215 obituary: prof. f.h. (terry) terblanche (17 june 1939 30 april 2014) professor terry terblanche, a former president of the south african communication association (sacomm), who passed in bloemfontein on april 30 this year, was in academia first and foremost a rhetorician in the classical tradition. terry studied at the heidelberg college of education, the university of south africa (unisa), and the university of the free state (ufs) in bloemfontein where he obtained a doctorate in communication science under the promotership of ben de koker and arrie de beer in 1987. terry’s professional career took him into teaching at school and college level, and a lengthy stint as lecturer in the department of drama and the department of communication science at the ufs. he was appointed head of the department of communication science at the ufs in 1990 and continued in that position until his retirement in december 2003. despite his ailing health, he remained a most valued research fellow of this department and an editorial board member of communitas until his death. 216 while terry had a life-long interest in greek and roman rhetoric, he also excelled in the teaching of general communication theory and, in later years, nonverbal communication. with regard to communication theory, he often explicated an existential approach in a similar vein to marthinus van schoor and the late nerina jansen of unisa, as well as the dramaturgical approach on which he was an expert. given this background, it is no wonder that terry was a formidable debater and a compassionate lecturer. tributes to terry have been widespread from former students, colleagues and the sacomm community. i was close to him for the past 25 years and can attest to his insatiable curiosity, dry sense of humour, sharp mind, humaneness and scholarly way of being in this world. we salute professor terry terblanche for the outstanding contribution he made to the communication science discipline and for his overall scholarly legacy. professor terblanche leaves behind his wife, ansa, three children and a grandchild. johann c. de wet _goback 113pb a pilot investigation into the readability of sesotho health information pamphlets abstract printed patient health communication in south africa is under pressure for various reasons, one being ignorance of the level of health literacy of patients. this pilot study investigated the readability of sesotho pamphlets given to sesotho-speaking patients with chronic diseases in the public health sector. findings obtained through readability tests indicate that the reading level of pamphlets handed to patients is too high, requiring the reader to have had a reading education of approximately nine years or more. this means it is written on a level requiring secondary education, while many people did not complete primary education. the south african context dictates that material should not be written at a level higher than grade 7 (seven years of schooling), since 21% of the inhabitants of the free state province has a literacy level (based on years of schooling completed) of grade 7 or lower. keywords: health communication; health information pamphlets; readability; health literacy; sesotho; flesch reading ease; flesch-kincaid grade level; fry assessment interpretation; coleman-liau index introduction patients visiting public healthcare services are often handed health information pamphlets to explain or provide more information about a specific health problem. these pamphlets normally originate from sponsoring non-governmental organisations (ngos) or the departments of health, either provincially or nationally. this study, as part of a larger project aimed at designing a health literacy test for sesotho speakers, investigated whether sesotho health information pamphlets have an acceptable readability level for patients to access the information contained therein. health literacy encompasses the personal characteristics and social resources needed for individuals and communities to access, understand, appraise and use information and services to make decisions about health. from this definition, it is clear to see why readability assessment forms an integral part of the majority of health literacy tests, such as realm (arozullah et al. 2007), toflha (parker et al. 1995), or dr daleen krige department of communication science, university of the free state (krigem@ufs.ac.za) dr marianne reid school of nursing, university of the free state (reidm@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 113-123 © ufs mailto:krigem@ufs.ac.za mailto:reidm@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.9 115114 daleen krige & marianne reid newest vital sign (weiss et al. 2005). since a patient must be able to access (mostly through reading) the information contained in health pamphlets, it is important to ascertain whether the readability of these pamphlets is on an accessible level (ideally at a readability level 7 or lower to accommodate possible low schooling levels). although research in the field of health literacy has blossomed worldwide, somehow this development largely passed the african continent. the eluded focus needs to be understood within the context of the continent being home to some of the world’s most impoverished populations, facing an ever-increasing threat of chronic conditions (economist intelligence unit 2011). at present, african healthcare needs are being delivered within an insufficient healthcare infrastructure, where skilled healthcare workers and essential medicines are in short supply (economist intelligence unit 2011). south africa cannot divorce itself from africa. apart from being part of the unique circumstances of this continent, the south african healthcare sector’s current unequal distribution of resources has been influenced by its political past (gaede & eagar 2014; sibiya & gwele 2013). the public sector forms the largest healthcare system in the country, with the majority of the population relying on a public healthcare system that has a disproportionately lower amount of financial and human resources at its disposal relative to the private sector (atabuga 2013; coovadia et al. 2009). to worsen the context, the overburdened south african public healthcare system is faced by the following leading causes of yll (years of life lost) across the county, namely tuberculosis, hiv-related conditions, cerebrovascular diseases, ischaemic heart disease and diabetes (groenewald et al. 2014). forming part of this scenario is the fact that multi-morbidity affects a substantial number of south africans, with a skewed distribution towards the poor (atabuga 2013). due to these complicating factors, teaching those with chronic conditions to manage their health will be key to avoid overreliance on the public healthcare system (economist intelligence unit 2011). the provision of health information pamphlets in hard copy to assist in teaching patients about health related topics is a well-known practice, also in resource-restricted health systems such as south africa (wasserman et al. 2010). in order for printed pamphlets to be successful, they should be tailor made to address all patients, and especially those of low literacy (wilson et al. 2012). the culturally rich and ethnically diverse population of south africa, home to 11 official languages, creates unique challenges for researchers and healthcare workers alike when attempting to address readability assessment of health pamphlets. almost half of all sesotho-speaking south africans reside in the free state province, where 63% of the population speaks sesotho (southafrica.info 2015). this pilot study only investigated the readability of sesotho pamphlets, but it would contribute considerably to the accessibility of health information if similar studies were undertaken for other indigenous languages. however, the question remains whether such tests would be feasible, taking into consideration the time factor and cost, as readability levels would have to be measured in the remaining nine official languages of south africa. 115114 a pilot investigation into the readability of sesotho health information pamphlets in order to address the literacy needs of the majority language group in the free state, investigation is indicated into the readability assessment of health information pamphlets in sesotho used at a provincial level. this investigation forms a first step towards the construction of a context-specific health literacy test for sesotho speakers. methodology making use of a quantitative descriptive design as a first step in the creation of a sesotho health literacy test, an identification was made of existing print pamphlets available in the public health sector. the range of documents collected consisted of all printed sesotho health pamphlets addressing chronic diseases that were electronically available from the free state department of health management, as well as hard copies from public health clinics within one of the five districts (namely, the mangaung metro) within the province. table 1 depicts the sample used within the project. no duplication of any pamphlets occurred. table 1: sampling of pamphlets collection site source pamphlet content (n=number of pamphlets) free state department of health (doh) management electronic data hiv-related (n=5) freedom square hard copy tb (n=1) hiv-related (n=1) westdene hard copy hiv-related (n=1) opkoms hard copy tb (n=1) hiv-related (n=1) epilepsy (n=1) mucpp hard copy hiv-related (n=3) mmabana hard copy hiv-related (n=1) total: n=15 this pilot phase was limited to 15 available sesotho health pamphlets. no other sesotho health pamphlets could be found within the confines of the identified sites. a general method of measuring the readability of print material, which has been used over the years, is the use of readability assessments such as smog (simple measure of gobbledygook), the gunning fog index and the dale-chall readability formula. since readability determination appears to be a handy indication of text difficulty, it is widely used in preparation of informational texts, also in healthcare (basara & juergens 1994). 117116 daleen krige & marianne reid grade levels calculated by the various readability assessments can vary considerably, yet these do provide some indication of text difficulty. although each assessment has a specific way to calculate statistically a readability score for a particular written text, the measurements have almost all of the following aspects in common, albeit in various formulae: a calculation of the number of syllables, words and/or sentences; these values are then equalised to a grade level as used in highincome countries. this grade level means that a person should have at least completed a certain grade (number of years) of school education to be able to fully understand the information. text creators often resort to “simplifying” the texts by using shorter words and/or sentences in the hope that this would make for more “readable” texts (begeny & greene 2014). to complicate matters, south africa, a middle-income country, is affected by the impact of the contextual factors discussed above. the south african census of 2011 indicated that 19% of the population have had no schooling or have a primary school education of grade 7 or lower, whereas the comparative percentage for the free state province is 21% (statistics south africa 2012). research has established that if adults and children read at their individual reading level, fluency and comprehension increases (burke & greenberg 2010). in general, reading assessment tools aim to determine vocabulary difficulty and syntactic complexity (bailin & grafstein 2001). however, word difficulty cannot be exactly equated to the length of the word, as familiarity with the specific word, textual coherence, typography and layout, amongst other factors, are not taken into account. despite these obvious impediments, readability assessments give an indication of a text’s difficulty, based only on semantic factors. in a comparison across various languages (including english, chinese and hungarian) using smog, the flesch-kincaid and the flesch reading ease formulae, taylor (2012) found comparable results for these three instruments. in another study, burke and greenberg (2010) found comparable results between the flesch-kincaid and fry methods. the finding that various readability assessments can be used for determining readability was supported by other studies, amongst which that of aleligay et al. (2008). normally, the flesch reading ease assessments and the fry readability graph are used to determine the readability of various types of health material in english. concerning the use of these readability tests for languages other than english, kondilis et al. (2010) noted that although the greek language is more complex, with longer syllables, than other romance languages, they could still use an adapted fleshkincaid assessment to evaluate the readability of public health information pamphlets. this strengthens the case of using a generic word and syllable count for determining readability. in south africa, no readability test exists that was specifically designed for the sesotho language. yet, since the flesch reading ease, flesch-kincaid, fry and coleman-liau index determinations depend upon word and sentence length, these tests could hypothetically be applied to sesotho texts. this can be done as the syntax of sesotho does not differ much from standard english, on which these assessment methods are based. in sesotho, a basic sentence structure is: subject + subject concord (expressing gender) + verb + object/adverb. from this it is clear that 117116 a pilot investigation into the readability of sesotho health information pamphlets the structure of subject + verb + object or expansion of subject is followed, which is similar to standard english. calculation of readability assessments the flesch reading ease readability formula is calculated as follows: reading ease (re) = 206.835 – (1.015 x average sentence length) – (84.6 x average number of syllables per word). this gives a result ranging from 0 to 100, where the higher numbers indicate a more “readable” text. a score of 90 – 100 is considered to represent a reading passage that is very easy to read, while a score of 60 to 69 represents a passage that is of standard difficulty, and a score of 59 or lower indicates a passage that is fairly difficult to difficult to read. a score of between 90 and 100 on this scale indicates that a person with at least five years of schooling will understand it, whereas a re of 30 indicates that tertiary education is required. the flesch-kincaid readability assessment, a variant of the flesch readability ease assessment, is calculated as follows: [(0.39 x average number of words per sentence) + (11.8 x average number of syllables per word) – 15.59] (aleligay et al. 2008). the fry readability determination is a non-weighted assessment done by reading a value from a chart corresponding to the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per 100 words in samples taken from a text. normally one should take three samples of 100 words each from a text, but due to the brevity of the pamphlets, the full text was used for the fry calculations in this study. another useful assessment method is the coleman-liau index, which makes use of word length and sentence length. the coleman-liau index is calculated as follows: [(0.0588 x average number of letters per 100 words) – (0.296 x average number of sentences per 100 words) – 15.8]. this index gives an indication of the number of years of education a person would need to understand the contents of the material. the benefit of this method is that it focuses on word length in terms of number of characters and not syllables, which makes it more applicable to languages other than english. all the samples collected (see table 1) were reproduced electronically so that a sesotho speaker could insert markers to break down the words into syllables. manual checks were performed by a third independent party to ensure the correctness of the reproductions and markers. manual calculations were done by two independent researchers, using the formulae above to determine the various indices. results table 2 reflects the basic statistics for each analysed pamphlet. 119118 daleen krige & marianne reid table 2: the basic statistics for each analysed pamphlet pamphlet content (collection site) c ha ra ct er c ou nt s yl la bl e co un t w or d co un t s en te nc e co un t c ha ra ct er s pe r w or d s yl la bl es p er w or d w or ds p er se nt en ce hiv-counselling (doh) 1081 443 247 17 4.4 1.8 14.5 hiv-arv (doh) 1400 587 361 25 3.9 1.6 14.4 hiv-arv2 (doh) 498 216 104 9 4.8 2.1 11.6 hiv8 (doh) 2446 952 546 41 4.5 1.7 13.3 hiv-pmtct2 (doh) 1090 438 242 15 4.5 1.8 16.1 hiv-pmtct (freedom square) 1949 805 470 22 4.1 1.7 21.4 tb2 (freedom square) 970 430 257 17 3.8 1.7 15.1 hiv5 (westdene) 1116 480 275 14 4.1 1.7 19.6 tb1 (opkoms) 770 347 213 9 3.7 1.6 23.7 hiv1 (opkoms) 803 320 187 11 4.3 1.7 17 epilepsy (opkoms) 1359 588 327 15 4.2 1.8 21.8 hiv2 (mucpp) 562 243 134 9 4.2 1.8 14.9 hiv-aids and relations 3 (mucpp) 502 212 121 8 4.1 1.8 15.1 hiv-aids 4 (mucpp) 1000 418 244 11 4.1 1.7 22.2 hiv6 (mmabana) 524 207 120 11 4.4 1.7 10.9 it is evident from table 2 that there is quite a variation in content length (number of words) per pamphlet, yet the syllable count was fairly stable across all pamphlets. results for readability calculations are provided in table 3. 119118 a pilot investigation into the readability of sesotho health information pamphlets table 3: combined results for readability assessments p am ph le t c on te nt (c ol le ct io n si te ) fl es ch r ea di ng e as e va lu e in te rp re ta tio n fl es ch -k in ca id g ra de le ve l v al ue in te rp re ta tio n (y ea rs o f e du ca tio n re qu ir ed ) fr y a ss es sm en t in te rp re ta tio n (y ea rs o f e du ca tio n re qu ir ed ) c ol em an -l ia u in de x va lu es in te rp re ta tio n (y ea rs o f e du ca tio n re qu ir ed ) hiv -counselling (doh) 40.4 difficult 11.3 ˃ 11 ˃ 12 7.9 8 hiv-arv (doh) 53.5 fairly difficult 9.3 ˃ 9 ˃ 12 5 5 hiv-arv2 (doh) 19.4 very difficult 13.4 ˃ 13 ˃ 12 9.8 9 hiv8 (doh) 43.8 difficult 10.2 ˃ 10 ˃ 12 8.5 9 hiv-pmtct2 (doh) 38.2 difficult 11.9 ˃ 11 ˃ 12 8.8 9 hiv-pmtct (freedom square) 40.2 difficult 13 ˃ 13 ˃ 12 7.2 7 tb2 (freedom square) 25 very difficult 10.3 ˃ 10 ˃ 12 4.5 5 hiv6 (mmabana) 52 fairly difficult 9.5 ˃ 9 ˃ 12 7.4 7 hiv5 (westdene) 43.1 difficult 12.7 ˃ 12 ˃ 12 6.6 7 tb1 (opkoms) 47.4 difficult 12.9 ˃ 12 12 4.7 5 hiv1 (opkoms) 45.8 difficult 11.2 ˃ 11 ˃ 12 7.7 8 epilepsy (opkoms) 32.4 difficult 14.1 ˃ 14 ˃ 12 7.3 7 hiv2 (mucpp) 24.2 very confusing 14.8 ˃ 14 ˃ 12 7.5 8 hiv-aids4 (mucpp) 31 difficult 12.5 ˃ 12 ˃ 12 8.3 8 hiv-aids and relations3 (mucpp) 47.8 difficult 10.8 ˃ 10 ˃ 12 8 8 it is apparent from table 3 (the combined results for the four readability assessments) that the flesch reading ease evaluation of the various pamphlets ranges from “fairly difficult” to “very confusing”, which is an indication that the material is prepared at a level that requires high school education or even tertiary level reading ability. the “easiest” pamphlet yielded a re of 53, which is at the upper end of difficulty. 121120 daleen krige & marianne reid the majority of these analyses yielded re values of between 30 and 40, which is an expression of difficult reading material. the flesch-kincaid grade level findings correspond more or less to the results obtained from the flesch reading ease assessments, in that the lowest level required as indicated by this index is more than nine years of schooling. this puts the readability demands at a high school level at a minimum. seven of the 15 pamphlets analysed indicated an education level of 12 years or higher, which implies that tertiary training is necessary to understand the content. contrary to the previous two assessments that are weighted for english, the fry assessment is not weighted and simply calculates readability on the basis of the relationship between the average number of sentences and the average number of syllables per 100 words. these findings indicated all material to be at a readability level requiring education of 12 years or more. however, the language structure of sesotho could have contributed to this high reading, as sesotho has many monosyllabic and single letter words, which could have elevated the counting of syllables/100 words. however, weighted for english, the coleman-liau index assessments generally yielded lower readability scores than the other three instruments. this assessment, contrary to the fry assessment, looks at the number of letters per 100 words and not the number of syllables, which is more in line with the sesotho word and language structure. yet, the majority of the texts analysed (8 out of 15) yielded a grade classification of grade 8, which is equal to the first year of high school. discussion written health information provided to patients can only be used in full if it is written at a level that the recipient can understand; therefore, material should be prepared at a suitable level. yet, as found by aleligay et al. (2008), internationally most educational health material is written at a grade 10 level, which means the reader must have completed at least ten years of schooling to be able to understand the material. in a south african context, where 32% of the population has had no or very little schooling (statistics south africa 2012), it is clear that material prepared for reading at this level will be too difficult for many patients who visit clinics. even the recommendation of aleligay et al. (2008) that health material should be prepared at a fifth to sixth grade level might prove to be too high for the specific context in south africa. this study is the first phase towards the construction of a context-specific health literacy test for sesotho speakers, in which several informational pamphlets on chronic diseases were subjected to four different readability assessments to give an indication of the level of text difficulty. although these readings cannot be seen as a precise indication of the text’s difficulty, it does provide an indication of the standard of schooling required to read and understand the information contained in the pamphlets. the patient’s understanding will be tested in a follow-up leg of the research. the results reflected above indicate that for the flesch reading ease, flesch-kincaid grade level assessment and the fry calculations, a person would need to have had 121120 a pilot investigation into the readability of sesotho health information pamphlets grade 9 and even tertiary education to understand the content. although also weighted for english, the coleman-liau index makes use of word length in terms of the number of characters and sentence length in terms of the number of words per 100 word samples. in considering word length, it is deemed a more reliable way of assessing the readability of sesotho texts, as the sesotho language has many monosyllabic words, contrary to english. these results indicate that only three texts are written at a grade 5 level, while four texts are at a grade 7 level, five at a grade 8 level, and three at a grade 9 level (see table 3). conclusion through this investigation, it was endeavoured to obtain a theoretical assessment of the readability of various pamphlets handed to patients diagnosed with chronic diseases at public health clinics in the free state province. with the exception of the fry assessment, the other three assessments are all weighted for english. the coleman-liau index is based on word length and sentence length, and could for this reason be a more reliable test for assessing readability difficulty of sesotho texts as the sesotho language displays many monosyllabic and single letter words in its sentence structure. although no readability test exists for the sesotho language, the four assessments yielded results that could indicate that the text difficulty is in general too high for the reading level of the patients. from the research, it is clear that a readability test for sesotho health information material would have to include in its structure a concession for monosyllabic and single letter words if a reliable indication of readability is desired. this was a first investigation into the texts, and the understanding of the texts will be tested in follow-up research. this project not only contributes to health communication knowledge, but could also contribute to better patient information processes, which could positively affect the health outcomes of sesotho-speaking patients, who form the majority population group in the free state. references aleligay, a., worrall, l. & rose, t. 2008. readibility of health information provided to people with aphasia. aphasiology 22(4): 383-407. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030701415872 arozullah, a., yarnold, p., bennet, c., soltysik, r., wolf, m., ferreira, r., … davis, t. 2007. development and validation of a short-form, rapid estamate of adult literacy in medicine. medical care 45(11): 1026-1033. https://doi.org/10.1097/ mlr.0b013e3180616c1b atabuga, j. 2013. inequalities in multimorbidiby in south africa. international journal of equity in health 12: 64-73. https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-12-64 bailin, a. & grafstein, a. 2001. the linguistic assumptions underlying readability formulae: a critique. language & communication 21: 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0271-5309(01)00005-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030701415872 https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e3180616c1b https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e3180616c1b https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-12-64 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0271-5309(01)00005-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0271-5309(01)00005-2 123122 daleen krige & marianne reid basara, l.r. & juergens, j.p. 1994. patient package insert readability and design. american pharmacy 34(8): 48-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0160-3450(15)30339-1 begeny, j. & greene, d. 2014. can readability formulas be used to successfully gauge difficulty? 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review of the literature. patient education and counseling 89: 7-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2012.06.007 https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.405 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2012.06.007 155pb press regulation in south africa and its implications for press freedom abstract using the critical political economy of the media theory (cpem), this article analyses press regulation in south africa. the data was collected from statutory documents, which inform press regulation in the country, and was analysed using inductive thematic content analysis. four themes emerged, namely from self-regulation to independent co-regulation, the communal approach, independent co-regulation, and citizenship. the findings indicate that press regulation in south africa has adopted a communal approach, which implies that press regulation attempts to include the public. although independent co-regulation is between the media and the public, and it is supposed to be independent from the government, this does not make it much different from the previous structureof self-regulation. keywords: press regulation; press freedom; media freedom; critical political economy of the media; communal approach; citizenship. introduction south africa’s approach to press regulation has progressed from self-regulation in 2007 to independent co-regulation in 2012, when the press council of south africa (pcsa) adopted the recommendations of the press freedom commission (pfc) following a review of the pcsa. between 2002 and 2013 the anc proposed a number of controversial ideas about press freedom, including a media appeals tribunal (mat 2010) and the protection of state information bill (posib, or “secrecy bill”). debates played out mainly in the english commercial press. since 2010, academic debates about press regulation and press freedom also emerged contesting the anc’s ideas on press freedom, and supporting self-regulation (berger 2010; daniels 2011; duncan 2014). duncan (2009) and daniels (2011: 11, 233) argued that the mat was not the answer to regulating the media, and that self-regulation of the press, independent from government intervention, was a better alternative. duncan (2009) and daniels (2011) both considered sibongile sindane department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria (sindasa@unisa.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 155-164 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:sindasa@unisa.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.10 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 157156 sindane issues in the press that accounted for the anc’s change in approach regarding freedom of expression, and which possibly informed the suggestions for a mat and the posib. duncan (2014: 180) argued for the self-regulation of the press in a plea to the pcsa not to adopt statutory regulation or co-regulation. similarly, berger (2011: 41) conducted a study on best practice for press regulation and concluded that, “for local best practice, it is imperative that the model introduced to a specific country takes into account the context and history of that country, and must have a common purpose”. berger (ibid.) warns against “… selective borrowing while disregarding the context of different countries”, and argues that “… special caution should be taken when utilizing concepts derived from different countries”. berger’s (2010: 291) argument for self-regulation points out that it avoids the changes of political control and leaves media ethics largely to media professionals, both as individuals and as a community. through these academic debates, press freedom is simply equated to self-regulation, and press regulation is made synonymous with press freedom. berger (2010: 291-292) further argues that “… it is the extent to which the broader public cherishes press freedom and self-regulation which provides the ultimate guarantee against political control”. in contrast to these ideas, press regulation does not happen in a vacuum but includes power relations (freedman 2008: 16). each actor attempts to have its interests reflected in the way that the press is regulated. these interests are either to meet economic ends, or to have political control and, at times, both (golding & murdock 2005: 60). murdock and golding (2016: 764) posit that political parties often exploit the press in support of political ends, whereas the media could give some ideas privilege over others in consideration of profit margins, and the interest of its target audience. however, a press that is well regulated in a democracy opens up space for inclusivity, pluralism, diversity and citizenship (bagdikian 2000: 234; habermas 1992: 231). these are the notions that determine press freedom in a democracy. press regulation in a developing democracy the press ombudsman and the press council of south africa that regulated press freedom until 2012 operated on the premise of self-regulation. however, the press and its regulatory bodies were forced to change the self-regulation system to an independent co-regulatory system in 2012 due to the pressures from the anc-led government (pcsa 2016). the idea for what would become the suggested media appeals tribunal emerged from the anc conference in 2002. in its discussion the anc highlighted what the party perceived as “press wrongdoing” in, for example, how the party’s ideas about press freedom were represented in the media. the anc published a media appeals tribunal (mat) discussion document in 2010 in order to address these perceived transgressions by the media. later in the same year, the protection of state information bill (posib) was compiled to support the mat. both documents were presented to parliament. by october 2018 the posib was still awaiting presidential assent (parliament 2018). 157156 press regulation in south africa the statutory documents that provided the framework for regulating and governing press freedom, media freedom and freedom of expression over the years since democracy are the bill of rights, the windhoek declaration, the review of the press council of south africa, the press council of south africa constitution document, and the press freedom commission report on press regulation in south africa. the constitution of south africa gives credence to these documents. the constitution, in section 16, protects and guarantees freedom of expression to all citizens; however, it does not guarantee press freedom to the extent that press freedom is accessible to all citizens. it merely attempts to open space for press freedom to develop. in other words, the constitution guarantees the potential for press freedom, but not the exercising of press freedom. the windhoek declaration notes that freedom of information is a fundamental human right. consistent with article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights, the windhoek declaration also states that maintaining and fostering an independent, pluralistic, free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy (wd 1991). an independent press is defined as “a press that is independent from government, political or economic control or from control of materials and infrastructure essential for the production and dissemination of newspapers, magazines and periodicals” (wd 1991). a pluralistic press, on the other hand, calls for the end of monopolies in the press and the existence of the greatest possible number of newspapers, magazines, periodicals and other media which would reflect the widest possible range of opinion within the community (ibid.). the windhoek declaration’s main concern for the advocacy of an independent and pluralistic press is that in many african countries journalists, editors and publishers have been victims of repression. journalists and editors have been murdered, arrested, detained and censored, and are restricted by economic and political pressures, which limit the opportunity to publish. these pressures include restrictions on newsprint and licensing systems, such as restrictions preventing the free movement of journalists, restrictions on the exchange of news and information, and limitations on the circulation of newspapers among countries across national borders. the windhoek declaration views censorship as a human rights violation (wd 1991), and encourages african governments to provide constitutional guarantees of press freedom and freedom of expression. a critical political economy of press regulation critical political economy of the media (cpem) acknowledges that economic dynamics define key features of the general environment within which communication activity takes place; however, it does not accept economic dynamics only as a complex explanation of the nature of that activity (murdock & golding 2016: 765). equally, cpem acknowledges that press regulation influences press freedom in a democracy. within the regulation the other factors that can influence press freedom are forms of media, forms of ownership, media systems and management, history and context, the institutional roles of the media and their freedom to carry out those roles, funding and financing, production and media products, content and representation of reality, and audience access and reception (ndela 2003: 6). 159158 sindane in relation to these factors, cpem examines the role of power in the production, distribution and exchange of mediated communication (mosco 2011: 10). cpem developed during the 1960s among sociologists and political scientists who became concerned about what they saw as the dubious role of large corporations and the state in cultural production (hesmondhalgh 2013: 42). cpem is based on the premise that media are first and foremost businesses (golding & murdock 2005: 60). these businesses are subject to constraints by owners and other market profit oriented forces such as advertisers. the focus in cpem is on the relationship between economic and social practices and political organisation. cpem is relevant to this study because it contends that change can take place, which means that it is historical and pays attention to context. for example, private power is made blatant, and this makes cpem important in understanding the relationship between private interest and public good (wasko et al. 2011: 2). at the heart of cpem’s core normative project are questions about “diversity and quality of the information, analysis by major news and current affairs outlets, both print and broadcast have been central to debates around how well the media system serves the requirements of democratic citizenship” (murdock & golding 2016: 767). in particular, cpem is based on a communal approach because it promotes a press regulation that prioritises the public as a citizen rather than one that prioritises the public as a consumer. for these reasons, cpem advocates for regulation of the press that emphasises community instead of individualism. in similar fashion, instead of a public that is defined by capitalism, critical political economy seeks a public defined by citizenship (bagdikian, 2000). this also forms the basis for this article’s discussion of the implications of the independent co-regulatory system. methodology the study employs a critical approach based on qualitative data collected through a document analysis (braun & clarke 2013: 30-31). cpem is useful as both theory and methodology because it focuses on seven interrelated themes. these are the historical or social context of a media system at national and global level, the institutional roles of the media and their freedom to do so, media systems, ownership and management, funding and financing, production and media productions, content or representation of reality, audience (access and reception), and media policy and regulation (golding & murdock 2005: 63-65). using cpem’s themes as a framework, an analysis of the press freedom commission’s (pfc) review document provided the following four themes: ♦ from self-regulation to independent co-regulation; ♦ communal approach; ♦ independent co-regulation; and ♦ citizenship. 159158 press regulation in south africa discussion theme 1: from self-regulation to independent co-regulation as discussed above, a review of the press council in 2011 dealt with the press council’s constitution, the south african press code and procedures for laying complaints of ethical or other misconduct by newspapers and magazines and for dealing with these (press council review 2011). the task team’s mandate was to develop a process, no matter how structured, that would meet the need for dealing with complaints against newspapers and magazines while promoting excellence in journalistic practice and upholding independence, freedom of expression and freedom of the media (ibid.). the current press council as from 2012 “is an independent co-regulatory system which involves exclusively representatives of the press and representatives of the public” (pcsa 2016). the change in the way in which the press is regulated has an influence on press freedom. press freedom does not happen in a vacuum, but involves competing interests. cpem involves an evaluation of these competing interests (mcchesney 2008: 307). classical liberal political economists and their present followers begin from the assumption that public intervention ought to be minimised and market forces given the widest possible freedom of operation (golding & murdock 2005: 65). classical liberalism keeps government and the media in conflict, while the constitution guarantees private freedom. mcchesney (2008: 307) posits that, as long as government’s influence on media is limited, the flow of information and ideas will be safe. however, cpem points to the distortions and inequalities of the market system and argues that the deficiencies can only be rectified by public intervention (golding & murdock 2005: 65). similarly, cpem is interested in determining the appropriated scope of public intervention (ibid.). as a result, cpem opens up space for press freedom that is based on a positive freedom that allows for participation in the press and in press regulation (marxist 2008). press freedom requires restraints because it can be used to serve economic and political interests (bagdikian 2000: 239). press freedom is created through, for example, a constitution, policy discussion documents, and regulation. as a result of the pfc report’s recommendations, media regulation in south africa is now shaped by a system of independent co-regulation, whereas previously it had been regulated by a self-regulating system. as a result, the regulation of the press has changed from being based on liberalism to some indication of neo-marxism. liberalism focuses on the liberty of the individual where there are no restrictions (curran 2000: 18). in its previous iteration, the pcsa leaned towards liberalism because it focused on a self-regulatory process, which placed importance on values and neglected the structure of the press. for instance, the self-regulated pcsa consisted of six members who were representatives of the press. one of the members of the press was nominated to represent the public. the office staff consisted only of the ombudsman and deputy ombudsman. decision-making authority regarding complaints received by the pcsa rested with the press ombudsman. in the independent co-regulatory system, the office of the pcsa was extended to include a director, chairperson, deputy chairperson and 161160 sindane a public advocate, and the decision-making authority regarding complaints received by the pcsa rests with the director (pcsa 2016). the press council review placed the principles of journalistic practice, independence, freedom of expression, and the freedom of the media above the importance of the structure that should regulate press freedom. but cpem emphasises both values and structures and economic dynamics behind the range of cultural production, texts and regulations of culture, and also incorporates questions on cultural consumption, access and cultural competence (golding & murdock 2005: 61). as a result, the industry bodies that make up the press council decided to hand over the press council review to the press freedom commission (pfc). the pfc was set up by the south african national editors’ forum (sanef) and print media south africa (pcsa 2016). for an effective and responsible regulatory system the pfc suggested independent co-regulation (pfc 2012). this recommendation from the pfc ties in with neomarxism, which argues that the press must belong to the many (mcquail 2010: 96). pfc recommendations resulted in changes to the structure that gives effect to press regulation. since 2016 the appeals panel consists of ten public members. the number of press representatives has been increased to eight from six. furthermore, the chairperson and the deputy chairperson alternate each term. if the deputy chairperson is from the members of the press one term, he or she will alternate with a member of the public the following term. should the director of the pcsa not be able to resolve certain matters at the level of mediation, these matters are escalated to the ombudsman. this means that the ombudsman still has the authority to make the final decision at the upper level of mediation. however, if a complainant is not satisfied with the decision of the ombudsman, the complainant can appeal to the appeals panel, chaired by a retired judge appointed by the chief justice of the constitutional court. the complainant forfeits legal representation in the process, but is instead assisted by the public advocate (pcsa 2016). the public advocate assist members of the public in formulating their complaints in an attempt to resolve complaints amicably by liaising directly with the publication on behalf of the complainant. in addition, the public advocate may represent the complainant before the ombudsman and/or the appeals panel (pcsa 2016). the public advocate is also flexible enough to accept third party complaints and to lodge a complaint on a matter that a third party sees fit for complaint. theme 2: communal approach the system of independent co-regulation is communal in nature. the communal approach means that the pcsa focuses on public good and on involving a community that consists of the public in the regulation of the press. similarly, cpem is concerned with the balance between capitalistic enterprise and public intervention. it goes beyond technical issues of efficiency to engage with the basic moral question of justice and public good (golding & murdock 2005: 61). however, a communal approach cannot exist if the entities that make up the community in the communal approach are not representative of the general public in south africa. 161160 press regulation in south africa at present, the “public” in the pcsa is slanted as many of the members who represent the public have ties to especially commercial media companies as former employees or a similar affiliation. public representatives with no media ties would perhaps allow for a better space for independent thought about press regulation in south africa. in this way the communal approach required by independent co-regulation can be achieved. influence from commercial media is not suitable to a communal approach as the main objective of these private media institutions is to make a profit. cpem, on the other hand, is a critical orientation that challenges unjust and inequitable systems of power (wasko et al. 2011: 4; murdock & golding 2016: 764). in this regard, influence from community media is better suited to the communal approach because the focus of community media is on serving the community and members of the community. the behavioural consequence of a particular media system can be influenced by product differentiation and advertising behaviour (gomery 1989: 49). in turn, this can influence the press regulation system. a communal approach as advanced by the independent co-regulatory systems is ideal for a developing democracy such as south africa. however, the parameters of what constitutes the “public” are vague in the current independent co-regulatory system. currently, public representation is limited to those with some media experience, often within private media institutions and from tertiary education institutions. in this regard, the current independent co-regulatory system has to rethink its parameters for its public approach to be truly representative of the public. cpem argues for a media that serves the public good (golding & murdock 2005: 61). when the press council does a type of “self-selection” of its public representatives it is self-regulation in a different form. theme 3: independent co-regulation the pfc review envisioned independent co-regulation as being independent from government and private media as the government has political interests and private media has economic interests to serve. independence in co-regulation is aimed at being a custodian to the public. independent co-regulation is a “system of the press that involves public and press participation with a predominant public membership but without state or government participation. it is accountable to the public” (pfc 2012: 7). hence, independent co-regulation differs from co-regulation as co-regulation involves both the government and the media industry (pfc 2012: 10). in independent regulation, “the press ombudsman should be independent of government and in operation independent of the media” (pfc 2012: 107). however, in independent co-regulation, as defined by the pcsa, there is no emphasis on independence from private media. it could be argued that the extent to which the pcsa is independent is skewed towards the interests of the media, as the analysis of the structure and specifically public representation proved. for example, the press code and the principles of the pcsa are based on the democratic roles of the media. cpem requires a strong focus on citizens. thus, rather than serving the public, the pcsa should aim at serving the citizens that form the public. citizens should be treated based on the principles of citizenship and the public sphere, rather than the public interest, which is difficult to define (bagdikian 2000: 207). 163162 sindane theme 4: citizenship citizenship, viewed through the lens of cpem, requires press regulation that is inclusive, pluralistic and diverse. diversity and pluralism of the press are important for press freedom. pluralism is generally associated with a number of different and independent voices and different political opinions and representation of culture within the media (doyle 2002: 11). the type of regulation of the press can also influence the degree of pluralism and diversity and, consequently, press freedom. furthermore, citizenship presupposes collective action in pursuit of equality and fraternity as well as individual liberty (murdock 1992: 19). citizenship is also the full right to social and cultural formation, which implies the right to participate in existing patterns of social and cultural life and the right to challenge these configurations and develop alternative ones (murdock 1992: 20). cpem assists in understanding the structure of citizenship in a world that addresses people as consumers. the pcsa also realigned the bodies it comprises in 2016 in consideration of the rapid development of online media. the bodies that form the pcsa are the association of independent publishers (aip), the forum of community journalists (fcj), the south african editors’ forum (sanef), and the interactive advertising bureau of south africa (iabsa), which represents online media (pcsa 2016). again it could be argued that these bodies are not representative of the public, and specifically of citizenship, as most members’ interests are aligned with the commercial aspect of media. for example, the association of independent publishers operates to protect the commercial interests of publishers (pcsa 2016). although the pcsa includes a public advocate to assist members of the public to formulate complaints, the focus of cpem is on the diversity and quality of regulation and how well media regulation systems serve the requirements of a democratic citizenship (murdock & golding 2016: 767). thus, to serve the democratic citizenship, the public advocate needs to be accessible to all citizens. this would include diversity of language as well as cultural sensitivity as “access to the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public” (habermas 1992: 23). this places an education purpose on the pcsa as well in terms of how the media operates. the public sphere is a concept which, in the context of today’s society, points to the issue of how and to what extent mass media can help citizens learn about the world, debate their responses to it, and reach informed decision about what courses of action to adopt (dahlgren 1991: 1). conclusion the analysis confirms the change in south africa’s approach to press regulation, from self-regulation to independent co-regulation with a communal approach. the communal approach involves the public in the regulation of press freedom and regulates the press in relation to justice and public good. however, there is room for improvement in the communal approach within which the pcsa currently operates. in order for the press to be plural, diverse and accessible to the public, the structure of press regulation is important. self-regulation, coming from a liberalistic perspective, places more emphasis 163162 press regulation in south africa on principles while independent co-regulation, with its communal focus, can only be accommodated through structural changes to specifically public representation. the implications for press freedom is that press freedom is moving towards being treated as a positive freedom rather than a negative freedom. this entails emphasis on the freedom to participate in matters of press freedom, rather than to be protected from a particular entity such as the government. references bagdikian, b. 2000. the media monopoly. boston: beacon press. berger, g. 2010. the struggle for press self-regulation in contemporary south africa: charting a course between an industry charade and a government doormat. communicatio 36(3): 289-308. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2010.518783 berger, g. 2011. best practice in media self-regulation: a three-way test to avoid selective borrowing and ad hoc transplant. ecquid novi: african journalism studies 32(2): 36-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560054.2011.578876 braun, v. & clarke, v. 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[accessed on 19 october 2017]. http://www.marxists.org http://www.anc.org.za https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716655094 https://www.parliament.gov.za/legislation?sorts%5bdate%5d=-1 https://www.parliament.gov.za/legislation?sorts%5bdate%5d=-1 http://www.presscouncil.org.za http://www.presscouncil.org.za http://www.pressfreedomcomm.org.za http://www.presscouncil.org.za https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444395402 http://www.unesco.org/webworld/fed/temp/communication_democracy/windhoek.htm http://www.unesco.org/webworld/fed/temp/communication_democracy/windhoek.htm _goback 87pb communicating male breast cancer: knowledge and awareness among some south african youth abstract minimal research exists on the knowledge and awareness of male breast cancer. although male breast cancer is a relatively uncommon disease, there is an increasing incidence in subsaharan africa. however, minimal awareness among the public has led to ignorance about symptoms, often resulting in the late diagnosis of the disease. consequently, praxis pertaining to male breast cancer is informed mostly by research on wellpublicised female breast cancer, yet studies show that while the two may have similarities, they are not identical. theoretically, the health belief model and the developmental health model are applicable to the study. a cross-sectional survey of some university students, using a self-administered questionnaire, was conducted to examine knowledge and awareness of male breast cancer. results indicate a general lack of knowledge about the disease. the majority of students were of the view that there should be more campaigns about male breast cancer. such studies are crucial in informing health promotion organisations in the formulation of gender-specific/inclusive campaigns required to create awareness. keywords: health communication; health literacy; health messages; health belief model; developmental health model; male breast cancer; knowledge; awareness; university students; south africa introduction globally, a dearth of knowledge and awareness about male breast cancer (mbc) is evident in most societies. low publicity and/or low prevalence could partially explain this lack of awareness about mbc. however, there is an increasingly growing incidence of mbc in sub-saharan african countries (bunkley et al. 2000; herbst 2016; ndom 2012). studies from seven sub-saharan countries, including south africa, indicate a male to female breast cancer ratio of 1:14, meaning that breast cancer was found to be 14 times less common among males than females (bunkley et al. 2000: 91). in kenya this ratio is 1:7. while these ratios indicate the relative scarcity of the disease, they also serve as an indication of the higher prevalence of mbc in africa; the american ratio is aniekie motloutsi postgraduate student, department of communication, media and information studies, university of limpopo (aniekiemotloutsi@ gmail.com) dr elizabeth lubinga research associate, university of limpopo (elizabeth.lubinga@ ul.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.7 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 87-97 © ufs mailto:aniekiemotloutsi@gmail.com mailto:aniekiemotloutsi@gmail.com mailto:elizabeth.lubinga@ul.ac.za mailto:elizabeth.lubinga@ul.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.7 8988 aniekie motloutsi & elizabeth lubinga 1:100, meaning breast cancer is 100 times less common among males than females (american cancer society 2017). bunkley et al. (2000) posit that there might be an increased incidence of breast cancer among men in sub-saharan africa, alluding to black males. statistics from the 2012 south african national cancer registry support this assumption. more than 50% of the men historically diagnosed with mbc were black, with the other half constituted all three other south african racial population groups combined (cancer association of south africa 2017). in a meta-analysis of studies on male breast cancer from 27 african countries, ndom et al. (2012: 238) observe that the male-to-female ratio was higher in sub-saharan africa than in north africa. these authors (ibid.) add that, considering that black males in the united states have a higher male-to-female ratio than white males, this may suggest that genetic background is an important risk factor for consideration of prevalence among black males. such statistics raise the question of whether and to what extent men, specifically black men, are aware that they can get breast cancer. statistically, in developed countries (american cancer society 2017) mbc forms less than 1% of all breast cancers, and less than 1% of all cancers for men when compared to female breast cancer (fbc), which is the most common type of female cancer worldwide, with an estimated 1.3 million women diagnosed annually. the american cancer society’s estimate for 2017 is that 2 470 men will be diagnosed with mbc (american cancer society 2017). this may not be a large number compared to the 255180 new cases of female breast cancer estimated for the united states in 2017. however, in comparison, mbc is more aggressive and deadly. herbst (2011: 6) states that although men rarely get breast cancer, it is more deadly. yet, if diagnosed at an early stage, the survival rate increases. the increase in deaths from mbc has been attributed in part to almost no public education programmes. steyn et al. (2014: 1) note that in south africa public awareness about mbc is lacking. healthcare facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, particularly in the public sector, are inadequate. swergold et al. (2014: 321) are of the view that a lack of defined screening programmes for men-at-risk, as well as delayed diagnosis, compounds the problem. ndom et al. (2012: 238) state that because of the ignorance of patients, combined with limited medical resources in many african countries, mbc is often diagnosed late. in both developing and developed countries, the common factor according to researchers appears to be lack of public education, which leads to ignorance among the male population. the low numbers of mbc cases may be attributable to undetermined and undocumented cases of men with mbc, who, due to lack of awareness, are not aware that they have the disease. in south africa, not only are more men diagnosed with breast cancer, but males are increasingly diagnosed with mbc at a younger age. traditionally mbc is associated with age and is especially common amongst men older than 50. in 2016, the south african cancer association (cansa) revealed that men as young as 25 are presenting with breast cancer (herbst 2016). in addition, two out of three men who visit clinics with breast problems are diagnosed with mbc. according to cansa (2017), the 2012 8988 communicating male breast cancer statistics from the south african national cancer registry showed that although the majority of men diagnosed with mbc were between the ages of 50 and 80, the youngest men diagnosed with the disease were aged between 15 and 19. against this background this article sought to determine whether young south african males, aged 15 and older, are aware that they should engage in routine breast selfexamination or that they should seek immediate professional help if they experience breast problems. theorertical framework the health belief model health communication campaigns could be instrumental in creating the necessary public awareness of mbc. tomaselli and chasi (2011: 93) state that health communication campaigns disseminate health messages through public education with the aim of changing the social climate to encourage healthy behaviour, create awareness, change attitudes and motivate individuals to adopt recommended behaviour. if men were aware that they too could develop breast cancer, it could lead to increased knowledge about risk factors, signs of the disease and its symptoms. thus, most authors agree that there is a need to increase awareness of the disease (kipling et al. 2014; robinson et al. 2008; steyn et al. 2014). theoretically, the health belief model (hbm), proposed in the 1950s by hochbaum and modified by rosenstock and kegels, was designed to explain and predict preventive health behaviour. schiavo (2013: 41) describes the hbm as a risk-learning model with one of the goals being that of teaching new information about health risks and the behaviours that minimise those risks. schiavo (ibid.) states that the overall premise of the hbm is that knowledge will bring change. this knowledge is brought to the intended groups through an educational approach that primarily focuses on messages, channels and spokespeople. in terms of this study, the hbm highlights the important role of mass media campaigns in providing what is termed as “cues to action”. cues to action motivate people to take health action. communication-related modifying factors (mass media campaigns, interpersonal advice, illness of a family member, and health professional advice) influence an individual’s perceived threat of the health problem. the hbm proposes several constructs. individual perceptions in the form of perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and perceived barriers are influenced by modifying factors, such as demographic variables (age and gender), as well as socio-psychological factors (personality and social class). take, for example, perceived susceptibility: if a person thinks that they are at risk of a particular health problem, then they might be more willing to engage in behaviour that decreases that risk. applied to this study, such behaviour could be in the form of an individual (manat-risk) engaging in self-screening, especially if he was made aware of mbc through a relative who has been diagnosed with the disease and/or is genetically pre-disposed or he could lessen risk factors, such as smoking. 9190 aniekie motloutsi & elizabeth lubinga the developmental health model the developmental health model (dhm), developed in the 1970s, could also be applied to this study, especially regarding the interpersonal interaction between patients, family members and healthcare providers. according to the dhm, health is a phenomenon of the family, which can be developed through the learning of healthy behaviour (coping and development skills). with regards to the interaction with health professionals, the model outlines four stages of development: during the orientation stage the patient is exposed to the therapist, during the identification stage they interact more closely with the therapist, during the third stage medical services are sought, and during the resolution stage they utilise the services of a health professional. it is not the purpose of this article to detract from the efforts focused on, the achievements made in addressing, or the gravity of the prevalence of fbc. instead, the article argues that there should be an additional focus on an increase in breast cancer communication campaigns targeting males. the only evidence of any type of mbc campaign in south africa was found in a few media articles during october 2016. more visible campaigns focusing on mbc are yet to be implemented and measured in terms of their impact on awareness and knowledge among male recipients. disparities between female and male breast cancer messages several studies indicate that, in the case of breast cancer, men are marginalised and that messages on breast cancer are gendered (donovan & flynn 2007; thomas 2010; white et al. 2011). globally recognisable pink ribbon campaigns have been successful at promoting breast cancer awareness. pink as a colour traditionally symbolises women, while the pink and blue ribbon, meant to symbolise mbc, remains relatively unknown. as hughes (2013) argues, “for any man who finds himself to be the one in 100,000 diagnosed with breast cancer annually, that lack of inclusion in awareness campaigns is doubtless troubling and a bit mysterious, given the pink ribbon campaign’s otherwise thunderously loud and sweeping reach”. rayne et al. (2017: 247) observe that as breast cancer awareness and advocacy has increased in africa over the past decade, it has mimicked trends from western europe and the united states, becoming strongly allied with female colours and themes. as indicated above, widespread ignorance among males means that men are not aware of the disease. in a qualitative study conducted in the united states, thomas (2010: 37) found an 80% lack of awareness that men can get breast cancer; in fact, one of the participants stated that men cannot get breast cancer because “they don’t have breasts, they have chests”. in south africa, rayne et al. (2017: 249) found that 67% of participants in a telephonic survey of 18 survivors were not aware of the fact that men could get breast cancer, before their own diagnosis. as thomas (2010: 32) asserts, “whether assumptions prevail that men cannot get breast cancer and that the disease is rare, male breast cancer has widely been ignored”. 9190 communicating male breast cancer in contrast, fbc attracts national and international gender-exclusive health interventions. several international organisations, including the who and the breast health global institute (bhgi), have facilitated campaigns intended at creating awareness amongst women, mainly in limited and middle-resource countries (sambanje & mafuvadze 2012). perhaps such measures are influenced by the fact the health problem remains highest amongst women, with diagnosis and treatment of the cancer in low-income countries remaining poor, thus creating the need to focus scarce financial and other resources on the bigger health problem of fbc. the who (2017) states that in 2015 more than 90% of high-income countries reported treatment services being available, in comparison to less than 30% of low-income countries. international efforts targeting women often run concurrently with national campaigns conducted by individual countries. in south africa the month of october has been dedicated to educating the public about breast cancer, yet such media and public outdoor campaigns address the disease from an entirely female perspective. as hughes (2013) points out: celebrities from across the spectrum … have donned the ubiquitous pink ribbon, raising awareness and funds for research and treatment. millions more worldwide have walked, run or organized charitable events, auctions and parties for the cure … despite that brightly illuminated soapbox, the issue of breast cancer in men remains the proverbial red-headed stepchild of the cancer movement. reedijk (in hughes 2013) reasons that mbc “gets caught at a later stage of development because it’s simply not on most men’s radar, nor that of their family doctors. that makes broadcasting the message — that men can and do contract breast cancer — crucial.” he adds, “if there was an ad in a popular magazine about breast cancer, it would be nice to see one sentence at the bottom saying, ‘by the way, men can get breast cancer, too. please see your family doctor if you have any breast symptoms’.” kipling et al. (2014: 29) state, “men should be offered a service tailored to their needs, rather than being ‘shoe-horned’ into a service designed to care for women”. some researchers observe that disparities exist between the knowledge, treatment and management of female and male breast cancer. they argue that mbc is not properly understood, with some studies indicating that mbc is physically and psychologically different from fbc, and therefore affects men differently to women (johansson et al. 2014; robinson et al. 2008; ruddy et al. 2013; sanguinetti et al. 2016). according to johansson et al. (2014: 527), most of the understanding of mbc has been extrapolated from knowledge of fbc, and even though differences (and some similarities) have been reported, the same information is used to determine management strategies. sanguinetti et al. (2016: 8) are of the view that the clinical and pathological features of mbc do not exactly match those of fbc. it is argued that men living with breast cancer have different needs and perspectives towards the disease; therefore they may require different male gender-specific psychosocial interventions by health care professionals (fish et al. 2015). according to these authors (2015), psychosocial factors such as embarrassment, fear and anxiety are risk factors that act 9392 aniekie motloutsi & elizabeth lubinga as barriers to health seeking amongst men. publicity about mbc would be crucial in creating the necessary knowledge about the disease. the purpose of this study was to assess knowledge and awareness of mbc amongst university students in south africa. sambanje and mafuvadze (2012) conducted a study on the knowledge and awareness of university students about fbc and posited that university students should have an adequate level of understanding about health problems, as studies from developed countries indicate that generally breast cancer awareness increases with the level of education. however, there is limited information about the awareness and knowledge of mbc among university students in south africa and africa in general. this study not only solicited responses from the potentially affected population, namely males, but included female students as well. women were included in the study because knowledgeable women can be sources of knowledge and can act as pillars of support to affected partners, relatives and friends (mcmenamin et al. 2005). however, it is important to note that the purpose of this study was not to compare knowledge and awareness between male and female, but rather to describe knowledge and awareness amongst university students in general, thus as representative of a group of a specific age and education level. methodology a cross-sectional survey aimed at assessing awareness and knowledge of mbc was conducted among some university students in south africa. a total of 252 students (106 male and 146 female) from the university of limpopo completed the questionnaire. ethically, the principles of informed consent and voluntary participation, as well as emphasis on the confidentiality of participant identity, were adhered to. participants were verbally and visually informed that they had the right to decline to participate or to discontinue participation at any time during the process of answering the questionnaire, if they chose to do so. consent forms were offered to and were signed by participants in affirmation. the questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions on types of exposure to mbc health campaigns by participants, knowledge about whether men could get breast cancer, the causes, risk factors and self-examination. socio-demographic depicters intended to solicit participant information, such as gender, age, faculty as well as level of enrolment, were measured. the section on exposure to health communication campaigns included both closed and open-ended questions about whether participants had seen or heard campaigns about mbc, in which media, or from whom they were exposed to such campaigns. these were considered to be some of the factors that could influence the knowledge and awareness of mbc among the participants. five questions were asked in order to assess the knowledge of mbc. participants were asked the question, “do men get breast cancer?” responses offered to participants to the question were “yes” (agree), “no” (disagree), and “i don’t know”. the same responses were offered in reply to questions about whether they knew the risks, signs and age at which men were more likely to get breast cancer. some of the questions 9392 communicating male breast cancer were followed by open-ended questions; for example, participants were asked to name the risks and signs of mbc. data was analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 23. descriptive statistics with cross-tabulations were performed on the data, resulting in the generation of frequencies for the “yes”, “no” and “do not know” answers. pearson’s chi-square tests were used to examine possible associations between variables, significance level at p < .05. findings baseline demographic descriptive statistics of the study from the closed questions in the questionnaire are presented in table 1. table 1: baseline demographic characteristics demographics (n=252) gender n (%) male 106 (42%) female 146 (58%) age (years) academic year <18 3 (1%) first year 71 (30%) 18-20 73 (30%) second year 47 (20%) 21-23 109 (43%) third year 41 (17%) 24-26 46 (18%) fourth year 28 (12%) 27-29 8 (3%) postgraduate 51 (21%) >30 13 (5%) breast cancer awareness additional statistics were derived from questions on the knowledge and awareness about mbc as presented in table 2. the results indicate that most participants have never seen or heard any health message about mbc in the media or from a health professional, amongst others. participants were offered a total of 12 options to select from, indicating where they could have been exposed to mbc messages. the options were categorised into mass media (radio, television, posters, newspapers and magazines); online (the internet and social media); public communication (campaigns by cancer organisations, as well as at schools); and interpersonal channels (friends, relatives or health professionals). table 2 only reflects the positive returns with regard to the medium of communication. none of the other above-mentioned options were selected. whereas many of the respondents knew the colour symbolising fbc (56%), the majority (91%) were not aware of the colour that symbolised mbc. most of the 9594 aniekie motloutsi & elizabeth lubinga participants (66%), however, advocated for a need to have more campaigns on mbc in order to create the necessary awareness about the disease. knowledge: risks, symptoms and self-examination as displayed by table 2, most of the respondents did not know that men can get breast cancer. this is reflected in the number of negative responses, comprising of participants who said “no” and those who said that they “do not know” (79%). the majority of the participants (92%) stated that they did not know the symptoms of the disease, 95% did not know the risks, while 66% did not know at which age males were more likely to get mbc. when asked whether they would be willing to screen for mbc, of the men who took part in the study (n=106), 70% indicated a willingness to undergo screening. answers to the open-ended questions reinforce the statistics. with regards to a question on risk factors, one of the participants said that men get breast cancer “through the different altitude they are exposed in, then some may be polluted” [sic]. more revealing were the answers to the question asking participants to explain whether men can get breast cancer. the ensuing responses include references to the hormonal make-up of men, the fact that men do not have breasts, or that men do not have mammary glands and do not breastfeed: “they don’t have hormone oestrogen and progesterone which can result to multiplication of cell rapidly in the body” [sic]. “i think it’s because they don’t have breasts but chests and nipples.” “…because it affects people who breastfeed and men don’t”. “…only women contains glands making the breasts more functional” [sic]. table 2: responses on the knowledge and awareness of mbc awareness n (%) n (%) seen or heard mbc messages (medium of communication) there should be more mbc campaigns radio 1 (0.3) yes 164 (66%) television 1 (0.3) no 46 (18%) internet 4 (2%) i don’t know 42 (16%) health professional 1 (0.3) do you know someone who has been diagnosed with mbc? no exposure 245 (97%) yes 6 (2%) 9594 communicating male breast cancer awareness n (%) n (%) colour of ribbon for mbc colour of ribbon for fbc blue 12 (5%) blue 10 (4%) pink 3 (1%) pink 138 (56%) pink & blue 4 (2%) pink & blue 9 (4%) purple 3 (1%) purple 5 (2%) i don’t know 230 (91%) i don’t know 90 (34%) knowledge do men get breast cancer? do you know the symptoms of mbc? yes 52 (21%) yes 19 (8%) no 61 (27%) no 231 (92%) at which age are males most likely to get breast cancer? do you know the risk factors of mbc? <12 ( pre-teen) 1 (1%) yes 11 (5%) 13-19 (teenagers) 3 (1%) no 241 (95%) 20-35 (youth) 24 (10%) would you screen for mbc (males only: n=106) 36-50 (elders) 34 (14%) yes 75 (70%) >51 (old age) 19 (8%) no 31 (30%) discussion and conclusion as with every disease, knowledge and awareness play an important role in allowing at-risk populations to make informed decisions. this study advocates for the provision of knowledge and the creation of awareness about mbc among the public and health professionals through male-focused health campaigns. this was confirmed by the majority of the participants (66%) who were of the view that there should be mbcfocused campaigns. the internet and social media could be effective channels of communicating mbc. similar to the few studies that have been conducted on knowledge and awareness about mbc amongst men in general (thomas 2010; rayne et al. 2017), male university students who participated in the study were not aware that they too could get breast cancer. if mbc is presenting at an earlier age (cancer association of south africa 2017), then it is incumbent upon health promotion organisations and governments to educate the public about the disease. the lack of mbc knowledge and awareness among university students in this study may be symptomatic of widespread ignorance 9796 aniekie motloutsi & elizabeth lubinga in society. as sambanje and mafuvadze (2012) argue, university students tend to be better informed about health issues than the average person. recommendations include that studies be conducted on relevance to the african context, such as how perceptions about mbc are possibly influenced by cultural beliefs, with the goal of informing message designers in constructing relevant campaigns. this article proposes that designing gender-inclusive breast cancer campaigns and other health initiatives, which target both men and women, could be instrumental in raising awareness about mbc, while minimising the use of financial resources. references american cancer society. 2017. what are the key statistics about breast cancer in men? 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[online]. available at: www.who.int/mediacentre/ factsheets/fs297/en [accessed on 22 august 2017]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.breast.2012.01.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.breast.2012.01.004 https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988316631512 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-008-9106-y https://doi.org/10.1016/j.breast.2012.12.014 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijscr.2016.02.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijscr.2016.02.004 https://doi.org/10.7196/samj.8277 https://doi.org/10.4236/ss.2014.57054 https://doi.org/10.4236/ss.2014.57054 https://doi.org/10.1097/01.naj.0000389672.93605.2f https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr2930 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en 59pb brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these abstract brand owners constantly seek strategies to improve their brand’s popularity. one such strategy is to seek a co-operative relationship with another brand, termed a “brand linkage”. this study represents one of the first attempts at empirical and experimental research on brand linkages in a south african marketing communication environment. one such brand linkage between engen (a fuel service station) and woolworths (a speciality food retailer) is examined. results showed that awareness of the brand linkage did have a marked effect on the overall rating of engen. implementing a pretest–posttest control group design, results also showed that there were statistically significant differences between preand post-intervention ratings of engen (the host brand) for the groups that were exposed to a campaign depicting the brand linkage. the research provides practitioners with a measuring instrument that can be replicated easily and provides insight for marketers on leveraging the value of brand linkages. keywords: brand linkage; brand linkage campaign; brand ratings; brand relationships; stakeholders; card scoring method, pretest-posttest control group design introduction more and more marketers are utilising brand linkages to create brand value (fill & jamieson 2006; kuhn, alpert & pope 2008; sweeney 2003; ueltschy & laroche 2011; wolfe & putler 2002). this has resulted in studies which investigate factors influencing the success of a brand linkage strategy (knittel & stango 2012). thus the authors of the current study asked: ■ what is the impact of brand linkages on stakeholder ratings of brands? ■ what is the impact of a brand linkage campaign on stakeholders’ ratings of brands? in order to answer the general research questions, the following research objectives were formulated: ■ to measure brand ratings of a linked brand ■ to measure brand ratings of a linked brand following exposure to a linked brand campaign dr abyshey nhedzi research fellow department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg abyshey1@gmail.com nina overton-de klerk emeritus professor department of communication science, university of johannesburg ndeklerk@uj.ac.za tim bester independent advertising industry research specialist tmbester@global.co.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.5 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 59-72 © uv/ufs mailto:abyshey1@gmail.com mailto:ndeklerk@uj.ac.za mailto:tmbester@global.co.za https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.5 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.5 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.5 6160 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester ■ to measure whether the host brand gains (or loses) a clear competitive advantage as a result of the linkage with the invited brand literature overview brand linkages have attracted the attention of marketers, advertising professionals and researchers. examples of linked brands are ferrari and shell, bacardi and coke, coca-cola and heinz, microsoft and nokia, dell and intel, and many others. the intent of any brand linkage is critical; it can resolve a business problem, it can create brand awareness, trial, usage, advocacy or retention, or create the opportunity for consumer lifetime value growth. according to fournier and alvarez (2013), a brand linkage strategy entails that customers’ experience of two or more brands will create a brand relationship between these brands which will benefit both the brand stature of the host brand and sales. the intent, however, of any marketing intervention is the driver that will require what kind of brand linkage is required. classification of brand linkages the concept brand linkage is used broadly and sometimes confusingly in the literature. classifications may sometimes overlap and are often used interchangeably with terms such as brand alliances, brand co-operation, joint sales promotions, bundling, dual branding, composite brand extensions and co-branding (anslinger & jenk 2004; leuthesser, kohli & suri 2003; simonin & ruth 1998). others include joint promotions, composite branding, affinity partnering, complementary branding, symbiotic marketing and co-adverting (washburn, till & priluck 2000). even though many brands appear as single brands, they engage other brands in other ways, which may affect consumers’ perceptions of brand relationships (gammoh & voss 2011). brand linkages can also be unintentional or associative on the consumers’ side; however, in this context brand linkages are referred to as purposeful, intentional linkages. there are numerous and varied forms of brand linkages. creating a linkage to offer an extended service to customers or to drive incremental foot traffic is very different from creating a linkage between a brand and a sports personality, or a television station giving away a car brand as a prize (which becomes a short-term promotional linkage). other brands are linked for the duration of an event such as the olympic games or the international football federation (fifa) and, for example, hyundai, kia or emirates (jones 2016: 52). some brands are linked because they naturally fit, e.g. bacardi and coke, also called affinity partnering (mooney 2009). most airlines have reward programmes that involve some form of linkage, including british airways and american express or south african airways and avis (avis 2016). co-branding strategies may also be employed to showcase a university’s research collaboration with a well-known brand in developing new car engineering technology, for example nanyang tech with rolls royce (anonymous 2013). as mentioned, the intent of a brand linkage is critical. this article focuses on purposeful joint-venture co-branding, a brand linkage technique used to transfer positive 6160 brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these associations of a company’s product to a joint brand, or to create operational synergy between established brand(s) (beezy 2007). the impact of brand linkages on brand assessments consumers’ experiences with brand linkages affect their brand evaluations and relationships (randall 2009). the perception of brand linkages is created inside the mind of the consumer. the purpose of a brand linkage is for each of the brands to derive added value, but it can also be said that the exponential gain can be greater in that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts (jevons, gabbott & de chernatony 2002; kotler & keller 2009). however, customers can perceive some brands as “good” and others as “bad”, and studies have shown that perceived brand quality can harm or promote the partnering brands (baker & saren 2010; buil, de chernatony & martínez 2013). in some cases a brand linkage may lead to the devaluation and dilution of the brand value of one or both brands (ettenson & knowles 2007; leuthesser et al. 2003). a poorly conceived brand linkage can also result in loss of investment, brand value and brand equity (baker & saren 2010). conceptual framework in view of the need to establish research insights into the impact of an intentional joint-venture co-branding strategy, the authors of this article focused on testing the effect of such a brand linkage as conceptualised in figure 1. the model shows the relationships between five key constructs: brand linkages, brand communication, brand ratings, brand perceptions, and redefinition of brand relationships. although not all of these constructs (brand perceptions and brand relationships) are explicitly discussed or measured for the purposes of this article, the model itself was useful in guiding current research and in suggesting future research. figure 1: brand linkage assessment model brand linkage (intentional) • ingredient brand linkage • same company (brand extension) • joint venture (co-branding/ brand alliance) • sponsorship (promotional) redefinition of brand relationships • brand assessments • experiences • opinions • preferences • beliefs • buying behaviour brand communication • advertising • branding materials • word of mouth, ewom, etc. brand a impact brand b brand ratings brand perception 6362 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester brand linkage two brands, brand a and brand b, partner purposefully with a strategic intent. in this study, as discussed earlier, the choice of purposeful brand linkage to be tested was identified as a joint-venture co-branding (and not for instance same-company brand extension or sponsorship). the ideal was to find two brands that were linked but separately owned and that appealed to the same target market. following consideration and shortlisting of a number of such linked brands, the choice ultimately fell upon engen (a south african fuel service station) as the host brand and woolworths (a speciality food retailer) as the invited brand. brand communication for the purpose of this study, engen and woolworths’ brand linkage advertisement campaign was used as stimulus to test customers’ ratings of engen. other forms of brand communication exist, of course, which are not restricted to advertising campaigns, but can also include word of mouth, social media, etc. brand ratings brand ratings was the main method to assess the effect of the brand linkage in this study. a non-verbal measuring instrument, known as card scoring, was preferred because it did not limit stakeholders to think and act in accordance with predetermined rules. brand ratings entail evaluation of strength, risk and potential of a brand comparative to its competitors by means of a scale. in this study the card scoring method and the number of cards allocated to a brand (as if stakeholders were asked to “put their money” on the brand) was used as the measurement “scale”. brand perceptions brand perceptions may be defined as the stakeholder’s preferences, attitudes, opinions and beliefs which influence their purchase intention and willingness to recommend a product. therefore, in this study brand assessments were used as a generic concept, which included brand ratings and brand perceptions. brand ratings were measured, although reference was made to the role of brand perceptions. brand relationships brand relationship refers to the interaction between a brand and stakeholders. conceptions of brand relationships are based on stakeholders’ perceptions, opinions, preferences, beliefs experiences, and buying behaviour, which will be used interchangeably in this study. it is the symbolic assigning of human properties to a brand, leading to stakeholders’ interaction with a brand as in social relationships (fournier & alvarez 2013: 253; schmitt 2012: 11). 6362 brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these methodology sample due to budget constraints, a non-probability convenience sampling method was used to select 250 respondents. selection criteria included several street intercepts, shopping malls, worksites/businesses, homes, and university of johannesburg campuses (staff and students) drawn from the gauteng province of south africa. voluntary participation took place between 18 september 2013 and 28 january 2014. while a small percentage of these respondents were not employed or did not own or drive a car, they were included as stakeholders as they still could access engen stations as walk-ins or via taxis to make use of woolworths. because this was a convenience sample, results cannot be imputed to population representivity. this sample, however, was chosen for the purpose of an explanatory experimental study (discussed below) to establish causal relationships between variables (brand linkages and brand ratings). according to babbie and mouton (2009: 212-213), the point of such experimental research is to increase internal validity by using groups that, through random allocation to the experimental and control group, are comparable in most respects except for exposure to some kind of intervention (or the experimental variable). research design the research design was quantitative and incorporated a card sorting procedure followed by an experimental design analysis, which are discussed in the following sections. measuring instruments card sorting procedure respondents were given envelopes labelled with the names of six major fuel service station brands and a set of 99 cards. they were asked to allocate these cards to each brand in accordance with their general assessment of the brands by placing cards in each envelope. this score, for each respondent, represented a baseline measure of brand salience for each brand. these envelopes were then set aside for later tabulation and analysis. the results for six fuel station brands are presented in figure 2. the total number of votes allocated was 24 750. if these votes had been randomly distributed (that is, no differentiation between brands) each brand would have received 4125 votes. engen’s score at 7068 was therefore 71% higher than a random score. the average score for engen, per respondent, was 28.2 votes (7068/250) compared to an average random score, per respondent, of 16.5 votes. respondents were then asked whether they were aware of these brands being associated in any way with any other brand or brands. responses were recorded on the questionnaire. there were 101 respondents who were spontaneously aware of the engen/woolworths brand linkage. these “aware” respondents allocated 6637 votes to engen, which on average rated engen 65.7 votes compared to a random allocation score of 16.5 votes and the engen average of 28.2 votes. this indicated that those 6564 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester respondents who were spontaneously aware of this linkage were more likely to rate engen’s salience much higher than average, that is 65.7 versus 28.2. therefore, the clinical results already gave a clear indication that the brand linkage itself (before exposure to the linked brand campaign) resulted in noticeably higher ratings of engen as a linked brand by those who were aware of the linkage. figure 2: results for six fuel station brands 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 bp engen caltex sasol shell total 4211 3103 4863 3089 2415 7068 experimental design based on the first card sorting procedure, two comparison groups were selected, based on whether they were aware, or not, of the engen/woolworths brand linkage. members of the group who were aware of the brand linkage were assigned at random to an experimental and control group. members of the group who were unaware of the brand linkage were also assigned at random to an experimental and control group. the experimental groups were exposed to advertising material depicting the brand linkage. the card sorting method was then repeated to assess the impact of the advertising material on brand ratings. all respondents, whether they were exposed to this intervention or not, were asked to resort the cards. a pretest-posttest control group design (babbie & mouton 2015; campbell & stanley 1963) was used to evaluate whether there were significant differences in brand ratings between the (experimental) groups who were aware and unaware of the linkage and the (control) groups who were aware and unaware of the linkage. respondents were randomly allocated into four groups and each participant received 99 cards, as described earlier. ■ 20% (n=50) aware group (those who mentioned engen being linked to woolworths) and were exposed to an intervention by being shown the campaign; ■ 20.4% (n=51) aware group no intervention (campaign); 6564 brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these ■ 29.6% (n=74) unaware group (those who did not mention engen being linked to woolworths) and were exposed to the intervention; and ■ 30% (n=75) unaware group with no intervention. note that the numbers of respondents randomly allocated to each group were more than adequate for statistical analysis, as the rule of thumb minimum number for statistical analysis is regarded as at least 30 respondents per group or more (van voorhis & morgan 2007: 43). validity as previously discussed, because a convenience sample was employed for the purposes of this research, results cannot be imputed to the larger population (external validity). however, as the purpose of the experiment was to ascertain the impact of the intervention itself and to eliminate other influences on the comparison groups, the pretest-posttest control group design was chosen as the experimental design most suitable for this purpose due to its high internal validity, as explained in table 1 (babbie & mouton 2015; bordens & abbott 2014; campbell & stanley 1963). table 1: internal validity threats threat how it was dealt with history no other events occurred which could be confounded with the experimental variable maturation manifested equally in experimental and control groups instrumentation the use of a fixed measuring instrument (card sorting) ensured that this was not a problem selection randomisation has assured group equality. aware and unaware groups were assigned at random to experimental and control groups testing manifested equally in experimental and control groups statistical regression if this was a problem it would have manifested equally in experimental and control groups due to randomisation experimental mortality all respondents participated throughout the research; therefore there was no effect on the research data collection (sources: bordens & abbott 2014: 326; campbell & stanley 1963: 7-9) 6766 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester experimental design analysis: statistical analyses differences between the four groups (inter-group comparisons) after intervention inter-group comparisons were firstly conducted to determine whether there were significant differences between the four groups’ posttest scores following exposure to the intervention. table 2: differences across four groups (posttest) n mean std. deviation std. error min. max. post_engen aware, intervention (campaign) 50 37.34 22.451 3.175 0 99 aware, no intervention 51 33.71 23.033 3.225 0 99 unaware, intervention (campaign) 74 35.07 25.133 2.962 0 99 unaware, no intervention 75 30.06 22.934 2.614 1 99 total 250 33.70 23.530 1.488 0 99 test statistics a.b chi-square df p-value post_bp .548 3 .908 post_engen 5.411 3 .144 post _caltex 1.375 3 .711 post_sasol 6.950 3 .074 post_shell 5.401 3 .145 post_total 1.953 3 .582 a. kruskal wallis test b. b. grouping variable: groups significance: (p<.05); not significant: (p>.05); confidence level: 95% a kruskal-wallis test revealed no statistically significant difference across the four groups and how respondents rated engen (aware intervention, n = 50: aware no intervention, n = 50: unaware intervention, n = 74: unaware no intervention, n = 75), x4 (4, n = 250) = 54.11, p = .144 after the intervention (see table 2). the aware intervention group recorded a higher mean score (m =37.34) than the other three groups, which recorded mean values of 33.71, 35.07 and 30.06. 6766 brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these differences between the four groups over time (intra-group comparisons) although the inter-group comparisons revealed no significant differences between the four groups following the intervention (which could, however, potentially become significant with an increase in sample size), it was also necessary to investigate each of the four groups separately and compare for significant differences between the preintervention and post-intervention ratings of engen for each group. table 3: difference between pre-intervention rating and post-intervention rating for each group on engen mean n std. deviation std. error mean aware, intervention (campaign) pre_engen 29.74 50 24.625 3.483 post_engen 37.34 50 22.451 3.175 aware, no intervention pre_engen 31.51 51 21.495 3.010 post_engen 33.71 51 23.033 3.225 unaware, intervention (campaign) pre_engen 25.03 74 20.879 2.461 post_engen 35.07 74 25.133 2.962 unaware, no intervention pre_engen 26.86 75 22.981 2.619 post_engen 30.06 75 22.934 2.614 a paired wilcoxon signed rank test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention on participants’ scores on engen (see tables 3 and 4). there was a statistically significant increase for aware group from pretest (m = 29.74, sd = 24.625) to posttest (m = 37.34, sd = 22.451), t (3) = 36.58, p< .006 (two-tailed) and for unaware intervention group from pretest (m = 25.03, sd = 20.879) to posttest (m = 35.07, sd = 25.133), t(3) = 33.32, p < .001 (two-tailed). the mean score increase in engen scores was 7.6 with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 30.96 to 43.72 and 27.23 to 40.18 respectively. the median scores on the four groups increased from the pretest (md = 21) to the posttest (md = 27). similarly, the mean scores on the four groups increased from the pretest (m = 27.86) to the posttest (m = 33.70). conversely, the results of the wilcoxon test did not show any significant differences in the postengen – pre-engen on both aware and unaware with no intervention. this implies that the experimental groups showed significant difference as a result of the treatment, whereas the control groups showed no significant difference as they did not receive any intervention. 6968 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester table 4: significance of differences for the four groups groups ranks n mean of ranks sum of ranks aware, intervention (campaign) post_engen pre_engen negative ranks 17d 17.88 304.00 positive ranks 30e 27.47 824.00 ties 3f total 50 aware, no intervention post_engen pre_engen negative ranks 15d 22.03 330.50 positive ranks 26e 20.40 530.50 ties 10f total 51 unaware, intervention (campaign) post_engen pre_engen negative ranks 20d 29.83 596.50 positive ranks 49e 37.11 1818.50 ties 3f total 74 unaware, no intervention post_engen pre_engen negative ranks 31d 35.58 1103.00 positive ranks 40e 36.33 1453.00 ties 4f total 75 d. post_engen<pre_engen e. post_engen>pre_engen f. post_engen = pre_engen in addition, a wilcoxon signed ranks test revealed a statistical significant favourableness in engen following the engen-woolworths campaign intervention on both aware (n = 101, z = -2.753, p = .006, r = .28) and unaware (n = 149, z = -3.655, p < .001, r = .31) groups, with a small and medium effect size (see tables 3, 4 and 5). 6968 brand linkages: winners, losers and how to measure these table 5: differences between the preand posttest ratings for the four groups test statisticsa groups aware, intervention (campaign) aware, no intervention unaware, intervention (campaign) unaware, no intervention z asymp. sig. (2-tailed) z asymp. sig. (2-tailed) z asymp. sig. (2-tailed) z asymp. sig. (2-tailed) post_ engen – pre_ engen -2.753c .006** -1.297c .195* -3.655c .000** -1.003c .316* a. wilcoxon signed ranks test b. based on positive ranks c. based on negative ranks **significance: (p<.05); *not significant: (p>.05) discussion engen scored higher than competitors overall. engen was more favourably rated amongst those who were spontaneously aware of the linkage. engen scored higher amongst those who were exposed to the campaign than those who were not exposed to the campaign. the results therefore clearly indicated that engen as the “main” or the “host” brand gained a clear competitive advantage because of the engen/woolworths brand linkage, and because of the brand communication depicting the linkage. these results confirm neale, baazeem and bougoure’s (2009: 5) suggestion that brand linkages can significantly influence parent-brand relationships. it also suggests that significantly increased ratings of the host brand is a direct result of a clear and welljustified strategic intent and strategic communication of the brand linkage (in this case joint-venture co-branding between fuel station engen and food retailer woolworths). it suggests that the establishment of woolworths’ fast food shops at engen fuel stations resulted not only in increased brand stature of engen, but could also increase previously untapped market segments from woolworths and engen. whilst brand ratings were measured via the card sorting method, brand perceptions also form part of brand assessments as indicated in the model. whilst brand perceptions were not discussed in this article, respondents were asked a battery of questions in order to add further qualitative understanding to perceptions of the brand linkage and the brands separately. although interesting and supporting insights were gained about perceptions of the brands separately and jointly, these results are not discussed for 7170 abyshey nhedzi, nina overton-de klerk & tim bester the purpose of the article, as at the time that the questions were asked, all participants had already become aware of the linkage. conclusion this study represents one of the first attempts at empirical and largely experimental research on brand linkages in a south african marketing communication environment. the principal finding is that the linked brand (engen) performed high against its competitors and that, as the host brand, gained a competitive advantage as a result of the brand linkage. the article outlines a measuring instrument that can be replicated universally to assess the effectiveness of brand linkages. retesting over time can also indicate the reliability of the measuring instrument. the design only tested for internal validity; in addition, given a proper random sampling method, external validity can be assured. an increase in the sampling size may also yield significant differences as far as intergroup comparisons are concerned. in addition, the measurement of brand perceptions, via further quantitative and qualitative measurements, could shed further light on the impact of brand linkages on brand assessments. whilst the categories used for this study were limited to convenient food stores and fuel service stations, research on several other types of brands and brand linkages would also afford researchers a greater understanding of their impact on brand assessments. likewise, it could be interesting to measure the effect of brand linkage on brand communication (e.g. in social media) with different types of brand categories being paired. references anonymous. 2013. ntu and rolls-royce in s$75 million tie-up. 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at south african universities have become a regular occurrence. a growing number of researchers have confirmed that coombs’ situational crisis communication theory (scct) assists in understanding how management generally responds to a crisis situation. this study used scct to investigate how the crisis communication activities at one south african university of technology was perceived by the staff of that institution. the study examined, through a survey among a stratified random sample of staff members, the respondents’ perceptions of the communication channels and crisis response strategies that management used when communicating with staff during crises related to student protests at the university. the findings suggest that the university mainly used the justification crisis response strategy to communicate to university stakeholders, while rarely using the other strategies found in scct. the communication channels most preferred by staff for crisis communication were smss and whatsapp messages, while the university website was perceived to have been used most by management. the article finally makes some recommendations, but also points out some limitations of the study. keywords: crisis response strategies; reputation repair; situational crisis communication theory; communication channel; crisis communication introduction an organisational crisis is a condition that can intensify and may threaten the image of an organisation, or even interfere with the everyday business activities (stephens et al. 2005). recent literature and media reports have acknowledged the prevalence of workplace crises. from a range of media sources, it can be presumed that the situation is increasing rapidly, affecting major corporates, universities, state organisations, as well as international brands and entities. crises at south african universities are not a new phenomenon. for example, since 2015 the south african higher education sector saw countrywide student protests amanda van rensburg communication specialist, corporate communication division, tshwane university of technology, pretoria west campus (vanrensburga@tut.ac.za) prof. dp conradie research professor, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, soshanguve north campus (conradiedp@tut.ac.za) dr hb dondolo department of integrated communication, tshwane university of technology, soshanguve north campus (dondolob@tut.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 62-74 © ufs mailto:vanrensburga@tut.ac.za mailto:conradiedp@tut.ac.za mailto:dondolob@tut.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.5 6362 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies 6362 over fees, known as the #feesmustfall movement. this movement triggered unrest across south african universities, which led to temporary closures at some. for the first time, even those universities that are usually adept at resolving student crises were not equipped to handle the crisis. failure to manage crises has always been a driving force behind reputational damage (fediuk et al. 2010: 635), and such damage is often caused by angry stakeholders who consider themselves victims (stephens et al. 2005: 395). therefore, crises provide a need for communication (coombs 2007a: 166; coombs 2015: 141). mazzei and ravazzani (2011: 247) state that ongoing communication with stakeholders about the crisis will improve their awareness and assure them that management is in control of the situation. however, a lack of communication during a crisis hinders restoring an organisation to its pre-crisis stage (stephens et al. 2005: 395). motivated by the continued increase in student protests and how higher education institutions handle such crisis events, this article focuses on how the crisis communication activities at one south african university of technology (hereafter mostly referred to as “the university”) were perceived by staff of that institution. the aim of the study was to understand what kinds of internal communication channels, and what kinds of crisis communication approaches, are perceived by employees at a south african university of technology to be effective and to be used most by management when communicating with employees during a crisis period at the university. theoretical approaches to understanding crisis communication several theoretical approaches have been put forward to explain how organisations could understand and manage communication associated with a crisis. one of these theories is coombs’ (2007b: 263) situational crisis communication theory (scct). coombs (2012: 11) categorises crisis management into three stages, namely the pre-crisis stage (involving signal detection, prevention, and crisis preparation), the crisis event (involving crisis recognition and crisis containment), and the post-crisis stage (involving evaluation, learning, and follow-up communication). one important approach to crisis communication is the crisis and disaster management theory (ritchie 2004: 669), which encompasses all three stages of crisis management. as described by mistilis and sheldon (2005: 4), this approach developed a three-stage strategic planning and prevention strategy for addressing crises in organisations. another theoretical approach that can be used to investigate crisis communication in all three stages of an organisational crisis, is chaos theory. chaos theory can be described as an expansion of the systems perspective that analyses large, non-linear complex systems, and it can be used to explain communication about such complex systems (sellnow et al. 2002: 269). yet another prominent theory that focuses mainly on the actions of management in the post-crisis stage is the image restoration theory of benoit (1995). the image restoration theory distinguishes five types of responses to crises, namely denial, evading responsibility, reducing the offensiveness of the event, corrective action, and mortification (benoit 2015: 303). 6564 amanda van rensburg, dp conradie & hb dondolo the abovementioned theories are all relevant to managing crisis communication in organisations. however, in this study, where the focus was on crises that have been experienced at south african universities over extended periods, the need was for theoretical insights on what to do during such an extended crisis. one approach that does meet this requirement is coombs’ scct. scct provides a theoretical basis for understanding how management can respond, not only after a crisis, but also during an ongoing crisis event. scct was deemed suitable to serve as the theoretical basis of the current investigation, and this theory is therefore described in more detail in the next section. the situational crisis communication theory drawn from the attribution theory, the situational crisis communication theory (scct) is one the most influential theories used to understand crises and crisis response strategies (coombs 2007b: 165). consistent with the attribution theory, scct suggests that individuals will always search for causes of events. in the organisational context, it is believed that stakeholders often seek to apportion blame on the organisation in the wake of a crisis event. as posited by coombs and holladay (1996: 282), “the more publics attribute crisis responsibility to an organization, the stronger the likelihood is of publics developing and acting upon negative images of the organization”. scct proposes that the reaction of stakeholders to a crisis might have behavioural consequences for an organisation, and that what an organisation does or says during a crisis might affect its reputation (coombs 2007b: 163). in such cases, organisations may use a variety of response strategies based on the severity and duration of the crisis. over the years scct has suggested several ways in which crisis response strategies can be classified and understood. for example, coombs (2007b: 168) proposes that crisis responses can be grouped into three clusters, namely the victim cluster, the accidental cluster and the preventable cluster. coombs (ibid.) explains that the victim cluster consists of natural disasters, rumours, workplace violence and product tampering actions, and the organisation itself is also a victim of the crisis. an organisation that distances itself from the crisis and refuses to take responsibility for the crisis fits the definition of the victim cluster (an & gower 2009: 107). the accidental cluster is characterised by technical-error accidents, technical-error product harm, and challenges (leading to inappropriate actions). within the accidental subtype, the organisation has minimal attributions to the crisis event (coombs 2007b: 168) and does not have crisis intentions in its actions (claeys et al. 2010: 256). the third crisis cluster characterises a crisis as an event that a company creates by deliberately placing people at risk, taking inappropriate actions, or violating laws/ regulations (coombs & holladay 2002). this cluster is referred to as the preventable cluster and consists of human breakdown accidents and recalls, organisational misdeeds with or without injuries, organisational misdeed and management misconduct (coombs 2007b: 168). in these instances, stakeholders may be correct to attribute the crisis to the organisation. regardless of the type of crisis, a response strategy will be required. in that case, the response strategy will be determined by the complexity and 6564 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies the type of the crisis event (coombs 2012: 11). typically, organisations are likely to use a combination of strategies when responding to a crisis. another relevant scct approach is that crisis response strategies can, according to coombs (2015: 142), be divided into three categories (dealing with the reason why information is being provided), namely instructing information, adjusting information, and reputation repair. instructing information strategies describe how stakeholders can protect themselves from a crisis. the instructing information strategy involves warning people about the crisis and how they can protect themselves from physical harm and from becoming victims. the adjusting information strategy has been offered as a useful strategy in helping stakeholders cope psychologically with a crisis. the adjusting information strategy appears as an expression of sympathy, providing information about the crisis event, offering counselling and taking corrective action (ibid.). scct’s reputation repair strategy attempts to reduce the negative effects that a crisis can have on an institution’s reputation (ibid.). within the reputation repair strategy, several types of crisis responses can be distinguished, e.g. denial, reducing offensiveness, bolstering and redress. the reputation repair strategies are built upon benoit’s image restoration theory (1995), which posits that communication is a goaldirected activity and that maintaining a positive reputation is central to communication (benoit 2015: 303). according to coombs (2007: 171), “scct draws upon the crisis response strategies articulated in image restoration theory by integrating those strategies into a system that predicts how stakeholders should react to the crisis and the crisis response strategies used to manage the crisis”. thus, scct “provides a set of tools for evaluating crisis situations in terms of how people will perceive crisis responsibility” (benoit 2013: 270). furthermore, scct provides an understanding on “how crisis response strategies could be used to protect or repair the reputation damage associated with a crisis” (benoit 2013: 271). an organisation may use as many as ten crisis response strategies to repair or protect its reputation (coombs 2004: 265). table 1 presents such an scct classification of ten crisis response strategies, which have been divided into four different groups of response strategies, namely deny, diminish, rebuild and bolster (coombs 2007b: 171; 2012: 158). this scct classification was considered most relevant for the purposes of this investigation, and the study’s survey questionnaire was based largely on the crisis response strategies that are outlined in table 1. table 1: scct crisis response strategies scct crisis response strategies 1) deny crisis response strategies attack the accuser: crisis manager confronts the person or group claiming something is wrong with the organisation. denial: crisis manager asserts that there is no crisis. scapegoat: crisis manager blames some person or group outside of the organisation for the crisis. 6766 amanda van rensburg, dp conradie & hb dondolo scct crisis response strategies 2) diminish crisis response strategies excuse: crisis manager minimizes organisational responsibility by denying intent to do harm and/or claiming inability to control the events that triggered the crisis. justification: crisis manager minimizes the perceived damage caused by the crisis. 3) rebuild crisis response strategies compensation: crisis manager offers money or other gifts to victims. apology: crisis manager indicates the organisation takes full responsibility for the crisis and asks stakeholders for forgiveness. 4) bolstering crisis response strategies reminder: tell stakeholders about the past good works of the organisation. ingratiation: crisis manager praises stakeholders and/or reminds them of past good works by the organisation. victimage: crisis managers remind stakeholders that the organisation is a victim of the crisis too. (source: coombs 2007b: 171; 2012: 158) subsequent writings by coombs have gone beyond providing crisis response strategies to include crisis communication guidance for organisations going through a crisis. table 2 shows the crisis communication guidance, which describes the outcomes that can be expected when choosing a particular crisis response strategy, taking into account the type of crisis situation and the organisation’s level of responsibility for the crisis. table 2: crisis response strategy guidance crisis situation crisis response strategies outcomes no crisis responsibility denial preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism and any possibility of negative word of mouth minimal crisis responsibility instructing and adjusting information preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth strong crisis responsibility instructing and adjusting information. apology, compensation, or both. preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth 6766 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies crisis situation crisis response strategies outcomes integrity-based crisis instructing and adjusting information. apology, compensation, or both. preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth competence-based crisis instructing and adjusting information, apology preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth long-term threat instructing and adjusting information. apology, compensation, or both. preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth timing instructing and adjusting information preserve reputation and purchase intention lessen antagonism, nervousness, possibility of negative word of mouth (source: coombs 2015: 141) coombs (2015: 141) believes that this guidance may help crisis managers to make informed decisions about the strategic use of communication during time of crises. coombs (2015: 145) does not view these crisis communication guidelines as representing best practice, but rather as “insights regarding which crisis response strategies can be beneficial in a particular crisis and which strategies can actually make the crisis situation worse”. research questions based on the above, the study’s overall research question was formulated as follows in terms of scct as a theoretical approach: which internal communication channels and approaches ‒ as defined by the different types of crisis response strategies that are contained in the situational crisis communication theory of coombs (2007b: 171; 2012: 158) ‒ are perceived by university employees to be the most used and the most effective when management is communicating with employees during a crisis at a university of technology? to address this overall research question, the following three research sub-questions were posed and addressed in this study: i) which crisis response strategies, as defined by scct, are perceived by university employees to be used most when management is communicating with employees during a crisis? 6968 amanda van rensburg, dp conradie & hb dondolo ii) which communication channels are perceived by university employees to be used most when management is communicating with employees during a crisis? iii) which communication channels are perceived by university employees to be most effective for management to use when communicating with employees during a crisis? methodology the study’s general research design is summarised in table 3. table 3: general design of the study research approach sampling data collection data analysis approachmethod time frame descriptive systematic random sampling of academic and support personnel at three campus types (city-based, communitybased, distance campuses) survey cross-sectional quantitative; descriptive statistics this investigation followed a descriptive approach, as opposed to an exploratory or explanatory/causal approach (bellamy 2012: 308). the study can further be described as a cross-sectional investigation consisting of a survey using self-administered questionnaires that were administered to a sample of university employees. for the purposes of this article, the target population for this study, namely those people to which a researcher would want to generalise the research findings (orodho 2005: 33), consisted of all academic and support staff at the university’s nine campuses. of these nine campuses, three were city-based, three were community-based, while the other three were distance campuses. while it would ideally have been preferable for the researchers to have accessed the study’s entire target population, in practice, this was not possible. the size of the university made accessibility a challenging aspect to conduct research, and this resulted in respondents being sampled from only one citybased campus, one community-based campus and one distance campus. the sample of respondents that participated in the survey was obtained by means of a systematic random sampling procedure that was applied to the university’s official list of academic and support staff members on the various campuses. the realised sample consisted of a total of 75 staff members from the three campuses. of these, 71 responded with usable questionnaires. the questionnaire contained both open-ended and fixed-response questions that formed part of a larger investigation dealing with corporate crisis communication messages and channels, expectations of corporate communication, the role of management within corporate crisis communication, and 6968 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies suggestions to improve corporate crisis communication. for this article, attention was focused on those quantitative responses (made on a 5-point scale) that dealt with the respondents’ perceptions of the university’s corporate crisis communication responses, as formulated in terms of scct, and on those questions dealing with communication channels used in crisis communication. this yielded quantitative data that were analysed by means of descriptive statistical procedures in the spss statistical package. results the findings in this section presents the research findings that address the study’s three research sub-questions. in other words, the section first describes which scct crisis response strategies were perceived to be used most by the participating internal stakeholders. secondly, the section outlines which communication channels were perceived to be used most in the crisis communication, and thirdly, it is pointed out which communication channels the employees preferred most for purposes of crisis communication. crisis response strategies that were perceived to be used the study’s first research sub-question dealt with which crisis response strategies, as defined by scct, were used most when management communicates with employees during a crisis. table 4 shows the crisis response strategies perceived by the respondents to have been used at the university. for ease of reporting, the five response options were grouped into three categories: the “totally disagree” and “disagree” responses were grouped together and labelled “totally disagree + disagree”. similarly, the “totally agree” and “agree” responses were grouped together and labelled “totally agree + agree”. the third category was the “not sure” response category. also for the ease of reporting, any cell in the table representing the choice of a majority of the respondents (i.e. more than 50%) was shaded with a grey background. table 4: crisis response strategies used at the university of technology crisis response strategies was the crisis response strategy used by the university? totally disagree + disagree (%) not sure (%) totally agree + agree (%) deny strategies attack denial (downplay) scapegoat (blame) 75 15 10 54 7 39 49 20 31 7170 amanda van rensburg, dp conradie & hb dondolo crisis response strategies was the crisis response strategy used by the university? totally disagree + disagree (%) not sure (%) totally agree + agree (%) diminish strategies excuse (no harm intended) justification 46 17 37 23 8 69 diminish strategies compensation apology (accept responsibility) 54 27 19 55 17 28 bolstering strategies reminder ingratiation victimage 56 24 20 52 17 31 41 28 31 from table 4, it is apparent that there was only one response strategy that was perceived by a majority of the respondents (as indicated by 69% of the participants) to have been used by the university, and that was the justification response strategy. on the other hand, the majority of the respondents disagreed that any of the two response strategies in the diminish cluster of strategies, namely compensation (54%) and apology (55%), had been used. similarly, the majority of the respondents disagreed that the university had used the attack (75%) or denial (54%) response strategies (in the deny cluster of strategies), or the reminder (56%) or ingratiation (52%) response strategies (in the bolstering cluster of strategies). perceived use and effectiveness of crisis communication channels the respondents’ perceptions regarding the use and effectiveness of communication channels for crisis communication are presented in table 5. in response to the study’s second research sub-question, the table firstly shows which communication channels were perceived by the respondents to have been used for crisis communication by the university. the percentages in the “yes” column of the table show that the two channels used most frequently by management during a crisis period were the university’s website (reported by 82.3% of the respondents) and emails (reported by 75.7%), followed by whatsapp and sms messages, then etutor (an electronic university newsletter) and lastly, facebook notifications (the whatsapp facility is currently a non-corporate channel as no official whatsapp platform with a dedicated cell phone number has been developed). it is interesting to note that on four of the six platforms, the majority of the participants stated that they did not receive any crisis communication from management. 7170 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies table 5: perceived use and effectiveness of crisis communication channels channel was it used? the channel is effective for crisis communication yes (%) no (%) totally disagree + disagree (%) not sure (%) totally agree + agree (%) emails 75.7 24.3 30.6 8.0 61.4 sms 44.3 55.7 12.0 0 88.0 website 82.3 17.6 26.7 9.3 64.0 etutor 32.8 65.6 46.7 21.3 32.0 whatsapp 44.1 55.9 6.7 4.0 88.0 facebook 21.3 78.7 28.0 12.0 60.0 in response to the study’s third research sub-question, table 5 shows how effective the respondents believed each of the channels, which are used by the university, could be for crisis communication. as was done in table 4, for ease of reporting the five-response options were grouped into three categories. from the percentages in the last column of table 5 it can be seen that a significant majority (88.0%) of respondents agreed that sms messages could be used effectively as a corporate communication channel during a crisis period. similarly, a total of 88% of respondents agreed that the whatsapp channel could be used effectively. the channel perceived to be the third most effective corporate crisis communication channel, as indicated by 64% of the respondents, was the university’s website. discussion and conclusions from the findings above it can be concluded that all three of the study’s research sub-questions were answered. the first research sub-question was answered by the finding that the respondents believed that the university management, in its internal crisis communication during a crisis, tended mainly to make use of the justification response strategy from the diminish cluster of scct crisis strategies. concerning the second and third research sub-questions, it was found that the respondents were of the opinion that the university mainly made use of its website and emails as channels for its internal crisis communication actions, but they believed that smss and whatsapp could be more effective corporate crisis communication channels. it is therefore recommended that the university should consider these communication channel preferences when dealing with future crises. the finding that the university tended to use mainly the justification response strategy can be better judged in the light of other investigations with similar findings. an example is the study conducted by vielhaber and waltman (2008: 308) on “changing uses of technology crisis communication responses in a faculty strike”, where the 7372 amanda van rensburg, dp conradie & hb dondolo justification strategy was also found to be one of the main strategies used to respond to a crisis. literature also indicates that an organisation tends to use the justification strategy when it acknowledges the existence of a crisis, and when the organisation hopes that this response will result in stakeholders attributing minimal responsibility to the organisation for the crisis (coombs 2006: 241; benoit 2013: 213). the purpose of the justification strategy is to minimise perceived damage (cooley & cooley 2011; jin et al. 2014) by stating that the “crisis is not that bad” (fediuk et al. 2010: 166). it is therefore reasonable to conclude that in the current study, the university was mainly concerned about being seen to be in some way responsible for the crisis, and therefore used the justification response strategy to prevent a perception of being responsible. studies have further shown that organisations tend to use the justification strategy when the crises have resulted in some level of attribution of crisis responsibility, and there are intensifying factors in existence (fediuk et al. 2010: 635). according to these authors, two factors are responsible for intensifying a crisis, namely crisis history and prior reputation. the authors argue that past crises and how organisations dealt with such crises intensify the threat from a crisis. regarding prior reputation, stakeholders will evaluate how well the organisation has treated them in the past. fediuk et al. (ibid.) observe that when stakeholders attribute greater crisis responsibility to the organisation, this intensifies the threat from a crisis. these authors recommend that when organisations are faced with crises with low attribution of crisis responsibility with no intensifying factors, the use of justifying strategies is appropriate. in the current study, there was an intensifying factor present in the form of a history of prior student crises and thus, according to the reasoning of fediuk et al. (ibid.), the use of the justifying response strategy was appropriate. however, it was not clear what the institution’s prior reputation was among the internal stakeholders, and there was no evidence that they considered the university to be in any way responsible for the crisis. this means that using only one response strategy could be considered to be excessive, and it is therefore recommended that in future crises, other scct response strategies should also be used. concluding remarks although it is hoped that the findings of the present study will contribute meaningfully in some way to the literature of crisis communication, there are a number of limitations to consider. firstly, readers should interpret the findings with caution because the findings are biased towards one particular university of technology in the gauteng province of south africa. respondents at other universities may perceive different patterns of response strategies being used at their institutions during a crisis. therefore, the findings cannot necessarily be generalised across the entire south african higher education sector. secondly, the size of the study’s sample of participants was relatively small and future work could aim at larger samples. lastly, future work could consider using more complex statistical approaches (e.g. structural equation modelling techniques) so as to investigate more complex processes and interactions between variables that are involved in crisis communication in the higher education sector. 7372 the use of scct to study crisis response strategies references an, s.k. & gower, k.k. 2009. how do the news media frame crises? a content analysis of crisis news coverage. public relations review 35(2): 107-112. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.01.010 bellamy, p.c. 2012. principles of methodology: research design in social science. london: sage. benoit, w.l. 1995. accounts, excuses, and apologies: a theory of image restoration. albany: state university of new york press. benoit, w.l. 2013. image repair theory and corporate reputation. in: carol, c.e. 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https://doi.org/10.1108/13563281111156899 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2003.09.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2003.09.004 https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880216599 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943605279057 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943608317112 _hlk493251232 203 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche* abstract a crisis communication plan facilitates the effective flow of information between relevant organisation(s) and a community affected by a crisis. in 2010 the frances baard district municipality, situated in the northern cape, commissioned the development of a crisis communication plan for the municipality. it was to be developed in consultation with various stakeholders. once developed, the plan had to be reviewed and serve as an educational document that could be used by other municipalities. the study found that drafting a crisis communication plan has to include best communication practices for each anticipated problem and effective implementation. continuous evaluation and updating of the plan are necessary to ensure that critical business functions are not jeopardised in the event of a crisis. * olivia kunguma is a lecturer and researcher at the disaster management training and education centre for africa at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. dr lydie terblanche lectures in the department of communication science at the same institution. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 203-221 204 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche introduction the integrated development plan 2010/2011 of the frances baard district municipality (fbdm) states that public participation is a prerequisite for sustainable development and it is on this premise that the municipality developed a communications strategy. creighton (2005: 2) supports the significance of public participation as an organised process that goes beyond the creation of sustainable development to provide accountability and assistance with decision-making in a democratic system. the fbdm communication strategy highlighted the need for a crisis communication plan. in 2010 a crisis communication plan was developed in cooperation with lecturers from the university of the free state and the director of a marketing and communication company. the background of the crisis communication plan is the south african disaster management act 57 of 2002 (dplg 2008). the focus of the crisis communication plan was on different sections, subsections and paragraphs within subsections from the above-mentioned act. these sections highlight the importance of having a crisis communication plan in municipalities: the first section 16(1)-(3) states that the national disaster management centre must establish communication links with disaster management role players. the act also highlights this importance for provincial and municipal disaster management centres in section 39(2) (k) (iv) (v) and section 53 (2) (k) (iv) (v). the second section 17(1)-(4) states that the national disaster management centre must act as a repository of and conduit for information concerning disasters and their management. a crisis communication plan must also be guided by other pieces of legislation such as the constitution of the republic of south africa, the white paper on local government 1998, the municipal structures act 1998, the municipal systems act 2000, and the promotion of access to information act 2000. following the original development of the crisis communication plan in 2010, the researchers reviewed and analysed various components of the fbdm crisis communication plan to determine whether it met the requirements. the purpose of this article is to educate other municipalities on 1) how to draft a crisis communication plan; and 2) to understand the crisis communication best practices for effective implementation. frances baard district municipality the frances baard district municipality (fbdm) is located in the northern cape province in south africa and is one of five district municipalities within this province. according to the fbdm integrated development plan 2010/2011, the fbdm has a total population of 353 198 people residing in four different local municipalities, namely dikgatlong, magareng, phokwane and sol plaatje, 205 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality as illustrated in table 1 below. the fbdm is concerned about the safety and security of its community, hence the vision: “to be a municipality with a clear developmental focus to improve the quality of life of all communities in the district”. the crisis communication plan referred to the potential hazards that were identified in the fbdm disaster management plan (2006) during a risk assessment. the same hazards were also identified and confirmed during the data collection phase of this research to evaluate the fbdm crisis communication plan. the hazards are illustrated in table 1 below, showing various hazards for each local municipality. table 1: potential hazards in fbdm dikgatlong lm magareng lm phokwane lm sol plaatje lm heavy rains air pollution water pollution road accidents floods erosion dam failures shack fires veld fires hail storms drowning in quarries communicable diseases heavy rains high winds floods water pollution road accidents shack fires communicable diseases floods air pollution water pollution shack fires heavy winds drowning in canals road accidents veld fires communicable diseases heavy rains high winds floods dam failure droughts air pollution power failure water pollution aircraft accidents road accidents veld fires communicable diseases (source: fbdm disaster management plan 2006; local informants 2010) hazard identification is the foundation upon which all emergency planning efforts in a community should be built. it sets priorities and goals for resource allocation, response, recovery, and mitigation activities prior to an incident occurring (identify hazards and risks 2012: 24; cf. lordan 2003). research purpose according to cleveland metropolitan school district (2009), a crisis is any situation that may significantly affect a community, its image, reputation and/or environment. it may be sudden and unexpected and may result in news coverage and public scrutiny. a crisis communication plan aims to protect a municipality’s image, reputation and credibility, and enables it to rapidly release factually accurate and timely information to all internal and external stakeholders when confronted with a crisis. 206 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche some municipalities’ image ends up being tarnished because they are not aware of and are unable to implement the best practices of crisis communication. according to coombs (2011: 250) the best practices of crisis communication can be classified into three categories, namely 1) pre-strategic planning (organising logistics, coordinating networks, accepting uncertainty); 2) pro-active strategies (forming partnerships, listening to public concerns, being open and honest); and 3) strategic response (being accessible to the media, communicate compassion and the provision of self-efficacy). some municipalities lack a solid understanding and implementation of these practices. they are also not knowledgeable on the various statutes as mentioned in the introduction, which support the importance of this plan. a crisis communication plan is a vital part of emergency preparedness and response. according to fearnbanks (2011: 306), a crisis communication plan should be a part of the larger crisis management or disaster management plan of any municipality. during implementation of a plan the crisis response team (crt) and the crisis communication team (cct) should (depending on the crisis) operate within the relevant legislation and policy documents. objective of this research the objective of this study was to determine the significance of a crisis communication plan in a municipality and analyse the content of the fbdm crisis communication plan specifically. research questions the following research questions pertain to this study: ♦ what barriers do municipalities generally encounter in the application of crisis communication best practices? ♦ were a crisis communication team and crisis response team(s) identified and assigned for the fbdm crisis communication plan? ♦ what are the roles and responsibilities of these teams? ♦ was a comprehensible systematic guide to manage communication during a response to a crisis identified in the fbdm crisis communication plan? methodology for the purpose of drafting the plan, the researchers used the fbdm crisis communication plan as a case study for an in-depth study. data collection included one-on-one interviews with the disaster managers of each of the four 207 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality local municipalities. the district municipality officers, the head of the district municipality and the heads of the communication departments were amongst the 14 officials interviewed. from relevant stakeholders, 32 government and private stakeholders were interviewed. as part of the multiple data design, telephone interviews were conducted with community leaders and a focus group discussion was held with 20 councillors, including the mayor of fbdm. the focus group was led by two researchers and thus made use of team member check to confirm the validity of the data. the fbdm crisis communication plan was reviewed through the examination of relevant documents, best practices and whether the plan complied with legislations. these documents served as supporting references to the project, as well as a framework within which the crisis communication plan can operate. the questions in the data collection instruments were designed to determine the effectiveness of the crisis communication plan. questions focused specifically on issues pertaining to potential hazards in the district, other preparedness plans available, roles and responsibilities played by different stakeholders in a crisis, training requirements, communication within the fbdm, and communication with the media, the community and external stakeholders during a crisis. the data collected was organised and categorised, including the strengths and weaknesses of the plan. an interpretation and identification of patterns was carried out, and the analysis indicated whether the various stakeholders had an understanding of the communication plan itself, as well as the best practices. the conclusion drawn from the findings could be generalised to other municipalities. crisis communication and media policy media policies are not only enacted or mandatory within local municipalities; they are policies that emanate from national spheres of government. for example, south africa began the formation of its media policy in 1990. the focus of this policy was the importance of the media sector and its role in the transition to democracy and beyond. another aim was to give previously disadvantaged communities a voice. article 19 in the united nations’ universal declaration of human rights, which was unveiled on 10 december 1948, was adopted in abstention by south africa in 1990 as a landmark of media policy. it states that, “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers” (hadland & thorne 2004: 26). this adoption by south africa made it obligatory for the fbdm to have a media policy within the formulation of this crisis communication plan. 208 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche the media policy entailed principles that the crt and cct should adhere to in order for these teams to respond quickly and accurately to an event as it unfolds. these teams should also ensure effective, accurate communication through the media and other means to present clear and consistent messages of the district municipality’s response to the crisis at hand. the fbdm guarantees that, within the capacity of its resources, they will adhere to the principles provided below as set out by the whitsunday regional council (2010: 1): ♦ timely: respond in an appropriate manner and on time to concerns raised by the media; ♦ frequency: the community, media and interested stakeholders should constantly be communicated with in regards to the crisis; ♦ honesty: the fbdm will never knowingly mislead the public, media or staff on an issue; ♦ transparency: the fbdm will promote openness and accessibility in dealing with the media, while complying with the law and maintaining confidentiality when appropriate; ♦ balance: information to the media should be objective, sensitive, accurate and informative; ♦ clarity: communication should be done in an official language approved by the council; ♦ governance: the fbdm should govern hand in hand with the people and not for the people. any form of participation should be genuinely empowering and not just a token of consultation or manipulation; ♦ accessibility and dissemination of information: information or content in the message must be disseminated in a manner that is acceptable or receptive to the audience to which it is targeted; and ♦ database: a centralised database of all interest groups that have a role to play in the successful operation of the crisis communication plan should be maintained. the database should be used to create linkages and interactions between the interest groups. in addition, the database should be made available to all staff members and councillors in order for them to have on hand information on their areas of jurisdiction and the municipal affairs they might be interested in. this should guide them on how to take an active role. with regard to any crisis communication plan, chandler (2010: 84) states that it is of great importance to build and review – on a regular basis – a valid and 209 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality effective emergency contact database for the organisation. details of all media enquiries should be logged on a crisis enquiry record. a designated spokesperson, communication officer or disaster manager should fill in this form after response to the crisis event (whitsunday regional council 2010; pool hospital nhs foundation trust 2010). key messages during a crisis it is easy to forget, or state precisely, what one intends saying to the media or to the affected community (fearn-banks 2010: 316). hence, it is important to prepare well in advance what primary information will be conveyed as key messages or speaking points. in addition, fearn-banks (2010: 316) states that key messages are important to avoid misquotation and they assist in the establishment of organisations’ credibility when handling the crisis. based on this background a set of prescriptive key messages were developed by the researchers for the fbdm crisis communication plan. the aim of these key messages was to assist the cct (through the elected spokesperson) to effectively communicate to all audiences. throughout the emergency response and recovery phase communicated messages should frequently change in order to address different situations. the key messages are as follows: ♦ a message of what is being done to manage the crisis; ♦ a message of empathy for what has happened to the people, their property and the environment in which they live; ♦ a message of assurance that the situation is being handled in all the best possible ways to resolve it, with emphasis on the different organisations assisting; ♦ a message of reassurance that things will return to normal; and ♦ a message of safety for the people, their belongings and the environment in which they live. key messages are fundamental for a crisis communication plan. because the fbdm crisis communication plan was never put into practice, the spokesperson had little knowledge of these key messages. the spokesperson’s lack of knowledge of these key messages makes them worthless. institutional arrangements through established networks, the municipality is able to enter into programmes with other organisations and municipalities at an international, national and 210 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche regional level. the identified cct and crt should keep watch over specific hazards and respond effectively in combating it when it causes calamity within the community. effective communication, planning and coordination should be done through the establishment of the following organisations, as suggested by the researchers and agreed to by the fbdm: ♦ crisis communication steering committees: established to take ownership, advise, approve and recommend on the running of crisis communication projects. this committee should be a sub-committee of the municipal disaster management advisory forum, according to the disaster management act (act 57 of 2002). district municipalities may establish a municipal disaster management advisory forum for the purpose of consulting one another and coordinating their actions on matters relating to disaster management. ♦ district communication forum: represents communication practitioners, significant decision-makers and those working directly with communities. the forum provides a platform for integrated communication and planning. the forum also encourages the practitioners to learn from each other and to create messages that are more integrated. ♦ ward committees: link the community to the cct/crt/council. they play an active role in assisting with the implementation of the plan and monitoring change, as well as the needs of the community. some of these platforms are active but very little reference is made to the crisis communication plan. crisis communication teams (cct) it is general knowledge that a cct should ensure the smooth operation of the plan and be responsible for communication, both internally and externally, before, during and after the crisis. they should plan, manage, coordinate, monitor and evaluate the whole process and write reports to evaluate the team’s response and lessons learnt. the team is essential to come up with a plan of action, select an official spokesperson who will be the primary contact for all media inquiries, and to execute the overall plan. there are no defined boundaries for these roles and responsibilities and they tend to overlap. figure 1 illustrates the flow of information within the cct, as developed by the researchers and approved by fbdm. 211 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality responsibilities of crisis communication team the cct should react quickly to the crisis that is occurring by reducing the number of phone calls from the public and the amount of time put into crisis recovery. this is done by constantly updating information about the crisis on the organisation’s website and other relevant communication media. in addition, input from the public on social media networks should be constantly monitored. social network platforms are relevant to fbdm because they are frequently used by the public, fbdm officials and other relevant officials. facebook friends and other contacts with whom the organisation has built a relationship could spread the news to a wider group of people. for twitter, on the other hand, relevant key messages should be prepared and posted (fearn-banks 2010: 316). figure 1: crisis communication team (source: developed by the researchers for fbdm) the various team members’ responsibilities during a crisis, as discussed by the researchers and approved with fbdm, are as follows: ♦ web masters: appointed on an ad-hoc basis to feed and monitor information on social networks and on the organisation’s website; ♦ head of disaster management centre: deals with management of hazards; the hoc should coordinate, but the relevant municipal department should lead the communication function. the head of the disaster management centre should lead and coordinate the communication function during a crisis, liaise with senior management, and provide guidance to stakeholder 212 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche representatives (these are heads/representatives of relevant stakeholders during a specific crisis e.g. the fire department, seating in the disaster management operations); ♦ disaster management (operations): assist in distribution of resources and information to affected communities; gather, manage and handle information flow between the members of the cct and crt stakeholders; work with other external experts and keep senior management updated; ♦ disaster management (advisor(s): depending on the crisis, the technical personnel act as advisors, for example it specialists, gis specialists, engineers, strategic decision makers, etc.). they monitor reactions during the crisis and advise on appropriate actions. in addition, they monitor the web functioning, call centre equipment and support technicians in the functioning of all communication media; ♦ communication manager/public relations officer: manages communication issues and coordinates media matters; develops and distributes key messages to different target audiences; identifies and helps prepare a primary and back-up spokesperson; monitors the media, web, and other channels of stakeholder feedback and feed-forward; ♦ emergency communication call centre operators: receiving and dispatching calls and notification of cct about the crisis; informing disaster manager of the incident; updating all relevant contacts; assisting disaster manager to link the community with relevant crt; ♦ municipal manager: approves operational messages or tasks; and ♦ mayor/council: approve politically influenced messages or tasks and express sympathy to the affected. crisis response team (crt) an identified crt consists of different institutions that are expected to coordinate and contribute their technical expertise and resources through effective communication. table 2 was developed as an example by the researchers for fbdm. it serves as a framework for the crisis response teams for each hazard, including their general responsibilities and persons to contact from each organisation. crisis response teams and their responsibilities are not only limited to the ones indicated for identified hazards. due to compound crisis events, some role players in crisis response teams can assist other crisis response teams in managing other hazards. crisis response teams are subject to review, depending on the magnitude and impact of the event. 213 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality ta b l e 2 : f r a m e w o r k f o r h a z a r d s, c r is is r e sp o n se t e a m s, g e n e r a l r e sp o n si b il it ie s a n d c o n ta c t d e ta il s (s h o r t e n e d e x a m p l e ) 214 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche crisis communication operational plan the steps of the operational plan that forms part of the crisis communication plan are listed in this section. these procedures will assist in the analysis of the practicality of operational plans. it is non-prescriptive procedures that the crisis response and crisis communication teams can easily follow. a crisis communication operational plan should operate within an incident command system (ics), or joint operations centre (joc). this joc houses professionals from relevant departments in order to help cut costs and improve the overall coordination of the plan. these steps (developed by the researchers for, and approved by the fbdm and other disaster management experts in south africa) are as follows: step 1 (hour 1 or immediate) a 24-hour dispatching call centre (initial call might go through the police, or relevant stakeholder depending on the crisis event) notifies the disaster management centre about the full details of the crisis, for example, what happened, where, when, if possible how it happened, and the number of casualties. the disaster manager (head) then notifies the other cct members of the details of the crisis. a briefing may be held to update the cct so that the team can also determine the next step(s) in respect of communication of the crisis and response. step 2 (hour 2 or immediate) the crt responsible for the occurring hazard, under the coordination of the disaster management centre, will carry out a fully-fledged assessment e.g. nature and location of incident(s), number of people affected, magnitude of damage/ losses, and risks/potential risks for surrounding(s) and or neighbours/adjacent areas. they record all findings and draw conclusions for purposes of amending any response activity if required. a briefing may be held to update the crt so that the team can also determine the next steps to crisis communication and management. step 3 (hour 3 or immediate) preparations are made to communicate information regarding the situation. all members of the cct and crt should understand their role and their immediate tasks. specific assignments are given to each team member and all experts are informed. at this stage, the media and the community are beginning to enquire and search for information. at this step, a joint operations centre can be established at the incident area. step 4 (hour 4 or immediate) at this step, the level or magnitude of the crisis should have been determined and communicated. the disaster management officer and his/her internal cct meet 215 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality and consult with relevant crt (this will entail an addition of ward councillor(s), and other community leaders/stakeholders to the crt). step 5 (hour 5 to ongoing period) key messages for different target audiences are developed and executed after accuracy of information has been checked and approved (the communication manager in consultation with the municipal manager/councillor should approve and release the messages). messages can be released through a variety of communication channels and at various periods, depending on the type of crisis and critical questions. during this time the cct should anticipate a list of questions that could be asked by a variety of audiences and develop new messages and answers. step 6 (ongoing period) the disaster management official and communication manager must ensure that there is maximum coordination and effective communication amongst the relevant response teams and the community affected. members of the mayoral committee (mmc) and ward councillors may be expected to give political support, depending on the type of incident, to fulfil responsibilities such as political assessment, address politically-related matters at the scene of the incidentm and coordinate political response and advice. step 7 (ongoing period) public education has to be considered if there is a need, depending on the type of crisis. for example, public health issues have to be highlighted to the community, if there are any. the audience not directly involved in the crisis should also be considered. step 8 (ongoing) the main issue here would be to convene the cct after the crisis to find out what worked well and what did not work during the crisis. this would be the time to analyse media coverage and feedback from the community. a debriefing form should be used and a report compiled for the crisis communication coverage. step 9 (ongoing to end of crisis) through monitoring of the public and media opinions the cct will be able to determine what messages are still needed, what misinformation needs correcting, and to identify concerns, interests, and needs arising from the crisis as it is being reported. the cct can also exchange information with other response partners at this stage. 216 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche step 10 (ongoing to end of crisis) at this step, reports are written and submitted together with templates used during the crisis. both the crt and cct are involved in the compilation and submission of reports. this will help improve the crisis communication plan through identification of lessons learnt. (media involvement can be initiated when necessary). table 3 illustrates the above-mentioned operational steps of the crisis communication plan. it illustrates the flow of information when an alert about a hazard arises. the crisis communication team is first alerted, after which the crisis response teams, either internally or externally, are alerted and coordinated. the choice between internal and external depends on the magnitude of the hazards or crisis. communication channels in order to communicate effectively with the target audience, a set of efficient communication media were identified for the fbdm by the researchers. examples of these are cellular ‘phones, two-way radios, landline telephones (with one common/toll free number known by everyone), email, website, newspapers, pamphlets, and face-to-face communication through community meetings. the use of these media depends on the magnitude of the crisis and whether communication is with the municipal officials, with the external stakeholders, or with the community. resources: equipment and supplies the crisis communication and response team will need resources during a crisis (fearn-banks 2010: 314). resources for the crt will vary according to the crisis event. the general resources for the cct are listed in the table below. the crt can also make use of these resources in addition to their other essential resources. these resources were identified by the researchers and acknowledged by fbdm. 217 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality ta b l e 3 : su m m a r y o f in f o r m a t io n f l o w o n a l e r t o f a s p e c if ic h a z a r d (e x a m p l e ) 218 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche table 4: equipment and supplies for cct and crt flip charts and chalkboards chairs and desks motorcycles computers/laptops/tablets internal contact list bicycles portable computer printer first-aid kit 4x4 vehicles telephones radio pens and pencils telephone directory television cameras cellular ‘phones food and beverages photocopying machine two-way radios detailed maps wireless internet fax machines generator and solar panels crisis communication and response team training needs according to zaremba (2009: 13), training, practice and simulation are essential for crisis communication to be effective. coombs (2011) recommends that specific training modules be developed for a crisis communication team. everyone involved in the management and response to crisis events need to go through basic training. the cct forms a critical link between technical experts and the population at risk, thus the crisis communication team should have the necessary skills to communicate with both groups. they should also be able to handle communication with the public via meetings (lindell & perry 2004: 198). training equips the teams in handling various crisis situations. volunteers can also undergo training. suggested training programmes include trauma counselling, conflict management, media management, listening skills, first-aid, as well as legislation and frameworks relevant to different hazards. crisis communications checklist a crisis communication checklist is essential for sending out error-free messages. this checklist is used by the communication manager and the disaster manager to check: ♦ before or during the alert phase of the crisis – as rumour investigation and/ or confirmation of facts is being done; ♦ during the crisis – actions such as securing the site and notification of teams are done; and ♦ after the crisis – the report is completed and the media updated. findings and recommendations the main finding with regard to the crisis communication plan for fbdm was that there was no skills transfer after the development of the plan. this then answers the research question on barriers municipalities encounter when implementing 219 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality best practice. skills transfer was not done because of lack of funding to accomplish the project. the recommended cct and crt were not officially appointed. there is a need for these teams to be appointed officially and for them to sign acknowledgement of acceptance of these responsibilities. not all crisis communication best practices are being practiced with regard to the successful implementation of the plan. the crisis plan was developed to address all the hazards identified in the disaster management plan but this is a major weakness of the plan. every hazard has its own specific character, hence the need for a single hazard or problem-specific crisis communication plan. the following are some recommendations to support effective implementation: institutional arrangements to meet the objectives of institutional arrangement platforms resources have to be mobilised, including financial resources (priority on the government budget and donors), physical resources and qualified human resources. crisis communication team and crisis response team members identified or currently participating in the above-mentioned platforms are encouraged to continually participate and make valuable contributions by attending meetings as stipulated by member(s) in charge. the functioning of these platforms will assist in the effective running and implementation of the plan. key messages messages should be released as quickly as possible; it is a rule of thumb to give the same information to all media at the same time (cf. gribb & hartomo 2002). spokespersons should be aware of the key messages since all eyes and ears are on the spokesperson as he/she communicates about the crisis. simulation a simulation exercise is important for preparation and for testing the feasibility of any plan. a simulation is a situation in which a particular set of conditions are created artificially in order to study or experience something that could exist in reality. since the development of the crisis communication plan, fbdm has not done any simulations and it is recommended that they implement simulation exercises. crisis communication monitoring and evaluation evaluation should be carried out at every step of the operational plan. this should be done through debriefing of the teams, viewing and reading media coverage of the situation, and reviewing any feedback received from members of the 220 olivia kunguma and lydie terblanche community and other stakeholders. monitoring of an event gives an opportunity to apply lessons learnt. what worked well? what could have been done better? what actions may need to be reviewed and revised to operate more smoothly in the future? conclusion this article critically analysed the fbdm crisis communication plan. the fbdm plan included many of the components of a crisis communication plan. for example, the crisis communication and response teams were identified and the roles and responsibilities of each team member were described. however, the team members lacked important elements such as skills transfer and simulation of the plan. effective communication is the key to the successful mitigation and prevention of hazards that may turn into disastrous events. in conclusion, it can be stated that within municipalities there is a need for proper management (through the comprehension and practice of crisis communication best practices), coordination, and availability of resources in order to improve efficiency. 221 a crisis communication plan for municipalities: the case of the frances baard district municipality references chandler, r.c. 2010. emergency notification. abc clio. cleveland metropolitan school district. 2009. crisis communication plan. [online]. available at: http://net.cmsdnet.net/2009 10schoolyear/2008 communicationplan.pdf [accessed on 28 april 2010] coombs, w.t. 2011. ongoing crisis communication: planning, managing and responding. usa: sage publications. creighton, j.l. 2005. the public participation handbook: making better decisions through citizen involvement. new york: john wiley and sons. dplg. 2008. disaster management act 57 of 2002. south africa: government gazette. fearn-banks, k. 2011. crisis communication: a casebook approach. new york: routledge. frances baard district municipality. 2006. disaster management plan. northern cape. gribb, j. and hartomo, t.s. 2002. sharing knowledge: a guide to effective science communication. australia: csiro. hadland, a. and thorne, k. 2004. the people’s voice: the development and current state of the south african small media sector. south africa: hsrc press. identify hazards and risks. 2012. michigan. [online]. available at: http://www. michigan.gov /documents/4-pub207_60737_7.pdf [accessed on 28 april 2010]. lindell, m.k. and perry r.w. 2004. communication environmental risk in multiethnic communities. usa: sage publications. lordan, e.j. 2003. essentials of public relations management. new york: rowman & littlefield publications. municipal structures act [no 32 of 2000]. south africa. municipal systems act [no 117 of 1998]. south africa. pool hospital nhs foundation trust. 2010. media relations policy. [online]. available at: http://www.poole.nhs.uk/about_us/documents/ mediarelationspolicyv310.8.doc [accessed on 28 april 2010]. whitsunday regional council. 2010. media relations policy. [online]. available at: http://www.whitsunday.qld.gov.au/linkclick.aspx?file ticket=orpo6yrfeqc%3d&tabid=76 [accessed on 28 april 2010]. zaremba, a.j. 2009. crisis communication: theory and practice. new york: m.e. sharpe publishers. 45 the learning organisation against a ceiling: can it move beyond the barrier? df du plessis* abstract in this critical literature review of the learning organisation and specifically the spirituality dimension of the concept, the aim is to identify possible aspects that will assist in operationalising the idea. the learning organisation concept is wellestablished and has been applied globally since being made popular in 1990 by peter senge. the concept promised huge potential and in many cases made a significant difference in the organisations where it was implemented. the emphasis is on learning in the organisation which makes it possible to adapt more rapidly to changes in the environment. however, its implementation was met with mixed success. for many reasons it is difficult or even impossible to establish the ideal learning organisation. this article proposes that one of the variables that inhibited proper implementation of the learning organisation concept can be the lack of accounting for spirituality in the organisation. spirituality in organisations (such as a sense of purpose, and meaningful engagement) is a fundamental assumption of the learning organisation. more research needs to be done to investigate the role of spirituality in an organisational context with the aim of unlocking the potential of operationalising the learning organisation concept. keywords: learning organisation, spirituality, organisational communication, society of organisational learning * professor danie du plessis (dplesdf@unisa.ac.za) lectures in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 45-61 46 df du plessis introduction the purpose of this article is to look critically at the literature relating to learning organisations to determine whether a renewed focus on the spiritual dimensions of the learning organisation may allow it to overcome the obstacles currently preventing organisations to convert fully to ideal learning organisations. the motivation to reconsider the role of spirituality in the implementation of the learning organisation has two sources. firstly, 25 years after conception and attempts to implementation, there are still problems establishing ideal learning organisations – as will be discussed later. secondly, in the past couple of years there has been a surge of research focusing on spirituality in the workplace. one of those was a study by van der walt (2006), which, focusing on communication in organisations, made the link between spirituality and the workplace. this prompted this investigation, so as to probe whether spirituality in the workplace could not serve as a focus for implementation of the learning organisation. in 1990, peter senge published the fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organisation. the idea of the learning organisation took off and quickly gave rise to a number of global initiatives to establish and apply the concept. although senge’s work (1990) popularised the concept, it was, at the time, not entirely unknown. the learning organisation developed an extensive network of followers all over the world: the society of organisational learning (sol) has been in existence since 1997 (with its own publication, reflections) and learning organisation, a scholarly journal, is published by emerald, with up to six editions per year. the sol is a network of global practitioners and consultants that engage in what they call “action research” – which is basically experimental in determining what works and what does not (reflections 2013). however, the idea of the learning organisation has also been questioned. for example, weir and örtenblad (2013) acknowledge the concept’s existence, but ask for a revision of its basic foundations. according to weir and örtenblad (2013), it is “generally accepted that the true ‘learning organisation’ is rather like the fabulous unicorn in that it is more commonly talked about than encountered”. similarly, caldwell (2012) asks whether the learning organisation, as a concept, is not too vague to be of use. on a more radical note, grieves (2008) poses the question whether the learning organisation as an imaginative concept has not run its course and should be abandoned. he bases his proposal on his analysis of the basic premises of the learning organisation, which found its theoretical and methodological premises wanting. the problem is that, despite a large number of research efforts and publications on the topic, not much progress has been made to take the idea beyond its original 47 the learning organisation against a ceiling conceptualisation and definition. as an example, the educationalist lara fenwick (2001: 86) is highly critical of the concept but comes to the following conclusion: questions about these issues are posed not to destroy the promise held by learning organisation approaches to workplace learning but to clarify its discourse. until its premises become clear, efforts to implement the learning organisation ideal will continually be challenged by real human beings and their needs, which weave together to create an organisation. örtenblad (2004: 349) supports fenwick’s (2001: 84) argument for the need to have thorough theoretical foundations established to operationalise the learning organisation and argues that “more research is required regarding whether and how learning organisations can be both effective and beneficial for employees”. this was again confirmed in örtenblad’s 2013 publication handbook of research on the learning organisation, in which he argues for more fundamental research to solve the problems standing in the way of learning organisations fulfilling their potential. the question this article aims to answer is whether a renewed focus on spirituality in the learning organisation debate can contribute to overcoming the obstacles which prevent the full implementation of the learning organisation. the learning organisation idea – a brief overview senge (1990: 14) defines a learning organisation as one that learns and encourages learning among its constituent members. it promotes the exchange of information between employees, hence creating a more knowledgeable workforce. he says a learning organisation is “an organisation that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future”. the result: “… produces a very flexible organisation where people will accept and adapt to new ideas and changes through a shared vision … the learning organisation is one in which people at all levels, individuals and collectively, is continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about” (senge 1990). for senge (1990: 3), the learning organisation is a “place where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to act together”. senge (1990) based his concept on what he called the “five disciplines”, namely systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision building and team learning. senge (1990: 69) proposed that these disciplines, which are briefly discussed below, must be used together to meet organisations’ aspirations: 48 df du plessis ♦ personal mastery represents how individuals learn to expand their own capacity and to influence other employees to develop; ♦ creating mental models involve introspection by employees towards shaping and creating personal success. mental models impact on our perceptions and will influence how we understand the world and also how we will take action; ♦ shared vision is the commitment by employees towards a shared outcome of the organisation – mobilise people around a core identity and a sense of destiny. it should be possible to be translated into realisable actions; ♦ team learning is how individuals realise that it is insufficient to develop themselves in isolation, but to alter their thought processes to align with team intelligence and success; and ♦ systems thinking involves employees’ understanding of the interrelatedness of interdependencies within the organisation. senge (1990) opines that these five disciplines sum up the requirements for an organisation to learn through its employees, thereby influencing the innovation factor from within the organisation. other definitions of the learning organisation developed over time. gephart, marsick, van buren and spiro (1996) see a learning organisation as one that is able to learn, to adjust, and to change in response to new realities. these authors also see the learning organisation as “one that is striving for excellence through continual renewal”. hitt (1995: 18) provided a definition that is more relevant to results-based management by defining a learning organisation “... as one that focuses on developing and using its information and knowledge capabilities in order to create higher-valued information and knowledge, to change behaviors, and to improve bottom-line results”. a more comprehensive definition of a learning organisation by king (2001) states that it is “... an organisation which learns powerfully and collectively and is continually transforming itself to better collect, manage, and use knowledge for corporate success. it empowers people within and outside the company to learn as they work. technology is utilized to optimize both learning and productivity.” bradbery and sturt (2007: 79-80) listed and summarised 25 definitions dating from 1990 to 2004. two issues emerged from that list. firstly, it represented a large variety of views that were selected to fit the purposes of the different authors. secondly, the primary common element was the dominance of learning processes as the core of the definitions. depending on how learning organisations are defined, organisational learning can either be seen as an aspect of the learning organisation – or, as some researchers 49 the learning organisation against a ceiling argue, that the learning organisation can be seen as a special case of organisational learning (örtenblad 2013: 23). borrowing from senge, du plessis (2008) sees learning organisations as: … those where all sections and staff are encouraged to learn, share institutional knowledge, capture the knowledge and are allowed to independently and in teams innovate and change in response to changes in the environment. in these organisations, the members are driven by purpose, and experience what they do as meaningful. du plessis (2008) then links this definition of the learning organisation to communication by saying “to establish and maintain learning organisations, authentic communication and the values associated with it, is the key to align it to society to keep up with changes that occur”. he then uses the following metaphor to illustrate his perspective of the learning organisation: to describe the ideal new learning organisation the analogy applies of a sophisticated machine where all the different components and functions are (independently) self-adjusting in response to variables that change. communication in the organisation plays a critical role in making this possible. du plessis (2008) summarised the understanding of the authors of the definitions of the concept by stating that learning organisations rely on learning by all members of staff – especially in the normal day-to-day activities and in teams that work together. it is about an attitude of asking how to do things better and more effectively, analysing current practices critically and applying collective wisdom to solve new problems. ideally, learning organisations should encourage individuals to think innovatively, as well as discuss new ideas informally with like-minded individuals, and then to set up task teams to interrogate and plan and implement new ideas. these individuals then receive acknowledgement and encouragement for innovations which serve the collective. there is general consensus among the different authors that if the principles and tenets of the learning organisation can be properly applied, organisations can benefit from becoming a “learning organisation” (du plessis 2008): what happened in practice? the implementation of senge’s original concept focussed on systems theory and highlighted the methodologies and pedagogies of organisational learning. this provided some benefit to organisations attempting to become learning organisations. much of the research and ‘results’ in the sol publication reflections report on 50 df du plessis success stories where learning was effective in organisations (without necessarily becoming prototype learning organisations). blackman (2013: 372) identified three issues that came out of an analysis of scholarly research on learning organisations (in contrast to what the practitioners/consultants report on, for example, in reflections): firstly, that, in many cases the stories were of difficulties, problems and, in some cases, failures in terms of the development of emergences of learning organisations within certain contexts. secondly, the fact that although context was seen as a framing element in each case … there was often no analysis of the context in a way which would permit clear comparisons or investigation across the cases. thirdly … [i]t is of note that so many of the chapters are still building on work by senge. örtenblad (2013: 22) is of the opinion that the literature on the learning organisation – from studies about the relevance of the idea to the contexts of organisations – are still based on the “well-known frameworks such as senge’s five disciplines from 1990”. these five disciplines offer the potential to address the problems that are articulated in the next section, but are currently not exploited to their full potential. it is, therefore, clear that the ideas conceptualised in 1990 by senge have remained relatively stagnant and have not developed to such an extent as to allow them to be operationalised in a fairly standardised way. obstacles to implementation of the learning organisation not only was the learning concept criticised from a practical and theoretical perspective, but, as early as the mid-nineties, also ideologically. coopey (1995) questioned the issues of power and politics in the basic assumptions of the learning organisation. he raised three concerns. firstly, he indicated a neglect of political activity encountered in the learning organisation, and secondly, that although employees will be empowered, the power of managers will be cemented by their privileged access to informational and symbolic resources. lastly, “… is that the concept of the ‘learning organisation’ is expressed in ways that provide raw material for managerial ideology, potentially constraining the meanings and actions of other employees so that they support the interests of the dominant coalition” (coopey 1995: 210). weir and örtenblad (2013) identify three types of obstacles that organisations encounter that prevent them from becoming a learning organisation. 51 the learning organisation against a ceiling the primary obstacle preventing the introduction of the learning organisation which the authors identified is what they call inability obstacles (i.e. organisations want to become learning organisations but cannot because of an inability to do so). the first inability obstacle is difficulty in understanding what a learning organisation is. the most commonly encountered problem with the learning organisation is that the concept is vague and/or ambiguous (grieves 2008; furnham 2004). weir and örtenblad (2013) say that the lack of understanding and clarity about the concept is a major obstacle and adds to the confusion. they add that the complexity of multiple learning processes may be contradictory or even conflicting. even when the idea is clear, there may be difficulties in implementing it. “the learning organisation may be one of those great-sounding ideas that just do not work because they are hard to operationalize and thus not practical” (weir & örtenblad 2013: 73). furthermore, managers may not be prepared, equipped and able to lead these processes. a perfectly functioning prototype of a learning organisation which is in line with the concept’s ideals (and which is able to be emulated) is challenging to find. even the literature and research claiming benefits are not based on clinical empirical evidence. the lack of evidence “… undoubtedly implies that the implementation difficulties are greater than many consultants and protagonists appreciate” (weir & örtenblad 2013: 74). these authors also state that myths play a suppressive role, “… we think that we know, but we do not”. in addition to the above, two other obstacles could be identified. the first is a lack of resources, such as time for staff members to reflect and learn; the second is not having the right people in the organisation to promote the concept. it was found (weir & örtenblad 2013: 77) that the idea often attracts “certain types of people who are not necessarily those who typically emerge into leadership positions in formal organisations”. the second obstacle may be that people do not know that they do not want to adopt the idea (inertia obstacles). an organisation may be structured in such a way that they are organised around hierarchies and both vertical and lateral barriers to authority and communication (silos) – which create small suboptimal empires of knowledge which cannot be broken down (weir & örtenblad 1993: 78). leaders and participants may also be unwilling to engage in introspection – action is usually preferred to reflection. the last obstacle is the expectation that success should translate into profitability or another benchmark of desirable outcomes. this “fear of failure can become self-defeating by creating cycles of more limited action around a restricted range of options” (weir & örtenblad 2013: 79). 52 df du plessis typically, authors would develop simple solutions for highly complex problems. maden (2012: 82) proposes such a simple process to convert public service organisations into learning organisations (with the focus solely on learning as a tool and outcome): on the whole, the proposed transformation model shows that there are three consecutive processes in converting public organisations into learning organisations. firstly, public organisations should strive to build a learning climate within their boundaries through enhancing structural, cultural, and leadership capacities to learn that will respectively increase their existing individual and collective learning capacities. as these capacities increase, they will facilitate higher knowledge creation within public organisations with the utilization of both internal and external sources of learning. knowledge creation can be considered as the initial step of organisational learning that should be complemented by an effective knowledge management process in order to achieve the goal of being a ‘learning organisation’. in this “solution”, all of the possible obstacles weir and örtenblad refer to can be encountered – without any provision to overcome these obstacles. the question is whether it is possible to move beyond the “classical” learning organisation concept with its limitations and problems regarding operationalisation of the concept. spirituality in the workplace spirituality associated with the learning organisation the issue of spirituality in an organisational context, as well as those associated with learning, is well documented. bradbery and sturt (2007) refer to the learning organisation as a radical model deviating from the traditional command and control view of organising to a “liberating structure based on faith and trust”. they reach the conclusion that the learning organisation exists in a spiritual context because of its continual search for meaning – in many ways. senge himself did not stagnate after the original development of the learning organisation concept. there were two developments in his thinking. in an interview in reflections (2013: 42-43) senge indicated that whilst he started off with the learning organisation, “learning communities”, which cross the borders of organisations, have now emerged: you would have these practical projects, let’s say on product development, as were some of the early projects. but they didn’t involve 53 the learning organisation against a ceiling the management team or any one well-defined group. they engaged an amorphous network of people who ultimately got involved and became instrumental to what was accomplished. so you start to see again and again that the real groups that matter are never the formal structures, the formal teams, the formal management. they include those but are much broader. practically speaking, the best term for them is communities or networks of collaboration. many of these communities of collaboration are the result of the networks of practitioners and consultants collaborating globally in the sol. it still does not question the basic fundamentals that were developed in 1990. however, it is moving towards a more universal position in line with what can be called a spiritual position in a postmodern context. secondly, since senge’s original work, he also moved on to place more emphasis on the idea of purpose in order to guide learning. it is generally accepted that the concept of the learning organisation begins with the idea of a vision for the organisation. in 2004 senge (2004: 16-18) proposed that organisations bring their missions to life – to nurture the sense of purposefulness: first, the mission is personal and immediate. it is not lofty or abstract. it is not even, ironically, about the future. purposefulness is intrinsic to the present moment, when i am aware that what i am doing is truly meaningful. i can feel connected to a larger or shared purpose only when i have some clarity about my personal purpose, or ‘who i am and the purpose of my existence’. in addition, senge (2008: 4) opines that an organisation’s mission should be active and concrete – it should connect a sense of purposefulness with the future. it should also be the motive that connects the people involved with each other and to the external environment. it builds a sense of community. however, to create such a sense of community, it is necessary for people to expose their true selves and made themselves vulnerable, so as to create a climate of trust (this also plays on the idea of knowing yourself and to communicate this knowledge to others to make authentic communication possible in the existentialist tradition). senge (2004) also emphasises the role of all stakeholders by urging organisations to really understand the people they are interacting with as part of the external environment – the people in whose interest they act. he uses the example of world bank employees who spent a week with one of the developing communities they were targeting for assistance – they had to understand the circumstances of those people in order to empathetically visualise their own roles in the bigger picture. 54 df du plessis senge (2008: 4) reiterates that people first need to have a personal vision for the unit and organisation – the organisational vision should be built on the positive visions of individuals. these visions for the organisation and individuals should be dynamic and able to adapt to changes in the environment. the organisational vision should be translated into a mission that will operationalise the concept further. the emphasis is therefore on a bottom-up approach as a basis for the development of an organisational vision and mission that employees and other stakeholders can relate to and take ownership of. spirituality in the workplace sorakraikitikul and sununta (2014: 175-178) make out a case that it is proven by various studies that accommodating human values and spirituality in the workplace is beneficial for both the employee and the organisation. in their own empirical study, they investigated the impact of cultivating an organisational learning culture on the spiritual integration of employees. they came to the conclusion that “[o]rganisational learning culture shapes the contextual environment for knowledge sharing and, at the same time stimulates employees’ perceptions that their work and lives have meaning. this enables members to integrate their lives and energy into the workplace” (sorakraikitikul & sununta 2014: 187-188). what they found was that the processes associated with the organisational learning culture itself contributed positively to employees’ spiritual experience. it also contributes to the commitment of staff to the goals and outcomes of their tasks (equal to a “calling”). this has an important implication for the proposal of a renewed focus on spirituality in the organisation that is proposed in this article. the challenge for most ordinary organisations is to get a commitment from their employees. unfortunately, such a commitment cannot be bought. commitment must be embedded in idealism. block (2004: 4) argues that, while most people are born idealists, they suppress that idealism when they become cynical adults whose self-interest dominates. people like this first ask “what is in it for me?” before they act. once commitment is traded for a pay-off, its transactional nature excludes it from being real, authentic commitment. the challenge for organisations is to combine purpose with everyday activities to ensure real commitment. learning organisations are also associated with excellence and innovation, as ahmed (1998) explains. ahmed (1998: 34) identifies four cultural traits and values associated with effectiveness, excellence and innovation in organisations. the last of these is an organisational and personal mission-driven activity: “a sense of mission provides purpose and meaning and can become the source that provides a number of other non-economic reasons why the existence and work of the organisation is important. it also defines the appropriate course of action for the organisation and its members.” 55 the learning organisation against a ceiling organisations in pre-modern times were characterised by a sense of community, with a dense network of personal relationships (based on kinship and direct faceto-face contact, unwritten norms and mutual interdependence), which had to make way for rationally organised modernist societies (baran & davis 2003). van der walt (2006) investigates the changes in postmodern society and the need for a spiritual intelligent framework of organisational communication. she concludes that society changed in a postmodern era, with the members of society having expectations and needs that are not accommodated in organisations still conceptualised in a modern framework – and that employees remain alienated from their work. effectively, it means that the values and practices that people accept as valid and appropriate in their functioning as members of society (democracy, service delivery, freedom of expression, sense-making and purposeful living, etc.) do not apply to them in their roles as employees in organisations. organisations expect a completely different set of expectations and, in essence, require employees to live compartmentalised lives – detaching their occupational life from what they fundamentally expect as members of society. for hundreds of years, people were able to influence their destiny by putting governments in power, exercising their right to free speech, and taking full responsibility for their households and the education of their children. however, many of them, after arriving at work, followed orders mechanically – with little authority or sense of self-determination. van der walt (2006: 420) proposes that organisations need to address the spiritual needs of employees. what are these spiritual needs? in a postmodern context, employees want to be meaningfully engaged in what they do at work. they want to find purpose in what they are doing. they also want to be engaged in something that is bigger than themselves. whitney (2002:79) says that: now, not only do people want their own life to be full of meaning and purpose, but they also expect the same of their organizations. awakening people want to work for organizations that care and that are consciously contributing to the planet. people want their organizations to make positive contributions to their communities and to the world, and they want work to enliven them. many employees are not satisfied to be paid to only do a job, but need to be involved in more than just contributing to the organisation’s bottom line. overell (2002) refers to a survey which indicated that substantial numbers of managers in britain who resign from their jobs do so on ethical grounds, because they crave values, purpose and identity in organisations that are not solely motivated by profit. according to overell “… instilling those values is the preoccupation of spirituality at work. it is an aim not that far removed from the human relations 56 df du plessis school of management, with all its emphasis on people being subject to ‘a hierarchy of needs’ at the top of which lies ‘self-actualisation’”. there is a growing awareness of the influence of spirituality on the ethos of organisations and a need to balance the pursuit of profit and the accommodation of spirituality. crossman (2007) studied a company which was exploring the introduction of “secular spirituality” into their operations and found that they selected products that were consistent with their core spiritual values and “… they set out to consider how these core values would shape approaches to relationships based on respect and concern for employees and clients”. the organisation also “… balanced spiritual practice with profit generation by donating a tenth of their profits to charity and budgeting five percent of employee time to be spent on voluntary service to community charitable projects”. crossman then linked this to the concept of learning organisations to create a sense of purpose for employees. porth, mccall and bausch (1999: 212) indicate in their study that the learning organisation is an ideal organisational type to “allow the human spirit to flourish so that creativity and innovation are possible”. they then identified spiritual themes that are associated with the learning organisation concept from a religious point of view and concluded that accommodating employees’ spiritual needs are reciprocally beneficial for both parties. in 1982, before the publication of the fifth discipline, kiefer and senge published an article on what they called metanoic organisations. in this article kiefer and senge (1982: 111) declare that at the heart of the metanoic organisation is a deep sense of purposefulness and a vision of the future: the vision can be abstract, such as excellence, service, or creativity. in one company, people speak of the ‘diamond in the sky’ to symbolize the excellence they strive for. their vision is also to demonstrate that people are most creative within a context of freedom and responsibility. alternatively, the vision can be concrete. at one computer manufacturer, the vision is to build a computer that never breaks down. in another, it is to build the world’s largest and most powerful computer. it is important for team members to be aligned around the shared vision (cf. bradbery & sturt 2007). “when a high degree of alignment develops among members of a team committed to a shared vision, the individuals’ sense of relationship and even their concept of self may shift” (kiefer & senge 1982: 112). these authors conclude: the essence of the metanoic shift is the realization within each individual of the extraordinary power of a group committed to a common vision. in metanoic organisations people do not assume they are powerless. 57 the learning organisation against a ceiling they believe deeply in the power of visioning, the power of the individual to determine his or her own destiny. they know that through responsible participation they can empower each other and ultimately their institutions and society, thereby creating a life that is meaningful and satisfying for everyone. stewart (2001) brings another dimension to the spiritual debate by propagating the introduction of narrative theory to capture the full reality of organisational experiences and learning. this will include the full picture of multiple, differing and even possible conflicting interpretations and representations of the experience and learning in organisations. stewart (2001: 151) concludes: “emotions need to be brought out of their private closets to the centre stage of organisations through the stories and conversations of members. a new way of working and learning needs to be fostered, where emotions are allowed to given expression and where questions about how one feels are freely asked.” bringing spirituality to the centre of learning organisations it is clear that employees live postmodern lives, but most organisations are still stuck in a modern paradigm that do not accommodate their employees’ needs. the “new” employee has different expectations and ideals. the question is to what extent are these metonoic ideals represented in the conceptualisation of the learning organisation? although it is the underlying foundation that provides motivation for individual employees to engage with those idealistic activities associated with the learning organisation, it is sorely neglected if the “five disciplines” is accepted uncritically as the sole framework for the establishment of the learning organisation without linking this with spirituality. the literature on the learning organisation, as well as the research that has already been done to investigate the topic of spirituality in organisations, indicates that the spiritual dimension can be accommodated by senge’s five disciplines. the “disciplines” are therefore not devoid of spiritual content, but organisational spirituality needs to be explicitly accounted for. bradbery and sturt (2007) propose such a framework that accounts for spiritual dimensions in all five of the “disciplines” – which could serve as a starting point to investigate the infusion of the original principles with contemporary spiritual content. from what the literature indicated in the previous section, the research on spirituality in organisations highlight the following themes: ♦ the vision and mission of the organisation mobilise people around goals that are worthwhile; ♦ a sense of community – sharing and engaging in collaborative effort on something that gives meaning to the members; 58 df du plessis ♦ an alignment of personal and organisational values that also accommodate religious and secular spirituality; ♦ a sense of mission that gives purpose and meaning to staff members and foster commitment; and ♦ the accommodation of staff member’s emotions, as well as the freedom to express themselves in narratives that will also become organisational narratives. these themes fit the learning organisation perfectly. these themes are also indicative of the needs and expectations of the postmodern employee. although much has been done to address spirituality in the workplace – and some of it also within the context of the learning organisation – most of the work done on spirituality does not deal with it as a central assumption of the learning organisation, but as a complementary dimension. conclusion the learning organisation is an excellent concept which can be extremely inspirational and certainly capable of focusing organisational attention on the right places – specifically, issues such as organisational learning focusing on employees as not only the object for learning, but also the source of learning, and also interrelatedness and interdependence in organisations. the learning organisation concept has been implemented with mixed results. the literature indicates that there are problems with the implementation of the learning organisation, with many obstacles in the way of establishing a real prototype of the learning organisation. many organisations apply some of the principles of the learning organisation, with the focus on the learning components, but with mixed success. looking at the needs of the postmodern employee, it is obvious that those needs have to be accommodated in the workplace. there is a growing trend that people need to find meaning in what they do every day. employees need to be purposefully engaged; they want to make a difference that goes beyond material compensation. this is exactly the kind of environment the learning organisation has to offer. the learning organisation can provide the context in which employees can meaningfully engage. is this perhaps the “missing link” that will allow the learning organisation to make a bigger impact? the primary problem with the learning organisation concept is that it relies on a number of assumptions which have not been tested theoretically or conceptually. the spiritual dimension is a fundamental assumption which is not dealt with as a central point of departure for the implementation of the learning organisation. 59 the learning organisation against a ceiling various aspects of organisational spirituality have been documented and investigated. this work confirmed the need to move the issue of spirituality to the centre of the learning organisation debate. further research needs to be done to investigate the spiritual dimensions of employee needs and the integration thereof with the learning organisation to the extent that it may assist in operationalising the concept more extensively. 60 df du plessis references ahmed, p.k. 1998. culture and climate for innovation. european journal of innovation management 1(1): 30-43. baran, s.j. & davis, d.k. 2003. mass communication theory: foundations, ferment, and future. toronto: wadsworth/thomson. blackman, d.a. 2013. contextualising the learning organisation: how will it help us in the future? in: örtenblad, a. (ed.). handbook of research on the learning prganisation. cheltenham uk: edward elgar publishing. block, p. 2004. authentic commitment. executive excellence 21(6): 4-5. bradbery, p. & sturt, c. 2007. the learning organisation: spiritual development and higher. international journal of the humanities 5(3): 77-85. caldwell, r. 2012, systems thinking, organisational change and agency: a practice theory critique of senge’s learning organisation. journal of change management 12(2): 145–164. coopey, j. 1995. the learning organisation, power, politics and ideology introduction. management learning 26(2): 193-213. crossman, j. 2007. the spirit of business: spiritualising otherwise secular work and learning contexts. international employment relations review 13(2): 1-10 du plessis, d.f. 2008. lost and found: “old” values for “new” learning organisations. inaugural lecture. university of south africa. 28 october. fenwick, t. 2001. questioning the concept of the learning organisation. in: paechter, c., preedy, m., scott, d. & soler, j. (eds). knowledge, power and learning. london: sage. furnham, a. 2004, management and myths: challenging business fads, fallacies and fashions. new york: palgrave macmillan. gephart, m., marsick, v.j., van buren, m.e. & spiro, s.m. 1996. learning organisations come alive. training & development 50(12): 34-46. grieves, j. 2008. why we should abandon the idea of the learning organisation. learning organisation 15(6): 463–473. hitt, w.d. 1995. the learning organisation: some reflections on organisational renewal. leadership and organisational development journal 6(8): 17-26. kiefer, c.f & senge, p.m. 1982. metanoic organisations in the transition to a sustainable society. technological forecasting and social change 22(2): 109–122 61 the learning organisation against a ceiling king, w.r. 2001. strategies for creating a learning organisation. information systems management 18(1): 12-20. maden, c. 2012. transforming public organisations into learning organisations: a conceptual model. public organisation review 12: 71-84. örtenblad, a. 2004. toward a contingency model of how to choose the right type of learning organisation. human resource development quarterly 15(3): 347-350. örtenblad, a. (ed.). 2013. handbook of research on the learning organisation. cheltenham uk: edward elgar publishing. overell, s. 2002. can work be soulful? personnel today 6/11/2002. porth, s.j., mccall, j. & bausch, t.a. 1999. spiritual themes of the “learning organisation”. journal of organisational change management 12(3): 212-220. reflections. 2013. 30 years of building learning communities. a dialogue with peter senge, otto scharmer and darcy winslow, part i. reflections 12:4: 40-52. senge, p. 1990. the fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organisation. new york: doubleday currency. senge, p. 2004. commentary. reflections 5(10): 16-18. senge, p. 2008. commentary. leadership excellence 25(3): 4. sorakraikitikul, m. & sununta s. 2014. organisational learning culture and workplace spirituality. the learning organisation 21(3): 175-192. stewart, d. 2001. reinterpreting the learning organisation. the learning organisation 8(4): 141–152. van der walt, e.a. 2006. a descriptive and exploratory study towards a spiritual intelligent transactional model of organisational communication. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of south africa. weir, d. & örtenblad, a. 2013. obstacles to the learning organisation. in: örtenblad, a. (ed.). handbook of research on the learning organisation. cheltenham uk: edward elgar publishing. whitney, d. 2002. spirituality as a global organising potential. reflections 3(3): 76-85. 31pb information and communication abstract after the enlightenment of the 18th century concern for the lonesome individual and the need for communication gave birth to the academic disciplines of psychology and communication science. positivism and the linguistic turn explored the distinction of what is observable and invisible. information assumed a place alongside matter and energy in the classical formulation of wiener: “information is information.” the problem of information and body-plans appears to be a key element in the tradition of vitalism. rainer schubert-soldern identifies form with the “order” of the cell and more recently the id movement (intelligent design) addressed the problem of an increase in information presented by the cambrian explosion. however, having assumed the current practice of viewing information as an object for natural scientific investigation is radically questioned by peter janich when he criticizes this legend and its icons. the impasse involved in this legend also entails a challenge to the status of natural laws. physical laws as conditions for what is physical are not themselves physical in nature. janich argues that we are inclined to use information in a metaphorical sense as if it is a natural scientific object of investigation. alternatively one should commence with communication between more than one human actor because it is only within such a communicative context that one actor can inform another actor and that information becomes meaningful. schuurman is therefore correct when he asserts that at bottom information is lingual. keywords: information; communication; natural scientific object; metaphor; naturalising prejudice; physicalism; bodyplan; cambrian explosion; the lingual nature of information during the 19th century the general understanding of the various academic disciplines by and large settled for focussing on the distinction between natural sciences (naturwissenschaften) and that of the humanities (geisteswissenschaften). distinguishing between these scholarly fields experimented with different options. within the baden school of neo-kantian philosophy, windelband introduced the idea of nomothetic natural sciences and idiographic cultural sciences. rickert opted for a different terminology, for according to him the natural sciences proceed in a generalising way whereas the cultural sciences were supposed to be individualising. when the era of conceptual rationalism entered the scene, particularly during the age of “reason” (the enlightenment of the 18th century – with immanuel kant as its main advocate), prof. danie strauss research fellow school of philosophy, north-west university (potchefstroom campus) dfms@cknet.co.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.3 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 31-42 © uv/ufs mailto:%20https://dx.doi.org/%0a10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.3?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.3 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.3 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.3 3332 danie strauss the relation between what is individual and universal turned out to be an unsolved problem. with the rise of historicism during the beginning of the 19th century the limitation of conceptual knowledge to what is universal prompted a search for alternative avenues, which were respectively found in the nature of sensory perception and language. positivism and neo-positivism explored the ability of sensory perception to grasp what is individual, while the “linguistic turn” chose for language because through the use of language it is also possible to capture what is individual in a unique deictic way. this line of development intersected with another one. by the end of the 19th century the differentiation of society, particularly as a result of the industrial revolution, resulted in an increasing alienation of the individual person. within the work place a distance emerged between the labourer and the end-product of the production process. the french sociologist, emile durkheim, underscored this development by highlighting the fact that the communal experience of roman catholics caused less instances of suicide than what was found within protestantism. the individual appears to have lost a proper self-understanding. combined with the increasing process of secularisation, individuals became less dependent upon the pastor, which in turn gave the newly emerging profession of psychologists a chance to step in. in a certain sense psychology developed as a spin-off of the individual who no longer understood herself or himself. yet after a number of decades it was clear that the situation had not improved and that individuals were not merely increasingly alienated but also no longer understood each other. this provided western society with another new option, seized upon by the rise of the theme of communication. not understanding each other may be cured through communication. however, human communication always presupposes meaning, oftentimes recognised by linguists as the “invisible” element of language (the visible sign and its invisible meaning). the emergence of information theory is of a relatively recent origin – a feature shared by the equally recent emergence of the scholarly discipline communication science. the name of shannon is associated with the rise of information theory, with particular reference to his articles in the bell system technical journal (july 1948 and october 1948). it appeared as “a mathematical theory of communication” (see shannon 1948).1 information – matter – energy the basic approach to information immediately rejected the identification of information with matter and energy. it therefore did not take long before a close affinity was observed between meaning and information, because, according to wiener: “[i]nformation is information nor matter or energy” (wiener, quoted by kiontke 2006: 232). kiontke explains his view as follows: information is also a wholly special entity of being. it is neither matter nor is it energy, both merely serve as bearers of information. if matter or energy is passed on then we have the resulting collection of matter or energy once more. but if we pass on information then we do not lose it. it is therefore possible to multiply information almost at will without the need to absorb further information (kiontke 2006: 232).2 3332 information and communication immaterial form: the vitalist legacy this statement raises a question regarding the vitalist distinction between form and matter – to which we will return in connection with the analysis presented by peter janich of the terms “information” and “informing”. it represents a legacy dating back to the basic orientation of greek philosophy as it is directed by the ultimate motive of matter and form. in order to account for the persistence of changeful entities, plato postulated a supra-sensory realm of eternal static ontic forms – his famous world of ideas. aristotle transformed these ideas into the universal forms inhering in material things, providing them with their substantial unity. this house is different from houseness: “the being of house is not generated, but only the being of this house” (aristotle 2001: 807). yet in the thought of both plato and aristotle the ultimate dualism between matter and form was not bridged. plato eventually realised that he could not introduce a form for what is formless; he later attempted to bridge the gap by introducing “ideal matter”. also in the thought of aristotle the opposition between the original formless matter and the form principle was not reconciled. happ discerns in aristotle’s thought an original split: “matter in itself” [reine hyle] and “reine form” (pure form – see happ 1971: 799). teleology and body-plans within the field of biology this notion of form was connected with the idea of goaldirectedness (teleology) and with the conception of an immaterial (ideal) body-plan. ray and linnaeus continued the legacy of plato within modern biology. in general their orientation is known as idealistic morphology. the best known more recent representative of this idealistic morphological approach is found in die work of wilhelm troll from austria. in a quasi-platonic sense he interprets the platonic forms as archtypical patterns. he assumes the existence of intuitively articulated primal units, viewed as the subject-matter of biology (see ungerer 1966: 232). in exploring this path troll continues the preference of goethe for a “gestalt”. yet it should be kept in mind that according to goethe “gestalt” is not rooted in law – rather law is rooted in “gestalt”. within idealist morphology a primal leaf or a primal plant is designed in which basic typological characteristics are present. one of the consequences of this position is that troll continues to believe that morphology determines the possibility of descent, and not the other way around: “it is not the descent which is decisive in morphology, but rather the opposite: morphology has to decide about the possibility of descent” (zimmerman 1968: 49).3 gestalt and form the idea of a gestalt reflects the platonic legacy within biology. particularly vitalism and neo-vitalism draw a distinction between “organic form” and the parallel characteristics of organisms. the neo-vitalist botanist, e.w. sinnott, writes that “[von] uexküll and others have emphasized this idea and regard organic form as essentially an independent aspect of an organism, parallel with its matter and energy”.4 he continues that neo-vitalism holds that “form” is “a basic characteristic of all living things” 3534 danie strauss (sinnott 1972: 51). it relates to the broader perspective that we may discern “regions of orderly diversity”. he contemplates a hierarchy from “atoms, molecules and crystals to stars and galaxies”. the “formative quality” which is “particularly conspicuous among living things” differs from “particles and the material substances they produce”. to this sinnott adds another dimension when he considers form to be constituted by the orderly patterns obtained between particles. it is also designated as relations among particles. form therefore does not concern the material particles themselves, but rather interrelations. elaborating this approach anticipates key elements eventually articulated in more depth by the contemporary intelligent design (id) movement. on the one hand it revives greek notions of an indivisible whole found in the metaphysics of being of parmenides5, and on the other its “changing and creative” nature relates to the general vitalist idea of a body-plan. sinnott believes that form “is a continuous entity and cannot be divided into pieces” (sinnott 1963: 199). johannes haas developed this view further by emphasising that every living thing in the elaboration of the course of its life obeys an inherent law or programme. he designates the programme not as a body-plan but as a life-plan – a term also frequently used by stephen jay gould. haas recognises within the life-plans the blueprints of each of their expressions, including the “genetic plan” for their succession, the functional plan for their activities, as well as the behavioural plan for all their “acts” (haas 1974: 336). according to haas, there is a similarity between life-plans and laws because both exhibit an ideal being (ideales sein). it entails that it is impossible to explain them in a physico-chemical way: “physical-chemical forces and laws are in themselves unable to bring forth the structures of meaning which we identify as the life plan, and even less can it produce a non-material bearer of life plans” (haas 1974: 355). the abyss between the non-living and the living according to haas, bridging the abyss (kluft) between the non-living (unbelebten) and the living (lebendigen) must conform to the following conditions: (1) it must dispose over a creative intelligence exceeding everything imaginable [es muss eine alles vorstellbare überragende schöpferische intelligenz besitzen], for only such a being can produce a meaning-structure such as what we recognise as “lebenspläne” (designs of life/vital plans) (haas 1974: 355-356), and (2) it must be capable of realising the “life plans” of organisms, namely it must have power over being as such (ibid.). in agreement with driesch, the neo-vitalist biologist rainer schubert-soldern also substantiated his view with biochemical arguments in which the so-called principle of wholeness plays a key role. he holds that the cell depends on actualising a dual potential: “(a) the ‘form’ or order of the cell, and (b) the chemical laws governing molecules. ... this principle of order may be called the ‘active potentiality’ of the material parts” (schubert-soldern 1962: 102). his view of the principle of order returns to aristotle: “hence the aristotelian concept of entelechy corresponds exactly with the principle of order, which we see at work making the cell into a whole. it is a principle of wholeness which forms a unity from parts which would otherwise go their separate ways. thus a hologenous system is born” (schubert-soldern 1962: 113). 3534 information and communication the central position of the idea of ganzheit (wholeness) and form within the vitalist legacy in biology is linked to the idea of an immaterial vital force already found in the thought of aristotle (he called it “entelechie”). whatever was introduced beyond matter or energy was assigned with the capacity to structure living entities in their peculiar forms. we noted earlier that the term best serving this purpose is captured by the idea of a body-plan. information theory and the cambrian explosion when information theory emerged during the late 1940s the discovery of the spectacular structure of dna was not yet known. once this discovery was made new challenges surfaced, particularly in connection with the data of what became known as the cambrian explosion.6 sterelny highlights the nasty fact, namely that about 530 million years ago most “major animal groups appeared simultaneously”. he continues: “in the ‘cambrian explosion’, we find segmented worms, velvet worms, starfish and their allies, molluscs (snails, squid and their relatives), sponges, bivalves and other shelled animals appearing all at once, with their basic organization, organ systems, and sensory mechanisms already operational. we do not find crude prototypes of, say, starfish or trilobites. moreover, we do not find common ancestors of these groups” (see sterelny 2001: 89-90; also see the later edition, sterelny 2007: 116). the 20 to 40 million years allocated to the cambrian era have now been reduced to 5 to 6 million years (meyer 2013: 72). we note these data only in passing because our focus is rather on the complexities involved in accounting for the information-increase required by new animal body-plans. in his mathematical theory of information, shannon assumes that improbability communicates more information. he proceeds by looking at the probability of any one character from the english alphabet occurring in a sequence of other such letters (including a space) – it is 1 in 27. in all cases shannon therefore assumes a 27-symbol “alphabet” (the 26 letters and a space). different orders of approximation are considered, such as a zero-order approximation (symbols independent and equiprobable): xfoml rxkhrjffjuj zlpwcfwkcyj ffjeyvkcqsghyd qpaamkbzaacibzlhjqd, a first-order approximation (symbols independent but with frequencies of english text): ocro hli rgwr nmielwis eu ll nbnesebya th eei alhenhttpa oobttva nah brl – and so on (shannon 1948: 7). clearly, the account had to revert to discrete units (compare “bits” – with 0s and 1s as their basis) – showing that also a binary alphabet can communicate an unlimited amount of information. within shannon’s theory additional information is communicated when there is an increase in the number of improbabilities. considering a specific sequence of characters shows that improbability may increase exponentially with the number of characters in the sequence. meyer explains that information scientists “measure such informational increases through a unit they call a bit. a bit represents the minimum amount of information that can be conveyed (or uncertainty reduced) by a single digit in a two-character alphabet.” the probability of either a zero or one arising in a sequence of binary characters is 3736 danie strauss 1 in 2. in shannon’s theory the presence of the more improbable character conveys more information.7 a meaningful sequence vs useless gibberish however, in his investigations regarding the increase in information needed for more complex body-plans, stephen meyer notes that the application of shannon’s information theory to molecular biology to some degree has obscured an important distinction regarding the type of information found in dna: “although shannon’s theory measures the amount of information in a sequence of symbols or characters (or chemicals functioning as such), it doesn’t distinguish a meaningful or functional sequence from useless gibberish” (meyer 2013: 166-167). meyer explains this by using the following example: “we hold these truths to be self-evident” and “ntnyhiznslhtgeqkahgdsjnfplknejmsed”. although these two sequences could be imagined as being random, their shannon information content is the same. nonetheless the implicit qualitative difference between them is concealed because it is not captured by the shannon measurement. whereas the first “meaningful sequence performs a communication function … the second does not” (meyer 2013: 167). warren weaver, one of shannon’s close collaborators, elucidated in 1949 that the special mathematical sense of the word “information” should not be confused with its everyday usage of meaningful or functional communication (meyer 2013: 167). the complexity of living entities a consideration behind this distinction concerns the complexity of living entities. in spite of having numerous differentiated internal functions, a (single-celled) eukaryote represents still merely one single cell-type. the complexity present in differentiated (prokaryote) multicellular living entities requires organs capable of performing more diverse functions since each of them needs multiple specialised cell-types. it is therefore understandable that examining the cell-types of different living things could be used to assess a different degree of complexity – a suggestion made by james valentine. of course such new cell types are in need of many new and specialised proteins. meyer mentions an “epithelial cell lining a gut or intestine” … “which secretes a specific digestive enzyme” … and this enzyme in turn “requires structural proteins to modify its shape and regulatory enzymes to control the secretion of the digestive enzyme itself”. the upshot of this is that the construction of novel cell types typically requires building novel proteins, which requires assembly instructions for building proteins – that is, genetic information. thus, an increase in the number of cell types implies an increase in the amount of genetic information (meyer 2013: 162). the moment the term “type” is used, another implicit distinction surfaces, namely that between modal (aspectual) laws and type laws. the former are universal in the sense that they pertain to all possible classes of entities, whereas the latter (type laws) evince a specified universality insofar as they only apply to a limited class of entities.8 stafleu (1980: 11) explains: 3736 information and communication whereas typical laws can usually be found by induction and generalization of empirical facts or lower level law statements, modal laws are found by abstraction. euclidean geometry, galileo’s discovery of the laws of motion ..., and thermodynamic laws are all examples of laws found by abstraction. this state of affairs is reflected in the use of the term ‘rational mechanics,’ in distinction from experimental physics. epigenetic information although it has been assumed for some time that natural selection acting on random mutations was sufficient to explain the rise of new complex body-plans, it more recently appeared that in addition to an unparalleled explosion of genetic information another type of information is required which is not stored in genes. it is called epigenetic information and extensively discussed by meyer in chapter 14 of his work on darwin’s doubt (see pages 271-310 – the epigenetic revolution). neo-darwinians concede that the genesis of the first living entity is a mystery. yet they still believe that it occurred “spontaneously” by means of purely material processes. the key issue concerns the extreme improbability of such a process and in particular the absence of any clues as to how the information found in living entities came into being. the “hardware” (material) does not explain the “software” (such as ordered dns sequences, epigenetic information or complex proteins). interestingly the equally mysterious appearance of new animal phyla during the cambrian explosion now turn out to be of an epigenetic origin, not stored in genes. what is more baffling is that similar information sequences do not affirm common ancestor genes. recent “genomic studies which reveal that hundreds of thousands of genes in many diverse organisms exhibit no significant similarity in sequence to any other known gene” (meyer 2013: 215). meyer also mentions that orfan genes (derived from “open reading frames of unknown origin”) have “turned up in every major group of organisms, including plant and animals as well as both eukaryotic and prokaryotic one-celled living entities. in some organisms, as much as one-half of the entire genome comprises orfan genes” (meyer 2013: 216). in the absence of homologs it is not possible to relate orfans to any common ancestral gene, increasingly acknowledged by biologists who now want to “explain” the origin of such genes through de novo (“out of nowhere”) origination (ibid.). it is striking that the mystical realm of “coming from nowhere” is intimately related to the information specified by the type-law of animals. it should therefore not surprise us that davidson and erwin concede that current theories of evolution do not explain the origin of the de novo body plans found in the cambrian explosion (see meyer 2013: 356). is information a natural object? thus far we have employed the standard and generally accepted practice which refers to “information” as a given from nature, as a “natural object”. this is already clear from the fact that wiener juxtaposes information, matter and energy – which entails that these three items belong to the same domain of (natural) objects. the implicit assumption present in this view raises the question: who naturalised information? 3938 danie strauss according to peter janich. the mistaken view that information belongs to the domain of natural objects should be seen as belonging to a programme according to which information is primarily viewed as an object for the natural sciences. of course the term “naturalisation” would not make much sense if the intention is to declare something to be natural that is already natural. it should therefore rather be seen as a designation of the claim that ultimately it is solely the natural sciences that are capable to research and control information. the naturalising legend and its icons the programme of naturalisation therefore proclaims that information is the exclusive or at least primary study object of the natural sciences. janich calls this programme also a legend with its own icons. the first icon of this legend is information. another icon of the modern legend is erbinformation (genetic information). the third icon belonging to this legend is the nachrichtentecnik (communication technologies). information in our everyday language obtained an ambiguous meaning because it employs as starting-point distinct traditions. on the one hand it concerns the tradition of lingual communication (with the accompanying activity of informing), and on the other, procedures of transformation, coding and decoding – in which it concerns the maintenance of structures without requiring that these structures carry a specific lingual, meaningful or truth capability with them. janich pays attention to the possibility that the new disciplines of the 20th century, such as cybernetics and the mathematical theory of information or their application in biology, chemistry and physics, provide a basis for this ambiguity, but then points out that a perspective on the conceptual history of the term information shows that it was already divided in its latin origins. yet he does not want to restrict himself to the term “information” and “informing” but rather to penetrate deeper into the history of philosophy. he specifically returns to the role of form in the philosophy of aristotle – to which we have alluded earlier. on the one hand it could be an abstract form and on the other a “formal cause” – in the spatial shape of a piece of marble brought forth by a sculptor (janich 2006: 20-21). laws: an impasse for physicalism what is required in this context is to acknowledge that the status of natural laws presents a physicalist view with serious problems for if everything in the world is material and physical (matter and energy) then the nature of modal and typical laws becomes problematic. laws condition whatever is subject to them and is shown by means of its law-conformity or lawfulness. conforming to the measure of the law, i.e., to be law-conformative (afrikaans: wet-matig), is a universal way in which modal aspects and typical entities display their subjectedness to law. being an atom, being a molecule or being a macro-molecule is a property of what is subjected to laws, of what displays the measure of a law. but the conditions for being this or that do not coincide with what is determined and delimited by laws. the law for being a macro3938 information and communication molecule is not itself a macro-molecule, just as little as the conditions for being green are themselves green. in other words, (modal and typical) physical laws are not physical by nature. wiener therefore could have added “a law is a law” to his triplet “information, matter and energy”! the laws holding for physical entities are just as little physical in nature as the “information” assumed to be present in the genetic code. in addition, one should distinguish between the phenomenon of information and the concept information. the metaphor: information at this point janich highlights an important feature of our current understanding of information, namely the metaphorical way in which we immediately speak about information. he mentions what was said by craig venter and bill clinton after the deciphering of the human genome and points out that familiar metaphors came into play. the language they used even aimed at transcending what the media conveyed – compare metaphors such as book, grammar, text or book of life. speaking of coding, transcribing, translating, speaking and so on became indispensable means. words from our everyday language play a key role. the english word “code” (latin: codex) comes from “tree-trunk”, “book”, and appeared in legislative or ecclesiastical contexts (janich 2006: 15). in general the word information in our everyday language refers to meaning (what is meant) and the validity of what is provided. asking for a travel guide at a railway station therefore requires meaning and validity (bedeutung und geltung) (janich 2006: 19). the phonograph (developed by edison in 1877) achieved something completely unique and novel, namely the ability to “record” what a human says, and later on reproduce it (“play it back”). the spoken word here became objectified in a lingual artefact with its own entity-like enduring existence over time. this mechanisation of the spoken word or of communication indicates that they are transported in a technical sense, i.e. a process causally controlled by physical laws. but is does not mean that human achievements – such as speaking, calculating, seeing, thinking and writing – are taken over or performed by machines (see janich 2006: 36). language is always a societal and communicational achievement of human beings. cybernetic guiding and ruling presupposes human action, although it proceeds in a causally determined way and therefore remains, conceptually understood, within the scope of physics as a special science. the steam engine of james watt and the modern arm-watch allow a description in purely physical terms without employing a single cognitive word derived from the sphere of human action and human argumentative intercourse (janich 2006: 50-51). janich questions the above-mentioned legend regarding the assumption that information in fact is a study-object of the natural sciences. his own view is that the term “information” is simply a metaphor within the domain of the construction of models. it is supported by three prejudices: (i) the frequent occurrence that the meaning of words is fixed through inter-human lingual communication and which then is transferred to animal, plant and non-living processes; (ii) the unwillingness to distinguish properly between the human being and nature, i.e. in respect of language and action; and 4140 danie strauss (iii) the refusal to distinguish between what is natural and what is artificial or technical. the naturalisation of information neglects the human being as original actor (janich 2006: 65, 67; see also janich 2000: 98-99). the cognitive metaphors applied in the description of the structural properties of reproductive phenomena are understood as a cognitive, lingual or language-similar process with the use of terms such as interpreting, coding and the translation of molecular structures within molecular biology. the noteworthy point is that this mode of speech does not belong to the popularisation of complex (not easily to be understood) relationships for laymen, but to the special scientific language of the experts themselves. janich discerns two weak spots in the usage of metaphors: (i) it is redundant vis-à-vis a causal description of these relationships, and (ii) it is false in respect of the choice of an inadequate metaphor (janich 2006: 92, 97). within genetics “information” is understood as passing on, copying of duplicating spatially configured molecular structures. a system with a spatial configuration impresses its structure upon another system, similar to the way in which a stamped coin can pass on its cast. the same state of affairs is therefore described in two modes of description. in the first the theme is the spatial ordering of parts in molecules or chains of molecules and in the second it concerns coded information. the problem is when, through a methodological upside-down turning, the act of explaining is exchanged with what has to be explained. nature does not explain language and science because the cultural phenomenon science in a lingual fashion explains the natural phenomena by the cultural achievements of physics and biology and the language of the communication media (see janich 2006: 112). language communication and information the biologist who speaks about genetic information in order to take the language of molecules as the foundation for human language runs into a performative contradiction with the lingual nature of producing this theory. language is therefore always presupposed within the cultural context in which communication takes place. and it is only on the basis of human communication that it becomes meaningful to speak about information. interactive communication opens up the possibility to inform those who are involved in the act of communication. and such an act of informing depends upon the information entailed in the process of informing. different lingual articulations can designate the same state of affairs (compare the numerical equivalence of the roman numeral iii and the arabic numeral 3). this illustrates that the concept of information flows from the act of informing (see janich 2006: 158-159). the implication is that in its original sense information presupposes communication which in turn presupposes the lingual aspect of reality. schuurman (2009: 23) provides a summary in which the rejection of a “naturalised” understanding of information as advocated by janich is underscored: in connection with computers, it is customary to refer to information-processing or data-processing processes. the danger in this is that one might be led to ignore the fact that information is lingual at bottom. language indicates and signifies 4140 information and communication something. and indicating and signifying are human activities, expressions of human freedom and creativity that cannot be tied up in set rules. the language which results from human activity can certainly be formalized, and formalized language can be objectified in the computer. yet the significance of the objectified signs and symbols is human in origin; the computer’s results receive their meaning through people. in the light of the basic lingual nature of information, what is normally designated as modal laws (such as the law of energy-constancy, the law of gravity or the law of non-decreasing entropy), or type laws (such as the typical body-plans discerned in the cambrian explosion), could be described through lingual objectification or metaphorically, as janich argued. but then one should steer clear of a naturalisation of information and acknowledge the difference between appropriate metaphors and a causal physical explanation. only then will it also be possible to acknowledge that communication is foundational to information. endnotes 1 more recently gray states: “information theory can be viewed as simply a branch of applied probability theory” (gray 2011: xvii). 2 “information ist also eine ganz besondere entität des seins. sie ist weder materie noch ist sie energie, beide dienen lediglich als träger von information. wenn wir materie oder energie weitergeben, dann besitzen wir danach die entsprechende menge an materie oder energie wieder. geben wir aber information weiter, dann geht diese bei uns nicht verloren. information kann also nahezu beliebig vervielfaltig werden, ohne dass dazu weitere information aufgenommen werden muss.” 3 “es is nicht die dezendenz, welche in der morphologie entscheidet, sondern umgekehrt: die “morphologie hat über die möglichkeit der dezendenz zu entscheiden” (zimmermann 1968: 49). 4 note that form here replaces information in the above-mentioned view of wiener: “information is information nor matter or energy.” 5 cf. the fragments of parmenides, contained in diels-kranz 1959, volume i – particularly fragments 4 and 8:3-6 where parmenides emphasizes that in the now being is present as one coherent whole. 6 in passing we may note that darwin believed that if “numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection” for “the development by this means of a group of forms, all of which are descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long before their modified descendants” (darwin 1859: 309). 7 in shannon’s sense dna conveys information owing to the presence of long improbable arrangements of the four chemicals adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine (a, t, g, and c). meyer states: “as crick realized in formulating his sequence hypothesis, these nucleotide bases function as alphabetic or digital characters in a linear array. since each of the four bases has an equal 1 in 4 chance of occurring at each site along the spine of the dna molecule, biologists can calculate the probability, and thus the shannon information, or what is technically known as the ‘information-carrying capacity,’ of any particular sequence n bases long (meyer 2013: 166). 8 in his own way immanuel kant already distinguished between these two kinds of laws, namely “pure or general natural laws” and “empirical laws of nature” (kant 1783: 320; § 36). pb42 danie strauss references aristotle. 2001. the basic works of aristotle. edited by richard mckeon with an introduction by c.d.c. reeve. (originally published by random house in 1941). new york: the modern library. diels-kranz. 1959/60. die fragmente der vorsokratiker. berlin. vols. i-iii. gray, r.a. 2011. entropy and information theory. berlin: springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ 978-1-4419-7970-4 haas, j. 1974. das organische leben. in: huttenbugel, j. (ed.). gott, mensch, universum. graz: styria. happ, h. 1971. hyle, studien zum aristotelischen materie-begriff. berlin: de gruyter. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110816747 heidegger, m. 1924. der begriff der zeit. vortrag, herausgegeben von fried v. herrmann. frankfurt am main: vittori o klosterman. [gesamtausgabe iii. abteilung: unveröffentlichte abhandlungen vorträge – gedachtes. band 64, der begriff der zeit.] janich, p. 2000. was ist wahrheit? eine philosophische einführung. münchen: verlag c.h. beck. janich, p. 2006. was ist information? frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. kant, i. 1783. prolegomena einer jeden künftigen metaphysik die als wissenschaft wird auftreten können. hamburg: felix meiner (1969). kiontke, s. 2006. physik biologischer systeme, die erstaunliche vernachlässigung der biophysik in der medizin. műnchen: mintzel. http://dnb.ddb.de. meyer, s. 2013. darwin’s doubt. new york: harperone. schubert-soldern, r. 1962. mechanism and vitalism: philosophical aspects of biology. edited by p.g. fothergill. foreword to the american edition by j.p. doll. trans. by c.e. robin. notre dame: indiana university of notre dame press. schuurman, e. 2009. technology and the future. grand rapids: paideia press. shannon, c.e. 1948. a mathematical theory of communication. reprinted with corrections from the bell system technical journal 27(july, october): 379–423, 623–656. sinnott, e.w. 1963. the problem of organic form. london: new haven. sinnott, e.w. 1972: matter, mind and man: the biology of human nature. new york: atheneum. sterelny, k. 2001 [second impression 2007]. dawkins vs. gould, survival of the fittest. london: icon books. ungerer, e. 1966. die wissenschaft vom leben. teil 3: der wandel der problemelage der biologie in den letzten jahrzehten. freiburg: alber. zimmerman, w. 1968. evolution und naturphilosophie. berlin: duncker & humbolt. 165pb the communication challenges of issue management in a postmodern world: a case study of the south durban industrial basin abstract this article describes the failure of issue management communication in resolving an enduring pollution crisis stretching over two decades in south africa’s south durban industrial basin (sdib). a crisis of responsibility has arisen from a postmodern, neoliberal order. concerns of residents are overridden in favour of nationally significant economic growth objectives. as a result “local” issues are communicated by global coalitions seeking environmental justice through modernist notions of “science” communicated in a postmodern, global context. the lack of public confidence, trust and the unmet expectations of participation in the environmental decision-making of government agencies and corporations is revealed. local mobilisations look to broader spaces of engagement, including international activist organisations and international media as the unresolved crisis is deepened by state coercion and industry intransigence. keywords: south durban industrial basin; environment; crisis communication; neoliberalism; modernism; science introduction it is difficult to find a scholarly account of any conflict in africa, asia or latin america which is not imputed in some way to economic globalisation and the “new neoliberal order” (van de walle 1998). however, the majority of scholarly work on issue management communication seldom interrogates in any detail how neoliberalism, defined as a partnership between big business and government, impacts on the free flow of information and prevents meaningful resolution from taking place. little attention is paid to the individual accounts and experiences of those who have endured a crisis. competing perceptions of reality between authorities and affected residents and commercial agents of causation characterise such crises. these remain enduring and perplexing questions in issue and crisis management communication (jacques 2014; simons 2016). prof. gary mersham school of health and social sciences, open polytechnic, new zealand gary.mersham@gmail.com doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.11 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 165-177 © uv/ufs mailto:gary.mersham@gmail.com https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.11 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.11 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.11 167166 gary mersham the end of apartheid and institutionalisation of a broadly liberal regime of democratic citizenship rights and its consequent expectations in south africa has coincided with the reinsertion of the south african economy into global circuits of production, investment and consumption. one of the results has been that the south african state in concert with large corporates in the pursuit of growth has failed to meet sustainable environmental standards by allowing life threatening industrial pollution (cox 2003: 329). the south durban industrial basin (sdib) and environs the sdib economic development hub is situated near durban in south africa’s kwazulu-natal province. the sdib is known as south africa’s “environmental and disaster management hotspot”. for decades, local communities have experienced very high levels of air, ground and water pollution, poor health conditions and constant exposure to high risks during ongoing industrial accidents (jaggernath 2010; barnett & scott 2007; sparks 2006; sdcea 2008/2009; skinner 1997; skinner & mersham 2002; skinner & rampersad 2014). it has two major petrochemical refineries, the largest in south africa, hazardous waste dumps, a paper mill, hazardous chemical storage facilities, a major airport and more than 150 crude oil dependent industries. it is the country’s second largest concentration of industrial activity, with more than 300 industrial-scale facilities situated in and amongst highly populated residential areas (peek 2002). nearby are two major shopping mall complexes attracting thousands of people from other parts of the province. pollution in this area is reported as one of the highest in the world (jaggernath 2010). the basin’s label of “cancer valley” refers to the area’s high rates of cancer and prevalent cases of asthma and bronchitis (jaggernath 2010; d’sa 2014). serious problems include explosions, heavy transport using residential roads, noise pollution, illegal dumping of hazardous waste and major leaks from the ageing pipelines which are directly beneath residential streets to the engen and sapref refineries (wiley et al. 2002). the sdib has a residential population approaching 500 000, comprising low to middle-income black communities who were forcibly relocated there during the apartheid regime, creating a cheap labour pool for local industry (barnett & scott 2007). health and environment concerns among communities and the continuing expansion of industry have resulted in an enduring crisis running over decades (van der merwe 2004). feeding this conflict is the lack of progress towards a resolution by which the many industries involved agree to jointly develop a crisis management plan with input from the affected communities, and the disregard of the legal rights of individuals and groups enshrined in national legislation. (ozawa 1996). crisis communication and contingency planning for ongoing disaster situations remains inadequate, with the strategies adopted by the major stakeholders insufficiently integrated to ensure effectiveness (skinner & rampersad 2014). the sapref refinery is jointly owned by two multi-national oil companies, shell and bp, while the engen refinery is owned by petronas, malaysia’s state-owned petroleum company. residents living close to polluting industries are forced to engage with local 167166 the communication challenges of issue management in a postmodern world representatives of corporations whose head offices are distant and disconnected from local concerns. as this article will show, local representatives have an unenviable record of poor communication and failure to improve the situation, with the apparent blessing of national and local government. industrial accidents are legion. in the period 1998 to 2008 the south durban community environmental alliance (sdcea) recorded 120 accidents and pollution incidents, ranging from large oil spills and work-related employee deaths to fires and explosions in the refineries’ compounds. in 2001 a petrol pipeline leak resulted in the release of more than 1 million litres of petrol into the soil under residents’ houses. the result is a “perpetual crisis” with ongoing tension between residents, big business and environmentalists. unsurprisingly crisis management messages from industry about their actions to mitigate these crises are treated with incredulity and disdain. in this multi-layered context of the inherited geography of apartheid urbanisation, a tradition of protest, a governmental focus on industrial investment and lack of consultation have fed into a variety of sometimes contentious forms of popular mobilisation. while residential proximity has created a shared experience of living in a polluted environment, cross-community mobilisation has negotiated histories of racial and class division and inherited traditions of activism and community mobilisation (sparks 2006). a host of organised demonstrations, protests and public meetings have occurred over 20 years. a crucial projection of community solidarity into the public realm came in 1996, with the formation of the sdcea umbrella organisation to focus on environmental concerns. sdcea’s political roots lie in a network of communitybased organisations whose origins include earlier mobilisations against apartheid. today it includes conservation organisations and ratepayers associations from formerly white areas, church and women’s groups and has links with ngos such as the environmental justice networking forum (ejnf), earthlife africa and groundwork (peek 2002; reid & d’sa 2005). the crisis of responsibility the crisis of enforcing the obligations of environmental citizenship rights has focused on state actors at the local, provincial and national scale, and non-state actors, primarily multinational corporations, based in other national territories (skinner & mersham 2008; barnett & scott 2007). section 24 of the south african bill of rights states, “everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or wellbeing”. however, “in the face of powerful domestic imperatives and global forces that encourage further development of dirty industries, the south african state is severely constrained in its capacity to give substance to this clause” (barnett & scott 2007: 14). despite a well-documented, extensive list of pollution incidents, transnational corporations manage to bypass governmental policies on environmental justice. the constitutional clause is the foundation of a broader system of environmental governance established in south africa during the 1990s, culminating in the national environmental management act (nema) in 1998. nema included commitments to sustainable development 169168 gary mersham principles, the entrenchment of environmental rights and social justice, and procedural mechanisms for stakeholder engagement (scott et al. 2001). this system follows the western model of ecological modernisation, importing principles and mechanisms from the north, assuming conditions such as steady economic growth, advanced technologies, a pluralist polity and an enabling state (scott & oelofse 2005). in south africa the lack of harmonisation between economic growth and ecological modernisation imperatives are highly visible. development policy focuses on further growing those sectors of the economy that operate internationally, including dirty industries such as petrochemicals, and paper and pulp processing. close proximity to heavily polluting industries, and current policy which identifies the sdib as strategic point for further industrial growth, means that environmental risks from continued development fall disproportionately on black communities (scott 2003). the sdib becomes the site of the collision of national and international circuits of accumulation where the concerns of residents are overridden in the name of nationally significant economic growth objectives in a neoliberal paradigm (barnett & scott 2007). uneven development is deepened by state coercion and industry intransigence (bond, desai & ngwane 2012). in turn, highly localised mobilisations look to broader spaces of engagement, including international activist organisations and international media (skinner & mersham 2002; 2008; cox 1998; staeheli 1999), and the politicisation of industrial pollution and public health issues evolves to encompass both national and transnational advocacy. focusing on this intersection of discourses of responsibility and practices opens up a less common view of the implications of crisis and issue management in a globalised world. neoliberal globalisation has compromised states’ ability to manage national economies in the best environmental interests of its citizens. in this view, the emergence of internationalised and flexible systems of production and capital investment lead to numerous problems of “territorial non-correspondence“, so that “the events over which the state needs to exercise control in order to achieve its objectives fall increasingly outside of its control” (cox 2003: 329). ironically, newly enfranchised south african citizens with widened expectations of government – regulating economic growth, creating jobs, providing health care, housing, improving education or environmental quality – comes at a time when the south african state appears less able to intervene in the ways in which citizens might now expect (mersham, skinner & rensburg 2011; barnett & scott 2007; mersham et al. 1995). crisis as a modern narrative modernism can be characterised as a way of describing the world that is based on two assumptions: (1) that there exists a singular reality; and (2) that this reality can be discovered and described by the methods of science (habermas 1990). these two modernist assumptions provide the grounds on which the sdib crisis management can be located. the modernist principle of a singular reality finds its most powerful expression in the institution of science (lyotard 1989). science, rather than residents’ lived realities of 169168 the communication challenges of issue management in a postmodern world sickness and poor health, has been framed as the only answer to establishing causal responsibility for pollution and its imputed health impacts. polluting organisations have often publicly rejected observed health impacts of pollution arguing that pollution levels do not exceed international standards. a strategy used by activist networks to develop binding obligations on both the state and foreign corporations is the making of an alternative narrative to “official” positions of government and business by mobilising and maintaining media attention. there is an increasing dissonance between the way in which public relations practitioners present their circumscribed, organisationally biased world, and the postmodern ways in which people express their lived realities (radford 2011; lyotard 1989). the sdcea developed an alternative, non-business, non-state frame through which south durban is problematised in policy and public debate through what leonard (2014) describes as the oppositional politics of shame. in 2000 a week-long series of stories in durban’s main daily newspaper, the mercury, titled poison in our air was published. the series started with a list of cancer cases in south durban located by community organisations. the credibility of community narratives was established in these reports, in spite of protests by industry against sensationalism and subjective anecdotal accounts (barnett & scott 2007). the detailed case-by-case record, accompanied by a picture gallery of the victims, many of whom were children, elicited widespread response from other residents, linking their own experiences to the working hypothesis in the reports, that cancer was more prevalent in south durban than elsewhere. both provincial and national government’s environmental departments quickly committed to further investigation of health impacts in the area. reporting, at first limited to local newspapers, extended to national and international coverage. the campaign consolidated sdcea’s status as the legitimate voice of community concerns and succeeded in establishing a postmodernist interpretative frame of environmental activism as the dominant one in public discourse and publicly exposing the inadequate responses of state and capital (leonard 2014). by giving space to an alternative construction of pollution in the area, the articulation of ordinary experience through journalistic reporting contextualised the discourse of science and expertise as just one perspective in a crisis of contested legitimacy. experiential and anecdotal knowledge that is problematic in formal, science-led policymaking is given its proper exposure. in response, the government introduced the multi-point plan (mpp) for south durban in 2001, which included pollution monitoring and research into health problems. the air quality act followed in 2004, empowering local government as the authority for environmental regulation, shifting the institutional location of environmental conflict once again, and opening up new bureaucratised forms of activist engagement. although its establishment appeared as a success for environmental activism, acknowledging an institutional response to community protests, it also presented new issues and crises, which followed incorporation into a technocratic forum. activist organisations had to seek further resources, financial and scientific, to both engage in new participatory procedures and to maintain the public media profile necessary 171170 gary mersham to maintain community mobilisation (leonard 2014). in 2003 the ethekwini (durban) municipality commissioned a system that could measure the compliance of companies to air quality measures, but the unit running this was dismantled in 2011 because authorities allowed the system to deteriorate to the point of collapse (mngoma 2014). the modernist assumptions of science provide the basis to articulate an understanding of the postmodern, where the assumptions of the modern are systematically challenged. holtzhausen (2000) argues that contemporary practices of public relations are based on modernist principles, as indeed are the subset of issue management practices. like positivist science, prediction and control are key elements to the crisis and issue management goal of making communication effective. the centrality of scientific expertise to modernist positions is dictated by the system of environmental governance instituted in south africa, which adopted the international framework of local agenda 21. this provided a politically neutral umbrella in the form of the discourse of sustainable development through which local state actors in south africa were to voluntarily construct new systems of environmental management (roberts & diederichs 2002). more recently sdcea’s legitimacy as a representative of local communities has depended on its strategy to provide communication that links local anecdotal knowledge to formalised, science-led forms of policy participation. this has involved establishing communication relationships with local, national and international news media. another example of postmodern activist mobilisation networking is sdcea’s collaboration with the danish environmental organisation danmarks naturfredningsforening (society for the protection of nature in denmark, or dn), which has been crucial in enabling sdcea to generate data for further advocacy and mobilisation. the collaboration provided a comparative study of oil refineries in south durban and denmark, enabling south african activists to demonstrate how refineries in their country failed to live up to standards elsewhere in the world; the development of a gis-based pollution map to be used by sdcea with the comparative report in their advocacy and education work; and an organisation development review of sdcea (leonard 2014). shared crisis communication in the international context sdcea and groundwork have established links with the dutch environmental organisation milieudefensie, the dutch arm of friends of the earth. milieudefensie has a long-standing involvement in the politics of industrial pollution in the netherlands, particularly the national and international environmental impacts of shell, a joint anglodutch owned company, and the owners of the sapref refinery. milieudefensie’s 2003 report for sdcea on leaking pipelines, spills and explosions at the sapref refinery uses the discourse of responsibility to translate a local pollution problem into a transnational frame: sapref has a history of corporate irresponsibility and sapref’s behaviour in these cases would be unacceptable in the netherlands […] what has been, and what continues to be, spilled and leaked into the environment on a daily basis? and what 171170 the communication challenges of issue management in a postmodern world kind of guarantee can sapref offer when it comes to the safety of the surrounding residential areas and the health of the local population? (verweij 2003: 4). milieudefensie reframes emphasis on sapref’s causal responsibility into a question of shell’s moral responsibility to take action: the shell group must take its responsibility, especially if it wants to live up to the reputation it is trying to portray as a responsible, open and concerned enterprise. having advertised this promise, shell cannot now renounce it (verweij 2003: 4). in community activist issue management it is a principle to name the owners of refineries, such as shell, bp or petronas, to emphasise the foreign-ownership and control of these plants. in this way, responsibility for enacting and enforcing environmental governance is in turn relocated to the international arena: the history of this refinery reveals the urgent need for international binding regulations for companies, including on environmental issues. south african legislation (and the understaffing of local authorities who must enforce the regulations), in combination with voluntary guidelines, do not appear to be enough to motivate sapref to become a more responsible enterprise (verweij 2003: 5). production of scientific knowledge established sdcea as a legitimate source to news organisations (barnett & scott 2014). the bucket brigade is a procedure allowing local residents to take their own air samples using a simple bucket device in their own homes and neighbourhoods. developed by us-based environmental justice activists global community monitoring (gcm) it has been widely used in the united states and internationally. in 2000, sdcea, groundwork and gcm carried out a bucket brigade analysis in the sdib to provide evidence of exact levels of pollution. the results enabled activists in south africa to confront both government and businesses with facts about levels of toxins in the air. it revealed benzene levels around the engen refinery of 4 to 15 times higher than world health organisation guidelines, and were used to generate media coverage that focused on the ability of community organisations to produce scientific evidence about pollution when the government had failed to do so, and connecting air pollution to widespread occurrences of cancer. corporations and government commonly regard the media and academics as an enemy to be constrained, limited and co-opted because of the centrality of corporations in delivering on the state’s agenda of neoliberalism (daniels 2012; wasserman & de beer 2005). a proposed but currently stalled protection of state information bill has provoked intense debate between community organisations, journalists and media scholars on one side, and government officials and corporations on the other (wasserman 2015). the bill would make it a criminal offence to publish information considered to affect the national interest, so that community organisations conducting independent monitoring of air pollution by engen, shell and arcelormittal, and who advise the public via media releases of such results, could face a r5 million fine and/or five years’ imprisonment for a first conviction of this offence. they would also be held liable for calculated loss or damage as a result of the offence (leonard 2014). 173172 gary mersham corporate and government responses one of the most serious explosions of a number experienced at the engen refinery occurred in 2007 when 7.5 million litres of petrol ignited following a lightning strike. while causing massive damage to the refinery it also created panic in nearby communities. earlier in the year an explosion at the nearby island view petrochemical facility caused the meltdown of ten storage tanks, the death of an employee and the release of 64 times the emissions limit of the leukaemia and cancer-causing agent bromomethane (skinner & rampersad 2014). response communication from engen and the city of durban (ethekwini municipality) was uncoordinated and badly handled. residents seeking information from engen’s environment office were rebuffed and communities adjacent to the refinery were not evacuated. engen disaster management crews drove through the residential areas warning people through loudspeakers to stay inside their homes and keep the windows closed. due to a lack of information and the visible threat of fire and smoke, rather than heed engen’s warning to stay indoors, most residents fled their homes causing more uncertainty (skinner & rampersad 2014). the response to this and a subsequent chemical accident at the same refinery in 2008 generated massive public response criticising the lack of an emergency response plan for the area (sdcea 2008). another explosion followed in 2011. residents experienced breathing difficulties, skin and eye irritations and school children were admitted to hospital. reports were received of foul smelling sludge running through drains and extensive oil sprays engulfing the neighbourhood (naidoo 2011; mottiar & bond 2012). residents marched to the gates of the engen refinery to deliver a memorandum calling for a disaster management plan and an independent investigation into the explosion. while engen would not meet the delegation, the memorandum was witnessed and signed by senior government officials. subsequently a legal notice calling upon management to clean up operations or face prosecution described the refinery as “an immediate danger” to the environment and people of neighbouring residential areas in south durban (carnie 2011). the response of the malaysian-owned engen petroleum group was a threat to close the refinery. engen ceo ahmad nazim salleh was quoted from an internal memorandum as saying: “do we continue with the refinery as our business? this is an option our majority shareholders (the malaysian state-owned petronas), have been debating for a while and is receiving careful consideration” (carnie 2011). however, little changed and air pollution was set to increase with large corporates stonewalling attempts by the media to expose them or government to take any meaningful action. in 2002, mondi paper proposed constructing an incinerator in south durban to burn industrial waste. waste such as de-inking sludge, materials containing heavy metals and chemicals such as arsenic, mercury, cyanide and lead were to be incinerated. health effects of incineration include transferring toxic metals into the human bloodstream by inhalation, deposition and absorption and producing cancer-causing toxins (i.e. dioxins and furans) putting human health and the environment at risk (leonard 2014). the community strongly opposed the incinerator due to health concerns. despite a legal 173172 the communication challenges of issue management in a postmodern world success in challenging the provincial government and mondi over the proposal, the campaign failed to halt the installation of the incinerator. the provincial government granted mondi permission for construction after the company submitted a second application for the proposed installation. leonard (2014: 969) describes how the major polluter mondi’s intimidation of media exemplify the tensions that work against media reporting on environmental injustice, when some of the dominant print media players have links with multinational corporations with a history of corporate pollution. leonard (2014: 974) refers to “the power of corporations to silence, intimidate or threaten local or regional journalists or outlets”. he cites an interview with a leading durban newspaper journalist: say a company like engen, [or] mondi … if … [the article is] not perceived well … instead of coming to the journalists to register their protests, it’s a kind of leap[ing] frog … protest to the editor to say, we [are] wounded, carnie is biased and he’s onesided and he doesn’t give us a chance to respond properly. when that doesn’t work, the leap[ing] … goes further, to head office in johannesburg … local community newspapers were also threatened with the loss of corporate advertising and funding if negative stories were printed. as the editor of local community newspaper said: an example of one that we had to leave out was a mondi incident […] mondi phoned our boss and said, ‘if you run that story i am pulling out all the advertising’ (leonard 2014: 10). at the time of writing, the south african government decided to exempt heavy industries from stricter air pollution laws for five years. along with other petrol refineries in the area, the engen refinery has been granted a special dispensation allowing it to pollute the air with dust and volatile organic chemicals in excess of new air quality act minimum standards (carnie 2015). conclusion as a high-profile site of poor people’s demands for greater responsiveness to their local conditions, the sdib is characterised as an enduring international symbol of corporate and government failure to engage in authentic communication (webber 2007; bhangdia 2015). the postmodern globalisation of issues has produced a growing threat to transnational companies. they are exposed to a broader range of stakeholders with increasing expectations of how the organisation should perform. multinational organisations can no longer handle an issue in different ways in different parts of the world. stakeholders expect and demand global consistency and transparency. issue management has shifted from its early participatory focus on public policy (chase 1982; regester & larkin 2002) to a much narrower emphasis on practitioneroriented, after-the-fact crisis management. this is occurring as activist organisations are moving their focus from engagement at a local or national level to targeting large organisations across a range of different issues and geographies (jacques 2014). 175174 gary mersham this study shows that there is irreversible demand for organisations to re-engage with local communities in public policy formulation and the need to do so in collaboration with other industry players. nowhere are the lack of public confidence and trust and the unmet expectations of participation more evident than in the environmental decision-making of government agencies and corporations (jacques 2014). whether it is copper mining in chile (meredith, aravena & deverell 2014; ulmer 2014), oil production in the niger delta or petrochemical manufacturing in south durban, these crises involving local communities appear perpetual and irresolvable (skinner & mersham 2002; frynas 2001). technology has made connectivity possible on a truly global scale – “our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with those of distant people and places around the world – economically, politically and culturally” (legrain 2004: 4). the textbook call to achieve “mutual understanding” in communication management needs to be translated into achieving “mutually beneficial outcomes” through returning to active engagement with public policy as a key plank of organisational issue management in south africa. declining levels of trust in big business and government internationally and the failure of management techniques in controlling business environments heavily burdened with social problems are the biggest challenges to issue management in the present neoliberal, global environment. references barnett, c. & scott, d. 2007. the reach of citizenship: locating the politics of industrial air pollution in durban and beyond. urban forum 18(4): 289-309. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/s12132-007-9015-4 bhangdia, k. 2015. fighting for the right to breathe: exploring perspectives of environmental threats in the south durban basin. independent study project (isp) collection. paper 2034. 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and dalmé mulder* abstract twitter is shaping brand communication globally at a mere 140 characters a time. although twitter is seen as a social media platform with little impact, the number of followers that can be attained “tweet” another story. this article focuses on the way in which marketers can utilise this social media platform to promote their brand image by improving their brand’s online presence. by investigating the branding strategies and characteristics of an integrated marketing communication (imc) strategy, and more specifically the 5r model proposed by schultz (2000), a framework was created to analyse social media messages. this framework was employed within a qualitative research approach to analyse all the twitter posts of the university of the free state (ufs) between 1 january 2013 and 31 july 2013. this was done to determine how the ufs made use of its twitter profile to enhance the perceptions about its brand. the results underlined the importance of imc characteristics in social media messages for the messages to contribute to the overall brand image of the institution. furthermore, the results indicated that in order for a brand to have a successful online presence, the marketers should embrace technology and align all messages with specific objectives. when each online brand message contains an imc characteristic, a core value of the institution and a motivational objective, there are no boundaries for how far the “little blue bird” can take the brand. keywords: brand communication, social media, twitter, university of the free state, brand image, integrated marketing communication, brand perceptions * annette snyman (snymana1@ufs.ac.za) is a postgraduate student in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, south africa. dr dalmé mulder (mulderd@ufs.ac.za) is a senior lecturer in the same department. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 156-174 157 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state introduction social media has taken the marketing world by storm. the father of the modern computer, john von neumann (1903-1957), once said, “it would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years” (schultz 2011). it is almost 40 years later and his statement is validated by the rapid change in technology. it is the era of social media where relationships are nurtured via this channel, rather than via actual conversation. if this is to be said about interpersonal communication, one cannot even begin to imagine the possibilities that social media create for brands to communicate with their target audience. it is important for businesses to make use of social networks for it will enable any business (local or global) to increase market share and drive sales (hartley 2010: 3). social media is the “welcoming mat” of an organisation today. it does not only increase global visibility and awareness but also serves as the platform for an organisation to engage in two-way communication, thus building relationships with both current and potential customers. for businesses to avoid being seen as outdated five years from now, it is essential for them to make the brand available to their customers on any network or social media available. this task may seem simple but the social media platform of an organisation can also sow perceptions of distrust and negligence when the messages are not well-constructed. despite the immense potential of social media for an organisation, this medium is not always used to its full potential. the aim of this article is to provide guidelines about the way in which an organisation could use social media to enhance their brand and to circumvent any messages that might lead to negative perceptions of the brand. tertiary institutions such as universities require proper communication channels as there are several constituent groups that are dependent on information on a regular basis. therefore it is essential for these institutions to optimise social media channels in order to reach their target market. as this specific market includes people between the ages of 18 and 26, social media might be one of the best ways to communicate with this specific age group (ieasa 2013). this article focuses on the twitter messages of a university in order to determine how the messages this institution posted on its social media platform promoted its overall brand. in the following section, marketing strategies and elements are discussed that may contribute to the successful presence of any company on a social media platform such as twitter. an integrated marketing communication strategy plays a fundamental role in the success of brand messages and therefore should be aligned with proper integrated marketing communication (imc) strategies and elements. this ensures that the messages posted on the social media site convey the same http://www.searchquotes.com/quotation/it_would_appear_that_we_have_reached_the_limits_of_what_it_is_possible_to_achieve_with_computer_tech/376602/ http://www.searchquotes.com/quotation/it_would_appear_that_we_have_reached_the_limits_of_what_it_is_possible_to_achieve_with_computer_tech/376602/ http://www.searchquotes.com/quotation/it_would_appear_that_we_have_reached_the_limits_of_what_it_is_possible_to_achieve_with_computer_tech/376602/ http://www.searchquotes.com/quotation/it_would_appear_that_we_have_reached_the_limits_of_what_it_is_possible_to_achieve_with_computer_tech/376602/ 158 annette snyman and dalmé mulder brand messages as the other forms of advertising and communication. the insight gathered from the imc and marketing strategies will be used to analyse the twitter messages of the specific university to determine whether these messages contribute to the overall image of the brand. the use of social media in imc marketers face the challenge of constantly having to keep up with the latest technological developments. when it comes to branding, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. a powerful message loses its impact when communicated through the wrong channels. it is, therefore, important to know one’s audience before the budget is spent on the wrong communication medium. hartley (2010: 14) suggests steps to safeguard the delivery of messages via social networks to prevent the channel of the message from being the “weak link” in the “chain” of the brand. a previous study on the effects of the brand promotions of a university was done at the university of de sevilla in 2013 by guzmàn, del moral, pérez, lardón de guevara and gómez. the aim of their study was to investigate the top 200 universities of the shanghai ranking’s usage and presence on twitter. their study focused mainly on how these universities managed to use their twitter profiles in order to increase their audience scope. from their findings they concluded that interactive communication with several internal and external constituencies, as well as a clear profile of their corporate information, led to a successful twitter presence. the first step for a business to move towards a more technologically advanced marketing approach is to embrace technology, rather than to avoid it (hartley 2010: 38). before any decisions can be made regarding the type of social media channel that should be used, the marketing techniques of social media marketing should be reviewed. the challenge of compromising between the new media and the old traditions will be the success of making a statement about the brand by means of digital media. hartley (2010: 50) identifies the ability of social media marketing to aid in several other business activities. he explains that social networks can be employed to recruit professionals needed in a company. social networks can also reinforce the marketing and communication messages regarding a product or service to a broad audience scope, and serve as a platform for a company to engage in two-way communication with clients and prospective clients. thus, social media should be used to convey the core values of the company, as with traditional marketing, but only in such a way that interactivity between the different constituencies are initiated. after considering the different techniques of social media as a marketing platform, one should apply the insight to the integrated marketing strategy of the 159 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state organisation. this will enhance the contribution of the social media messages to the overall brand. duncan (2002: 8) defines imc as a process where customer relationships are managed that drives the brand value. he states that it is a crossfunctional or two-way process of creating and maintaining relationships with different stakeholder groups by controlling and influencing the messages that are sent out to these groups. with the right imc strategy, a purposeful dialogue can be created between the brand and the different stakeholder groups (duncan 2002: 8). within an imc approach, several elements should be taken into consideration when brand messages are formulated. first of all two-way communication is essential in building a brand as it contributes to trust and loyalty of the consumers regarding the brand (klopper & north 2010). the unique selling proposition (usp) of the brand also contributes to customer loyalty. the chartered institute of marketing (2009: 2) defines usp as a single, unique element or product offering that distinguishes the brand from all the competition; it should be visible in all brand activities and messages. when consistency is key, an overall brand image can be built. this will give consumers and potential consumers a better understanding of what the core values of the brand are and will lead to brand loyalty. when the company has established a good brand image, it will be easier to distinguish the company from its competitors in the market (shimp & andrews 2014: 35). the use of social media networks for marketing holds numerous benefits. one of the core benefits of online marketing, as acknowledged by merril, latham, santalesa and navetta (2011: 3), is that it is more cost-effective. therefore, more messages can be sent out to keep the target audience informed about any valuable information regarding the brand. online marketing also provides an organisation the opportunity to engage in two-way communication with its target audience. relationships should be rooted in trust; they will be reinforced via two-way communication. online marketing ensures a much wider audience scope than traditional marketing, thus international markets can be reached (ibid.). the message in social media meyerson (2010: 107) identifies several aspects that should be taken into consideration when creating a brand message for social media networks. in line with the imc philosophy it is important that all brand messages are in line with the core values and identity of the brand. communicating the right message also helps a brand establish and position itself in the market (meyerson 2010: 107). messages should be formulated carefully to ensure that the specific objectives of these messages are attainable. furthermore, the information has to be interesting in order to attract attention on social networks (czinkota & ronkainen 2012: 554). topics for discussion need to result in many opinions that can be given and messages should be aimed at group discussions. in order for the aspects identified 160 annette snyman and dalmé mulder by meyerson (2010) to contribute to an imc strategy, they have to be linked to the overall branding strategy of an organisation. koekemoer (2004: 34) proposes a number of objectives for social media messages with an imc perspective. the first objective of any brand message is to build primary demand. meyerson (2010) focuses on the importance of adding a glimpse of what the brand stands for in each social media message. koekemoer (2004: 34) posits that each message should aim to establish primary demand for the brand amongst their target audience. therefore, the message should not only give a glimpse of what the brand stands for, but should communicate the core competency of the brand that makes the brand more desirable than its competitors. in addition, a brand message should attempt to reach a specific target audience (holloman 2013). thus, it is essential to create an experience of the brand to a wide number of audiences within a specific target group. a further objective of brand messages is positioning. effective brand messages communicated through social media can contribute to the overall positioning of the brand by providing relevant information (meyerson 2010). marketers can utilise social media to make the brand part of the lifestyle of the target audience. the brand message must attempt to win the hearts of their target market by positioning the brand in such a way that it will be the first choice of their target market (koekemoer 2004: 36). communication is essential to facilitate purchase and trial. the brand should communicate with the specific target market to assure them that they made the right choice by choosing this brand (holloman 2013). the brand has to identify stumbling blocks that affect the target audience’s choices (koekemoer 2004: 36). the previous objectives are stepping stones to reach this final objective, namely to create loyal customers. it is important for the marketer to not only gain customers, but to keep them loyal to the brand as well (ibid.). this is one of the key principles of imc. this consumer-based approach acknowledges the changes in the marketplace, and also takes into consideration the power of the consumer and the interactive nature of the marketing communication system. the importance of a social media network site is to act as a platform for the company to engage in two-way communication with its stakeholder groups (merril et al. 2011: 3). interactive conversations with customers are important to a company as it provides feedback. all feedback is considered good, even if it is negative feedback. negative feedback gives the organisation an idea of how to improve in terms of customers’ satisfaction. companies must have the patience and the determination to handle negative feedback with care. it is also important for companies to realise that a social media platform like twitter never “sleeps” and that they have to be able to give feedback as soon as possible (noff 2010: 6). a company can increase visitors’ interest in the brand by frequently posting 161 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state competitions or special campaigns. this will not only have a positive impact on the customers, but will contribute to positive impressions on potential customers. one imc approach that is particularly relevant to social media is that of schultz (2000). by applying the imc approach of schultz (2000: 25) one can determine if the brand messages are contributing to the promotion of a brand, or not. schultz (2000) identifies five rs that should be taken into consideration when planning the marketing communication strategy. the first characteristic, namely responsiveness, is of cardinal importance in any imc strategy. it entails that the marketer should always try to respond to the needs and wishes of the customer as quickly and effectively as possible (schultz 2000: 25). the marketer needs to realise that the way the company responds to a customer will have an impact on the trust placed in the company. the company must play the role of the listener, instead of the speaker. when the customer or consumer feels that their voices are heard, they immediately have a positive attitude towards the company and brand (schultz 2000: 26). secondly, the communication programmes should have relevance to the company’s target group. the relevance is based on how well the communication programme addresses the needs and wants of the target group. in the third place customers should be motivated to access the marketing communication themselves and not be interrupted by it (schultz 2000: 25). the challenge in the marketplace is to be available or accessible to provide information when the customer or prospective customers ask for it, not only when the marketer wants to give them information. schultz (2000) calls this characteristic receptiveness to the marketing communication programme. it is much more efficient to provide information when the buyer wants to buy and not only when the seller wants to sell (schultz 2000: 25-26). this directly links to the statement made by meyerson (2010: 7) that the long-term relationship between the client and the company can only be sustained when the company puts effort into engaging in two-way communication with its clients, rather than to fulfil its original purpose of selling products. another characteristic identified by schultz (2000) is the recognition of the brand. the trustworthiness and knowledge of a brand is based on the familiarity of the brand in the marketplace; therefore, the communication programme should contain messages that support brand recognition. consumers that know the brand from personal experience or from a recommendation of other people will easily make a choice between brands to use. it is important for the marketer to realise that the marketplace is competitive and that the brand itself can be the biggest asset of the company as the consumers want to identify with the characteristics of the brand (schultz 2000: 26). 162 annette snyman and dalmé mulder the final characteristic identified by schultz (2000) is relationships. this characteristic reflects on the shared values between the buyers and the sellers. the organisation has to ensure that the relationships between their sellers and their customers are positive. the power is in the hands of the customer when it comes to the length, strength and depth of the relationship they have with the organisation (schultz 2000: 26). the nature of the message does not always have to lead to certain actions. a better relationship can be formed when information sent out is useful to the target group, rather than to make them feel obligated to take a certain action (hartley 2010: 14). these different perspectives on effective imc and online brand strategies provide the framework within which the data of this study was analysed. table 1 aids in aligning thoughts on how imc elements can contribute to an effective online presence of an organisation. in this table schultz’s (2000) 5r approach is used as the core elements that should be visible in twitter messages. then these elements are compared to the rules of online marketing, as compiled by gamse (2012), in order to see how they can be applied to an online marketing strategy. the benefits attained from having a successful online marketing strategy, as stated by leaning (2011), are added to give the marketer a perspective on the possible outcomes of having an effective online marketing strategy by using an imc approach. table 1 illustrates the criteria used to analyse the ufs twitter messages. table 1: criteria used in twitter message analysis imc approach (schultz) rules of effective online marketing strategy (gamse) benefits of effective twitter marketing strategy (leaning) responsiveness asking the audience can pay off. it is essential for a company to encourage the visitors to engage in two-way communication. businesses can use the conversation with its visitors to monitor the replies or feedback. this will result in better management of its reputation. relevance personify your visitors. a company that plans its twitter messages around the preferences of its typical followers can ensure that they have a positive experience of the brand’s online presence. twitter users can be entertained or intrigued by promotions or events posted on twitter without feeling that they are being lectured. receptivity talk to the buyer behind the buyer. a company’s online presence should be based on nourishing the relationship with its clients rather than distributing clusters of unprocessed information. twitter enables businesses to interact and communicate with their followers to gain better insight into their thoughts about the brand and its products. 163 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state imc approach (schultz) rules of effective online marketing strategy (gamse) benefits of effective twitter marketing strategy (leaning) recognition portray a consistent image. when the company is transparent, the potential client will have more confidence in trusting the brand. by using twitter as a communication platform, the company can attempt to gain or uphold the trust of clients and potential clients. companies can develop and promote their brands by making use of the network site that enables millions of people to follow the brand. relationships speak the language of your visitors. the relationship between client and brand can develop to such an extent where the brand becomes part of the client’s identity. frequent conversations with clients will ensure that a long-term relationship is built. by making use of twitter as a cost-effective way of communication, the company can ensure that they become part of the client’s life. (sources: schultz 2000; gamse 2012; leaning 2011) the previous discussion clearly illustrates that social media marketing has several benefits for organisations, and thus also universities, that optimise its usage. the point of departure for a social media message to promote the overall branding strategy should be that each message is rooted in the overall imc strategy of the organisation. research methodology in this study a qualitative approach was followed. to ensure objectivity in this research a framework was set up in order to analyse each twitter message (merriam 2009: 14). this framework contained elements that contribute to an effective imc strategy. as the twitter messages of the ufs were analysed, findings were linked to its overall vision, mission and objectives. each message was analysed according to the visibility of these elements and traits. therefore, a specific timeframe was chosen to analyse the posts of the ufs twitter page. a case study strategy was used in this research as a certain phenomenon and its relation to its real life context (yin 2003) was investigated. the relation between the twitter posts and the way they fit into the imc strategy of the ufs is unclear, therefore this type of strategy was ideal to use. tweets are created by the social media staff of the ufs and although they are given a structure in which they have to formulate messages, one cannot ignore the fact that their personality, their situation, and even their emotions have an influence on their posts. nevertheless, studying the tweets of the institution can 164 annette snyman and dalmé mulder spawn a broad spectrum of benefits that they can make use of in future. institutions like universities engage in communication with stakeholders to improve or form relationships. by exploring if the twitter messages contribute to the overall imc strategy of the brand, one can determine if this communication platform enhances brand equity when it creates contact points with the brand. simons (2009: 15) emphasises that a well-formulated case study should be particularistic. this means that when studying the tweets of the ufs, the focus should only be on tweets within a specific timeframe. the ideal timeframe chosen for these messages were between 1 january 2013 and 31 july 2013. this timeframe included the tweets from the university’s twitter page before and after the first semester, and therefore an adequate number of tweets were gathered. the general benefits of the social media sites, as well as the specific branding elements of the ufs, were integrated to analyse specific tweets. in analysing the data the tweets of the ufs (from the identified timeframe) were sorted in a chronological way by making use of a table created in microsoft excel. the first column of the table indicated the date of the tweet. the actual tweet was sorted in a column next to the date column. the third column was created for the purpose of analysing each of the individual tweets. coding was used to analyse the messages of the social media sites. this type of analysis is used to examine qualitative data by assigning data units with a unique code (saldańa 2013: 5). by means of open coding the tweets were analysed by placing them in a certain category according to the derived nature and purpose of the message. to determine if the ufs’s twitter messages complement their overall branding strategy, documentation from the ufs website was reviewed to determine what brand characteristics had to be communicated in all brand messages in order to contribute to the imc strategy. this institution states five core values which serve as the foundation for all activities, namely superior scholarship, human embrace, institutional distinctiveness, emergent leadership, and public service (university of the free state 2013). these core values were also added to the analysis framework. finally, the specific ufs tweets were analysed through the process of open coding to identify categories. these categories included: administrative information: information regarding any administrative arrangement that the current students of the university should take note of in order to complete certain tasks. celebrations – academic: this category contains information regarding prestigious academic awards or achievements by current ufs students. this information is of value to current and prospective students, as well as their parents and the media. 165 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state celebrations – culture: the celebration of prestigious awards or achievements by current ufs students who participate in cultural activities are placed in this category. celebrations – kovsie campuses: information that relates to activities on the three campuses is placed in this category. by communicating this information any follower can gain insight into all the extramural activities that take place on the three campuses. celebrations – kovsie culture: information that celebrates activities that contributes to the overall culture of the institution. this information differs from the events held on campus in the kovsie campuses category, based on the fact that it provides information about activities that are hosted annually and form part of the brand identity of the institution. in this category the focus is moved from communicating specific achievements attained at events to the actual events that are held. celebrations – kovsie staff: information that celebrates the professionalism and expertise of the kovsie staff members are placed in this category. this information boosts the university’s image and is communicated to both current and prospective students. celebrations – sport: prestigious sports awards or achievements obtained by current kovsie students are placed in this category. celebrations – student leadership: information regarding any achievements and awards received by current students for innovation and leadership qualities. contemporary news: information regarding any contemporary news of an external affair communicated on the ufs’s twitter page. this information is communicated to inform current students about external affairs. motivational: quotes and motivational statements are communicated to current students in order to inspire them to achieve in a certain field. celebrity/guest engagement: information regarding any celebrities, academic professionals or external visitors who engaged in activities on campus. student interaction: tweets in which the ufs aims to engage in twoway communication with its students is placed in this category. 166 annette snyman and dalmé mulder results and discussion the results are reported in table format. examples from the data of each category are presented in the first column. then the appropriate elements from schultz’s (2000) 5r approach for an effective imc strategy were identified and supported with the brand objectives of each message (koekemoer 2004). in the final column, the core values of the ufs are aligned with the tweet categories to establish how the ufs incorporates its imc strategy in online marketing. administrative information and academic celebrations when looking at the administrative information category, it is clear that the ufs makes use of these messages to manage current students. these messages provide more information than necessary and therefore link directly to the receptivity characteristic of imc (schultz 2000). other characteristics of imc that are visible in these messages are responsiveness, relevance and relationships (ibid.). by providing current students with relevant information, the ufs responds to the students’ needs. the ufs can assist its students with day-to-day activities and therefore the relationship between the students and the university could be influenced in a positive way. the main objective of providing administrative information on twitter is to provide relevant information to students and to influence their attitudes and feelings towards the brand (koekemoer 2004). by providing students with more information than what is expected, the ufs aims to be seen as an institution that goes the extra mile for its students in order to make the students’ day-to-day activities easier. the core value of institutional distinctiveness is communicated. table 2 provides an example of this type of message. table 2: administrative information and academic celebrations categories category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value administrative information 01/06/2013: cut-off date for 1st year applications to study architecture at the #ufs extended to 28 june. for more info: http://apps.ufs. ac.za/dl/yearbooks/190_ yearbook_eng. pdf … receptivity relationship responsiveness relevance to provide relevant information to influence attitudes and feelings institutional distinctiveness 167 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value celebrations: academic 15/04/2013: very proud of our 3 322 graduates receiving their degrees this week. live streaming of graduation here: http://www.ufs. ac.za/ufslivestreaming/ … #ufs #kovsies receptivity relationship relevance to create brand preferences and awareness to influence attitudes and feelings to build primary demand superior scholarship in the category dedicated to celebrations in the academic field (see table 2), the receptivity, relationship and relevance characteristics of schultz’s (2000) imc strategy can be identified. by providing students with information about academic awards and prestigious heights achieved by students in the academic field, the institution provides information that is not only relevant and interesting, but also motivates current students. these messages can also be used to persuade potential students and their parents to choose the ufs as their tertiary institution of choice. information placed in this category aims to build a relationship with the target audience by not only giving credit to those who worked hard, but also to create a positive brand association. the main objectives that can be reached through these messages are to create a brand preference, to influence the brand attitudes and feelings, and to build a primary demand of the ufs as an institution (koekemoer 2004). the core value of the ufs that is communicated via these messages is superior scholarship because the university celebrates the academic achievements attained by its current students and staff members. kovsie culture, campus, cultural activities, sport and staff although the messages in the categories differ where the kovsie culture, campus, cultural, sports and staff activities are celebrated, the objectives they reach as well as the imc approaches they convey are similar. with these types of messages the receptivity, relevance and relationship characteristics of schultz’s (2000) imc strategy can be identified. the information communicated in the different categories is based on a receptive approach as they are tweeted to students and potential students as extra information. the students and potential students have a desire to be informed of different activities on campus. not only is the information of the different categories relevant to the target audience, it also reinforces the entire brand image. by providing the information, the relationship and brand associations that these groups form with regard to the brand will be promoted. therefore, the main brand objectives reached through these messages are the 168 annette snyman and dalmé mulder ability to create brand preferences, to influence the brand attitudes and feelings, and also to build primary demand (koekemoer 2004). the core value conveyed through these messages once again is the value of the ufs reaching the status of institutional distinctiveness. in the category where ufs staff members’ activities are celebrated, the value of academic excellence is conveyed, for these messages primarily consist of the academic achievements by staff members. table 3 presents a message in the kovsie staff member category. table 3: celebrations: kovsie staff category category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value celebrations: kovsie staff 30/05/2013: 2 #ufs professors received research grants from the nrf to buy equipment to add more value to their research. http://ow.ly/ lxlge receptivity relevance recognition to create brand preferences and awareness to influence attitudes and feelings superior scholarship institutional distinctiveness celebrity and guest engagement in the celebrity and guest engagement category, the relevancy and receptivity characteristics of schultz’s (2000) imc strategy could be identified. the information posted in this category is vital to current students of the university, but also to potential students and their parents. whenever students come across these messages, they should create a feeling of pride amongst students when they see that their tertiary institution is associated with celebrities and other popular individuals. these messages also positively influence the brand perception they have of the ufs because they are able to see that the ufs is associated with esteemed international academic personnel or celebrities. the main objectives are to create brand awareness, but also to influence the target audience’s attitudes and feelings towards the brand (koekemoer 2004). the core value of the university that is communicated through these messages is that the ufs can be seen as an institution of distinctiveness for it associates itself with celebrities and other important people. table 4 illustrates how a message from this category was analysed. http://ow.ly/lxlge http://ow.ly/lxlge 169 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state table 4: celebrity guest engagement category category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value celebrity / guest engagement 23/04/2013: prof. deevia bhana presenting explosive data presenting her research on “moffies, gays and isitabane” at #ufscolloquium. relevance receptivity relationships to create brand preferences and awareness to influence attitudes and feelings institutional distinctiveness student leadership and contemporary news when looking at the categories for student leadership messages, one will recognise the receptivity, relationship and relevance characteristics of schultz’s (2000) imc strategy. by providing students and prospective students with information on achievements attained by students for their leadership qualities, the ufs could build relationships with the different parties of the target audience. the information does not only give credit to the students who achieved, but it is also proof that the ufs supports their students to become the leaders of tomorrow. the brand objectives that can be identified in these messages are to build primary demand of the institution and to influence the attitudes and feelings of the target audience towards the brand (koekemoer 2004). the core values of the ufs communicated via these messages are the ability to support emergent leaders and to embrace humanity. table 5 provides an example of this category. table 5: student leadership and contemporary news categories category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value celebrations: student leadership 04/05/2013: william clayton, @ufs_src president, welcomes prospective students to his home: #ufs #ufsopenday receptivity relationship relevance to create brand preferences and awareness to build primary demand to influence attitudes and feelings emergent leadership human embrace 170 annette snyman and dalmé mulder category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value contemporary news 25/06/2013: our hearts go out to nelson mandela and his family. http:// ow.ly/i/2rz23 responsive relevance receptivity to influence attitudes and feelings public service human embrace in table 5, the role of the contemporary news category is illustrated. the purpose of this category is to provide information about topical issues that are discussed in international and national news. the imc characteristics of schultz (2000) that are visible in this category are responsiveness, relevance and receptivity. students need to be made aware of contemporary issues in the news. with the ufs being a tertiary institution, it is essential to provide students with this information. although it has no direct effect on the promotion of the brand, it does influence the relationship the current and prospective students have with the institution. the target audience will see the institution as a credible source of information. the brand objective reached through these messages is to influence the attitudes and feelings of the target audience with regard to the brand. the core value of the ufs that is conveyed through these messages is that the ufs contributes to public service by being involved in contemporary issues, and also to embrace humanity. the ufs may not be directly involved in public service when communicating these messages but is does alert students to issues that are seen as of national or international importance. motivation and student engagement the final two categories, namely motivation and student engagement, can be seen as the most effective categories within the context of this study. these categories contain all the approaches of schultz’s (2000) imc strategy. these messages generate responses from the target audience and therefore have the potential to influence relationships with the brand in a positive way. the messages are relevant specifically to current students because the messages are aimed at certain activities and challenges that the students face on a daily basis. with these messages the students experience the character of the ufs brand on a more personal level; therefore, the messages are a form of brand recognition. the main objectives achieved through these messages are to influence the attitudes and feelings of the target audience, but also to build a primary demand of the ufs brand (koekemoer 2004). the ufs core values that are conveyed through these messages are the ability to embrace humanity as the university takes the issues of its students to heart. by reaching out to their students, this institution also lives out the core value of becoming an institution of distinctiveness. table 6 illustrates the findings from the analysis made from these two categories. 171 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state table 6: motivation and student engagement categories category examples from data imc approach characteristics brand objective ufs core value motivational 25/06/2013: “i’m not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but i’m responsible for what i do with the life i’ve got.” h. hesse. responsive relevance receptivity recognition relationship to influence attitudes and feelings human embrace institutional distinctiveness student engagement 22/02/2013: what is the highlight of your day? / wat is die hoogtepunt van jou dag? #kovsies #ufs responsive relevance receptivity recognition relationship to influence attitudes and feelings to build primary demand human embrace conclusion the aim of this article was to explore the role and nature of social media messages in the context of promoting a brand. linking all online branding strategies to the brand’s overall imc strategy is one of the most fundamental steps in the planning process of an online branding strategy. not only does an effective social media site enable an organisation to give and receive immediate feedback, it can also be considered as one of the media to communicate strong brand values on a global basis. to utilise this media channel to its full potential, a steadfast imc strategy needs to serve as the foundation. when looking at the case of the specific university’s twitter page, it is clear how the ufs sustained its position as a top university in south africa. it incorporates its imc strategy by ensuring that the institution’s core values are identified in each message that is tweeted. from the findings it follows that the ufs takes most pride in communicating that it is an institution of distinctiveness. this reflects on the brand objectives reached by these messages as the university’s main objective for its twitter messages is to influence the attitudes and feelings of the target audience. this institution believes that it can be seen as one of the top universities in south africa, and it is directly reflected in all its messages, especially online, which aim to evoke similar pride in its staff and students. recommendations that can be made from this study include that organisations should use social media as a “welcoming mat” to lure a wide audience to visit the website or actual premises of the organisation. there is nothing that welcomes the target market to a brand like strong core values that are visible in all brand messages. without making the core values of an organisation visible in social media 172 annette snyman and dalmé mulder messages, the brand will not succeed in engaging in two-way communication or in building relationships with the target audience. the suggested framework can be used to analyse all social media messages of an organisation, or to create successful social media messages. this framework will require imc characteristics to be explored within the messages. these characteristics should then be aligned with brand objectives before the messages can be formulated by making use of the core values of the organisation. social media might have taken the marketing world by storm, but it need not pose a threat to a company. with meticulous planning and by aligning all online marketing strategies to a solid imc strategy, the company can succeed in building a strong online presence that contributes to the promotion of the brand. an effective imc strategy is key to weather the social media storm with absolute composure. imc is truly the eye of the social media storm. 173 the use of twitter in branding: the case of the university of the free state references czinkota, m. & ronkainen, i. 2012. international marketing. hampshire: cengage learning. duncan, t.r. 2002. imc: using advertising & promotion to build brands. new york: mcgraw-hill. gamse, p. 2012. 42 rules for a web presence that wins. california: super star press. hartley, d. 2010. 10 steps to successful social networking for business. alexandria, virginia: astd press. holloman, c. 2013. the social media mba: your competitive edge in social media strategy. hoboken: wiley. ieasa 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[online]. available at: http://www.ufs.ac.za/content.aspx?id=48 [accessed on 11 may 2013]. yin, r. 2003. case study research. california: sage publications. _goback 137136 137136 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty among young black women in south africa abstract celebrities and celebrity culture tend to influence young people’s ideas of culture and the aspirational perception of self and identity. with social media platforms increasingly becoming spaces of influence for celebrities, how do they use these platforms to communicate their perceptions of beauty and the feminine body, and what messages do they communicate in this manner? this articles reports on a study that explored the cultural ideology of beauty against the backdrop of a digital culture that draws on celebrity beauty performances on social media. through nonparticipatory digital ethnographic observations on social media of four female south african celebrities and conversational interviews with young adults, the study examined how celebrities present their bodies in the performance of beauty on social media and explored the messages that pertain to feminine beauty amongst young women. the findings revealed that celebrity culture perpetuates the ideology that black beauty can be achieved through natural skin colour erasure, extended artificial weaves and a thin body frame. keywords: social media; communication; mass communication; celebrity culture; beauty; feminine body image; identity; south africa introduction beauty enhancements through medical interventions have become a growing norm amongst women in south africa, and some celebrities are reported to have undergone surgery in order to achieve their ideal of feminine beauty (madikwa 2009; naidoo 2015; van den heever 2016). beauty is not a stagnant and rigid concept, as what was regarded as “beautiful” in a previous era, or by a specific group, may not be regarded as so in the current epoch or by other groups (patton 2006; wolf 1991). considering the diversity in human bodies, a generic notion of beauty is flawed, and when a specific ideal of beauty is propagated as ideology, it often discriminates against those who do not conform to certain body types. this results in stereotyping, racism, depression and eating disorders, amongst others. mediated popular mpho motseki department of communication, media and information studies university of limpopo (twinky.motseki@gmail. com) prof. toks oyedemi department of communication, media and information studies, university of limpopo (toyedemi@gmail.com) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 136-148 © ufs mailto:twinky.motseki@gmail.com mailto:twinky.motseki@gmail.com mailto:toyedemi@gmail.com https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.11 137136 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty 137136 culture continues to shape certain ideals of beauty, and, in this regard, celebrities in movies, music videos and other forms of entertainment have become idolised images of beauty (aruguete et al. 2014; chae 2014). the fashion and advertising industries often perpetuate the image of a slim physique as the ideal of feminine beauty. young females look up to celebrities in the media and the impact of the idealisation of these celebrity bodies cannot be ignored. social media have changed the consumption of celebrity from mass mediated media to a much more personal experience. celebrities choose how they present themselves and their notions of beautiful bodies to appeal to their “friends” and “followers” on social media with images and comments that accentuate their bodies and material accessories. in south africa, following international trends, celebrities have taken to social media to communicate their beauty ideologies to their often young fans. as a result, social media inform and sometimes dictate the ideal definition of beauty (patton 2006). many local celebrities also tacitly dictate beauty trends on social media platforms through their postings and comments about body types and body augmentation that they consider beautiful. these celebrities often showcase the different body enhancements and cosmetic altering they have undergone. examples of common beauty enhancement practices are skin bleaching, long hair extensions and weaves, efforts to attain slender bodies, and buttock augmentation. social media platforms create a space where celebrities can present public virtual performances of new beauty trends. propagating a certain ideal of beauty through mass media, and specifically social media, has been researched quite extensively. for example, shen and bisell (2013) observed the impact and use of social media by cosmetic beauty product companies in marketing and branding their products. other studies investigated the trend of body dissatisfaction and other social psychological effects on young women. for instance, a study by meier and gray (2014) examined how appearance exposure and facebook photo activity are associated with body image disturbances in adolescent girls. they found that elevated appearance exposure on social media significantly correlated with weight dissatisfaction, a drive for thinness, thin ideal internalisation and self-objectification. tiggemann and slater (2013) found that adolescent girls, who are facebook users, scored significantly higher on all body image concern measures than non-users. these authors then argued that the internet represents a potent sociocultural medium of relevance to the body image of adolescent girls. other studies on social media and body image (see kim & chock 2015; cohen & blaszczynski 2015) have shown similar trends of body image concerns, such as pursuit of thinness, body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders. in south africa, there are limited studies on how celebrities use social media platforms to highlight their ideals of beauty, or the implications of social media use and body image among young women. consequently, the focus of this study is on the messages communicated by certain black celebrities, and their ideas of feminine beauty through their posts and communication on social media, and how young black females aspire to these images of beauty. the study is guided by questions related to the perceptions of young black women of the idea of “beauty”; the ways in which some local black 139138 mpho motseki & toks oyedemi female celebrities present their bodies in the performances of beauty on social media; and the reactions by followers on social media to these performances. background body image and youth’s perception of beauty young women are often faced with the challenge of (dis)identifying themselves in terms of what is beautiful and what is not in their struggle for conventional body image (field 2001). exposure to media images of unrealistic beauty affects the selfconcept of many women and they become dissatisfied with their body image (szabo & allwood 2006). it is observed that with the increasing influence of western media and values, more black south african women may be attracted to the media-portrayed images of a specific type of beautiful feminine body, often seen as “thinness equals beauty” (szabo & allwood 2006). this may lead some young women, who have fullfigured bodies, to suffer from eating disorders and body dissatisfaction; their selfesteem is affected negatively because of the portrayal of thinness as the ideal body image. moreover, according to groesz (2002), women are significantly more body dissatisfied after viewing thin and beauty media images. this is also concern in south africa as some young women will go to great lengths to lose weight in order to conform to a thin body type. in a study conducted by szabo and allwood (2006), it was found that young south african women were abusing diet pills and laxatives as a means of losing weight. moreover, it was found that a large number of young south african females had a strong desire to be thin, and had a negative body image. furthermore, szabo and allwood (2006) state that these young females sought to lose weight because of a perception that young men prefer thinner women. the role of the media in creating a certain perception of beauty amongst young women is perhaps a reflection of societal, and particularly patriarchal, ideology of women and the body. as wolf (1991) argues, it was historically believed that women who are considered beautiful have more advantages relating to their career, marriage and social mobility than those who are not. baron (2005) asserts that there is more pressure on women, than on men, to be attractive because women are judged more on their physical appearance than on any other personal aspect or quality. the implication of this is that many women are affected by how they perceive themselves and compare their own beauty with other women’s because of a society that views women’s body image as central to their existence (baron 2005). as a result, the pursuit of a societal acceptable notion of body image, largely influenced by the media, has become a goal for many young women. according to grabe et al. (2008), body image dissatisfaction and low self-esteem in women are often the result of consistent exposure to the notion of “ideal” bodies portrayed by the media. furthermore, low self-esteem and low body image dissatisfaction increase the rate of people who report eating disorders and other behavioural concerns (ibid.). in addition to their body, for many women hair plays an important role in their perception of beauty. hair is therefore a marker of identity. the idea that there is such a thing as “good” and “bad” hair is a beauty myth that has become normalised. “good” hair usually 139138 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty describes long straight hair, which mostly is unnatural to many african women. as a result, many black women wear weaves that hide their natural hair in order to achieve a specific notion of “good hair”, namely shoulder-length straight hair. oyedemi (2016) studied the concept of “beautiful” hair amongst young black south african women and found that many young black women do not wear their natural hair as a result of many stereotypes and issues with social acceptability. in fact, many young women have their hair relaxed at a very young age, some as young as three years old, in order to erase the natural texture of their hair. this, oyedemi (2016) argues, leads to a cultural violence of identity erasure in the pursuit of achieving an idealised body feature. skin colour remains a marker of beauty amongst many black women in south africa. in this sense, the lighter the skin complexion, the more attractive a woman is perceived to be. fair skin colour and the demeaning of dark skin has a long history of colonial prejudice that still shapes the perceptions of dark-skinned people of african descent (porano 2006). today, many women of african descent augment their skin by bleaching it in the pursuit of a fairer skin. all these various perceptions of beauty shape cultural identity. hooks (1996) argues that cultural identity is a matter of “becoming” as well as “being”, and as such belongs to the future as much as to the past. it means that black women’s identity is rooted in their culture and heritage, but also in the past experiences of colonialism that have clouded black identity. hooks (ibid.) further argues that black women have the challenge to question issues of race and representation about “good” and “bad” images of black women in order to decolonise the mind in the perception of the body. celebrity culture and social media trends the media can be considered a reflection of society and thus play an important role in the perception of the feminine body. individuals who possess some level of authority as a result of their visibility in the media tend to reinforce this perception. amongst many young women, this reinforcement of a specific type of idealised beauty is reflected on social media platforms where celebrities display and perform their perceptions of thinness and skin hue as elements of ideal beauty. many young black south african women look up to these celebrities and model their behaviour accordingly to conform to the subtle dictates of celebrities regarding the body. consequently, the idealisation of these celebrities becomes an aspirational pursuit for many young women. the consistent exposure to certain kinds of body aesthetic in the media and specifically social media has an influence on body image and perceptions of women (sutton 2009). in addition, as odhiambo (2008) argues, the media’s influence can take away women’s natural confidence and catalyses the obsession of what is considered perfect and flawless celebrity beauty. young south african women are bombarded with images of celebrities on social media platforms, such as instagram and facebook. here many celebrities present their bodies as perpetually beautiful and flawless, through either skin bleaching, plastic surgery, or an often-unhealthy thinness. furthermore, the power that some celebrities accumulate through a large following on social media reinforces the demand for their presence in marketing and media spaces. this is apparent in the increase in the demand for celebrity endorsements of products, 141140 mpho motseki & toks oyedemi where a celebrity’s body becomes an aspirational goal that contributes to trends in body augmentation and increasingly high rates of eating disorders, self-harm and depression (odhiambo 2008). celebrity culture not only affects young women’s self-esteem and mental health, but also their behaviour. it is considered acceptable for young women to have idols as they grow up and to mould their identity in line with their celebrity idols (sutton 2009). studies by, amongst others, dlova et al. (2014) and sastre (2014), have shown the impact of celebrity culture on various perceptions of elements of beauty. dlova et al.’s (2014) study of skin bleaching amongst black women in south africa shows that out of 292 africans and 287 indians included in the survey sample, 32.3% had used skinlightening products (60% of africans and 40% of indians). according to the study, black women who use skin-lightening products confirmed that they use the products because models and celebrities use them and the notion of beauty in advertisements is defined as being light-skinned. sastre’s (2014) study of celebrity culture and the body engages how kim kardashian, a american reality television show celebrity, presents herself in a sexualised body, and how she uses her body to define “her” beauty on social media. the study also indicated that kardashian’s habit of “performing beauty” on social media could negatively affect other women’s self-concept. engaging “self-concept” as a theoretical concept is significant in the understanding of the perception of beauty. combined with the agenda setting theory, this study contributes to understanding how some celebrities use social media to set the agenda about what is considered an “ideal” feminine body. self-concept can be described as everything that people think and feel about themselves. it includes appearance, physical and mental capabilities, attitudes and beliefs, strengths and weaknesses. mead (1972) explains that self-concept is a social entity that exists in ongoing transactional relationships between an individual and the environment, an individual and other individuals and groups of individuals, and an individual and various types of institutions. similarly, epstein (1973) suggests that self-concept can be perceived as a theory that a person holds about himself/herself as an experiencing, functioning being in interaction with the world. in developing the “self”, we use others as measure to assess ourselves (steinberg 2007). to goffman (1963), self-concept reflects the content and organisation of society in relation to how individuals present themselves in interactions, what he calls “staging operations”, towards achieving a desired impression, which he refers to as “impression-management”. this process involves the presentation of self in social encounters (goffman 1959). applied to the current context of social media, celebrities’ communication of self through social media is often the measure that many young people use in their own development of self. in developing self-identity young women tend to compare themselves to images on social media and then perform a self-identity that is “liked” by many “friends” online. similarly, because of the ability of celebrities to influence how many youth perceive themselves, they invariably set agendas for the self-concept and, as demonstrated by this study, they set an agenda for a specific type of body that is considered beautiful. agenda setting in its original form (mccombs & shaw 1972) shows how mass media influence the topics in public discourse through the covering and neglect of certain 141140 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty topics in the news media. agenda setting is based on the assumption that, whether consciously or unconsciously, the media create a particular image of reality and what is considered to be important (mccombs & shaw 1972). today’s media landscape is different from the 1960s: bloggers, so-called citizen journalists, social media users, as well as traditional media corporations populate the media landscape. the emergence of new digital technologies has given celebrities the opportunity to leverage social media to influence ordinary people. castells (2011: 1) refers to “networked power”, which is “the power of social actors over other social actors in the network”. methodology as method this study made use of non-participatory digital ethnography, which in this case involved non-participant observations of postings of text messages, photographs and comments by four black south african female celebrities and the comments of their social media following on facebook, twitter and instagram. four local female celebrities were chosen purposely for the study: khanyi mbau is a television personality and socialite. she is open about her body transformation from a dark skin to a very fair complexion. she is known for celebrating her new fair skin and her thin body frame in both traditional mass media (the citizen 2017), as well as social media, where she commands a substantial following (375 000 followers on twitter and 654 000 followers on instagram). nomasonto “mshoza” maswanganyi is a local pop star. although her music career has waned somewhat, she recently became popular for her body transformation from a dark-skinned woman to a very light-skinned woman through a medical skin bleaching procedure. she has a fairly strong following on social media platforms, with some 15 000 followers on her twitter account. bonang matheba, a television and radio personality, model and the revlon face of south africa, has a significant presence on social media. she has 1.8 million followers on twitter. zahara, a singer/songwriter, has 241 000 followers on twitter. she was selected for the study as she projects a natural-looking body image. she is known to wear her hair styled in what is considered natural african styles. the data for this study was collected through daily observations of postings and comments made by these celebrities and the responses posted by their followers on social media. the observation and data collection took place over a period of three months, from 26 february to 31 may 2016. the postings were collected daily and saved for analysis. in addition, data was also collected from the facebook account of mtv base, a 24-hour music and entertainment television satellite channel of viacom international media networks. although mtv base is popular amongst young people and its social media pages attract a large following, the reason for selecting this media platform is due to a reality show broadcast on the channel that captured how mshoza, one of the celebrities selected for this study, was recorded during her plastic cosmetic surgery in an effort to look like nicky minaj, an american celebrity who underwent a 143142 mpho motseki & toks oyedemi body transformation. the promotional video for the reality show was posted on mtv base’s facebook page. this post and subsequent comments formed part of the data for this study. in addition to digital ethnography, conversational interviews were conducted with eight university students (three male and five female), selected through convenience sampling, to examine their notion and perception of feminine beauty. speaking to male students allowed the researchers to explore the notion that young women’s idea of beauty is also influenced by men’s perception of feminine beauty (cf. szabo & allwood 2006). data was analysed through the use of thematic analysis and qualitative content analysis. the findings presented below describe the ways that celebrities shape the agenda of what is considered a type of feminine beauty for young black south african women. findings data from the online ethnographic observations indicated that these celebrities perform their cultural ideology of feminine beauty through three key themes: skin complexion, where fairness of skin is considered a beauty ideology for black women; thinness as an ideal body frame for feminine beauty; and weaves as a marker of beautiful hair. fair skin as black beauty skin colour tends to influence the perception of beauty amongst some black women. the notion that proximity to whiteness or a fair skin complexion is considered the measure of beauty amongst some black women is supported by the findings in this study. celebrities play a major role in promoting the trend that proximity to white skin is more beautiful than dark black skin by erasing their dark black skin through skin bleaching. the video of mshoza posted by mtv base on its facebook page and cross-posted on mtv base’s twitter account shows her inviting the audience to watch her reality show as she undergoes cosmetic plastic surgery in order to look like the american pop star nicky minaj, who is reported to have bleached her skin. this video is a telling artefact in engaging celebrity culture and the ideology of beauty. in the video, mshoza is seen undergoing medical procedures, including injections to achieve full lips; she describes her love for minaj and how she hoped to be like her after the cosmetic surgery. the viewers hear her screams of pain during the medical procedure, a pain that is bearable considering the reward of a new body. the promotional video then shows mshoza on a clinic bed looking fair-skinned and wearing a blonde weave. in response to this post, some people were critical of her bleached skin while others commented on how beautiful her skin looked. one comment reads: “you look good my dear, don’t let jealous and negative people put you down, you only live once, so do what makes you happy. we as africans are so negative and pathetic as long as the goodness is not on us we will have negative stuff to say. they claim they were happy with the old you, not the new you, but my dear either way they will still be negative. nicki minaj, beyoncé, riri, but to name a few, have all gone thru surgery and skin bleaching but none of us africans will criticize but instead wish to be like them. unfortunately reality is we all have flaws regardless of 143142 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty skin colour, gender, [or] race, if one isn’t comfortable or rather brave enough to do anything about their flaws they shouldn’t be negative to those who are bold enough to actually correct their flaws. if enhancing your beauty under the knife is wrong, then to those who don’t support it, but use make-up, tell me then what makes the make-up we put on our skin right? to me it’s the same only a temporary solution to hiding my flaws for a short time, a cheaper solution than going under the knife, so as a person, choosing your solution could be based on your financial status” [sic]. another comments reads: “you look beautiful dear. i love you. people will always have something negative to say, miss sa [south africa] is mocked whilst she won the title of being the most beautiful girl in sa. so… yeah you do you and lots of love.” fans were critical of those who criticised mshoza’s decision to augment her body and they acknowledged the beauty of her new body. one comment reads: “people project their own internal and/or physical defects or goodness on your posts. if someone says you are sad, they are actually projecting their sad lives. those who say you are ugly, they are projecting their ugliness but the case is they do it on your profile for all of us to see their sadness, ugliness and nastiness. you are loved dear, wamuhle girl (you are beautiful, girl).” some facebook comments were critical of the transformation, referring to “self-hate” and that “black people have a perception that whiteness is better than blackness with the trend of bleaching black skin”. others comments included: “what is wrong with us black people?? we always think the white people are better than us. which is nonsense, black is beautiful and god loves you the way you are.” “black child why do you hate yourself so much … god made you beautiful. why put your face through so much alterations … it’s sad.” “mental slavery … africans feeling inferior about themselves, it’s a big shame … black child love yourself.” others commented on what they perceived as her “misguided” idea of beauty. however, one of the male student participants, who was interviewed as part of the study, commented that a fair-skinned woman provokes a sense of pride; she is a cultural trophy to elevate one’s status amongst other men: “we prefer yellow bone girls [light complexion girls] because it’s a new trending concept of beauty, so if we date yellow bones we normally get praises from our friends that our girls are hot and beautiful.” another male respondent concurred: “it is prestigious to date a light-skinned girl these days because you will be complimented for dating a beautiful girl.” thinness as ideal body image thinness as a beauty standard has always being a prominent ideology in the media’s construction of feminine beauty. this has made thinness a marker of beauty in many 145144 mpho motseki & toks oyedemi societies; even in places where a fuller body shape was historically considered beautiful (onishi 2002). many celebrities have embraced this thin-body standard, and south african celebrities are no exception. social media allow celebrities to show off their thin bodies, as well as the rigorous endeavours they undertook to achieve this body frame. khanyi mbau posted a semi-nude photograph on herself on instagram, showing off her bleached skin and thin body. although she posted this photograph without a caption, it is clear that the message was to direct attention to her slim body and her now bleached skin, which she celebrates in many of her media comments (seimela 2017). her followers appear to grasp the message communicated with the photograph. this specific post had 2537 “likes”, with almost all those who commented showing positive appreciation for her body and commenting on the aspirational tendency created by her body. comments such as “perfection”, “cute”, “beautiful as always”, “i have never seen someone as beautiful as you”, “the most beautiful and sexy black woman”, “flat tummy”, “toned arms”, “lord what is your secret?” and “thumbs up, you are sexy, you are a true definition of beauty” are used to describe and respond to the photograph. a similar trend is seen in responses to other celebrities’ photographs of their slim bodies. bonang matheba posted a photograph in which she is wearing a swimsuit. comments included positive references to her flat tummy, slim arms, and thin frame. in conversational interviews with participants, they tended to support the ideology of beauty being a slim body. however, some did indicate that they aspired to a slim body for other reasons. for example, a female student said: “a nice body to me is a slender body because it doesn’t make you struggle when buying clothes, because big sizes are rare to find in stores”. another female participant stated: “a skinny body is a healthy body because it is not associated with obesity and heart-related diseases”. weaves as a marker of beautiful hair as mentioned earlier, hair plays an important role in the perception of beauty amongst many women. hair is both a marker of race and beauty, and it is tied to biological, political and historical processes (patton 2006). in south africa, many black women have embraced the global trend of wearing weaves made from synthetic or natural human hair (oyedemi 2016), which is associated with class and a western notion of beautiful hair. wearing weaves of indian, brazilian or peruvian origin have become a beauty trend in south africa. many female celebrities in south africa promote natural brazilian and peruvian weaves as the “new” look for a “beautiful” black african woman. in terms of the celebrities focused on in this study, bonang matheba and khanyi mbau often wear weaves; in general, only a few black female celebrities are seen with their natural hair. a female student interviewed for this study stated, “i wear weaves because they bring out the best look that i like about myself”. another female student explained, “i prefer weaves because they are easy to comb, unlike natural hair, which is often painful to comb”. one female student expressed a different opinion, saying, “i don’t wear weaves, i prefer my natural hair because i don’t spend too much money on cutting it and making it short”. this assertion implies that the decision to wear natural 145144 social media and the cultural ideology of beauty hair is financially influenced, and not necessarily because it is considered beautiful. a previous study by oyedemi (2016) established a similar trend. as mentioned above, a number of south african female celebrities wear synthetic or natural hair weaves as a marker of hair beauty. their posts on the different shades and types of weaves they wear generate many positive comments from their fans. for example, in a post by bonang matheba she draws attention to her hair, mentioning that the weave she is wearing is of peruvian origin. the majority of the comments were positive, referring to her “nice and beautiful hair piece”, with some asking where she bought it, while others observed that she always wears beautiful weaves. examples of comments on this post include: “hey bonang what is the name of your hairpiece? i like it.” “ke kopa one of your hairpiece bonang [i am asking for one of your hair pieces].” “mmmmh that is oweeeeesum [awesome] i’m in love with your hair.” “i love your hair, [it is] is 3 things at de same time … classy … funky … and hot … mwaaah.” “beautiful … where can i get your hair, bonang? i love it.” on the other hand, singer/songwriter zahara projects a different hair image. she is known to present a natural look; she wears her hair natural or styles it in a manner that reflects a typical look for african hair. most photographs she posts on her social media sites show her without shoulder-length straight hair or the weave typical of many south african black female celebrities. in a facebook post by zahara, in which she wears her hair natural, comments include a number of negative observations targeting her hair or “lack of style”. the majority of people who commented on the photograph did not like her hair. however, a few people commented on her tendency to wear her natural hair, stating that zahara is proud to be natural and comfortable in being naturally beautiful. examples of such comments are: “i love your hair zahara, be who you want to be, don’t let anyone tell you what to do. it’s your life, it’s your time, live the way you want people to remember you! be natural, be yourself zahara.” “i love your hairstyle; i wish i can be just like you. keep it up girl, your fine like that don’t change, be yourself and stay strong country girl# u ya baba girl [you are hot, girl].” some people who commented also engaged in debates regarding natural hair as opposed to synthetic or natural hair weaves. some said that zahara should change her natural-looking hairstyle: “the hairstyle must fall.” “you babe, but please change your hairstyle ngoku yhini? [what now?].” “when are you changing the hairstyle? it’s ugly.” 147146 mpho motseki & toks oyedemi discussion and conclusion some key observations can be highlighted from this study. first is the hegemonic cultural ideology of proximity to whiteness that is perpetuated by a number of celebrities through social media. the legacy of political and, more importantly for this study, cultural colonisation elevates closeness to european culture as ideal, while african cultural identity remain debased or relegated in cultural performances of many african youth. the performance of beauty, as seen in this study, is such an example and, as oyedemi (2016) argues, this form of beauty performance warrants a scholarly inquiry from a postcolonial and cultural critique perspective. a second observation relates to the globalisation of celebrity culture, which has been propagated in the media through reality shows and by the ability to self-broadcast on personal media sites. this provides celebrities with immense cultural power to display their wealth, taste, lifestyle and bodies, with the resultant effect of creating an aspirational desire for materialism amongst many of their fans. the implication of this trend is that the media’s influence can rob young women of their natural confidence and instigate the obsession with “perfect” and “flawless” celebrity beauty. thirdly, this study on celebrity performances of self and beauty on social media platforms shows that the ideal feminine body is one that is slim and fair in complexion; if not naturally endowed, a fair skin can be achieved through bleaching. a more european or asian looking hairstyle is also preferable to natural african hair. these tendencies have real-life implications for young women, one being the trend of skin bleaching (dlova et al. 2014). many women in south africa fall prey to media-portrayed images of “thinness equals beauty” (szabo & allwood 2006). a consequence is that women are significantly body dissatisfied after viewing media images of thin bodies (groesz et al. 2002). although this study only analysed a small sample of black female south african celebrities’ social media postings and the comments on these, it is insightful to see how these celebrities have appropriated social media to set the cultural agenda for what is considered beauty. if the “self” is developed in communication with the generalised other, the socio-cultural environment and institutions in society, as mead’s (1972) seminal theory of self proposes, for many young women who follow the social media posts of celebrity performances of beauty, their idea of their “self” and what they consider “beautiful” is bound to be influenced by the cultural agenda of beauty set by celebrities on social media platforms. references aruguete, m., griffith, j., edman, j., green, t. & mccutcheon, l. 2014. body image and celebrity worship. implicit religion 17(2): 223-234. https://doi.org/10.1558/imre. v17i2.223 baron, s.s. 2005. 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(2009) report that one in four south african men admitted to raping a woman. the violent nature of rape in south africa continues to be reported in the media and this creates public outcry. in this regard, smith (2012) reports on a 17-year old girl who was violently gang-raped, mutilated and left to die. in yet another case, a 17-year-old girl from soweto, who is mentally challenged, was gang-raped by young men who videotaped the incident and offered her r2 to keep her from reporting the attack. these are only two of many similar reported cases. it also appears that in the school context south african girls are likely to be sexually assaulted by one or more of their male classmates. many girls have been subjected to sexual violence at schools in bathrooms and empty classrooms as reported by the human rights watch (2001). moreover, some adolescents’ attitudes regarding violence against girls have been found to perpetuate such violence. these attitudes include the belief that a boy can rape his girlfriend if she makes him wait too long to have sex with her, or that it is impossible to rape a girl in a relationship with a boy where the boy and the girl have previously had sex (kann 2008). on the foundation of the socialisation theory, it is assumed that the way in which a boy is socialised at home, school, among the peer group and in society at large presents the masculine role as dominant and controlling. this impacts on his attitudes to rape and the domination and objectification of women, which lead to a culture of rape in south africa (vogelman 1990). attitudes have been of central concern in relation to violence against women. according to flood and pease (2009), attitudes toward men’s violence against women shape the perpetration of violence against women. attitudes are also the target of violence-prevention campaigns. as a result, studying attitudes is important in order to understand violence against women and its prevention. the south african government through the department of basic education, and in partnership with lead sa (a private initiative by independent broadcasting and newspaper houses), began a major initiative called the stop rape campaign. the main purpose of this campaign is to communicate critical issues around rape and gender-based violence by raising awareness and educating south africa’s learners about the scourge of sexual violence. the campaign was initiated on 22 february 2013 when the minister of basic education, angie motshekga, issued a directive to all provincial education departments to call upon all schools across the country 177 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations to hold a special assembly on 1 march 2013 during which learners would be addressed about rape and sexual crimes. president jacob zuma officially launched the stop rape campaign on 28 february 2013. many schools across the country supported the campaign and learners were educated on women and children’s rights, rape, sexual violence, and awareness about their rights and responsibilities. one of the aims of this study is to explore the attitudes and reaction of rural male learners towards this anti-rape campaign. many studies have examined the attitudes of youth towards rape in higher academic institutions, and in urban and township locations. for example, magwaza (2007) examined the attitudes and perceptions of students at the university of zululand toward rape victims, and kann (2008) explored adolescent township boys’ attitudes and perceptions about gender and sexual relationships. there are, however, limited studies of the attitudes and perception of high school learners, especially rural adolescent learners, toward rape. focusing on young rural men is relevant considering the social challenges that confront many rural dwellers. for instance, there are challenges related to poverty, limited access to social and economic utilities, and limited and weak presence of security agencies such as the police which may lead to many unreported cases of rape. there is also the assumption that cultural beliefs about gender roles are prevalent in traditional rural settings that describe most villages. it then becomes relevant to examine how all these may shape the perceptions and attitudes of young rural men to rape and gender relations. it is also important to examine how communicative practices, such as communication with family members, interaction with the peer group, media messages, and cultural practices contribute to the socialisation process of rural young men. specifically, it is relevant to examine how the socialisation process shapes young rural males’ attitudes to rape and gender relations. in order to achieve this, the following research questions guided this study: what are rural adolescent males’ perception of and attitudes to rape? what is the role of communicative practices of socialisation in shaping these attitudes to rape and gender relations? what is the role of the societal and cultural construction of gender in the rural adolescent males’ perception of rape and gender relations? what are the rural adolescent males’ attitudes to the government’s stop rape campaign? the overall objective of this study is to provide an understanding of the attitudes of rural adolescent boys, a less studied population, to gender relations, rape and the efforts to combat sexual violence. 178 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi literature attitudes and perceptions toward rape there are many studies globally that have examined attitudes of youth to rape. a few of these studies will be briefly discussed below. ben-david and schneider (2005) examined the connection between rape perceptions, gender role attitudes, and victim-perpetrator acquaintance among students in israel. significant negative correlations were found between gender-role attitudes and measures of rape perceptions in this study. women tend to have more egalitarian attitudes than men with regard to gender roles. women also were less likely to minimise the severity of rape situations and the appropriate punishment for rapists. kamal, shaikh and shaikh (2010) examined the attitudes and perceptions of rape among university students in islamabad, pakistan. they found that attitudes and beliefs blaming the female victims of rape were more common among males. male students were more likely to believe that a strong character might shield women from the advances of a rapist. the male participants were of the opinion that only young, pretty women were raped, and that women’s tacit willingness to participate in sex is present in rape. about 25 percent of the students also believe that a raped woman is not worthy of becoming another man’s wife, and one third of the students believe there can be no rape in marital context. largely, attitudes and beliefs blaming the female victim of rape were more common among males. in the united states, nagel et al. (2005) compared perceptions of victims of rape across a wide range of ages, educational backgrounds, religions and income levels, while focusing on gender and racial differences. results indicate that victims of rape are generally viewed more sympathetically by females than by males and by whites than by african americans. the study also indicates that age, sex, education and income are significant predictors of attitudes toward victims. younger participants and those who are more educated in this study tend to have more favorable attitudes toward victims of rape than older participants and those who are less educated. in south africa, kann (2008) explored adolescent township boys’ attitudes and perceptions toward sexual relationships. in particular, the study focused on what the construct of “rape” is perceived to be. eleven adolescent boys aged between 16 and 19 and attending one high school in alexandra township participated in the study. it was found that the majority of the participants have adopted some rape-supportive beliefs and ideas, and heavily displayed some gender role stereotypes and hegemonic masculinity. hegemonic masculinity describes how boys are socialised into gender roles that see masculinity in terms of aggression, power, bravery and heterosexuality. it implies that being a “real man” means 179 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations having multiple girlfriends, being the breadwinner, and having the power to make females submissive to men. other studies have supported the argument that the cultural display of hegemonic masculinity tends to lead to violence against women. for instance, flood and pease (2009) argue that men with more traditional, rigid and misogynistic gender-role attitudes are more likely to practice marital violence. for these reasons they argue that attitudes shaped by a cultural perception of gender roles, which operates on individual, organisational, communal and societal levels, should be the target of violence-prevention campaigns. magwaza (2007) examined the attitudes of 150 university of zululand students, aged 18 to 25, toward rape victims. the female participants formed 54.7 percent of the sample, with 45.3 percent male. in this study more males than females displayed negative attitudes toward rape victims. for example, more males disagreed that a raped woman is usually an innocent victim. younger participants were more sensitive towards rape victims. the overall results from this study indicate a positive attitude towards rape victims. this means that the participants generally perceive women as innocent victims of sexual violence and acknowledge that women are emotionally and physically affected by sexual violence. socialisation, society and gender role expectations a study of socialisation provides a way to understand attitudes and perceptions in society. engaging the socialisation theory assists in understanding how young males have been socialised to construct their own meanings, perceptions and attitudes toward sexual relationships, and more specifically, rape (kann 2008). socialisation can be defined as a process through which people are acculturated to attitudes and ways of behaving that allow them to participate in society (harway & o’neil 1999). the theory of socialisation provides a premise that effectively explains the influence social factors have on attitudes and behaviour. vogelman (1990) argues that children require the moral codes, social skills and sex role behaviours necessary for proper functioning in society and these skills are acquired through socialisation processes. the socialisation theory suggests that social institutions help mould experiences, attitudes and behaviours, and these in turn may contribute to situations and attitudes in society, including the incidence of rape. a key element of this theory is the belief that behaviour is the result of social rather than biological factors. flood and pease (2009) argue that attitudes toward violence against women are formed through social processes at multiple levels of the social order. however, a critique of the socialisation approach is that it is limited because it does not take internal factors into account. it is argued that the individual and his ‘free will’ are often ignored and the individual is seen as having no control over his own attitudes, decisions and behaviour (koss & harvey 1991). 180 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi scholars such as thorne (1993) have argued that gender role socialisation has an impact on expectations of behaviour and attitude around gender relations. according to thorne (1993), gender role expectations are seen to influence a person’s identity from birth, and are ingrained in our personality, which influences how we see ourselves. socialisation often begins in the home with direct communication with parents and family members, and through communicative and cultural practices in the home. witt (1997) states that a child’s earliest exposure to gender-role expectations comes from their parents and adds that from the time children are babies, parents treat boys and girls differently; girls are expected to be sweet and sensitive and boys are expected to be strong and brave. frosh et al. (2003) argue that masculinities are not purely naturally occurring; instead, they are constructed in social interactions and achieved through the use of the cultural resources available to particular boys and men. gender is constructed or learned from certain conditions, experiences and contingencies that a culture systematically and differentially pairs with being female and male, and is a major social category used by most societies as a basis for socialisation and the assumption of social status (lott & maluso 1993). children learn at a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. through countless activities, opportunities and various forms of communication and guidance children experience the process of gender role socialisation. gender roles are non-physiological components of sex that are regarded culturally as appropriate to males and females (martin, wood & little 1990). as children develop, the gender stereotypes they are exposed to in their home context and socialised with are reinforced by other elements in their environment and are thus perpetuated throughout childhood and into adolescence (martin et al. 1990). according to kann (2008), south africa is traditionally a male dominated patriarchal society. men are expected to hold power while women are expected to passively stand back and are frequently exploited. research on masculinity in south africa shows that men who do not drink, smoke or hang out with other men are referred to in insulting and demeaning terms (walker 2005). this socialisation approach to gender stereotypes suggests that gender can be a reliable predictor of social behaviour only under certain conditions, especially where the situation provides strong expectations of gender-related behaviour. social and gender expectations that adolescent boys be confident and knowledgeable when it comes to sex limit their expression of doubts and uncertainties. as a result they often accept incorrect sexual information without question or learn about sexuality by chance (koss & harvey 1990); kann (2008) also suggests that rape is more prevalent in such societies. the understanding that the way in which people are socialised influence their attitudes and behaviour assists in engaging 181 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations the attitudes and perceptions of the rural adolescent males in this study to rape, gender relations and the stop rape campaign. methodology this study is designed as in-depth qualitative research that relies on the accounts and opinions of adolescent high schools boys. this qualitative design leads to an interpretive research paradigm. interpretive paradigm addresses the research agenda from the view that there are many realities and multiple truths that are derived from people’s perspectives in an environment. according to lindlof and taylor (2002), the interpretive paradigm allows for deep understanding of human action, motives and feelings. this leads to a methodological approach that allows for evidence for claims about social issues and actions to be recorded and expressed using verbal and narrative means, which provides the opportunity for the voices, concerns and practices of research participants to be heard (lindlof & taylor 2002; weaver & olson 2006). drawing from this approach, two focus group sessions were conducted with 16 boys aged between 16 and 18 who attend a secondary school at duthuni, a village near thohoyandou about 200 kilometres from polokwane in the limpopo province of south africa. the sampling of the participants for this study was done by posting invitations to participate at the school gate with the approval of the school authorities, directly from the principal. the learners who responded to the invitation by either calling or sending a “please-call-me” (a text message requesting the receiver to call the sender) were sent a notifying message with the information about where and when to meet with the researcher. every volunteer received a consent form with information about the study. this form states the objective of the study, the expected roles of participants, and information on how their privacy will be protected and their confidentiality maintained. participants were assured of their anonymity in that their real names will not appear in the report of the research. to achieve this anonymity, participants were given aliases to use in addressing each other during the discussions. before they could participate in the study, the volunteers were asked to sign the consent form; for participants under the age of 18, parental consent was sought and granted, and parents co-signed the consent forms. a female moderator conducted the first focus group session with eight adolescent male participants. questions about rape, the stop rape campaign, and about masculinity and femininity were asked. the session lasted about 60 minutes and was tape-recorded for analysis. the rationale for using a female moderator was to examine if the participants would provide comments that may be influenced by the presence of a female, either by under-disclosing their opinions with sensitivity to gender issues or otherwise, and for the female moderator to be on the lookout for any gender role stereotypes at play during the session. based on the 182 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi assumption that people of the same gender may disclose more information when interacting together than when interacting with someone of a different gender, a male moderator conducted the second focus group with another group of eight boys. the discussion was based on the same questions and the session lasted for 60 minutes. data from the discussions were transcribed and studied for analysis. using thematic analysis, the transcribed data were studied for keywords, phrases, patterns and themes, and the data was categorised into four broad themes. the themes are perceptions of rape, societal role on attitudes, construction of masculinity, and perceptions of the stop rape campaign. in the following presentation of the findings, these four themes provide thematic categories under which the findings of the study are presented and discussed. direct quotations from the participants are presented to provide evidence of their opinions and attitudes regarding these four themes, which encapsulate the research questions identified for the study. findings theme 1: perceptions of rape findings reveal the participants’ perceptions of what rape is and what the different types of rape are. findings from the focus group discussions indicate that the adolescent boys generally consider rape as violent, forced sexual harassment where the rapist uses power to gratify his/her sexual needs without the victim’s consent. all the participants agreed that rape happens to all people, young and old, female and male. one of the participants specifically addressed the occurrences of hiv/aids and rape and cited the violent instances of baby rape, where babies and toddlers are raped due to superstitious beliefs that if an hiv positive man sleeps with a virgin he will be cured. to this participant, this unfounded culturally held belief among certain people in society is contributing to the spread of hiv and the callous incidences of baby rape in south africa. while there was a general consensus that rape happens to both males and females, there was a slight debate and disagreement about male rape. although most of the participants acknowledged that male rape can occur, the majority opinion was that it only happens in certain situations. one such situation, as a participant put it, is that “in prisons males are raped by other inmates. we hear such cases very often, even from the former inmates who have experienced this”. only one participant in focus group 2 had a different opinion, noting that male rape does not exist in real life. he noted, “i have never heard of a male who was raped, it only happens in the movies”. 183 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations in contrast to this, another participant pointed out: men are raped but they don’t come out and say it because they don’t want to be perceived as weak. the rapes in prison are man-to-man rape; i do believe that a man can be raped by a woman, sometimes men consent to initiate sexual intercourse [unwillingly]. for an example, if a man is tired from work and when he gets home he does not want to entertain his woman and she forces herself on him. this comment generated a discussion about marital rape, with the majority of the boys reluctantly agreeing that rape can occur among married couples. a participant’s comment sums up this debate: you know, i agree with you because many a times we hear of married couples rape, and you wonder what causes that. can you really rape the person you call your wife/husband? but it is true because like we agreed rape is when there is no consent, if your wife/husband says i am tired that should be it. generally, rural adolescent males perceive rape as a sexual act with no consent, with the offender using her/his power or strength over the victim; these boys also are of the opinion that rape happens to all people of all genders and ages. theme 2: societal role on attitudes and socialisation the adolescent boys generally draw on their experiences in the society they live in to explain their perceptions of rape and issues related to rape. this provides a glimpse into the socialisation process in the social environment the boys live in that eventually shapes their everyday experiences. their opinions are largely influenced by these experiences; for example, in defining rape they relate it to their “society”. as the participant who does not believe in male rape put it, “in the society i live, i have never heard of a man who was raped that’s why i think male rape is not happening here”. from their argument one could conclude that these young men’s attitudes and perceptions are built on what they observe from the society at large. when discussing definitions of masculinity versus femininity the boys generally believe that a man or woman is defined in conjunction with the expectations of the society. a participant from focus group 1 explained that a man assumes a powerful role in society because growing up in the village boys observe that their fathers go to work, while mothers stay at home. this invariably allocates power and authority to men as the breadwinners. the idea of power and authority derived from structural configurations in society is reiterated by most of the boys, even in the absence of men being breadwinners. one argues: 184 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi yes, we are what our society tells us to be, as men we still have the power to be leaders in the society, a man is still the head of the family even if he is not employed. the reason i am saying this is because family is known by the male’s name, even if he does not work. one aspect derived from the societal role in the socialisation process is the conceptualisation of maleness, masculinity and power. this conceptualisation informs gender role expectations and it defines the way these boys are socialised. this socialisation largely starts at home; mostly from the way parents communicate gender expectations to their children. a participant draws on his experience to elucidate this point: you know, one day i came back from school crying because i had fought with my female classmate, my mother told me i was a fool. when my father came back from work she told him, and he told me that i was not a man because men don’t cry and they don’t fight with women, they beat women. another adds: several times i would hear my mother telling my uncle’s wife that ‘munna ndi ndou hali muri munwe fhedzi’, this means that men can have multiple partners and women are expected to respect that. a participant from focus group 2 (facilitated by a male) says that: as african men we believe that things such as rape and abuse happen to women and children. that’s why we have the highest rate of women and children abuse and rape. we as men are raised to believe that a man cannot be overpowered by a woman in any way. however, a participant in focus group 1, with a female facilitator, notes that one aspect of the society is that we live in a democratic society where all people are equal and should be treated as such. in general the societal role in socialisation influences the attitudes and perceptions about gender relations and rape. theme 3: constructions of masculinity the societal role on attitudes and perceptions of the adolescent boys to gender and gender roles is notably displayed in their social construction of masculinity. three sub-themes were identified under this theme and they were extracted directly from the comments offered by the participants. these sub-themes are men are leaders, being the breadwinner, and men should be respected and honoured. 185 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations men are leaders there is a general opinion about maleness that besides being respected and honoured, men are considered leaders in every culture, especially in the african culture. a participant supports this by noting that in the african culture most leaders are men, “they rule the world, the president of the country and chiefs in rural villages are males”. drawing from a religious text, the bible, another participant supports this, “from creation in genesis it is said that adam was created first and god took a rib from him to create for him a helper, so women are here to support and not to lead us”. in a similar argument another participant notes, “whether you are traditional [practicing african traditional beliefs] or a christian, women need men to make it through life, they need our manpower and they need to be loved”. a participant sums up this socially constructed idea of male superiority and authority by saying: in my opinion men should be the leaders in politics, churches and in all the organisations including the family, because they have power and are strong to face any threat and challenges. on the other hand their perceptions and attitude to femaleness is weakness and being emotional. a participant states, “women are weak and emotional, they get shaken easily and they cry instead of dealing with the situation. sometimes they are too sweet.” being the breadwinner another theme in the boys’ idea of masculinity in relation to femininity is that a real man is in charge and takes care of his family by providing support financially. however, some of the boys felt that it was acceptable for women to work; though the general agreement was that men should earn more than women. it appears that there is a concern that if a woman earns more money than a man, then the man would feel inferior and the woman might lose respect for “her man”. the issues of respect and authority and men deserving of these are generally repeated by most of the participants. men, they argue, are deserving of these because they are breadwinners. men should be respected and honoured the boys also generally believe that, even if the man is not the breadwinner, he is still deserving of being “respected and honoured” by women. a participant cites an instance to buttress this point: the man next door is uneducated and unemployed but when you look at him and his wife you see a normal couple, they look happy and you can see he still has the respect he deserves as the man of the house; men are bound to be respected, even the bible says so. 186 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi another participant concurs, “the bible even commands that women should submit to their husbands”. the participants’ construction of masculinity is influenced by different systems of socialisation with the family being the most influential institution. the belief systems, including religious beliefs, play a major role in these perceptions, which eventually shape gender role expectations. men are to be respected by women, and if women are to be loved, it is by men. undoubtedly, these attitudes and beliefs influence their perceptions of gender relations and rape. since religion and cultural beliefs dictate that women are to submit to their men, this is also translated to mean sexual submission, and men who report their abuse by women are considered “women”; “they lose their respect as men, and are seen as weak”. a participant argues, men who report being raped are considered women, even if you could just be submissive to a girl as a boy, they’ll tell you that ‘ni musadzi’ [you are a woman]. which is why you would hear men saying ‘the police will laugh at you if you report being abused by a woman’. to us as men, rape is a woman thing. theme 4: perceptions of the stop rape campaign this group of adolescents strongly agree that considering the rate of sexual violence at schools, the government ought to initiate a campaign, educate learners and encourage them to fight the scourge of rape. although some of the participants seem not to relate to the campaign, they acknowledge it is a good initiative and relevant. for the few participants who are sceptical about the campaign, their scepticism is geared toward the government itself, they see the campaign as “just one of the government’s stunts to get our attention; they just want to paint an image that they care”. two participants, one from each group, argued that the campaign is more relevant to females, and less to males, because girls are more at risk of being raped than men. but generally the boys consider the campaign a very important initiative; one participant elucidates this well: looking at what is happening in our country; the stop rape campaign is a good initiative, because as learners we are now in the know of what to do when faced with such a crisis … you know, for me the campaign is generally relevant because the case of anene booysen was not just a new story in our society, we have had two similar cases in the past two years; in 2011 a grade 9 learner was raped and killed, and also in the following year, 2012, a grade 7 learner was raped and her body was striped [sic]. 187 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations the fact that the case of anene booysen, a 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped, disemboweled and left to die, was not considered a unique case but one of the numerous violent rape cases talks to the acknowledgment of the rampant incidence of violent rape in south africa. the boys acknowledge that with the rate of rape in schools, a campaign that informs learners of what to do to avoid rape, and in the unfortunate situation that it happens, what to do afterwards, and how to approach and use the criminal justice system is necessary. the boys also note that the campaign does not only educate about rape, but it is also a form of warning to a potential rapist, because the campaign emphasises the penalty of imprisonment for perpetrators of rape. as one participant puts it, “the knowledge from the campaign restricts me from raping a female schoolmate knowing that they are well informed to put me in jail”. the two groups of boys in general show positive attitudes towards the campaign noting that even if it does not eradicate the crime of rape, the stop rape campaign will help reduce not only the rate of rape of school children both inside and outside schools, but also reduce the spread of disease among the young generation and help solve other psychological problems that come with rape. one participant sums this up, i personally think that this campaign is a good initiative because rape on its own comes with a lot of problems such as committing suicide, transmission of diseases, and psychological problems. in trying to fight against rape we also fight against the spread of hiv/aids and prevent rape-related suicidal deaths. discussion of the findings there were no pattern of differences in the reaction and interaction of the participants with the female facilitator and the male facilitator. the boys in focus group 1 acknowledged that it was interesting to engage in such a discussion with a female. from the results it is clear that participants are well informed of what rape is and are also familiar with the different types of rape. in this sense, these findings contradict findings discussed in some early studies (cf. muehlenhard & felts 1998; muehlenhard & hollabaugh 1988) which indicate the ignorance of when a situation is rape, or that a woman means “yes” when she says “no”. the participants in this study understand rape and sexual consent. they acknowledge that sex without consent is rape. from gender role socialisation there is the acknowledgement that masculinity is not purely naturally occurring; instead, it is constructed in social interactions and communicative practices and achieved through the use of the cultural resources available to particular boys and men (frosh et al. 2003). this is evident in the findings of this study because the adolescent males’ arguments about masculinity 188 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi and femininity are heavily based on what is expected in the society the family and other social institutions, as well as the belief systems. communication with family plays an influencing role in gender identity, and the belief systems have a strong influence on their gender role construction. the christian religious assertions, exemplified through texts from the bible, are used by the boys in the construction of masculinity and interpretation of gender roles. they draw on this religious text and traditional cultural beliefs to argue that females are to submit to men, men are the head and the leaders, men should protect women since women are considered weak and emotional. the danger with such construction of masculinity is that it creates a sense of entitlement and power, which may play out in gender relations regarding sex. this study confirms the arguments that the socialisation of boys and the construction of masculinity and femininity play a huge role in the incidence of violence against women. the role of the family becomes important in this aspect, and often this socialisation is generational. this is exemplified by the participant in the study stating that his father berated him for fighting or arguing with a woman, stating instead that “men don’t cry and they don’t fight with women, they beat women”. from this, the argument can be made that violence against women is cultivated through socialisation, often starting from home and family. there are clear indications that boys’ perceptions and attitudes are influenced by the society in which they live that is, boys’ perceptions and attitudes represent their socialised roles in the society. therefore, this study concurs with other studies (cf. black & mccloskey 2013) that show that rape attitudes and perceptions are affected by gender roles, the way in which boys are socialised, and the societal construction of masculinity and femininity. interestingly, the media as a huge cultural institution is glaringly absent from the boys’ analyses of gender role construction. undoubtedly, the media plays a huge role in the construction of gender roles and representation of male and female, but there was no mention of the influence of the media for this group of rural boys. their traditional beliefs, family communicative practices and religious beliefs play the most roles in their socialisation. there were signs of alternative and open-minded voices of masculinity evolving from a few of the participants. these opposed versions of masculinity indicate the potential for change in the gendered system. in a couple of instances participants challenged hegemonic masculinity dismissing some gender roles while demonstrating support for more reasonable relationships between men and women. as kann (2008) notes, this suggests that alternative forms of masculinity were operating alongside dominant forms, and as such, it is possible, through socialisation, to “learn” and “unlearn” gender myths and sexist ideas. 189 communicating masculinity: attitudes of adolescent males in rural south africa to rape and gender relations although there is some disagreement on the relevance of the stop rape campaign in this study as a few participants still believe that rape education is meant for females because they are the ones at greater risk of being raped, the majority of the participants show positive attitudes toward the campaign. they note that the campaign will help reduce the rate of rape in schools and hope the rate of reported rape will increase, and the rapists will face the criminal justice system. conclusions can be drawn that most of these adolescents have positive attitudes toward the stop rape campaign as a social effort to combat the high incidence of rape in south africa. it is recommended that the department of basic education improves on the campaign by including such educational messages about rape in the content of academic subjects, such as life orientation. the campaign should not be a once-off event; learners should be constantly reminded or educated about rape. societal construction of masculinity and societal gender role expectations should be considered major themes relating to attitudes and perceptions of rape. since the study indicates that socialisation of boys shape many of their attitudes and perceptions, socialisation institutions, such as schools, the family and religious institutions, can be useful in addressing issues of rape and the construction of gender roles because these adolescents are heavily influenced by these institutions. conclusion the findings of this study confirm that adolescent rural boys, like other groups of young men, are influenced by socialisation process in their society. their attitudes and perceptions of rape, violence against women, and construction of gender roles are influenced by their socialisation in society. however, unlike urban and township boys, these rural adolescents do not rely heavily on the media, but rather their daily socialisation at home, and their belief systems (traditional and biblical dictates) influence their attitudes and perceptions. these socialising elements of boys influence their construction of masculinity and femininity, which plays a huge role in gender relationships and incidences of violence against women. 190 hulisani nedombeloni and toks oyedemi references ben-david, s. & schneider, o. 2005. rape perceptions, gender role attitudes, and victim-perpetrator acquaintance. sex roles 53 (5/6): 385-399. black, k.a. & mccloskey, k.a. 2013. predicting date rape perceptions: the effect of gender, gender role, attitudes, and victim resistance. violence against women 19(8): 949-967. flood, m. & pease, b. 2009. factors affecting attitude to violence against women. trauma, violence & abuse 10 (2): 125-142. frosh, s., phoenix, a. & pattman, r. 2003. young masculinities: understanding boys in contemporary society. houndmills: palgrave. harway, m. & o’neil, j.m. 1999. what causes men’s violence against women? thousand oaks, ca: sage. human rights watch. 2001. scared at school: sexual violence against girls in south african schools. new york, ny: human rights watch. jewkes, r., sikweyiya, y., morell, r. & dunkle, k. 2009. understanding men’s health and use of violence: interface of rape and hiv in south africa. medical research council. 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audience rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach* abstract while music is the main product of many radio stations, this study seeks to gain insight into the music preferences of a central south african radio station’s audience. the study into the personality psychology of music has remained mainly mute. various questions remain regarding individual differences and different uses of music, as well as individual differences and music preference (rentfrow & gosling 2003). by examining the patterns of music use and the relationship between music use and audiences’ psychographic profiles, and by employing the ten-item personality inventory (tipi) and the uses of music inventory (umi), this study might contribute to the development of a more efficient model in the construction of a radio station’s music content and diversity. * rozanne kotzee completed a master’s dissertation on the topic in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. professor manie breytenbach of the same department acted as her supervisor. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 136-155 137 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience introduction since the beginning of time, communication has played a vital role in the everyday lives of human beings. barker (1987: 4) indicates that approximately 70 percent of a person’s waking day is spent on one or more types of communication, including talking to others, reading, and listening. he further indicates that the importance of communication may seem obvious, but that communication experiences actually shape the quality of human life. verderber and verderber (2008: 1) note that the effectiveness of one’s communication with others is important as it may be regarded as the foundation of all personal relationships. in order to communicate effectively, the understanding of communication as a synergetic process central to every person is of great significance. it is important, firstly, to understand that the communication process consists of various elements, each with a vital role in the goal of communication, which may, in short, be described as the “process of creating or sharing meaning” (verderber & verderber 2008: 1). various approaches to communication (littlejohn & foss 2008) exist and may aid the scholar in gaining insight into the communication process and the various elements involved therein. it is of great importance to recognise the various elements in the communication process, as well as the role that the said elements play in the process as a whole. secondly, recognising various communicators as elements in the process, as well as the different functions and goals of their communication, may aid the understanding of the formulation of communication messages and possible intentions of communication. furthermore, gaining insight into the receivers of communication, the messages and motivation of messages, as well as the contextual background of communication may be regarded as significant in the process of gaining insight into communication. the interpretation of messages by the communicators involved – both the source and receiver of the communication – may be important in the effectiveness of the intended communication. various methods of communication exist and the understanding of the subtle differences in each form of communication may aid the compassing of this complex process. an example of one of the methods of communication is music. music is a powerful method of communication as music can be found almost everywhere in our society, from muzak played in a doctor’s office, to music in local nightclubs (barker 1987: 358). at this moment, all around the world, in restaurants, houses, offices, vehicles and night clubs, people are listening to music. music surrounds us, whether we are listening to the radio, being put on-hold during a telephone call or going about day-to-day activities, such as shopping. music has become a significant part of our lives. music has become a ubiquitous social phenomenon and is the centre 138 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach of various social activities, like concerts, where people gather to listen to and talk about music. even in social gatherings where music is not the primary focus, such as at weddings, it is an essential component. music can satisfy a number of needs beyond the social context. just as individuals shape their social and physical environments to reinforce their dispositions and self-views, the music they select can serve a similar function (rentfrow & gosling 2003: 1237). radio stations may be regarded as some of the largest users of music as a method of communication. wimmer and dominick (2006: 361) indicate that music is the main product of many radio stations and is of utmost importance for their economic sustainability. it is important to gain insight into the preferences of the audience. as music is the main product of a radio station, it is of cardinal importance to be able to identify the music that might be preferred by the audience of the radio station. the audience is the main users of this product and the audience figures for commercial radio stations are directly related to the station’s advertising income. these figures, known as rams (radio audience measurement survey), are released by the south african advertising research foundation (saarf) every six months in the form of 12-month-data which covers the two most recent fieldwork periods (saarf n.d.: online). south african radio broadcasting stretches back to 1923 when the south african railways presented the first public broadcast in johannesburg. in 1936 the country’s public broadcaster, the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc), was established. in 1945 the sabc realised that, in order for radio to be viable, funds had to be generated in order to cover the high costs of equipment and salaries. due to the strengths of radio, as well as its portability, it has since progressed to being one of the broadest mass media in the country (mason n.d.: online). the audiences of radio stations – thus the receivers of the communication – play an important role in the communication process employing music specifically as a method of communication. rayner et al. (2004: 108) state that there are several reasons why radio audiences are so important. firstly, without an audience, the broadcast would not be created for anybody in particular. furthermore, the audience size and reaction is often seen as a way of measuring the success of a media product. audiences are also the receivers of the advertisements of products and this provides income for the media companies producing the advertisements, the broadcasters of the advertisements, as well as the advertisers themselves. radio is free, but is financed by advertising and the advertisers want to know that they are receiving value for their advertising money. in turn, this means that they want to know which people and how many people are exposed to their advertisements. barker (1987: 359) states that many small companies cannot 139 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience afford to advertise on television, but still can get relatively inexpensive publicity through radio. after having established that music is the main product of many radio stations, one needs to answer the following question, “what is music?” a lay answer to this question might be that music is singers or musicians performing an arrangement of sounds in a structured manner. however, this is not a definitive answer, as some people may not classify some of these sounds as music, for example some artists screaming, as well as sounds that are used that might not be classified as formal music. the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (wehmeier et al. 2005: 966) defines music as “sounds that are arranged in a way that is pleasant or exciting to listen to. people sing music or play it on instruments.” in addition to music being made up of certain facets, music can also be divided into certain genres. the concept of genre is useful when examining the organisation, categorisation and consumption of media. the concept of genre suggests that there are certain types of material that can be recognised through common elements, such as style and structure that are used to make up a particular type of genre (rayner et al. 2004: 55). furthermore, these authors state that audiences are presumed to like the concept of a genre, because of its reassuring and familiar promise of patterns of repetition and variation and this concept is important in arousing the expectations of an audience and how they judge and select texts (rayner et al. 2004: 56). the existence of a music genre will allow the audiences to select which genres they like and allow them to develop a preference for certain music genres. despite the prevalence of music in our lives, the study into the personality psychology of music has remained mainly mute. various questions remain regarding the individual differences and different uses of music, as well as individual differences and music preference choices. it is a given that people differ. precisely how and why they differ is less apparent and forms the focus of personality or individual differences research in the social sciences and, in particular, psychology (rentfrow & gosling 2003). personality characteristics are often associated with the type of music that people prefer (barker 1987: 90). furthermore, the perception of communication by audiences may, to a large extent, be influenced by their personality. perception is one of the tools that human beings use to make sense of the world. it gives meaning to the information that they receive through their senses (louw & edwards 1997: 82). these authors indicate that the study of personality is the study of individual differences between people. it may involve the ways in which people think, feel and act, but will also include individual differences in motivation, emotion and coping with stress (louw & edwards 1997: 7). 140 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach barker (1987: 122) defines personality traits as qualities that distinguish one personality from another. early studies in the structure of personality revolved around the identification and labelling of characteristics that might describe an individual’s behaviour. louw et al. (1998: 523) describe a personality trait as a relatively constant characteristic of a person that may be responsible for the consistency of his or her behaviour. selective perception is another important element and may be described as any characteristic that makes an object, event or message stand out and increases the probability that it will be perceived. since humans cannot observe and assimilate everything that goes on around them, they engage in this process of selective perception. information and messages are selected according to interests, background, experience and attitudes and allow an individual to create a shortcut in evaluating information (robbins 1993: 141). studies by davis and woodall (in lichtenstein & rosenfeld 1983: 99) found that the perception of gratification obtained, rather than actual gratification obtained, seems to be the best predictor of media use. one can conclude that the interpretation and perception of messages that audience members receive from the media will have a large impact on the media they choose, as well as how often this media will be consumed. this underlines the importance of audience analysis to formulate the most popular music mix the station can offer. wimmer and dominick (2006: 361) emphasise the importance of music in the economic survival of a radio station as follows: “music is the product of a music radio station and failing to analyze the product courts disaster.” chamorro-premuzic and furnham (2007: 175) state that there has been increasing research into the study of the psychological aspects of music. however, the authors also indicate that the question of the relationship between individual differences and different uses of music in everyday life remains. these authors (2007:182) further note that there has been a considerable lack of research into the relationship between individual differences of audiences and the uses of music. rentfrow and gosling (2003) also highlight the lack of knowledge and research into the individual preferences of music by stating that “although a growing body of research has identified links between music and social behaviour, the bulk of studies have been performed by a relatively small cadre of music educators and music psychologists”. despite the research that has been conducted in this area, criticism has been raised about the lack of attention to real-world behaviour in personality psychology; the collection of information regarding the relationship between personality and behaviour remains minimal. the authors believe that certain psychological processes, such as the preference of music based on 141 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience personality, have remained in the shadow of other mainstream topics in social and personality psychology. they also indicate that they believe that an activity that consumes so much time and resources, and that may be regarded as a key component of various social situations, warrants more attention and that the historical neglect of music and music preference should be redressed. the lack of this knowledge exists universally, including in the south african context. identification of the research problem babbie and mouton (1998: 73) indicate that all research commences with the identification of a research problem. this research problem should be clearly formulated to ensure that the amplitude of the study is comprehended. in accordance with this, as well as the background information provided, the following research problem has been identified: ♦ there is a lack of knowledge and research specifically related to the relationship between personality traits, the uses and gratifications of music, and the music preferences of radio audiences. formulation of the research question mouton (2001: 53) argues that the formulation of research questions is necessary “to direct one’s thinking toward the solution of the research problem”, or serves “as a way of focusing the research problem”. research questions are useful, particularly in the study of areas that have been researched only marginally, or not at all. such studies may be classified as exploratory research, since the researcher does not have an exact idea of what the possible findings may be and predictions cannot be made as to the results of the study. exploratory research is intended to search for data indications, rather than finding causality. the primary focus may be to gather preliminary data in order to possibly refine the research question and to aid the development of hypotheses. therefore, “research questions are appropriate when a researcher is unsure about the nature of the problem under investigation” (wimmer & dominick 2006: 279). the following explorative research question has been formulated for this study: ♦ what is the relationship between personality traits, the uses and gratifications of music, and the music preferences of radio audiences? purpose, goal and objectives of the study babbie and mouton (1998: 79-81) identify three common and useful purposes of research, namely exploration (to explore a topic or to provide a basic familiarity with a topic), description (to describe an observation), and explanation (to 142 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach indicate causality between variables or events). in this study, the research will be conducted at an exploratory level, although also containing certain descriptive and explanative elements. a distinction is made between the following goal and the objectives of the study in an attempt to address the research problem stated: goal ♦ to explore the relationship between personality traits, the uses and gratifications of music, and the music preferences of radio audiences primary objectives ♦ to examine the concept of music preference and relate it to radio audiences as receivers of communication in the form of music; ♦ to explore the concept of personality traits and relate it to radio audiences; ♦ to investigate the uses and gratifications of music and relate it to radio audiences; and ♦ to identify and examine existing measurement instruments that could be of use in this study. secondary objective ♦ to attempt to determine the reliability of the measurement instruments by comparing the music preference examined in this study with the music preference of similar respondents. the research based on the above goal and objectives has been conducted within the real-life context of a commercial radio station in central south africa. delimitation of the study in order to meet the goal and objectives of the study, one needs to identify and make use of respondents who are receivers of music as a method of communication. for the purpose of this study, the audience members of a particular commercial radio station in central south africa were identified as potential respondents. the location of this radio station, as well as ease of access to its audience members, was the primary motivation in selecting this specific station and its audience as role players in the communication process. furthermore, the radio station that was identified for this study is one of the few radio stations in south africa that has previously conducted music evaluation research amongst members of their audience, although not focusing on the personality traits of the audience, nor 143 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience the uses and gratifications of music. the radio station was approached and the researcher was granted access to certain information about the music and audience of this radio station, as well as information regarding previous music preference research conducted by an independent research company for this radio station. however, as this radio station is a commercial radio station in the public domain, certain privacy concerns were raised. placing information about the audience and the radio station’s use of music in the public domain may have negative economic implications for the radio station, given the competitive nature of the radio industry. wimmer and dominick (2006: 76) indicate that there are two ways to guarantee privacy, namely by assuring anonymity and by assuring confidentiality. the authors define anonymity as a guarantee that a given respondent and/or role player in the research cannot be linked to any particular response or research findings. furthermore, confidentiality may be the assurance that the names of individuals and/or role players in the research will not be publicly associated with the information provided. thus, the selected radio station and identifying information about its audience will not be made public. the aim of this study was to investigate the possible development of a predictive measurement tool in order to predict the music and genre preference for different psychographic groups of respondents who represent the audience of a typical radio station, as well as their uses and gratifications of the music. it may enable a radio station to manage their database of music more cost effectively. as the research examined the patterns of music use and the relationship between music use and psychographic profiles, it may contribute to the development of a more efficient model in the construction of a radio station’s programme content and diversity. however, it should be noted that this was by no means an exhaustive study into the exact influences on music preference, nor the patterns of music use amongst the audience of this radio station. as previously mentioned, the radio station had agreed, on certain terms, to allow access to data from previous studies which tested the music preference of its audience. however, these studies only provide information regarding the demographic profile of the audience and how the respondents evaluated certain songs. as there is no way of determining the personality profile for the audience members who participated in the previous studies on music preference, nor their patterns of music use, the data collected from previous studies will only be employed as a possible validation instrument. defining terms the following are definitions of the key terms as contextualised in this study: 144 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach ♦ uses and gratifications: the goal-oriented communication behaviour of the radio station’s audience members in terms of their direct experience with music, as well as the active utilisation of music as a form of communication. ♦ music: a form of communication that may be regarded as the main product of commercial radio stations and that may be categorised in various genres and music dimensions. ♦ personality types: constructs that are employed in order to explain the modes of perception and behaviour within and across various individuals according to similarities and differences. ♦ central south african radio station: a radio station broadcasting mainly in central south africa. ♦ previous study: a study conducted by an independent research company for the selected radio station. this study focused on the music preference of audience members and was conducted over a period of 23 months. ♦ current study: the study conducted by the researcher in order to answer the research question and to meet the goals and primary objectives. theoretical points of departure information regarding communication and music as a method of communication was examined in order to investigate how music may be employed as a method of communication. furthermore, the uses and gratification of communication, especially music, was examined to gain insight into how and why audiences listen to music and how this may be influenced by individual differences. personality traits in individuals were also investigated in order to gain insight into how personality may influence the behaviour of individuals. this may provide valuable insight into the preferences of communication and music as communication method, and the reasoning behind the uses and gratifications of music as a method of communication. studies related to the influence of personality on music preference and the use of music by audience members, such as those by sigg (2009), delsing et al. (2008), zweigenhaft (2008), mccown et al. (1997), and baker and bor (2008) will be used as points of departure. special emphasis will be placed on the research findings of especially rentfrow and gosling (2003) and chamorro-premuzic and furnham (2007). 145 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience value of the study if music preference and use of music is even partially determined by the personality of an audience member, then determining the personality aspects of the radio station’s audience may serve as a clue to the types of music preferred by the audience members in general. determining the personality aspects of a radio station’s audience may provide valuable information that may be used in determining which music could be received more positively by the audience members, which may in turn lead to greater revenue and market share. the research that will be conducted may provide certain suggestions regarding the music preferred by the audience of a central south african radio station. research design a quantitative approach for the purpose of this study, a quantitative approach to research was followed. according to wimmer and dominick (2006: 50), the questioning involved in this method is static or standardised, meaning that all respondents are asked the same questions. the authors further indicate that quantitative research requires that the variables under consideration be measured. survey research both descriptive and analytical surveys were combined in this study. wimmer and dominick (2006: 179) indicate that, while descriptive surveys attempt to describe or document current conditions and attitudes, analytical surveys attempt to describe why situations exist. the results of analytical surveys may allow researchers to examine the interrelationships among variables and the development of explanatory inferences. the advantages of survey research, according to wimmer and dominick (2006: 179-180), include the use in realistic settings, reasonable cost, large amounts of data that may be collected, and helpful data that already exists. the disadvantages include the fact that independent variables may not be manipulated in the way that they are in laboratory experiments and that survey research may be difficult to conduct, especially in the case of telephone surveys. literature review a review of literature may contribute to the clarification of the nature of the research problem. the literature review for this study mainly focused on examining information regarding communication and music as a method of communication in order to investigate how music may be employed as a method of communication. the uses and gratifications of communication, especially music, was examined 146 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach to gain insight into how and why audiences listen to music and how this may be influenced by individual differences. personality traits in individuals were also investigated in order to gain insight into how personality may influence the behaviour of individuals. this may provide valuable insight into the preferences of communication and music as a communication method, and the reasoning behind the uses and gratifications of music as a method of communication. research methodology research participants and sample selection the proposed sample type for this research was a purposive sample. the research participants who were included in the study included audience members of the selected central south african radio station who were purposively selected to meet a predetermined quota of respondents in accordance with the listener profile of the radio station based on rams figures. the participants include male and female respondents belonging to three ethnic groups, namely white, coloured and black. respondents were segmented into four age groups, namely 25 – 30 years, 31 – 36 years, 37 – 42 years, and 43 – 49 years. a sample of 151 respondents was used to represent the radio station’s listener profile. a sample of 151 respondents calculates at a standard error of ±8.02 and a confidence level of 95%. wimmer and dominick (2006: 102) argue that standard error, or sampling error occurs when measurements taken from a sample do not correspond to what exists in the population. the authors also note that an error-free sample is highly unlikely and that computing standard error may determine, with a certain amount of confidence, the difference between a sample and the target population. this number of respondents (n = 151) was deemed to be representative for the purpose of this study. ten item personality inventory (tipi) the ten item personality inventory (tipi) was developed in order to measure a person’s personality traits according to the big-five dimensions of personality (gosling et al. 2003: 525). each of the ten items in this inventory consists of two signifiers, separated by a comma. each of these two signifiers is prefaced by the phrase, “i see myself as”. each tipi item is then rated on a seven-point likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). an overall score for each dimension is obtained by summating the two items representing each scale. the higher the score, the more prominent the personality trait is within the individual. the tipi takes about a minute to complete (gosling et al. 2003: 516). rentfrow and gosling (2003: 1250, who also employed the tipi, provide norms 147 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience (mean scores) for each of the personality traits. respondents could either score “low,” “medium low,” “medium high” or “high” on each of the personality traits. extensive and intensive research have been undertaken into condensing long and confusing lists of personality traits into five basic personality dimensions, namely the big five personality dimensions. these dimensions are characterised by certain human traits. the big five personality dimensions include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to new experiences, and emotional stability as opposed to neuroticism (schultz et al. 2003: 41). uses of music inventory (umi) the uses of music inventory (umi) is a measurement instrument that comprises of 15 items which are rated on a five-point likert-type scale, measuring views regarding music, when it is listened to and why people listen. this inventory has three subscales: emotional use of music (m[emot]), cognitive, intellectual or rational use of music (m[cog]), and background or social use of music (m[back]) (chamorro-premuzic & furnham 2007: 178-179). cronbach’s alpha for these subscales are as follows: m[emot] α = .78; m[cog] α = .85; m[back] α = .76 (ibid.). the cronbach’s alphas for each of these subscales indicate high reliability of the scale. the relationship between the three different uses of music and the personality dimensions was then established in order to determine the possible influence that the various personality dimensions may have on the uses of music. data and data collection a tipi (gosling et al. 2003) and a umi (chamorro-premuzic & furnham 2007) were administered simultaneously by means of a telephonic interview to a sample of 151 respondents who were recruited from listeners who fit the profile based on the rams figures of the particular radio station and who served on a panel for the collection of the original data provided by the radio station. a list of ten hooks (short music clip) was played to the respondents in order to determine their music preference. these ten hooks were representative of the four music dimensions outlined by the short test of music preference (stomp) (rentfrow & gosling 2003). respondents were then asked to rate the songs on a semantic differential scale with a range from 1 to 10, where 1 indicates that the song is disliked very much and 10 indicates that the respondent likes the song very much. the mean and standard deviation scores for each song was calculated and summated to determine an average preference score for each of the four music dimensions. the preferred music genres were represented by different music dimensions outlined by rentfrow and gosling (2003: 1241). these authors found that very 148 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach few respondents are familiar with specific subgenres of music, but a large number of respondents are familiar with broader music genres. these findings suggest that the genre-level of measurement is appropriate to examine music preference (ibid.). they categorised different genres of music into four different dimensions of music by means of component analysis, as indicated in table 1. the four dimensions are: reflective and complex; intense and rebellious; upbeat and conventional; energetic and rhythmic (rentfrow & gosling 2003:1243). for the purpose of this study, the categorisation of songs into various genres was done by identifying the genre or sub-genre categorisation of songs by making use of wikipedia. although wikipedia may not offer an entirely reliable way of classification, using this method standardises the categorisation of the songs according to a popular medium. because these songs were categorised into different genres, wikipedia was also used in defining the genres and subgenres. a limitation of this method of categorisation is that songs do not mutually exclusively belong to a single genre or music dimension. by using this method, various genres could be identified, consisting of several subgenres. the main genres that were identified are rock; afro-fusion; hip hop; pop; anti-folk; country; jazz; dance; electronica; folk; funk; r&b; soul; punk and post-punk revival; reggae; south african music; south african music afrikaans; blues; and world music. table 1: genre classification according to stomp dimensions reflective and complex dimension intense and rebellious dimension upbeat and conventional dimension energetic and rhythmic dimension genres included: folk punk and post-punk revival country dance jazz rock pop electronica afro-fusion anti-folk funk world music hip hop south african music reggae south african music – afrikaans soul blues r&b 149 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience each music dimension was represented by four songs. however, it should be noted that from the ten songs that were chosen to test music preference, only five songs could be categorised exclusively within single music dimensions. four of the ten songs could be classified in two music dimensions, while one song was classified in three music dimensions. therefore, due to some songs being representative of more than one music dimension, only ten songs were selected in order to test the evaluation of four songs per music dimension. the selection of the songs for the particular evaluation was done by examining the playlists and “hit parades” of the radio station and selecting songs that were played frequently by the station at that stage. wimmer and dominick (2006: 199) state that a disadvantage of telephone research is that respondents may become suspicious about telephone calls. another disadvantage of administering a measurement instrument telephonically is that respondents may, at any time, simply hang up and not complete the interview. for this reason, ten songs which were representative of the four music dimensions were selected to be evaluated. due to the fact that the tipi and umi were also administered during the interview, the aim was to keep the duration of the interview to a minimum. due to the exploratory nature of this research the need for extensive evaluation of the songs did not arise. the results from the tipi were then used to examine the personality profile of each of the demographic groups that respondents belonged to. this was done according to the guidelines provided by gosling et al. (2003) and rentfrow and gosling (2003). the results from the personality profiling were measured against the music dimension preference to examine the possible correlation between personality traits and music preference. the results from the tipi were also measured against the results of the umi to examine the possible correlation between personality traits and the uses of music amongst the respondents. a secondary analysis of data that was previously collected over a period of 23 months for the central south african radio station was performed in order to examine the reliability of the measurement instruments employed in this study. access was provided to data that was collected for the radio station for music evaluation purposes. during the period of 23 months, call-out research was conducted by a research company for the radio station in order to evaluate the popularity of certain songs that were tested. a total of 250 songs were evaluated by a panel of 314 respondents from which a revolving sample of respondents was selected. hooks of these songs (determined by the music producer of the radio station) were tested on a two-weekly basis. respondents evaluated the songs on a semantic differential scale with a range from 1 to 10, where 1 indicated that the song was disliked very much and 10 indicated that the respondent liked the song 150 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach very much. the mean and standard deviation scores for each song were calculated and summated to determine an average preference score for each of the songs. the songs were categorised into different genres, again employing wikipedia as a tool for the categorisation of the songs. the songs were also categorised into the four music dimensions, determined by rentfrow and gosling (2003), by employing the stomp. the music dimension preference of respondents in the current study was then compared to the music dimension preference of respondents in the previous study. two sample t-tests were performed in order to determine whether any statistically significant differences between the preference of music dimensions existed between the two data sets. data analysis wimmer and dominick (2005: 26) state that the time and effort required for data analysis and interpretation of data depends on the purpose of the study and the methodology used. baxter and babbie (2004: 9) indicate that the analysis brings logical and observational aspects together in the search for patterns in what is observed. the steps that were followed in the process of data analysis were as follows: ♦ collecting and recording of data; ♦ managing the data; ♦ classifying and interpreting data; and ♦ representation of the data. validity according to wimmer and dominick (2006: 61-62), validity refers to a measuring device that measures what it is supposed to measure and the assessment of validity requires some judgment on the part of the researcher. in the case of this study, concurrent validity played an important role. the authors indicate that concurrent validity involves checking the measuring instrument against some present criterion. in this study, the measurement instrument in question consisted mainly of a combination of the tipi and umi that were already constructed and tested. furthermore, construct validity (ibid.) involves relating a measurement instrument to the overall theoretic framework to ensure that it is logically related to other concepts in the framework. again, by following the guidelines provided by the developers of the tipi and umi, this might have been ensured to some degree. 151 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience it should, however, be noted that there was an important difference in the measurement instrument employed in this study and the measurement instruments employed in previous studies by rentfrow and gosling. this difference was that the respondents were not asked to provide an evaluation of music genres. different songs were tested and were categorised into genres by the researcher. this might have contributed positively to the validity of the study. furthermore, because there has been no similar research in the domain of the radio station and its audience who was selected for this study, a secondary analysis on the original data, collected for the radio station for music evaluation research, was done. although music evaluations have been done by the radio station, no investigation into the relationship between personality traits and music preference of the audience members of this radio station have been done. however, the secondary analysis of the data that was collected for the radio station may have provided certain indications of the reliability of the measurement methods of the current study. by examining the music dimension preference of the respondents conducted for the radio station one might gain insight into the music preference of the panel. music preference based on personality aspects and music dimensions when examining the correlations between personality aspects and the music dimensions, certain predictions regarding music preference may be made. it may be predicted that listeners with high levels of agreeableness may not prefer music in the energetic and rhythmic dimension, while listeners with high levels of conscientiousness may not prefer music in the upbeat and conventional dimension. furthermore, it may be assumed that listeners scoring high in emotional stability, but low in neuroticism, will not prefer music in the energetic and rhythmic dimension. when measuring scores of personality traits of the respondents interviewed in the current study with the norms set out by rentfrow and gosling (2003), certain recommendations may be made to the radio station, should the respondents be regarded as representative of the overall audience of this particular station. even though many respondents indicated a preference for music from the energetic and rhythmic dimension, the statistically significant correlation between music from this dimension and the agreeableness trait suggest the contrary. a total of 49.67% of the respondents interviewed had high scores on agreeableness. statistically, when examining the respondents in totality, it may be assumed that the listeners of this radio station may not be inclined towards music from this dimension. 152 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach furthermore, 60.93% of the respondents interviewed had high conscientiousness scores. this may, when considering the statistical significance, lead to the assumption that the audience of the radio station may not prefer music from the upbeat and conventional dimension. a total of 37.09% of the respondents scored high on emotional stability. again, when considering the statistical significance of the correlations found, this may lead to the assumption that the audience of the radio station may not prefer music from the energetic and rhythmic dimension. uses of music based on personality aspects when examining the correlation between personality aspects and uses of music, it may be assumed that listeners who score high on neuroticism, but low on emotional stability may use music for emotional purposes, such as emotional regulation. as previously mentioned, 37.09% of the respondents interviewed in the current study had high emotional stability scores, which would suggest that the audience of this radio station does not use the music played on this station for emotional purposes. reliability of the measurement instruments from the t-statistics and probability levels performed on the data, it may be deduced that there were no statistically significant differences in music dimension preference between respondents participating in the music evaluation research conducted for the radio station and the respondents participating in the current study. this lack of statistically significant differences in music dimension preference may indicate the reliability of the measurement instrument used in the current study. this might also indicate the reliability of employing ten songs as representative of the four stomp music dimensions. because there were no statistically significant differences in the music dimension preference amongst the respondents, one might infer that the personality profiling of the respondents, as well as the uses and gratifications of music by the respondents, may be accurate to a certain extent and that the sample of respondents selected to participate in the current study may be representative of the panel members who participated in the previous study. recommendations in concluding this study, the following recommendations are made: ♦ that a more generalisable tool for categorising music into genres be developed; 153 the uses and gratifications of music, by personality type, of a central south african radio station’s audience ♦ that a more comprehensive study into the full theory of music preferences, focusing on the influences of personality, cognition, self-views and other possible determinants should be executed; and ♦ that a more comprehensive measurement instrument measuring of uses and gratification of music in a south african context be developed. final word on potential value of this study there appears to still be a long way ahead in the complete juncture of theories regarding music preference and music use. despite the methodological limitations of this study, it is believed that the results presented may have laid a foundation on which to build future research. this research may be regarded as groundwork in the process of understanding the music preference of audiences, as well as the uses of music, an important form of communication in most individuals’ lives. 154 rozanne kotzee and h.j. breytenbach references babbie, e. and mouton, j. 1998. the practice of social research. 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(eight edition). belmont: thomson wadsworth. zweigenhaft, r.l. 2008. a do re mi encore: a closer look at the personality correlates of music preferences. journal of individual differences 29(1): 45-55. 95 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres lynnette naidoo and lynnette fourie* abstract this article focuses on the principles of participatory development communication. it is argued that that participation may exist only on a conceptual and ideological level in government policies in south africa, resulting in the practice of diffusion communication. this article reports on how the communication approach of the thusong service centres with their communities in tshwane align with the normative principles of participatory development communication. a qualitative research approach was adopted to gather data, and purposive sampling was used, focusing on the six thusong service centres in tshwane, which are considered to be development communication vehicles. it was found that thusong service centres do not fully meet the required principles of participatory development communication, which was used as the theoretical framework in this research. this inadequate alignment with the principles of participatory development communication implies that authentic development is not being realised. * lynnette naidoo completed her master’s dissertation on the topic under the supervision of professor lynnette fourie of the school of communication studies, potchefstroom campus, north-west university. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 95-115 96 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie introduction one of the major factors that have slowed human development in south africa is the lack of developing communities’ participation in the design and implementation of policies and programmes that affect their lives (gcis 2009). in recognising south africa as a developing country, attention is drawn to appropriate methods and approaches in mobilising change. participatory development (facilitated by participatory development communication) is the process by which people become leading actors in their own development as opposed to being mere recipients of external development interventions. in order to address development problems and the concomitant mass poverty, it has become necessary to shift the focus of development communication from a linear information dissemination paradigm to a transactional, dialogic mode of communication. an essential requirement for development is the political will to drive programmes that are aimed at improving the lives of the poor and the disadvantaged (gcis 2009). in south africa, the government has demonstrated this political will in various policies, including the comtask report. this report mandates government to establish thusong service centres (formerly known as multi-purpose community centres) as the primary vehicle for the implementation of development communication (gcis 1996: 36). “thusong” means “a place to get assistance” in sesotho. a review of the literature shows that although extensive research has been conducted in this field, the focus in previous research has not been on the approach that government uses in its communication with communities. development communication has gone through various development paradigms. firstly, the modernisation paradigm, adopting a linear communication approach, suggests that it is essential that the newly independent, developing nations adopt western ideas and innovations, in order to “catch up” with the developed nations (nyamnjoh 2005). subsequently, inadequacies in modernisation have given rise to the dependency paradigm, which focuses on underdevelopment (frank 2005) and cultural imperialism (servaes 1983). the dependent society is a silent one, and its voice is merely an echo of the voice of the authorities. white (1994b: 25) criticises the modernistic and dependency paradigms by arguing that in order for development to occur, the community should be empowered into self-reliance. it is during this time that the participatory paradigm was born. it is widely accepted that participation is the normative approach regarding development (cohen 1996: 230; tri 1986b: 35; white 1994a: 30; yoon 2004). therefore it is argued in this article, based on the nature and function of the thusong service centre, that it (the centre) should adopt a participatory communication approach (rogers 1976: 52). it is clear that the south african government also subscribes to the notion of participation when talking about participatory governance. however, although participatory governance implies 97 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres both political and developmental participation the focus is often on the former. the contribution of this article is that it brings a participatory communication perspective to government communication (cf. fourie 2012 for full argument). ascroft and masilela (1994: 260) argue that the notion of the developing community’s participation in development planning, policy-making and decisionsharing has remained a concept that is honoured more on paper than in practice. this article argues that it is through community participation that the mandate of thusong service centres may be successfully implemented. it is against this background that the findings of an investigation of the communication approach of the thusong service centres are presented. the study investigates how the communication of the thusong service centres in tshwane compares with the normative principles of participatory development communication. literature review the various paradigms that have marked the evolution of development communication are still active on different levels (idrc 2004). despite these diverse approaches and orientations there is nevertheless consensus today on both the need for grassroots participation in development and on the essential role that participatory communication plays in promoting development (idrc 2004; ascroft & masilela 1994: 290; rogers 1976: 52). paradigm shifts in development communication until the 1960s, economic theories explained the lack of development as being a consequence of industrial and technical backwardness, while sociological theories attributed a lack of development to the cultural backwardness of the illiterate masses (kumar 1994: 76). accordingly, it was believed that the quickest solution for development would entail the borrowing of the modernisation strategies of western societies which were deemed to be developed. this resulted in the emergence of development communication during the modernisation paradigm where specialists in development advised the poorer countries (lerner 1976: 287). according to schramm (1964: iv), it is understood that before there may be free and adequate information in any country, there must be sufficient development of the mass communication. he further states that mass communication is influential in modernising a developing culture which is, in turn, necessary for national development. lerner (1964: 247) claims that mass communication is the great multiplier of development − the device that may spread new ideas, attitudes and knowledge more rapidly. the basic assumption of development was that “modern” people act in a rational and informed manner and that success inevitably results from careful planning 98 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie (moemeka 1999; schiller 1976: 6). however, this “rationalist and positivist” approach in terms of which everything may be measured and uncertainty eliminated is hardly a reflection of real life (nyamnjoh 2005). moemeka (1999) explains that since development communication initiatives began in africa in the 1950s it has been based on the erroneous belief, firstly, that development meant westernisation and, secondly, that development meant modernisation. nyamnjoh (2005) argues that development in africa may have been impeded because, firstly, the continent has relied on a notion of development agendas that are both foreign to the majority of its peoples in origin and objectives, and which have not always addressed the correct issues or, indeed, addressed these issues in the right way. secondly, development communication researchers have adopted research techniques that were designed to meet the needs of western societies, and these research techniques do not always suit african cultures and societies. a reaction to modernisation was the emergence of the dependency paradigm in the mid-1960s, which was a way of explaining the persistent poverty of the poorer countries (wallerstein 1976; frank 2005). as victims of cultural imperialism (schiller 1976: 6) and due to their dependency on the wealthier nations, the poor nations find it difficult to formulate autonomous development policies in accordance with their own cultural histories and societal interests (servaes 1983: 13). servaes (1983: 13), a pioneering participatory development communication scholar, emphasises the need for culturally sensitive development programmes. he criticises the modernisation theories as being based on the assumption that as societies develop they lose their individual identities and gravitate toward a common culture. the essential input that indigenous communities have to offer to the development process is thus ignored. this results in overlooking the cultural nuances of communities and, eventually, in the failure of the development effort (chitnis 2005). white (1994b: 25) refers to the concept of self-reliance as an integral aspect of participation − both as an outcome and as a part of the process. in order to become self-reliant, the focus must be on strengthening local economic resources and on making the community more self-sufficient. this would mean that a community of self-reliant people would move from dependence to independence. subsequently, the participatory development paradigm was born which encourages individuals’ active participation in their development. with the above-mentioned shift in focus from the linear mode of communication during the modernisation era to participation of the developing community, it is necessary to fully involve the communities in identifying their needs and taking 99 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres ownership of activities and information (cohen 1996: 223; rahim 1994: 127; tri 1986a: 10). it is also necessary to incorporate communities’ exposure to technology as it is an essential component for empowerment (rahim, in servaes 2000: 84). participatory development communication emphasises the importance of strategic communication, a research-based communication process, in achieving development goals (unicef 2005: 1; bessette 2004; mozammel & schechter 2007: 7). it underscores that communication is as much a science as an art, as much a process as it is about outcomes. setting goals, both midterm and longterm, is an important step to measure the success or failure of any programme including that of development initiatives. phases for strategic development communication various phases may be used in the strategic communication process and constitute the basis from which participatory development communication should be conducted. mozammel and schechter (2007: 7) outline five phases which were used as the benchmark for strategic development communication during analysis in this research. phase 1, in which the communication management function is established, entails developing the strategic communication intervention. phase 2a involves conducting a strategic communication assessment, followed by an operational communication analysis in phase 2b. bessette (2004) refers to this phase as the identification of problems and potential solutions and the implementation of concrete initiatives. phase 3 involves developing a communication strategy and action plan. implementing communication activities represents phase 4 where officials in the project management take various steps in order to put into practice each of the communication activities as laid out in the afore-mentioned action plan matrix. in the last phase, monitoring and feedback activities are implemented. strategic development communication, however, does face the challenge not to become just another form of top-down communication. mozammel and schechter (2007: 7) provide some examples of communication activities that could be used to ensure that the communication strategy has a participatory nature: ♦ customised sensitisation workshops, which include information about the proposed project aimed at key stakeholders; ♦ stakeholder consultations which emphasise bottom-up communication, a voice for the poor, the development of trust, ownership by and relationships among all stakeholder groups; 100 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie ♦ a management information system (mis) to collect, analyse, store and disseminate information that may be useful for decision-making; ♦ visioning sessions and participatory rural appraisal techniques to encourage dialogue with the community; ♦ community mapping to provide insight into the community’s current status in respect of development; ♦ a transect, a walk through a neighbourhood to gain insight on the community’s physical reality; ♦ the venn diagram for visualising and analysing relationships, which may be further used to eliminate corruption and abuse of power; ♦ problem trees whereby community members identify their own priorities; ♦ citizen report cards, a way in which reliable and consistent feedback and communication for accountability may be obtained; and ♦ governance scorecards, a tool to monitor government service delivery. development communication literature shows that formal research is strongly in favour of a participatory rural communication appraisal (prca), a component in strategic communication for development (belbase 1994: 457; idrc 2004; bessette 2004). prca is a participatory research method that involves the community in the process of communication programme planning from the outset (bessette 2004). this is enabled by the dialogic process of communication, which is discussed using freirean dialogue. freirean dialogue in his pedagogy of the oppressed, freire (1970) criticised one-way communication in education and advocated a more interactive approach which would raise learners’ consciousness. according to srampickal (2006), conscientisation comprises several stages, starting with “intransitive thought” during which people believe that their own actions are incapable of changing their conditions. “semi-transitive thought” is the next stage towards conscientisation, where people believe partially in themselves as vehicles of change and, to some degree, they try to act in order to bring about social change (srampickal 2006). the goal of the second stage is to facilitate critical reflection and thus develop autonomous thoughts. central to freire’s thoughts were that the relationship between oppressor and oppressed should change. freire proposed that the distance between teacher and student, and in this case local government and community, should disappear. he saw 101 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres communication in the form of dialogue as the process to change this relationship (shefner-rogers et al. 1998; singh 2008: 702). by means of dialogue participants come to understand the circumstances that led to the disadvantaged position. only by understanding your world can you name the world, and by naming the world you change the world. for this article it is important to note that singh (2008: 705) highlights that freire in his later work acknowledged that the teacher starts from a position of power. at the start of the dialogue the teacher has more knowledge about the subject and also the power to steer the dialogue on a certain course. the idea is not for this person to solve the community’s problem, but rather to serve as an enabler for the community to be able to solve their own issues. in the third stage, individuals reflect on their actions and take new actions (ridner 2004). this final state, which freire (1970: 71) terms “critical transitivity”, corresponds to the achievement of conscientisation. this stage involves a dynamic relationship between critical thought and critical action, which is triggered by the ability to think holistically about one’s condition. freirean dialogue is advocated in the current article due to the strong link to empowerment. when following the viewpoints of freirean dialogue, engagement between government and citizens could be a learning process for both community and government. this in turn could lead to self-efficacy which would restore the power balance and in the long run benefit participatory governance. it is therefore argued that dialogue, in the context of participatory development communication, should lead to empowerment. this further implies that all phases of development (implementation, evaluation, benefits and decision-making) should be participatory. levels of participation yoon (2004) states that participation in implementation is where people are actively encouraged and mobilised to take part in the actualisation of projects whereby they are given certain responsibilities, set certain tasks, or are required to contribute specified resources. upon completion of a project people are then invited to review either the success or the failure of the project − participation in evaluation. yoon describes the third type of participation as participation in benefit which refers to the process whereby people enjoy the fruits of a project. finally, he describes participation in decision-making, where people initiate, discuss, conceptualise and plan the activities that they will conduct as a community. yoon (2004) claims that participation in decision-making is the most important form to utilise in the development process because it allows the members of a community to have power over their own lives and their environment. this concurs with 102 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie freire’s (1970: 76) concept of empowerment. however, development efforts do not always implement all four aspects. it should be acknowledged that the higher the degree of participation, the greater the chance that development will occur, thereby benefitting community members. the literature review yielded the formulation of the following normative principles: ♦ participatory development communication requires sustainability and continuity. ♦ participatory development communication is a dialogical process. ♦ empowerment of the developing community is necessary for participatory development communication to be realised. ♦ in order for participatory development communication to be practised, the element of community participation should be prevalent. ♦ participatory development communication involves due consideration of the community’s socio-cultural context. ♦ participatory development communication involves strategic communication. the above-mentioned theories and principles underpinned this research; hence the results will contribute to understanding the importance of applying the principles of community participation in development communication. methodology the study used exploratory research to gain insights into the phenomenon of participatory development communication at thusong service centres in tshwane. a qualitative approach was adopted and three methods for collecting data were used: semi-structured interviews with government communication and information services (gcis) personnel, personal observation of all six thusong service centres in tshwane, and a qualitative content analysis of government mandate documents regarding development communication. a purposive sampling technique was used. it focused on all six thusong service centres in tshwane. the following documents which provide the mandate for thusong service centres as the primary vehicle for development communication in south africa were analysed: ♦ communications 2000: a vision for government communications in south africa, comtask report 1996 ♦ white paper on transforming public service delivery, 1997 103 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres ♦ cabinet memorandum no. 15 of november 1999 ♦ president’s state of the nation address (sona 2004) ♦ thusong service centres government communications: business plan 2006-2014 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with senior gcis personnel were conducted in an attempt to determine the approach adopted by government in its interaction with communities regarding development communication efforts. the interview guide was informed by the principles of participatory development communication. the interviews were recorded and transcribed, after which the texts were analysed by means of coding the dominant themes that had been identified. personal observation was used as a means to observe the real-life setting and actions of the members of the thusong service centres in tshwane. this further assisted in determining the communication approach adopted by these thusong service centres. in this study, the researcher’s role was that of complete observer, in terms of which the researcher was present on the scene, but did not participate or interact with insiders to any great extent. although the results of this study may not be generalised to the other thusong service centres in south africa, it may be deemed useful when planning development communication initiatives. analysis the data gathered from the empirical study was analysed using thematic categorisation. although open coding was used in the analysis of the data (schwandt 2001: 26), the formulation of theoretical constructs assisted in providing a foundation for analysis. the data generated during the empirical study was tested against the normative principles identified in the literature and the findings were compared with each of the data-gathering methods as a crossreferencing mechanism for validity and reliability. discussion of findings the themes and subthemes relating to participatory development communication that emerged during the empirical study are discussed below. sustainability and continuity the research found that although government communication initiates cooperatives and engages in partnerships between the community and various government departments, these display a linear structure. in other words, communities are not 104 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie given equal levels of influence and decision-making authority, thereby preventing community members from actively sustaining development efforts independently. this is contrary to frank’s (2005) concept of self-reliance. one of the objectives of thusong service centres in regards to development is to create networks of economic opportunities in order to address the socio-economic conditions in developing communities (gcis 2009). the empirical study indicated that although this is being implemented in tshwane through workshops, it is either done on a small scale or not sustained. however, no actual networks are created for continuity, sustainability and eventually self-reliance. instead, community members are provided with information in a linear manner, and there is no evidence of follow-up with community members. community members thus do not have the opportunity to become the subjects of their own development instead of merely the objects of processes. the study provided evidence that the tshwane communities’ own knowledge was not generated in the development communication process. during an interview, a senior communications officer (sco) indicated the following: “it is imperative that knowledge and skills development take place, but this area needs more work and attention”. ultimately, not enough was being done to equip the developing communities in tshwane with knowledge, skills and sufficient opportunities to create self-reliance. dialogue the environment for participatory development communication is expected to be supportive, creative, consensual and facilitative, leading to the sharing of ideas through dialogue (thomas 1994: 52; freire 1970: 68). the empirical research found that the various communication methods and channels specific to participatory development communication as identified in the literature review are not utilised optimally by government communication. in respect of engagement with the community, it was established that government officials communicate from a position of authority, whereby knowledge is imparted to community members, which also demonstrates a linear informationdissemination process. an sco remarked during an interview: “the community must be able to liaise with you to be able to encourage reciprocity, unlike information dissemination, which is being practised in our communication to communities, which i am not in favour of”. the afore-mentioned response does not align with freire’s participatory, dialogic and reciprocal communication (freire 1970: 101). the research ascertained that feedback received from community members for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating the appropriateness of programmes 105 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres was verbal, informal and on an ad hoc basis primarily during the needs analysis that the gcis conducts. there was no evidence of structured feedback from communities, which goes against bessette’s (2004) argument that monitoring and feedback during the development initiative is fundamental. in summary, the empirical findings indicated that the gcis does not engage in meaningful dialogue with its communities, although this is a prerequisite for authentic development to occur. also, their actions are contrary to the principles of freirean dialogue (freire 1970: 29). empowerment the findings showed that communities did not take ownership of development communication initiatives, due to authorities retaining power during the process. an interviewee stated: “although decisions are taken at the workshops where community members gather, most decisions are taken by the ward councillor on issues that affect that particular community in respect of infrastructure, for example, building of the schools. the ward councillor also decides who will receive contracts.” it was also found that government communication does not fully adhere to the theoretical principles of empowerment, thus yoon’s (2004) participation in decisionmaking is not prevalent in development initiatives in tshwane. furthermore, the lack of empowerment opportunities that was evidenced through this study creates communities that may be perceived as intransitive or semi-intransitive and lack the skill and cognition to be critically transitive (campbell & jovchelovitch 2000; freire 1985: 75). a response from an sco was as follows: “the community as a stakeholder in the development communication process is generally a superficial exercise. yes, community members are consulted but not fully involved.” the use of communication technology is a potential source of empowerment (servaes 2000) in that information and communication technologies (icts) may be used to promote literacy in the development communication process. the president’s state of the nation address (sona) of 2004 contains information on government’s undertaking to ensure that modern icts are introduced at the identified development nodes. however, thusong service centres show a deficiency in this provision where personal observation reveals a lack of free facilities. according to chitnis (2005), empowering people in the development communication arena means that they are allowed access to resources in order to overcome existing oppressive forces. although policy documents advocate the introduction of such tools and services, it was found that it is not a prioritised action by government. 106 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie finally, thusong service centres in tshwane do not display evidence of the literacy programmes necessary for people’s empowerment, yet these communities are in dire need of such interventions (rahim 1994: 120; thomas 1994: 50–51). community participation of significance is the inadequacy of government communication’s intervention in ensuring communities’ participation from the inception of development communication projects. although the implementation of “consultation” is insufficient for authentic development to occur, the interviews revealed that the communities were nevertheless consulted on their development communication needs. this finding contradicts freirean dialogue (freire 1970: 76) and yoon’s (2004) theory which claims that participation in decision-making is the most important form of participation. it was found that the stakeholder forums that government communication hosts have a top-heavy communication approach, which results in an apathetic attitude in the community. this research showed that government speaks to the community from an authoritative position and attempts to impart skills and knowledge to community members, instead of allowing them the opportunity to participate in a process that is meant to change their lives. thus, this finding counters yoon’s (2004) argument where he argues that participation in decision-making allows the members of a community power over their own lives and their environment. in addition, there was no evidence of participatory rural communication appraisal (prca) techniques during the development communication programme to ensure relevance and ownership of the project by the developing community. the literature on participatory development communication illustrates that prca is a fundamental facet of development communication (belbase 1994: 457). government communication conducts semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions with community members to gain their insights during the informal needs identification process, which is indeed aligned with participatory development communication principles (mozammel & schechter 2007: 7). however, these activities are conducted on an ad hoc basis, and no formal structure in respect of research principles exists. part of incorporating community participation involves establishing common ground with communities. it was found that although community members were involved during the needs analysis process, this did not bring about mutual trust because the community was not adequately involved in the adoption of research procedures. freire’s (1985: 73) critique that the dependent society is by definition a silent society, may be related to community members’ apathy towards development communication. this may be attributed to communities’ dependence 107 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres on government for their mobility, which results from a lack of community participation in the development process and is demonstrated in communities’ reluctance to attend community meetings that are held. it is noteworthy that community workers seldom work with the entire community (lombard 1992: 65), as confirmed by the research conducted with the gcis and emphasised by an interviewee: “key independent thinkers in the community may often be excluded from initiatives because of geographic reach”. socio-cultural context the interviews point to the fact that government communication takes into account communities’ cultural and language issues in its communication efforts. this was evident from the assertion by an interviewee: “information sent out to communities is available in all eleven official languages”. this was also confirmed during the personal observations. during the research, it was noted that partnerships had been formed with members of the community, including traditional leaders. these partnerships allow community members to provide input regarding their indigenous knowledge. however, what was clear is that the foregoing considerations are not applicable from the outset or throughout the initiative. therefore it may be deduced, according to yoon’s (2004) benchmark of levels of participation discussed earlier in this article, that partial participation is used in this instance. strategic communication the five steps advocated by mozammel and schechter (2007: 7) were used as the benchmark for the strategic communication adopted by the gcis in their development communication initiatives. the first phase, according to the literature, indicates that the communication management function should be established. the thusong service centres in tshwane employed trained communication professionals, but it was found that the existing staff lacked the capacity to cover all areas adequately. the personal observations revealed that none of the centres in tshwane employed centre managers. this situation has a negative impact on a sound action plan towards developing the communities. the second phase in participatory development communication planning requires that a strategic communication assessment be conducted. the empirical study shows that government communication does not engage in formal research. furthermore, there was no sign of prca methods being adopted as reported on earlier in this article. 108 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie phase 2b involves an operational communication analysis, which requires all stakeholders to be involved in identifying problems and potential solutions and implementing concrete initiatives in a collaborative way. the study shows that the only sign of such activity is during the informal needs analysis process which is conducted in an ad hoc manner. the third phase involves the development of a communication strategy and action plan. the interviews and analysis of the gcis’s consolidated action plan 2010 and the thusong service centre-municipal infrastructure grant (mig) communication plan 2010 indicated that the gcis compiles an action plan for each project but does not address participatory development communication principles as their focus. instead, these plans address operational but not strategic issues. although there was an indication of prior planning, the emphasis was on commemoration days in the government calendar, which indicates that there is a gap regarding formal research, which is a much needed component for successful development communication. the study acknowledged the integrated development plan (idp), which is the strategic planning instrument for development and is a planning document used to manage and guide all planning, development and decision-making in the municipality. this relates to a response from an interviewee regarding the communities’ involvement in the public participation forums: “i think our communities are passive and do not want to get involved in development communication activities. whenever there is an integrated development plan process, most of the people who attend those meetings are members of the political party that the ward councillor comes from.” the above response demonstrates communities’ apathy to participate and this relates to freire’s (1985: 73) critique of the dependency paradigm. the fourth phase in strategic planning involves the implementation of communication activities, where appropriate methods and techniques should be used according to the identified needs of the community. it was found that various government departments implement activities in isolation. an sco remarked: “there is a danger of duplication of activities amongst the various government departments. also, there is a lack of an information-sharing culture which exists.” the afore-mentioned response does not correspond with mozammel and schechter’s (2007: 7) strategic communication requirements outlined in this article. phase five incorporates monitoring and feedback activities. the interviews established that there was no comparative analysis between the benchmark study and a post-implementation baseline study. however, it was found that the gcis uses the ward-level information management system (wims) programme 109 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres (a management information system) that works well for the communication officers. on the other hand, contrary to the theoretical principles of participatory development communication, feedback activities are not used to monitor development communication activities scientifically. the interviews indicated that the research that scos conduct with communities is not formal in nature. however, certain gcis personnel form part of the forum for south african director generals (fosadg), where formal research issues are discussed. an interviewee commented: “formal research is conducted, but i am not sure how; maybe quantitative, maybe qualitative. my research is finding out exactly what is happening in terms of identifying needs or gaps in the community.” the interviewees indicated that formal research was only conducted if the need arose. it was further noted that most of the formal research that is conducted is outsourced because of a lack of capacity in the research department. despite the need for formal research in the development communication process (unicef 2005: 1; bessette 2004; mozammel & schechter 2007: 7) this fundamental component is compromised by government. conclusion the aim of the research reported on in this article was to indicate how the communication approach of the development communication hubs (thusong service centres) aligns with the normative principles of participatory development communication. the investigation found that the principles of participatory development communication are not being fully practised; therefore this section provides insights regarding these findings and growth points for government’s consideration. during the research, the normative principles were used as categories in exploring the phenomenon of participatory development communication, which led to the formulation of six theoretical constructs, which are used in the discussion below. firstly, self-reliance should be the goal of government to encourage participants to become independent in the development process, and not fall into a paradigm of dependence whereby cultural imperialism and cultural domination (schiller 1976: 6) destroy native cultures and compromise communities’ independent thinking (white 1994b: 25). when cooperatives and partnerships are formed, there should be an assurance of devolution of power, whereby all stakeholders are equal partners in the development communication process. government should take on this responsibility by monitoring such activities to ensure that this objective is realised. it is further suggested that networks of economic opportunities for self-reliance are introduced for the sustainability of each community. these may include current initiatives, 110 lynnette naidoo and lynette fourie but it is suggested that government publicise such initiatives robustly in the community and assist those who are currently passive receivers of information to act on such initiatives for their sustainability. secondly, it was argued that dialogue, as the core of participatory communication, should lead to empowerment. it was evident that there was very little scope for freirean dialogue as communication was mostly done from a position of power. thirdly, empowerment should be promoted by ensuring that communities participate actively in the planning, decision-making and ownership of the development project. government should plan with communities by creating structures that offer communities and developers opportunities to work together, and introduce activities that will empower communities. freire (1985: 73) criticises the dependent society as a silent society and its voice is not an authentic voice but merely an echo of the voice of the authorities in every way, whereby the authorities speak and the dependent society listens. it is recommended that thusong service centres provide computer services free of charge, which may include limited internet connectivity for community members. literacy and numeracy programmes should be introduced in partnership or collaboration with higher education institutions as part of their community engagement programmes, which is currently a requirement in higher education. the proposition that oppressed and marginalised individuals can free themselves if they are given a voice and the ability to take control over their surroundings seems to exclude the role of structure as played out by the institutions involved (giddens & pierson 1998: 44). it is therefore recommended that the development communication process incorporates the communities’ participation in decisionmaking. not only should this principle be built into government policy documents, but it should also be incorporated into the day-to-day operations of development communication hubs. this approach will further enhance community autonomy. fourthly, community participation should be encouraged during the entire development communication initiative (thomas 1994: 51; rahim 1994: 118). it is recommended that the development communication programmes include relationship-building and performance-monitoring activities as outlined earlier in the literature review in this article. it is also recommended that a stronger commitment from government be introduced in the form of deliverables to communities during the process. the fifth factor is that government should consider the socio-cultural context of each community during the development communication process, which includes the community’s indigenous knowledge and cultural identity. this study acknowledges the high premium that government places on its communities’ sociocultural context. culturally sensitive communication and the use of communities’ 111 participatory anchored development in south africa as evaluated at thusong service centres indigenous expertise are encouraged in order for participatory development communication to be useful. however, it is recommended that such indigenous expertise be included throughout government’s development communication initiative in an authentic, participatory manner with communities. lastly, it should be ensured that government’s development communication efforts involve strategic planning with the community (unicef 2005: 1; mozammel & schechter 2007: 7). coordination of events, activities and initiatives requires a structured strategic plan, which should incorporate all key stakeholders and integrate the activities of the various government departments. currently, government does not engage in formal research with the tshwane communities. therefore it is recommended that research studies be conducted on the effectiveness of development programmes together with perception studies. this may be done in conjunction with the informal research studies that are currently being conducted. the findings of such research will inform subsequent plans of action to resolve communities’ apathy towards development. instead of merely acknowledging that community members are apathetic, government should be working to combat such circumstances for the greater good of the nation, which formal research will help to facilitate. the literature indicates that the participation of the developing community will assist in promoting the adoption of new practices, empowering communities, and building networks and capacity among stakeholders, which are requirements for successful and sustainable development 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[accessed 25/08/2010]. 125124 exploring twitter reporting and best practices in a south african news organisation abstract twitter journalism is a new phenomenon with limited local research that identifies specific models for the dissemination of news that could be used in a south african newsroom context. identifying best practises when using twitter alongside a primary medium of news production is crucial to understanding how to harness the potential of this social networking site. methods to train reporters in using twitter as a journalism tool as well as an awareness of the ethical implications pertaining to the incorporation of twitter in mainstream news, also need to be established. this article identifies twitter journalism in the south african context by using a local news organisation, eyewitness news (ewn), as case study. self-administered questionnaires and interviews were used to collect qualitative data from reporters and senior editorial staff. based on the findings, guidelines are provided for a localised twitter journalism model, which could be used when developing media policies, newsroom production strategies, journalism training courses and ethical guidelines that encompass the use of social media tools as necessities in mainstream newsrooms. keywords: eyewitness news; fake news; innovation; newsrooms; social networking sites; twitter journalism introduction as technological, economic and infrastructure advancements increase internet access globally, social networking sites (snss) have become communication mainstays for millions of users. not only do snss provide new avenues for the dissemination of information and news reports, but personal and professional relationships are also forged on platforms such as twitter and facebook. this is achieved by means of public and private messaging, photo sharing and providing hyperlinks in tweets and facebook posts to other online information sources and news organisations’ websites. the importance of studying the impact of twitter on news dissemination has increased as journalists move away from merely using the sns as a news gathering tool but also as a news production tool (garman & van der merwe 2017: 312). sholain govenderbateman postgraduate student, department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa (govenderbatemanrs@ tut.ac.za) dr hilke steenkamp department of journalism, soshanguve north campus, tshwane university of technology pretoria, south africa (steenkamph@tut.ac.za) dr pedro diederichs department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa (diederichspd@tut.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.8 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 124-138 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:govenderbatemanrs@tut.ac.za mailto:govenderbatemanrs@tut.ac.za mailto:steenkamph@tut.ac.za mailto:diederichspd@tut.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.8 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 125 exploring twitter reporting and best practices 125124 boyd and ellison (2008: 211) define snss as web-based services that allow users to create profiles within online environments and select other users with whom they want to connect and whose information they are interested in. although various snss such as facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube share similarities such as realtime feedback and interactive features to promote user participation, “the nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site” (boyd & ellison 2008: 211). twitter poses various advantages within the context of online reporting. not only does the sns provide opportunities for rapid news dissemination, but it also enables reporters and news organisations to signal their trustworthiness to media audiences in terms of providing credible, accurate and reliable news (barnard 2014). this article aims to identify best practices that can be suggested for a traditional news organisation such as eyewitness news (ewn) in order to develop social media strategies that enhance twitter journalism within the context of mainstream newsrooms. it is posited that if there are specific best practices, these guidelines could be replicated by other news organisations to increase and amplify their presence on snss, and specifically twitter, to promote the credibility and image of news organisations. it is postulated that if a news organisation manages its online presence well, it could strengthen its reputation and attract larger audiences that could, in turn, result in more advertising and increased profit margins. social networking sites and journalism although news organisations’ online presence and reputation could be augmented on snss, fake news and miscommunication spread via snss continues to challenge the media industry. both consumers and news producers require increased media literacy and awareness to distinguish between reliable news reports and fake news articles. in this context it is important that reporters maintain an ethical high ground when disseminating news and/or links to websites on twitter. this can only be achieved through proper training related to the verification of news and the dissemination thereof on snss as the news generators, the reporters and the consumers become more digitally literate and take measures not to promote fake news. albeit that fake news is a concern, snss offer various benefits for media audiences and news organisations alike. according to boyd and ellison (2008: 221), since “snss enable individuals to connect with one another, it is not surprising that they have become deeply embedded in [users’] lives”. an example of this is the #feesmustfall south african student protest campaign that started in 2015 and gained rapid momentum on twitter through the use of the hashtag, which was named newsmaker of the year for 2015 by the south african national press club (pretorius 2016). in addition to snss being deeply ingrained in the social fabric of everyday life, joseph (2012: 43) argues that twitter is a powerful tool that is a constant source of story ideas for reporters. benefits include building contacts as well as finding new sources of information. reporters can communicate directly with potential sources through tweets and direct messages, or make requests for information on their timelines which all twitter users have access to. additional uses of twitter for reporters include crowdsourcing, monitoring trends, and being the foremost platform for breaking news (ibid.). 126 govender-bateman, steenkamp & diederichs unlike traditional media that promote the one-to-many news dissemination approach, hill (2010: 8) posits that twitter is a utility device that can serve many models including one-to-many, many-to-one and one-to-one. it is, therefore, imperative for mainstream news organisations that use traditional media, such as radio, print and television as primary platforms to communicate news reports, to embrace snss such as twitter as a reporting tool and additional platform to disseminate news. in a study that examined the twitter practices of 1202 italian journalists, bentivegna and marchetti (2018: 286) found that journalists adapted their journalistic norms to align with the social media “participatory culture”. this was implemented to build their follower base and increase the reach of their news content. in light of this, herrera and requejo (2012: 81) note that organisations can use twitter effectively to distribute news. news organisations must, however, define and identify the objectives of the chosen snss before conceptualising newsroom strategies that will be used to communicate news via snss. reporters and editors alike must take cognisance of the latest trends in news distribution and its associated processes. furthermore, newsroom policies need to be revised, training on snss should be provided, and an awareness of media ethics within the context of twitter reporting should be cultivated to accommodate and reflect the dynamic media landscape (boers et al. 2012; scott 2014). this is supported by neilson (2018: 544) who found that although journalists were under pressure to engage online with media audiences in order to expand their news coverage, those expectations were not reinforced by adequate training, social media policies and resources. media convergence has promoted the merging of different news gathering and production methods. to this extent boers et al. (2012: 54) note that conventional workflows that focus on one main medium are no longer suitable. herrera and requejo (2012: 81) argue along similar lines that news organisations must create new models of news production “that match this emerging paradigm” created by snss. the aim of this is to give snss a primary role in news production, rather than regarding it as a supplementary or inessential journalism tool. sharing stories and links to stories via tweets, as well as retweeting to promote the work of other reporters, can further build the reputation of the reporter and the news agency. according to barnard (2014: 10), sharing stories and links to news agency websites as well as promoting other reporters’ work through retweets and comments, illustrate the role of twitter in “building and maintaining status as a journalist”. in addition, the twitter success of the individual reporter has an effect on that reporter’s news organisation if the reporter is identified on his/her twitter profile as working for a particular organisation. therefore, the level of community engagement and the impact of different social media interactions become increasingly important for news organisations. the constant evolution of the newsroom due to rapidly developing snss such as twitter, facebook and live blogging necessitates research into the use of those sites and reporters’ use thereof. as such, this research employed a social constructivism approach and qualitative research methods to explore how twitter is used by editorial staff in a mainstream south african newsroom, namely ewn. the aims of this article are, thus, to identify the twitter practices of ewn reporters, the ethical implications of 127 exploring twitter reporting and best practices twitter journalism in south africa, and to propose social media guidelines that could be followed when reporters are trained to use twitter as a journalism tool. theoretical framework a combination of communication and information technology theories alongside mass media and cultural studies theories form the theoretical foundation of this article in order to identify the different approaches to the adoption of new technologies in newsrooms. diffusion of innovations the diffusion of innovations theory was developed by rogers in 1962 and is regarded as one of the theoretical frameworks for this research as it provides categories in which to place different user-groups of new technologies and innovations such as snss like twitter. the diffusion of innovations theory contributes to the study of the impact of twitter on the production of news and newsroom routines and it describes the adoption of innovations, with the focus on technological developments, in relation to communication. twitter’s rapidly expanding role as a reporting tool in newsrooms locally and abroad provides motivation for identifying how it is adopted and used by a mainstream south african news organisation. this sns is an example of an innovation that has “trialability” (rogers 1983: 231). the adopter (i.e. reporters, news organisations and ordinary users) is not required to pay a fee to create an account and multiple accounts can be created, updated or deactivated, if and when desired. news organisations can also create social media usage policies as well as update these policies when necessary, thereby adapting to the use of the innovation. although rogers’ theory of diffusion is seen as seminal research, micó et al. (2013: 120) argue that the innovation process is not always predictable, especially in the news organisation context. the challenge of introducing an innovation to a complex news organisation can be minimised by simplifying and centralising the phasing-in of the innovation (micó et al. 2013: 122). this makes a case study of the use of twitter in a single newsroom ideal as other news organisations may then be able to customise best practices related to the use of such an innovation to their individual environments. varied applications of twitter have been included in the production of news in south african newsrooms and this is directly associated with rogers’ categorisations of adopters and attributes that influence the use of specific innovations. with direct reference to ewn’s use of twitter in the newsroom, the 2014 state of the newsroom south africa report notes that the difference between ewn and print publications was “striking” (wits university 2014: 61). the report states that the hourly news cycles for radio and sometimes half-hourly news bulletins may be the reason why twitter was a more natural fit for radio than for print. the evolution of snss the 320 million monthly active twitter account users (twitter 2016) and more than 1.59 billion monthly active facebook users (facebook 2016) indicate that the phenomenon of snss have become central to users’ daily routines (boyd & ellison 2008: 210). 128 govender-bateman, steenkamp & diederichs facebook has a multi-faceted approach to internet usage with users being able to connect to other snss and online tools that include youtube, blogs, instagram and twitter. by using the “share”, “link” and “like” functions, it is easy to create a chain reaction where users spread a message, photograph or video which can reach thousands of connections in a short period of time. in contrast, twitter does not rely on personal connections between users and does not require biographical details as facebook does, or allow for in-depth verbal discourse (hill 2010: 1). instead, the success of twitter is associated with its micro-blogging format. previously twitter restricted users to compile tweets with a maximum of 140 characters, but now offers a new functionality where tweets may be 280 characters (busby 2017). this stands in stark contrast to blog posts that do not have character limits. the platform is also widely used for commercial purposes (pcmag encyclopaedia 2016). it also influenced the political campaigns of donald trump and hillary clinton in the 2016 american presidential elections, with allcott and gentzkow (2017: 212) finding that 62 percent of us news consumers retrieved and read news from snss. twitter journalism the speed and brevity of twitter makes it ideal for news organisations to disseminate “scoops” and breaking news to media audiences (farhi 2009: 1). mcadams (2014: 32) concurs that a tweet’s character limit is the key to it being perfect for sharing news as consumers are able to get headlines and breaking news faster. not only do news organisations have the opportunity to interact with audiences and share information on twitter, they could also embrace the micro-blogging platform as a means of self-promotion. however, mcadams (2014: 33) argues digital skills need to be developed in south african newsrooms to optimally utilise the sns. individual journalists as well as news organisations’ executives must commit to this digital evolution. the power of communicating that an individual journalist now has through the use of twitter emphasises the need for the provision of adequate guidelines and social media policies in newsrooms (wits university 2014: 61). however, the 2014 state of the newsroom south africa report adds that while twitter is now a mainstay of newsrooms, there is no consensus in the country on how it should be used as a professional tool (ibid.). as no definitive south african set of rules govern journalists’ conduct on twitter, du plessis (2014: 21) states that journalists still need to be ethical, credible and fair when working online. pavlik (2013: 183) has a similar view, stating that innovations in news media such as the use of twitter can only be sustained through good research, freedom of speech, accuracy and ethical behaviour. in her study of two major south african newspapers, mail & guardian and rapport, jordaan (2013: 21) indicates that social media and twitter are rarely mentioned in editorial planning meetings. if formalised guidelines on the usage of twitter for reporting existed in newsrooms, as well as a code of conduct for social media use, this would require editors to pay more attention to the sns on which news is shared. 129 exploring twitter reporting and best practices gaps in existing literature the rapid growth of twitter has resulted in numerous studies related to a variety of fields (public relations, marketing, political communication). however, armstrong and gao (2010: 219) note that a more in-depth analysis of the sns is needed to combat declining news industry resources such as staff size and decreased funding. moreover, vis (2013: 29) asserts that the study of twitter and twitter journalism is still gaining momentum and has earned a place as a research topic itself. as researchers and practitioners are faced with the challenge of defining convergence as partnerships between traditional and digital news media organisations increase, this lack of understanding makes it difficult for news organisations to develop and update their news production routines (dailey et al. 2005: 3). addison (2014) argues that social media commentators and researchers focus largely on the technological aspects of networking but a comprehensive analysis of networked communities should be conducted. this is supported by wasserman (2010: 10) who states that the divide between developed and developing countries in terms of access to the internet and new technologies means that academics should be looking at journalism in different contexts as south africa lags behind technologically. although the use of twitter in newsrooms has been the subject of many recent academic studies conducted in newsrooms globally, jordaan (2013: 22) maintains that research in a developing country such as south africa is limited to broad overviews of how snss have impacted newsrooms as opposed to how journalists are using the snss to produce news. furthermore, hermida (2010: 304) asserts that the ever-changing social and cultural habits of media audiences make snss vulnerable platforms that require ongoing research so that news organisations are able to adapt to these changing needs. additionally, hedman (2017:2) states that while journalists tend to adapt their use of snss to traditional news production processes, it is important to distinguish between “social media logic” and “news media logic” in order to optimise the use of twitter as a journalism tool. local research on south african media and twitter usage also tends to be done in the context of development and democracy, for example studying the impact of the use of snss by civilians during protests, rather than focusing on the actual models of twitter journalism used in newsrooms. all of these factors provide motivation for further in-depth studies on south african news organisations’ use of twitter journalism with the focus on working models that would, in theory, function well in a technological, social and editorial context. methodology in this research the authors followed a social constructivism paradigm and made use of primarily qualitative methods to identify the twitter routines of ewn reporters and any best practices that exist in the ewn newsroom. self-administered questionnaires and interviews with senior editorial staff were used to identify the ethical implications of twitter journalism in south africa and to propose social media guidelines that could be followed when reporters are trained to use twitter as a journalism tool. 130 govender-bateman, steenkamp & diederichs the ewn newsroom was used as a case study (punch & oancea 2014: 18). the motivation for selecting ewn was prompted by the lead researcher’s own observations of that news organisation’s reporters’ activity on twitter and the prominence of several of the reporters on the sns. although basic quantitative methods were used to obtain numeric data, the authors used thematic coding to identify themes related to the manner in which reporters at a news organisation utilised twitter as a journalistic tool, their understanding of the platform’s functionality, along with their own meanings and interpretations of the ethical implications of disseminating news on twitter. purposive sampling was used due to the small population that represents the ewn newsroom. as such, the self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all 20 full-time reporters at the ewn johannesburg newsroom and voluntary semi-structured interviews were conducted with four senior editorial staff members. the questionnaire consisted of 25 questions and was divided into four sections. face-to-face, telephonic and e-mail interviews were conducted during the data collection period and were then transcribed by the lead researcher. research also included the observation of twitter accounts which are linked to specific ewn reporters. qualitative data were analysed using thematic coding based on the objectives of the research, including ewn’s social media policy and social media training of reporters. the authors also analysed the responses to questionnaires in order to identify individual reporter’s perceptions of twitter usage in the ewn context. findings sixteen of the 20 ewn editorial staff who were invited to complete the self-administered questionnaire responded (i.e. a response rate of 80 percent). the findings indicate that access to a smartphone device by reporters was an essential part of their working routine as it gave them immediate access to twitter in order to immediately compose updates (tweets) pertaining to breaking news event. all 16 respondents indicated that they had personal twitter accounts. in response to how the use of twitter benefits ewn, seven respondents cited audience interaction, real-time story updates, and being able to verify news by cross-checking several sources on the sns. senior editorial staff interviewed also listed twitter as being valuable for breaking news quickly and interacting with media audiences as news organisations compete for numbers, which translate into profits. some advantages of twitter over radio that were identified by senior editorial staff interviewed included “calling for info from the community” (interview respondent 4) and supplementing on-air radio reports with tweets that expand on the story by including photographs and videos. in addition, interview respondent 4 said that twitter allowed the newsroom to identify trending topics in local and global spaces and to monitor stories being promoted by so-called citizen journalists. ewn broadcasts news bulletins every hour, news headlines every half hour, and breaking news is immediate. therefore, according to interview respondent 4 131 exploring twitter reporting and best practices [w]e try where possible to get the info out on whichever platform we can first. for instance, if a story breaks five minutes before a news bulletin, then the bulletin takes priority over twitter. but if it breaks at ten past the hour, when we still have 50 minutes to go before the next bulletin, we will break it on twitter first. questionnaire respondent 11 added that in the rush to publish stories sourced through twitter, mistakes such as the incorrect spelling of sources’ names and surnames as well as tweeting factually incorrect information could occur. an example of such an error was a spelling mistake found in the tweets collected during the twitter profile observation phase of the research which read: “#xenophobia #alex he says while he still fears for his life (trading from behind the shop’s gate), he must make ends meat” [sic]. while ewn reporters were encouraged to tweet from the official @ewnreporter account as well as their personal account, if a follower of @ewnreporter also follows the reporter, “this [could] lead to people choosing to follow individual reporters and unfollow the official account”, said interview respondent 4. interview respondent 2 stated that ewn was one of the “pioneers of live tweeting in south africa” through coverage of court cases and live news events. interview respondent 2 added that “twitter [was] now part of the news gathering process and [was] seen as an absolute must to remain competitive”. both reporters and editors cited verification of information as a key concern when using twitter whilst reporting news. questionnaire respondent 5 said, “[t]here are moments when one would like to be brutally honest about one’s views on twitter, but to do so would be detrimental to both your brand, and that of your employer”. questionnaire respondent 8 added that due to the character limit on twitter, reporters “[cannot] include context; people read tweets isolated and make wrong assumptions”. derived from the questionnaire, the authors were able to establish that reporters faced various ethical dilemmas as they conducted their daily work duties. this included the following main themes: the need to separate personal views on matters; and maintaining objectivity in order to make decisions in short time frames. the immediacy of twitter allows impulsive behaviour, which may lead to tweeting subjective information and/or personal standpoints that are unrelated to news events. nine reporters made comments related to decreased accuracy with tweets as a result of time and space limitations on twitter. responses from the interviews corroborate the findings from the questionnaire with interview respondent 4 stating that, [t]he main challenge is the verification of information – both in terms of info going out and in terms of info picked up on twitter by our journalists. with the increasing speed of news dissemination, often the information concerned is not properly verified. additionally, interview respondent 2 said, [a]s we have seen a wrong step on twitter can and does cost careers. so this is a field we have to navigate carefully. senior staff members interviewed said that mistakes ranging from typing errors to more serious errors tended to occur when reporters used twitter to report timeously https://twitter.com/hashtag/xenophobia?src=hash https://twitter.com/hashtag/alex?src=hash 132 govender-bateman, steenkamp & diederichs on a news story. “the key here is correct these quickly and to learn from them,” said interview respondent 2, adding, “[a] big challenge is how we approach correcting factual errors on twitter and whether to delete incorrect tweets (and deal with the abuse that comes with doing that), or leave them on twitter with a correction attached”. the abuse referred to includes the reaction that some sns users have when a reporter corrects or deletes news tweets. users may interpret the correction or deletion as an attempt to hide information or hidden biases of the reporter or news organisation. both questionnaire and interview respondents indicated that factual errors arising from the speed at which a reporter needed to live tweet news stories or break major news stories was the biggest ethical challenge faced by ewn editorial staff. making judgement calls regarding breaking news tweets without having to first obtain approval from a senior or editor, placed the burden of responsibility on junior editorial staff. this trend is supported by findings that dutch journalists were increasingly relying on snss such as twitter and facebook as reliable sources of news and information (internationale nederlanden groep 2015: 4). findings from the questionnaire and interviews showed that ewn provided adequate training for staff members. there was, however, a need for further training that is focused on speed and accuracy when under pressure whilst live tweeting stories. although the fast pace of newsrooms may limit the amount of time allocated for training, editorial managers should dedicate more time to training journalists on how to use twitter as a reporting tool alongside news production for the organisation’s primary news medium (scott 2014: 9). the majority of the respondents (93.75%) who completed the self-administered questionnaire were aware of the ewn social media policy and had an understanding of the policy. the policy itself is detailed in giving reporters clear explanations of twitter’s terms and functions and includes examples of how to use the sns to tweet news and enhance reporting. based on the findings there is, however, scope to make recommendations with regard to a more comprehensive social media policy. the findings showed that a combination of adequate training and a detailed social media policy were in place to provide guidance to ewn reporters and editorial staff. by means of a combination of on-the-job learning, benchmarking of other news organisations’ social media policies, as well as consulting with social media legal experts, ewn’s use of twitter has evolved as the sns has grown. discussion and recommendations in terms of benefits, the ability to cross-check several sources was mentioned as a key advantage, and seven respondents cited audience interaction, real-time story updates and being able to verify news through the sns. interview respondents 2 and 4 also listed twitter as being valuable for breaking news quickly and enhancing audience interaction and numbers as news organisations compete for prominence and eventual profit because of more advertising revenue. although beckett and mansell (2008: 6) warned of the threat of snss to the journalism landscape, by embracing twitter and using it on a regular basis to disseminate news, the ewn editorial team has made 133 exploring twitter reporting and best practices twitter an essential news gathering and reporting tool. another benefit pointed out by the respondents was that instead of pitting radio against twitter, both could be used effectively due to the following characteristics: different audience profiles; and the ability to supplement a story that breaks on one platform by using the other platform. other benefits emerging from the research include measuring the progress of a story as well as identifying big stories from other news organisations and building contacts. ewn’s editorial routines and practices showed that newsrooms should have at least one functional official twitter account from which all reporters on duty could tweet while covering news stories for their news organisation. one key finding was that all reporters had to balance multiple twitter account activity as part of their daily work practices. again, the need for multi-skilled reporters is emphasised as key to the successful use of snss as part of the news production process (wallace 2013: 100). reporters are continually under pressure to tweet from multiple accounts, including personal and official ewn accounts in order to build their personal accounts as well as the news organisation’s account. this needs to be done accurately in order to maintain credibility. however, the ewn editorial management team does not compel reporters to tweet from both personal and official accounts. the segregation of personal versus official (the news organisation’s verified) twitter accounts, also ensures that media audiences are made aware of the fact that a reporter tweets in his/her personal capacity when tweeting from a personal account. conversely, when including his/her initials or his/her twitter handle in a tweet sent by the official (verified) ewn twitter account, it signifies that the reporter is “officially” representing ewn and disseminating factual information. as established during the interview phase of the research, ewn editorial management are aware of the impact and importance of tweeting in order to promote the news produced by the editorial team. however, there is no set practice related to the development of personal twitter accounts in conjunction with activity on the formal ewn accounts. findings related to live tweeting, followers and interaction suggest there is a link between media audience interaction and the number of tweets produced. this leads to increased exposure and increased followers, which help to promote the news produced if a reporter tweets from both official and personal accounts. a study by olausson (2017: 3) refers to the “celebrified journalist” and explores the relationship between promoting a news brand and the celebrity or popularity of a journalist. therefore, ewn should make use of the link in order to build their followers and expand the reach of their news stories. lastly, one important motivation for the organisation to promote the personal accounts of their reporters is, as bruns and highfield (2012: 4) state, “[…] although this may add to an already busy work schedule, individual journalists are better placed to engage in actual conversations with their audiences through social media such as twitter”. the following are proposed additional twitter guidelines and best practices that were formulated for news organisations such as ewn: ♦ the basics of journalism such as factual correctness of information and the spelling of names and surnames should be verified before a tweet is posted. 134 govender-bateman, steenkamp & diederichs ♦ the issue of verifying information is closely related to ethical standards. the policy should overtly clarify that information must be verified in order for both the news organisation and the reporter to remain credible and trustworthy. ♦ reporters should attend a training workshop where deleting tweets, creating lists and advanced searches are explained and practised. ♦ emphasis should be placed on transparency when reporters are trained to delete tweets and to post apologies alongside corrected content. ♦ simulated news scenarios should be used, as part of a workshop’s learning outcomes, to teach reporters how to deal with character limitation and the pressure to tweet factually and grammatically correct tweets. ♦ simulated news scenarios that specifically focus on the dissemination of exclusive information (breaking news) should be introduced in training workshops. ♦ reporters should have a list of possible scenarios (i.e. news events) where twitter reporting takes precedence over radio or vice versa. this would assist junior reporters in their decision-making skills. ♦ even if a reporter is under pressure to tweet breaking news, information and/ or photographs that may contain sensitive information should first be sent to the news editor or in-house law expert. their advice should be sought before tweeting sensitive information. ♦ the policy should clearly explain the steps reporters should take to rectify factually incorrect information. the statement could read: “do not simply delete tweets that were sent in error or tweets that were factually incorrect. rather post an apology and formulate a new tweet alongside it that clearly explains the error.” ♦ a basic guide or document should be formulated by using previous twitter “faux pas” (errors) and conduct a workshop where these errors (spelling mistakes, the deletion of tweets and the dissemination of ethically sensitive information or photographs) are discussed in great detail. scenarios pertaining to ethical, legal or editorial dilemmas should be discussed in this document and/or workshop. ♦ self-regulation should be explained to reporters in greater detail. for example, provide a definition of self-regulation alongside concrete examples thereof. ♦ the notion of accountability when disseminating information on snss should be defined in the social media policy. ♦ although self-regulation is common practice in journalism, reporters should be made aware that editors or content managers will monitor their activities periodically to ensure that they uphold principles such as fair and unbiased reporting. ♦ twitter arguments and rules regarding the use of expletives, diversity issues and sexual content should be discussed with all reporters on a continual basis. 135 exploring twitter reporting and best practices ♦ the social media policy should include specific means that could be used by reporters to report instances of online abuse or bullying anonymously. ♦ personal development courses such as multi-skilled reporting, the use of equipment and software-specific social media training should be held more regularly or self-study guides should be disseminated to reporters via the organisation’s intranet or via e-mail. ♦ the creation and dissemination of multimedia content should receive greater attention. this could be attained by either organising workshops or formulating basic guidelines. ♦ the policy should explain to reporters how to prioritise their work output when faced with having to choose between tweeting and another activity such as taking a video. ♦ concrete definitions of personal tweeting versus professional tweeting should be included in the policy. examples of the two different practices should be given to reporters and discussed at a workshop. ♦ the use of personal and organisational twitter accounts should be explicitly described in the policy. for example, clear guidelines when to include the news organisation’s official twitter handle or when to only include the reporter’s initials in a tweet should be formulated. ♦ audience interaction should be increased by reporters by, for example, replying to tweets, retweeting followers’ comments and/or replying to direct messages. training opportunities on the use of applications that produce analytics reports should also be introduced as a means to assist reporters to increase meaningful audience engagement, leading increased ewn news story consumption. ♦ reporters should be given guidelines on how often they should create tweets that encourage interaction and comments from followers including opinions, descriptive tweets which include atmosphere at a news event, and questions related to news stories being covered by the reporter. conclusion identifying best practices for twitter journalism is valuable to all news organisations. this research sought to identify best practices that could be suggested for a traditional news organisation, eyewitness news (ewn), in order to develop social media strategies that work best in mainstream newsrooms. the authors propose that best practices identified in this research could be used as guidelines and replicated by other news organisations to enhance their presence on snss, and specifically twitter, in order to promote the credibility and online reputation of news organisations. as such, it is postulated that if a news 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[online]. available at: www. journalism.co.za/stateofnewsroom [accessed on 15 march 2015]. https://about.twitter.com/company https://about.twitter.com/company https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2012.741316 https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048512461764 http://www.journalism.co.za/stateofnewsroom http://www.journalism.co.za/stateofnewsroom 178 negotiating water conservation communication through indigenous media abstract water conservation efforts have become increasingly important as spiralling population figures and snowballing economic development continue to pile pressure on fresh water resources across the world. in south africa there are a number of water conservation initiatives to ensure optimal use of dwindling water resources. but not all citizens, particularly in rural communities, consider water conservation a social priority. the apathy has been attributed to the failure of current conservation communication to galvanise people in a way that they come to regard conserving water as a critical factor in achieving sustainable water use. the water conservation efforts rely heavily on persuasive communication, which encourages rural residents to take on new behaviours adjudged beneficial by the promoting agencies, often without seeking their commitment and understanding or appreciating the sociocultural dynamics underpinning their water use behaviour. this study used the participatory action approach to explore the effectiveness of indigenous media in engaging and mobilising rural residents on water conservation initiatives. given its grassroots nature and interpersonal attributes, indigenous media provide a communication approach with the potential to negotiate the issues around water conservation. keywords: indigenous media; development communication; mass communication; mass mediated messages; participatory action research; communication campaign; water conservation introduction curbing the escalating water demand driven largely by accelerated economic and population growth remains a pressing challenge confronting water resource management in south africa (dwa 2012). it has been projected that water consumption in south africa could reach 30 billion cubic metres per year by 2030 (dwa 2013). with population and economic growth beginning to run headlong into limited renewable supplies of potable water, pressure on water resources is likely to become more acute especially in large urban municipalities where household water demand already constitutes a significant share of total water demand (smith & visser 2014). many of the biggest municipalities, such as johannesburg, cape town, durban and pretoria, dr kevin onyenankeya indigenous language media in africa, department of communication, north-west university, mafikeng campus, mmabatho, south africa onyenankeyakevin@ gmail.com prof. abiodun salawu indigenous language media in africa, department of communication, north-west university, mafikeng campus, mmabatho, south africa abiodun.salawu@nwu. ac.za doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 178-193 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:onyenankeyakevin@gmail.com mailto:onyenankeyakevin@gmail.com mailto:abiodun.salawu@nwu.ac.za mailto:abiodun.salawu@nwu.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.12 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 179 negotiating water conservation communication are already under intense water supply pressure as the reservoirs providing them with water cannot cope with the increasing domestic and industrial demand (boccaletti et al. 2010). recent droughts in parts of the country have compounded the nation’s water stress. in response, the government has introduced a variety of water demand management (wdm) initiatives to encourage the efficient use of water resources. water demand management is arguably one of the most popular strategies deployed to tackle rising water consumption. according to tsatsi et al. (2010: 24), water demand management represents “the adaptation and implementation of a strategy by a water institution or consumer to influence the water demand and the usage of water to meet any of the following objectives: ♦ economic efficiency, ♦ social development, social equity, ♦ environmental protection, ♦ sustainability of water supply and services, and ♦ political acceptability”. an integral part of wdm is water conservation which, according to tsatsi et al. (ibid.), encompasses “the minimization of loss or waste of water, the care and protection of water resources and the effective and efficient use of water”. corral-verdugo (2002: 1) regards water conservation as one of the most significant “pro-ecological activities to be modelled and developed” by man to ensure the prudent and sustainable use of water resources. the ultimate aim of wdm and water conservation is to persuade consumers to embrace sustainable water consumption behaviour (willis et al. 2011). however, communicating wdm objectives and galvanising south africans to embrace water conservation initiatives have been fraught with difficulties. this is not peculiar to south africa; in fact, promoting environmental issues such as water conservation is one of the biggest challenges confronting global, regional and national governments. this is because efforts at engendering a harmonious relationship between people and their natural surroundings is often seen as a “pipeline problem” in that it is difficult for people to realise that their actions impact on the environment (gee 2002). water conservation is normally a relatively non-salient issue, given that many people consider water to be a relatively inexpensive resource of unlimited availability. this is more so when there is no first-hand experience of water scarcity, shortage or drought that could result in collateral damage. the absence of short-term damaging effects gives a false sense of security, which means people are not likely to take environmental issues seriously until there is a crisis. kempton and holland (2003) argue that a first-hand experience of environmental damage can reinforce an “environmental identity and make it salient”, and eventually influence attitude. the task of educating people about water resource and water demand management issues poses an enormous challenge and will become increasingly more pronounced (onyenankeya et al. 2017). south africa, like many other countries, uses a combination of strategies, including public 180 onyenankeya & salawu communication campaigns, education, social marketing and entertainment education to promote environmental conservation, including water conservation. public communication campaigns a public communication campaign forms part of the strategic communication approach employed by the government to promote water conservation activities. public communication is typically a deliberate and planned form of communication aimed at informing or influencing a large number of individuals, usually within a specific timeline. public campaigns utilise a broad range of communication activities, including a collection of “mediated messages” on several channels (rice & atkin 2009; rogers & storey 1987). the definitive aim of public communication campaigns is to influence a change of behaviour in individuals, families or communities to an expected end (weiss & tschirhart 1994). in an attempt to ensure optimal success, public campaigns usually use a combination of interpersonal and community-based communication channels (coffman 2002). the department of water and sanitation and some water utilities, for instance, use a mix of communication activities including high-visibility materials such as exhibitions, workshops, events, brochures, newsletters, or posters to reach out to water users (onyenankeya et al. 2017). these promotional materials create an opportunity to expose the target audience to water conservation messages. for example, the national water week and the women in water programme are some of the direct communication programmes that the directorate of water conservation use to create awareness about water conservation. although this form of direct public communication campaigns engender interactions and feedback, such interactions are often between individuals or small groups and communication is mainly formal (ibid.). besides, information from public communication is top-down and rarely take into consideration the social dynamics of the receiver of that information. some have argued that the impact of contemporary public communication campaigns is modest (hornik, in howarth & butler 2004). education environmental education is considered a key strategy in bringing about positive change with regards to how people relate to nature. this is because knowledge is generally regarded as an essential prerequisite for an individual’s behaviour. having a well-informed citizenry who are generally aware of, and understand, the water situation is not only key to developing water conservation behaviour, but also necessary in ensuring social adaptability in the face of water scarcity (onyenankeya et al. 2017). for instance, educating and arming people with the know-how for saving water is considered a basic and vital process in changing their behaviour toward a “conservation goal”. knowledge transfer takes prominence in most water conservation educational initiatives, especially those targeting children as change agents. this is consistent with several studies that suggest that education, especially when targeted at learners, 181 negotiating water conservation communication is a vital avenue of promoting water conservation. middlestadt et al. (2001) posit that availing students in high school of “specific behavioural knowledge” concerning ways to conserve water can inspire water conservation behaviour. young learners are also said to be particularly receptive to water conservation education and awareness as they would not yet have accumulated the inefficient habits practiced by adults over years of entrenchment (mckenzie 2014). knowledge acquired from early education or information provides power that enables informed decision-making and, hopefully, better choices regarding the subject of information. by educating present or future water users about efficient water use, the established culture of bad practices gradually comes into contact with a new, more efficient culture which catalyses the process of migration from one culture to the next. for this reason, mathipa and le roux (2009: 258) argue that schools must “provide learners with the opportunity to learn more about the environment and its natural resources and to cultivate proenvironmental behaviour and skills that can be carried through into adulthood”. this thinking seems to underpin the 2020 vision for water education programme, which is aimed at not only educating learners but making them change agents in their families and communities. however, environmental education programmes for learners are often designed from outside the learners’ environment. according to hart (2013: 3), “too many children are naively parroting clichés from someone else’s environmental agenda about an environment entirely removed from their own experiences”. in order for children’s participation to be more impactful their involvement must emanate from their immediate environment and must be planned to recognise their competencies and unique strengths (ibid.). to achieve the global participation of citizens in solving environmental problems, hart (2013:10) advocates environmental education that is not only fundamental but built from local knowledge and participation by the people. in other words, environmental educational programmes should not only relate to the local environment but should also be based on the problems the residents themselves have identified (ibid.). this highlights the imperative for conservation education developers to ascertain the specific kinds of “knowledge” that successfully stimulates behaviour. social marketing a social marketing campaign is a common method that governments and utilities in south africa deploy to effect behavioural change among water users (mckenzie 2014). social marketing is “the application of marketing principles to shape markets that are more effective, efficient, sustainable and just in advancing people’s well-being and social welfare” (lefebvre 2012). the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing is that while the former is used mostly for promoting socially beneficial practices or non-profit programmes, the latter is intended to promote profitable interests (meyer & dearing 1996). the aim of social marketing is to influence individuals “to change their behaviour” (servaes & lie 2015: 130). the application of social marketing techniques to conservation is intended primarily to create awareness about water scarcity issues and ultimately influence a change of attitude or other desirable social outcomes. mass media, especially television 182 onyenankeya & salawu (which combines visual and auditory components), is considered a potent and effective tool for driving public participation as well as education and awareness. but, as howarth and butler (2004: 43) observe, using commercial marketing theory to promote environmental issues like water conservation does not always work because “marketing water conservation is very different animal to marketing shampoo”. in their study, which sought to ascertain the efficacy of marketing “campaigns on water-use attitudes and behaviour” of customers in tilehurst, england, howarth and butler (ibid.) found that a commercial marketing campaign only succeeded in removing “some of the ignorance of the need to reduce water use and raising awareness”. however, it was unsuccessful in stimulating the actual desire to decrease water consumption and therefore did not trigger any real need to conserve water. although social marketing using mass media is effective in educating and creating awareness, the method has been criticised for its tendency to employ “any means necessary” to achieve its objectives including deceiving and manipulating people into certain behaviours (buchanan et al. 1994). moreover, it has been criticised for its non-participatory approach, which excludes stakeholders from articulating their own problems and defining the possible line of actions. hart (2013) argues that social marketing has a “brazen tendency” to market and foist on individuals and communities a “universal environmental dicta and ecological good behaviour” determined from outside their milieu. this negates the aim of communication, which ought to be to support people to carefully assess their “social reality” in order to make the necessary behavioural modifications. participatory approach theorists argue that adjustments or change can only come about when people are actively involved in development interventions and have a sense of ownership. therefore, media and communication efforts must be sensitive to the problems and the situation at hand (höivik & luger 2009: 322). also, the application of social marketing to conservation has been found to be limited in achieving behavioural change (wilhelm-rechmann et al. 2014). entertainment the impact of entertainment education has long been established, especially in health communication where studies have demonstrated that people’s attitude and health behaviour can be changed through planned entertainment (slater & rouner 2002). entertainment education has been defined as “the pro-social messages that are embedded into popular entertainment content” (moyer-gusé 2008: 408) and are purposely designed and implemented “to both entertain and educate in order to increase audience knowledge about an educational issue, create favourable attitudes, and change overt behaviour” (singhal & rogers 2004: 5). according to moyer-gusé (2008), entertainment education could bring individuals to a new level of knowledge where they would be able to adjust their attitude, beliefs, behavioural intentions and actual behaviour. entertainment education is premised on the social cognition theory (sct), which assumes that individuals learn behaviour through observing and copying “role models”, particularly those promoted in mass media (bandura 2009). moyer-gusé and nabi (2010) assert that media entertainment such as narratives can enable people to 183 negotiating water conservation communication also identify others’ mistakes and eventually modify their own behaviour in order not to suffer the undesirable outcomes of such mistakes. behaviour modelling and selfefficacy do not occur only at the individual level; in fact, singhal and rogers (2004: 9) posit that entertainment education can enable communal or group efficacy where community members come to believe that they are able to implement “courses of action required to achieve collective goals”. entertainment education differs from marketing in that although it engages the community, it is not exclusively engaged in changing the behaviour of the individual. servaes and lie (2013: 11) argue that entertainment education “takes the social context into account while seeking diffusion and community ownership of ideas and innovations”. singhal and rogers (2004) hold that purposefully designed entertainment can inform, educate and influence social change and at the same time be a commercial success. educational communication channelled methodically through radio or television programmes are significantly more effective than when it is inserted as commercials or public service announcements that may encounter negative reception from the public (mcguire 2001). moyer-gusé (2008) attributes the relative efficacy of entertainment education in bringing about change to the fact that these messages are presented as narratives. the ultimate aim of entertainment education is to generate overt behavioural or “social change” (greenberg et al. 2004). in south africa, top sports personalities and television stars are frequently used to disseminate water conservation messages. for instance, the rand water-wise water conservation and education campaign uses cartoons and comics to educate learners about water issues. but it remains unclear how entertainment efforts may affect beliefs and attitudes beyond modelling and vicarious reinforcement (slater 2002). social media social media has become an important vehicle for promoting awareness about water conservation, especially by utilities. the major attraction of social media as a promotional tool lies in its interactivity, tailoring and narrowcasting abilities (rice & atkin 2012). in terms of reach, immediacy, usability, durability and frequency, social media appears to have an edge over conventional media (agichtein et al. 2008). social media enables the design of tailor-made messages that reflect the individual’s interests and capabilities (noar et al. 2009). for instance, municipalities, water utilities or even non-governmental organisations can use social media to engage with their audiences in a more productive way by designing tailor-made and appropriate water conservation communication (o’neill & boykoff 2011). in contrast to the monologic transmission model of social marketing, social media functions in a two-way communication format that provides convergence for a plethora of sources and multiple receivers (pavlik & macintoch 2015). for some utilities and municipalities, social and mobile technologies provide a platform for dialogic communication. one of south africa’s biggest water utilities, rand water, has been leveraging social media to create awareness among learners about the need to value water and use it wisely through its water-wise campaign. however, experts have raised issues regarding the trustworthiness and reliability of information, as well as the disparity of information, which is presented on social media 184 onyenankeya & salawu (flanigin & metzger 2007). some have argued that social media is only effective for those who are educated and financially capable of procuring social networking tools and gadgets. for the illiterate and poor in rural communities, the use of social media as an instrument for creating awareness or changing attitudes and thus behaviour to use water more wisely is still in its heuristic stage. despite the intrusive nature of social media it remains an important tool to create awareness. the overarching goal of current water conservation awareness and education campaigns in south africa is to influence and change south africans’ attitude and behaviour towards water in order to promote more efficient water use. to achieve this goal, agencies and utilities have relied mostly on “traditional, long established and widely accepted and often qualitative, measurable methods and techniques such as communication campaigns, social marketing techniques, surveys, broadcast media methods and mass entertainment education techniques” (servaes & lie 2013). clearly, using a media-centred model in engaging commercial and domestic water users to embrace water conservation practices has its advantages; especially in building salience around a particular issue or innovation in society and enabling people to be aware and understand the ramifications of those issues (atkin & wallack 1990). but, as highlighted in the howarth and butler study (2004), while promotional campaigns appear effective in reducing or removing ignorance regarding the need to reduce water use and raise awareness about water conservation, they do not appear strong enough to motivate individuals to actually walk the talk. for instance, television, even with is well-known “high appeal for entertainment and awareness raising on specific issues, is not equally effective in changing audience attitudes and behaviour, unless used in conjunction with other channels” (mefalopolous 2008: 125). the same limitations apply to radio, apart from community radio, which allows for more participatory and development-oriented programming. it has been argued that the “technical” media has ceased to play the dominant role as “champions of innovation”, especially in rural communities (singhal & rogers 2001). mody (1991: 91) holds that “media-based communication attempts are effective to the extent that their process of message design approximates dialogue in interpersonal communication”. a study by onyenankeya et al. (2017) that investigated the water conservation attitudes of rural and peri-urban residents in south africa found that “rural and peri-urban residents are yet to develop a social ethic of water conservation essential in creating sustainability of resource use”. this suggest that existing water conservation communication strategies are yet to “resonate with this very influential population” (onyenankeya et al. 2015: 23). no doubt concerted education and awareness campaigns around water issues are required to build community knowledge and support for water conservation. if everyone should be involved in achieving a sustainable, country-wide conservation practice, there is a need for a new approach that entails a basic grassroots public outreach – a methodology that is more qualitative and participatory in nature (servaes & lie 2013). this article argues that engaging the rural community to see the need to change in the face of scarce water supplies and increasing demand requires not just communication to inform and persuade but communication to foster mutual understanding and collective action. 185 negotiating water conservation communication the need for indigenous communication before the advent of contemporary mass media, many societies relied on a traditional or indigenous communication system. in africa there exists a variety of communication modes, including folk drama, storytelling, music and dance, which are used for information dissemination and entertainment. indigenous media is defined as “any form of endogenous communication system which by virtue of its origin from, and integration into a specific culture, serves as a channel for messages in a way and manner that requires the utilization of values, symbols, institutions, and ethos of the host culture through its unique qualities and attributes” (panford et al. 2001: 15601). while indigenous media is described in a number of ways, including “oramedia” (ugboajah 1985) or “folk media” (panford et al. 2001), experts agree that indigenous media are endogenous or rooted in the culture of the communities where they are “produced and consumed” and help in reinforcing the values of such societies (ugboajah 1985: 166). melkote and steeve (2001: 252) describe folk media as “products of local culture, rich in cultural symbols, and highly participatory”. they are “visible cultural features often quite strictly conventional, by which social relationships and a world view are maintained and defined” (ugboajah 1985: 233). indigenous communication has a much wider audience as it can reach those who do not read or write (oyesomi et al. 2017). indigenous media uses interpersonal communication, which attempts to talk to the people, solicit their support and partnership, and encourage them to voluntarily embrace expected behaviours. indigenous media does not compel individuals to take on new behaviour adjudged “beneficial” by the promoting agencies and governments but instead people are encouraged to participate in constructing what is beneficial to them. calhoun (2002) insists citizens must freely participate in arriving at decisions on issues of mutual importance. for citizens to participate in such deliberations, however, they must have equal capacities (shabani 2003: 49). this presupposes that the structure for deliberation must take into account the conditions in which the thought and language of the people are dialectically framed (freire 1972: 61). traditional media often communicates messages to audiences using the local dialect with entertainment. ugboajah (1985, in nyamnjoh 1996: 10) holds that indigenous media as oral media in local languages not only “speak to the common man in his language, and idioms, dealing with problems that are directly relevant to his situation”, but can also provide a codification of reality which can be used by participants in analysing their situation (ibid.). because traditional media easily connect with the lived experiences of the general population it is a potent platform for disseminating messages around conservation issues. chari (2016: 221) posits, “indigenous media have the ability to integrate the socio-economic and linguistic milieu of indigenous communities and their historical locus in searching for indigenous solutions to indigenous problems”. the use of local dialect helps to mitigate semantic noise, which is inevitable in communication (wood 2016: 22). in india, indigenous media has been found to be effective in fast-tracking rural development (kumar 2006). it has been argued that indigenous media promotes two-way communication essential in cultivating a conscious conservation ethic. 186 onyenankeya & salawu this is more so as indigenous knowledge on conservation already exists. according to struwig (2010: 199), “traditional conservation practices suggest that african agricultural, harvesting, forestry and hunting practices were designed in a way to conserve”. one of the indigenous communication platforms that has demonstrated huge potential for natural resource conservation is folk theatre. chari (2016) writes that folk theatre was effective in galvanising the people of zimbabwe into action for the national tree planting campaign. in cameroon, participatory theatre was used to dissuade residents in the korup and banyang-mbo area from taking part in the environmentally harmful practice of using pesticides and dynamite to kill fish (inyang 2016). similar conservation behaviour change was achieved in papua new guinea using folk theatre (ibid.). from the above, it is evident that indigenous media modes such as folk theatre, song and dance can offer a cost-effective vehicle to communicate messages about water issues and stimulate the desired conservation action. according to servaes and lie (2013: 130), “techniques such as storytelling and drama provide platforms to communicate the change process”. storytelling is becoming an increasingly meaningful tool in development interventions (bell 2010; fog et al. 2010) because “stories challenge our linear ways of thinking and can have real enabling power” (servaes & lie 2013). methodology this study utilised the participatory action research (par) approach. par takes place in a native setting, uses indigenous knowledge, and seeks “shared ownership” of the research project in order to analyse social problems and jump-start a collective community action. mefalopolous (2008) notes that human beings naturally want to maintain the status quo and are typically apprehensive of any suggestions demanding adjustment of deep-rooted beliefs, habits or practices. therefore, to bring about sustainable change people must “see the need and the related benefits, and take an active part in that change”. as pointed out by höivik and luger (2009: 322), “even the best-intentioned campaigns will fail if the local population is unwilling or unconvinced if the aim is to bring about fundamental change in deep-rooted cultural habits”. in this study, par was utilised to determine the role of and assess indigenous communication strategies such as dialogue, dance and traditional drama in advocating attitude and behavioural change among rural dwellers in gaga, a rural community in south africa’s eastern cape province. first, in order to extract a more nuanced perspective on participants’ perception of and attitude to water conservation and water issues, a focus group session was conducted involving seven purposively selected residents (four females and three males aged between 16 and 65). the sampling frame focused on families who have a shower and bathing basin installed in their homes. thereafter, ten in-depth interviews were conducted with five female and five male participants. the interviews enabled the researchers to identify entrenched social, contextual and cultural dynamics underlining residents’ water beliefs and attitude to conservation. both focus group interviews were conducted in isixhosa, the language commonly used in the community. 187 negotiating water conservation communication following the interviews, a door-to-door survey was conducted involving 51 randomly selected households in the community. the survey was administered using four trained xhosa-speaking assistants, and only one respondent in each household could answer the questions. thereafter, 45 people who participated in the earlier survey were invited to a “water day” at the gaga community hall. in attendance were the ward counsellor and the manager in charge of water services in the local municipality, who presented a 30-minute talk on water generation, purification and distribution. thereafter, he fielded questions from participants. this was followed by a dance and folk theatre production. the drama was written and performed by locals who worked with the thematised water problems, including the misconceptions around water scarcity and conservation. the drama was in isixhosa and made use of local songs, motifs and values associated with responsible behaviour and etiquette. at the end of the presentations, the same questionnaire administered during the initial survey was distributed to the participants to fill in with the assistance of four research assistants. results eleven percent of the participants who completed the second survey were of the view that south africa has sufficient water resources. this indicates a significant shift in position from the previous survey, where 57% of participants held this view. according to one of the participants, what he took away from the drama was when one of the actors said, “eish! even our water is captured by our neighbours”. similarly, the proportion of those who were of the view that city dwellers consume more water and should conserve more water declined from 58% to 11%. this suggests that the dialogue with water officials and the theatre presentation, which focused on the need for everyone to save water, may have influenced the belief that water conservation is the responsibility of urban residents. there was also a significant decline in the percentage of those who held the view that water scarcity was as a result of mismanagement or incompetence on the part of municipal managers. ten percent agreed with the statement, “water scarcity is as a result of mismanagement and incompetence of municipal managers”. this is in contrast to 45% in the earlier survey. interestingly, more than half of the participants (52%) disagreed with the statement that south africa will face a water scarcity crisis in future. one explanation for this view could be the belief that south africa has an abundance of water. many participants were of the view that the available water resources were sufficient to meet future needs, if the resources are competently and judiciously managed. when asked to describe the impact of the folk theatre with regards to their understanding of the water situation in south africa, many of the participants stated that they were now better informed on water issues. with regards to what they felt was the important lessons from the event, the three overarching responses that emerged were “water costs money to produce” (46%); “saving water is everybody’s business” (33%); and “we should use water wisely” (20%). the majority of the participants expressed a willingness to save water and be water-saving champions in their households. 188 onyenankeya & salawu discussion as evidenced from the findings, the participants stated that their understanding of water issues was enhanced by the dialogic and theatrical engagement. listening to the talk by the water officials on the challenges in providing water, and watching the dance and drama, which emphasised the need for individuals to help conserve water, the participants indicated that they had arrived at a new level of knowledge where they were able to take voluntary actions. bamberg and möser (2007) hold that the ability of individuals to behave responsibly towards the environment is largely influenced by the amount of knowledge the individual has about environmental problems. the folk drama used the language and idiomatic expressions that the people are familiar with, which helped to break down abstract concepts to something real and present, thus enhancing clarity and understanding. prior to the application of the indigenous media strategies of dance, traditional drama and dialogue, more than half of the participants held the belief that south africa has infinite water resources and 58% also believed the onus to conserve more water lies with city dwellers. but, with the crucial facts emanating from the drama and dialogue, the participants were able to change their opinions. for instance, almost all the participants were unaware that south africa was sourcing fresh water from neighbouring countries. the folk theatre was able to connect participants emotionally to their “broader socioecological systems” (heras & tàbara 2016). as indicated by the findings, the majority of the participants now knew that water was not only limited in supply but also cost money to provide; thus, everyone should participate in conserving this scarce resource. the dramatisation of the water issues using familiar motifs and symbols not only enhanced sense-making but stimulated actions. because dance and traditional drama is familiar to the participants and the message speaks to the problem identified by and reflective of the participants’ social context, they were able to arrive at what moyer-gusé (2008) describes as a new level of knowledge that convinced them of the need to bring about a change in their water conservation habits. this is regarded as transformational participation (abdulla 2016: 462). conclusion the findings of this study suggests that indigenous media, dance and folk theatre, in particular, are not only effective in raising awareness and educating rural people about water issues but they are also a potent tool in breaking down misconceptions and the complicated issues around water conservation. this study foregrounds the social and psychological dynamics that underpin water conservation practices but, more importantly, it highlights the need for water conservation communication programmes to be tailored to address not only the needs of the people but also to take cognisance of diverse contextual issues. water conservation should be seen as a joint responsibility and people should freely and voluntarily accept and commit themselves to conservation. as höivik and luger (2009) point out, only when people willingly adopt and implement a “conservation ethic” and embrace water conservation as a way of life, the long-term supply goals of water conservation will be met. to bring 189 negotiating water conservation communication about a change in behaviour, where the individual comes to regard water conservation as a lifestyle, will involve active participation. much as the conventional, top-down centralised mass media system remains 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(2010: 1) further observe, characterised the veterans’ actions as “mugabe’s land grab” carried out by an “unruly, violent mob” supported by mugabe’s “thugs”. scoones et al. (2010: 1) argue that this “story is far more complex than the generalisations of the media headlines”. even though 14 years have passed since that incident, zimbabwe continues to be the subject of intense and emotive debates both locally and internationally (mbeki 2013; chikane 2013; hanlon et al. 2013; scoones et al. 2011; blair 2011). in august 2013, following the announcement of zimbabwe’s july 31 election results, former south african president thabo mbeki (2013: 61-62) expressed concern that african intellectuals were failing to give african perspectives on contentious african issues. mbeki’s observations were informed by what he regarded as “a very intense and sustained campaign to discredit the elections before they took place”. in his view, clearly … the intention was in the event that the elections resulted in a victory for president mugabe and zanu-pf, they would obviously be unfair. in the event that they resulted in the election of morgan tsvangirai and the mdc, then they would be free and fair (ibid.). mbeki further argued that although zimbabwe has been a major issue on the international media and politics … africans still have not quite understood zimbabwe. i think it is your task to change that, so that we understand ourselves better (2013: 61-62). moving from the premise that journalists constitute the intellectual class, this article interrogates whether or not south africa’s city press, a self-proclaimed “distinctly african” newspaper, has given “african perspectives” on zimbabwe, as opposed to the euro-american hegemonic views. by “african perspectives” the author refers to notions and perspectives that are cognisant of african history and culture. 125 searching for ‘african’ perspectives informed by bennett’s (1995: 294) observation that to speak of the political role of the media is not an abstract undertaking, and that this can be done “only through a study of the role played by the media in concrete, historically determined political conjunctures”, and that to study these, “it is necessary to deal not only with the media but the political issues at stake in those conjunctures”, this article was inspired by a need to identify and study major political issues and challenges in the first decade (1994-2004) of south africa’s democracy. crime (common and political), hiv/aids and the zimbabwean crisis were identified as the major political challenges that received widespread media coverage during the 20 years of democracy (calland 2006: 190-191; sparks 2003: 85; jacobs & calland 2002: 2-4). however, in this article attention is paid to the zimbabwean crisis in which mbeki played a central role as a mediator between the conflicting ruling party, zanu-pf, and the opposition movement for democratic change (mdc). while reference is made to some south african newspapers that reported and commented on zimbabwe’s challenges, the focus of this article is on city press. qualitative content analysis (seeking meaning, not frequency of the message) was applied, studying city press’ editorial comments and individual black journalists’ columns and opinion pieces focusing on the zimbababwean crisis. editorials and opinion pieces serve as guidelines to the publication’s norms (bennett 1995: 303). by doing a content analysis of the editorials and opinion pieces, the objective was to establish city press’ official and political stance on the zimbabwean crisis. it was also hoped that columns and opinion pieces by city press’ individual black journalists would shed light on their stance on this issue. the city press content studied covers the years 2000 to 2004, the period when the zimbabwean crisis began, and the end of south africa’s first decade of democracy. subsequently, books specifically dealing with the zimbabwean crisis since it began, up to the year 2014, are referred to. the article begins with a brief history of city press as a contextualisation and rationale for choosing the newspaper as a case study. this is followed by a brief historical background to the genesis of the zimbabwean crisis, and how city press responded. this is then followed by the analysis of the handling of the zimbabwean crisis by city press, using afrocentricity – which will be defined later – as a theoretical tool of analysis. the article ends with concluding remarks. city press – a context and rationale city press was established in 1982 (whitehead 2007: 6) with phillip selwynsmith as the first editor. percy qoboza succeeded him in 1983, until his death in 1988. archbishop desmond tutu’s hope, that “city press would interpret reality as blacks know it and express their aspirations”, indicates that there were expectations that its story-telling would be informed by african experiences and realities 126 simphiwe sesanti (mbhele 2003: 8). in response, the newspaper identified itself with the struggle of the oppressed by positioning itself as “the voice of the voteless masses” (sibiya 1992: 1). it “fought for the poor and the underdog” and “fearlessly” took up cudgels against government, the military and the police, when necessary (blow 1992: 6). consequently, the newspaper was “harassed, threatened with censorship and on numerous occasions … faced closure by the authorities” (sibiya 1992: 1). when he took over the driver’s seat, former city press editor vusi mona (2001: 8) noted that city press was a “quality, serious black newspaper which tries to reflect on issues of substance”. in october 2004, the newspaper’s motto changed from “the people’s paper” to “distinctly african” (tsedu 2004: 1). in launching the “distinctly african” city press, the then editor, mathatha tsedu (2004: 1) stated that among the challenges facing south africa in its first decade of democracy was the country’s relationship with the rest of the continent. tsedu said that south africans, having been “indoctrinated with the belief” that they were different from the rest of the africans on the continent, internalised this belief and saw themselves “not as africans, but as south africans”. to address these challenges, according to tsedu, a “distinctly african” approach would mean that in south africa the issues that enhanced and threatened the african identity would drive city press’ coverage. considering that mbeki argues that african intellectuals are not telling the african story, this article interrogates the extent to which city press told the zimbabwean story in a “distinctly african” way. but in order to appreciate the zimbabwean crisis, a background to the crisis needs to be given. the zimbabwean crisis: brief historical background to appreciate the zimbabwean war veterans’ invasion of land belonging to white farmers in 2000, it is useful to revisit incidents that preceded the move. early in 2000 the zimbabwean government made constitutional proposals, contained in a draft constitution prepared by a commission appointed by the government, meant for adoption before elections scheduled for april 2000 (hartnack 1999: 8). among these proposals was the zimbabwean government’s intention to redistribute “millions of hectares of white-owned land” (sapa-afp 1999: 4). the draft constitution “adopted a clause, likely to spark an outcry, allowing the government to seize land for resettlement without paying compensation”, the compensation to be paid being only for buildings and other structural improvements (mandizvidza 1999: 4). before the draft constitution was presented to the public, critics argued that the process was flawed and open to manipulation by the ruling party (sayagues 1999: 15). when objections were raised, the government promised to offer zimbabweans a chance to reject the draft in a referendum (sapaafp 1999: 4). when a referendum was held in february 2000, the government’s draft constitution was rejected – 55% voted against it, while 45% voted for it 127 searching for ‘african’ perspectives (sayagues 2000: 6). the “no vote”, according to sayagues, was an indication of “the end of zanu-pf’s yoke over the country”. the results were “hailed by many as the beginning of the end of mugabe” (pretorius 2000: 11). makunike (2000: 11) observes that on the day of the referendum, white zimbabweans, who had “always stayed aloof of political involvement since independence in 1980 – thronged the polling stations to protect their interests and property”. that was because, according to makunike, for white zimbabweans a “no” vote was the only way they could protect their privileges. the zimbabwean referendum was followed by the presidential elections, which were also contested by the opposition mdc, led by morgan tsvangirai. when mugabe won, mail & guardian (2002: 22) reported that mbeki’s response to the outcome of the elections had to “confront the reality that robert mugabe is back in power and should not be there”. according to mail & guardian, mbeki had to “appreciate that it is vital that mugabe absent himself, or be removed, from government in zimbabwe as quickly as possible”. the call for mugabe to “be removed” was an echo of the call by western countries for “regime change” in zimbabwe. alluding to this in his autobiography, a journey, former britain’s prime minister tony blair (2011: 229) states: people often used to say to me: if you got rid of the gangsters in sierra leone, milosevic, the taliban and saddam, why can’t you get rid of mugabe? the answer is: i would have loved to; but it wasn’t practical since in this case, and for reasons i never quite understood, the surrounding african nations maintained a lingering support for him and would have opposed any action strenuously. the african leaders’ resistence to “regime change” – instigated by the west – which blair “never quite understood” was driven by resentment, chikane (2013: 108) observes, of any activity that suggested that someone, particularly western countries, wanted to tell them what to do with their lives. what united them most was the ‘regime change’ obsession of the us and britain that threatened the very existence of these leaders or the positions they held. if the major powers could determine who should be part of the government of zimbabwe then all of the countries in the region were vulnerable. with reference to the “regime change” discourse, chikane (2013: 104) notes that [a]nother challenge was that the media, which had chosen to bid for the ‘regime change’ allowed no room for contrary views on the issues. any dissenting voice was silenced by the dominant voices that were given the space to articulate their views. 128 simphiwe sesanti thus, chikane (2013: 95), states, the campaign made ‘regime change’ not just the desired outcome for the facilitator but the ‘right’ one. in a sense, this became their measuring stick for success. anything else was not acceptable. that is why even shaking hands, holding hands or smiling with president mugabe when the facilitator was received at the airport made headlines and was seen as reprehensible. the “facilitator” that chikane refers to is mbeki, a task that was given to him in march 2007 by the extraordinary summit of the southern african development community (sadc) heads of state and government, mandating him to facilitate negotiations between the zimbabwean government and the opposition (hanlon et al. 2013: 96). to appreciate the shaking of hands and smiles cited by chikane, it is best to refer to veteran south african journalist allister sparks (2003: 268): [a]s international outrage mounted at this wilful destruction of a oncepromising country, mbeki and some other leaders of the 14-nation southern african development community (sadc) flew to the victoria falls to meet with mugabe. the following night i cringed as i sat in my washington apartment watching a cnn newscast that showed mbeki standing beside mugabe holding his hand and smiling … the sickening scene appeared on screen again and again over the following days and weeks as cnn rolled over its news items the way 24-hour news channels do. i know african men hold hands, it is a cultural thing the way frenchmen kiss cheeks, but here was mbeki with his british education and sophisticated understanding of the western world, the super-diplomat and skilled persuader, allowing this impression of smiling support for mugabe’s outrageous actions to be broadcast globally. mbeki did not accept calls to put pressure on mugabe. instead, after a week of silence, he accepted mugabe’s victory (forrest & pressly 2002: 7). in may 2003, mbeki along with the then nigerian president, olusegun obasanjo, and the then malawian president, bakili muluzi, met with mugabe and tsvangirai in a bid to resolve the zimbabwean crisis (kindra & masunda 2003: 2). remarking on mbeki’s continued efforts on zimbabwe, wetherell (2003: 15) said that the visit “failed to shift mugabe from entrenched positions, thus exposing the much-vaunted new partnership for africa’s development (nepad) as a toothless totem”. in response to charges that his mission to zimbabwe was a failure, mbeki (2003: 31) charged that his “detractors” were “firm in their conviction that we have some divine right to dictate to the people of zimbabwe”. he also pointed out that his “detractors” believed that if south africa issued “instructions” to the political 129 searching for ‘african’ perspectives leaders of zimbabwe, this leadership would obey what the “baas” (an afrikaans word for “boss”) across the limpopo told them. mbeki rejected such a position. mbeki’s “quiet diplomacy” was condemned by mail & guardian (2003: 32), and dismissed as “a national disgrace” by sunday times (2003: 20). a mail & guardian editorial (2001: 26) criticised mbeki’s approach as a singular failure. instead of confronting mugabe’s “crude, brutal and idiotic” rule, mail & guardian argued that mbeki had shown a timid approach. according to the newspaper, mbeki should have pursued a more “robust policy towards mugabe”. mail & guardian (2000: 20) held the view that since south africa supplied “most of zimbabwe’s electricity and fuel”, mbeki’s government could close zimbabwe down in a month. mbeki resisted the media pressure, preferring to carry out the sadc’s mandate to facilitate negotiations. his facilitation culminated in the signing of the global political agreement in 2008, which saw the mdc leader, morgan tsivangirai, becoming zimbabwe’s prime minister, and mugabe president in 2009. in 2013, elections were held, and mugabe was declared the winner. considering the concern of mbeki and other african politicians that the media did not take into consideration “african perspectives” on the zimbabwean crisis, and that city press had a record of a pro-liberation struggle, and later identified itself as “distinctly african”, this article’s major research question is: how, if at all, did the coverage by city press of the zimbabwean crisis consider “african perspectives”? below, the coverage by city press of the zimbabwean crisis is outlined. zimbabwe – an african problem requiring african solutions after noting that mugabe had supported the war veterans, and also arguing that their action was a justifiable protest against the unfair ownership of land by the country’s minority whites, city press, in an editorial (2000a: 14), objected to what it perceived as mugabe’s encouragement of lawlessness. the newspaper further argued that mugabe himself was partly to blame for the crisis because he allowed land reform to be delayed by 20 years after zimbabwe’s independence. the editorial also blamed white zimbabweans, noting that they had “made little effort to reciprocate [mugabe’s] outstretched arm of friendship” and added that “[i]n fact, some of them still think of themselves as europeans first and zimbabweans second”, something which “generated a lot of disappointment and resentment on the part of black zimbabweans”. mona (2000a: 12) saw the forceful eviction of white landowners not only as a reflection of resentment on the part of black zimbabweans, but “as chickens coming home to roost”. mona (2000a: 12) further argued that “commentary about the current land invasions in zimbabwe is informed by an arrogant and pathetically ill-informed understanding of the history of that country”. in mona’s view, a “reflection of where zimbabwe has 130 simphiwe sesanti come from becomes necessary” because “an impression is created that the black zimbabweans who have invaded white-owned farms have sunk to the lowest level of human existence – and this in a manner unique to indigenous africans”. as “[o]utrageous as the invasions are”, mona noted that “the truth is that similar or worse incursions happened in that country a century ago” (ibid.). this was in reference to the land dispossession of zimbabweans by british settlers led by cecil john rhodes. mona also stated that at the lancaster house conference in 1979, in negotiations between the then rhodesia’s rulers and zimbabwean freedom fighters, britain undertook, among other things, to raise money to buy white-owned farms which were to be used for land redistribution once the new government came into power, an issue which “britain now has a dim recollection of”, which “mugabe has not forgotten” (ibid.). supporting mbeki’s diplomatic approach to zimbabwe, city press (2000b: 12) endorsed the sadc decision not to publicly condemn mugabe, arguing that the problems in zimbabwe “would require great diplomatic skills”. against this background, echoing its support for mbeki’s diplomatic approach four months down the line, city press in another editorial (2000c: 8) argued that the african continent had its “own unique problems, different from those of europe”, adding that “mbeki understands his continent much better than those who have one foot in africa and another in europe”. the city press editorial (2002a: 8) further made it explicit that it subscribed to a view that zimbabwe was an african problem needing an african solution. this view was expressed on the occasion of a deal, brokered by nigeria’s obasanjo, between zimbabwe on the one hand, and britain and other unspecified european countries on the other (seepe 2001: 2). the agreement reached in september 2001 entailed a commitment from the zimbabwean government to halt the land invasions, whilst britain and other european countries undertook to pay the cost of compensating white farmers (city press 2002a: 8). commenting on this development, city press (2002a: 8) in an editorial stated that “obasanjo, mandated by other african governments to enter into discussion with britain in an effort to halt the land invasions, has done africa proud”. this was because, the editorial further noted, obasanjo had “shown the rest of the world the commitment of african leaders to bring about lasting peace”. in city press’ view, “[t]he zimbabwean accord clearly shows that african leaders can work towards providing african solutions to african problems”. almost two years later, the then city press deputy editor, khathu mamaila (2004: 18), recalled that the “west conspired to overthrow former congolese leader patrice lumumba and imposed a despot mobutu sese seko”, a man who was “corrupt and plundered the wealth of the congo, but he remained in power for almost three decades because his puppet regime did not threaten the interests 131 searching for ‘african’ perspectives of the west”. mamaila (ibid.) further pointed out that the angolan president, jose eduardo dos santos, was running a corrupt and undemocratic regime, milking the country dry while “enjoy[ing] his millions in america” with no negative reaction from the united states because western interests were not threatened. it was for these reasons, mamaila noted, that the readers of new african, a london-published magazine, had voted mugabe “the third greatest african of all time”. it was also for these reasons, mamaila stated, that mugabe received a thunderous welcome at orlando stadium in south africa when he attended the funeral of the anc leader walter sisulu. mamaila (ibid.) argued that mugabe represented “the anger of many africans against the west, in particular colonialism in all its forms”. he represented “tenacity, the undying and unconquered spirit of those willing to die on their feet rather than live on their knees”. the view expressed by mamaila had been expressed three years earlier by city press columnist sonti maseko (2001: 9) who said: mugabe has certainly struck a chord among people and gained the recognition as the icon and champion of the struggle for land rights. and as an african leader who can stand up to western influence and interests. the support for mbeki’s diplomatic approach in zimbabwe on the part of city press was, however, not synonymous with the support for mugabe’s tactics. supporting mbeki, not mugabe when mugabe’s zanu-pf party won the national elections in march 2002, and south africa accepted the outcome, city press (2002b: 8) in an editorial called mugabe’s victory “problematic”. the newspaper said this amid reports of intimidation and violence in zimbabwe. but, unlike “some western leaders like britain’s tony blair” who laid all the blame on mugabe, city press (2002a: 8) added that the violence had emanated both from mugabe’s and tsvangirai’s supporters. although supportive of mbeki’s approach, city press (2001: 8) argued that “[o]ur approach to the zimbabwean crisis – that of quiet diplomacy – sometimes creates a perception that we apply double standards” because south africa had a “tendency to denounce mugabe’s dictatorial grip on power and later we heap praises on the man for ‘the perfect way he handles the controversial land issue’”. according to city press (2001: 8), “[t]his perception was reinforced by statements from the sadc – of which we are a part – who visited that country to assess the state of affairs”. when sadc objected to the commonwealth heads of government’s decision to extend the suspension of zimbabwe, city press (2003a: 18) in an editorial criticised it, arguing that the southern african body gave the “impression that it is a regional ‘boys’ club’ in which its members are intent on defending each other and, at all costs, will avoid rebuking the conduct of one of their own”. the newspaper further 132 simphiwe sesanti argued that “[w]hile mbeki has in the past few months pursued a policy of quiet diplomacy in an effort to steer mugabe towards a path of democracy, there is nothing to suggest that this policy has worked”. city press (2003b: 18) asserted that “[q]uiet diplomacy seemed to be playing into mugabe’s hands” because “[o]ur strategy of quiet diplomacy appeared to have been misunderstood – rightly or wrongly – by mugabe to mean support for his political excesses”. revisiting mbeki’s approach to the zimbabwean crisis, city press (2004: 18) in an editorial stated that while it was “fine” for south africa to choose “the path of quiet diplomacy – or non-megaphone diplomacy – in its dealings with the increasingly dictatorial regime of robert mugabe”, the approach “however, cannot be an excuse to obfuscate when wrongs are being done”. the editorial was referring to the deportation of a cosatu delegation that visited zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission. the delegation had met with the mdc in zimbabwe. city press asserted that the expulsion of the cosatu delegation was “tantamount to saying to those zimbabweans that they are not free to meet with whoever they wish to” and that the move should be seen in the light “of a government hell-bent on oppressing its own citizens”. having considered how city press approached the zimbabwean crisis, the next section deals with defining afrocentricity, the theoretical framework that has been utilised in this article as a tool of analysis. afrocentricity afrocentricity is “a theory rooted in the history, culture, and worldview” of africans (okafor 1993: 201). culture in this context is understood as a “total way of life of a people” with surface structures and deep structures (myers 2003: 122). the “surface structure”, myers (ibid.) further points out, refers to the level of sensory observation, which is “subject to relatively rapid change, constrained by time and space”, while the “deep structure” refers to the “philosophical assumptions” which “can be preserved in the conceptual systems”. in terms of african culture, myers (ibid.) states, the deep structure refers to “what is persevered and developed” and considered the “essential qualities of the african worldview, a view concerned with metaphysical rather than purely physical interrelationships”. reference to “essential qualities” on the part of afrocentricity provokes charges of “essentialism” (ibid.). responding to this criticism, the leading theorist of afrocentricity, molefe kete asante (2003: 45) argues that while he “may answer to being essentialist, i am not an immutabilist”. the difference between the two, asante (ibid.) argues, is that in the case of the former is the recognition that there are “certain essential characteristics that identify the contours” of the african community, while in the latter there is a denial of dynamism and change. while some changes may and do occur in culture, asante, like myers cited above, 133 searching for ‘african’ perspectives argues that “cultures do exist and in fact persist for centuries with many basic charateristics hardly changed” (ibid.). this article recognises that among africans there are different ethnic cultural practices, but simultaneously common african cultural practices that cut across ethnic lines. it is the common cultural features which are referred as “african culture”. afrocentricity was chosen because of its emphasis on the need to take into cognisance african culture and history when examining african issues. it embraces both myers’ and asante’s argument about the resilience of african philosophical worldviews. in the next section, using afrocentricity as a theoretical framework, the author examines whether or not city press’ editorial columns, individual journalists’ columns and opinion pieces took into cognisance african history and culture in their commentary on zimbabwe’s struggle for land repossession. this is done by examining zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and african culture’s position with reference to land. reference to “african history”, in this article’s context, means examining whether the media’s discourse on zimbabwe has been sensitive to the history of dispossession of africans in zimbabwe by the british, and africans’ struggle to regain their land. reference to “african culture” means examining whether or not, in scrutinising the zimbabwean crisis, the media has been sensitive to traditional african culture with regards to land. zimbabwe’s struggle: an afrocentric analysis beginning with the land occupations that took place in 1997, hanlon et al.’s (2013: 72) narrative dispels the notion that mugabe was behind the war veterans’ occupation of white farmers’ land. they point out that the government strongly opposed the occupations, sending state and zanu-pf vice president simon muzenda to svosve to try to persuade the occupants to leave. at goromonzi, police were sent to evict the occupiers, burn their temporary shelters, and arrest the leaders of the war veterans (ibid.). even in 2000, when war veterans led zimbabwean nationals to occupy more land, “they were driven out violently by anti-riot police in late 2000; even war veterans were beaten” (hanlon et al. 2013: 76). hanlon et al. (ibid.) further note that [r]realizing the scale of the occupation and the farmers’ unwillingness to move, zanu-pf was forced to accept. but this was not a zanu-pf initiative – it was the war veterans in opposition to zanu-pf. so, claims by wetherell that mugabe unleashed his forces as retaliation to the “no vote” in the referendum are false. 134 simphiwe sesanti city press, to a certain extent, showed appreciation and sensitivity to the history of zimbabwe with reference to the conflict about land in that country. it was due to this that mona (2000b: 10) argued that “commentary about the current land invasions in zimbabwe is informed by an arrogant and pathetically ill-informed understanding of that country”. what this meant, therefore, was that mona was calling for commentary on the zimbabwean crisis that was based on a historical context. not only did mona call for such an approach, but led by example by reminding his readership that the 1979 lancaster house conference, where negotiations between the zimbabwean liberation forces and the ian smith government took place, concluded with an undertaking by the british government to raise money to buy white-owned farms, which were to be used for land redistribution so that zimbabwean blacks could own land. at the lancaster house conference, against the liberation movement’s will, a provision stipulating that the land could be acquired by the government only on a “willing seller, willing buyer basis” was inserted into the new zimbabwean constitution (ankomah 2000: 15). that provision was to be in effect for ten years – from 1980 to 1990. this meant that the zimbabwean government could only acquire land from the white farmers if they were willing to sell any piece of land. while mona, the then editor of city press, in his personal capacity endorsed mugabe, the newspaper was cautious. it appreciated the land question as a legitimate issue around which zimbabweans rallied, but it regarded the delay in addressing the land issue as mugabe’s fault, pointing out that mugabe waited for 20 years after independence before addressing the issue. on this score, city press failed to appreciate the historical developments in zimbabwe. there is, according to the former secretary general of the african union, amara essy, a historical factor that played a significant role in the delay to resolve the land issue in zimbabwe (essy, in ankomah 2002: 27). according to essy (ibid.), when the ten-year period of the lancaster house conference agreement had expired, “it was african heads of state who told him [mugabe] to be quiet, because we were fighting against apartheid in south africa”. essy (ibid.) notes that the african heads of state prevailed on mugabe to delay his land reforms so as not to “scare the white people of south africa”, since at the time there were serious negotiations taking place between the liberation movements and the south african government. in his biography thabo mbeki – the dream deferred, mark gevisser (2007: 445) alludes to this historical reality. but in the book, unlike essy, who singles out african heads of state for asking mugabe to delay dealing with the land question, mbeki singles out the anc as having persuaded mugabe “to defer land reform so as not to scare white south africans away from agreeing to majority rule”. city press failed to make these connections between mbeki’s approach to zimbabwe and this 135 searching for ‘african’ perspectives historical background. city press also failed to contextualise the land issue within african cultural value systems. african culture on land and human relationships emphasising that mugabe has “never said that white africans cannot own land or property in their country”, osabu-kle (2001: 47) states that what mugabe has been saying is that “land ownership has to be compatible with african culture”. in osabu-kle’s view mugabe’s move on the land question was an act of “only enforcing an african culture without which he cannot be accepted as an african” (ibid.). the question then is: what does african culture say about land ownership? mqhayi, (1974: 12-13), a south african historian and poet, explains that land among africans was never sold but belonged to the nation as its treasure. williams (1987: 171), an african-american historian, having observed that according to african culture “the land … cannot be sold or given away”, further says that african culture held the view that the land belongs to no one. it is god’s gift to [hu]mankind for use and as a sacred heritage, transmitted by our forefathers [forebears] as a bond between the living and the dead to be held in trust by each generation for the unborn who will follow, and thus to the last generation. abrahams (2000: 374-375), a south african poet and novelist, echoes this: for africans for instance, land will always be more special than for most other people: land is their life, given by god in trust to sustain the tribe and the community. man [humankind] cannot own land in the way europeans see ownership. if it mothers all who depend on it for life, how can anyone see it in terms of exclusive ownership? remarking on the land question, rodney (1981: 41), an african historian, points out that where a few people owned the land and the majority were tenants, this injustice at a particular stage of history allowed a few to concentrate on improving their land. in contrast, under communalism every african was assured of sufficient land to meet his own needs by virtue of being a member of a family or community. in calling upon his government to “go back to the african custom of land holding”, former tanzanian president, julius nyerere (in shivji 2000: 42-43), argued against the sale of land, reasoning that in a country such as this, where, generally speaking, the africans are poor and the foreigners are rich, it is quite possible that, within eighty or hundred years, if the poor african were allowed to sell land, all 136 simphiwe sesanti land in tanganyika would belong to wealthy immigrants and the local people would be tenants. but even if there were no rich foreigners in this country, there would emerge rich and clever tanganyikans. in other words, nyerere was saying that the african law on land was to protect the poor against abuse by the rich. in arguing that this is an african worldview on land is not the same as saying that africans still practice it. they do not, and this is due to their disempowerment through colonial dispossession. the invocation of this african value system is recognition of an independent traditional african philosophical outlook before the colonial conquest. this african cultural perspective on land was missing in city press’ editorials, black journalists’ columns and opinion pieces. while city press showed an appreciation of the historical context on the zimbabwean issue, it also exposed a lack of appreciation for the african cultural context in mugabe and mbeki’s personal relationship that impacted on their political relationship. gevisser (2007: 439) observes that mugabe and mbeki had a father-son relationship, the same way mbeki had that kind of relationship with zambia’s former head of state, kenneth kaunda. mugabe, according to gevisser (ibid.), treated and cared for mbeki as if he were his own son. this story was told by mbeki himself to gevisser, according to the author. gevisser (ibid.) observes that the “context in which mbeki was telling me this made its implications clear: his latter-day appeasement of mugabe was rooted at least in part in an acute sense of the role the two men had played” in mbeki’s personal and political life. conclusion this article’s point of departure was to interrogate whether or not city press took into consideration the history of zimbabwe’s liberation struggle for land, and african cultural values on land. this was done in response to the observation by the former south african president and mediator in the zimbabwean crisis, thabo mbeki, that african intellectuals, with particular reference to the zimbabwean crisis, were not giving african perspectives on african issues. applying the afrocentric theoretical framework, which posits that any analysis that deals with africa and africans must take into cognisance african history and culture, this author analysed, by means of content analysis, city press’ editorials and its black journalists’ opinion pieces and columns to examine whether african history and culture – in search for “african perspectives” – were taken into cognisance. the author concludes that while this was done – to an extent – on zimbabwe’s history of the liberation struggle for land, analysis of african cultural values on land was completely missing. failure to do this on the part of city press is failure to fulfil the media’s role to educate. 137 searching for ‘african’ perspectives references abrahams, p. 2000. the coyaba chronicles: reflections on the black experience in the 20th century. kingston: ian randle publishers. ankomah, b. 2000. why mugabe is right … and these are the facts. new african, may 2000: 15. ankomah, b. 2002. amara essy: ‘we will deliver the african union in durban’. new african, june 2002: 27. asante, m.k. 2003. the afrocentric idea. in: mazama, a. 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content marketing; mobile marketing; mobile content marketing; mobile marketing communication; patrons; kaplan; branding; brand messages introduction i think the biggest change, and the one we’re already starting to see take shape, is that globally the majority of internet usage will be done via a mobile device and for most people the mobile web will be their primary ‒ if not their only ‒ way of experiencing the internet (rojas, in adler 2014). this prediction by peter rojas, formerly associated with the technology blog gizmodo and currently with engadget, became a reality when google announced in 2015 that more than half of all searches are now done on mobile devices. this development has huge implications for branding in that brand messages might soon be seen mainly by users on a company’s mobile website or device (sterling 2015). prof. charmaine du plessis department of communication science, unisa (dplestc@unisa.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 31-47 © ufs mailto:dplestc@unisa.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.3 3332 charmaine du plessis regrettably mobile marketing has been hamstrung by the contrast between its intrusive nature and mobile users’ essential need for privacy that enables them to manage their social lives with their smartphones. issues around trust and reaching the right target audience therefore persist (cf. kelley’s (2014) observation that 80% of mobile marketing efforts are either unavailing, abandoned or irreconcilable with the brand’s overall strategy). mobile marketing has nevertheless made some progress over the years in that companies realise how important it is to have a mobile marketing strategy. today marketers use multimedia mobile platforms (mobile applications) and mobile internet browsers supplemented by social media applications and platforms, such as quick response (qr) codes, to reach the target audience in a more personalised manner (santos 2015). although marketers are “mobile-ready” and appreciate that mobile phones facilitate more personal communication, they are often not up to date with the persistent evolution of mobile technologies (shankar et al. 2010). mobile applications are also expensive for brands to build, maintain and track (bergen 2014). attempts to understand mobile marketing (m-marketing) have produced studies in a wide range of areas. these include consumer acceptance and experiences (bauer et al. 2005), consumption (chan-olmsted et al. 2013), privacy (almuhimedi et al. 2015), adoption (sanakulov & karjaluoto 2015), value (andrews et al. 2012; wang 2015), campaigns and advertising (bart et al. 2014), a variety of mobile applications (harrison et al. 2013), mobile commerce (sharif et al. 2014) and theory building (pousttchi & wiedemann 2006). marketers should not only understand evolving mobile technologies, but also be aware of the unique nature of a mobile platform and know how to become part of consumers’ daily lives. as consumers increasingly access the internet via their mobile phones to complement their lifestyles, the research of ghose et al. (2013) indicates that consumer behaviour is different on a mobile platform; therefore, the same mobile message will not be equally arresting to all users. mobile marketing from a mobile commerce (m-commerce) perspective is defined as “any kind of business transaction, on the condition that at least one side uses mobile communication techniques” (pousttchi & wiedemann 2006). however, this narrow perception that it is mostly advertising on a mobile distribution platform has widened its essential communication role as consumers expressed a need for more value. this realisation presents a unique opportunity for marketers to promote personalised communication. since smartphones have more capabilities that can accommodate so-called pull as well as pushing techniques, this article proposes some building blocks to engage mobile users who have already expressed an interest in a brand. a mobile phone is perhaps not the ultimate platform to reach new customers, but rather a personalised way of retaining and engaging interested parties. accordingly this article seeks to investigate an underexplored area of research and fill a gap in academic literature by understanding how issues around trust, relevance and value could be addressed by mobile content marketing, with particular reference to pulling techniques as classified by kaplan (2012). 3332 building blocks for mobile content marketing the article is structured as follows. firstly, mobile marketing is positioned within the marketing communication and content marketing fields to clarify its scholarly foundation. thereafter, it is explained how mobile content marketing could benefit mobile marketing communication when pulling patrons, followed by a discussion of the research question and research methodology. lastly, based on the findings, three building blocks for mobile marketing as content marketing are proposed with some concluding remarks. positioning mobile communication given the many perspectives on mobile marketing in the media today, it is important to clarify its scholarly foundation in support of the building blocks which are proposed towards the end of this article. mobile marketing is no longer viewed as mere m-commerce, but as an important part of marketing communication, which subsumes a wide range of communication possibilities, such as collecting customer relationship management (crm) data, streaming media, messages and providing downloadable content. all forms of media can now be integrated by this means to enable electronic mobile-word-of-mouth (ewom), a type of mobile viral marketing (castronovo & huang 2012). palka et al. (2009) define mobile viral marketing as “a concept for distribution or communication … a type of marketing [which] relies on consumers to transmit mobile viral content via mobile communication techniques and mobile devices to other consumers in their social sphere and to animate these contacts to also transmit the content”. pousttchi and wiedemann’s (2006) view that mobile marketing is part of the fourth p of the marketing mix, namely promotion (otherwise known as marketing communication), is still widely influential and focuses on using various communication instruments to communicate with consumers. former criticism of its lack of personalisation is laid to rest by recognising mobile marketing as a communication instrument of the marketing communication mix (constantinides 2006). kaplan’s (2012: 130-131) highly cited classification of mobile marketing is relevant to marketing communication in that it clearly identifies the trigger for communication with mobile users based on what is known about them. he classifies this trigger according to strangers, cohort groupies, victims and patrons. a company that is relatively ignorant about mobile users reaches them by means of push technologies with a general message sent to the masses (referred to as strangers). another trigger for communication is to pull mobile users in order to get them to opt-in to receive information about the brand (referred to as cohort groupies since not much information is known about them). however, personalised communication remains a challenge with this group. the third group refers to communication with mobile users who are known to the company and are receiving pushed information without first asking permission (referred to as victims). the fourth group includes mobile users who have given permission to be contacted and who provided personal information for more custom-made communication with them (referred to as patrons). patrons are thus 3534 charmaine du plessis the right mobile users to communicate with in a more personalised manner and to be enticed to pull more information about the brand. pulling techniques are especially extendable to patrons (cf. beard 2014). as a mobile phone assists consumers to find relevant information it could play a valuable role in not only enhancing brand awareness and understanding but also holding users’ attention via engagement. content marketing is ideal to address mobile messages to patrons as it uses unobtrusive pulling and not merely pushing techniques to attract consumers to brand content (cf. liu & huang 2014). numerous perspectives about content marketing still proceed from practitioners’ epistemologies and perspectives (cf. myllys 2016; du plessis 2015; symons 2015; holliman & rowley 2014). there is nevertheless consensus that content marketing involves pulling techniques to attract readers to brand stories about content they are already searching for (du plessis 2015). pulizzi’s (2012) point of view that storytelling is the key to successful content marketing is still widely acknowledged. he states that the company consistently creates and pulls “valuable, relevant and compelling content” to entice some positive behaviour from a customer or prospect. in this regard schimke (2015; 2016) argues that since a mobile phone is a personal item, mobile marketing communication within a content marketing approach has much potential to become trusted or perceived as having relevance and value. although content marketing as a marketing paradigm is academically argued, there is no scholarly literature on what mobile content marketing is. the issue of optimising mobile experience for content marketing by practitioners and professional bodies such as the content marketing institute (cmi) is, however, a topic of much interest. for lack of a formally accepted definition, mobile content marketing is conveniently defined as “a mesh between content marketing (creating useful content to attract customers) and mobile marketing (marketing to mobile device users)”. content is thus optimised for mobile to attract and engage existing and potential customers (west n.d.; bedor 2016). push vs pull mobile communication there is still no final answer as to whether marketers should rather use push or pull mobile communication, simply because there are so many options to consider in this regard. unni and harmon (2007) explain that push, in the context of traditional marketing, refers to the use of trade promotions to ensure that stocks will last, while pull uses mass advertising and consumer promotions to create demand for a brand. however, within the context of location-based advertising and other forms of nontraditional marketing, push refers to outbound communication originating from the marketer as a direct-response marketing message or advertisement, whereas pull is inbound communication that is initiated by the consumer, based on interest. for mobile communication it could include push notifications through mobile applications, application of fresh features, or promotion alerts. on the other hand, mobile users are pulled to relevant information and resources, for example by retrieving coupons after texting a keyword (moulin 2014). as noted, numerous perspectives exist as to whether to use push or pull communication via 3534 building blocks for mobile content marketing mobile platforms. for example, arguments draw attention to each offer’s different benefits depending on entry barriers, target consumer, industry and the available budget. an earlier study by okazaki (2004) found that users are more receptive to pulled mobile communication because it is informative and entertaining, while pushing messages could be perceived as annoying. similarly a mobile study by lai et al. (2012) points towards users favouring pulling techniques to become involved in mobile shopping. since push mobile communication is still deemed evasive, unsolicited and even inclined to malicious advertising in some instances of free mobile applications, pulling mobile communication to patrons could be an acceptable alternative. kaplan and haenlein (2011) refer to a unique combination of push and pull communication “from the sender to followers, from followers to followers and from receivers to external information sources” in a microblogging environment. this view could also be extended to a mobile environment in that information that is pushed to mobile users may be read but not really have relevance and thus be easily forgotten. however, when messages are considered relevant they are pulled by the mobile user for additional information. hagel et al. (2010) identify three levels of pulling within an organisational performance context, namely access, attract and achieve. if their views are considered within a mobile context, with particular reference to mobile content marketing, users could be constantly connected to a “flow of knowledge” by accessing a relevant mobile community and resources to which they are attracted based on their interest and the opportunity to participate. attracting the right kind of users to this “flow of knowledge” could result in the right kind of interactions, which could lead to more knowledge about the brand that could prove useful in the present contexts as well as in future strategies. in addition, vee et al.’s concept (2008) of gravitational marketing could also be applied to pulling mobile communication at the point of letting users opt in to receive communication to be able to connect with them as patrons. said authors propose that a list based on direct-response and relationship marketing be drawn of people who are interested in the brand and that attention be focused exclusively on them. once the brand is familiar with what the customer wants, a message is created that attracts the customer, namely the problem being solved, fulfilling hopes, and the reason why people should care about its products/and or services. attraction is based on consumers’ interest (being enjoyable, funny and conversational) and uniqueness (standing out) and thus shareable content (problem-solving). mobile users could be attracted to empowering content that stands out because of its relevance to their own lives which they would want to pass on to other interested users. pousttchi and wiedemann’s (2006) study identified four types of values that could be pulled to consumers via mobile phones which link up with gravitational marketing. these values include the information, entertainment, raffle-and-coupon, and standard types. the information standard type refers to the perceived value of the information, for example about products, nearest point of sale, mobile newsletters and other relevant information. the entertainment standard type refers to entertainment that has amusement and emotional value for the consumer, such as video, music, games and mobile customisation offerings to encourage different contact points. the raffle standard type refers to mobile bidding where mobile users answer a question, 3736 charmaine du plessis vote for something or someone, or send a certain code by sms for a chance to win cash and goods prizes which are either digital or non-digital. the main advantage of raffles is that the prize provides customers with a tangible reason to contact the advertisers. the more attractive the prize is to the target group, the higher the chance of success, because customers compare the probability of winning with the estimated value of the prize and then decide to participate in the campaign. the coupon standard type refers to a monetary incentive sent to the user’s mobile device which could be redeemed at the point of sale, for example, discounts and trial packages. in this study a sense of belonging is added as another standard type that can be achieved with brand storytelling, a technique involving stories about the brand that is gaining increasing traction and could be extended to a mobile platform to develop brand loyalty. brands could share brand updates via stories that are mobile friendly and could be accessed at various entry points, for example, by using video, images and text to make users feel part of the mobile brand community (du plessis 2015). research question the aim of this study was to answer the following research question: how could mobile marketing communication benefit from content marketing to add value and relevance to consumers’ daily lives? research methodology for this study a directed content analysis of industry white papers concerning best mobile marketing practices was conducted. content analysis is a widely adopted method because of its ability to make replicable and valid inferences of analysed text data. content analysis was a functional method for this study since research about content marketing within the context of mobile marketing is lacking and would benefit from further description (hsieh & shannon 2005: 1277). a total of 71 full-text copies of white papers serving as best practice illustrations for mobile marketing were accessed online through search engine searches. hoffman (2017) explains that a white paper provides insight into a topic by advocating for a specific solution to a problem and thus functions as thought leadership. these documents were purposively selected as they represent topical contributions concerning the use of content in mobile marketing. they are also longer (on average 20 pages), convey practical information, and are more substantial than blog posts. since this study is exploratory, 71 documents were deemed enough to provide a snapshot idea of current mobile marketing practices when it comes to creating and sharing content. the units of analysis were social artefacts (white paper documents). the data analysis was as follows. at first miles and huberman’s (1994) approach was followed to reduce the data in an accurate manner. thereafter, key concepts or variables were identified in accordance with the literature followed by formulating operational definitions for all pre-determined categories. all documents were examined on both manifest (what the text is saying) and latent levels (the deeper meaning in the text) (bengtsson 2016: 9). after this systematic review the text was coded into 3736 building blocks for mobile content marketing categories and highlighted where the data represented instances of a pre-determined category. in the last step, subcategories were identified where needed (hsieh & shannon 2005: 1282). the final code frame consisted of 23 individual codes located across three main categories. the issue of coding reliability was addressed by following up the initial manual coding with coding via a qualitative data analysis software programme, qda miner, by provalis research. this ensured that data was thoroughly interrogated and follows coding reliability suggestions by welsch (2002). it is widely argued in academic literature that a computer-programme-assisted analysis ensures higher reliability than human coding techniques (silver & lewins 2007). findings three categories with two subcategories respectively emerged from the data. table 1 illustrates the three main categories, number of cases, codes and frequency, which are discussed in more detail below. it can be inferred from this table that content marketing could play a role in mobile marketing to attract and retain patrons. each category is explained in more detail below with the proposed building blocks to follow in the subsequent section. table 1: three main categories and frequency in data category description frequency % codes cases % cases purpose of mobile content marketing purpose of mobile marketing when it comes to sharing and creating content for a mobile platform 411 36.40% 53 74.60% level of content pulling how users already interested in the brand are attracted to mobile content and then retained 231 20.50% 51 71.80% engaged mobile community content marketing actions to retain patrons’ interest after they have opted-in to become part of a mobile community 486 43.10% 58 81.70% 3938 charmaine du plessis category 1: purpose of mobile content marketing category 1 encompasses all findings relating to the purpose of mobile marketing when it comes to sharing and creating content for a mobile platform. it constitutes 36.40% of the codes. it is important to be goal-oriented when devising content for mobile platforms to entice patrons already interested in the brand with relevant and timely content at “key moments”. two subcategories also became evident, namely that of mobile interaction and mobile experience. this category firstly illustrates that the purpose of the content should foremost centre around interactivity, building relationships, engagement and being personalised. mobile interaction is “an integral part of owning a mobile phone” and it is, therefore, important that the brand should be “part of the conversations that matter to local and online communities”. in addition, marketing via mobile devices is about “unlocking the potential of a huge, expanding, captive and engaged audience”. equally important is that “mobile engagement can deepen relationships between a brand and customers by delivering the right message at the right moment across channels and devices”. it is thus important to provide “customers with content that is timely and relevant”. secondly, the purpose should be to enable a “seamless”, carefully managed mobile experience “across devices and platforms to create a more rewarding cross-channel experience”. this could also be achieved by “enabling integration with both the web and social media”. the customer experience with the content should thus be the same irrespective of where the entry point is. this mobile-optimised experience should preferably be part of a larger framework such as the overall marketing strategy to enhance the “total brand experience”. the mobile experience could also be enhanced through “augmented reality” technology to bring the brand closer to the mobile user. table 2: category 1: purpose of mobile content marketing category 1: purpose of mobile content marketing subcategories mobile interaction mobile experience codes interactivity cross-channel building relationships part of larger framework engagement management personalised content mobile-optimised relevance augmented reality category 2: level of content pulling category 2 encompasses all findings relating to how users already interested in the brand are attracted to mobile content and then retained. it constitutes 20.50% of the codes. 3938 building blocks for mobile content marketing two subcategories also became evident, namely that of unified customer data and participation. this category firstly illustrates that “data analytics around customer data provide customer insights” and assists with “focusing on quality messaging over quantity”. data analytics could also be integrated with location-based technology to “generate more insights into customer/user behavior”. since the users are already interested in the brand the mobile opt-in process could be facilitated with branded content and mobile promotions. it is thus important for marketers to “seek to leverage data to better understand customers including their businesses, the products and services they use, and the processes they prefer and then integrate that knowledge into campaigns”. by understanding customer behaviour the opt-in process could include sending users “relevant location-based offers”, but to enhance more trust “an automatically fixed period opt-out is perhaps a way of encouraging additional trust among audiences”. secondly, it is also important to retain patrons through participation on a “rich user interface” which could, amongst others, include collaboration and peer to peer interactions. the interface should encourage users to engage with the content with ample interactive features. equally important is that the brand also needs to be part of these interactions. user preferences should be accommodated by providing “helpful information, offers or entertainment based on geographic location”. it is important to continuously “surprise and delight consumers” to retain them. table 3: category 2: level of content pulling category 2: level of content pulling subcategories unified customer data participation codes opt-in process user preferences branded content collaboration mobile promotions user-friendly interface peer to peer category 3: engaged mobile community category 3 encompasses all findings relating to content marketing actions to retain patrons’ interest after they have opted-in to become part of a mobile community. it constitutes 43.10% of the codes. two subcategories also became evident, namely that of relevance and value. this category firstly illustrates that relevance of content and technology is also very important after the opt-in and not only before the opt-in process. actions to engage patrons should be focused on a real-time context, integrated technology and consistent content delivery. marketers could focus actions from insights on data retrieved from “real-time location data tracking” and provide content that is relevant to users at 4140 charmaine du plessis the right time. by consistently providing “relevant, technology infused content”, the “unique differentiator” is personalised and real-time communication and experiences. secondly, patrons’ perceived value to remain part of the mobile community is centred on individual needs, the opportunity to share knowledge and have access to exclusive content. by “optimising customer experience”, through continuous interactions, patrons’ individual needs could be addressed and ultimately enhance loyalty to the community. the brand should thus “fulfil the role of trusted partner” in real time. patrons should additionally be given the opportunity to “provide knowledge, ideas, inspiration and skills on topics that members want to hear about”. this gives members of the community access to unique, exclusive and valuable content which is applicable to their daily lives. table 4: category 3: engaged mobile community category 3: engaged mobile community subcategories relevance value codes real-time context individualised needs integrated technology sharing knowledge delivery consistency content access discussion the discussion of the findings is anchored in three building blocks to connect with patrons via mobile content marketing and answers the research question how mobile marketing communication could benefit from content marketing to add value and relevance to consumers’ daily lives. the functional building blocks were derived by drawing on pertinent scholarly literature and practitioners’ views that became evident from the three categories of the data of the content analysis. however, these building blocks should also be considered collectively as they are mutually supportive. purpose of mobile content marketing this building block represents the unique purpose of engaging with patrons via a mobile platform that is part of the company’s content marketing strategy, which although uniquely distinct, should include its objectives, target audience, channels, frequency and metrics (baltes 2015). however, mobile content marketing should not be adopted only because it is essential nowadays, but because the company has a distinct long-term goal in mind. the goal could be to attract and retain users who are already interested in the brand and could presumably become repeat buyers. marketers could build relationships with patrons by first attracting and then engaging them through relevant and unique mobile content marketing messages that captivate users’ interest. in this way the brand builds a mutually beneficial mobile community 4140 building blocks for mobile content marketing through continued strategic, relevant mobile content marketing that allows users to participate (cf. shankar & balasubramanian 2009). marketers using this building block should realise that mobile use will not produce an immediate return on investment (roi), but that consistent use could benefit the brand in the long run. level of mobile content marketing pulling for opt-in through attraction this building block represents the three levels on which information about users is collected and permission obtained to become part of a mobile community where they receive mobile content marketing messages as patrons on the three levels of attraction, access and achievement (hagel et al. 2010). this building block furthermore refines the course of action to obtain and retain the patron’s interest in the mobile content marketing messages. the opt-in (often referred to in content marketing as the lead magnet) acts as an enabler, enhancer or extra, which will be of value to the consumer in exchange for a mobile phone number, e-mail address and personal information (hlavac 2014). this lead magnet is typically shared via both social and mobile platforms to attract patrons to access privileged information that they will find valuable as a means to achieve personal objectives in their daily lives. for example, a communication trigger could be presented via the brand’s sign-up process on its mobile website, application(s) or mobile landing pages with clickable links, social media posts (directing users to owned media), or paid social media advertising to enable direct communication. owned media comprise content over which a company has complete control (corcoran 2010). where mobile is concerned, consumers typically opt in by texting, scanning or submitting information to a mobile website or application (russell 2016). since mobile marketing is permission-based in many countries, a company’s website often serves as a means of asking consumers for permission to communicate with them via their mobile phones (scharl et al. 2005). furthermore, at the point of opting-in, patrons are alerted to the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the mobile community through their active participation. lin (2013) refers to “socialised media” in which a community is formed based on its interactivity and two-way network platform capabilities. users are attracted to this community because it allows their active participation. a study by ind et al. (2013) confirms that people participate in a community when given the opportunity to do so meaningfully. attracting patrons to a mobile community could produce the right kind of interactions and be beneficial to the brand as well (hagel et al. 2010). enough information could be obtained in this way to allow for more personalised communication. the success of this building block depends on patrons’ desire to have access to information, knowledge and resources and an opportunity to contribute meaningfully, which would not be available to them otherwise, unless they willingly subscribe and provide some personal information. 4342 charmaine du plessis identify the mobile content marketing focus for optimum relevance and value this building block represents the focused mobile content marketing actions to retain patrons’ interest in the mobile community by adding value to their daily lives through relevant information. rubin (2015) correctly notes that building a mobile community depends on the same principles of engaging, interacting, adding value and support that are used to build other communities. once the brand captures consumers’ interest to receive mobile content marketing messages based on their interest, marketers have to provide relevant, continuous and attention-grabbing information to keep them engaged as part of a mobile community. if mobile users are not interested in the communication, they will unsubscribe from any further messages to the community. bedor (2016) recommends the use of a “content-centric” mobile application that will allow frequent usage and personalisation of message. in this way a community could be built around the content. as suggested by pousttchi and wiedemann (2006), as well as du plessis (2015), mobile content marketing could focus on providing value to consumers, for example by solving their problems with value-based and rich information, creating and sharing stories to illustrate the brand in ways that add value to their daily lives, or by providing entertainment value that appeals. the mobile platform and content marketing messages that will be best suited to retain patrons’ interest are identified and consistently used to promote the success of using this building block; moreover, participation is encouraged and rewarded to serve the same end. bullas (2014) argues that brand fans or advocates too should become eager to produce content (including visuals) to share with the mobile community. the information provided during the mobile opt-in process enables marketers to personalise their mobile content marketing to build a closer relationship with the consumer. the marketer unfailingly provides exclusive access to value for the benefit of patrons with a view to retain them in the community. mass messages are no longer sent to mobile users who might not be interested, but instead seamless value is provided to an interested target audience within a mobile community that has the potential to become repeat customers (vee et al. 2008). thus, in accordance with the concept of gravitational marketing advocated by vee et al. (2008), this building block constitutes the “glue” to retain patrons’ interest. the attraction of having access to the mobile content marketing messages and thereby making a contribution could be enhanced by being enjoyable, funny, conversational, and prominently visible through exclusivity and the ability to solve patrons’ problems in daily life. value would be enhanced at the same time by the continuous provision of useful information, entertainment, monetary incentives, or an opportunity to win a prize, or gain an enhanced sense of belonging (du plessis 2015; pousttchi & wiedemann 2006). the success of this building block would be dependent on nourishing patrons’ interest in the brand by providing valuable, compelling and relevant brand content to which they could add significant meaning of their own. 4342 building blocks for mobile content marketing conclusion while exploratory in nature, this study offers several useful insights into how content marketing could play an important role in engaging with the target audience in a mobile marketing community. the findings have expanded understanding of how brands could use content marketing in mobile marketing communication by proposing three building blocks based on the findings of a directed content analysis. in doing so, the study provides sufficient evidence of how content marketing could benefit a brand by pulling rather than pushing messages to mobile users. because of the study’s limitations in terms of a small sample, it is proposed that future studies include a larger sample and also focus on marketers’ perspectives to expand on this knowledge. mobile marketing has been plagued by numerous obstacles which have impeded its success. companies that are serious about targeting the right mobile users will find the building blocks useful as a means of attracting users who are already interested in the brand, and of co-opting them into becoming part of a committed mobile brand community. due consideration of the three building blocks could enable mobile marketers to reach the right mobile users more efficiently through alternative means. the brand could at the same time benefit from rich and relevant interactions through its exposure to a constant flow of knowledge in a mobile community. using content marketing principles could facilitate the creation of the most appealing lead magnet on suitable platforms that will persuade mobile users to become part of a mobile community because of their interest in the brand. these mobile users could then be pulled constantly via content marketing to engage with relevant and valuable brand content to complement their lifestyle. pushed messages are still preferred by many mobile marketers, and they can certainly play a role when it comes to mobile applications. however, pushing messages to mobile users are also increasingly seen as intrusive and not providing any value, which could ultimately alienate mobile users. references adler, b. 2014. the 10 most telling quotes about the future of mobile. 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afro-optimism; western liberal orthodoxy; speech; barack obama; donald trump; rhetoric; african union; rhetorical criticism introduction how fair are western media about africa? are they biased afro-pessimists, as many academic critics suggest (de b’béri & louw 2011; nothias 2012; nothias 2015), or are negative portrayals simply based on reality? after all, on objective measures such as life expectancy, income and access to modern amenities, africa as a whole ranks far behind the developed world. even on more subjective measurements such as the happiness index, inhabitants of african countries, on average, are far less content with their lives than citizens in the rest of the world (helliwell et al. 2017). at this point the debate often turns, not to the merits of the critique of africa or its substance, but into an academic exercise of discourse analysis and psychological “explanations”. the critics, it is argued, resort to old racial stereotypes of darkest africa, aggregate the experience of many different countries into a totality, view selectively and negatively, compare africa unfairly to europe and make unfair and pessimistic predictions. a recent dissertation applies van dijk’s claim that anybody who denies that their negative portrayal is driven by racism is suffering from intention denial and justification (van dijk 1992, in nothias 2015: 229). prof. ian glenn research fellow, department of communication science, university of the free state (glennie@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 1-15 © ufs mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.1 32 ian glenn there is something unsatisfactory about a line of argument that ends up suggesting that any critique of post-independence africa is illegitimate. further, those arguing that western media are too afro-pessimistic often fail to examine the history of afropessimism from rené dumont and achebe and others onwards to see how the earlier afro-pessimism differs from the later one and to distinguish what the major features of more recent critiques are. when it becomes clear that the critique of africa over the past 25 years or so, in spite of many continuities, has changed emphasis from criticisms in the 1960s in the first post-independence phase, it becomes more difficult to see it as a mere product of stereotyping. more critically, the attempts to delegitimise any critique of africa fail to observe the crucial feature of what we can call the second wave of post-1994 afro-pessimism: that it is largely the product of left-wing and liberal media organisations and journalists. there is another, more compelling, reason to reject all criticisms of africa as a product of the observer’s bias and racism. to do this is to neglect the real force of liberal orthodoxies about africa and their impact on politicians, politics and policies. those arguing that all criticisms of africa are unfounded on the one hand, or those arguing that former us president barack obama was not nearly as sympathetic to africa while president as they had expected, miss the crucial connection: obama’s outlook was shaped by powerful criticisms of and concerns about africa (lyman & robinette 2009; washington 2010; carson 2013; van de walle 2015). after a further discussion of afro-pessimism, this article turns to obama’s major african speech to the ghanaian parliament in 2009 as the best summary of the major tropes of modern liberal afro-pessimism. in the final section, the article moves briefly to consider obama’s second major african speech to the african union in 2016 and to what the context of liberal afro-pessimism should predict for the african views of current us president donald trump. afro-pessimisms and their context the spirit of much of this modern liberal afro-pessimistic writing recalls that of dumont who, writing in 1962 after the first wave of african independence, opens l’afrique noire est mal partie (false start in africa) with a sense of physical angst – his pen trembling as he starts to write material that may justify the white colonists or irritate blacks (dumont et al. 1969; dumont 1973). many of the issues and themes that concern liberal afro-pessimists are not new. the critical novels of writers such as achebe, soyinka, ngugi and beti, or the social analyses of andreski, achebe, dumont and mazrui have kept much of their cogency (andreski 1968; achebe 1983; mazrui 1980). nonetheless, continuities should not mask the extent to which new themes occur. these themes, old and new, provide a framework, the mainstream western cognitive map, for understanding how africa appears to media in the developed world. they help explain why a liberal us president like obama sees africa the way he does. the new afro-pessimism arose in a particular global political context. after the fall of the berlin wall and the end of the cold war, white rule in south africa ended peacefully 32 obama and liberal afro-pessimism with a political transition that gave hope. this allowed an examination of africa not dominated by the issue of apartheid and the scandal of white racist rule. given that super-power rivalry for african resources and african allies seemed to be over, states could be judged more pragmatically, self-interestedly and critically. as schraeder and endless (1998: 33) note in a study of increasingly pessimistic news coverage of africa in the new york times during the 1990s: the most noteworthy trend was the media’s rising focus on sociocultural issues in the postapartheid era. feature articles in this category rose from 14 percent of total coverage in 1990 to 23 percent in 1995. these articles focused on a variety of transnational trends – illegal african immigration, health issues posed by the aids and ebola viruses, and drug trafficking from west and southern africa – considered to pose significant threats to the domestic well-being of the united states. this study notes how dramatically coverage of africa switched from coverage of race to coverage of ethnicity, but, if anything, it underestimates the full extent of the change as it does not take into account the ongoing effects of the rwandan massacres of 1994 that were felt throughout the decade. after 9/11, the negative perceptions of africa or african states perceived to be too sympathetic to muslim extremism would heighten the negative images associated with somalia in the united states. the outbreak of piracy in the coasts off somalia, boko haram, the activities of joseph kony, accusations of genocide in sudan and political turmoil in previously stable states like kenya and the ivory coast have all been factors in leading to a generally pessimistic view in western media. but, more than half a century after dumont wrote, the tone was less apologetic. in almost all of africa, there are no colonists left worth worrying about and patience has worn thin after half a century of further failure while others have succeeded. nor was this pessimism only in print journalism. since the end of white rule in south africa in the period between 1990 and 1994, new discourses and concerns came to dominate international perceptions of africa, in television news, cinema (like hotel rwanda, last king of scotland, blood diamonds and the interpreter) (evans & glenn 2010), travel writing like paul theroux’s dark star safari (theroux 2002), or novels like j.m. coetzee’s disgrace (coetzee 1999). what is surprising in these attacks is that they emanated, whether in europe or in north america or even in africa or south africa, not mainly from traditional right-wing sources, or voices of capitalism. they came, and continue to come, from what one might consider liberal writers and the bastions of left or centre-left liberalism: in france from le monde and le monde diplomatique and le nouvel observateur, in britain from the guardian or the observer or the bbc, and in the usa from the washington post or the new york times or vanity fair or the new yorker, or from what many americans regard as the liberal source itself: hollywood. in south africa, the toughest critiques of the new anc government have come from people with impeccable struggle and anti-apartheid credentials: from andré p. brink and pieter-dirk uys and cartoonist zapiro, and disillusioned ex-anc figures like pregs govender and andrew feinstein (feinstein 2007; govender 2007), and, increasingly from african leaders such as 54 ian glenn desmond tutu, anc struggle stalwarts like ahmed kathrada, or the breakaway economic freedom fighters led by julius malema. many other writers from nominally liberal papers, particularly africa correspondents like steven smith, a le monde correspondent, or rory carroll, a guardian correspondent, like african-american washington post correspondent keith richburg before them, broke from the general orthodox liberal or left-wing stance of their newspapers to write more politically unsettling pieces (smith 2003; carroll 2006; richburg 1997). in smith’s negrologie: pourquoi l’afrique meurt (literally negrology, why africa is dying), he takes on what he sees as the african leaders’ typical quest for a historical status – whether in négritude or, in the case of former south african president thabo mbeki, the african renaissance (smith 2003). in his analysis, this historical obsession is at once barrier to and mask for poor governance. after the cold war, africa received a searching new examination as the international media no longer felt obliged to defend african states. in this shift, liberal or left-wing media became new critical voices as they remained more engaged with africa than right-wing publications, which had in many cases written off independent africa as a lost cause. the characteristic tones of this new afro-pessimism, marked by disappointment and disillusion, are anger, tough love or cool dispassion. in the film the interpreter, by director sydney pollack, there is a telling exchange when the american secret service officer, played by sean penn, asks the white african-born united nations interpreter, played by nicole kidman, what her feeling is about zuwanie, the liberator-turneddictator of her home country – a figure who seems to be modelled on robert mugabe and hastings banda. she replies, “disappointment”. “it’s a lover’s word,” he accuses, and that exchange helps explain much of the emotional tone of liberal afro-pessimism. the concerns stem from dismay at events in the history of independent african states. liberal afro-pessimism is well-informed, disappointed, rather than being the product of any kind of simple racial prejudice. it is the view of africa of a desmond tutu or barack obama, not of somebody indifferent. obama’s critique barack obama’s speech to the ghanaian parliament in july 2009 was centrally illuminating because that speech confirms that the obama administration shared the concerns and views of this new afro-pessimism and factored them into its policy (obama 2009). obama’s speech was relatively short, but packed with observation and pointed critique. in isolating its major themes, a summary of his statement or the relevant quote from his speech is followed by a brief elaboration to explain its provenance and force. tribalism, nepotism, corruption and kleptocracy in my father’s life, it was partly tribalism and patronage and nepotism in an independent kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is still a daily fact of life for far too many … no country is going 54 obama and liberal afro-pessimism to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. no business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. [...] i have directed my administration to give greater attention to corruption in our human rights report. people everywhere should have the right to start a business or get an education without paying a bribe. we have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don’t, and that is exactly what america will do (obama 2009). one fairly constant critique of african states from the beginnings of independence has been that of corruption and the tendency of leaders and officials to use their office for self-enrichment rather than the public good. early novels, like achebe’s 1966 man of the people, recorded the loss of idealism in the face of ethnic mobilisation, election rigging and military take-overs, while andreski controversially identified the notion of a “kleptocracy” as a form of african government (achebe 1988; andreski 1968). other works, like de sardan’s analysis of the “moral economy of corruption” or bayart’s work on the “politics of the stomach”, gave more detail of how power worked as a way of channelling public wealth and resources to powerful individuals without challenging the generally pessimistic tone (de sardan 1999; bayart 1993). while anthropologists might see corruption as a modern form of clientelism or a “big man” tradition, journalists could point quite reasonably to the fact that no politicians or ideologues came to any overt defence of this practice. when politicians themselves were entering ritual denunciations of (usually other politicians’) political corruption, it was difficult to shrug this off as business as usual. for obama, the issue of corruption was central to his analysis and he indicated that the us administration would include corruption as a factor in its human rights reports. pathology of leadership africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions (obama 2009). a central recurring motif of afro-pessimism has been the failure of electoral systems and democratic institutions. after the coming of democratic government to south africa, there was, for a while, a sense of increasing democratisation, of a rise of new young idealistic leaders and of reasons for belief in an african renaissance and for afrooptimism (gordon & wolpe 1998). once again, south africa was seen as exemplary with nelson mandela’s retirement after only one term of office seen as a reaction to the “big man” syndrome and the tendency to dictatorship elsewhere in africa. while some critics rejected the afro-optimism at the time (rieff 1998), events in the twenty-first century have led to a renewed interest in what one might call the pathology of power. museveni of uganda complained rightly about the 30 years lost to the sergeants, but he still clings to power. in kenya, a disputed election and postelection violence made another of the “advanced states” seem to be as shaky in its democratic robustness as the ivory coast had proved to be before it. and the support of the south african government for zimbabwean president robert mugabe when he refused to accept the 2008 election results in zimbabwe was, for many observers, another example of african contempt for the electoral process. 76 ian glenn the complaint about leaders clinging to power and of their undermining of institutions was central to obama’s comments in both speeches. economy and technology but despite the progress that has been made ‒ and there has been considerable progress in many parts of africa ‒ we also know that much of that promise has yet to be fulfilled. countries like kenya had a per capita economy larger than south korea’s when i was born. they have badly been outpaced. disease and conflict have ravaged parts of the african continent (obama 2009). one consequence of the post-cold war era and the intellectual and political realignments that followed was that societies and nations were judged on the basis of economic performance and on how they reacted to the new global economy and forces controlling and shaping it. whether from economic and technological historians like manuel castells, formerly a 1968 radical, who famously or infamously judged the dangers of africa falling into or simply being one of the “black holes of informational capitalism” or popularisers like the new york times columnist thomas friedman, the judgment on africa was damning (castells 1998; friedman 2005). african states had started off with more apparent natural advantages and wealth than countries like india or china, but had fallen behind in the global race to prosperity and technological advancement. these critiques also serve as a rebuttal to the argument of jared diamond that environmental rather than cultural factors determine africa’s fate (diamond 1998). a leitmotif from the developed world, recurring in a host of writing, is that if the eastern countries can join in and benefit from globalisation, why can african countries not do the same? for friedman, countries not benefiting from the global economy were simply not trying hard enough, not willing to benefit from the win-win possibilities of global trade. to try to resist the force of a real-time world was simply obtuse. if the criterion of judgment of a country or a continent in a post-cold war era became economic rather than ideological, africa had to be judged as persistently failing and journalists could outline how its governments, instead of being champions of economic performance, were all too often hindrances to it. the war on terror and the criminal state when there is genocide in darfur or terrorists in somalia, these are not simply african problems – they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response (obama 2009). a state that is internally kleptocratic may move quite rapidly towards becoming something worse, more threatening in the new global war on terror. so, whether it was samuel huntington, looking at the coming clash of civilizations, or robert d. kaplan, a reporter whose the coming anarchy predicted a grim future and role for african nation-states, those warning about the possible threats from africa got a hearing across the normal political divides (huntington 1996; kaplan 2000). here is kaplan, in an influential 1994 atlantic piece (kaplan 1994, reprinted in his the coming anarchy): 76 obama and liberal afro-pessimism west africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real ‘strategic’ danger. disease, over-population, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a west african prism (kaplan 2000: 7). in addition, the realpolitik of a huntington or kaplan also suggested that africa was, in whole or part, a hostile force to american interests – a view that increased in force after disastrous american forays into somalia and the discovery that osama bin laden had been harboured in africa. after the moral outrage over apartheid settled, a new look at africa did not produce much that americans, in particular, wanted to see. and the lawlessness and anarchy was not only confined to west africa as repeated acts of piracy by somalis off the horn of africa revealed and continue to reveal. obama’s observation was in time strengthened by the realisation that the poaching of ivory and rhino horn in east africa aided al-qaeda financing, while the recent discovery that north korean diplomats have been involved in rhino horn smuggling in south africa also suggests that africa can be seen as a weak link in anti-terrorism initiatives. in obama’s speech to the african union in 2015 he explicitly mentioned the dangers of wildlife trafficking (obama 2015). the resource curse hypothesis so in ghana, for instance, oil brings great opportunities, and you have been very responsible in preparing for new revenue. but as so many ghanaians know, oil cannot simply become the new cocoa. from south korea to singapore, history shows that countries thrive when they invest in their people and in their infrastructure … for far too many africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. there are wars over land and wars over resources (obama 2009). another major theme about developing nations and their problems, in american social analysis in particular, was what came to be known as the resource curse hypothesis (auty 1993; friedman 2006; stiglitz 2006; le billon & international institute for strategic studies 2005; humphreys et al. 2007; dunning 2005). in brief, this held that rich mineral resources lead to endless struggles to control the state which could enrich those holding power and dispensing mineral rights, rather than leading to a government committed to creating wealth through educated citizens. most of the analysis of the “resource curse” came, in the first instance, from concern with developments in the oil-rich middle east. in the case of africa, critics argued that having rights to resources as the spoils of civil war not only encourages corrupt and kleptocratic government but also undermines effective, idealistic opposition because opponents tend to turn to violence in an attempt to seize control of mineral rights (weinstein 2005; collier & hoeffler 2005; herbst 2000). while some recent research takes issue with some of the more deterministic claims of the resource curse, or sees new ways it develops (frankel 2010; moyo 2012), obama’s speech shows his awareness of this issue. this is seen both in a gentle 98 ian glenn warning to ghanaians that their oil wealth is not the true source of wealth and in his urging of africa to follow an asian model of human development. child soldiers but the west is not responsible for the destruction of the zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … it is the death sentence of a society to force children to kill in wars (obama 2009). no single human issue has probably mattered more in perceptions of africa during the past two decades than the issue of child soldiers (jensen 1996; wessells 1998; de berry 2001; hick 2001; fox 2004; park 2006; medeiros 2007; kimmel & roby 2007). for western critics, the treatment of children, particularly kidnapped female children, was a continuing source of concern and outrage: “for example, the uk newspapers the times and the sunday times have published more than 60 articles in the past 5 years with reference to child soldiers, and the new york times has published more than 100 articles since 1996” (fox 2004). while fox looked at the times, a comparison of coverage in newspapers at what one might call left and right wing, or liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum in the uk, shows that the guardian published many more articles about this phenomenon than the telegraph. this once again shows that liberal media showed greater awareness of, concern about, and, consequently, pessimism about these developments. serious academic articles considered the evidence of wide-spread cannibalism, drug usage, belief in the efficacy of magic and charms against bullets, and adulation of charismatic leaders. (medeiros 2007). it is difficult reading this literature not to feel that western critics simply could not find adequate ways to react to these events, whether imaginatively, medically or psychologically. only rarely does a critic seem to grasp the enormity of these events and gauge their repercussions for the human and symbolic landscape, as achille mbembe tries to (mbembe 2002). one of the significant achievements of the film blood diamond was to try to confront the psychological and social toll exacted by the capture and use of child soldiers (zwick 2006). rape and sexual violence it is the ultimate mark of criminality and cowardice to condemn women to relentless and systematic rape (obama 2009). sexual violence against women and children and even babies became another staple of the international concern with individual rights during this period, particularly in reporting on south africa and on war-torn areas such as the democratic republic of congo or darfur (turshen 2001; buss 2009; lefort 2003; smith 2005a; smith 2005b). former south african president thabo mbeki clashed publicly with south african journalist and rape survivor charlene smith, accusing her of racism for her characterisation of rape trends in south africa. smith subsequently wrote a series of articles for le monde diplomatique, probably the leading organ of left-wing international reporting in france, reporting on how widespread rape in south africa was (smith 2005a; smith 2005b). her reporting, along with those of concerned women’s 98 obama and liberal afro-pessimism groups, or the version in coetzee’s disgrace and the reports of rape by the janjaweed as a weapon of war reached the liberal western media and remain dominant there. hiv/aids in obama’s ghana speech, he refers twice to the treatment of hiv/aids, once referring obliquely to the change in stance in south africa, the second time referring appreciatively to the “strong efforts of president bush”. here again we see that obama sits in the mainstream of western opinion that saw south african responses, in particular, as inadequate and tardy. the first major negative portrayal of mbeki’s aids denialism was written by samantha power and appeared in the new yorker (power 2003). power is a pulitzer prize winner for a book on modern genocide, a problem from hell: america and the age of genocide (power 2013). she held a prominent position in the obama campaign and administration, notably as us ambassador to the united nations from 2013 to 2017. this connection shows that liberal academic analysis fed through to policy not only as discourse but as personnel choice. obama’s implicit criticism of mbeki may have had a personal edge. when obama, then a junior senator from illinois, visited south africa in 2006, he visited the treatment action campaign (tac) in cape town and issued a statement condemning the minister of health’s stance. mbeki, apparently stung by the criticism, cancelled a meeting with obama (van vuuren 2008). genocide when obama explicitly used the word “genocide” about darfur, he signalled that he did not accept african defences of events there as simply an internal matter (scherrer 2002). if child soldiers or the rights of women drew on notions of individual liberal rights to trump any notion of cultural difference or self-determination, genocide was another powerful term and claim that enabled or forced western media into a critical stance that overrode any claims to african norms or african autonomy. genocide became a heated issue, particularly after the rwandan massacres of tutsis by hutus in 1994 when the indifference of major international powers and relative media neglect led to considerable soul-searching after the event and to heavy politicisation of the term “genocide”. while mamdani and others have tried to offer different accounts of events in rwanda or darfur (mamdani 2010), power’s book on genocide and her role as his adviser indicates that obama used this word deliberately and advisedly. political struggles to represent government repression as “genocide” were central to what happened in darfur precisely because “genocide” is the one condition more or less guaranteed to ensure international intervention. that genocide could become the accepted term for events in another african country after rwanda and again blamed on ethnic rather than racial violence did much to change liberals’ optimism about africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/a_problem_from_hell:_america_and_the_age_of_genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/a_problem_from_hell:_america_and_the_age_of_genocide 1110 ian glenn the curse of aid for obama in ghana, the problems of aid loomed large and his speech articulated several nuances. he indicated the need for assistance to build transformational change; he showed that he was aware of the critique that too much of aid money ends up in the hands of western aid organisations; he promised to help provide farmers with new methods and technologies that would in time render aid obsolete; and he acknowledged ways in which donor nations have weakened local civil society by recruiting highly trained africans. all of these comments showed that he had absorbed the complex and painful lessons that the new afro-pessimism had been discovering about how the path paved with good intentions has not led to the hoped-for improvements (easterly 2006; calderisi 2006; krotz 2007; whitfield 2009; glennie 2010). the idea that aid was not doing any good for africa was a staple of earlier criticisms sharpened by later critics who came to see it as a more sinister force. for an earlier critic like bauer, aid was simply an economic illogicality – if a country deserved investment, it did not need aid, while if it could not sustain and justify investment, it was highly unlikely to benefit from aid (bauer 1957). large sums of aid money did little to help africa as they had helped post-war germany or members of the european community, and earlier critics tended to see this as a sign of a kleptocratic governing class. in later critiques, aid comes under further attack. for some radical critics, the international monetary fund and other international agencies with their structural adjustment and other plans are agents of a neo-liberal economic agenda making disastrous decisions for africa that have done nothing but harm standards of living. but while this kind of large scale economic “aid” may have come under one form of critique, the do-good aid also came under sharp scrutiny. now aid is no longer seen merely as inefficient or unlikely to improve things, but as a structural underpinning of corrupt or violent governments. aid becomes another resource curse, something governments and corrupt officials struggle to control, use and abuse to increase their power. while de sardan may have been the first to identify this trend, the most powerful version of this critique is that of dambisa moyo in her dead aid, a work extensively reviewed and commented on in the international media (moyo 2009). these critiques started influencing government perceptions and policy in the west (whitfield 2009). at the level of government aid, the repercussions of perceptions were certainly felt in the period just before obama’s speech. as reverchon reports, the levels of aid to developing countries dropped between 2006 and 2007: from the united kingdom by 29%, by 15% for france, by 30% for japan, and 10% for the usa (reverchon 2008). while one can point to other economic factors involved, it does seem that the rationale for many kinds of aid to africa has been thoroughly undermined. obama’s second african speech to the african union in obama’s second major african speech, that to the african union in addis ababa in 2015, he returned to several motifs of his earlier speech, but also sounded several new concerns (obama 2015). his most optimistic note was about the spread of mobile 1110 obama and liberal afro-pessimism technologies in africa and their possibility, though he also warned about the threats to a continent with so many young people of unemployment and youth dissatisfaction. obama also turned to two other major modern american concerns about africa: the role of china in supplanting western societies in many countries as the primary investor and benefactor; and the need for africa to treat women as equal citizens. though obama did not mention china specifically, he warned africa about people whose interest was simply in extracting wealth from the continent. one common observation about china’s role in africa is that it differs from much western aid in not attaching aid to conditions about human rights or criticisms (brautigam 2011). obama tried to present the american view as based on respect for common humanity rather than western superiority, but his criticisms also seemed much more muted in the second speech. trump and the new critique of africa many africans have been concerned by what the presidency of donald trump will mean for us relations with africa. in his view of africa, as on much else, trump presents what seems to be a caricature of conventional right-wing views on his twitter account. he praises mandela, but south africa has, in his view, become crime-ridden after mandela; aid to africa would be wasted; investment in african infrastructure was misplaced given the us’s own infrastructural needs, and so on. yet, in many of these cases, there is little in trump’s views that differs sharply from the pessimistic liberal account of africa. if there is one area where trump’s rhetoric and views on africa may differ from obama’s it is on immigration from africa to the developed world. obama referred only obliquely to african immigration to the us as showing that the american dream was open to all. for trump, as for much of europe, immigration is a central issue threatening national identity. his travel ban targets two african countries among the six in total: somalia and sudan. given the likelihood that many more young africans will try to reach europe and the united states for political and economic reasons in the years ahead, increased tensions seem likely. conclusion western attitudes towards africa, particularly as articulated by liberal or left-wing media, grew more pessimistic after 1994. we can locate this shift historically, as happening after the fall of the white regime in south africa, when the scrutiny of africa became a more general one. other major factors that deepened the pessimism included genocide in rwanda, ongoing ethnic conflict in darfur, aids denialism, civil wars and profligate corrupt governments. as president obama’s ghana speech showed, we have a well-established western liberal orthodoxy about africa with major themes and emphases, an orthodoxy that may have done much to shape his outlook and policy as president. while president trump’s rhetoric is coarser, he does not yet, in most crucial ways, seem to depart that far from the vision of his 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(dir.) 2006. blood diamond. film. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003001005 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002705277802 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343398035005006 84 brand storytelling: the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website charmaine du plessis* abstract brand storytelling is an evolving branding technique which involves continuous narratives about the brand through publishing and sharing useful brand-related content with consumers. publishing content no longer includes publishing in traditional print media only, but also via electronic and social media in various media formats and on different platforms. in doing so, marketers endeavour to engage with consumers by creating consumer experiences through brand-related content. non-media organisations have thus also become publishers of their brands although there are no clear-cut guidelines but numerous perspectives on how to communicate brand content by means of storytelling. this study explores, identifies and explains types of consumer experience which were evident on the coca-cola journey corporate website, one of the world’s leading brands at the time of the study. a theoretical perspective is adopted that borrows from and is also adapted from both media management and marketing communication. brand storytelling is theoretically delineated and then applied to the proposed types of consumer experience which could be created through content for media organisations, as put forward by peck and malthouse (2011). the content on the coca-cola website is narrowed down for analysis and then explained using this perspective. the findings offer insight into the type of brand stories that marketers could consider when drafting content marketing strategies for nonmedia organisations. keywords: brand content, brand storytelling, content marketing, consumer experiences, content marketing strategy, corporate website * charmaine du plessis (dplestc@unisa.ac.za) is an associate professor in marketing communication in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 84-103 85 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website introduction “the value of a good story is priceless” (hermansson 2008). this study delineates brand storytelling on coca-cola’s corporate website, which is well-known for its innovative brand storytelling techniques (pulizzi 2012b; interbrand 2014). in this way, a theoretical perspective is adopted that borrows and is adapted from both media management and marketing communication. brand stories conveyed on coca-cola’s website (a non-media organisation) are explicated by applying proposed types of consumer experience which could be created through content for media organisations (peck & malthouse 2011) in the context of the theoretical requirements of brand storytelling. although there has been a rapid increase in academic research on brand storytelling, there is still a paucity of research on how non-media organisations actually convey stories anchored in brand-related content. a brand is a multi-disciplinary concept – hence the wealth of definitions of the concept. opoku, abratt, bendixen and pitt (2007) define a brand as a “symbol around which social actors, including firms, suppliers, supplementary organizations, the public and customers construct identities”. this definition of a brand is adopted for this study because it is seen as a personality or “set of human characteristics associated with a brand” upon which marketers rely to facilitate purchases and gain a competitive advantage (aaker 1997). herstein and zvilling (2011) argue that the role of a brand can be seen from the perspective of the manufacturer or the consumer. for the manufacturer, the role of the brand is to separate a product from that of the competitor through its unique features, while consumers perceive the role of the brand as facilitating expression of their own personalities, and thus also as a “form of self-expression”. the role of the brand for this study is seen from the perspective of the consumer who embraces the notion of a “new brand”. the new brand invites consumers to participate on their own terms in order to enhance their own worlds and build a relationship with the brand through experiences, metaphors and stories (burnett & hutton 2007). research by woodside, sood and miller (2008) confirms that consumers use brands as “personification” in stories they describe about themselves as well as others. according to hermansson (2008), storytelling is part of human communication. when used by an organisation to build a connection with employees and customers, emotions and feelings can be evoked in the target audience which also facilitates conveying complicated messages. similarly, brand storytelling is increasingly being used by marketers to convey the story of the brand to arouse an emotional response in the organisation’s target audience and to create mutual understanding. shankar, elliot and goulding (2001) argue that in the era of new media, consumers have greater access to countless media, and organisations thus face the challenge of reaching them because of information overload and 86 charmaine du plessis fierce competition. traditional marketing, although still popular, now also poses challenges because of the technology available to block commercials. sharing compelling brand stories through various new media enables organisations to break through the clutter and capture the right target audience’s attention. social media, in particular, has the potential to share brand stories virally through electronic word of mouth (ewom). based on an analysis of the research findings, the article concludes with the types of consumer experience that were evident on the coca-cola journey corporate website at the time of the study and which could help marketers to draft their own content marketing strategies. brand storytelling as a branding technique all brands have a story to tell and marketers increasingly use this branding technique to engage with consumers to enable them to connect with the brand. brand storytelling, also known as narrative branding, has now also become part of the digital environment where there is even more opportunity for brands to connect with the target audience. brand storytelling is an evolving branding technique which involves continuous narratives about the brand. according to bartel and garud (2009), narratives describe events through a plot; thus, in a structured manner. kemp, childers and williams (2012) explain that brand storytelling typically uses persuasion to convey beliefs to the target audience on which they can base their own identities. branding thus creates awareness about the organisation and what it stands for using different branding techniques. various branding terms exist, for example, “emotional branding”, “experiential branding”, “relationship branding”, or “brand equity”, which all involve a relationship between the brand and the consumer (burnett & hutton 2007). branding techniques are usually aimed at building relationships and touching the emotions of consumers. according to bostos and levy (2012), the brand image represents an advance in branding in that consumers who need to make daily choices about which brands to choose, are now guided by their brand perception. through various branding techniques, organisations promote the value, image, prestige and lifestyle of their brands (kemp et al. 2012). it is argued that all brands have a potential story to tell, but that some brands are more factual about the way in which they choose to tell the story. according to denning (2006), the brand story is usually told by the product or service, the customer (word-of-mouth), or even by a convincing third party. in this regard, herskovitz and crystal (2010) refer to “persona-focused storytelling” which means that the brand’s story usually begins with the spoken form of a 87 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website brand’s character or personality. all brand story elements should thus focus on this personality to connect the brand story as a whole, thereby making the brand more recognisable instead of telling incoherent brand stories. brand story elements usually include a theme, characters, a plot and a setting. conveyeing brand stories through brand-related content lieb (2012) indicates that the emphasis is no longer on advertising and buying media, but on publishing for and engaging with customers on platforms where they can be found. creating and sharing content is a way of extending the brand story beyond advertising and is a means of personalising the brand by enhancing brand experiences (pulizzi & barrett 2009; pulizzi 2013a; 2013b). however, quality content should be published using the numerous online tools available; it could be aimed at educating, informing, connecting, entertaining and creating trustworthiness (lieb 2012). jefferson and tanton (2013) reiterate that quality content should include useful content based on the organisation’s knowledge, expertise and ideas, tailor-made for different types of customers. in this regard, williams (2013) emphasises the fact that content should be created with a brand story in mind, which could be about the organisation’s history, culture, mission, inspiration, goals, audience and reasons for existing, including why its products and services are special, to name but a few. according to harad (2013), content marketing, sometimes referred to as a branded integration or brand journalism, relates to frequently sharing relevant and unique published information with the organisation’s target audience, based on brand stories on various media platforms, not only to align with but also to reinforce the brand in their minds. it thus consists of brand stories by the organisation not aimed at immediate selling, but instead generating interest in the organisation and building trust and long-term relationships which could financially benefit the organisation in the long term. similar concepts include custom publishing, branded storytelling, corporate content, info-content and information marketing (pulizzi & barrett 2009). pulizzi (2012a; 2012b) argues that storytelling is at the core of content marketing to attract and retain customers; it can be used in both traditional and online media. in addition, storytelling “humanises” the organisation, making it more accessible to the target audience. in this regard, chiu, hsieh and kuo (2012) argue that brand storytelling is an effective way to share valuable information about the organisation with its target audience because stories create emotional associations with and foster a better understanding of the brand. studies in the fields of advertising, leadership and information processing, for example, indicate that consumers interpret their exposure to and experience with brands through stories 88 charmaine du plessis (woodside 2010; west, huber & min 2004; deighton, romer & mcqueen 1989). according to barker and gower (2010), storytelling as a communication method appreciates the fact that all humans can be storytellers with the power to create their own reality of experiences, establish common ground with others, and build social relationships (cf. soin & scheytt 2006). pulizzi (2012a) explains the difference between content created for a media organisation and for a non-media organisation. for a media organisation, content is created in order to make a profit through paid content or advertising sales and to increase and retain readership. however, for a non-media organisation, content is created, not to profit directly from the content, but indirectly, to attract and retain customers through, among other things, brand storytelling. lieb (2012) refers to this strategy as pulling content to the consumer by being attracted to and interested in it and thus being more receptive to the message. brand goals are rooted in generating content through search engine optimisation (writing content in such a way that it will be found through search engine keyword searches), lead generation (eventual conversion into sales), or investing in social media tools to manage brand-related conversations (pulizzi 2012a; 2012b; 2013a; 2013b). lieb (2012) states that many organisations use content to augment their traditional marketing efforts and also replace traditional marketing efforts by relying only on quality published content. customers who are engaging with content in, say, social and online media, create links to this content and share it with a much wider audience, resulting in ewom. ewom, a form of viral marketing, refers to the spontaneous sharing of interesting information with other users of online and social media using various online content sharing tools. martin and lueg (2013) explain that ewom is more visible and accessible than traditional word of mouth (wom) and may thus influence a massive number of potential global customers. ewom, including wom, is also perceived to be more credible and impartial because the source does not “have a vested interest” in the receivers’ response to the communication. fournier and avery (2010) refer to consumers creating and disseminating brand content as open source branding, during which the users become active influencers of the brand. open source branding is thus “participatory, collaborative and socially-linked”. when information is shared virally it is considered by marketers to be successful as the internet consists of a great deal of clutter, which makes it extremely difficult to attract the necessary attention (ho & dempsey 2010; lin & huang 2006). however, bell (2012) reiterates that social media should not be treated merely as another advertising channel, but that modern consumers want helpful information to assist them with their daily lives. 89 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website engaging with the brand through relevant and useful published stories provides added value and exposure to the brand. boatwright, cagan, kapur and saltiel (2009) explain that in order for a brand to be valuable, it should also provide value to consumers. the brand identity should thus be linked to customer needs and be at the core of all aspects of the organisation, including brand storytelling. according to singh and sonnenburg (2012), brand storytelling not only enhances consumers’ association with a brand, but social media also makes the consumer an active participant in the sense that conversations are created between consumers and the brand, also promoting user-generated brand content. social media include but are not limited to discussion forums, blogs, social networking platforms, video, photographs and news-sharing sites. media organisations’ content applied to non-media organisations: proposed types of consumer experience this study adopts and adapts theoretical perspectives applicable to both media management and marketing communication. the focus of the analysis is on applying the proposed types of consumer experience generated through content for media organisations, as proposed by peck and malthouse (2011), to the corporate website of a non-media organisation. this proposal also suggests that branded content should centre around sharing different types of stories on multiplatforms to enhance consumer experiences and engagement, which are based on extensive consumer research in the united states. peck and malthouse (2011) propose that when brand content for media organisations is generated, it should focus on creating any of eight types of consumer experience identified through consumer research, as explained in table 1 below. all of these types of consumer experience are based on how the brand fits into the daily lives of consumers. peck and malthouse (2011) perceive engagement as “the collection of experiences that readers, viewers, or visitors have with a media brand”, a perspective which is also adopted for this study in the context of brand storytelling for non-media organisations. experiences refer to how consumers believe the brand fits into their daily lives. because of information overload, the organisation should have an editorial voice and content related to experiences that are central to the brand’s concept and of use to consumers (peck & malthouse 2011). table 1 below indicates how the types of consumer experience through content proposed for media organisations can be applied to non-media organisations. 90 charmaine du plessis table 1: application of types of consumer experience created through content for media organisations to non-media organisations type of consumer experience explanation for media organisations application to non-media organisations civic providing a value-added experience by offering solutions to problems in society, exposing misconduct and thus remaining essential to retain readers (shearer 2011). providing value to consumers by giving them brand-related content that provides solutions in their daily lives and at the same time retaining them (pulizzi 2012a; 2012b; boatwright et al. 2009). makes me smarter creating engaging experiences in convenient ways that would encourage repeated use and lead to viral marketing by audience members. customers’ knowledge and self-image should be improved (youngman 2011). providing useful brand-related content (educating, informing) that could be continuously shared among users across different media platforms to improve their knowledge of the product or service which will benefit their lives (lieb 2012; williams 2013; jefferson & tanton 2013). anchor camaraderie creating and sharing useful and meaningful information by a news anchor in short sections, easy-tounderstand language, promoting a feeling of friendship (bennett 2011). providing content central to the brand’s concept which creates a feeling of familiarity with the brand. engaging consumers with interesting brand stories which personalise the organisation’s products and services (dahlen et al. 2010; lieb 2012). communityconnection addressing the motivations for a user’s participation in online conversations, as well as the value derived from the conversations and content supplied by others (gordon 2011). affording users the opportunity to participate in online conversations and to benefit from sharing and receiving useful content with and from fellow community members (dahlen et al. 2010; lieb 2012). social identity creating and sharing content that will augment the audience’s emotional connection with the social group who also consume the same content (mersey 2011). conveying a brand’s character or personality through persona-focused storytelling and making consumers feel part of and significant to the brand community (herskovitz & crystal 2010). utilitarian providing a platform for both audience members and creators to share experience relating to learning and improving themselves (peck 2011). consumers providing useful brandrelated content that is both educational and informational, which will assist other consumers in their daily lives (williams 2013). 91 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website type of consumer experience explanation for media organisations application to non-media organisations inspiration providing content that will make consumers feel good about themselves and inspire them to achieve the same results as others (whitaker 2011). providing useful content which is also inspiring and will excite consumers to share it with friends, families and peers (lieb 2012; williams 2013; jefferson & tanton 2013). coproducing attracting consumers to the productive efforts of the audience contributing to the conversations on the platform (humphreys 2011). consumers actively participate in the conversation by being encouraged to add to the brand content by telling and sharing their own stories about the brand. users become brand influencers (fournier & avery 2010; denning 2006). timeout establishing how the reader spends time relaxing and establishing contact points for media consumption, and then linking this to the organisation’s mission and vision. it is thus important to ascertain how the reader experiences the content (wolter 2011). providing content that reflects the realities of how and where consumers consume the product(s) and or service(s). portraying the brand as part of the lifestyle of consumers (kemp et al. 2012). the corporate website organisations today need to have a strong online presence which is not only considered a competitive advantage, but also fulfils strategic objectives. in particular, an online presence in the form of a website creates greater awareness of an organisation’s products and services (heinze & qing 2006). the corporate website remains an essential tool for an organisation to convey information about its activities and to connect with its target audience. typical information that is conveyed via a website includes an organisation’s corporate strategy, history, environmental concerns, human resource management principles, organisational culture, social responsibility, code of ethics, corporate objectives, organisational values, vision, awards achieved, and business philosophy (llopis, gonzalez & gasco 2010). this is also confirmed by fernando (2009), who argues that the corporate website is continuously used by organisations to convey information about their corporate culture and values (cf. fernando 2009). according to llopis et al. (2010), the culture of an organisation is its “personality”, which every member of an organisation needs to understand. a longitudinal study of 500 websites for a period of six years by heinze and qing (2006) indicated that websites have become increasingly interactive, have more content, and are more geared towards customer service. it is also essential for a website to create a positive impression with users after their first visit and interaction. 92 charmaine du plessis coca-cola’s ‘journey’ coca-cola, one of the world’s most valuable brands and the largest beverage company with more than 500 brands sold in more than 200 countries, is renowned for its powerful brand storytelling techniques to engage its customers (pulizzi 2012a; interbrand 2014). according to montgomery (2012) and elliot (2012), as a result of continuous efforts to enhance engagement with its customers, in 2012, coca-cola revamped its corporate website as a “highly visual, sharable digital magazine” known as journey, named after an earlier in-house employee magazine. it thus uses its website to integrate stories with its brand. using consumer feedback to continuously publish relevant and valuable content, themes on the website at the time of the study included the front page, brands, videos, food, music, and unbottled (the most popular and featured blog posts) categories. in addition, articles included were on business, sustainability, history, innovation, jobs, culture and sport; the ten most popular stories; articles just poured (submitted) and longer more in-depth articles; and stories chosen by its employees. the coca-cola company deemed it important that business-oriented content, such as investor information, job postings and news releases, should be kept after the revamp in 2012 (elliot 2012). the revamped coca-cola website was not available internationally, including in south africa, when this study was done. hence, only the international us website was analysed to provide a snapshot of the types of consumer experience which were evident on the website, in accordance with peck and malthouse’s (2011) perspective. research questions the aim of this study was to answer the following research questions: research question 1: how can the proposed types of consumer experience of content for media organisations be applied to brand storytelling in nonmedia organisations? research question 2: what types of consumer experience were evident on the coca-cola journey website at the time of the study? research methodology this study adopted a worldview based on the interpretive research paradigm in that the researcher tried to understand, explore and interpret social reality dealing with qualitative data (cohen, manion & morrison 2007; creswell 2007). the researcher qualitatively evaluated the coca-cola journey’s new corporate website to obtain an idea of the types of consumer experience that could have been generated through brand content, in accordance with pick and malthouse’s (2011) 93 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website perspective. the perspective identified in table 1 for non-media organisations and applied to brand storytelling for non-media organisations consequently guided the researcher in the analysis. the content on the coca-cola website was regarded as socio-cultural “texts” and is thus described and explored from a qualitative perspective to uncover conformity with the proposed types of consumer experience created through content for non-media organisations (cf. gibson 2011). sample and unit of analysis it should be kept in mind that website content is dynamic and thus ever changing, and in many instances could consist of thousands of pages, making the sample size impracticable to handle (heinze & qing 2006). it is thus acknowledged that the website content analysed at the time of the study could have differed from its current content. the unit of analysis was a social artefact, namely the coca-cola journey corporate website’s most obvious brand-related content. to first gain an understanding of the large content, as well as structure of the cocacola journey website at the time of the study, the researcher had to use several techniques to narrow down the analysis. this included using content auditing software to structure the website in terms of its most prevalent topics, and then using issue discovery, a heuristic data exploration tool, to confirm and further explore these issues. the issue discovery tool was developed by the digital methods initiative, which was established in 2007 as a research programme at the university of amsterdam (rogers 2013; gibson 2011). konopásek’s (2008) guidelines were followed to first make the data more visible to facilitate the analysis, before using atlas tii, an empirical software tool for qualitative data analysis, to better understand the vital issues. once the main issues on the cocacola journey website had been identified, a total of 1 001 relevant files in word format were examined more closely using the atlas tii software. data analysis since issue discovery is more of a data exploration tool, it was also necessary to use an empirical tool such as atlas tii for further understanding of the types of consumer experience which would be evident from the main issues identified. atlas tii as a powerful data analysis tool was thus used to work through the electronic files in the sample, to underline important text, writing and editing notes, and to search for text in accordance with types of experience (smit 2002) in table 1. discussion of the findings and interpretation the findings of the study are now explained in accordance with the types of consumer experience as postulated by peck and malthouse (2011), and adapted for brand stories for non-media organisations. 94 charmaine du plessis types of consumer experience the following types of consumer experience were identified on the basis of the brand stories on the coca-cola journey website at the time of the study. civic the coca-cola company plays an active role in finding solutions to problems in society. these solutions are communicated on the coca-cola journey website through brand-related stories. the civic-type of experience is thus evident on the coca-cola journey website through, say, the empowering women category, where users can read and join the conversation about the role coca-cola plays in uplifting women in society by empowering them to become entrepreneurs and thus independent. this conversation was carried forward on the microblogging site twitter under the hashtag #5by20 (the name of coca-cola’s business skills training course). on the website, coca-cola explains under various categories what it does, how it does it, the progress on its women empowerment endeavours, and success stories. this is then further explicated in terms of its most shared stories, recapped stories, most watched stories, and the most discussed stories on twitter. the civic-type experience on the coca-cola journey website was in the behind the bottle category, which explains its role in innovative technology (referred to as plant bottle technology), which is a more environment-friendly interior fabric used by ford vehicle manufacturers. stories about coca-cola’s sustainability report also indicate how it enhances people’s personal well-being, building stronger communities and protecting the environment. instead of simply presenting the sustainability report, important issues in the report are shared by means of articles, videos and stories, making it more accessible to the consumers. makes me smarter brand stories on the coca-cola website are aimed at educating consumers about the company’s different products by linking the brand to consumers’ daily lives and by making it more accessible by giving it an entertaining slant. the website provides both informational and enlightening content through its food, music, recipes, videos and discovery of new music categories. thousands of brand-related videos, recipes using different coke brands, as well as music videos linked to the coca-cola brand not only entertain website visitors, but also provide them with information they can use in their daily lives. for example, brand story content in the opener category on the website provides useful information on daily issues such as career advice, practical do-it-yourself tips, a do-it-yourself cabinet makeover, five ways to generate breakthrough ideas, nine ways to boost energy at the office, and five ways to blast perfectionism and get your work done. this brand-related 95 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website content is ultimately aimed at improving consumers’ knowledge about coca-cola and its various brands, including the versatility of its uses. this type of story is also easily shared virally, adding to the conversation about the coca-cola brand. anchor camaraderie all coca-cola’s brand stories centre on the brand concept of sharing happiness, which is part of the brand personality of the coca-cola brand. it is evident from the brand stories published on the coca-cola website that besides the central brand concept of sharing happiness, all its content is aimed at making the cocacola brand part of the daily lives of consumers through brand stories on what its products are like or how they can be used. through its helpful content on the website, consumers become familiar with the brand, while carrying out ordinary daily tasks such as preparing food or listening to music. the coca-cola brand thus advocates happiness to its consumers, which is central to its brand stories about how consumers feel when they drink coca-cola. a feeling of camaraderie with the coca-cola brand is created by means of central editorial brand content through brand stories based on sharing happiness. community connection as a digital magazine, the coca-cola journey website provides ample opportunities for users to connect with other users who consume its brands through real-time conversations, and at the same time personalising the coca-cola brand. for example, through its front page and brand category pages on its website, consumers can connect with other users via social media networking sites such as google+, twitter (using various hashtags), facebook, youtube, flickr, redditt, instagram and linkedin, where they can join the conversation about the brand or follow conversation feeds from each of these sites. in addition, numerous blog posts were shared on the blogging platform referred to as unbottled. consumers can also subscribe to the coca-cola newsletter, the optimist, via its website to further connect with the community. constant efforts are made to engage consumers with interesting brand stories. for example, at the time of the study, a twitter chat was held about the future of brand journalism hosted by the vice president of corporate communications at coca-cola, grouped under the hashtag #cokecomm, and users could also join the conversation via the website. real-time conversations are held, and users are motivated to participate via the website. social identity coca-cola’s brand character or personality, namely that of sharing happiness, was evident throughout brand stories on the website. for example, in the unbottled category, at the time of the study, numerous blog postings containing brand stories 96 charmaine du plessis about happiness were shared. these stories were posted by consumers and cocacola employees, which indicate that consumers feel part of the coca-cola brand. these postings are also significant for the coca-cola community in the sense that their own happiness may inspire other consumers (see also the co-producing category below). the persona-focused brand stories on the coca-cola website enhance the feeling of identification with the coca-cola brand, as well as with consumers who also consume coca-cola products. utilitarian this type of consumer experience is similar to the makes me smarter type of experience, except that the focus is also on the consumer sharing of useful brand-related content to assist other consumers of the coca-cola brand in their daily lives. the coca-cola website does not provide evidence of such consumer experiences and the effort seems to be more on the part of coca-cola employees. however, consumers do generate content on the website and on social media, but the focus is more on sharing fun experiences and happiness about the brand, as is evident in the section on co-producing below. inspiration there is a wealth of evidence of inspiring brand stories on the coca-cola website, especially in the unbottled category for its blog posts. its brand personality, that of sharing happiness, aims at conveying inspiring moments in which to share happiness, which coca-cola considers as part of its heritage. this concept is carefully integrated with its brand stories on the website. for example, at the time of the study, a total of 6 880 videos, 475 articles, 90 blog posts, 23 downloadable images, 22 third-party articles, 13 recipes and four debates conveyed stories focusing on inspirational topics in order to create and share happiness for those who consume coca-cola products. the brand story content on the coca-cola website is aimed at making consumers feel good about themselves, and also to inspire them to improve themselves. co-producing consumers actively participate in the coca-cola brand content as co-producers and are continuously invited to share and create content. users can, for example, upload pictures of themselves on the website showing happy moments while consuming coca-cola products. in addition, users can share pictures and upload videos of them being creative with their spare empty coca-cola bottles. for example, in the unbottled category of the website, users can share pictures and videos of what they do when they are not at the office and they are in their happy place (as part of the out of office series). this also includes videos and pictures of coca-cola’s employees. 97 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website timeout consumers are encouraged to share their happy moments on the coca-cola website or on various social media while consuming coca-cola products by uploading and sharing their videos or images. in addition, they are invited to share images or videos of what they are doing when they are not at the office and while consuming coca-cola products. the coca-cola brand thus features prominently when consumers are relaxing. for example, brand stories also featuring cocacola as part of the lifestyle of consumers depict them using coca-cola recipes and consuming coca-cola outside of the workplace (see also the co-producing and makes me smarter experiences). interpretation of the findings regarding research question 1, the proposed types of consumer experience pertaining to content for media organisations could be applied to brand storytelling in non-media organisations in that only the aim of the brand stories might be different. for non-media organisations, the emphasis would be more on longterm consumer engagement through consumer experiences than on making an immediate profit (pulizzi 2012a). concerning research question 2, several types of consumer experience were evident on the coca-cola journey website at the time of the study. these brand stories could be applied to peck and malthouse’s (2011) types of consumer experience, namely civic, makes me smarter, anchor camaraderie, community connection, social identity, inspiration, co-producing and timeout (see table 1). brand stories at the time of the study could however not entirely be applied to the utilitarian type of consumer experience when it comes to consumers sharing useful brand content because the effort seems to be more on the part of coca-cola employees to provide practical content to assist consumers of the coca-cola brand in their daily lives. by engaging consumers with relevant and useful brand stories, the coca-cola brand gains added value and exposure. the brand itself thus provides value to consumers and is linked to coca-cola’s brand personality (cf. boatwright et al. 2009). it is evident from the coca-cola website that its content is created to attract and retain customers through useful brand stories which consumers can experience in different ways. consumers are pulled towards the highly interactive content, are receptive to the brand message (cf. lieb 2012), and become active participants in the brand conversations (cf. singh & sonnenburg 2012). in addition, via the corporate website, consumers are directed to brand stories and conversations on multiple platforms, which are shared with others via ewom (cf. martin & lueg 2013). consumers thus have numerous experiences with the coca-cola brand in a way that fits into their daily lives. brand stories are related to the brand personality of coca-cola, namely that of 98 charmaine du plessis sharing happiness, which is central to the brand’s concept (cf. peck & malthouse 2011). furthermore, the coca-cola brand is humanised through various brand experiences (cf. pulizzi 2013a; 2013b). coca-cola brand stories are aimed at educating, connecting, informing and entertaining, and creating trust, and are tailor-made for different types of customers (jefferson & tanton 2013). limitations of this study the researcher acknowledges the following limitations of the study: the findings only provide a snapshot of the types of consumer experience evident on the coca-cola journey corporate website at the time of the study. the findings are thus not necessarily applicable to the current content on this corporate website. the purpose of the study was also not to generalise the findings, but only to provide a snapshot of the types of consumer experience evident at the time of the study which could be of use to the content marketing strategies of marketers. since the consumers were not part of the study, they could have experienced the brand stories differently from what is proposed in the findings. however, it should also be acknowledged that the analysis was strictly guided by the findings of intensive consumer research in the united states, which could have value for the future content marketing strategies of marketers. conclusions and recommendations the findings only represent the types of consumer experience as proposed by peck and malthouse (2011), that were evident on the coca-cola website at the time of the study. these findings could however differ from the current situation owing to the dynamic nature of the highly interactive coca-cola journey website, which is in the format of a digital magazine. the findings were thus congruent with reality at the time of the study only. marketers will hopefully benefit from the findings with regard to the type of content that they could create for brand storytelling when constructing content marketing strategies for their organisations. currently, there are no clear guidelines and a paucity of academic research on this topic. consumers of the coca-cola brand can relate to the brand in that it is communicated as fitting into their daily lives, which may create different types of experiences through engagement with brand content on multiple platforms. the persona-focused storytelling also connects the brand stories as a whole, thereby making the coca-cola brand more recognisable. it is recommended that future studies should include the evaluation of more organisations that use brand storytelling effectively; peck and malthouse’s (2011) proposed types of consumer experience via consumer research should also be tested in other countries. once the digital magazine format of the united states website is rolled out in south africa, the south african website could also be evaluated. 99 the case of coca-cola’s journey corporate website references aaker, j.l. 1997. dimensions of brand personality. 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(eds). medill on media engagement. evanston, il: north western university, hampton press. 1pb poetry in the act of killing1: the bloody origin of language and communication abstract there is a common belief that war and violence hinder communication, and conversely, communication has the power to end wars and conflicts. this article challenges such logic and argues that human identity, language, meaning and communication have their origin in war, death and the spiritualisation of killing on the battlefield. indeed, the assumption that acts of killing and warfare are formative of becoming human underlies much of the world’s cultures and the tradition of western philosophical thought initiated by heraclitus in ancient greece. this article traces the way major western social thinkers imagine war and killing as the foundation of poetic speech, and how face-to-face combat can be considered the primordial model for human dialogue, with death and killing the foundation for the construction of abstract concepts and meaning. the article also examines the way the ideas of war, killing and death are used in the broader discussion by western social thinkers on the origin of language and meaning. keywords: rhetoric; war; killing; death; social construction of meaning; communication as war by other means; heraclitus; hegel; kant introduction the assumption that communication inherently contributes to peace dominates mass media and scholarly discourse. as a result, peace is idealised while war is condemned as senseless violence, and an inhuman and irrational disturbance of the presumed peaceful habitus of enlightened human beings. from this follows an axiomatic assumption that communication has the power to end war and restore humanity to its imagined pristine peaceful state of nature. such assumptions are evident in the influential claim by habermas (1981: 314) that “our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus”. habermas assumes that the aim of all communication is to reach consensus, and conversely, war and conflict are the result of the breakdown of communication. this implies a clear dichotomy: violence terminates communication because it reduces language to silence, and conversely, communication has the power to prevent violence because it transmits information (dawes 2002: 2). such beliefs grew stronger dr stefan sonderling research fellow department of communication science, unisa, pretoria sondes@unisa.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.1 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 1-15 © uv/ufs mailto:sondes%40unisa.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.1 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.1 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.1 32 stefan sonderling as electronic communication technologies were expanding globally because it was assumed that they offered the ultimate means to end all wars. in the postmodern discursive “global village”, ideology has allegedly come to an end (bell 1962) and the end of history has even been announced because the ideological conflict of the cold war has ended with the fall of the soviet union (fukuyama 1992). perfect communication supposedly eliminated all ideological differences so there were no causes left for which to fight (fukuyama 1992: 311). expressing confidence in such peaceful utopia, mcluhan (1969: 90) declared that new computer technology can translate incompatible languages and offer “a pentecostal of universal understanding and unity”. but contrary to these expectations, more communication paradoxically intensified warfare and the myth of peace was shattered. thus, adams parodies mcluhan’s belief in communication as if it were a magical babel fish: “if you stick a babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language”, however “the poor babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation” (adams 1979: 50). the return of war puzzles social thinkers because it does not fit the predictions of mainstream social theories (mouffe 1993: 1; žižek 2002: 75). however, this is understood by scholars possessing knowledge of history because the return of war signifies that “the world has become normal again” (kagan 2008: 3). indeed, understanding war as a rational human activity has a long and ancient intellectual tradition in most cultures, and in western thought it dates back to ancient greece and was reflected in the texts of almost all major western philosophers throughout history (lomsky-feder 2004: 83). writing at the end of the 19th century, nietzsche argues that “life is a consequence of war” and that “society itself is a means to war” (nietzsche 1968: 33). in the 21st century it becomes evident that war always was, and remains, the organising principle of the postmodern world and thus the existing civil peace within these societies is another form of fighting a civil war (foucault 2003; hardt & negri 2006: 13, 334). such conditions require a new and positive understanding of war and its relationship with communication. such an understanding was already alluded to by the eminent 19th century’s philosopher of war, carl von clausewitz’s (1985: 402) speculation that war might be “merely another kind of writing and language for political thought”. this article argues that war and its activity of killing and dying, which have been the common experience of humanity throughout history, are the foundations for the emergence of language, poetry and communication. the article reviews a number of mainly western major social thinkers on the formative force of killing and warfare to show that from antiquity to the present, war has been, and still remains, the most popular theme to inspire poetry, literature and visual representations and communication in almost all known cultures. 32 poetry in the act of killing: the bloody origin of language and communication the bloody battlefield as the place for the emergence of language and communication ever since the ancient greek philosopher heraclitus proclaimed war as the father of all things, major western social theorists have acknowledged war and conflict as primordial formative forces. moreover, such assumptions were not limited to western culture but are evident in almost all human cultures (brosman 1992: 85). human imagination and discourse can attest to the fact that “the battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another” (campbell 1993: 238). heraclitus’s assertion that war is the father of all things gives birth to ancient greek poetry and literary production: from homer’s poetry in the iliad, to the literary prose in the writing of historians such as thucydides and herodotus (havelock 1972: 21; 1982: 304). such genealogy inspired nietzsche (2009: 90) to speculate that if “war is the father of all good things”, then it can also be assumed that “war is also the father of good prose”. historians contend that the link between poetic and literary communication and war is derived from the oral and agonistic character of ancient societies (ong 1982: 43). the characteristic of social interaction in oral societies is a confrontational face-to-face encounter where antagonism is integral to the verbal interaction, as ong (1982: 45) argues, “when all verbal communication must be by direct word of mouth” these are also “involved in the give-and-take dynamics” of everyday life and contain both attractions and antagonism. the physical and verbal interactions follow the same pattern as if both were exchanges of blows (ong 1982: 68). in other words, verbal interaction is a form of verbal combat (or “flyting”) and real battles are co-mingled with verbal battles and duels can function as either preludes to battle or as substitutes to bloody contests (pagliai 2009: 61; 2010: 87; parks 1986; 1990; ong 1982; 1989). george herbert mead (1965) locates the original human speaking encounter – the dialogue – in the exchange of blows as in a boxing match. dialogue, like hand-to-hand combat, is derived from a primordial “conversation of gestures” where each combatant responds and anticipates the opponent’s moves (bushman 1998). mead contends that the social antagonistic actions precede the deliberate communication through symbols (mead 1965: 129). for mead (in meltzer, petras & reynolds 1980: 36), “the blow is the historical antecedent of the word” because human consciousness evolved from the violent exchange of blows; this implies an evolutionary process whereby the “mind arises through communication by conversation of gestures in a social process or context – not communication through mind”. such a material evolutionary process was already advanced by blaise pascal (1623 – 1662), thus althusser (1971: 168-169) contends that pascal promoted the notion that body gestures construct ideas and beliefs in the human mind. althusser argues that pascal seems to suggest that religious ideas or beliefs develop directly from material physical practice: if an individual wants to acquire religious beliefs all that is required is to “kneel down, move your lips in prayer and you will believe”. althusser’s reading of pascal is inspired by karl marx’s materialist conception of human consciousness. marx (1972: 119) rejects hegel’s idealistic philosophy that assumed ideas originated in the rarefied world 54 stefan sonderling of the spirit, and instead he argues that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” and thus language which is an embodiment of “practical consciousness” (marx 1972: 122). to support the argument outlined above the next section will trace how the ancient greeks theorised the emergence of language and thought from the reality of bloody battles and how bodies and fighting action on the battlefield provided the primordial vocabulary for subsequent development of abstract concepts for poetry, literature, and art. war as the origin of discourse the origin of discourse can be linked to killing and death on the battlefields of the world’s ancient cultures (brosman 1992: 85). for the west’s philosophical thought, ancient greek battlefields provided the major inspiration. for the ancient greeks, war, death and killing were integral aspects of life. in particular, the battle was the primary topic and inspiration for the greek poets, writers, artists and philosophers. the ancient greeks’ zeitgeist understood war as a way of life (havelock 1972), while many philosophers had personal experience of fighting on the battlefield (hanson 2010: 45). this is attested to by socrates who stood in the ranks of the hoplites at delium and the dramatist aeschylus’ desire to be remembered not for his plays but for having fought at marathon (lynn 2004: 27). the philosophers, like all war veterans throughout history, “return to their experience in combat to clarify or broaden their thought on whatever subject they were discussing” (hanson 2000: 45). for the greeks, war was “the master text” that defined their humanity and identity (coker 2002: 37). war provided the language and conceptual framework for understanding the world: “war was good to think with in the ancient world. ... greeks and romans frequently used ideas connected to war to understand the world and their place in it. war was used to structure their thought on other topics, such as culture, gender and the individual” (sidebottom 2004: 16). homer’s detailed description of killing delighted readers throughout the ages (bryant 1996; king 1991; manguel 2007; seaton 2005; vermeule 1981: 97). xenophanes credits homer’s epic poem as the source of human thought, because “all men’s thoughts have been shaped by homer from the beginning” (hawkes 1972: 148). homer’s iliad presented the warrior as the ideal model of a human being and inspired philosophers and warriors for the past three millennia (king 1991: xi; lynn 2004: 26; manguel 2007: 2). the enduring popularity of the iliad is derived from the persona of achilles who could be “fruitfully manipulated for poetic, political, and philosophical ends” (king 1991: 219). “the iliad’s military hero is used to make a profound statement about the human condition. because achilles is not only superlative in prowess and physical beauty but also superlatively complex – possessing skills of a healer, the uncompromising principles of an idealist, the self-knowledge of a philosopher, the artistry of a poet – readers are emotionally engaged with him as a complete human being” (king 1991: 220). 54 poetry in the act of killing: the bloody origin of language and communication death becomes infused with meaning because death in battle is a valuable contribution to the security and hence the continuous existence of the community. death in the service of the community is an honourable and meaningful death and becomes a popular theme in literature and art (vermeule 1981: 84). the warrior’s acts of killing and his own heroic death are meaningful because they are interpreted as good acts of killing enemy combatants, as well as good deaths when defending the community, and in retrospect through repeated narration become aesthetically beautiful deaths to commemorate in poetry, prose and represented by visual art. xenophon presents the good death as achieved through valorous fulfilment of duty and friendship that lasted for eternity: “corpses of both friend and enemy were lying with each other, shields smashed, spears snapped, swords drawn from their scabbards … some fixed in their bodies, others still in the hands of the dead” (xenophon, in hanson 2000: 198). the sight of the dead warriors lying on the battlefield was familiar to many ancient greeks. it was a popular practice to view the dead bodies after the battle ended. large groups of curious spectators took sight-seeing tours of the undisturbed aftermath of the battle. it was also the practice of the victorious military commander to inspect the dead on the battlefield while the carnage was recorded by painters and inscribed in noble words by poets (hanson 2000: 202-203). the way a warrior killed his enemy defined his worth. homer describes the successful fighter as gracefully killing the enemy in a quick and easy movement thus demonstrating skill and competence, while the second-rank fighter was cumbersome and his acts of slaying are brutal and grisly (fenik 1968: 15). in the iliad, killing becomes poetry as is evident from the exchange of words between warriors praising each other’s courage in combat (tatum 2003: 118). in the words of tatum (2003:118-119), “killing one’s enemies can be carried out with as much craft and studied variation as any other art”, and in a war poem the “poet’s song and warrior’s song blend into single melody” that “turns killing itself into poetry”. for homer a whole aesthetics of the battle satisfies the curiosity of the ancient audiences. the detailed descriptions of giving and receiving blows, and the tit-for-tat reciprocal action resembles a dialogue of gestures with their corresponding rhyming words. in the “prestigious mode of combat” represented by the “face-to-face” situation the blows administered by weapons are intermingled with exchanges of verbal insults and praises. all this allows for a personal involvement of the reader who acknowledges the bravery and humanity of the combatants (tatum 2003: 125). hence, the pleasure of reading such early war literature is derived from satisfying the public’s curiosity about war’s mysteries. moreover, for readers eagerly awaiting the outbreak of new wars, such literature provides a vicarious experience of what they can anticipate on the battlefield (tatum 2003: 126-127). thus, war is an incitement for speaking on various levels: the oral first-hand account, the narrated written account, the reception by an uninvolved reader and, by implication, further communication as the text is read by many, is publicly commented on becomes a prophetic prediction of events to come. commenting on ancient greek texts, foucault (1988: 53) suggests that “it is quite likely, as homer has said, that the gods send disasters to men so they can tell of them”. historian victor davis hanson (2004: 15) notes that “plays, poems, and novels 76 stefan sonderling are written because of a day’s fighting”, while art is commissioned and philosophy is born, or as a literary scholar speculates: “without war, there could be no hero, no history, no song, no jongleur, and no audience” (vance 1980: 386). the ancient warrior and the ancient poet share a unity of purpose: the one who fights and the one who narrates want to kill their enemies – whether by swords or by words – and to immortalise in language the killing of enemies and the death of brave warriors. “the goal of a good epic poet, in a battle song, is to kill people with picturesque detail, power and high spirit …the iliad begins with corpses burning on an alien plain and ends with a gallant corpse burning in prelude to the city’s burning. the verses are studded with corpses in between, pierced and collapsing in a panorama of pictorial conventions, and gestures of ferocity held in check by formula and rhetoric which, as they killed, still invoked a more general life cycle through images of animals, planted fields and wild forests, storms and seas (vermeule 1981: 94). war is central in the transition from homer’s epic poetry to the prose narrative of herodotus and thucydides. while homer’s iliad sings praise for fighting through which men win glory, herodotus’s prose records the sequence of reciprocal exchanges of gifts and injuries (dawson 1996: 53, 74). indeed, since antiquity war provides exemplary tactics for public speaking and debates; this is so because public arguments are structured as combats or wrestling matches and it is reasoned that a person could learn to speak and argue in public in the same manner as one learns to wrestle. the close affinity between speech and fighting is evident from the fact that both were learnt in the gymnasium (hawhee 2002a; 2002b; 2005). the aim of public argumentations, like the aim of battle, is to win, but winning is not always guaranteed a priori but depends on an element of chance. to improve the likelihood of winning the ancient word-warrior – the philosopher or sophist – had to memorise a repertoire from homer’s panoply of battle scenes and used an appropriate example when an appropriate occasion arrived. this exposed the limitation of the rhetorical art because it shows that teachers of rhetoric “taught arguments” but “not how to argue” as they did not teach “a general strategy” (ryle 1966: 200). strategy for winning argumentative battles was however developed by the warriorphilosopher socrates who was able to identify the abstract principles underlying the “strategy and tactics” of battle, and to apply them to verbal arts with the result that “the combats of homeric heroes found themselves being translated into battles between concepts, categories, and principles” (havelock 1982: 304). indeed, socrates draws on his own battle experience as well as on the general agonistic zeitgeist of the ancient greek world. perceptively nietzsche (1978: 32) notes that socrates “introduced a variation into the wrestling-matches” of rhetoric by asking substantial questions which disturbed the “agonal instinct of the hellenes”, which was characterised by its dazzling display of superficiality without much depth. it was aristotle who finally provided a complete guide for verbal warfare. linking war and rhetorical action, ryle (1966: 18) argues that “aristotle develops the methodology of the rule-governed battles of wits of which plato’s elenctic (or socratic) dialogues gives us dramatised specimens”, which has its analogy in famous military strategist in which “aristotle is the clausewitz to 76 poetry in the act of killing: the bloody origin of language and communication plato’s napoleon”. later generations of western philosophers continuously turned to the ancient greek scholars for inspiration. tracing the marks of battle in the texts of western philosophy the insights developed by the ancient greeks that the structure of battle is reflected in human ways of thinking was elaborated upon by later scholars who proposed that the individual’s process of reasoning is modelled on, and is an internalisation of, the public procedures of adversarial debates conducted in the ancient war councils (hampshire 2000: 7-9; hampshire 2002: 637-638). thus, the habit of thinking is a product of social interaction whereby physical gestures and “social acts precede the symbol proper and deliberate communication” (mead 1965: 129). all basic concepts are arguably directly related to strategy and tactics of living in a world of struggles. indeed, the linguist george lakoff and philosopher mark johnson (lakoff & johnson 1980) are able to demonstrate that most of our metaphors we use to describe reality are derived from the experience of war and fighting; thus the human ways of speaking, thinking, and acting are all structured like warfare. they conclude that describing the conduct of human argumentation as war is not merely a metaphorical description of discourse, but is the natural way people talk and argue in western societies (lakoff & johnson 1980: 5). thus if we argue as if we were fighting the converse is also true: “physical conflict is itself already rhetorical, already a kind of symbolic action, already understood in terms of argument” (crosswhite 1996: 128). for the ancient greeks, war was a constant reality and similarly throughout human history war was always the context against which everyday life was experienced (cuomo 1996: 42; favret 2005). margaret mead (1963) summarises this aptly: “warfare is here, as part of our thought; the deeds of warriors are immortalised in the words of our poets; the toys of our children are modeled upon the weapons of the soldier; the frame of reference within which our statesmen and our diplomats’ work always contain war” (mead 1963: 132). the centrality of war in human life means that it left its traces in language and the discourse of scholars. clausewitz (1985: 402) identifies a direct link between war and communication and proposes that war may be “merely another kind of writing and language for political thought”. nietzsche (2004) sees remnants of battle manifest in human speech where “one often hears an echo of the times when they were better skilled in arms” and “they handle assertions as poised archers their weapons” and one “hears the whir and clatter of blades” when “an assertion thunders down like heavy cudgel” (nietzsche 2004: 183). the use of military analogy underlies immanuel kant’s (1798/1978: 92) philosophy as he locates the process of human understanding, judgment and reasoning in the sphere of military organisation that was the predominant exemplary institution of social life. kant proposed (ibid.) that human reasoning evolved from the demands of military hierarchy: “the domestic or civil servant under orders needs only to have understanding. the officer, to whom only a general rule is prescribed, and who is then left on his own, needs judgment to decide for himself what should be done in a given 98 stefan sonderling case. the general, who must consider potential future cases and who must think out rules on his own, must have reason.” development of thought is motivated by demands of military leadership, as kant notes: “subordinates must not try to guide themselves by pedantic reasoning because the principle which should be employed must often be concealed from them, or at least remain unknown to them. but the general or commanding officer must have reason, because instruction cannot be given him for every case that might arise” (kant 1789/1978: 94). hence, for kant epistemology has the form of the military chain of command, and the modern human subject is a soldier who learnt to think on his own, while the history of reason is the history of war (kittler, in winthrop-young 2011: 136). hegel (1841/1910: 277), following on his predecessor kant’s military analogy, sees war as the origin of human spirituality and in his philosophy locates human discourse in the sphere of warfare. for hegel (ibid.) “war is the spirit and form” that provides the foundation on “which self-consciousness ... and every kind of existence is manifestly confirmed and realised”. hegel affirms the military inspiration on his philosophy when he writes on october 13, 1806 he had seen napoleon riding past on horseback and had immediately realised that he is observing “the world’s soul on horseback” (hook 1962: 60). for hegel, it was as if napoleon – the great warrior – was the paradigmatic model for human spirituality, and indeed it may be suggestive that a century later another philosopher, ludwig wittgenstein (1988: 178) speculates that “the human body” provides “the best picture of the human soul”. for hegel, history is a long discussion between men that is carried “with clubs and swords or cannon on the one hand, and with sickles and hammers or machines on the other” and inspires the verbal arguments of philosophy (kojève 1980: 185). hence, according to kojève’s (ibid.) interpretation of hegel, the human being’s very sense of self develops in this primordial battle to the death at the beginning of history. he envisages a primordial battle that establishes a social hierarchy of master and slave that throughout history is challenged and contested in a dialectical interaction whereby the one demands to be recognised as master by the other. this primordial violence is understood as being the origin of human consciousness, self-consciousness and identity. at first, consciousness arises from the fight itself and from the act of killing the opponent, because “without this fight to the death for pure prestige, there would never have been human beings on earth”; this is so because by placing their lives in danger, they prove that they are indifferent to their own animal survival and demonstrate they are worth more than animals (kojève 1980: 11–12). however, killing the adversary does not yet produce a complete human identity because it constructs consciousness but not yet self-consciousness that is also required to complete the process. selfconsciousness is conferred by an act of mutual recognition from another living human being against whom one fights and defeats him. in turn, the defeated adversary does not lose his honour or fighting spirit because he knows that his defiance perpetuates the dialectical contest of submission and domination in which the positions of winner or loser are interchangeable. based on the central importance of acts of fighting and killing, hegel goes on to argue that if thinking develops in battle, then it is reasonable to suggest that the formation of 98 poetry in the act of killing: the bloody origin of language and communication the concepts used for thinking can be considered as an equivalent to killing or murder. this is so because in order to become an abstract concept it must detach itself from the particular living entity. as kojève (1980: 140) explains: for example, as long as the meaning (or essence) ‘dog’ is embodied in a sensible entity, this meaning (essence) lives: it is the real dog, the living dog which runs, drinks, and eats. but when the meaning (essence) ‘dog’ passes into the word ‘dog’ – that is, becomes abstract concept which is different from the sensible reality that it reveals by its meaning – the meaning (essence) dies: the word ‘dog’ does not run, drink, and eat; in it the meaning (essence) ceases to live – that is, it dies. and that is why the conceptual understanding of empirical reality is equivalent to a murder. in other words, in order to think one needs to transcend the immediate material situation or reality by the use of abstract concepts that can be applied to other situations; in such a process the physical objects loses it physical substance as it is transformed into a metaphysical object. indeed, what hegel describes is a semiotic process as elaborated at the beginning of the 20th century by the swiss linguist ferdinand de saussure (1857 – 1913) to explain how a sign used for communication consists of a physical and perceptible element he named “signifier” and its associated “signified”, which is the associated publicly known meaning (denotation) or more individual meaning (connotation) ascribed to it by a social group. inspired by hegel’s idea of the transition from concrete objects to abstract concepts, foucault argues that while an event such as inflicting a wound, gaining a victory or accepting defeat in battle, or death “is always an effect produced entirely by bodies colliding, mingling, or separating”; nevertheless, it can be understood by the human mind when it becomes incorporeal (foucault 1988: 172-173). foucault (1988) concludes that in discourse, “death supplies the best example, being both the event of events and meaning in its purest state. its domain is anonymous flow of speech; it is that of which we speak as always past or about to happen and yet it occurs at the extreme point of singularity” (foucault 1988: 174). foucault (1988: 173-174) explains this transformation of a singular event to a level of abstraction used in speech by providing another example: ‘marc antony is dead’ designates a state of things; expresses my opinion or belief; signifies an affirmation; and, in addition, has a meaning: ‘dying’. an intangible meaning with one side turned toward things because ‘dying’ is something that occurs, as an event, to antony, and the other toward the proposition because ‘dying’ is what is said about antony in the statement. to die: a dimension of the proposition; an incorporeal effect produced by a sword; a meaning and an event; a point without thickness or substance of which someone speaks and which roams the surface of things. foucault (1989) goes on to document how the will to power and death were central to the birth of modern medical knowledge. in his study of the emergence of the clinic, foucault (1989) shows that until the 19th century disease was considered as a symptom and one could only offer a blind guess as to its causes. a change occurred, however, when by cutting open a human corpse, the invisible internal organs were made visible, as a 19th century doctor metaphorically explains: “open up a few corpses: you will dissipate at once the darkness that observation alone could not dissipate” (foucault 1989: 146). foucault comments that death thus became the key to understanding life, as if the “living night is dissipated in the brightness of death” (ibid.). 1110 stefan sonderling if the construction of concepts has such a bloody origin, it should be no surprise that affixing meaning to such concept is equally the result of violence and display of power. the violence behind the social construction of meaning the violent play of power is central to conferral of meaning and it can be considered as the pre-theoretical knowledge and the foundations for meaning (berger & luckmann 1979: 83–84). berger and luckmann (1979) argue that the vocal signs are refined into words and become associated with meaning thus can be used to signify basic physical experiences. this is a process of spiritualisation of violence: the original violent physical act, such as beating someone with a clenched fist, elicits a submissive response, and, as the victim progressively becomes familiar with the meaning of the violence, only the sight of the clenched fist is enough to elicit the appropriate response (berger & luckmann 1979: 54-55). in other words, the reality of the sign becomes a symbolic reality representing or standing for real actions (berger & luckmann 1979: 70-71, 77). this process, known as the “social definition of reality”, entails the action of prominent and powerful social agents ascribing meaning to the physical and social worlds. in other words, to a large extent the social definition of reality implies that the social or physical reality is what people decide what it is supposed to signify. ultimately, it is the signification or the meaning conferred on reality by the dominant social groups that is the one that will prevail and spread within a society. the definition of reality is thus not a peaceful process because it meets with resistance and the definers will use forms of persuasion, which include “getting the authorities to employ armed might to enforce one argument against its competitors” or they may even physically liquidate the opposition (berger & luckmann 1979: 139). meaning is not decided by rational arguments but “on the less rarefied level of military might” and the “historical outcome of each such clash is determined by those who wielded the better weapons rather than by those who had the better arguments”. berger and luckmann (1979: 126-127) conclude that the signification or meaning that “will be made to stick” is determined by the group that “has the bigger stick” because it has the better chance to impose its definition of reality. the possession of social power explains, as berger cynically notes, why “many social situations are effectively controlled by the definitions of imbeciles” (berger 1980: 101). nietzsche aptly summarises this by saying that “the lordly right of bestowing names (or meaning) is such that one would almost be justified in seeing the origin of language itself as an expression of the rulers’ power. they say ‘this is that or that’; they seal off each thing and action with a sound and thereby take symbolic possession of it” (nietzsche 1956: 160). a similar point is playfully made by the character of humpty dumpty, saying that when he uses a word, “it means just what i choose it to mean – neither more nor less” and then explains to alice that this is so because he is the master and has power to impose such meaning (carroll 1985: 269). similarly, research by bourdieu (1977: 25) confirms that “the meaning of a linguistic element depends at least as much on extra-linguistic as on linguistic factors”. ultimately, the social mode of thought and the individual’s thought are not entirely uniform or static but are shaped by historical conflicts. this dynamic process whereby meaning is in a flux mirrors social existence where people 1110 poetry in the act of killing: the bloody origin of language and communication living in groups interact with and against one another, while their respective groups struggle and each attempts to “demolish the basis of its opponent’s social and intellectual existence” (mannheim 1979: 34). the philosopher martin heidegger speculates that human life is a kind of war (polemos) because human existence is dependent on interpretations of the world, and by their very nature, all interpretations are polemical and conflictual. as he puts it: “dasein is polemos because dasein’s existence is hermeneutical, and all interpretation is polemical” (heidegger, in fried 2000: 52). the reason that interpretations are always in conflict is that different people offer opposing interpretations of the same phenomena (fried 2000: 52; curtis 2006: 15). moreover, if life is a battle, then human thought is involved in such battle, and by implication, in order to survive the human being “demands a philosophising that knows how to do battle” (caputo, in curtis 2006: 13). consequently, knowledge always contributes to the ability of strategists and fighters to increase power and success in war, and in any other form of competing interests. on a wide historical scale such battles continue in the social and cultural spheres. for example, edward said (1994) in his study of the relationship between culture and imperial conquests argues that culture is a sort of a war theatre “where various political and ideological causes engage one another” entailing a conflict over who has the “power to narrate, or to block other narratives from” telling their stories and communicating their meanings of the world (said 1994: xiii-xiv). conclusion this article documented the views of a significant number of social thinkers supporting the argument that language, poetry and communication are intimately linked to war, and that killing and spilling of blood are the conditions for their emergence. it should thus be no surprise that communication about war in the modern and postmodern mass media has consistently attracted large audiences and war can be considered as an indicator of the health of the media, as was documented in a study by hallin and gitlin (1993). moreover, in the 21st century, war is “becoming a permanent social relation” and can be considered as the “matrix” or model to describe social organisations and the relations of power in the globalised world (hardt & negri 2006: 12-13). thus hallin (2008: 1) predicts that because “we are going to be in perpetual war for a long time” it should be obvious that our culture is a culture of war, and we must “understand war in order to understand our culture”. implied in hallin’s statement is that culture is a form of communication, and therefore, an understanding of war is also essential for an understanding of communication. this is to reaffirm that from antiquity war’s “ability to entertain, to inspire, and to fascinate has never been in doubt” (van creveld 1991: 226). the significance of war is constantly re-enacted on the world’s theatres of war and in our daily speech, poetry, literature and the arts. beginning in the ancient world of homer, poets, writers, philosophers and artists transformed war and battle into an aesthetic experience that confers 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theory and his conception of a personal construal system governing human cognition and communication. constructs develop from primitive constructs derived from human biology, while construct development is bound to embodied experience where the body mediates individual experience and provides content to the primitive constructs. the personal construal system resides in the cognitive unconscious and has a deep-seated and complex metaphorical structure, which is reproduced in the rhetorical imprint. a rhetorical imprint is dynamic and will evolve in concert with the personal construal system to make sense of the world, while remaining internally coherent. in a constructivist understanding of communication, sophisticated personal construal systems produce sophisticated communication, a crucial element of the rhetorical imprint. the rhetorical imprint corresponds to the classical canon of inventio where habitual topoi, metaphorical mental common-places from where available means of persuasion are sought, leave an indelible impression of a rhetor’s individuality in rhetoric. keywords: rhetoric, rhetorical imprint, carl burgchardt, constructivism, george kelly, personal construal system * dr stephanie cawood (cawoods@ufs.ac.za) is programme director of and lecturer in the centre for africa studies at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, south africa. professor johann de wet (dewetjc@ufs.ac.za) is chairperson of the department of communication science at the same university. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 60-79 mailto:cawoods@ufs.ac.za mailto:dewetjc@ufs.ac.za 61 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective introduction: origins of the rhetorical imprint the concept of the rhetorical imprint was first coined and defined by carl burgchardt (1985: 441) as a device well-suited for studying the reasoned discourse of single, great rhetors: through the careful analysis of a rhetor’s lifework, it is sometimes possible to discover the ‘rhetorical imprint’ – a constant, underlying pattern of distinctive verbal characteristics that supports the content of numerous speeches and articles in different contexts. a rhetorical imprint is archetypal in the sense that it is the basic model for the whole rhetorical production of an individual. it is an indelible stamp that manifests itself, to some degree, in each piece of rhetoric a person creates. burgchardt was inspired by osborn and ehninger’s (1962) collaboration on metaphor in public address and the work of osborn (1967) on archetypal metaphor in rhetoric. osborn and ehninger (1962: 223-226) were concerned with the reasons why certain metaphors appeared to be more powerful than others and described metaphor as a stimulus-response process of the mind, a viewpoint different from the conventional semantic definition of metaphor. here, the process of metaphor begins with the communicative stimulus, i.e. to denote an object or idea by using a sign not ordinarily associated with that object or idea. the stimulus then serves as the catalyst for a complex response cycle which, in everyday idiom, is known as interpretation. osborn (1967: 115-116) found archetypal metaphors to have transcendent qualities cutting across generation and culture. he posited that by concentrating on the speeches of one individual or one genre, it would be possible to follow the development of particular metaphors across time or culture. archetypal metaphors are prevalent in rhetoric and strongly associated with fundamental human experience and motivation. the ability of archetypal metaphors to transcend cultural boundaries was confirmed by jamieson (1980: 51), who was interested in the significance of metaphors persisting in the rhetoric of individual rhetors. by investigating the “metaphoric lexicon” of an individual rhetor as reflected in the manifest language, deeper rhetorical consistencies characteristic of the rhetor could be accessed, building on burgchardt’s concept of the rhetorical imprint. for jamieson (1980: 52), the use of metaphor in rhetoric is especially revealing with regard to the rhetor-audience interaction as intrinsically coherent metaphoric clusters are considered to be particularly powerful and persuasive. 62 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet in spite of the initial promise shown in the use of the rhetorical imprint to explore the rhetoric of a single rhetor, the concept did not gain widespread traction in communication circles. however, the idea of a fundamental, underlying template on which the rhetoric of a single rhetor is based can still be a powerful analytical concept used towards understanding the lifework of a single individual as well as the interplay of rhetoric and cognition. since a rhetorical imprint is so closely associated with individual cognition, a constructivist understanding of communication is implied, which required constructivism as the encompassing theoretical lens through which to further refine the concept of the rhetorical imprint. the fact that the rhetorical imprint was derived from the idea of metaphor as mental process also required a consideration of lakoff and johnson’s work on metaphor and cognition, as well as dewey’s understanding of the embodied mind and experience. aim of study and method the rhetorical imprint is considered in this article through a constructivist lens as a product of individual cognition including biological, cultural and perceptual experience. therefore, the dynamics of cognition and rhetoric are re-examined from a cognitive perspective. a specific rhetor’s upbringing, education, cultural influences and career are all expected to play a role in the evolution of a rhetorical imprint. with regard to method, a conceptual analysis and application of constructivism to the notion of the rhetorical imprint are provided. the constructivist lens applied in this article is fundamentally derived from a constructivist understanding of communication based on the personal construct theory of george kelly, the origins of constructs, and the structure of the cognitive unconscious, while the nature in which reality is experienced is elaborated by the embodied realism of lakoff and johnson and john dewey’s pragmatism. the personal construct theory of george kelly the notion of the personal construal system is derived from the personal construct theory of george kelly (1969a: 11), a psychologist who posited the cognitive theory of the person based on a constructivist understanding of the mind (epting & paris 2006: 22). kelly’s theory is based on a fundamental postulate, namely that a person’s processes are psychologically channelled based on the anticipation and control of events and the drive to understand his or her “phenomenological world” and function therein (katz 1984: 315; meyer, moore & viljoen 1997: 525). here, the person is viewed in totality and the mind is not separated from an independent body as is the case with the cartesian dualistic notion of the person (lakoff & johnson 1999: 5). 63 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective kelly’s personal construct theory is based on three philosophical premises, namely constructive alternativism, pragmatism and phenomenology (kelly 1955: 3, 17; meyer et al. 1997: 527). constructive alternativism accepts fluid, alternative or plural constructions of reality (kelly 1955: 14-17; 1969b: 96; epting & paris 2006: 30). kelly (1955: 17; meyer et al. 1997: 528) drew on the logic of pragmatism to explain the basis on which certain constructs are chosen or discarded. constructs are not judged based on the correspondence theory to reality, but rather on john dewey’s pragmatism where they are evaluated based on their value. value is determined by how useful they are, in other words, whether constructs anticipate future events usefully (kelly 1955: 44, 129). should an individual’s construal system and scheme of constructs be unproductive, the individual would adapt or replace it. kelly therefore conceived of a constructivism that is inherently pragmatic. phenomenology further informed kelly’s third philosophical premise. although kelly (1955: 6) acknowledged the existence of an objective reality, he thought it impossible for humans to know the objective reality directly. humans can gain access to reality only through their subjective knowledge and experience, in other words, their constructions of reality (kelly 1955: 8, 40). it is through the scheme of constructs that a person tries to make sense of experience, since interpretation is expressed as the interplay of constructs and experience (brockriede 1985: 155, 157). a person’s scheme of constructs will allow the knowing of certain aspects of reality, instead of others (kelly 1955: 11, 43; meyer et al. 1997: 528-529). the personal construal system consists of a large number of interacting personal constructs of diverse formal and functional characteristics. the constructs and their characteristics account for individual behaviour, differences and common ground between people, as well as interpersonal interaction (kelly 1955: 55-56, 90-91; meyer et al. 1997: 538). constructs are defined as dichotomous conceptual representations of facets of reality. a construct is therefore signified as a set of bipolar conceptions, such as good-bad (kelly 1955: 59-61, 106). events are anticipated or predicted by placing experience in a “perceptual frame” (delia 1974: 119) representing either one of the two opposing positions. due to the dual nature of constructs, a construct can only be understood if both poles are known. individual constructs can be unique as different individuals can understand the same concept differently. it is critical to note that the polar opposites constituting one of the constructs of a single person may not denote the same construct in another person (epting & paris 2006: 26). the phenomena that become the objects of focus for constructs are called elements (kelly 1955: 57; katz 1984: 315). the personal construal system drives the process of construction where an unknown element, whether a person, object 64 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet or event, becomes associated with constructs that build towards an understanding of the particular element. when a construct is brought to bear on an element, the element is associated with one of the poles of the construct. the associative pole is the semblance pole, while the opposing pole is contrastive. elements therefore become understood through a dualistic process of association, by aligning the element with a construct where one pole and element resemble one another with the opposing pole providing distinction (katz 1984: 315). constructs can also differ with regard to scope and context. the scope or context of a construct refers to the total range of applicable elements. certain constructs are more comprehensive than others and can be applied to a wide variety of elements, while others are incidental and have a limited range of applications. a construct, such as good-bad, is comprehensive because of its broad scope of application as it could be applied to almost any number of elements, while a construct, such as endangered-thriving, would have a narrow application to elements, such as fauna or flora. a person has a limited number of constructs, irrespective of the nature of the constructs, while each construct is also limited in its application to different areas of phenomena. as such, a person will never be able to successfully anticipate all events in life and will be caught off-guard by events that are not covered by the scope of applicability of the personal construal system (kelly 1955: 11-12, 108-109). constructs have ordinal relationships with other constructs, rendering the personal construal system hierarchical (kelly 1955: 9, 57; katz 1984: 315; infante, rancer & womack 1993: 83; meyer et al. 1997: 538). the scheme of constructs of a personal construal system consists of main and subordinate constructs, where a main or a higher-order construct is comprehensive and encompasses other constructs as fundamentals, which are called subordinate constructs. should a main construct be drawn on in a particular situation, the subordinate constructs would also be involved (kelly 1955: 155-157). kelly (1955: 56-57, 72) understood the individual to be a motivated being, constantly striving towards the goal of organising reality and improving the personal construal system. as a person’s construal system continually evolves and becomes more sophisticated, the person would acquire more articulate verbal constructs. an individual with a more sophisticated personal construal system, such as an adult, would therefore have more pliable and comprehensive constructs than those with less sophisticated personal construal systems, such as children. the recognition that people are motivated beings is an important connection to a constructivist understanding of rhetoric. rhetoric, especially instances of public speechmaking, is the product of the rhetor’s intent and motivation to persuade an audience or audiences to internalise certain information or adopt a particular 65 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective position. epting and paris (2006: 22) view kelly’s (1955: 12) constructive understanding of the person to be future-oriented and intent on anticipating future events by continuously developing a dynamic scheme of constructs (nicotera 1995: 48-49; meyer et al. 1997: 526-527). the origin of constructs in kelly’s construct theory, the individual is the source of his or her unique personal construal system and scheme of constructs. katz (1984: 315-317) identified what he called the “origin problem” in kelly’s personal construct theory and based it on a perceived inconsistency of internal logic regarding the origin of the constructs. while the process of elaboration explains the evolution of the construal system, kelly did not adequately account for the initial source of constructs after birth. although kelly did not specifically discuss the origin of constructs, his notion of pre-verbal constructs as precursors for more sophisticated constructs suggested an answer (katz 1984: 317-318). katz (1984: 318) further developed the idea of pre-verbal constructs and proposed that while individuals are not born with a functioning personal construal system with fully-fledged constructs, they are born with primitive constructs derived from humankind’s biological legacy. the notion of the primitive construct represents an unconscious impetus towards the development of constructs. humankind’s biological legacy is understood to be a universal condition of human physical embodiment on earth subject to the same governing natural laws (lakoff & johnson 1980: 317). all human beings are born into the same natural world with similar bodies and similar basic human experiences, the result of evolution and natural selection. shared human biology therefore endows human beings with a preliminary set of impersonal constructs at birth, the “primitive constructs”, signifying a “common psychic substrate” in all human beings (hirschman 2002: 315; katz 1984: 318). primitive constructs provide a “pattern of perception” for the individual based on perceptual similitude and differentiation and, while it is a means of making sense of the world, it also essentially configures experience (katz 1984: 320). gradually, physical experiences in the world become more coordinated and sophisticated as a person develops from childhood to adulthood, giving rise to the development of constructs of mounting complexity. the nature of experience therefore drives the evolution of primitive constructs into more sophisticated constructs (hirschman 2002: 316, 319). although primitive constructs represent general human biological heritage and embodied experience, they are not rigid, universal mental categories, but allow individual and temporal variations and are essentially experientially mutable 66 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet (katz 1984: 318-319). the development or elaboration (kelly preferred the latter term) of human cognition as collective representation of personal construal systems is a function of human evolution (hirschman 2002: 316). once human cognition achieved metaphorical thought along the evolutionary continuum, primitive constructs became accessible to individuals and the foundations for the development of articulate personal constructs and discerning personal construal systems were laid (hirschman 2002: 317). the structure of the cognitive unconscious the personal construal system and its antecedent primitive constructs are derived from the cognitive unconscious. the majority of cognitive processes belong to the domain of the unconscious, which means that people are largely unaware of their cognitive processes and structures that cannot be directly accessed and explored (lakoff & johnson 1999: 32). lakoff and johnson (1980: 3) found the personal construal system with concepts that govern every aspect of a person’s daily life to have a deep-seated and complex metaphorical character. this means that the concepts and constructs in the personal construal system are metaphorical in nature and that metaphorical concepts structure everyday thought and action. the elaboration of the personal constructs into a coherent personal construal system is also considered to be metaphorical. the embodied experiences that feed the personal construal system thus become metaphorically structured in the mind. in this way, a rhetor’s personal construal system is understood to be metaphorically configured. lakoff and johnson’s metaphorical concepts (1980: 3-6) are used to elaborate the notion of the personal constructs where the composite conceptions are still dualistic, but the nature of the association is considered to be metaphorical. the conventional definition of the personal construct as dichotomous conceptual representations of facets of reality already implies an intrinsic metaphorical structuring when considered in terms of the definition of “metaphorical” in the work of lakoff and johnson. here, “metaphorical” means “one kind of thing is understood and experienced in terms of another” (lakoff & johnson 1980: 5). “metaphorical” therefore subsumes the traditional understanding of construct as a composite of diametric opposites, but provides space for understanding more sophisticated associations between the composite conceptions of the personal constructs. in the current study, the notion of metaphor referred to is not metaphor as figure of speech, but metaphor as a constituent aspect and mechanism of thought and elaboration process of the personal construal system (radman 1995: 1-2). 67 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective reality and the nature of experience the act of considering the nature of human reason allows one to explore how human beings make sense of the world, and in this case, based on a constructivist understanding of the mind. human reason, however, cannot be fully understood until the nature of reality and experience is explored as it is the human experience of reality that feeds the personal construal system located in the mind. constructivist scholars vary in their belief of an autonomous and external reality, but agree that should such a reality indeed exist, the exact form would be unknown, which requires individuals to construct conceptual representations thereof based on experience subject to spatial and temporal contexts (von glasersfeld 1984: 29-30; nicotera 1995: 60-61; eddy 2007: 12). as reality is mediated through individual experience, understanding the nature of experience is therefore crucial for understanding how human beings make sense of the world. kelly accepted constructive alternativism in relation to the nature of reality and was unconcerned with finding the true nature of reality because he did not consider meaning to be intrinsic to events or phenomena, but rather to be created by individuals (epting & paris 2006: 23). his main interest revolved around the way in which individuals experienced and conferred meaning to the world (epting & paris 2006: 31). lakoff and johnson (1980: 185, 192-194) conceived of an experientialist view of reality that fundamentally echoes kelly’s viewpoint in that truth is considered as a function of personal construal systems and that absolute and impartial truth is impossible. constructivism consequently suggests a universe that is pluralistic, where knowledge of the world is constructed through the personal construal system (delia 1977: 69; 1974: 119), which has, as previously discussed, its genesis in human biology and the resultant primitive constructs. the constantly evolving world leads to continuously changing human experiences where the meanings derived from experiences are productive and the most useful conception of the world available at that point in time is constituted. meaning is therefore a product of personal construal systems based in individual experience (lakoff & johnson 1980: 226-227). dewey, concomitant with the constructivism of kelly and delia, accepted the possibility that human beings share an external world that is “trans-momentary”, “pre-existing”, general and individual that could be accessed solely through the process of knowing (dewey 1916: 250-251, 254; 1989: 38; maxcy 2003: 58-59). as a result, dewey’s pragmatism is a theory of naturalistic and pluralistic realism where “meaning is embodied in existence” (dewey 1922: 356, 359) and “different reals of experience” are acknowledged (dewey 1905a: 394). the deweyian notion of existence is derived from darwin’s evolutionary theory, as 68 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet the cognitive is considered to be “realistically conditioned from the genetic side” (dewey 1905b: 326). consciousness can therefore not be separated from the body, but is embodied therein. lakoff and johnson (1999: 74, 90) also accept a worldview of multiple-constructed conceptions of a mind-independent reality and the belief that human beings are able to possess stable knowledge thereof. according to the philosophy of embodied realism (lakoff & johnson 1999: 74-93), individual experience is mediated through “organs of experience”, for instance, the body, the central nervous system, hands, eyes, muscles and senses, and can be expressed as embodied experience (dewey 1940: 247). dewey’s notion of a realism based in evolution is further refined and expanded in the embodied realism of lakoff and johnson (1999: 95). reality, for dewey, as for the constructivists, is a function of embodied experience. human experience of reality is evidently not a uniform structure and through societal interaction human beings become aware of multiple individual realities (dewey 1907: 341). human beings, nevertheless, find harmony in their subjective experiences by establishing common ground among the various individual realities through agreement or a drive towards harmonisation or consistency, although consistency does not presuppose equivalence (dewey 1907: 327-328; maxcy 2003: 59). individual embodied experiences are purposeful products of cognition and are measured according to how well they serve the intended purpose and are, in other words, pragmatic. therefore, not only is the birth of the personal construal system derived from the very nature of human embodiment, but also from human experience. kelly emphasised that, in order to know a person, it is imperative that the idiosyncratic construction of the world as derived from human embodiment be understood (epting & paris 2006: 24-25). thus, in order to know any specific rhetor, the unique construction of the world as reflected in his or her public speeches must be explored. while reality is subject to individual embodied experience of the life-world, it is also subject to social construction and context. reality is neither objective nor external, but situated in the process of socialisation where the individual assimilates the communal reality, as well as individual experience and interpretation. as a result, all knowledge of the world is constructed and mediated through comprehension and explanation. the process of interpreting experience is situated in a particular context, which directs the interpretive process (nicotera 1995: 46, 60-61). in constructivism, knowledge is based on symbolic interaction with the self, others and the environment (waddell 1988: 104). in the constructivist interaction with reality, individuals have different personal construal systems and schemes of 69 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective constructs and therefore construct different representations of reality. this affects notions of factuality because something that may be true in one conceptual world may not be true in another (waddell 1988: 107). waddell (1988: 107) cautions against a constructivism that moves too close to solipsism, which posits that all experience and perception resides in the mind (watzlawick 1984: 15). where constructivists construct interpretations of phenomena and events gleaned from reality, solipsists argue that it is actually reality that is being constructed. in constructivism, meaning is not an intrinsic value of an event or phenomenon, but resident in the human psyche (waddell 1988: 108). reality is subject to constructed experience and will never be known completely and absolutely, but will continuously shift and evolve to incorporate new experiences and understandings thereof. in this sense, human knowledge of reality will progress incrementally and will never be final (delia 1977: 79). linking the personal construal system and communication delia and colleagues applied a constructivist vision of human reason inspired by kelly’s personal construct theory to human communication. the personal construal system is a tool through which individual communication behaviour is channelled (nicotera 1995: 55). interpersonal impressions therefore depend on the personal construal systems introduced to the interpersonal context (delia 1974: 119). the personal construal system plays an important role in the perception of other people, as well as in message production because it is the foundation informing choices regarding communication. impressions of others are based on experience, which encompass observation, as well as self-admissions from the other person. the two sets of impressions can be compared to either validate or invalidate one another altering the construction the perceiver constituted of the other (delia 1974: 120). impressions are constructions, which means that observations do not directly represent the intrinsic characteristics of the other’s motivation, intentions and mindset, but that the observations and experiences of another are constructed within the perceiver’s cognitive structures in the personal construal system on which the perceiver draws in an interpersonal experiential context (delia 1977: 71). the process of construction does not involve the discovery of a so-called “true self” (epting & paris 2006: 24), but rather involves the construction of the self within the context of continuous interrelations with others. a person’s self is therefore invented through physical experience and the process of interaction with others, the latter being a process of mutual construction. thus, while individual rhetors’ 70 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet personal construal systems are derived from their singular physical experiences, they are also functions of their social interactions with others throughout their lives. personal construal systems change and evolve with more life experiences and social interactions, providing the individual with an increasingly complex personal construal system consisting of a large number of hierarchically integrated constructs. it is not only the range of social experiences that develops the personal construal system, but also the quality of the social interactions (delia 1974: 120). the evolution of the personal construal system therefore forms the foundation for communicative development, since cognitive development is essential to communicative development. according to the constructivist notion of development, actions impact and are impacted upon by continuous and contextual constructions. interpretation and understanding is therefore a composite function of the personal construal system, and communication is a form of action that requires assuming command over communication at various levels, including non-verbal, linguistic, socio-cultural and strategic. the greater the control achieved over communication, the more evolved the personal construal system becomes. sophisticated personal construal systems are discriminating, structurally coherent, conceptual and produce interpersonal impressions that are wide-ranging, stimulating and integrated (delia 1974: 119). a person’s construal system will develop in concert with the person throughout his or her life, according to the orthogenetic principle. the orthogenetic principle posits that a person’s construal system will evolve from a simple and global scheme lacking differentiation towards a more hierarchically intricate and detailed makeup. the more sophisticated the interpretive scheme, the more discriminating the individual. interpretive schemes can also vary internally with regard to complexity where certain constructs are more sophisticated, while others are more simplistic (delia 1974: 120). the sophistication of the interpretive scheme is a measure of cognitive complexity where complexity is the function of the number of constructs present in an individual’s construal system on which that person can draw in order to differentiate. the number of constructs available to a person is indicative of cognitive differentiation (littlejohn 1999: 113). should a person be able to draw fine distinctions between similar events or phenomena, that person is said to be cognitively complex. cognitive simplicity leads to stereotyping and egocentric communication, while cognitive differentiation allows a person to make fine distinctions and therefore circumvent stereotyping (delia 1974: 120). cognitively complex individuals are able to comprehend another’s point of view and produce messages sensitive to that differing point of view. this ability is called 71 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective perspective taking and produces more sophisticated argumentation attuned to the needs of others involved in the communicative process. littlejohn (1999: 114) calls this person-centred communication. individuals who function at higher levels of cognitive complexity are able to incorporate empathy and insight into communication in order to elicit sympathy. although kelly never offered a clear theory of personality development (epting & paris 2006: 25; meyer et al. 1997: 547), he did understand development to occur based on the individual’s ability to observe and conceptualise differences among events. cognitive complexity and cognitive differentiation are considered to form an integral part of the rhetorical imprint of a specific rhetor. constructivism as frame for understanding rhetoric accentuates the creation of meaning as a process equally subject to embodied experience, socially constructed codes and individual conceptual and behavioural structures (delia 1977: 70). delia (1970: 140) was interested in the psychological processes underlying persuasive discourse. he felt that conventional communication studies fell victim to the logical fallacy, namely that discourse is derived from pre-existing categories, while he believed that logic, along with reality, truth and meaning, do not exist autonomously from the individual (delia 1970: 141). persuasive elements, such as the enthymeme, where the main premise in an argument is implied and not explicitly stated (larson 1998: 9), are persuasive according to delia (1970: 147) because it draws on transcendental psychological and physical processes. message production involving the interpretation of incoming messages and stimuli and constructing messages through the cognitive system is understood to occur at different hierarchical levels in the mind: manifest and latent. in line with the notion of communication as process, communication is deemed social and interactive, as well as individual. while message production is subject to the individual’s cognitive system, it is not an isolated and disjunctive occurrence, but forms part of the encompassing process of human communication. the message is therefore conceptually produced and publicly shared through speechmaking, but it is elicited by messages and stimuli received by the rhetor, interpreted and incorporated into the individual cognitive structure which, in turn, is the foundation of individual message production. towards a constructivist clarification of the rhetorical imprint the ontology of human communication as presented in this article echoes a philosophical constructivism robustly fortified by classical or american pragmatism and embodied realism. delia and colleagues based their idea of perceptual categories of the mind on the personal constructs of kelly and applied them to human communication. the personal construal system of kelly, as adopted 72 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet by delia, is elaborated upon in this research by drawing on the pragmatism of dewey that describes the intrinsic nature of the personal construal system and the embodied realism of lakoff and johnson (1999; 1980) to explain the nature of experience. lakoff and johnson (1999: 16-44) conceived of an embodied mind and contended that the conceptual system which drives thought processes and action in the individual has a fundamental metaphorical character. the embodied realism of lakoff and johnson and their notion of metaphorical concepts within personal construal systems are considered to be remarkably constructivist and pragmatic. their theory emphasises the importance of physical experience in understanding. reason is not autonomous, but embodied (lakoff & johnson 1999: 16). the objectivist notion of “truth” is subjugated to understanding as dictated by personal construal systems where meaning is a function of “constructive coherence” (lakoff & johnson 1980: 226-227). the mutual enrichment of constructivism and pragmatism (in this study pragmatism denotes classical or american pragmatism and its heir, neo-pragmatism) is a natural outcome of the myriad points of convergence between the theories of constructivism and pragmatism (neubert 2001: 1), especially as regards the pragmatism of dewey (baert 2005: 126; neubert 2001: 3-4). dewey also conceived of an embodied mind and his work is considered by lakoff and johnson (1999: 97) to be a philosophical antecedent of embodied realism. ontology foregrounds the role of the individual in message production, but not to the point of psychologism or solipsism, where the individual is the sole source of meaning (russill 2003: 4). the individual human mind of a particular rhetor as a source of meaning may be the focal point; however, in full recognition of the dialogical process of meaning construction between the individual and society. on the one hand, human behaviour and interaction are understood in terms of universal features transcending specific cases while, on the other hand, human behaviour and interaction are considered to be meaningful only in context, rendering any attempt at generalising immaterial. these opposing positions are reconciled in the notion that human thought and action are influenced by both commonalities transcending individual cases and contextual aspects. the available literature offers multiple terms used to describe the interpretive structures of the mind as envisioned in a constructivist frame; for instance, the personal construal system, scheme of constructs, conceptual representations or categories of the mind as derived from the personal construct theory of kelly (1955); the conceptual system of lakoff and johnson (1980: 3); the perceptual frame (delia 1974: 119); and the interpretive scheme (littlejohn 1999: 113), to list the more salient terms. all these terms, however, refer to the same notion, namely 73 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective that the human mind is structured according to individual conceptual categories which both govern knowledge and facilitate understanding through embodied experience (lakoff & johnson 1999: 4). in order to contemplate ontology as the nature of being, it was necessary to consider two interrelated aspects, i.e. the nature of human reason and the nature of reality, which also includes the nature of experience. the nature of human reason required concerted thought regarding the concept of person and the nature of mind and thought. as the current study followed a constructivist understanding of the mind and human communication derived at its most basic level from the personal construct theory of kelly, reason is viewed as a function of the personal construal system, which is found to be intrinsically pragmatic, embodied and derived from the cognitive unconscious. drawing on kelly’s personal construct theory, it is worth noting that archetypal metaphors correspond to the notion of comprehensive constructs, where constructs with more scope are those constructs that transcend multiple phenomena or events. archetypal metaphors could be the products of personal constructs with extensive scope which, due to their extraordinary range in the interpretation and understanding of events and phenomena, prove useful across individual cognition. the work of osborn and ehninger (1962) situates metaphors within the conceptual categories of the mind as mechanisms of interpretation. lakoff and johnson (1980: 3) elaborated and defined the conceptual approach to metaphor. they conceived of a more complex interplay between metaphor and the mind where the conceptual categories of the mind are not merely sources of metaphor, but rather have an intrinsic metaphorical nature as previously mentioned. in this view, metaphorical concepts in the personal construal system are mechanisms of thought and action (lakoff & johnson 1980: 7) and therefore facilitate, make sense of and structure experience. metaphorical concepts in personal construal systems are thus not merely mechanisms with which to know a so-called universal reality external to the individual, but mechanisms to construct multiple individual realities. in the current research, metaphorical concepts are viewed as personal constructs that are conceptually and metaphorically extended beyond the conventional structure of polar opposites. the use of the term “metaphorical concept” is significant in the current study. other equivalent terms are “conceptual metaphor’ and, simply, “metaphor” depending on the source. in their seminal work, metaphors we live by, lakoff and johnson (1980: 6) used “metaphor” and “metaphorical concept” to refer to the same notion, while other authors such as kövecses prefer “conceptual metaphor” in referring to the concept defined as the process of comprehending “one conceptual domain in reference to another” (kövecses 2002: 4). in this scenario, one conceptual domain 74 stephanie cawood and johann c. de wet would be abstract and unfamiliar (the target domain) and therefore connected to another, more concrete and familiar conceptual domain (the source domain). the “metaphorical concept” is the preferred term in emphasising the conceptual understanding of metaphor as opposed to the traditional view of metaphor as a figure of speech. metaphor is significant to the current study from a constructivist point of view in that it is understood to structure the personal construal system. closing argument in constructivist terms, the rhetorical imprint is more than the isolated, recurring use of a particular device of adornment, linguistic or stylistic idiosyncrasy, superficially habitual feature or a compilation of often-used anecdotes. rather, the rhetorical imprint represents a unified set of rhetorical characteristics that function below the surface of rhetoric, but becomes evident at the surface level of the rhetoric as “a range of consonant verbal manifestations” (burgchardt 1985: 441). in the current research, the structure of the rhetorical imprint follows the structure of the personal construal system and scheme of constructs where constructs in ordinal relationships form an integrated interpretive scheme, which is fundamentally metaphorical (lakoff & johnson 1980: 3). burgchardt (1985: 442) probed the rhetorical imprint by distinguishing distinctive motifs in the rhetorical lifework of his subject. he defined motif as those distinct rhetorical features that transcend a number of speeches. in a constructivist understanding of the rhetorical imprint, individual themes that are related, constitute motifs. in constructivist terms, the themes and motifs play a particular role in conceptual sense making: … kelly’s psychology focuses particular attention on how people give meaning and definition to what is there, such that their own meanings and definitions become the very foundations of who and what they are. that is, each person’s special significance, his or her individuality, is seen in terms of the particular meanings by which each gives both shape and expression to her or his world (epting & paris 2006: 23) the conceptual structure imposed on the rhetorical imprint by the personal construal system is evident at the manifest level, while conceptual content is perceptible at the latent level of rhetoric. in the context of rhetoric, the rhetor is believed to have a unique scheme of constructs governing his or her interpretation, understanding and behaviour. this specialised scheme of constructs is inherently metaphorical and is naturally integrated into the larger personal construal system and scheme of constructs and will therefore become accessible through the rhetorical imprint. a rhetorical imprint is not believed to be static, but elements of the rhetorical imprint, along with the personal construal system of the rhetor 75 the rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective evolve to remain dynamic and effective in making sense of the constructed world, while still remaining internally coherent. the constructivism based on kelly’s personal construct theory follows the pragmatic principle of utility. thus, where the nature of human reason, communication and the concept of the rhetorical imprint are contemplated from a constructivist perspective, the approach to studying the rhetorical imprint suggests a pragmatic maxim, in line with the internal organising principle of the specific ontology. within a constructivist mindset, the belief is that any concept such as the rhetorical imprint is entrenched in a worldview, which provides a foundation of assumptions and concepts (delia 1977). in constructivism, the rhetorical imprint is understood as a manifestation of a rhetor’s conceptual processes dictating the encoding and sending of messages, corresponding to inventio, one of the five traditional canons of classical rhetoric (de wet 2010: 33; kennedy 1992: 12; vickers 1988: 62; kennedy 1980: 185). inventio or invention refers to the art of discovering subject material and arguments and coheres with the notion of conceptualising argument or message production (olmsted 2006: 2; vickers 1988: 63). aristotle’s concept of topoi is an important device in inventio or the invention of argument. topoi are metaphorical mental common-places from where the available means of persuasion (topoi) may be sought. topoi may be universal and therefore applicable to general arguments regarding any subject matter or relating specifically to particular subjects, which are called idia. the majority of enthymemes originate from the specific topoi or idia (aristotle 1991: 45 – 47; kennedy 1991: 320; aristotle 1932: 15-16). aristotle’s (1991: 47) notion of topoi or topic is a kind of a metaphorical concept where loci or “common places” are used as mnemonic mechanisms to store information for subsequent recall. nothstine (1988: 155) elaborated on aristotle’s topoi to posit that the “place” metaphorical concept suggests that the individual is located at a “place”, which affords a particular perspective on the world and the things in it. individuals understand themselves as beings in specific circumstances, who are placed in a particular horizon with a restricted view. nothstine’s (ibid.) understanding of topoi accepts perceptual plurality and is inherently constructivist. topic is therefore an expression of the character of the individual rhetor (nothstine 1988: 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(contributions to constructivism). new york: norton & company. 89pb a conceptual analysis of integrated communication abstract in a cut-throat market environment where providing the best product no longer safeguards the success of a company, the significance of having an appropriate integrated communication (ic) strategy in place has never been more important. in intimidating market circumstances, companies increasingly seek refuge in stakeholder relationships; in the process they began to focus on customer share rather than market share. even though companies have realised the importance of ic, the proper implementation thereof can become a challenge if a clear vision or insight of what ic entails is found wanting. this article aims to demonstrate the importance for companies to follow an ic approach to engrave its corporate values and personality on the hearts of customers by shedding light on the essence of ic. a conceptual analysis was employed as research strategy while the concept under investigation was ic. the steps of conceptual analysis that were applied included an investigation of ic’s historic evolution, identifying terms similar to ic, defining ic’s attributes and antecedents, and also highlighting the consequences of ic implementation. the results not only provide companies with an understanding of this complex phenomenon, but also provide insight that might lead a company to implement ic with more confidence. keywords: integrated communication; integrated communication strategy; integrated communication essence; integrated communication attributes; integrated communication antecedents; stakeholder relationships; customer share; conceptual analysis introduction companies that compete in an overcrowded market have become more aware of how sustainable relationships with stakeholders are able to increase their market share (kotler, burton, deans & armstrong 2013: 504). in these types of markets, communication is essential for creating long-term relationships with stakeholders and can provide the company with more stability through long-term profitability (kotler & pfoertsch 2011: 68). however, some companies are still battling to master the art of creating lasting relationships with stakeholders (kumar & meenakshi 2008: 117). integrated communication (ic) has become important in building relationships, as it enables corporate values to serve as a driver for daily corporate and managerial activities (shimp & andrews 2013: 11). through this annette van baalen department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein snymana1@ufs.ac.za dr. dalmé mulder department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein mulderd@ufs.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.7 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 89-107 © uv/ufs mailto:snymana1@ufs.ac.za mailto:mulderd%40ufs.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.7 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.7 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.7 9190 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder communication strategy, companies can engage in purposeful two-way communication with stakeholders to ensure that the company meets the expectations of these stakeholders (shimp & andrews 2013: 681). a steadfast ic strategy should enable a company to act on each message sent to internal and external stakeholders. this should not only increase a company’s ability to be recognised in an overcrowded market, but it could also provide the opportunity for companies to set the standards when it comes to communicating with stakeholders (shimp & andrews 2013: 207). even though several companies claim that they make use of an integrated approach, when their strategies are reviewed the results indicate a different story (grobler & niemann-struweg 2013; koekemoer 2004). according to wells and hollins (2002: 88), some marketers and companies overlook the use of ic as they are not aware of the potential and impact that it can have on a company. without having a clear vision of ic and all the components and strategies it entails, proper implementation of this communication approach becomes a challenge. to address this problem, a conceptual analysis of ic was done to investigate its true nature. in this article it is argued that knowledge regarding ic could equip companies with the necessary insight that might lead to more effective implementation. research methodology a conceptual analysis creates a knowledge foundation of a certain concept (becker & correira 2005: 325). through this research method a number of specific phases are followed to explore the fundamentals of a concept. first of all the concept (in this study ic) needs to be contextualised through investigating its historic evolution and development. this discussion refers to the different marketing communication eras that led to the development of ic and illustrates how each era influenced ic. in the next phase the similar and surrogate terms of the concept of ic are identified, as it is important to be aware of these terms prior to the development of a working definition of ic. during the following phase the defining attributes of the concept are discussed and combined in a working definition of the concept. this is followed by the exploration of the antecedents of the concept. in this study the antecedents refer to structures within the company that need to be in place for a company to create a tailored ic strategy. it is only after a better understanding has been reached regarding the structures that should be in place prior to the implementation of ic, that the consequences of implementing ic can be reviewed during the final phase of the research. this review includes the advantages and disadvantages of implementing ic in the business strategy, and enlightens an understanding of ic and how it can add value to an organisation’s health and wealth. the data of the conceptual analysis of ic will now be provided according to the phases mentioned previously. the historic evolution of ic an exploration of the history of ic provides insight into how the concept took shape through the different marketing eras. this investigation consists of the major events in history that led to the changes in marketing perspectives as well as the prevailing 9190 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication attitudes of these eras (hurd, barcelona & meldrum 2008; fassnacht, schmidt-gallas & dewan 2008: 77). to understand the impact of these events on the marketing and communication perceptions, the different eras were compared to indicate how these attitudes influenced the overall focus of marketing (hurd et al. 2008). the marketing elements used in the specific eras are highlighted to indicate the priority of marketing during these eras. finally, the impact of these marketing strategies on the internal and external stakeholder groups is compared to demonstrate the importance of having an integrated communication strategy (boone & kurtz 2012; koekemoer 2004). table 1 summarises the four marketing eras that led to the shift from a once distribution-driven market to an approach that is more strategic to building sustainable stakeholder relationships (fassnacht et al. 2008: 77). table 1: the development of ic through the marketing eras production era sales era marketing era service marketing era the events that influenced marketing henry ford’s mass production line the industrial revolution the great depression the advent of the world wide web prevailing attitude of the era a good product will sell itself: “they can have any colour they want, as long as it is black”. creative advertising and selling will overcome the consumer’s resistance to buying. the consumers are in control; find their needs and fulfil them. long-term relationships with these customers will ensure repurchase. focus of the marketing era improving internal processes rather than focusing on external influences. production increased and therefore sales should increase by using personal selling. marketing is seen as more than just selling products. relationships with internal and external stakeholder groups. marketing elements marketing is seen as an afterthought just to sell products. no investments were made on improving marketing. personal selling consumer behaviour was studied and marketing became part of product development. integrated marketing communications (imc): the marketing mix. impact on consumers they had to buy whatever was on the market. sales techniques were used to stimulate demand. customers could buy a product that fulfils their needs. customers feel that the company takes their opinion to heart. table continues 9392 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder production era sales era marketing era service marketing era impact on internal stakeholders labour intensive work without proper control. sales persons sold products without having knowledge of or input in the products. internal stakeholders had an input in product development. internal stakeholders feel that the company takes care of their needs. (sources: boone & kurtz 2012; hurd et al. 2008; koekemoer 2004) table 1 demonstrates that the demand for the development of the concept of ic progressed as the different eras passed. the least favourable circumstances for the development of the concept of ic were during the production era. the deterioration of the market due to the negligence of stakeholders, especially internal stakeholders, soon led to the advent of the sales era. during this era, companies started to realise the important role of internal stakeholders with regard to selling products (hurd et al. 2008). the sales era soon ended as the great depression era took over before the outbreak of world war ii (hurd et al. 2008). companies started to invest in studying consumer behaviour to better understand their needs. furthermore, during this era, another ground-breaking development was made in the corporate structure of companies (koekemoer 2004). staff members were allowed to provide input on the development of products and there was an increase in the need to include staff in decisions that affected the company. finally, the era of service marketing evolved with the development of the world wide web and an increase in information technology (willmer 2011: 120; hurd et al. 2008). as people started to connect via several communication platforms provided through the internet, the focus moved from selling products to engaging in two-way communication with different internal and external stakeholder groups. this new focus led to the development of imc and the marketing communication mix elements. through creating unified messages by means of these elements, the company succeeded in building a relationship with customers, but also led to a workforce who was loyal and dedicated to reaching the overall objectives set by the company (smith & taylor 2004: 16). from the discussion of the different marketing eras that led to the development of the concept imc, it is clear that the development of information technology had a direct influence on the evolution and development of imc (willmer 2011: 120). imc enables companies to succeed in integrating basic promotional mix elements with other elements of the brand to such an extent that the company forms a unity (shimp & andrews 2013: 12). however, true integration in all organisational communication efforts require an ic approach. through ic, companies can develop synergy in all departments and communication functions of the company and not just in the marketing communication function (pickton 2004: 237). in the following section, surrogate and similar terms will be provided to demonstrate how imc differs from ic and to identify the available variations of this concept available in literature. 9392 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication surrogate and similar terms of ic some authors refer to ic as strategic communication (frandsen & johansen 2015: 230), corporate communication (cornelissen 2014), or even communication integration (barker & angelopulo 2006: 40). although different terminology is used by these authors, it still encapsulates the essence of ic. throughout literature, some authors refer to ic, but the definitions they provide focus more on imc and the way in which marketing communication should be used to communicate the core values of the company (schultz, patti & kitchen 2011). rodgers (2000) defines these types of terms as similar terms, as they provide a similar, yet different interpretation of the concept. it is evident that some authors use different terminology to describe ic. these similar terms include some of the attributes of ic, but do not provide a true reflection of ic. therefore, through the process of reviewing literature to develop a working definition of the concept, the focus should be on including attributes that complement ic and not imc. the following section provides a working definition that reflects the true nature of ic. a working definition of ic the working definition of ic was developed through the identification of literature that could serve as the fundamental explanation of what ic entails. the first citation used is that of duncan and moriarty (1997: 15), who define ic through strategic drivers that encapsulate the essence of ic. these drivers are divided into three categories, namely corporate focus, corporate processes and infrastructure. some of these drivers were used as a vantage point in creating the working definition of ic through combining these drivers with more contemporary viewpoints from literature. the first driver category of ic identified by duncan and moriarty (1997) is corporate focus. within this category, it appears that ic has a strong stakeholder focus and is driven by creating and maintaining relationships with these stakeholders. in duncan and moriarty’s (1997) second driver category of ic the focus is on the infrastructure that needs to be in place to be able to implement it successfully. within this category, cross-functional management was emphasised. according to gitlow (2001), cross-functional management can be defined as the integrated efforts of all business management functions to create and achieve a unified rational target that is achieved through the actions of all departments or business functions. duncan’s (2002: 8) definition of ic seems to serve as the bridge between duncan and moriarty’s (1997) drivers that are constituted in the corporate process and infrastructure categories. duncan defines ic as: a cross-functional process for creating and nourishing profitable relationships with customers and other stakeholders by strategically controlling or influencing all messages sent to these groups and encouraging data-driven, purposeful dialogue with them. 9594 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder although all the above-mentioned elements of ic are important in the implementation of the strategy, purposeful interactivity is a key defining element of ic that binds the entire concept (duncan 2002). without purposeful interactivity with stakeholders there is no way of establishing or maintaining relationships. figure 1 illustrates how each mentioned defining element of ic shapes the concept. figure 1: the fundamental elements of ic a cross functional process that reflects core values to create and maintain long-term relationship and leads to a holistic company view p ur po se fu l di al og ue through a stakeholder focused approach based on the definitions provided and the illustration of how the identified elements of ic form the concept, the working definition of ic is stated as follows: a cross-functional process generating purposeful dialogue that reflects the core values of the company. these values are channelled via a stakeholder-focused approach to create and maintain long-term relationships that meet the demands and expectations of each group. when these values are reflected in the relationship with the different stakeholder groups, the company will be able to create a holistic view of what it stands for. defining attributes of ic the working definition reflects a set of attributes of ic. each of these attributes should be discussed separately to create a better understanding of how it contributes to the concept of ic. 9594 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication cross-functional planning although it is not always possible for a company to manage all touch points of the brand, the company needs to make use of cross-functional planning to ensure that all controlled touch points of the brand communicate the same set of brand values (roll 2006: 113). this cross-functional process includes the ability of the company to create a corporate focus that aids the development of a unique compensation system that enables the company to prosper from certain core competing traits that are different from those of competitors (grunig, grunig & dozier 2009). purposeful dialogue another defining characteristic of ic is that it focuses on two-way communication between the stakeholders and the company. as ic includes both internal and external stakeholders, it is vital to ensure that all stakeholder groups are well-defined and that continuous feedback is given to every involved stakeholder group on a frequent basis (barker & angelopulo 2006: 198). not only will engaging in conversation with stakeholder groups reinforce relationships with these stakeholders, but it will also enable the company to identify areas of potential development of the brand or product (pitt 2014). core value communication a company can only reach true integration when all the communication efforts of the company have a focus on communicating the corporate values in a way that reaches all stakeholder groups with impact (shin 2013: 9). according to pride and ferrel (2014: 567), the brand or company will increase the chances of stakeholders buying into or associating themselves with the values that a brand offers instead of just buying a product if the values are reinforced through all brand communication. stakeholder focused when a company focuses on the person rather than the product, the focus on communication leads to commitment from both parties and results in a mutual achievement of goals and a feeling of fulfilment for both parties involved (baran, galka & strunk 2008: 123). for a company to create relationships with the different stakeholder groups it is vital to identify these groups as well as their value to the company (olsen 2005: 43). long-term stakeholder relationships when the different internal and external stakeholder groups feel that their input is taken to heart by the company or brand, they develop a sense of belonging and become more loyal to the company. therefore, through ensuring that the proper communication channels are in place, thereby encouraging stakeholders to engage in conversation with the brand, the company will be able to build long-term relationships with the stakeholders (gregory & willis 2013: 14). 9796 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder holistic view according to yeshin (2012: 77), true communication integration can only be reached when all the internal and external communication channels of the company reinforce the core values of the institution. baker (2003: 146) concurs with this notion by stating that when integration of all communication efforts is ensured, the company can prosper from clearer and more realistic objectives. antecedents an antecedent variable is the variable that should be identified and defined prior to the identification of the focal dependent variable with the aim of understanding the origin of the dependant variable (aneshensel 2013: 288). in this study, it is necessary to identify the primary circumstances that need to be in place for ic to be implemented successfully in a company. to explain the antecedent structures that need to be in place prior to ic implementation, the domains of ic will be discussed. this will be followed by the rules for implementing an integration strategy to ensure that the necessary circumstances are in place when ic is implemented. the domains of ic the role of ic in the company is to communicate the core values and principles of the institution, not only through marketing communication, but also by creating custom messages for all the different business functions and stakeholder groups. these functions can be divided into three domains of communication within the company, namely the business management, marketing management and communication management (niemann 2005). with a strong focus on all three domains, stakeholders will not only experience the brand through its marketing communication efforts, but also recognise certain values in the daily activities of the company (smith & taylor 2004: 16). by making use of ic within the different business functions a company can create a competitive advantage. business management ic should serve as the foundation on which all communication endeavours of the company are rooted. without the presence of ic in the business management function of the company, it will continue to operate by using a silo structure (lambert 2008). this results in each department focusing entirely on reaching their own department’s targets and surviving the pressure of another month end. the only way a company can truly be regarded as integrated is when a strong set of corporate values has been created and when these values are acted out by all the different departments in the same way in everyday tasks (schein 2010). in order to create this strong set of corporate values and to increase brand equity, the company needs to define its brand personality and the way in which it wants the different stakeholders to perceive the brand (aaker 2009). relationships with stakeholder groups can only be created when the brand offers a certain set of values with which the stakeholder can associate (hollis 2008). when corporate values are communicated in a way that best suits the demands 9796 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication and preferences of the different stakeholder groups, the company can build lasting relationships. by providing the different departments with a unified set of corporate values, each department can ensure that the corporate values are communicated in everyday tasks (ind 2007: 116). marketing management ic in the marketing management strategy of the company involves the way in which marketing materials and communication functions are used to create and develop unified messages to various stakeholder groups to increase brand value and drive sales (copely 2004: 14). the focus on the integration of the marketing management function of a company is to ensure that consistent messages of the brand values reach the different stakeholders in such a way that these stakeholders want to associate themselves with the brand. although the customers and potential customers are seen as very important stakeholder groups to communicate through the use of marketing communication, the internal marketing communication strategy should also be noted. internal marketing can be defined as an establishment of the needs of employees and the way in which their needs can be addressed by referring to the corporate values (copely 2004). an ideal internal marketing strategy ensures that the interests of the company are met and accepted by staff while they have a sense of acceptance and support from the company. since it is important to have a proper marketing communication strategy for the internal and external stakeholder groups in place, the company needs to assess all the stakeholder groups and the way in which they prefer to communicate. the actual messages sent through these communication channels can only be unified after the importance of each marketing communication function has been determined. this knowledge will also enable the company to use zero-based budgeting when allocating financial resources. zero-based budgeting can be defined as the process where increments of costs are compared with increments of benefits before the allocation of budgets is calculated for each function (debarshi 2011: 469). therefore, when the company understands the value and impact of all communication channels of the company, better decisions regarding budget allocations can be made. communication management through the presence of an integration strategy in the business and the marketing management functions, the company is in a better position to have a strong brand personality that reaches each stakeholder group with maximum impact. however, the communication management function of the company should also be integrated, as ic is defined as a complete cross-functional process. a cross-functional process can be defined as the integration of skills and resources that each department or function of the company has to offer to optimise the output of the entire company (monczka, handfield, giunipero & patterson 2009). this process involves the responsibility of management to ensure that there is a proper communication flow between different departments, so that each department can use their level of expertise to contribute to the overall mission and vision of the company (boone & kurtz 2010: 279). by enabling the different departments, especially the marketing communications and financial 9998 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder departments to collaborate in reaching the ideals of the company, the different departments can aid in determining a more accurate return on investment (roi) (reece 2010). the role of ic in business management is to ensure that the company creates a strong set of brand values that can be acted out in all business functions. when these values become visible in every department, the departments no longer function as individual entities. this integration leads to each department using their distinct set of skills and expertise to contribute to the overall brand personality and value of the brand. through integration in the marketing management function of the company, the company will be able to link the desires of the different stakeholder groups to the values of the brand. this should contribute to create long-term relationships as the different stakeholders feel that the brand offers them more than just a product or service. the knowledge about how stakeholder groups prefer to communicate also enables companies to use zero-based budgeting to allocate financial resources according to the performance of each communication function. thus successful implementation of ic requires the domains of ic to be in place prior to implementation of the concept. ic can be seen as a disciplinary approach and with the proper guiding structures, a company should be able to ensure that the necessary structures are in place before ic is implemented. to provide further guidance on the implementation of ic, the rules of integration are included in the discussion. the rules for integration as internal conflict and a lack of interest from management or staff members can become a hurdle when implementing ic in the company, this implementation process has to be supported. smith and taylor (2004: 19) suggest certain rules for the successful implementation of an integration strategy in the company. these rules will contribute to the practical implementation of ic. the first rule for successful integration is to ensure that senior management have knowledge of and provide support during all stages of the implementation process (smith & taylor 2004: 19). implementation of an integration strategy causes a lot of change in the company and can often result in confusion and even a feeling of alienation of staff as they struggle to adapt to the changes (murray, poole & jones 2006). it is only when management has a clear understanding of how the change will be implemented that the strategy can be communicated to the rest of the staff members. this directly leads to the second rule of integration, which is that integration should take place on the vertical and horizontal levels of the company (smith & taylor 2004: 19). proper integration requires a team effort and therefore staff members at every level in the company need to be part of the integration process (hickman2010: 118). consistency in communication efforts enhances a clear focus of the marketing communication strategy of the company (smith & taylor, 2004:19). during the integration of all communication efforts, the value of each communication channel should be determined (barker, valos & shimp 2011: 6). by having a clear understanding of the impact of messages sent through a specific communication channel, the company will be able to use zero-based budgeting when allocating financial resources (smith & taylor 2004: 19). 9998 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication with the last three rules for integration, the focus is on building relationships with stakeholders through brand values by following a customer-first approach. these relationships can only be sustained when strong communication platforms are created for each stakeholder group according to their specific needs and expectations of the company (smith & taylor 2004: 19). these three rules can be considered as the core of an integrated communication strategy because without the support of personalised communication channels for each stakeholder group it would be difficult to build relationships (aaker 2012). table 2 provides a summary of how the three domains of ic form part of the antecedent structures for the implementation of ic. the rules for integration is also included in this table, as it is vital for a company to see ic as a disciplinary approach and to identify certain precautions regarding the implementation of ic. table 2: antecedents of ic business management marketing management communication management structures that need to be in place prior to ic implementation define brand personality and core values identify all stakeholders create unified messages that convey core values invest in internal marketing communication determine the communication preference for stakeholder groups apply zero-based budgeting management should set clear objectives for each department create unified messages that convey core values use cross-functional planning ensure unity of effort in all departments rules for integration senior management should provide support the aim of ic should be on building relationships include integration of the vertical and horizontal levels of the company have a clear focus of the marketing communication strategy identify the most effective communication platforms apply zero-based planning include integration of the vertical and horizontal levels of the company identify the most effective communication platforms (sources: smith & taylor 2004: 19; niemann 2005) 101100 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder consequences the aim of a consequences variable is to follow the focal dependant variable to explain its aftermath (aneshensel 2013: 288). to understand the scope and impact of ic it is necessary to review the consequences or the impact that the implementation of ic could have on the different domains within a company. although ic seems to be an effective strategy to use to create a transparent brand identity, there are certain advantages and disadvantages that a company have to consider before implementing this strategy. the following discussion will aim to identify the challenges, but also the advantages in each domain during and after ic implementation. implementation of ic in the business management function ang (2014: 4) suggests that, although ic provides a broad spectrum of advantages for a company, the implementation of this strategy often leads to internal conflict and disparity. one of the first problems a company faces when it comes to ic is the decision whether it should be implemented in the company or not. this issue could result in internal conflict between management and staff, as the corporate culture embedded in the company’s structure is usually reluctant to change (alvesson 2013: 186). percy (2014: 18) acknowledges the negative impact that staff can have on the implementation of ic by stating that a rigid organisational culture and resistance of staff to accept changes can easily bring the implementation of ic to a standstill. as ic requires all functions within the company to contribute to the development and implementation of the company’s ic strategy, a lack of interest or participation from internal stakeholders might be one of the biggest concerns of ic implementation. kitchen and uzunoglu (2014: 6) acknowledge the benefits that can be obtained through ic by stating that it is a strategy created to build the most important asset any company has, namely, its relationships with its customers. one of the main benefits of ic is that it enables a company to engage in two-way communication with each stakeholder group on a more personal basis. these more personal conversations might result in an increase in brand equity as committed employees could communicate strong brand values that will cause customers to identify the company values through the actions of its staff members (ind & bjerke 2007). implementation of ic in the marketing management function one of the main concerns of implementing ic is that most ic enthusiasts perceive marketing communication as a form of support to ic, instead of one of the managing functions of ic (grunig & grunig 2013: 61). as this perception may easily cause undeliverable results, a company may start to feel that ic is an unreachable ideal (hohpe & woolf 2004). furthermore, even if the implementation of ic is accepted by the internal stakeholders of the company, the application of zero-based budgeting through ic may result in internal competition between departments as they compete for a budget. fortunately, ic also enables companies to follow an approach where the value of each stakeholder is determined before a more personal communication platform can be created to meet the demands of each individual group (mcmanus 2007: 95). 101100 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication ic enables a company to apply zero-based budgeting when resources need to be allocated to the different marketing communication channels (thorson & moore 2013 148). zero-based budgeting ensures that communication efforts are result-oriented to achieve greater impact of messages (atrill, mclaney, harvey & jenner 2012). implementation of ic in the communication management function when a company focuses more on the financial gain and well-being of each department, the focus on attending to customers’ demands is lost and staff members lose interest in implementing ic (perrey & spillecke 2013: 18). this is often the result of management not providing the different departments with the support needed to implement ic. another reason for the loss of interest from staff with regard to implementing ic is often because managers prefer to outsource the implementation of an ic strategy (michaels 2011). fortunately, when the company succeeds in implementing ic, it is able to support and motivate each staff member to become a brand ambassador who lives out the company’s values and meets the promises of the company (bauer, bloching, howaldt & mitchell 2005: 136). this motivation is supported through a cross-functional planning structure that enables the different business functions to collaborate and the corporate values become the driving force of all communication endeavours (rosenau & wilson 2006). when all business functions or departments have a shared set of values and an overall goal to achieve, it will reduce internal conflict between departments, as the different business functions will form a unity (simonsen 2010: 18). although the mentioned disadvantages pose a threat to the implementation of ic, it should rather be seen as challenges that can be overcome. table 3 provides a summary of the advantages and disadvantages that should be taken into consideration when the actual ic framework will be developed. table 3: consequences of the implementation of ic business management marketing management communication management disadvantages or challenges of implementing ic internal conflict corporate culture reluctant to change or accept ic lack of interest or participation from internal stakeholders marketing communication is seen as support of ic rather than a managing function ic is seen as complex and unreachable ideal zero-based budgeting could cause internal competition departments may fail to see the reason for ic implementation management outsources ic implementation table continues 103102 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder table continues business management marketing management communication management advantages of the implementation of ic build stakeholder relationships two-way communication increase brand equity personal communication platforms meet the demands of stakeholder groups zero-based budgeting ensures that communication efforts are result-oriented staff become brand ambassadors core values become the driving force of communication cross-functional planning creates shared values, goals and unity after reviewing ic in terms of the historic evolution that led to the development of the concept and the defining attributes that constitute ic, a clear picture of the essence and scope of ic emerged. however, to understand the full impact of implementing this concept into a business structure, the antecedents and the consequences of implementation of ic also have to be reviewed. by using the information gathered through the guidance of a conceptual analysis, the authors were able to identify the most prominent themes of ic and the most important factors that need to be in place for ic to be implemented. the structure developed through the conceptual analysis facilitated the identification of the most prominent themes of ic to develop a structure that encapsulates its scope. identification and structuring of the dominant themes and constructs of ic to implement ic successfully in a company, integration should take place in all its domains or functions. table 4 provides a visual demonstration of how the knowledge foundation of ic created through the conceptual analysis supports the identification of aims and objectives for each theoretical domain. table 4: consequences of the implementation of ic business management marketing communication management communication management driver of ic focus on stakeholder loyalty create sustainable relationships core value communication consistency in marketing communication messages purposeful interactions zero-based planning consistency in strategic communication messages cross-functional management core competencies overall integrated strategy 103102 a conceptual analysis of integrated communication business management marketing communication management communication management characteristics of ic two-way communication manage relationships increase brand equity cross-functional planning two-way communication manage relationships increase brand equity cross-functional planning stakeholder focused two-way communication manage relationships increase brand equity cross-functional planning antecedents for ic implementation integration: internal communication building relationships establishing values clear imc strategy zero-based budgeting stakeholders-first approach build relationships through brand value strong information systems get support from management integration at all business levels zero-based budgeting build relationships through brand values possible disadvantages or challenges faced through ic implementation internal conflict lack of participation from internal stakeholders internal stakeholders do not accept core values ic is seen as too complex marketing communication is seen as support of ic zero-based budgeting might cause internal competition management outsources ic implementation departments fail to see bigger picture possible advantages obtained through ic increase brand equity build stakeholder relationships two-way communication creating personalised communication platforms meet the demands of all stakeholders bigger message impact through zerobased budgeting staff engagement cross-functional planning summary this discussion of the historic evolution of ic served as a vantage point to identify how the concept evolved through the different eras, and differs from one era to another. after this discussion, a working definition of ic was created and the different 105104 annette van baalen & dalmé mulder elements that shaped this concept were identified and explained in more detail. the antecedents of ic were identified to contextualise the circumstances needed for ic to be implemented. in this discussion, the three 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(fourth edition). london: kogan page. thorson, e. & moore, j. 2013. integrated marketing communications programs: an approach to moving from chaotic to systematic. in: thorson, e. & moore, j. integrated communication: synergy of persuasive voices. psychology press. wells, p. & hollins, t. 2002. time to let go. in: baskin, m. brand new brand thinking: brought to life by 11 experts who do. sterling: kogan page. willmer, w.k. 2011. advancing small colleges: strategies for success. new york: sterling. yeshin, t. 2012. integrated marketing communications. london: routledge. 22 time and communication dfm strauss* abstract this article commences by paying attention to the dual role of signs, as physical subjects and communicative objects – both being correlated with physical law and communicative principles. in order to show that time cannot be reduced to physical time, we shall argue that there are indeed different modes of time differing from the physical and kinematic modes of time. once the ontic reality of four modal or functional aspects has been established, it will be shown that succession (number), simultaneity (space), uniform flow/persistence/constancy (the kinematic) and (irreversible) change (the physical) are each a mode of time in its own right. moreover, also within the other aspects of reality ontic time manifests itself, such as evidenced in (heterogeneous) biotic time-order of birth, growth, maturation, ageing and dying. a distinction between time-order and time duration is needed in order to question the widespread view that time is the dimension of change. change represents only one among multiple modes of time. against this background, attention is given to communication and the conditioning role of the first four ontic time-orders (with a remark on identity and communication), followed by an account of communication and the other modes of time. the intimate connection between time and communication is explained by highlighting the multiple interconnections between communicative actions and the various modes of time, with a view on the norming role of the latter. keywords: time, communication, modes of time, ontic time, biotic time-order, time-order * professor danie strauss (dfms@cknet.co.za) is a research fellow in the school of philosophy at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university in south africa. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 22-41 23 time and communication introduction the two key terms captured in the title of this article are commonplace within our everyday experience, although the term “time” acquired prominence long before the term “communication” obtained an important position. during the past hundred years it was particularly enhanced through the rapid development of modern technology and the new devices invented to make communication easier, faster and more reliable. we will explain below that understanding time requires an insight into the ontic status of the most basic aspects or functions of reality, namely those of number, space, movement and physical change.1 the term “ontic” is derived from the greek word “on” designating what exists prior to any human cognition. it will be argued that “time” exceeds both the kinematic meaning of uniform flow (rectilinear motion) and the physical meaning of dynamic changes. then, the outcome of these considerations will be applied to an understanding of time and communication. it appears as if only physics can tell us what time is, for the generally held conviction is that we live in a “space-time-continuum” – with time as a fourth dimension (einstein 1959). the dual role of ‘signs’: physical subjects and communicative objects since the nature of a sign (verbal or written)2 is vital for an understanding of communication, one also has to account for the relation between the assigning actor and the sign. the sound heard in lingual activities and the ink or carbon used for writing/printing are undeniably physical (and chemical) in nature. as such they are subject to the known physical laws. sound waves, as well as atoms and molecules, are subjects within the physical aspect of reality. but since no atom, molecule or macro-molecule is alive they are not biotic subjects, such as plants, animals and human beings. however, mediated by (human) sense organs, physical subjects may be objectified in the biotic and sensitive modes of reality by making these latent object-functions patent. of course, physical subjects can also be objectified within aspects such as the logical-analytical, the cultural-historical, the sign-mode, and the social aspect of reality. the ability to identify carbon molecules and distinguish them from sound waves entails their objectification within the logical-analytical aspect. likewise, the formative control exercised in articulating language gives rise to the cultural-historical objectification of sound waves. lingual objectification takes place when physical subjects are objectified within the sign-mode of reality. when the latter is deepened by the social interaction between human subjects we encounter communicative objectification. 24 dfm strauss subject-subject relations and subject-object relations the reason why time appears to be inseparably connected to communication is that most subject-subject relations are founded on subject-object relations. two lines (extended spatial subjects) may intersect at a point or may be delimited by two points (spatial objects). from the fact that communication, as a subject-subject relation, is always dependent upon and founded in subject-object relations, one may be tempted to think that reflecting on time and communication can settle for physical time. since normal communication involves two subjects and two objects more than physical time is needed: there is subject-1 [the person addressing someone], object-1 [the object in discussion], object-2 [the verbal sign (word): designating object-1], and subject-2 [the person addressed]. in all s-o-o-s relations the human subjects are subject to communicative norms or principles. law-side, norm-side and factual side within each aspect of reality we may distinguish a law-side (or norm-side), as well as a factual side. the latter embraces both subject-subject relations and subject-object relations. moreover, all post-logical aspects are based upon the basic opposition of what is norm-conformative and what is anti-normative. contraries are founded on the logical principle of non-contradiction (contraries such as logical – illogical, polite – impolite, frugal – wasteful, beautiful – ugly, legal – illegal, and moral – immoral). these contraries appear at the factual side of each of the above-mentioned norming aspects, correlated with relevant principles on the norm-side of these aspects3. keep in mind that the word “factual” refers to what is given in an ontic sense, prior to human cognition, signification and communication. the idea of being, time and eternity in early greek philosophy the idea of “being” acquired a connotation, which became an integral part of the established view on time and eternity. being was related to a continuous whole which turned an infinite succession, extending beyond all finite limits, inwards by recognising the infinite divisibility of continuity. soon the multiplicity of parts was considered to be present at once. succession and simultaneity therefore mark key elements of the general human awareness of time and of all forms of communication. it is noteworthy that succession was first connected to recurrent events, giving rise to an awareness of cyclic successions, such as the succession of day and night, the succession of seasons, the succession of generations, and so on. it was much later before a linear view of time became dominant. yet assmann (1975: 43-44) mentions the opposition of cyclic and linear conceptions of time in ancient egypt, but does not find textual support for 25 time and communication correlating succession with cyclical time and linearity with eternity. in his philosophy of being, parmenides contemplated that being is without origination and passing away for it is as inexpressible and unthinkable that nonbeing is (diels-kranz 1960: 236-237; b fragment 8: 10-25). the only option is that what is is – and this is [being] has many characteristics: while unborn it is incorruptible and it coheres in the now [present] as a whole, as a continuous (coherent) unity (diels-kranz 1960: 235; b fragment 8: 3-6). on this basis infinity was seen as the timeless present (compare plotinus’ enneads – the whole iii,7). infinity eventually became related to eternity as timelessness compare boethius, augustine (confessiones xi,11,13; de trinitate xii,14), thomas aquinas (summa theologica i,10) and klaas schilder (schilder 1948: 61; see also mozersky 2008 and oaklander 2008). augustine assumed that god can oversee every infinite succession at once. the effect was that time (succession) and eternity (at once) were related to what we may designate as the successive infinite and the at once infinite (since aristotle known as the potential infinite and the actual infinite). late medieval speculation about the infinity of god gave rise to the expressions infinitum successivum and infinitum simultaneum (the successive infinite and the at once infinite – see maier 1964: 77-79). does nature make jumps? after the renaissance linear time surfaced, nature does not make jumps (natura non facit saltus). the genius of the 17th century, g.w.h. leibniz, incorporated this view in his famous law of continuity (lex continui). it embodies the modern ideal to bridge in thought all discontinuities encountered in reality. this ideal became all-pervasive, also underlying the idea that the physical universe is continuous (and therefore infinitely divisible)4. however, subsequent developments necessitated the acknowledgement of the difference between mathematical space and physical space. spatial extension is both continuous and infinitely divisible, while physical space is neither continuous (since it is determined by the quantumstructure of energy), nor infinitely divisible (see hilbert 1925: 164). paul bernays also distinguishes between physical space and mathematical space (bernays 1976: 37 note 5). penelope maddy mentions feynman saying that the view that “[physical] space is continuous is wrong” (maddy 1997: 149); two pages further she also distinguishes between physical space (which is not continuous, owing to the “impediments of matter”) and mathematical space (maddy 1997: 153). on the same page she summarises her argument by saying “we’ve seen that a space-time continuum is not something we can take as established”. both mathematical space and physical space are extended, showing what is similar between them. but in this similarity the differences between these aspects 26 dfm strauss are apparent. physical extension represents a spatial analogy within the structure of the physical aspect. we therefore are not living in a space-time-continuum, at least not in a physical continuum. whereas space is merely one aspect of reality, time is an encompassing dimension of the universe5. recent discussions of the problem of time within the broad context of a philosophy of time gave prominence both to the nature of succession and the role of simultaneity, although by and large most authors in this field identify time with (physical) change. of particular significance in this regard is an article published by mctaggert in the journal mind in 1908 on “the unreality of time”. it is republished in a four-volume series of books on the theme the philosophy of time (oaklander 2008a; oaklander 2008b; oaklander 2008c; oaklander 2008d)6. these works are subdivided in 13 parts and they include diverse articles on time by 97 authors. mctaggert’s a series, b series and c series mctaggert distinguishes the series of positions running from the past to the present and to the future [his a series], from the series of positions running from earlier to later [his b series]. the crux of the a series is related to the “universally admitted” claim “that time involves change” (mctaggert 2008a: 22). whereas an a series entails change, it is opined that the b series “by itself is not sufficient for time, since time involves change”: “so it follows that there can be no b series where there is no a series, since where there is no a series there is no time” (mctaggert 2008a: 24). on the same page a c series is introduced, which “is not temporal, for it involves no change, but only an order”. mctaggert here acknowledges the fact that one can count, following the order of a c series, both forward and backward (mctaggert 2008a: 25). the reversible quantitative order of succession the decisive feature of the b and c series therefore is given in what we may describe as the reversible quantitative order of succession. this order of succession forms the foundation of mathematical induction7 and, according to the intuitionist mathematician hermann weyl, it safeguards mathematics from becoming an enormous tautology [“eine ungeheure tautologie zu sein”] (weyl 1966: 86)8; yet the attempt to strip this order of succession from any notion of time is questionable. a time-order of succession? according to smart, the main purpose of cassirer’s “critical study of the history of mathematics is to illustrate and confirm the special thesis that ordinal number is logically prior to cardinal number, and, more generally, that mathematics may be defined, in leibnizian fashion, as the science of order” (smart 1958: 245). after leibniz the 19th century mathematician william hamilton (in his work theory of 27 time and communication conjugate functions) advanced the view that algebra is the “science of pure time or order in progression” (cassirer 1957: 84-85). in his neo-intuitionism brouwer advances the view that discreteness and continuity are primitive notions and that they are mutually irreducible (see brouwer 1907: 8; bell 2006: 217). brouwer equates what he designates as the intuition of bi-unity [twee-eenigheidsintuïtie], that is, thinking together discreteness and continuity, with the time-intuition [tijdsintuïtie] (see brouwer 1919: 14)9. change and physical time physics deals with energy-operation, i.e. with causes and effects (causality) – and whenever energy operates changes occur. however, the question is if we can detect changes without an awareness of “an unchanged element”, as mctaggert calls it (mctaggert 2008a: 23). on the same page he writes, “[n]ow what characteristics of an event are there which can change and yet leave the element the same event?” mellor formulates a similar statement in connection with the conviction that no one thinks that, “i could survive the simultaneous loss of all my intrinsic properties”: “so while any one property of mine is changing, i must, in order to preserve my identity through that change, keep enough other properties of mine unchanged” (mellor, in oaklander 2008d: 407)10. in passing it should be noted that the law of non-decreasing entropy, the second main law of thermodynamics, ultimately ensures that physical time is irreversible (we will return to this issue below). does persistence (‘stasis’) need a cause? when mellor continues his argument in the next paragraph on the same page, he looks for an account of the “cause” resulting in “stasis”, i.e. in what remains the same: “the causation of stasis may be less obvious than that of change, but it is no less real, and no less necessary to secure the identity that is needed to make a difference a change”. however, this view confuses the physical meaning of change with the (foundational) phoronomic meaning of uniform, rectilinear motion. when something persists, i.e., stays the same, no physical cause is needed. this mistake was corrected by galileo (his law of inertia) and newton (his first law of motion): movement does not need a cause – only a change in motion is in need of a cause. as an original mode of explanation motion is primitive and therefore (just as number and space as modes of explanation) not in need of being explained. the basic distinction between phoronomy and dynamics janich distinguishes between what is phoronomic (also designated as kinematic) and what is dynamic – by pointing out that given certain conditions a body can never accelerate in a discontinuous way, that is to say, it cannot change its speed through an infinitely large acceleration, because this would require an infinite force (janich 1975: 68-69; see also janich 2009: 140).11 28 dfm strauss the distinction between the kinematic aspect of uniform, rectilinear motion and the physical aspect of dynamic energy-operation reveals a perennial philosophical problem, namely that of constancy and change. plato already realised that if everything changes (as heraclitus claimed) then conceptual knowledge would be at a loss (see plato’s dialogue cratylus 439 c – 440 a). his lasting insight is that without an element of constancy, no changes could be detected. order and time what about the idea of a time-order? it appears on the law-side of reality, strictly correlated with duration at the factual side (see the remarks of dooyeweerd 1936: 67-70). the b series of mctaggert should be related to the numerical time-order of succession and the a series with the irreversible (physical) time-order of cause and effect (change or causality) which concerns physical changes occurring when the future turns into the present and the present into the past. in addition, we have to consider two other modes of time, namely the spatial and the kinematic modalities: the spatial time-order of simultaneity and the kinematic time-order of uniform flow (rectilinear movement or constancy). modes of time and the history of time measurement immanuel kant already saw this, in spite of the psychological one-sidedness present in his general view of time as a sensory form of intuition. he states that the “three modes of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity” (kant 1787b:219)12. the history of time-measurement reflects four different time-orders which actually belong to our everyday awareness of time, namely earlier and later (number), simultaneity (space), time-flow (kinematic) and irreversibility (physical). the physicist points out that these are well-known modalities of time (stafleu 1980: 16)13. universal constants implicitly confirm the existence of the first four modal aspects our awareness of time is also reflected in the units of measurement (designated as: constants) identified in the protophysics of lorenzen. he distinguishes the following four units, namely mass, length, duration and charge (lorenzen 1976: 1 ff.). this clearly demonstrates that linking time with duration embraces all four above-mentioned modes of time, which opens up the possibility to employ them also as modes of explanation. interestingly, heisenberg acknowledges two universal constants only, namely the constant velocity of light in a vacuum postulated by einstein and the quantum of action discovered by max planck. the latter was understandably in search for a third universal constant, namely length. 29 time and communication he believed that we need at least three units – such as length, time and mass. one may replace them by length, velocity and mass or, alternatively, by length, velocity and energy (heisenberg 1958: 165). interestingly, time is here implicitly identified with its kinematic mode, because the word “time” (which heisenberg equates with the vacuum-velocity of light, c) is substituted by “velocity” in the last two alternatives contemplated by heisenberg. once the four basic units of measurement are identified, we can represent the outcome in table 1 below, distinguishing number (“mass”), space (“length”), the kinematical (“duration”), and the physical (“charge”). weinert lists the kilogramme (number), the meter (space), the second (the kinematic) and temperature (the physical) (weinert 1998: 230; see also lorenzen 1989; strauss 2010: 169). table 1: summary of the four basic units of measurement lorenzen heisenberg (a) heisenberg (b) heisenberg (c) heisenberg (d) weinert physical charge quantum of action energy temperature kinematical duration c (velocity of light) time velocity velocity second space length length length length meter number mass mass mass kilogramme it is clear that these thinkers implicitly provide their account of different units of measurement in terms of the four most basic aspects of reality and it is also clear that they related time rather to the kinematic aspect than exclusively to the physical mode. change is only one among multiple modes of time this broadened perspective immediately questions the identification of time with change, which is no more than only one of the modes of time. mctaggert holds that a “universe in which nothing changed ... would be a timeless universe” (mctaggert 2008a: 22). mellor clearly still adheres to this conviction by stating that “time is the dimension of change” (mellor, in oaklander 2008d: 406). however, as soon as it is realised that the various aspects of reality are not fitted into an “either-or” relation, but into a relation of mutual coherence based upon their uniqueness, then room is left for different angles of approach to the same event or state of affairs. in passing we may note that the sociologist anthony giddens questions the identification of time with change. he does this because he is aware of the problem of identity: “time is not to be identified with change, since an object only has identity in so far as it has continuity that ‘abides in time’” (giddens 1987: 141). 30 dfm strauss the biotic time-order a person maturing and reaching adulthood certainly manifests the determining and limiting effect of the biotic time-order of birth, growth, maturation, ageing and dying14. in this example the focus is on the biotic subject-function of living entities. of course they are also physical subjects (constituted by their atoms, molecules and macro-molecules), a kinematic (moving) subject, a spatially extended subject, and a numerical subject – a person is one, not many. observing that such a person has aged (changed) over the past decade does not exclude an assessment from the angle of the kinematic subject-function of such a person, but presupposes it for noticing changes over a decade rests on the assumption that we are still speaking of the same person – (kinematic) constancy lies at the foundation of (physical) change. when time is one-sidedly identified either with change or with constancy the result will be a meaningless theoretical construct. the reality of the biotic time phases exceeds physical time. the french-american biologist lecomte du noüy points out that biotic life phases accelerate, for the older a living entity gets, the quicker the process of ageing advances. (ir)reversibility although communication involves reciprocity, it does not entail reversibility. in this sense it echoes the physical meaning of irreversibility. the development of modern physics highlights these distinctions also from the angle of (ir)reversibility. within the aspects of number, space and movement, the time-orders are reversible. mctaggert already noticed the reversibility of the numerical timeorder (see mctaggert 2008a: 25). the succession of the natural numbers could be counted in two directions: 1, 2, 3 ... or ... 3, 2, 1, while the integers by definition include positive and negative numbers [... -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3 ...]. an actual (physical) process of counting, in whichever direction, will always be bound to the irreversibility of the physical time-order. the symmetry of spatial figures reveals the reversibility of the spatial time-order, and in the case of the kinematic time-order, switching the sign will change the direction of movement (as in the case of a pendulum). every aspect of reality is unique, characterised by its peculiar core meaning or meaning nucleus, and at the same time it reveals its meaning only in coherence with the other aspects of reality. for example, the physical concept of mass reflects a physical quantity (a numerical analogy). we have already briefly discussed the difference between physical space and mathematical space (physical extension reflects a spatial analogy within the structure of the physical aspect). on the lawside of the physical aspect the kinematical analogy is revealed in the configuration of energy-constancy (the first law of thermodynamics). the order of succession 31 time and communication between these aspects suggests that we may call the backward-pointing analogies retrocipations (forward-pointing ones are anticipations). the limitations of the classical mechanistic view in modern physics einstein endorses the earlier mentioned position taken by janich, as well as the view of planck. these scholars are critical of the mechanistic main tendency of classical physics which reduced all physical phenomena to reversible mechanical movements (planck 1910: 53). planck also points out that the irreversibility of natural processes (also known as the “arrow of time”) confronts the mechanistic view with unsolvable problems, since within the latter all processes are considered to be reversible (planck 1910: 55). in his autobiographical notes einstein mentions that planck recognises thermodynamically irreversible [nicht umkehrbaren] courses of events, but immediately adds that seen “from the molecular-mechanical point of view... all courses of events are reversible [umkehrbar]” (einstein 1959: 42). the difference between reversibility and irreversibility therefore concerns the kinematical time-order and the physical time-order. according to planck, the most encompassing and perhaps last attempt to reduce all natural phenomena in principle to motion, is contained in the mechanik [mechanics] of heinrich hertz. hertz only acknowledges one kind of matter, namely mass-points, just as there is also only one kind of energy, namely kinetic energy. all the other forms of energy (such as potential energy, electromagnetic energy, chemical energy, and thermic energy) are for hertz derived from the invisible movements of mass-points (planck 1910: 56). acknowledging the feature of irreversibility therefore represents the crucial step in the transition from classical physics to modern physics. in the context of our present assessment, the correlation of time-order and timeduration expresses itself within each aspect in accordance with the unique nature of the aspect concerned. what we have called the dimension of ontic time guarantees an ontic time-order amongst the various aspects of reality, which is revealed in their succession. dooyeweerd indeed distinguishes between the law-side and factual side of “cosmic time” in terms of the distinction between time-order and time duration (dooyeweerd 1940b: 193). communication: the conditioning role of the first four ontic time-orders we noted earlier that communication embodies an s-o-o-s relation, that is to say it concerns the relation between a primary subject (s-1), a primary object (o-1), a secondary object (o-2), and a secondary subject (s-2). communication is therefore based upon a communicative multiplicity and the actualisation of this communicative multiplicity always has to conform to the numerical timeorder of succession because in the communicative interaction the participating 32 dfm strauss subjects and objects successively serve the communicative interaction. yet in all face-to-face communicative interaction the successive elements involved in communication are present at once, conforming to the spatial time-order of simultaneity. communication at a distance, depending upon different kinds of technology (from the telegraph up to almost instant web-interactions), depends upon a continued interaction, persisting throughout the particular communicative event. likewise, in the case of face-to-face communication, the interconnected subjects and objects have to continue their participation, for if it does not persist (kinematic time), the actual communication will break down. the communicative interaction taking place evinces the physical time-order of irreversibility, ensuring that the communication does take effect. the achilles’ heel of a positivistic understanding of time the achilles’ heel of positivism is given in its emphasis on observation, senseperception and sense data. does “time” allow access to sensory perception? can we taste time (is it bitter or sweet)? can we hear time (is it soft or loud)? can we feel time (does it hurt)? can we see time (is it beautiful or ugly)? can we touch time (is it hard or soft)? does the absurdity of these questions compel us to conclude the “unreality” of time? no, not if we do acknowledge the ontic reality of the aspects of reality. otherwise we may be tempted to see time merely as a theoretical entity, as is done by nyíri (2006: 302). he follows sellars who calls upon the “framework of everyday observational discourse” causing the “postulation” of certain “unobservable entities” – and sellars then claims that “time is just such a postulated entity” (nyíri 2006: 302-303). however, such a view would not only eliminate the ontic reality of time, but also the ontic reality of the various modal aspects of reality. once the positivist scientist has observed a material entity the next task is to describe it – producing statements concerning “how many?”; “how big?”; “how enduring?”; and “how strong?” and immediately we can ask questions similar to those raised above in connection with time. what does the numerical aspect feel like? how heavy is the spatial aspect? how loud is the kinematic aspect? how sweet is the physical aspect? communication and other modes of time dooyeweerd noticed that all definitions of “time” are actually definitions of the multiple ways in which ontic time expresses itself within each aspect of reality15. how does this insight relate to the different ontic modes of time? communication always entails a succession of recurring s-o-o-s relationships: a subject communicates with another subject (a subject-subject relation), on the basis of a two-fold subject-object relation, encompassing whatever state of affairs is objectified and in a secondary sense whatever written or oral signs mediate the process, leaving aside which technical means are used. 33 time and communication we can now proceed by looking at the foundational relation between the human communicative capacity and the organic subject function of the communicator. a certain level of organic development is required before the lingual abilities of humans come into their own. nonetheless, lingual performance involves the human person in its totality, implying that strictly speaking human lingual and communicative activities do not depend on so-called speech-organs16. furthermore, communication is also co-conditioned by the sensory mode of time. a boring conversation may feel as if it lasted for hours, whereas in fact, measured against the yardstick of physical (clock) time, it lasted only a few minutes. bergson captures the meaning of psychical duration by speaking of dureé. argumentations are governed by the logical order of prius et posterius – the logical ground precedes the logical conclusion. leibniz discovered the logical principle of sufficient ground, also known as the principle of sufficient reason or ground: the principium rationis sufficientis. the imperialistic claim that only physics can tell us what time is runs into serious difficulties with historical time. visiting a farm may cause the visitors to notice that it appears as if life stood still during the previous five decades. this mode of speech says that during the past 50 years nothing changed, an absurdity for physical time. yet, when it is realised that is concerns our historical awareness of time, no absurdity is present. the general pattern of cultural development distinguishes between the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age. it is even said that within the 21st century there are communities still living in the stone age (more or less dated between 2 million and 10 000 years ago). in passing we may note that historicism aimed at reducing everything to historical change, but actually discovered the historical aspect as a genuine mode of time17. historical time phases are determined by historical criteria of cultural development. tradition may be appreciated as an important communicative link between the present and the past. seeing the past as behind us and the future in front of us will not be constitutive for the understanding of time in “cultures in which tradition is the primary medium of organizing time experience”, as giddens (1987: 143) remarks. various cultures may be more or less advanced in terms of their technology, tertiary academic institutions or economic systems, yet through translations intercultural communication is opened up at once. bührig, house and ten thije edited a book dedicated to this perspective (2009). highlighting that human existence is characterised by “historicality” does not automatically need to result in the historicistic conviction that human nature is inherently “historical”, as giddens (1987: 141) correctly remarks. 34 dfm strauss time also comes to expression in what is normally designated as the lingual mode. a more encompassing characterisation is found in calling it the sign mode, because it then includes the lingual trait (linguistic structures), the semantic trait (what is signified), and the semiotic trait (given in the normative calling: signify). the meaning of the sign mode is opened up or deepened when its forward-pointing analogies (anticipations) are disclosed. the first aspect towards which the sign mode is opened up is the social aspect. the term communication aptly describes this deepened meaning of the sign mode. within the sign mode itself lingual time is evident in the semantic effects of punctuation marks or pausing in speech acts. the phenomenon of interest reveals economic time, also captured in the slogan “time is money”. legal communication is embedded in particular features attached to the way in which law treats time. whereas the physical calendar follows the normal succession of days, weeks, months and years, the jural calendar contains gaps or discontinuities, such as excluding public holidays, sundays or weekends from the number of days specified. laws with a retroactive effect underscore the uniqueness of jural time. a declaration of age (a privilege granted a minor – venia aetatis) or the new marital status (after a wedding) may affect the jural time involved in “coming of age” in such a way that the generally specified age of majority may vary in the legal order of western states. legal arrangements therefore contain their own communicative force since they cannot be reduced to physical time. moreover, laws are made valid by competent legal organs requiring an interpretation of what is communicated by such laws. identity and communication both the subject-subject and subject-object relations involved in communicative acts have to retain their communicative identity throughout actual communication. the problem of identity concerns the relationship between constancy and change. there are two ways in which terms can be derived from a particular modal aspect: (a) to designate what functions within the boundaries of an aspect; and (b) to account for the way in which such a term can be used to point beyond the boundaries of that aspect. for example, although the term wholeness or totality is located within the spatial aspect, it may be used in order to refer to the entire universe. one may call usage (a) a conceptual use of spatial terms and usage (b) a concept-transcending use of spatial terms (also designated as an idea-use of such terms). likewise, uniform motion may refer to a moving body (as a kinematical subject), but the persistence or “abiding in time,” as giddens has called it, points at the identity of an entity. a concept-transcending use of terms derived from the first four aspects communicates the most basic philosophical statements any scholar can make: 35 time and communication everything is unique, everything coheres with everything else, everything is constant, and everything changes. this applies mutatis mutandis to communication as well: it is unique, coheres with everything else, endures, and changes. the multiple aspectual time conditions norming linguistic communication18 in their account of participatory communication, jacobson and servaes (1999: 274) consider four normative conditions, namely truth (is the information being offered undistorted and reliable?), rightness (legitimacy), sincerity (honesty), and comprehensibility. when linguistic communication is equated with the adjective communicative, then the interconnections between communicative actions and the various temporal modes of reality analogically reflected within the deepened structure of the signmode shed a new and more nuanced light on the relationship between time and communication19. we have alluded to the presence of principles on the norm-side of all the postsensory aspects. every retrocipation and anticipation on the norm-side of the postsensory aspects reveals a fundamental modal norm or principle. we highlight this perspective in terms of the multiple modes of ontic time. communicative orderliness reflects the subjectedness of successive communicative actions to the numerical time-order. information communicated ought to be properly ordered and presented in an orderly way. in addition, it ought to be communicated in a coherent way, integrated into a meaningful communicative whole (the appeal of the spatial time-order of at once). once communication commences it ought to be sustained (continued) in such a way that it is terminated only when the participants completed their communication (the kinematic timeorder of uniform flow). although communication oftentimes involves repetition, it ought to have communicative effects (the irreversible physical time-order of causality). communicative vitality, fruitfulness and adaptivity (the biotic analogy) call for communicative growth and communicative maturity, reflecting the conditioning role of the biotic time-order. communicative sensitivity, in turn, serves as the foundation of the normative appeal of communicative consistency, comprehensibility and reaching of sound conclusions (the norming effect of the logical time-order). in the presence of communicative mastery, power, care and control, communicative actions ought to avoid the break-down of communication or a too rapid advancement, for it should be guided by considerations of communicative continuity and steadfastness (within the cultural-historical mode these features are known as avoiding reactionary or revolutionary tendencies by acting in reformational ways). within a differentiated society communal and interindividual communicative politeness (as opposed to impolite communication) 36 dfm strauss provide the foundation for communicative frugality (communicative economy – the avoidance of communicative excesses and redundancy). in communicative harmony, communicative retribution (justice), communicative integrity (morality), and communicative reliability, confidence20, trustworthiness and being convincing (bona fides), we discern the aesthetic, jural, moral and certitudinal anticipations (within the communicative deepened structure of the sign-mode). it may be illuminating to succinctly summarise the structural features of a modal aspect, which surfaced in our preceding analysis in diagram 1: diagram 1: the structure of a model aspect concluding remark of course, acknowledging multiple modes of time does not intend to deprive kinematical and physical time from their rightful place. but this point is so obvious that it barely needs further elaboration. from the sundial and mechanical clockwork up to the radio, telegraph, telephone and cellphone, modern societies organise themselves on the basis of the trustworthiness of kinematic and physical time. nonetheless, we have seen that the acknowledgment that ontic time distinctly comes to expression in each of the modal aspects of reality enables a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between time and communication. 37 time and communication endnotes 1 what is presupposed in our subsequent analysis is the distinction between the various aspects of reality and the concrete (natural and societal) entities functioning within them (such as material things, plants, animals, human beings and cultural objects – artifacts). in addition to the four just-mentioned aspects (number, space, the kinematic and the physical), we mention the biotic, sensory, logical-analytical, cultural-historical, the sign mode, social economic, aesthetic, jural, moral and the certitudinal aspects. compare the diagram explaining the structural features of a modal aspect before the concluding remark at the end of this article. 2 modern technology explores various kinds of electromagnetic waves, such as light, microwaves, as well as television and radio transmissions. their recurrent propagation over a distance is designated as their wave-length. 3 therefore, we may designate the law-side of all the post sensory aspects as the norm-side of these aspects. there are logical-analytical principles, cultural-historical principles, and so on. 4 although charles darwin employed this aphorism at four places in his origin of species this idea of continuity permeates the entire work. 5 “the problem of time occupies a much deeper and more fundamental level than the problem of space, with which it was incorrectly seen as an equivalent for a long time” (dooyeweerd 1939: 2). 6 references to articles contained in these volumes will refer to the just-mentioned dates. 7 when a statement holds for the natural number 1 and [this is the inductive step] if it is the case that when it holds for the natural number n it also holds for n+1, then it holds in general. 8 in passing we may note that weyl here defends and continues the view of immanuel kant, namely that mathematical judgments are synthetic a priori judgments (see kant 1781, 17872). 9 by acknowledging that “greater and less are undefinable” russell implicitly accepts the primitive meaning of numerical succession (see russell 1956: 194; see also page 167). he remarks that “progressions are the very essence of discreteness” (russell 1956: 299). 10 mellor does acknowledge that our “a-beliefs are as indispensable as they are irreducible” (mellor, in oaklander 2008d: 407). 11 “bezogen auf den gang einer angeblich so ausgewählten parametermaschine kann eine körper seine geschwindigkeit deshalb nicht unstetig, d.h. mit unendlich große beschleunigung änderen, weil dazu eine unendlich große kraft erforderlich wäre.” 12 “die drei modi der zeit sind beharrlichkeit, folge und zugleichsein.” 38 dfm strauss 13 carey touches upon physical (ir)reversibility where he refers to north american communications theory during the third quarter of the 20th century. he says it could have been described “by an arc running from harold innes to marshall mcluhan”. “it would be more impressive,” as oscar wilde said while staring up at niagara falls, “if it ran the other way” (carey 2009: 109). 14 the factual lifespan (duration) of individual plants, animals and human beings vary largely from less than a year to several thousands of years (like the redwood trees in california). 15 see dooyeweerd 1940a: 166-174 and strauss 2010: 169-174 for a more detailed analysis of ontic time. 16 if a speech organ is defined as that bodily part which exists solely in service of the production of speech sounds, then there are no human speech organs. the lungs, larynx, mouth cavity, palate, teeth, lips and nose cavity, without an exception, will perform their primary normal biotic functions even if humans never uttered a word (overhage 1972: 243). 17 already hegel and fichte introduced the concept of “geschichtliche zeit” (historical time), further explored by thinkers such as kierkegaard, jaspers, heidegger, and many others. these developments prompted zuidema to present his inaugural address (1949) under the title: “de mensch als historie” (the historical nature of being human – zuidema 1949). 18 when communicative actions are contextualised within different kinds or types of societal interaction, in addition to unspecified universal modal norms, specified typelaws need to be taken into account. however, such an analysis exceeds the limits of this article. 19 what jacobson and servaes identified merely concerns a few analogical interconnections (retrocipations and anticipations), namely communicative truth and comprehensibility (logical-analytical retrocipations), communicative rightness (a jural anticipation), and communicative sincerity (an ethical anticipation). 20 dianna booher’s book on communication with confidence, in the absence of a theory of modal aspects, prevented her from realising that the meaning of confidence comes to expression only in its coherence with all those aspects differing from the certitudinal aspect. implicitly this book deals with this insight all the way. the subtitle reads: “how to say it right the first time and every time”. it reflects the numerical time-order because the word “first” points at an ordinal number. right from the start she lifts out guidelines derived from the various modal aspects, such as “find commonalities” (the logicalanalytical aspect), “show compassion” (the sensory-emotive aspect), “demonstrate competence” (cultural-historical control, mastery and skillfulness), avoid doublespeak (ambiguity – the sign mode), and so on (see booher 2012: 1-8). 39 time and communication references assmann, j. 1975. zeit und ewigkeit im alten ägypten. heidelberg: carl winter universitätsverlag. bell, j.l. 2006. the continuous and the infinitesimal in mathematics and philosophy. milano: polimetrica. bernays, p. 1976. abhandlungen zur philosophie der mathematik. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buckgesellschaft. booher, d. 2012. communicate with confidence. new york: mcgraw hill. brouwer, l.e.j. 1907. over de grondslagen der wiskunde. amsterdam & leipzig: maas & van suchtelen. brouwer, l.e.j. 1919. wiskunde, waarheid, werkelijkheid. groningen: noordhof. bührig, k., house, j. & ten thije, j.d. 2009. translational action and intercultural communication. manchester: st. jerome publishing. butts, r.e. & brown, j.r. 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(third revised and expanded edition). vienna: r. oldenburg. zuidema, s.u. 1949. de mensch als historie. inaugural oration, free university of amsterdam. franeker: t. wever. 53pb investigating social media conversations: towards implementing an online reputation management framework for npos abstract the main objective of the research reported in this article was to investigate whether a proposed online reputation management framework can be implemented for an npo to effect stakeholder engagement in social media content and conversations. the research further assessed whether an npo can afford greater control of the social web by tracking critical comments and negative publicity and by utilising this information to manage its reputation. the latter was achieved by exploring the facebook page of a south african trade union, solidarity, to determine the impact of online conversations on the reputation of the npo, regardless of the content. a case study methodology was used for the research. the research, which departed from an interpretivist tradition, aimed at analysing the online interactions of stakeholders and their impact on the reputation of the organisation. data was elicited through interviews with administrators and the content of conversations on facebook. the latter was analysed through content analysis. the outcomes of the research and the ideas presented in this article might assist npos with reputation management by implementing the online reputation management framework as a tool to manage and direct their online content and conversations for improved reputation. keywords: online reputation management; online conversations; content; social media; stakeholder engagement; reputation; non-profit organisation introduction stakeholders and organisations are constantly interacting within and between local communities and communities worldwide. people, groups and organisations compete for the attention of their target audiences. in information-overloaded environments, attention has become a commodity in deficit. all roleplayers make decisions, execute actions and produce communication content that are sought after, processed or ignored on digital platforms (carroll 2013). juran van den heever postgraduate student, communication management division, centre for communication and reputation management, university of pretoria, south africa (juran@solidariteit.co.za) prof. ronel rensburg communication management division, centre for communication and reputation management,university of pretoria, south africa (ronel.rensburg@up.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 53-70 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:juran@solidariteit.co.za mailto:ronel.rensburg@up.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 5554 van heerden & rensburg according to van riel and fombrun (2007), all communication, however, to some extent influences the perceptions of stakeholders about a particular organisation and its activities, and therefore affect the organisation’s identity, image, brand and reputation. corporate reputation arises from the perceptions of the stakeholders, irrespective of whether they like, admire or trust the organisation. these perceptions are based on their experiences and the corporate messages and conversations taking place on platforms like social media. online reputation monitoring is increasingly regarded as an essential management practice for marketers and public relations practitioners (jones et al. 2009). the new rules of engagement on the social web are explored in relation to how they contribute to, damage or improve corporate reputation and brand image. how an organisation is perceived and the image the stakeholders have are not only shaped by the organisation’s communication efforts; it is rather a product of conversations taking place online (jones et al. 2009). it is evidently important to monitor social media platforms to manage corporate reputation. stakeholders engaging online can damage or build the reputation of the organisation and through this engagement, they can either help to recruit new stakeholders, or scare them off. while current research indicates how social media content and conversations can be used efficiently in organisations, little is known about the influence these have on keeping stakeholders engaged. there is also ample research on corporate reputation and reputation management (bromley 1993; doorley & garcia 2015; fombrun et al. 2004), but not much about unpacking how online stakeholder engagement via social media affects corporate reputation. this article focuses on the implementation of an online reputation management framework to determine whether and to what extent social media content and conversations contribute to online stakeholder engagement and their effects, whether positive or negative, on online reputation management. research objectives the main objective of the study was to determine the impact that online content and social media conversations had on stakeholder engagement and reputation by implementing the online reputation management framework. the research further undertook to: ♦ determine whether online content has an impact on online reputation and contributes to solidarity’s brand and identity; ♦ find out if online content has an impact on stakeholder engagement; ♦ determine whether online conversations have an influence on continuing stakeholder engagement and online reputation; ♦ investigate whether monitoring of, listening to, and engaging with stakeholders can assist in addressing or suppressing risks for reputation management; and ♦ whether the online reputation management framework can be implemented and operates in corporate communication. 5554 investigating social media conversations an online reputation management framework the proposed online reputation management framework departed from work by shannon and weaver (1948), berlo (1960), schramm (1954) and barnlund (1962), skinner et al. (2009) and james grünig and colleagues (1984). according to skinner et al. (2009), the most basic communication process comprises a triad: a communicator, a message and a recipient. these three aspects go hand-in-hand with closely related factors, such as code, medium, context, feedback and interference. reputation management models include concepts like listening and engaging (aula & mantere 2008). thus, the online reputation management framework that is proposed is a combination of traditional communication models and contemporary online reputation models. the online reputation management framework is contextually defined as follows: an online framework that organisations can implement and use to create and communicate specific images of themselves to their internal and external stakeholders, so that perceptions about the organisation can be managed. it is a framework that allows organisations to say something about themselves, allows the media to say something about them, indicates the organisation’s actions to these conversations, as well as how organisations “listen” to what stakeholders say about the organisation on online platforms. any organisation has a certain reputation and the organisation must manage, protect and maintain this reputation. the process begins with the organisation’s daily activities − what it says, writes, does and produces, the way it packages itself, and how it interacts with stakeholders. the proposed online framework above attempts to assist organisations to monitor, manage, protect and maintain their online reputation step-by-step. 5756 van heerden & rensburg figure 1: the online reputation management framework (adapted from van den heever 2014) unpacking reputation and online reputation management according to larkin (2003) and dowling (2006), reputation is built on trust and belief and on the experiences and opinions of the public (aula & mantere 2008; portmann et al. 2014). in the commercial world, reputation appears to have become a “cinderella” asset. it is easily overlooked, but with immense potential, and a key issue in corporate success (coenen et al. 2009) – success here being the return of customers who bring friends with them. the reputation of any organisation can be affected by deliberate and non-deliberate actions and events, caused by any stakeholder in or outside the organisation. the online world has radically altered the dynamics of corporate reputation formation and management, and in today’s global markets, organisations compete daily for visibility, investments and brand positioning (bunting & lipski 2000; romenti et al. 2015). in the growing hubbub of consumer, media and activist dissection of corporate behaviour, organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to make their voices heard. by creating newly accessible channels of communication, the internet 5756 investigating social media conversations has shifted the balance of power of “voice” with the result that corporate reputations are increasingly defined not by what organisations do or say, but by how others perceive and respond to their words and actions (bunting & lipski 2000). online reputation is a perceptual identity formed through the collective perceptions of others; it also represents an organisation’s past actions and prospects, which are all visible online. aula and mantere (2008) identified the tension between two competing discourses on organisational reputation, namely the financial value-driven capital discourse and the meaning-driven interpretive discourse. this means the difference between the “show me the money” concept and the idea that reputation has power beyond the monetary. for an organisation to become excellent, it must pay attention to both aspects of reputation. bennett (2013) states that reputation exists in the communicative interaction between the organisation and its stakeholders, and is built on the organisation’s past actions, current state, and its prospects. the strategic management of reputation requires an understanding of an organisation’s internal and external environment. aula and mantere (2008) use the communicative metaphor of an arena to describe the environment in a market of meaning. organisations interact with their stakeholders in different types of arenas where interactions create mental impressions. corporate communication occurs everywhere. different reputational arenas are formed based on the kind of communication practised by the organisation and that of its stakeholders. aula and mantere (2008) differentiate between four arenas in which the organisation may find itself, namely peace, defence, attack and riot. this model is based on two elementary acts, namely integrating current meaning, and dissipating it. there are also two sets of actors, namely the organisation and its stakeholders. peace offence defence riot figure 2: the arena model of organisational reputation (adapted from aula and mantere 2008) 5958 van heerden & rensburg agenda-setting and agenda-building theory inspired by lipmann’s (1922) notion of the media influencing the “pictures in our heads” of “the world outside”, scholars have spent decades exploring the agendasetting function of the news media and its role in shaping public opinion. mccombs et al. (1997) regard agenda-setting as one variant of priming and framing. according to these authors (1997), agenda-setting looks to story selection as a determinant of public perceptions, issue importance, and indirectly through priming and evaluations. cohen’s classic dictum in 1963 (in carroll 2013), “the media may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling stakeholders what to think about”, clarifies what contemporary agenda-setting researchers have termed first and second level agenda-setting effects. according to maxwell et al. (1972), the first level is concerned with how the salience of objects in media messages influence “what we think about”, while the second level is concerned with how the salience of attributes used in media messages to describe these objects shapes “how we think about” them. although agenda-setting focuses on what is said in media, a new type of media entered the scene and social media became more relevant. in this instance, the organisations themselves, especially non-profit organisations (npos), are becoming authors and generate the content that the stakeholders see. an agenda is set, and people are influenced. stakeholders in this case also have a say and could influence other stakeholders, which may further determine the agenda and influence reputation. according to resnick (2004), an organisation’s most important intangible asset, its reputation, will be at risk unless executives actively manage the perceptions of their organisation with as much rigour as they apply to managing financial, operational or technological risks. greyser (in resnick 2004) states that corporate reputation is a window to the fundamental character of an organisation and its leaders, and as such is relevant to all stakeholders. organisations need to put procedures and practices in place to manage their reputation and the risks involved as they set out to engage with the wider community on the social web (jones et al. 2015; resnick 2004). practices may include a variety of aspects, but for this study these practices, as part of the research objectives, covered the following aspects (portmann et al. 2014), focusing particularly on online conversations: ♦ monitoring and listening to stakeholders who have their own perceptions and by listening to them, help create loyalty so that relationships might develop. ♦ promoting the organisation’s brand through online actions. ♦ suppress or address general risks and reputation risk. 5958 investigating social media conversations online stakeholder engagement according to adams and frost (2006), stakeholder engagement has become increasingly important in recent years. for foster and jonker (2005) and loi (2016), the effect of stakeholder relationships on the success of organisations cannot be ignored. every organisation must therefore gear itself to engage with its stakeholders in some way, as there is pressure on organisations to manage performance and stakeholder perceptions of performance through external reporting (adams & frost 2006). in the online environment, there is little space for monologue. according to jones et al. (2015) and foster and jonker (2015), organisations can no longer simply devise a message and communicate it to their audiences, neither can they simply put across their own agenda; this would be a monologue and not a dialogue (adams & frost 2006). with the available social networks, organisations are no longer solely in the hands of their management teams. in the online world, corporate reputation might easily be enhanced or permanently damaged. therefore, jones et al. (2015) state that reputation on the social web is built on online stakeholder engagement. organisations seek to create active online communities around their brands (ibid.). the social web allows the organisation’s stakeholders to co-create its brand image and reputation. the stakeholders can thus play a role in the improvement or deterioration of the reputation of the organisation. freeman’s stakeholder theory according to rhodes et al. (2014) and andriof and waddock (2002), stakeholder theory addresses the elements in an organisation’s relationships with stakeholders. the theory has evolved in recent years and the attention here should be focused on the importance of the relationships that an organisation has with it stakeholders. the long-term value is determined by its relationships with critical stakeholders. in the case of the research reported on in this article, it is the online relationship that the npo, solidarity, has with its facebook followers. freeman (1984) suggests that the purpose of a business is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders. to succeed and be sustainable over time, executives must keep the interests of all stakeholders aligned (freeman 1999; donaldson 1995). the challenge is to identify and recognise the mutual interests among the organisation and its stakeholders (rhodes et al. 2014). freeman (1984) further states that every business creates, and sometimes destroys, value for its stakeholders. the 21st century is the time for companies and organisations to “manage stakeholders”. managing stakeholders refers to activities such as identifying and prioritising key stakeholders, assessing their needs, collecting ideas from them, and interpreting this knowledge into strategic management processes (rhodes et al. 2014). the task of executives is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders without resorting to trade-offs. good companies endure because they manage to get stakeholder interests aligned in the same direction. 6160 van heerden & rensburg social media according to carroll (2013), an organisation’s online reputation today is its reputation. organisations can engage and inform stakeholders (floreddu et al. 2014), who can create and share content online almost instantaneously through the use of social media (carroll 2013). foster and jonker (2005) and thomas and barlow (2011) confirm that the essential building block of stakeholder relationships is communication. thomas and barlow (2011) further state that social media does not change the fundamentals of the relationship between the organisation and the stakeholders; it rather provides a channel to extend those relationships far beyond what is possible in the physical realm. ponte et al. (2015) indicate that social media is changing the communication strategies of organisations because it facilitates a more dynamic and interactive way to communicate, which might lead to improved stakeholder engagement. aula (2010) argues that social media is characterised by interactivity – participants freely send, receive and process content for use by others. for jones (2015) the power and effect of social networking sites create opportunities as well as threats, depending on the approach, and here a social media manager’s task will be to determine the type of communication strategy. the outcome will be determined by how well the organisation engages with stakeholders through conversations. according to ponte et al. (2015), social media comprises web 2.0 tools, which organisations can use to interact with their stakeholders for engagement and relationship building. social media allows for real-time, multimedia, efficient communication at low cost through a variety of global platforms, such as facebook. all these practical applications facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design and collaboration online. social media content content is the origin of communication, and it can be considered a major source of development within an information society. according to mcluhan (1962), the content of any medium is always another medium. for hanafizadeh and yarmohammadi (2015), in the information economy era, a progressive society experiences steady growth, not only in expenditure for technology, but also in production of high quality content. they (2015) further state that content is a general term, which is used differently depending on prevailing contexts. individuals communicate with each other through their speech, writing and other intellectual productions, which can all be considered as types of content (ibid.). mutula and brakel (2010) consider content as a cerebral or an intellectual process. beasly (2013) describes content as a purposeful, accessible and understandable artefact. there is also an approach that views content as a means for value creation. such a view considers content as producing value for target audiences. ballentyne (2002) approaches content as a type of product and process (procedure). to persuade through content, a relationship with stakeholders should first be established. according to cairncross (2002), organisations learn to fit the internet into their relationships with their members or followers and realise that easy interactivity and information dissemination allow them to provide an appearance 6160 investigating social media conversations of personal touch. this then may lead to persuasion by using technology and communication content optimally. berkovsky (2012) states that persuasive technologies attempt to shape, reinforce or change behaviours, feelings or thoughts about an issue, object or action. software updates help to achieve these goals regarding computer-human dialogue and thus enhances personalisation. one development in the last five years has been technology-augmented social persuasion, leveraged by the wide acceptance of social networking sites like linkedin, facebook and twitter. merilainen (2011) observed that nowadays, agenda-setting may be regarded as a precondition to be heard in society. social media is used to encourage or persuade people to learn more. the communal nature of social media allows organisations to create and engage in their content building. through this sharing and engagement, organisations and their stakeholders can also co-create corporate reputation. social media conversations koudenburg et al. (2016) postulate that a good conversation comprises more than the exchange of information. according to lipinski-harten and tafarodi (2012), popular instant messaging such as windows live messenger (formerly msn messenger) and blackberry messenger have made text messaging and online chat a daily practice for millions of worldwide users. floreddu (2014) indicates that social media has ushered in many ways in which an organisation can communicate with its stakeholders. conversations are a form of dialogue characterised by the exploration, examination, and reconsideration of individuals’ reasoning, assumptions and perspectives. when done effectively, such conversations allow participants to construct meaning, transform knowledge, and create collective wisdom on the challenges they face (hartung & wilson 2016). bolton (1998) articulates that the key to achieving engagement from stakeholders is to manage and follow a sequence of conversational steps of which the first step is to learn to “listen”. listening should take place to find possibilities, to listen without judging, and to discover ideas, commonalities, emotions, beliefs, causes and direction. methodology this study departed from an interpretivist-phenomenologist tradition with the aim of discovering the interactions of stakeholders on social media networks, to make sense of their conversations, and to determine whether their interactions have or had any influence on the reputation of solidarity. a case study approach included the content and conversations on social media during a four-month solidarity campaign. the four-month campaign, the #onsbou (#letsbuild) campaign was aligned to solidarity’s agenda, which is the supporting foundation of all its activities and focused on key issues that depict its core values. this campaign was in direct contrast to the countywide #feesmustfall campaign. according to mail & guardian (2016), news24 (2016), ewn (2016) and the website of the department of justice, the latter campaign involved students from both historically advantaged 6362 van heerden & rensburg and historically disadvantaged universities and the uprising of #feesmustfall was the culmination of years of unkept government promises. free education had been a major commitment made by the anc (the ruling party) in the first democratic elections in south africa. the failure to keep that promise – while presiding over an explosion in student fees – had sown the seeds of discontent. an analysis of facebook posts and comments were executed to investigate stakeholder conversations on the campaign content. details about the context surrounding the campaign, such as the physical environment and the historical, economic, political and social factors were recorded in the analysis. the units of analysis included: ♦ individuals (the five social media administrators of solidarity) and groups (the population on the npo’s facebook page) – these comments and responses were analysed through content and conversation analysis; ♦ social artefacts (the npo’s content on its web page was analysed through content analysis to determine whether the content contributed to the reputation of solidarity, and to investigate how its facebook followers reacted to the content); ♦ social actions (the focus here was on the actions in social media – the patterned social action in which individuals act in an unconscious/conscious collaboration with others). these were recorded through observations. sample a simple random sample was drawn due to the homogenous population – stakeholders engaging online in activities in afrikaans on solidarity’s facebook platform during the four-month #onsbou-campaign between may 2019 and august 2019. the sample comprised of 122 000 men and women between the ages of 25 and 45. they all communicated in afrikaans, were mostly from the afrikaner culture, and engaged on solidarity’s facebook page. the group commented on and took part in conversations on the facebook page during the campaign. the main objective was to determine whether these stakeholders’ engagement and conversations on solidarity’s facebook page constructed an online reputation for the organisation during the campaign. analysis of online content and conversations the content of articles on solidarity’s website and of online conversations was analysed. the artefacts included written content on the website of solidarity and comments on its facebook page. the articles and conversations indicated who had said what to whom and the effect it had on the reputation of solidarity. as the research attempted to determine the impact of this content and conversations on reputation, the content needed to be thoroughly analysed to identify factual information, themes and sentiments. 6362 investigating social media conversations during this analysis, the following were analysed: ♦ articles published on the website to achieve a certain objective during the campaign; ♦ media content published during the campaign; ♦ stakeholder responses (conversations and engagement on facebook); and ♦ the measurement of the entire process, through analytics, to determine how it contributed to the overall reputation of solidarity. online software tools including sproutsocial, hootsuite, sumall, ornico, meltwater and worditout were used to collect and analyse the content and conversations. interviews five social media administrators who were working on this specific campaign were interviewed. risks in terms of generalisation existed and not all media administrators experienced “reputation” and “reputation management” similarly. the administrators indicated to what extent the content addressed the promotion of the existing reputation of solidarity and, as they interacted directly with the conversations on facebook, they gave additional information to the content and outcomes of the conversations. there were 29 articles posted on facebook and 172 stakeholders commented in their conversations on these articles. implementation of the online reputation management framework this online reputation management framework was implememented from the beginning of this campaign and during the analysis process. all the content that was produced was written with solidarity’s existing established reputation in mind. the team followed the steps of the framework from the beginning of the campaign through to the end. the phases included the existing reputation of the organisation, content planning, communication, stakeholders, feedback and the measurement thereof. the organisation the process started with the organisation, solidarity, as it has a certain image, identity and brand to protect, and these form part of its reputation. solidarity has a full-time reputation team working to assist in managing its reputation through content and online conversations. although solidarity relies on its own content to communicate its views, it cannot discard the voices of the stakeholders conversing online because they are the people who can build or break its reputation. solidarity communicates through its content to the media and conveys certain core values and beliefs on its social networking sites – particularly during the four-month #onsbou (#letsbuild) campaign. 6564 van heerden & rensburg content planning content is a means of value creation and, during this stage, content was generated that represented a certain issue in the campaign. during the content analysis, the content surrounding the campaign was scrutinised to glean whether the content was compelling, convenient, fulfilling and efficient. each time a cross reference was made to the arena model of aula and mantere (2008). the content was placed in word maps using worditout software, which indicated the levels of importance of the content that was communicated. the content can detect whether solidarity is either prepared, informed, certain, credible or ambitious. this was decided through interviews with the different social media administrators. the content surrounding the campaign was generated by various authors within solidarity. the administrators were requested to indicate how the npo is perceived when posting the content. the administrators were also requested to indicate which features of the campaign aligned with the content in each article that was posted on facebook. the lead researcher could then determine in which arena solidarity fell with its stakeholders before its actual communication on facebook. the administrators can normally ascertain in advance how stakeholders will respond to certain content, as they work with it daily. the administrators can also be proven wrong as soon as stakeholders begin to respond and engage on facebook on the content of the articles. communication process after the content creation stage and during the communication stage, the content was communicated via social media as well as traditional media. the brand and media intelligence company, ornico, drafted a feedback report regarding social media and traditional media during the #onsbou campaign. traditional media always plays an important role in the reputation of the organisation and should be considered. after the communication process, which involved posts on facebook and twitter, and newsletters and media releases, the interviews with the administrators were conducted to determine whether they thought the content complied with the 7cs of communication (raina et al. 2010) – complete, considerate, clear, correct, concrete, courteous and concise. engagement and reputation after the content was shared on social media, the process of stakeholder engagement followed. it is important to keep in mind that stakeholders have certain experiences and expectations. if stakeholders are satisfied, they might become loyal to solidarity. the likes and shares were monitored to determine the level of engagement. if stakeholders shared content with friends, more stakeholders could become involved. a facebook analytics product called sumall was used. with this instrument, the lead researcher could calculate all the likes of the posts as it provided a count of engagements – how many people engaged, how many commented, liked, or shared the posts. the conversations were also monitored to determine the perceptions of the stakeholders. a wordcloud programme (worditout) was used to establish which sentiment stood out the strongest in the conversations. all the comments on a certain post were fed 6564 investigating social media conversations into the software. it provided a wordcloud, where the words that were used the most appeared larger and the words used less, smaller. at this point, the lead research aimed to discover whether the stakeholders reacted positively or negatively and what influence these reactions had on the rest of the stakeholders’ engagement before the administrators became involved. facebook analytics also determined whether people unfollowed the organisation, started following the organisation, defended the organisation, or attacked the organisation. this would then determine in which arena the organisation found itself with its stakeholders. for example, administrators may post an article on private higher education and foresee that people will like it, share it, and start following the organisation’s facebook page. stakeholders’ comments might be negative because of a lack of information provided or administrators would find that people leave the page and provide negative comments. conversations and reputation (response and feedback) conversations are a form of dialogue characterised by the exploration, examination and reconsideration of individual reasoning, assumptions and perspectives. the next step was to determine whether the administrators could rectify the reputation (if it was jeopardised) and whether they could boost it by adding more content. at this stage, depending on where in the arena the roleplayers found themselves, the need for crisis communication management arose (when the arena became a riot and the comments were very negative). the thought leaders, which include strategists and the executive management of solidarity, would then be consulted to decide on the next step. at times, brand ambassadors can act on behalf of the organisation and respond to the negative comments on facebook. these ambassadors are usually high-profile people like artists, socialites or politicians. this can also be the case when ordinary members of the public assist solidarity by providing factual content. following these actions by the brand ambassadors and administrators, it was determined whether the arena had moved, for example, from a riot to peace. discussion of the findings the findings established that the content on solidarity’s website is tightly aligned with its core brand values and identity. thirty-six articles were generated by a team of internal writers. there were also media releases provided to monitor media reporting. the content of all the articles was analysed using worditout to identify the words that were used the most. the articles were all written in line with the existing core values in the reputation of solidarity, as featured on the website. according to the social media administrators who were interviewed, the content was compelling, interesting, gripped the stakeholders’ attention, and inspired them to join the cause of the campaign. the administrators indicated that most content was efficient and convenient, and addressed real problems and needs in south africa and society in general. the administrators could foresee – during the scheduling of content – whether there would be a riot or peace among the stakeholders. it was found that 6766 van heerden & rensburg solidarity seemed prepared and informed of its core business and that it appeared ambitious and credible. although the #feesmustfall campaign dominated the media at that stage, traditional media also reported on the #onsbou campaign. mostly afrikaans media reported on the campaign and it did well on online media platforms. it was established that solidarity stayed true to its target audiences and communicated to them what they wanted to hear at the time. although the total media coverage was valued over r5 million, it was indicated that there was a 51% positive and 49% neutral sentiment in the media towards solidarity and its campaign. there were no negative articles reported. different content attracted different stakeholders, whether the content was economic, political, organisational or humorous. organisations shoud align their core values with their content and should primarily focus on what their stakeholders want to hear and the information they need to receive on issues. it remains important to be mindful that stakeholder sentiment is as valuable as rand value in media coverage. a shared sentiment among solidarity’s online stakeholders was evident. at the time, solidarity’s facebook page had 112 000 followers. solidarity grew its facebook followers by another 24 000 stakeholders during the four-month campaign. engagement was acceptable, as the overall engagement rate on all the content totalled 695 638 people. it was clear that stakeholders reacted to content where they could find alternative answers during insecure times when universities were disrupted. the bigger picture of building other institutions did not receive that much attention. organisations should be prepared for online “outbursts” or disruptions from stakeholders during the stage of content creation and try to determine beforehand what might happen with specific content. credibility begins with content. solidarity focused its campaign and strove towards content simplicity. stakeholders wanted factual information and clear and concise content. facebook is currently the most appropriate platform to share content because it allows stakeholders to take part in conversations and engage with organisations and other stakeholders. apart from content, the conversations played a pivotal role during the campaign. the conversations were analysed using worditout. the words that stood out aligned with the words that stood out in the content. this implies that stakeholders reacted according to the content. by analysing the conversations stakeholders had on facebook, a clearer indication arose of what solidarity stood for and meant to them. if the stakeholders did not relate to the content at all, they would mention it on facebook, and it would carry a reputational risk. the conversations on facebook reflected the reputation of solidarity. what the stakeholders said about the npo impacted on the communication and online reputation management process. managing the organisation’s social media platforms implies that the online reputation will also be managed. stakeholder conversations recruit more stakeholders to become part of the stakeholder community of solidarity. negative conversations between different stakeholders may scare away potential stakeholders. negativity spreads quickly online, particularly in an environment that is open 24/7. 6766 investigating social media conversations in the current environment it is important to take notice of the online presence of stakeholders: they are there, and they listen to each other. they form opinions on an organisation despite the content that it publishes. all content should be sense-making and aligned. an organisation should actively engage online by answering questions and assisting stakeholders who are unsure of facts surrounding issues. as soon as the administrators detected a possible crisis during the solidarity campaign, they started engaging with stakeholders, providing them with more information or detailed content. these administrators assisted insecure stakeholders by providing them with answers and more facts through online content. they communicated this in a civil and diplomatic manner, without blame. well-informed and trained public relations professionals should ideally form part of social media teams in oganisations. they should be the first to receive information and should be the first to respond. the online reputation management framework provided the solidarity team with a model to work from during the research process. they knew how important the reputation was and they understood that the content should be created accordingly and be communicated thoroughly. the framework further provided them with the different stages to follow, and to react as soon as a problem occurred. the online conversations formed the most important part of the suggested framework. it was proposed and established through the research that the online reputation management framework might assist other npos to manage their online content and conversations to engage stakeholders and to manage their online reputation. the framework allows organisations to craft strategies that shape or influence the public perception of an organisation. it is suggested that organisations need to direct negative and positive feedback on social media platforms to manage their reputation. this means that social media administrators should monitor and listen as stakeholders engage, form their own perceptions, and attempt to cement stakeholder loyalty. every part of the online reputation management framework is important. compelling, convenient, fulfilling and efficient content should be created, and it should be communicated correctly, considerately, concretely and concisely. the process can be controlled by the social media administrators of an organisation. satisfied stakeholders with certain expectations and perceptions might become engaged and loyal over time. summary and concluding remarks there are many misconceptions about online reputation management. at times it is seen as social media monitoring, while at other times it implies public relations. this study identified the need to implement an online reputation management framework to manage the reputation of any npo by managing the online content, stakeholder engagement and conversations. today, the online world and the websites of organisations are no longer static brochures. user-generated content is a must, and regular interactions with stakeholders on social networks are vital to any organisational success. 6968 van heerden & rensburg in this study an online reputation management framework was implemented and tested. it could contribute towards practical implementation as it guides npos during their reputation management process. the research indicated that online reputation monitoring is increasingly regarded as an essential management practice for marketers and public relations professionals and that an online reputation management framework can be implemented for npos to determine how content and conversations on social media influence stakeholder engagement and reputation. the research also proposes that an npo can afford greater 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(eigth edition). cape town: oxford. thomas, d.b. & barlow, m. 2011. the executive’s guide to enterprise social media strategy: how social networks are radically transforming your business. new jersey: john wiley. van riel, c.b.m. & fombrun, c.j. 2007. essentials of corporate communication. (first edition). london: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203390931 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fss.2014.06.004 https://doi.org/10.1108/02756660410569175%0d https://doi.org/10.1108/02756660410569175%0d https://doi.org/10.1108/jgr-02-2014-0004 https://doi.org/10.1108/13632541011090428%0d https://doi.org/10.1108/13632541011090428%0d https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij-05-2012-0041 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203390931 _goback 18 the relationship between traditional and digital media as an influence on generational consumer preference abstract marketers, advertisers and media planners often turn to reliable data on target markets to make decisions regarding the selection and use of media, allowing practitioners to communicate the message optimally and cost-effectively to the target audience. decisions in media planning and media selection are only possible if information on media use patterns is up-to-date. hence, understanding media consumers allows marketers to tailor specifically to a target market. this article presents an initial inquiry into preferences between traditional media and digital (online) media. with a better understanding of consumer preference between traditional and digital media platforms, practitioners could significantly improve media allocation. by applying a uses and gratifications approach to the concept of media use, the author conducted a crosssectional questionnaire survey (n=558). a t-test analysis of the findings indicated a significant difference in time spent on traditional media (m=3.60) over time spent on digital media (m=2.63) (t(555) = 20.73, p < .05). the results revealed differential patterns across different media (traditional and digital); differences are most often based on the demographic variables. the data indicated that statistically significant differences in media consumed are more a function of whether or not people are employed and have completed their studies than age group per se. accurate audience measurement remains complex due to media consumers’ mobility and wide variety in the media environment. however, the findings can be used as a guideline for media planners and advertising agencies when planning to target an exact audience at the right time on the right platform. keywords: media consumption; traditional media; digital media; social media; consumer preference; media planning; generational preference dr abyshey nhedzi research fellow, department of department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg, south africa (abyshey1@gmail.com) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 18-38 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:abyshey1@gmail.com https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 19 the relationship between traditional and digital media introduction it is fair to say that a myriad of tools and the technologically driven internet have changed the way people live. the ever-increasing complexity and changeability of the current markets is evident. this article reports on the amount of time spent by consumers on traditional and digital (new or online) media devices. an understanding of media preferences for various demographic groups could increase marketing campaign reception and indicate to media planners and marketers how marketing expenditure should be budgeted for distinct subgroups and the life-cycle stages of consumers. for the purpose of this study, “media” refers to the technology used to access content, not the content itself. “traditional media” refers to vehicles that are an alternative, pre-digital platform in the form of mass media directed at mass audiences: print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast (radio and television). “new”, “online” or “digital” media or “non-traditional” media refer to all digital and online vehicles accessed by individual or mass audiences (e.g. digital newspapers, online news, etc.). these can take many different forms, including internet forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts and picture, music and video sharing. examples of social media include google groups, whatsapp, wikipedia, myspace, facebook, youtube, flickr and twitter (odun & utulu 2016). the debate on traditional and digital media remains topical. globally, traditional media face a sharp decline in circulation. advertisers and media management practitioners are thus faced with uncertainty. o’guinn et al. (2015: 7) argue that “[m]ass media are not dead, but they are being supplemented and supported by all sorts of new ways to reach consumers. consumer preferences and new technologies are reshaping the communication environment”. based on a survey on news consumption in the united states, mitchelstein and boczkowski (2010: 1087) admit to the lack of conclusive findings resulting from an analytical stance that splits the use of print, broadcast and online media. this hinders the exploration of how consumers integrate news consumption across media. the blurring of lines between traditional and social media is affecting the way consumers read, view or listen to traditional media – a phenomenon that has received attention in previous studies (patterson 2015). the digital threat to print media is also being experienced in south africa, although a report by the audit bureau of circulations of south africa argued that the growth in digital media was not the cause of the decline in print circulation (patterson 2015). this report attributes the decline to the fact that many publishers, both local and international, refocused their efforts from migration from print to digital to using both. hence, many more people are consuming digital news rather than traditional newspapers, magazine publications, or radio and television broadcasts. if traditional media are facing their most severe challenges, as some scholars argue (jere & davis 2011; patterson 2015), then understanding the consumption tendencies of its consumers should help the industry stay relevant and effective, given the seismic shifts wrought by the wired world. 20 nhedzi the ‘old’ is dying; the ‘new’ struggling to be born a theoretical framework for understanding the significance of traditional media is found in a combination of approaches, as applied by nossek et al. (2015: 367). these authors suggest the convergence of two approaches in communication research – technological and functional. the technological approach is generally associated with marshall mcluhan (2003), who asserts that the dominant media technologies in a given historical era are replaced by new media, if they stop fulfilling their societal functions. mcluhan (2003) stated that civilisations are shaped by their use of a particular medium of communication over a lengthy period, and that a dominant communication medium in any given historical period will eventually be replaced by a medium better able to cope with the problems of communicating knowledge across time and space. at the centre of the media displacement theory is the notion that a medium offering the same functions or gratifications replaces another medium, as new media replace old media (wurff 2011). mcluhan (2003) took this idea of the displacement of one medium by another as his conceptual base and explored the social consequences of the invention of print and the later widespread use of electronic media. generational differences generational differences are relevant as these reflect differences in attitudes, values, ambitions and mind-sets between people. each generation is likely to manifest its own values, attitudes, ambitions, mind-sets, worldviews and ways of communicating. this is subject to contestation as scholars disagree on the start and end dates of generational cohorts. the various labels for specific generations differ according to the researchers and consultants exploring and writing about generational differences. hence, a great deal of variation still exists. contemporary media research reveals the importance of empirically analysing the relationships between media and age and changing user patterns over the course of one’s life (o’guinn et al. 2015). in this article generations are classified in two groups: millennials or generation y (born between 1980 and 2000) and generation x (born between 1965 and 1979). marketers and media planners have shown interest in how users interact with multiple media devices and platforms, particularly as new media platforms have begun to thrive, although adoption behaviours vary by country (jordaan et al. 2011). theoretical framework media consumption patterns have been a central topic of audience research in marketing and communication studies (jordaan et al. 2011; nazarov 2017; schrøder 2015). the use of consumer goods correlates broadly with traditional and digital media consumption (schrøder 2015). with regard to media and consumption at the most general level, it is necessary to recognise the complexity and importance of consumption as a salient feature of postmodernity. without twisting the argument or weakening the logic and making it difficult to see how this study frames the subject in a new way, it is necessary to note that streams of journalism and media research dominated the study of media consumption. 21 the relationship between traditional and digital media journalism and media research concepts and critiques arising from studies on news consumption have come to the fore, rather than comparisons of traditional media and digital media from advertisers and marketers’ perspectives. for example, researchers have shown that access to online news varies according to socioeconomic status, educational attainment and age (mitchelstein & boczkowski 2010). researchers agree that groups who are older, less educated, and of lower socioeconomic status used traditional media (mitchelstein & boczkowski 2010). odun and utulu (2016) assert that advertisers need to understand the media consumption patterns of their target audiences because such knowledge enables the devising of a strategy to target a particular set of people effectively. consequently, these authors point out that marketing and advertising management in business makes decisions on “the choice of the fastest means of getting consumers to know about the product and convince them to buy … on the list of their marketing tactics” (odun & utulu 2016: 63). theories of media consumption have different approaches to explain media consumption habits and patterns (jordaan et al. 2011; nazarov 2017; schrøder 2015). one such an approach is through the lens of the seven “worthwhileness” dimensions, namely time spent, public connection, normative pressures, participatory potential, price, technological appeal and situational fit (schrøder 2015), a framework that helps to compare consumer media consumption. in this framework, time spent refers to pockets of time used throughout the course of daily life. other researchers (damásio et al. 2015) followed an approach in which respondents were asked which media they had used during the previous week. one constraint common to all those approached is time – that is, it is assumed that time spent on one activity cannot simultaneously be spent on another (nazarov 2017: 16). the media business has an economic interest, which is a consumer delivery enterprise for advertisers (poster 2004). on the other hand, advertising is a variable field, a second-level field, which borrows and tests theories to build knowledge in different advertising contexts (royne 2016). in postmodernity, this is shifting from treating consumers as audiences for media content towards sustaining communities where people create value by engaging (poster 2004). the theory of the niche assumes that media compete in a multidimensional resource space (wurff 2011). the introduction of a new medium, therefore, reduces the amount of time individuals allocate to existing media, ultimately leading to the replacement of such media. according to fulgoni (2018: 146), “digital commerce, enabled by digital analytics, has created and satisfied consumers’ insatiable desire for immediate gratification”. the variables most often identified as having a significant effect on media consumption patterns are age, sex, class, gender, ethnicity, race and region (poster 2004). to address the relationship between traditional and digital media in terms of consumption patterns (jordaan et al. 2011) this study broadly presents representations of media consumption habits and patterns. previous studies were based on online news and the credibility of communication (jordaan et al. 2011; nazarov 2017; schrøder 2015); the researchers did not examine the media consumption habits and patterns in the context of device usage. for example, the researchers focused on the ways in which people use and consume different media in diverse media materialities and communicative 22 nhedzi practices (damásio et al. 2015). although all these studies model the impact of news consumption, none of them tackled the issue of comparison between traditional and digital media over time and device usage. in addition, the majority of these studies made use of student populations. adopting the uses and gratifications theory, the assumption is that, as individuals, people have limited amounts of time and money and have to choose between the different media platforms by determining which one would better satisfy their particular needs (van cauwenberge et al. 2010). in their study of news media use among college students, van cauwenberge et al. (ibid.) found that information or surveillance gratification showed a significant positive relation with three patterns of news consumption: time spent on television news, newspapers and online news sites. this research was limited in that it analysed only the role of motivations of uses and gratifications rather than comparing traditional and digital media consumption patterns. research has often approached the subject of old (broadcast) mass media and new (networked) media consumption patterns as two separate enterprises. communication technology is conceived as the articulation of artefacts, practices and social arrangements (lievrouw 2014). lievrouw (ibid.) asserts that artefacts (time spent on using a specific media device) and practice (time used to perform a certain activity) are important aspects in defining consumption practices. similar to previous studies (damásio et al. 2015; lievrouw 2014), this study considers media use, location of media use, media in daily life, and demographic patterns within a broad cross-disciplinary perspective. the media landscape process of change and innovation favours digital media. for this reason, the often-discussed shift from traditional to digital media is rarely quantified (mander & young 2017). from these expectations, the author advances the following hypotheses: ♦ h1: the higher the amount of surveillance gratification experienced with new/digital media, the more likely it is that less time will be spent with traditional media. ♦ h2: an increase in diversion needs (entertainment, escape, and pastime) will result in an increase in time spent with print newspapers, television and radio, and a decrease in time on new/digital media. the main contribution of this article is to test these two hypotheses as they relate to the two different perspectives of traditional and digital media consumption patterns. previous studies have compared the media consumption pattern (mapping of crossmedia news consumption in pre-mobile 2008 is compared with replicating mappings carried out in 2011 and 2012) (schrøder 2015) and the media use and consumption patterns (varga & nyirő 2014). however, these are limited in that they focused on screenrelated actions and emerging new media consumption habits rather than providing an assessment of the pattern of relationships among all media consumption patterns. given their limited resources, people will choose between media that serve similar needs (van cauwenberge et al. 2010). materiality and consumption practices are issues that relate to substitution and complementarity (damásio et al. 2015). hence, these authors argue that frequent users of digital media find it at least comparable with 23 the relationship between traditional and digital media and perhaps even superior to traditional news media or devices (van cauwenberge et al. 2010). in light of the above, this study expects the following relations between the news use of traditional and online media: ♦ h3: time spent on online digital newspapers will negatively relate to time spent on print newspapers. ♦ h4: time spent on online news will negatively relate to time spent on print newspapers. ♦ h5: time spent reading books in the electronic version will negatively relate to time spent on reading books in the print version. the purpose of the study is to examine the media consumption habits and patterns of south africans in their assessments of time spent on traditional or digital media. here, the expectation is that media use will be positively affected by age, educational attainment and socioeconomic status. therefore, media use and consumption patterns can be an important factor for organisations, consumers and media, and in analysis of the effects of advertising (laczniak 2016). a separate inferential analysis (a mann-whitney test) was performed to examine how media use varies by age, gender and education (damásio et al. 2015). by applying such an integrative approach, the researcher is able to measure the time spent on different media for different practices and analyse how different media devices and communicative practices relate to one another (whether digital media are replacing old media). in addition, the researcher is able to establish the relationship between traditional and digital as well as broadcast and networked (online) media in the context of consumption practices across demographics. methodology design, participants and procedure the researcher considered descriptive survey design to establish socio-demographic correlations of time spent on media devices. the author made no a priori behavioural distinction between respondents in the sampling strategy (i.e. consumers, contributors and creators of social media content) to avoid a skewed distribution of the sample and to ensure that the final findings could be used with typical consumers independent of their level of engagement with any media. the questions were fixed-choice (except for the questions that required respondents to specify “others”). the questionnaire was divided into sections containing seven items measuring the demographic profile of the respondents and 28 questions measuring how the consumption patterns of digital media and traditional media differ between the different generational groupings of the respondents. the questionnaire was pre-tested amongst ten respondents from the target population to allow for consideration of the length of the questionnaire, clarity of instructions, layout and flow of questions. 24 nhedzi as the sample involved media users from a diverse population, a convenience sampling approach was used. the self-completion survey (format adapted from etikan et al. 2016) was administered as the population that could fit the sample (south african population of 55.7 million) is very large. because the researchers had limited resources and time, data was collected from respondents who were intercepted in their normal daily routines at various places, including houses, flats, businesses and organisations. the selection process identified people living or working in the gauteng province of south africa. similar to the world economic forum (2016) report, 580 questionnaires were distributed. there were four incomplete or unusable (with errors) questionnaires and 20 unreturned. the questionnaire administrator commenced by inviting subjects to complete the questionnaire voluntarily in approximately ten minutes. during the introductory stages, all the research participants were informed that data was to be held securely and kept confidential, and that the final data was to be stored, analysed and reported completely anonymous. additionally, they were asked to give informed consent orally with the option to decline if they were not interested. to further increase the distribution, the “drop and collect” method was used for this survey (also referred to as drop-off delivery, hand delivery and collection, or self-completion questionnaires). the procedure ensures increased anonymity for participants, which results in more reliable data. the study met the standards involving research on human beings for research ethics of the university of johannesburg. data was collected in person over the months of november 2016 and february 2017. measurements media use the day before responding to the survey owing to the lack of directly related empirically published research on the consumption of traditional or digital media (focus on credibility of communication, etc. jordaan et al. 2011; schrøder 2015), the time dimension was applied to this study (nazarov 2017). to assess the instrument’s content validity and applicability, the first version underwent a process of engaging experts and a pilot study. content validity was applied to ensure that it includes all the items that are essential and eliminates undesirable items to a particular construct domain (taherdoost 2016: 30), while a literature review was conducted to allow criterion-related validity (damásio et al. 2015; mander & young 2017). the respondents were asked how much time they spent consuming (viewing, listening to, reading) various media. the questionnaire presented a list of media and asked, “over the last week, how much time have you spent consuming the following media?”. this part of the questionnaire was split into two sections. the first was related to traditional mass media (for example, television, radio, print newspapers) and differentiated between traditional media and the use of digital/internet-based media (via computer and cellular phone); the second considered various internet-based activities, such as the use of social network services (snss), blogs and online games (format adapted from mander & young 2017). 25 the relationship between traditional and digital media types of print newspapers read and location of use the respondents were presented with a list of newspapers (for example, daily international, national and local newspapers) and were asked to indicate which types they read. they were also given a list of at-home locations (for example, in the living room) and out-of-home locations (for example, at work, at school, public spaces) and were asked to mark all those in which they read the newspaper. leisure preferences the respondents were given a list of 14 leisure and media-use activities and were asked to indicate the three they were most likely to choose if they had a few hours of free time (based on maditinos et al. 2014; nimrod & adoni 2012). data analysis in total, 566 complete surveys (out of 580 responses) were analysed using spss software (version 24). the author used descriptive statistics (that is frequencies, ratios, crosstabs and chi-squared tests) and parametric t-tests to compare the values to determine the position of traditional media relative to equivalent new/digital media and their use compared with that of other media (or vice versa) (pallant 2010). data was analysed to see if there was a significant difference in whether consumers preferred media platforms for traditional media channels over digital media channels. it compared their responses and found unique similarities and differences in terms of which types of content each generation enjoys most. the non-parametric wilcoxon signed-rank test and parametric independent samples t-tests were used to examine the relationship between the demographics and the usage of media. results descriptive results the study’s response rate was 95.8%, and the completion rate was 88% (n=556). there were slightly more male (50.3%; n=272) than female (49.8%; n=284) respondents. the majority of respondents (80%) were millennials or generation y (born between 1980 and 2000 and therefore 16 to 36 years old at the time of this study), rather than generation x (20%) (born between 1965 and 1979 and therefore 37 to 51 years old at the time of this study). groups are significant in this study because previous researchers have argued that groups have homogeneous behaviour patterns given their common lifestyle. the study followed brosdahl and carpenter’s (2011) grouping system and categorisation of generations. according to bolton et al. (2013:246), members of generation y or millennials are called digital natives, rather than digital immigrants. the group are the first generation to spend their entire lives in the digital environment and information technology strongly affects how they consume media. hence, millennials are most assuredly different from their predecessors with respect to values, preferences and behaviour that are stable over time. these demographics reflect a young population, a relevant phenomenon in african and other emerging societies, and the majority were single (58%). the sample consisted mostly of black africans (54%), followed by whites (24%), which is in line with the demographics of the country. it further consisted 26 nhedzi mostly of individuals in the peak productive and reproductive years. as regards the work situation of the respondents, 48% were employed by a company, 35% were students, 12% were unemployed, and the remainder self-employed (5%). south africa has relatively high levels of poverty and a widening income inequality gap (socio-economic review and outlook 2018: 27). the main research question sought to identify the most time spent on different media devices for conducting different practices. most respondents (57%) had spent less than 31 minutes reading print newspapers (see table 1) over the previous week. the second largest group (52%) had spent less than 31 minutes obtaining news online from other sources. the third largest group (48%) had spent less than 31 minutes over the previous week consuming online news from other sources. the fourth largest group (43%) had spent more than two hours over the previous week watching television on a television set and reading a print newspaper. in contrast, table 1 shows the significant number of respondents for groups who were neither listening to a radio or a computer radio (65%), nor watching television on a mobile phone (58%). table 1: differences on time spent on traditional versus new media none at all up to 30 minutes 31 minutes to two hours more than two hours total time spent on reading newspapers, print (physical) n 119 316 99 21 555 % 21% 57% 18% 4% 100% time spent on reading newspapers, online n 122 264 128 42 556 % 22% 48% 23% 8% 100% time spent on obtaining news online from other sources n 89 287 135 44 555 % 16% 52% 24% 8% 100% time spent on reading books, print (physical) n 68 157 197 131 553 % 12% 28% 36% 24% 100% time spent on reading books, digital n 144 178 149 84 555 % 26% 32% 27% 15% 100% time spent on watching tv, on a tv set n 47 80 192 237 556 % 9% 14% 35% 43% 100% time spent on watching tv, on a computer n 226 97 124 104 551 % 41% 18% 23% 19% 100% 27 the relationship between traditional and digital media time spent on watching tv, on a mobile phone n 320 135 58 41 554 % 58% 24% 11% 7% 100% time spent on listening to a radio, on a radio set n 149 157 141 107 554 % 27% 28% 26% 19% 100% time spent on listening to a radio, on a computer radio n 359 117 47 30 553 % 65% 21% 9% 5% 100% time spent on listening to a radio, on a car radio n 120 147 190 96 553 % 22% 27% 34% 17% 100% time spent on listening to a radio, on a mobile phone n 271 132 98 52 553 % 49% 24% 18% 9% 100% the question on how respondents spent time on various internet activities using a computer was a multiple-response question (total percentage will therefore exceed 100%). the majority of respondents indicated that they used facebook (72%), youtube (72%), whatsapp (64%) and google+ (50%), rather than tumblr (7%) or flickr (3%) (figure 1). figure 1: computer internet-based activities the question on the time spent by respondents on reading various types of print media and in what location was a multiple-response question (total percentage will exceed 100%). the percentage of respondents who reported that they read local 28 nhedzi daily newspapers was highest (48%), followed closely by national daily newspapers (46%), then magazines/periodicals (43%), free newspapers (39%), international daily newspapers (18%), and international weekly newspapers (11%). when respondents were asked to indicate at-home and out-of-home locations for reading traditional print newspapers, a significant number read in the living room at home (72%), followed by those who read at work (30%), in a public space (21%), when in transit to work (14%), at school (14%), and when in transit to school (7%). furthermore, respondents were asked to indicate at-home and out-of-home locations for reading traditional print magazines. a significant number read them in the living room at home (75%), followed by those who read them in public spaces (31%), at work (25%), at school (17%), when in transit to work (11%), and when in transit to school (5%). the question of how respondents spent time on leisure activities if they had a few hours of free time for such activities was a multiple-response question (total percentage will therefore exceed 100%). data revealed that the highest number of respondents (80%) were likely to use their free time on leisure activities such as fitness, walking or shopping, watching television (78%), listening to music (68%), socialising with other people such as friends (60%), followed by mass media usage (e.g. reading newspapers) (46%), and activities on online platforms (e.g. playing online games) (22%). group comparison between traditional and digital media a t-test paired samples test was used to determine whether a statistically significant difference exists between traditional and digital media preference. traditional media included print newspapers, print books, radio sets and television sets, while new/ digital media included online newspapers, online news from other sources, online radio, online videos, online television and social media sites. the mean and standard deviation scores in the study are shown in table 2. according to pallant (2010), the p-value should be smaller than or equal to .05 for the value of t to be significant. consistent with hypotheses 1 and 2, analysis of variance indicated a significant amount of time spent on traditional (m=3.60) rather than new media (m=2.63) (t(555) = 20.73, p < .05), with a 95% confidence interval of the difference, along with significant time spent on watching television on a television set rather than obtaining news online from other sources (t(554) = -18.195, p < .05). results from the t-test found h3 consistent; analysis of variance indicated significant time spent on digital newspapers rather than print newspapers (t(554) = -3.77, p < .05). results concur with h4, significant time spent obtaining news online from sources other than print newspapers (t(553) = -4.91, p < .05). as proposed in h5 and shown in tables 2 and 3, more time was spent reading print books than digital books (t(553) = 8.77, p < .05). respondents were more likely to visit social networking sites using a computer than a mobile phone (t(499) = -15.02, p < .05). the results of the non-parametric wilcoxon signed-rank test indicate that traditional media differ significantly from digital media on mean scores in six of the nine comparisons (table 3). 29 the relationship between traditional and digital media ta b l e 2 : tt e s t r e s u lt s o f t im e s p e n t o n t r a d it io n a l a n d d ig it a l m e d ia 30 nhedzi ta b l e 3 : tt e s t f o r m e a n c o m p a r is o n o f t im e s p e n t o n t r a d it io n a l a n d d ig it a l m e d ia 31 the relationship between traditional and digital media comparison of gratification between traditional and digital media consumption statistical significance testing was conducted to examine whether differences existed across the following demographic measures: gender, age and education. an independent samples t-test compares the mean scores of two different groups of people (see table 4). an independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the gender consumption scores of male and female. first, there was a significant difference in scores on digital newspapers between the two groups of media consumers, t(554) = 2.37, p < .05, two-tailed, with male (m = 3.05, sd = 1.50) scoring higher than female (m = 2.74, sd = 1.54). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = .305, 95% ci: .05 to .56) was small (eta squared < .05). second, there was a significant difference in scores on print books between the two groups of consumers, t(551) = -2.13, p < .05, two-tailed, with female (m = 4.05, sd = 1.68) scoring higher than male (m = 3.74, sd = 1.77). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = -0.31, 95% ci: -0.60 to -0.03) was small (eta squared < .05). therefore, only two comparisons were statistically significant. table 4: independent t-test on gender mean scores comparison 32 nhedzi to compare the age mean scores the data was grouped into two: one group comprised of the millennials (36 years or younger) and the other generation x (37 years or older). an independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the age scores of those aged 36 years or younger and those 37 years or older (see table 5). first, there was a significant difference in scores on print newspapers between the two groups of media consumers, t(553) = -3.34, p < .05, two-tailed with those 37 years or older (m = 2.96, sd = 1.35) scoring higher than those of 36 years or younger (m = 2.52, sd = 1.30). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = -0.44, 95% ci: -0.70 to -.18) was small (eta squared < .05). second, there was a significant difference between the two groups of media consumers in scores on watching computer television t(549) = 6.10, p < .05, two-tailed, with the group of 36 years or younger (m = 3.29, sd = 2.08) scoring higher than the group 37 years or older (m = 2.19, sd = 1.69). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = 1.10, 95% ci: 0.744 to 1.46) was small (eta squared < .05). third, there was a significant difference in scores on watching mobile phone television between the two groups of media consumers, t(552) = 2.51, p < .05, two-tailed, with those aged 36 years or younger (m = 2.15, sd = 1.67) scoring higher than those aged 37 years or older (m = 1.79, sd = 1.35). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = 0.36, 95% ci: 0.08 to 0.65) was small (eta squared < .05). fourth, there was a significant difference in scores on the use of the traditional radio set between the two groups of media consumers, t(552) = -2.26, p < .05, two-tailed, with the group 37 years or older (m = 3.66, sd = 2.06) scoring higher than the group 36 years or younger (m = 3.21, sd = 1.84). the magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = -.046, 95% ci: -0.86 to -0.06) was small (eta squared < .05). from table 5 the mean scores indicate that respondents, predominantly millennials, spent time reading online newspapers, obtaining news online from other sources, reading digital books, watching television on a television set, computer television, mobile phone television, and listening to radio on a computer and a car radio. on the other hand, generation x’s mean scores were high on time spent reading print newspapers, and listening to radio on a radio set and a mobile phone radio. however, the mean scores were the same for print books (see table 5). therefore, time spent reading print books was the same for all age groups. the non-parametric statistics mann-whitney u test and the wilcoxon signed-rank test were used (see table 6) to compare the age mean scores. data was grouped into four: one group was comprised of those with grade 12 or lower, the second included those who had attained a diploma or certificate, the third group had undergraduate degree(s), and the fourth, postgraduate degree(s). the results showed that consumers with a diploma or certificate (n = 85) are more likely to consume digital newspapers (mean rank = 285.54) than those with grade 12 or lower (n = 143, mean rank = 235.13). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 5004, p < .05, r = .15. second, results indicated that consumers with a diploma or certificate (n = 85) are more likely to listen to computer radio (mean rank = 128.90) than the grade 12 group or lower (n = 143, mean rank = 105.94). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 4853.5, p < .05, r = .15. 33 the relationship between traditional and digital media ta b l e 5 : a g e m e a n s c o r e s c o m p a r is o n ( m il le n n ia l v e r s u s g e n e r a t io n x ) 34 nhedzi table 6: education mean scores comparison test statisticsa,b chi-square df asymp. sig. print newspaper 5,802 3 0,122 digital newspaper 19,773 3 0,000 digital news from online 7,546 3 0,056 print books 7,579 3 0,056 digital books 23,538 3 0,000 traditional tv set 6,259 3 0,100 computer tv 18,117 3 0,000 mobile phone tv 10,002 3 0,019 traditional radio set 4,819 3 0,186 computer radio 9,573 3 0,023 car radio 7,371 3 0,061 mobile phone radio 29,340 3 0,000 a. kruskal wallis test b. grouping variable: reducation third, the results showed that consumers with a diploma or certificate (n = 85) were more likely to listen to a mobile phone radio (mean rank = 131.96) than the grade 12 or lower group (n = 143, mean rank = 104.12). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 4593.5, p < .05, r = .21. fourth, the results revealed that consumers with undergraduate degree(s) (n = 175) were more likely to consume computer television (mean rank = 174.10) than those with grade 12 or lower (n = 143, mean rank = 141.63). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 9957.5, p < .05, r = .18. fifth, results showed that consumers with postgraduate degree(s) (n = 150) were more likely to consume digital books (mean rank = 167.22) than the grade 12 or lower group (n = 143, mean rank = 125.79). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 7692.5, p < .05, r = .25. sixth, the results indicated that consumers with undergraduate degree(s) (n = 177) were more likely to consume mobile phone television (mean rank = 177.01) than those with postgraduate degree(s) (n = 149, mean rank= 147.45). a mann-whitney test revealed that this difference was statistically significant: u = 10795.5, p < .05, r = .17. discussion this empirical investigation attempted, as a baseline for future research, to answer whether most south africans consume traditional media or digital media. contrary to expectations, even at this initial stage, the overall results of the study are that traditional media (especially print media and traditional television sets) still constitute 35 the relationship between traditional and digital media an important component of the wired world context for south african audiences. the results confirm the findings of wurff (2011: 155), who found that “displacement of traditional by online media is a question of accessibility and habit formation, rather than a matter of conscious choice for (new) media that serve the same user needs better”. these results should also be considered in light of the particular economic challenge faced by the majority of black people in south africa (54% of the sample). access to digital media may perhaps be limited because of affordability and exposure issues. digital media remain the domain of a privileged minority in south africa (jordaan et al. 2011). the findings are consistent with the assertion of nossek et al. (2010) and odun and utulu (2016: 64) that africa cannot do away with traditional media because, compared with developed countries, there are more illiterate or semi-literate people who do not have access to digital media devices. results of sub-group comparisons showed that respondents are fragmented across various media platforms. news consumption both online and offline is led by male respondents, while more female respondents enjoy reading books. therefore, the traditional gender division observed in mobile phone use is interesting in the light of conjectures that genders are still uneven in their use of new technology. generally, in relation to gender, males consume more news that females do, although a healthy number of males and females still follow the news. these findings do not concur with those of renés-arellano et al. (2017). the examination of 556 respondents showed that the most used platforms are facebook, youtube, whatsapp and google+. in line with previous studies, young consumers in south african cities spend more time interacting with friends via social networking sites than watching television (jordaan et al. 2011). the finding that listening to music was the predominant leisure activity agrees with nimrod and adoni (2012), who found that respondents were more likely to listen to music and play video and online games. this study provides marketers with a basic insight into the state of traditional media and the capacity to capitalise on unique opportunities posed by the media landscape. finally, it brings a significant understanding of how the age, gender and education gap affect media usage. the findings of this research can assist advertising and marketing agencies in developing campaigns in line with the principles that guide the media allocation. the research findings will also be useful to organisations working on strategies to communicate effectively with south african audiences. conclusion the study clearly indicates that those who have adopted digital media are typically from younger groups with a higher socio-economic status. gender, education and age appear to be the most important factors. this implies that deeply entrenched patterns of social inequalities in the country explain the disparities in access to and use of newer media. gender also remains divisive for the greater adoption of digital media. the updated market insights derived from a comparison of consumers’ time consumption 36 nhedzi between traditional media and digital media will inevitably have consequences for fine-tuning the targeting and engagement of consumers. in summary, the study offers important implications for theoretical advancement and practical understanding of consumer response to time consumption on traditional media and digital media. the findings provide evidence that traditional media consumption is preferred to digital media for an older generation. for advertisers considering platforms to reach consumers, this study offers insights into the challenges of how to connect consumers with messages within the complexity of digital data. these findings imply that targeting millennials remains a challenge as respondents are fragmented across various media platforms. limitations are present in terms of the measurements of media consumption — the use of a standardised questionnaire may not reflect the complexity of “repertoire” (distinct media are associated with specific content and reflect the specific needs of the audience). future studies can take a qualitative approach to examine the views of users of both traditional and digital media. in terms of traditional media, including radio and television channels, further studies could shed light on the types of channels used. this serves as a contemporary understanding of media use but change might inevitably occur. digital media will continue to evolve; therefore, future researchers should consider similar research using a representative sample. gauteng is the most populated province in south africa (socio-economic review and outlook 2018). however, further studies with other provinces would be valuable to conduct a comparative study. finally, this study considered only two types of media (i.e., traditional print or broadcast and new media digital or online). media consumption, however, has been used for general media. therefore, it would be valuable to understand if and how consumers respond differently to specific traditional and digital media platforms of local or international origin. references bolton, r.n., parasuraman, a., hoefnagels, a., migchels, n., kabadayi, s., gruber, t., loureiro, y.k. & solnet, d. 2013. understanding gen y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. journal of service management 24(3): 245267. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564231311326987 brosdahl, d.j. & carpenter, j.m. 2011. shopping orientations of us males: a generational cohort comparison. journal of retailing and consumer services 18(6): 548-554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2011.07.005 damásio, m.j., henriques, s., da silva, m.t., pacheco, l. & brites, m.j. 2015. between old broadcast media and new networked media: materiality and media consumption practices. international journal of communication 9: 386–411. etikan, i., musa, s.a. & alkassim, r.s. 2016. comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. american journal of theoretical and applied statistics 5(1): 1-4. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11 https://doi.org/10.1108/09564231311326987 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2011.07.005 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11 37 the relationship between traditional and digital media fulgoni, g.m. 2018. will digital commerce and analytics be the death of traditional brands? 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taylor & franke 2003; van meurs & aristoff 2009; osborne & coleman 2008; baack, wilson & till 2008; shimp 2010; wilson & till 2008; veloutsou & o’donnell 2005). digital and unconventional advertising media displayed on objects placed in unexpected contexts such as promotional street art, graffiti and chalk stencils, television screens in taxis, digital screens in sports bars or stadiums, interactive displays in shopping malls, advertising on balloons, bicycles, clothing and tee-markers on a golf course, and bill folders now form part of this class (gambetti 2010: 34; shimp 2010: 580; moriarty, mitchell & wells 2012: 365). the term outdoor advertising has become obsolete and the broader concept ooh advertising media is preferred now (du plooy 2012: 132). this is an attempt to do away with external/internal, outdoor/indoor, and in-home/out-of-home dichotomies when identifying and distinguishing between different formats in this class (gambetti 2010: 38; muller 2013: 3). thus, ooh advertising now includes outdoor advertising in the public domain, such as advertising on boards next to a highway; but it also includes other non-domestic ooh advertising – not necessarily outdoor communication – such as advertising at airports, train and subway stations and entertainment or retail venues, such as shopping malls, health clubs, doctors’ rooms, public restrooms and restaurants (gambetti 2010: 37; wilson & till 2008: 59). ooh advertising media trends across the globe ooh advertising media has traditionally not accounted for a large proportion of advertising budgets (taylor 2010: 1). however, overall expenditure has grown 97 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives considerably in recent years. global ooh advertising expenditure was us$30.4 billion in 2012; it is expected to grow at a faster pace than traditional advertising to us$38 billion in 2017 (mckinsey 2013: 5). approximately us$7.5 billion was spent on ooh advertising media in america in 2012, and it is projected to grow to almost us$9.6 billion by 2017 (oaaa 2014). currently, ooh advertising media represents a significant part of the overall share of advertising expenditure of countries such as south korea with 20.3%, and singapore and japan with 14% each. this is also the case for central and eastern europe (ukraine with 16.2%, slovenia with 12.8%, bulgaria with 12.5%, hungary with 12.7%), as well as western europe (france with 11.4%, portugal with 11.2%) (muller 2013: 4). the drastic increase in the popularity of ooh advertising media in emerging markets is notable in the relative share of the medium, e.g. russia with 17.7%, china and japan with some 14% each, and mexico with 9.5%. ooh advertising media in russia, since their inclusion in the free market system, has increased exponentially. large outdoor advertising formats, in particular, are being encouraged because these are regarded as an indication of prosperity in this country (lopez-pumarejo & myles 2009: 35). in nigeria, ooh advertising represents 30.6% of the country’s total advertising expenditure, which is probably due to the relatively restricted access to print and television media (muller 2013:7). not only has the attractiveness of ooh advertising media increased globally, it has also entered the digital era. globally, digital ooh advertising is one of the fastest growing media types due to its expansion into new venues and markets, innovation, enhanced features and the integration of mobile and social media. globally, digital ooh advertising media expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 13.7% from 2006 to 2011. america remains the largest global market with an annual revenue of us$2.05 billion and a growth rate of 11.2% in 2011. the second largest market is china, at us$1.44 billion, increasing at a rate of 39.2%. third is the united kingdom with us$549 million, up 11.3%, followed by brazil with us$155 million and a growth rate of 38% (pq media 2014). this type of advertising is more effective for content and advertising delivery because it allows advertisers to customise their messages to location, circumstance, time of day, and day of week. this digital technology also offers creative and interactive opportunities, such as the display of full motion video and the inclusion of animation, so that, in effect, television commercials are shown outdoors. the latest technology employed in these full colour and large format electronic signs provides superb levels of brightness and resolution on leds so that daily news and weather updates and relevant information can be displayed to stimulate audience interest (müller et al. 2009: 6). 98 at roux and dlr van der waldt consumers are now able to interact with digital ooh advertising using their mobile or smart phones, thus combining two of the fastest growing advertising mediums in the world (pq media 2014). combining location-based mobile media and digital ooh advertising using digital coupons, branded content, games, smart phone applications, call to action via sms, sweepstakes, competitions and promotions, mobile internet sites and social interaction via mobile can increase engagement with consumers and will be more effective in persuading them to buy products (lasinger & bauer 2013: 162). more innovative technological developments are constantly being tested and applied; for instance, “intelligent billboards” that detect the radiation from vehicle antennas determine the most popular radio station and adjust their messages to suit the drivers passing by. then there are “oscillating billboards” on top of buses that adjust messages as the bus drives from one location to another; and “soundenabled billboards” that are equipped with a motion-sensitive infrared device that can launch a recorded message, thereby strengthening the outdoor advertisement (lichtenthal, yadav & donthu 2006: 246). digital screens are also opening up the opportunity to run more creative and noticeable advertising. technology that can link a poster to a mobile phone and can recognise passersby is being tested. thus, it will be possible to carry advertising, content, promotions and social media activity from the internet into public spaces via poster-to-mobile campaigns (kinetics 2011: 5). it is expected that the ooh advertising media sector will continue to grow and diversify over the next few decades, not only because of its cost-effectiveness, but also because it seems to be the only available realm from which to reach progressively elusive consumers. furthermore, it is the ideal anchor for integrated marketing communication (imc) campaigns (lopez-pumarejo & myles 2009: 38). research rationale there seem to be some disagreement in the academic literature (belch & belch 2012: 449; duncan 2005: 376; gambetti 2010: 36; koekemoer 2014: 209; lane, king & reichert, 2011: 359; o’guinn, allen & semenik 2000: 507; shimp 2003: 356; sissors & baron 2010: 441; yeshin 2006: 328) and industry publications on exactly what constitutes contemporary ooh advertising media (omac 2014; ohmsa 2014; oaaa 2014; oma australia 2014; oma ireland 2014; omanz 2014; omc 2014). previous studies published on ooh advertising media focussed mainly on the effectiveness of specific types in this media class (bhargava et al. 1994; taylor & franke 2003; van meurs & aristoff 2009; osborne & coleman 2008; baack et al. 2008; wilson & till 2008; veloutsou & o’donnell 2005). none of these studies offer 99 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives a systematic basis for classification or conceptualisation of all the major ooh advertising media platforms and options in this class. when considering the views of prominent academics in advertising and marketing communication it becomes clear that some of them only focus on traditional ooh advertising or billboards in the roadside environment (o’guinn et al. 2000: 507), disregarding the other more contemporary formats, such as those at airports, public transport waiting areas, minibus taxi ranks, pedestrian routes, shopping malls and leisure environments. several authors seem to realise that transit advertising is also part of ooh advertising media (koekemoer 2014: 209; shimp 2003: 356; yeshin 2006: 328), while others include some indoor marketing communication such as sales promotions, in-store radio, cinema advertising and product placement as part of this class (gambetti 2010: 36; duncan 2005: 376). only a few sources acknowledge, as with other media, that ooh advertising media is now entering the digital era (belch & belch 2012: 449; lane et al. 2011: 359; sissors & baron 2010: 441), thereby ignoring the latest developments in the field (cheng & chen 2014: 53). the industry seems to adopt a more inclusive approach by including a far wider variety of options in ooh advertising media (omac 2014; ohmsa 2014; oaaa 2014; oma australia 2014; oma ireland 2014; omanz 2014; omc 2014). however, the different classification criteria and schemes used by the industry still does not offer a clear answer to the question of exactly what constitutes contemporary ooh advertising media. given the above context, the problem statement is summarised as follows: due to the rapid development of the ooh advertising media landscape, there is disagreement between academics and the industry on the classification of ooh advertising media. there is no accepted basis for the classification of ooh advertising media, indicating exactly what constitutes contemporary ooh advertising media platforms. without such a classification system, there is no orderly, integrated basis to describe and research this advertising medium, neither is there a complete understanding of the wide range of contemporary ooh advertising media options. the practical implications are that measurement of the total ooh advertising media spend will not represent all the types and the resultant data will not be relevant to marketers and media decision makers. furthermore, advertisers might not be aware of all the contemporary options available to reach very specific market segments at a variety of places, such as at shopping malls, golf courses, outdoor squares, festivals and events, access routes to shopping malls and stores, health clubs, beaches, schools, public restrooms, doctors’ waiting rooms, sports stadia and arenas; thus, these opportunities will not be fully exploited. 100 at roux and dlr van der waldt addressing the differences between the perspectives of academics and the industry with regards to ooh advertising media is valuable, since closing the academic/industry divide remains a concern. rossiter and percy (2013: 391) warn that in recent years there has been a significant worsening of the academic/ industry divide, which has seen academics continuing to ignore practitioners’ views and research which appear in trade publications and practitioner-oriented journals. an investigation of this nature is vital in view of the alleged gap between the knowledge that is created by marketing academics and that which is regarded as useful by practitioners (tapp 2004: 579). academics certainly regard the integration of marketing theory and practice as both valuable and necessary, and believe that it is they who should drive marketing knowledge forward. considering the academic as well as industry perspective on ooh advertising media can result in a useful basis for the classification and research of all the new advertising options within this class. research question, objectives and method in light of the above, the primary objective of this article is to answer the following research question: how do academic and industry perspectives on ooh advertising media compare and which media platforms should form the basis of a contemporary ooh advertising media classification framework? the secondary objectives of this article are two-fold, namely to compare academic and industry perspectives on ooh advertising media and to identify and compare the major ooh advertising media platforms. research method an integrative review of academic literature and industry sources was conducted to analyse both perspectives and to identify commonalties that can be used as the basis for potential reconceptualisation of a contemporary ooh advertising media classification framework. an integrative review is a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesises representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated (torraco 2005: 356). similarly, hart (2001: 3) notes that it serves as an evaluative summary of the focal work in a given field of interest and has an organisational pattern that combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. thus, analysing the literature on ooh advertising media types can have as much intellectual and practical value as primary data collection. renowned international journals (journal of advertising research, journal of current issues and research in advertising, journal of advertising, international journal of advertising) regarded to be key sources of research in advertising media 101 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives (cheong & kim 2012: 323) were examined to find a taxonomy or conceptual classification of ooh advertising media types. it appears that the articles in these journals examined the effectiveness of specific ooh advertising media types, such as outdoor advertising boards and posters (bhargava et al. 1994; taylor & franke 2003; van meurs & aristoff 2009), digital ooh advertising (osborne & coleman 2008), airport advertising media (baack et al. 2008; wilson & till 2008) and taxi advertising media (veloutsou & o’donnell 2005), but no encompassing or comprehensive classification of ooh platforms seems to exist. due to the lack of journal articles classifying contemporary ooh advertising media types, the classifications and taxonomies found in some of the most prominent textbooks on advertising and marketing communication published during the past decade were consequently examined (belch & belch 2012: 578; du plessis et al. 2010: 107; duncan 2005: 372; koekemoer 2014: 209; lane et al. 2011: 359; moriarty et al. 2012: 364; o’guinn et al. 2000: 507; shimp, 2003: 356; sissors & baron 2010: 441; wells et al. 2006: 227; yeshin 2006: 328). thereafter, the industry perspective on this wide variety of media types was considered, examining the official websites of prominent ooh advertising media associations listed by fepe (federation european publicite exterieura). these organisations are the officially recognised trade associations for the ooh advertising media industry in the respective countries. they connect the major role players in this industry and typically represent the bulk of industry revenue (fepe international 2014). only the official websites of members with an english classification of the different media formats were reviewed, in particular the out-of-home marketing association of canada (omac 2014), out-of-home media association of south africa (ohmsa 2014), outdoor media association of america (oaaa 2014), outdoor media association of australia (oma australia 2014), outdoor media association of ireland (oma ireland 2014), outdoor media association of new zealand (omanz 2014) and outdoor media centre of the united kingdom (omc 2014). sources from both these perspectives were reviewed and compared to offer an academic and industry perspective on ooh advertising media. then, a new conceptualisation of the basis of an ooh advertising media classification framework was proposed derived from this critical analysis and synthesis. objective 1: compare academic and industry perspectives on ooh advertising media academics’ perspective on ooh advertising media when considering the academic perspective on ooh advertising media as seen in table 1, it is apparent that the major ooh advertising media platforms grew from mainly being outdoor advertising in the past, to now include a variety of 102 at roux and dlr van der waldt alternative or non-traditional options, such as transit advertising media as well as street-and-retail-furniture advertising (duncan 2005: 372; lane et al. 2011: 359; moriarty et al. 2012: 364; o’guinn 2000: 507; shimp 2010: 578). more recently, a variety of digital ooh advertising options have also been introduced and have become one of the fastest-growing areas within this sector (gambetti 2010: 35). ooh advertising media are entering the digital era with digital screens to reach out to consumers anytime and anywhere in physical space. some of these sources have followed an extended view of ooh advertising media to include a wide variety of non-traditional media or alternative communication channels (duncan 2005: 376; moriarty et al. 2012: 364) not considered by others to form part of this class (belch & belch 2012: 568; lane et al. 2011: 359; o’guinn et al. 2000: 507; shimp 2003: 356; sissors & baron 2010: 441; wells et al. 2006: 227; yeshin 2006: 328). for example, duncan (2005: 376) considers options such as cinema and video advertising, kiosks with electronic advertising, banner displays on atms, advertising in elevators, advertising on shopping trolleys, and even product placement part of ooh advertising media. koekemoer (2014: 209) regards outdoor advertising and cinema advertising as ooh advertising media, since consumers need to be away from home for exposure to both these media types. however he does not take into account the unavoidable nature of ooh advertising because it cannot be turned off. this allows advertisers to break through the barrier to advertising consent because ooh advertising is placed in the out-of-home environment where its power of intrusion does not require the explicit consent of the consumer in order to make an impact. in the case of movies in cinemas, they must be consciously selected and attended before viewing of the advertising message can takes place. moriarty et al. (2012: 364) include on-premise or retail signs on the premises of businesses, restaurants or shopping centres to identify their type of business or store location. they argue that on-premise or retail signs can either be simple, to identify an outlet, such as the mcdonald’s signs; or they can be more complex in order to perform similar functions to what billboards do, such as the large illuminated and even animated or digital signs in las vegas. shimp (2010: 578) disagrees and clearly distinguishes between on-premise signage and off-premise advertising. this view seems to be more appropriate since only off-premise advertising is typically used by third-party advertisers in an attempt to influence consumers’ store or brand selection decisions, while on-premise signage or branding is used by retailers or business for identification purposes and not rented as media space to advertisers. 103 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives table 1: an academic perspective on ooh advertising media major ooh platforms included in classification of ooh advertising media outdoor transit media street and retail furniture digital ooh channels additional media/ types added o’guinn et al. (2000: 507)  shimp (2003: 356)   duncan (2005: 372)   cinema/video advertising, electronic kiosks, banners displays on atms, advertising on elevators, advertising on shopping trolleys, product placement yeshin (2006: 328)   wells et al. (2006: 227)    du plessis et al. (2010: 107)   sissors & baron (2010: 441)    lane et al. (2011: 359)     moriarty et al. (2012: 364)   on-premise signs belch & belch (2012: 578-568)     koekemoer (2014: 209)  cinema advertising 104 at roux and dlr van der waldt industry perspectives on ooh advertising media the increasing variety of ooh advertising media types are confirmed when considering the industry perspectives, as represented by prominent international ooh advertising media trade associations in table 2. compared to the academic viewpoint, the major ooh advertising media industry associations seem to be leading the way with their inclusion of even a wider variety of non-conventional ooh advertising media types (omac 2014; ohmsa 2014; oaaa 2014; omc 2014). while static outdoor advertising signs might once have dominated ooh advertising media, advertisers now are offered a wide variety of new options. in their classification of ooh advertising media, these associations include options such as sport stadium advertising and promotions, sales promotion at shopping malls, inside stores or targeting commuters, electronic outdoor advertising, airborne or waterborne advertising on aeroplanes and boats, advertising on flags, giant advertising balloons or blimps, and advertising at gymnasiums and petrol stations. furthermore, traditional static outdoor advertising signs are increasingly giving way to digital screens, which can display video and animated advertisements. nowadays digital media are used to entertain and inform minibus taxi commuters in south africa. a transit media company, provantage, recently introduced large plasma screens inside taxis with bluetooth technology to broadcast tailor-made programmes with the opportunity of advertising and the sponsorship of regular features (provantage 2010). another company, comutanet, offers large television screens that are strategically placed at the largest taxi ranks in south africa. these types of media are ideal for regional advertisers, or to allow national advertisers to customise their message. they offer an entertaining audio-visual medium; they also create a sense of community when commuters gather to watch the large screen, for example, during major sports events (comutanet 2011). the industry appears to employ different classification criteria. in order to understand the reason behind the classification, the method or criteria used should be taken into account. some trade associations classify ooh advertising media types based primarily on media format (ohmsa 2014; oaaa 2014; oma ireland 2014; omanz 2014), while others classify ooh advertising types based on the audience environments where the media are placed (ohmsa 2014; oma australia 2014; omac 2014; omc 2014). using different classification criteria has implications for advertisers when planning their marketing communication strategies. when using media format as classification criterion, a signboard or a billboard would be classified as outdoor advertising regardless of whether it is located next to a road aimed at vehicular traffic, or at a train station aimed at commuters, or at the entrance of a shopping mall aimed at shoppers. for example, billboards next to the road aimed at vehicular traffic, those located inside a parking 105 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives area at a shopping mall, and advertising located inside airports or at railway stations will all be categorised as outdoor advertising signs. when using the ooh audience environments as the basis for classification, an advertising board would be classified depending on the primary audience reached. thus, the type of ooh audience environment where it is located and not the type of media format used is the primary criterion. therefore, a billboard next to the road, reaching vehicular traffic, would be classified as roadside media. a board located inside a parking area at a shopping mall reaching shoppers will be regarded as retail media. boards inside a train station or airport reaching daily commuters will be categorised as transit advertising. table 2: an industry perspective on ooh advertising media major ooh platforms included in classification of ooh advertising media outdoor transit media street and retail furniture digital ooh channels additional media/types added out-of-home marketing association of canada (omac 2014)     place-based/ venue advertising out-of-home media association of south africa (ohmsa 2014)     activations/ sales promotion outdoor media association of america (oaaa 2014)     cinema advertising outdoor media association of australia (oma australia 2014)     the outdoor media association of ireland (oma ireland 2014)     the outdoor media association of new zealand (omanz 2014)     outdoor media centre of the united kingdom (omc 2014)     cinema advertising this option of considering the ooh audience environment as the primary classification criterion seems to be more marketing-oriented, given that the focus is on the potential target market reached in the ooh media environment where 106 at roux and dlr van der waldt the advertising message is placed, rather than simply considering the physical features of the media formats or types. advertising in the roadside environment, using billboards located on key arterial routes and busy urban streets can be used to reach major markets. advertising in the transit environment allows effective geo-demographic targeting in order to reach certain transport-user groups with similar buying patterns. advertising in retail and leisure environments can deliver a message to shoppers by placing it at a specific place or location. for example, university campuses or medical clinics could reach a more specifically targeted profile, such as students or people likely to consider pharmaceutical or health-related advertising. this should be done in order to draw attention where consumers are most likely to be interested in the visual message, creating a desire, and ultimately moving the exposed consumers towards action to buy the advertised product, according to the stimulus response view of the aida advertising model (duncan 2005: 183). as such the persuasive aspect of the visual message should be highlighted, irrespective of the product or service advertised. in other words, the message should be adapted to best suit the ooh advertising media in order to reach and influence as many of the target audience as possible. media planners should realise that ooh advertising media platforms are not necessarily located at the point of purchase or point of sale within a store. therefore, it needs to motivate and/or create a desire to want the product or service advertised, and reinforce and remind the target market across the different phases of the decision-making process. objective 2: identify and compare the major ooh advertising media platforms from the above discussion it is clear that academics and ooh advertising media practitioners disagree on the inclusion of certain communication elements, such as sales promotions, cinema, on-premise signs and a variety of new alternative outdoor communication options, as ooh media. there is also a tendency in the industry to include non-conventional contemporary formats, such as digital and a range of ambient communication channels. despite the different ways of approaching the classification, and some differences on exactly what constitutes ooh advertising media, academics and the advertising media industry agree on the vast range of indoor and outdoor formats that can be placed in a variety of environments. in spite of the differences between these two groups, most sources seem to be in agreement on the inclusion of outdoor advertising, street-and-retailfurniture advertising, transit media advertising, and more recently, digital and ambient ooh advertising media as part of this class. therefore, all four these major media platforms should be considered as part of the ooh advertising media class. 107 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives evolution of ooh advertising media ooh advertising media evolved from being mainly outdoor advertising (on the left of figure 1) to include other contemporary platforms (moving to the right of figure 1). each of these platforms continue to develop and expand. outdoor advertising has evolved from mostly free-standing outdoor advertising boards next to highways to include super large formats, such as gantries across roads, murals and massive buildings wrapped in advertisements. transit advertising options now range from those that are ideal for reaching consumers in low-income and middle-income groups, such as advertising on buses, minibus taxis and metro trains, to the expansive range of opportunities catering for high lsm groups, such as airport media, branded upmarket cabs in major metropolitan areas, water taxis at the cape town waterfront, private car branding, and the gautrain. street-andretail furniture advertising can now be found in suburban areas, as well as in shopping environments (du plooy 2012: 331). this allows advertisers far more targeted reach to pedestrians and shoppers. digital media at airports, at retailers and in shopping centres facilitate dynamic communication content and consumer engagement. ambient ooh media allow advertisers to reach consumers in unconventional places, and to attract attention by using them at unexpected times, but also in specific contexts and environments. thus, ooh advertising media can no longer be regarded as a homogeneous sector sharing the same key characteristics, benefits and limitations as outdoor advertising media, as suggested by some sources (moriarty et al. 2012: 369; lane et al. 2011: 359). ooh audience the four major platforms can reach ooh audiences in different environments. outdoor advertising media are primarily for vehicular traffic. transit media advertising reach commuters in transit. street-and-retail-furniture advertising media reach pedestrians and shoppers in retail-and-leisure environments. the unique features of digital ooh advertising can be used to attract the attention of consumers who are in transit or at commercial locations by displaying customised messages, including animation, audio and video in the content, placing the screens at highly visible locations, and incorporating colourful and interesting content and different types of content such as news, weather or entertainment (müller et al. 2009: 6). digital ooh advertising screens in shopping malls also affect consumer perceptions about the brand names displayed and can enhance their image, leading to a more modern perception, entertaining customers and improving sales (newman et al. 2010: 6). alternative ooh advertising media target certain audience profiles where particular groups congregate for a specific purpose, such as at doctors’ rooms, public health clinics, shopping malls, restaurants, night clubs, classrooms, golf courses, and sport and cultural events. 108 at roux and dlr van der waldt with the wide range of contemporary ooh advertising media options available now, advertisers are able to reach far more targeted audiences in specific environments throughout their daily routines. for example, public transit advertising and minibus-taxi advertising media can reach a captive mass market travelling back and forth to major metropolitan areas on a daily basis. private car branding, where car owners’ lifestyles are matched to the target market of the product or service being advertised, could be employed as a brand-touch point – with specific audience profiles, such as students on campus, mothers with children in a school in a specific neighbourhood, or holidaymakers at a beach town during high season. alternative ooh advertising can be employed as an additional figure 1: a comparison of the major ooh advertising media platforms ooh audience type of ooh audiences vehicular traffic commuters pedestrians/ shoppers specific targets extent of market coverage broad mass markets narrow/niche markets ooh advertising media environment type of ooh environments roadside transit retail/leisure various locations mostly indoors potential dwelling time limited extended ability for interaction/ engagement low high 109 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives brand-contact point, or when the advertisers have a limited budget available. digital ooh advertising media with customised content can be placed indoors where it can be seen by specific audiences, whether this is business professionals waiting to catch a flight in the morning, shoppers waiting in line at the grocery store in the afternoon, or people spending time with friends at a bar or restaurant in the evening. digital interactive capabilities are ideal in this context because they allow for interaction with the target audience, such as via cellular telephones, short-text messages (sms) and qr (quick response) codes. this makes this medium more engaging for consumers while allowing advertisers to provide relevant customised content, instead of only one-way static advertising messages. ooh advertising media environment advertising and media practitioners can no longer simply consider the physical features of the media formats or types. ooh audience environments should be a primary consideration. ooh advertising messages placed on different formats should be suitable for the environment where the audience is exposed to messages to maximise the effectiveness. the roadside environment where the message is aimed at fast-moving traffic results in limited dwelling time and thus requires short copy and a limited number of high-impact visual cues. environments with a captive audience, such as people waiting at business lounges at airports, in doctors’ rooms and in retail stores typically result in more time being available for people to notice and be discerning about their surroundings. these ooh environments result in longer dwelling times, and they allow advertisers to interact or engage with their target audience. contemporary ooh advertising in its many shapes and formats can be employed effectively as brand-touch points in an urban or rural environment in a way that is generally less expensive and more cost-efficient than highly fragmented traditional mass advertising media. it could, in fact, serve as the ideal brand-touch point with a target audience in a variety of ooh environments by enhancing their relationship and experience with the brand and offering them information, entertainment and distraction (du plooy 2012: 313). ooh advertising media can now be used to target selected market segments with specific messages or themes at a time and place where they are mostly likely to be interested. for example, a digital sign at a tourist information centre can make tourists aware of the daily tours in the area, an advertisement at the bus station can remind commuters to buy their morning newspaper, or an advertisement inside a maternity clinic can inform prospective mothers about the vaccinations recommended during pregnancy. however, the surrounding clutter and competing stimuli in the ooh advertising media environment can distract the audience. this can be an overcrowded entrance to a shopping mall, competing outdoor advertising boards in a township 110 at roux and dlr van der waldt environment, or too many passengers converging at certain locations in an airport. therefore, when designing ooh advertising media or messages the following aspects should be considered carefully: the level of message involvement of the audience, the distracting clutter in the environment, the amount of dwelling time in different ooh environments, the exact locations of the advertising media vehicles, activities or frame-of-mind of the target audience, size and shapes of the advertising media vehicles, as well as the themes, number of words and size of text used in the message copy (donthu, cherian & bhargava 1993; van meurs & aristoff 2009; veloutsou & o’donnell 2005; wilson & till 2008). managerial implications and conclusions this article has implications for practitioners, as well as academics. academics should not remain overly attached to original or traditional outdoor advertising media at the expense of contemporary ooh advertising media options, such as digital and ambient ooh media. they should rather follow the lead of experts in the industry to embrace this wide range of platforms and formats. digital ooh advertising media allow for the real-time adaptation of advertisements, supported or automated by information systems. contemporary digital ooh advertising will only be successful if placed in environments which allow enough dwelling time for the necessary interaction. environments with a captive audience, such as people waiting at train stations, business lounges at airports, bus stops, taxi ranks, as well as inside transit-media vehicles typically result in more time being available for people to notice and be discerning about their surroundings. these ooh environments result in longer dwelling times, and they allow advertisers to obtain interaction or engagement with a target audience by using detailed entertaining copy (wilson & till 2008) and combining it with mobile devices (lasinger & bauer 2013: 162). roadside environments, where the message is aimed at fast-moving traffic, result in limited dwelling time and require short copy and a limited number of high-impact visual cues (van meurs & aristoff 2009). furthermore, the frame of mind or mood of the target audience in the specific environment will influence their responsiveness. locations outside the home introduce the element of mood. the audience can be tired, irritable, preoccupied, or conversely, particularly alert and susceptible for relevant messages during certain times of the day. for example, shoppers browsing in shopping malls are likely to react to persuasive messages advertising fashion brands. a captive market, such as minibus-taxi commuters, would probably be receptive to valuable information on relevant products advertised on large plasma television screens inside taxis, with bluetooth technology to broadcast tailor-made programmes. a driver stuck on a highway on the way to work might not pay attention to a message on an outdoor advertising board for a new movie or alcohol brand. however, while on their way 111 out-of-home advertising media: theoretical and industry perspectives back home, when seeing an advertisement for a hamburger or when driving past a fast food outlet, this might catch the attention of the now-hungry driver. by analysing and monitoring a target audience’s movements (walking, driving a private car, using public transport) across different environments advertisers can use a combination of ooh advertising media options to create a well-timed, targeted ooh advertising media campaign. the changing nature of ooh advertising requires advertisers and their agencies to reconsider their manner of media planning. their aim should no longer be to merely obtain maximum exposure or to deliver the message to a mass audience. it should rather be to deliver quality media exposure to a specific ooh audience segment. this can be achieved by selecting the most visually impactful, relevant and preferred ooh brand contact points in the most suitable ooh environments to connect with the target audience, whenever and wherever they are most receptive. this study identifies several opportunities for future research. the lack of any proper classification framework for the whole new range of ooh advertising media options should be addressed by testing a new framework consisting of the major media platforms: outdoor advertising, transit media advertising, street-andretail-furniture advertising, and alternative ooh advertising as identified. marketing scholars and academic institutions should examine the wide range 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change-orientated communication; organisational change; strategic communication; concept development; stakeholder engagement; purposeful communication introduction organisations today operate in a business environment of economic uncertainty, climate change, resource constraints, rising population growth and poverty, income inequality and social movement and unrest (king & roberts 2013: 3). these global and economic developments make change an inevitable part of organisational life (cummings & worley 2015: 22). moreover, interactive communication technologies have brought prof. yolandi slabbert department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria slabby@unisa.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 87-107 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:slabby@unisa.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 88 slabbert about a “collaborative turn” that allows innovative and engaging opportunities to obtain valuable information from stakeholders through two-way conversations and opportunities to listen to stakeholders (verwey 2015a: 324). these changes in the organisational environment, largely because of advances in communication technology, stimulated a shift towards critical ideology (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 363). in this context, the strategic communication function is no longer regarded as a tool to achieve the objectives of organisational management, but an all-encompassing process focused on purposeful communication to ensure the inclusiveness of all voices (holtzhausen & zerfass 2015: 4). a critical perspective in the context of organisational change is built on the notion that change is best understood through the manner in which members of the organisation construct their social reality (graetz et al. 2006: 5). this arguably yields an emergent change focus in the organisation where the strategic communication professional fulfils a facilitation role of all communication processes within the organisation in making sense of change (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 533). the need for organisations to change according to the demands of the volatile business environment in order to survive is indispensable, and communication plays a fundamental role in ensuring the successful implementation and management of organisational change (christensen 2014; lewis 2011; helpap 2016). although studies that focus on proposing a strategic and participatory communication approach to organisational change exist (helpap 2016; lines 2004; morsing & schultz 2006), little research has been conducted on the contemporary, more critical developments in strategic communication, specifically in organisational change. this could be ascribed, inter alia, to the slow incorporation of critical developments in strategic communication as practitioners are held captive by their own mainstream assumptions (verwey 2015b: 2). the work of järventie-thesleff et al. (2015) contributes towards closing this gap through the proposition of using the corporate brand as a tool for managing strategic communication in a multi-change environment. their study, however, focuses on the broader role of strategic communication during change, and is not concerned with the internal communication processes of organisational members (management and nonmanagement employees) in making sense of change. against this background, the aim of this article is to satisfy the need to develop theoretical approaches beyond mainstream assumptions (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 364). more specifically, this article endeavours to develop a concept to encapsulate the specific social and communication processes of organisational members in making sense of change by drawing from contemporary, critical developments in strategic communication. this will be done through the conceptual development of “co-change orientated-communication” (co-coc) according to rodgers’ (2000) evolutionary approach to concept development. concept development plays a significant role in the development of a knowledge foundation and entails a process of identifying a definition and key attributes (rodgers 2000). this will not only meet the need to develop change communication approaches in line with the latest developments in the field (appelbaum et al. 1998: 289), but could also simultaneously assist communication professionals to realise the need for the incorporation of contemporary developments in strategic communication in practice. 89 co-change-orientated communication to address this conceptual development aim, this article endeavours to answer the following research question: what are the key attributes of co-coc? this will be addressed by means of a two-phased, qualitative methodological strategy. firstly, a sample of literature will be compiled, based on a selection of online resources according to specific parameters and contextual bases. clarke and braun’s (2013) thematic analysis approach will be followed to identify key themes from the literature sample. secondly, an exemplar for co-coc will be identified through an exploration of the identified themes by means of a document analysis of 2016 fortune “change-the-world” organisations’ annual and sustainability reports. strategic communication: a contemporary outlook the collaborative turn brought about by, among others, web 2.0 communication technologies has caused communication professionals to increasingly find themselves at points of inflection that have stimulated a shift towards critical ideology. in this context, the role of strategic communication as a process that sprouts from an organisation’s strategic plan focused on enabling the organisation’s strategic objectives is being questioned. such a perspective was primarily promoted by grunig’s (1984) excellence study, which has been accepted as the meta-theory in public relations and communication management literature (botan & hazleton 2006: 21). the excellence theory is an umbrella term for an integrated collection of middle-range theories to explain the value of communication to an organisation and to identify the specific characteristics of communication that contribute towards organisational effectiveness (grunig & grunig 2008: 330). this mainstream definition served as a platform for two-way communication models – for instance, shannon and weaver’s (1949) transmission model eventually evolved in discussions of two-way symmetrical and two-way asymmetrical communication in public relations literature (holtzhausen & zerfass 2015: 10). a critical perspective on strategic communication questions the concept of “managerialism” where managers assign workers to authoritarian workplace activities to predominantly benefit themselves (holtzhausen 2002: 251). such a perspective departs significantly from mainstream approaches as it raises questions about power, persuasion and activism, which the “orthodoxy of public relations [and communication management] chooses to ignore” (coombs & holladay 2012: 882). conversely, power, persuasion and activism in mainstream strategic communication is regarded as “unethical”, “socially irresponsible behaviour” that should “be avoided” to sustain a balanced, two-way symmetrical communication perspective of mutual understanding between the organisation and stakeholders (coombs & holladay 2012: 881-882). overton-de klerk and verwey (2013: 370-376), echoed by verwey (2015a), have identified various paradigmatic shifts in strategic communication, brought about by disintermediation; blurring of communication genres; media convergence; and organisation as communication. these shifts particularly outline the differences between mainstream and contemporary approaches to strategic communication, as summarised in table 1. 90 slabbert table 1: paradigmatic shifts in strategic communication paradigmatic shift description from divergence to convergence strategic communication now represents an all-encompassing function of purposeful communication to achieve the mission of the organisation. from top down to bottom up interaction as opposed to information transfer is valued. leaders should listen to organisational stakeholder by means of stakeholder engagement and co-creation strategies. bottom-up communication, in which shared meaning is formed by the communication process itself, is favoured. from monologue to dialogue different voices should be appreciated to stimulate creativity and innovation and to identify unique solutions to problem solving. from consensus to conflict/ dissent strategic communication is no longer aimed at achieving concensus, but at ensuring that multiple voices are heard, even if it causes conflict. from communication management to communication influence the strategic communication professional no longer acts as a representative for organisational management controlling commuincation. instead, the strategic communication professional should serve as a facilitator for discourse within a climate of continuous change. from control to selforganisation change and concensus within an organisation cannot be achieved through controlling stakeholders. instead, the process of identifying creative solutions for business problems should start with stakeholders by means of high stakeholder engagement. from corporate social responsibility to accountability accountability is earned by means of transparency and consistency between organisational statements and actions, which underline the power shift from the organisation to its stakeholders. from integration to collaboration instead of communication integration, where the organisation was in control of the message, the real-time environment now necessitates organisations to work in partnership with society (which includes hostile stakeholders) to build its brand identity. nowadays, strategic communication is viewed as an all-encompassing function characterised by purposeful communication with the focus on meaningful action, sharing of meaning, ideas and a deeper mutual understanding to shape organisations (hodges & gill 2015: 291). strategic communication moves beyond merely providing information or building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships to the manner in which communication could contribute to an organisation’s purpose for being (hallahan et al. 2007: 11). in this regard, strategic communication is insentiently shaping the organisation itself (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 370). organisational change in defining organisational change, various derivatives of the concept have been developed over the years, of which “organisational change management”, “organisational change process” and “organisational change project” are seemingly the most prominent. organisational change management is regarded as the process of continuously revisiting the organisation’s direction, structure and capabilities to meet and absorb the ever-changing needs of stakeholders (moran & brightman 2001: 177). 91 co-change-orientated communication an organisational change project refers to a change initiative that necessitates either a redefinition of the organisational mission or an amendment of organisational goals to support a new direction, while the process of organisational change is built on the notion that organisations are “emergent properties of change” (järventiethesleff et al. 2015: 533). in this regard, organisational change is accepted as part of organisational life. organisational change could emanate from external environmental factors (e.g. competitive action; technological advances; government regulations; or economic conditions) or it could be caused by internal organisational factors. this article supports a broad perspective on organisational change, both internally and externally. multiple types of organisational change could be categorised according to the rate of occurrence, how it originates, and by scale (todnem by 2015: 28). this article focuses specifically on change in the category of origin – more specifically, planned and emergent change, because it is directly related to the proposition of co-coc. planned change, also known as a “hard systems approach” (ströh 2007: 126), aims to highlight the processes that have to be implemented by the organisation in order to move from an unstable, indefinite state to a more favourable one (eldrod ii & tippett 2002: 74). this definition corresponds with an “organisational change project”, as mentioned earlier. the model for planned change, which is most prominent in the literature and has served as the basis for various other planned models developed over the years, is lewin’s (1951) three-step model of change, namely unfreezing the current situation, moving to the new level, and refreezing the new level to ensure that the change has been internalised (todnem by 2015: 30). other planned change models include kotter’s (1995) eight-step model and senge’s (1999) systems thinking model. approaches to planned change have been severely criticised for being based on the supposition that organisations function under stable conditions and are able to move from one pre-planned stage to the next (bamford & forrester 2003: 550). conversely, emergent change or the “soft systems approach” (ströh 2007: 126) deals mainly with the reality of the volatile organisational environment and emphasises the fact that change cannot be regarded as a series of linear events at a specific time, but as a “continuous, open-ended process of adaption to changing circumstances and conditions” (todnem by 2015: 33). this perspective resembles the characteristics of an “organisational change process”. in line with the notion of “the organisation as becoming” (weick & quinn 1999; tsoukas & chia 2002), emergent change is concerned with how organisational members construct their social reality (graetz et al. 2006: 18). emergent approaches/models to change (e.g. kanter, stein & jick’s (1992) ten commandments for executing change and luecke’s (2003) seven steps) are criticised for their lack of coherence and multiplicity in techniques (bamford & forrester 2003: 550). a more practical approach to the implementation of emergent organisational change is the cycle of continuous change suggested by lawrence et al. (2006), which highlights the fact that continuous change is a process consisting of four phases, each with a specific champion, namely evangelist, autocrat, architect and educator. in order to infiltrate an emergent approach to change, organisational and leadership agility are arguably essential. organisational agility refers to “the organisation’s 92 slabbert ability to develop and quickly apply flexible, nimble and dynamic capabilities” (holbeche 2015: 11). in essence, it encapsulates the organisation’s ability to swiftly adjust, respond and flourish in a continuously changing environment. furthermore, it is ultimately the responsibility of the leader to establish a receptive infrastructure in the organisation (holbeche 2015: 12). an agile leader “champions the change effort and displays active change leadership aligning people around the vision” (holbeche 2015: 219). an agile leader should listen, be open and connect with organisational members. the leader should implement “discursive templates” (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 535) or “frameworks for grassroots initiatives” (ströh 2007: 133) and engage organisational members at all levels to enable change from below. a further consideration towards the implementation of an emergent approach to organisational change is the culture of the organisation. tsoukas and chia (2002: 578) highlight that the manner in which organisations respond to change depends on the organisation’s “self-understanding – the historically created assumptions and interpretations of itself and its environment”. in the context of accepting change as part of organisational life, a “change-affirmative culture” (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 540) or “change-able culture” (holbeche 2015: 229) should be embedded in the organisation. this points to a receptive context for change where change is viewed as “dynamic stability” (ibid.). organisational members should accept change as the norm. change-orientated communication “change communication” is the consistent effort to educate and motivate employees; encourage higher performance and discretionary effort; limit misunderstandings; and ensure employee alignment behind the strategic and overall performance improvement goals during organisational change (barret 2002: 220). it is regarded as a “potent tool” to set direction and ensure alignment between various organisational functions during change (sharma & sahoo 2014: 175). most definitions of “change communication”, however, highlight the fact that the communication process and the implementation of change are indissolubly linked (lewis 1999: 44). conversely, “change-orientated communication” is regarded as any communication relating to change (zorn et al. 2000: 516). this definition is in line with the proposed concept as it emphasises that change communication should be regarded as a continuous process and not only during the implementation of organisational change. this perspective resonates with the work of ströh (2007) who recognises that organisations are complex and adaptive, with the ability to adjust to the unstable, changing environment through self-organisation. in corroboration with the paradigmatic shifts in table 1, ströh (2007: 128) proposes a “complexity science approach to change communication”, which underlines four important factors, namely dissent, self-organising processes, relationships and participation. dissent is considered a daily activity that can stimulate growth, creativity and innovation through debate and dialogue. self-organisation implies that the organisation is able to adapt itself to changing conditions by learning from previous experiences. laszlo and laugel (2000:10) argue that successful change is dependent on self-organised interactions between organisational members as opposed to a top-down controlled approach. ströh (2007: 128) avers that these “interactions could 93 co-change-orientated communication lead to relationships which create knowledge and intelligence, which in turn give meaning to the organisation”. self-organisation is thus the threefold integration of multifaceted interactions with the environment, existing organisational relationships and the history of the organisation. it is also essential that stakeholders are connected to the organisation and are afforded the opportunity to participate in the creation of organisational strategy (ströh 2007: 130). communication associated with planned change projects is predominantly top-down in nature and applied during the actual change implementation. in contrast, communication associated with an emergent change context, where change is managed as an ongoing process, is bottom-up and lateral in nature. consistent with mainstream strategic communication, the communication in planned change serves as an “instrument of management control” aimed at ensuring the successful absorption of change projects (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 536). it is focused on ensuring that messages are clear, participation is encouraged and that uncertainty is reduced. communication during emergent change implies that it is a means by which the organisation is established, composed and sustained (cooren et al. 2011: 1150). it is about creating “practices and policies through which change can be embedded in the deep structures of the organisation, and to make sure that all members of staff, on all organisational levels, are capable and motivated to make sense of the change process in the course of their daily activities, both individually and collectively” (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 537). in this regard, the significance of organisational change is negotiated within communicative interactions (thomas et al. 2011: 13). research methodology rodgers’ (2000) evolutionary approach to concept development was used as a guideline, as it is an approach to conceptual development that recognises the context of the proposed concept (in this case, contemporary developments in strategic communication in an organisational context). this approach moves away from the assumption that a concept is universal and unchanging; thus, allowing for a flexible process where the steps do not have to be followed chronologically (rodgers 2000). various data sources could also be used in concept development, of which existing literature is the most prominent (rodgers 2000) and the selected data source for this article. figure 1 provides a map of the conceptual development process that was followed in accordance with rodgers’ (2000) steps. 94 slabbert figure 1: the process map of the conceptual development of co-coc as one of the first steps in the conceptual development process of co-coc, surrogate terms/phrases (synonyms) and related terms/phrases (concepts that seemingly relate to the concept of interest, but have different characteristics) (rodgers 2000) had to be identified by means of an exploration of organisational literature in general. because of the unique nature of the proposed concept, only two related terms were initially identified, namely “change communication” and “communication during change”. however, these terms, as explained earlier, relate to communication within a change project, which is contradictory to the focus of a continuous change process in this article. a two-phased, qualitative methodological strategy was employed in accordance with the steps of an evolutionary approach to concept development. the first phase started with the compilation of a sample of literature within specific parameters and contextual bases, as outlined in figure 1. after an initial exploration of this literature sample, two additional related terms to co-coc were identified, namely “strategic communication during change” (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015) and “a complexity science approach to change communication” (ströh 2007). although both these approaches propose elements in line with contemporary developments in strategic communication, these approaches do not encapsulate the specific communication processes of organisational members in collaboratively making sense of change. the focus is more on the broader 95 co-change-orientated communication facilitation role of strategic communication or the importance of relationships in managing change. after the identification of the related terms, an in-depth analysis of the literature sample was conducted according to clarke and braun’s (2013) thematic analysis approach. this process resulted in the identification of eight distinct themes, namely collaboration, participation, purposeful communication, emergence, self-organisation, dialogue, dissent and bottom-up communication. the second phase of the methodological strategy focused on identifying an exemplar for co-coc. the themes identified in the first phase served as an initial coding guide for a document analysis to not only determine whether the themes in the literature resonate with the activities of high-change organisations (organisations that are at the forefront of change), but also as a starting point for the identification of new categories and codes. in this capacity, fortune’s 2016 list of “change-the-world” organisations was used. this list consists of 50 global organisations that have made a positive social impact through activities that are part of their core business strategy (leaf 2017). these organisations are ranked according to three factors, namely measurable social impact, business results and degree of innovation. the organisation’s reach, nature and durability of one/more social problems, the economic benefit of the respective socially impactful initiative, and the degree of innovation in comparison to rivals are measured (ibid.). in the context of an ongoing approach to organisational change with the perspective that the identified themes should be infiltrated in the daily activities of high-change organisations, it was necessary to obtain documents that provided a summation of these organisations’ business activities for the 2015/2016 financial year. in this regard, a document analysis was conducted of selected 2016 fortune “change-the-world” organisations’ 2016 annual and sustainability reports. an organisation’s annual report is the most significant formal communication that an organisation has with its stakeholders and is regarded as highly credible (dawkins & ngunjiri 2008: 289). a sustainability report provides an overview on the impact that the organisation’s activities has on the economic, environmental and social environment and outlines the organisation’s commitment to a sustainable global economy (global reporting 2017). the sustainability report was applicable to this article as it provided an overview on various projects of these organisations in response to changes posed by the macroorganisational environment. table 2 indicates that only 32 of the possible 50 2016 fortune “change-the-world” organisations comprised the realised sample of the second phase of the methodological strategy. in this regard, purposive sampling was applied because only organisations that had published their 2016 annual and sustainability reports online in english were used. fifteen organisations were excluded for not having 2016 reports available online, and a further three organisations were excluded for not having information available in english. 96 slabbert table 2: 2016 realised sample versus excluded organisations miles et al.’s (2014) qualitative data analysis steps were used to guide the document analysis process. for the purpose of this article, the entire sustainability report of these organisations was analysed, but only the following sections of the annual report were analysed: message of the ceo and chair; performance highlights of 2016; business review 2016; company strategy and corporate governance information. financial information, statements and executive compensation, risk reporting, mine safety disclosures and legal proceedings of the annual reports were not scrutinised. findings the document analysis of the annual and sustainability reports of high-change organisations revealed categories relating to the nature of co-coc and antecedents for the implementation of co-coc. it should be noted that the information in these reports was not necessarily always applied to a change context, but provided insight into the key success factors of high-change organisations that could be aligned with the identified themes of the literature sample to build towards the conceptual development of co-coc. 97 co-change-orientated communication the nature of co-coc in line with some of the themes identified in the literature, specifically the identified paradigmatic shifts in strategic communication, six categories were identified that specifically point to the nature of co-coc, and thus the definition and core attributes of this concept. dialogue and conversation the importance of shifting from monologue to dialogue and conversation in strategic communication to stimulate creativity and innovation was echoed in most of the reports. the crystal group indicated that its employee relations rest on building social dialogue: “a prerequisite for an engaged workforce is a robust communication mechanism between the company and its workers” (crystal group 2016). according to both pepsico and the coca-cola company’s sustainability reports, the focus is on “ongoing conversation” and “long-term dialogue” with all stakeholders (the coca-cola company 2016; pepsico 2016). to instil an environment of continuous, open discussions between employees and management, unilever abides by “always-on conversations” in order to stimulate a culture of development and learning (unilever 2016a). collaboration and partnerships in conjunction with the promotion of dialogue and conversation, high-change organisations seemingly recognise that the real-time environment necessitates collaboration and building partnerships. the coca-cola company indicated that “we recognise and embrace the idea that the collaborative idea of partnerships can achieve much greater collective impact” (the coca-cola company 2016). wal-mart abides by “collective action” and building “shared value” to realise transformation and address business and societal challenges (wal-mart 2016). cipla’s chairperson, dr yk hamied, stated that “collectively we must build the best-in-class organisational capacity to make our aspired future come to life” (cipla 2016). in congruence, alex gorsky, chairperson and ceo of johnson & johnson, argued that “true innovations are the result of collaboration. and that collaboration is driven by a diversity of ideas, individuals and disciplines – working together towards a common goal” (johnson & johnson 2016). general electric states that central to its success is “high-performance teams dedicated to winning together” (general electric 2016). innovation, creativity and experimentation as derivatives of dialogue and collaboration, innovation, creativity and experimentation among organisational members dominate in high-change organisations. according to nestlé’s annual report, “innovation is still one of the pillars on which this company is built. we work with agility, creativity and discipline, constantly innovating and renovating our portfolio” (nestlé 2016). unilever implemented a change programme in 2016 called “connected 4 growth” (c4g) to establish a responsive and agile organisation. in its annual report it states that through this programme “we want to give our people the opportunity to experiment and encourage them to think and act like entrepreneurs and business owners” (unilever 2016a). furthermore, in its sustainability report it 98 slabbert states that “in an uncertain and volatile world, we cannot achieve our vision unless we find new ways to operate” (unilever 2016b). correspondingly, johnson & johnson asserts that “our company’s structure allows us to interconnect our breadth and depth to drive innovation” (johnson & johnson 2016). the godrej group also maintains that “accelerating the pace of innovation is a key strategic pillar and driver of our growth strategy” (godrej group 2016). employee engagement and empowerment synonymous with “participation” mentioned in the literature, high-change organisations value employee engagement. recognising employees’ input in the decision-making processes of the organisation creates a sense of belonging and promotes self-discovery and, in essence, employee empowerment. this viewpoint was specifically reflected in dsm’s integrated annual report: “our employees feel engaged and motivated both through the contribution they make to a better world and the success this creates for the company in which they work” (dsm 2016). according to nestlé (2016), “keeping employees engaged is one of our top priorities”. similarly, the crystal group (2016) declares that “the group will continue to enhance communication with our employees to keep them involved”. unilever ceo paul polman states that the organisation is becoming more “agile and empowered” because of continuous employee engagement and partnership endeavours (unilever 2016a). in congruence, glaxosmithkline strives “to create an environment that empowers and inspires. our people strategy focuses on talent, leadership, performance and engagement” (glaxosmithkline 2016). diversity and dissent one of the paradigmatic shifts in strategic communication indicates that the focus is no longer on establishing consensus, but rather to instigate conflict, because knowledge develops through continuous debate and discourse. it was evident that most of the high-change organisations promote diversity and inclusion. this does not only point to the acceptance of different ethnicities, cultures, social beliefs and sexual orientations, but also the recognition of diverse and contradictory opinions and solutions to problems as a platform for the generation of new ideas. as part of a leadership development programme, glaxosmithkline focuses on an organisational environment that fosters “strategic debate” (glaxosmithkline 2016). indra k nooyi, pepsico chairperson and ceo, is of the opinion that “it’s inevitable that we’ll disagree on certain issues, but those disagreements need not be roadblocks to implementing solutions”. we need to “engage with one another across sectors, listen to diverse perspectives, resolve current tensions and coalesce around the latest research to find a collective path forward” (pepsico 2016). equally, the godrej group is “committed to recognizing and valuing diversity across our teams” (godrej group 2016). this sentiment was shared by united technologies: “we have a diverse and global workforce that embraces many different viewpoints” (united technologies 2016). bottom-up communication the literature reflected that interaction should be promoted and organisational leaders and management should listen to stakeholders through co-creation and stakeholder 99 co-change-orientated communication engagement strategies. the crystal group advocates that “workers should be able to collectively negotiate” (crystal group 2016). glaxosmithkline believes that “listening to our people is essential for employee engagement. responding even more so” (glaxosmithkline 2016). unilever’s c4g programme focuses on “inverting the traditional structures, pushing responsibility and opportunity outwards into the organisation so people can be more entrepreneurial” (unilever 2016a). panasonic integrated a “bottom-up approach” in its “forward looking r&d 10-year vision”, which entails “starting with researchers and engineers working in the field” towards identifying new innovations (panasonic 2016). antecedents of co-coc in congruence with the literature discussed earlier, a further four categories emerged from the document analysis, which specifically serve, in the context of this article, as antecedents or foundational prerequisites for the implementation of co-coc. organisational agility the integration of leadership agility and a change-able culture towards accepting change as part of organisational life, necessitates organisational agility. in support of this perspective, ibm contends that the organisation is “dynamic, adapting to the continuously changing industry and economic environment” (ibm 2016). in accordance, grupo bimbo “work[s] every day to be an agent of change” (grupo bimbo 2016). as stated earlier, unilever’s c4g programme focuses on, inter alia, building organisational agility to facilitate new ways of thinking and an entrepreneurial culture. with reference to organisational agility, munich re chairperson nikolaus von bomhard states that “munich re is also a company in transition. innovative business models and partnerships that would previously not have been taken into consideration are now being set up” (munich re 2016). leadership agility leadership agility is essential to realise change from below. it is important that the leader creates a receptive infrastructure in the organisation by listening, being open, and truly connecting with employees. in alignment with this perspective in the literature, unilever states that the c4g programme allows the leader and managers of the organisation to “better support employees who are encouraged to experiment, fail, learn and collaborate” (unilever 2016a). the ceo of the crystal group, andrew lo, asserts that it is a top priority for the organisation to keep employees informed and to communicate openly: “the group management uses different channels to enhance and maintain close relationships with their teams”. various platforms are also employed “to share information and keep employees abreast of the latest group happenings” (crystal group 2016). similarly, general electric chairperson and ceo jeffery r immelt argues that “leadership, now more than ever, is about embracing the new and bringing people with you” (general electric 2016). 100 slabbert change-able culture according to dsm, its organisational culture “aims to support the company’s strategic objectives and to equip employees to respond the needs of the ever-changing world” (dsm 2016). this specifically points to the necessity of a change-able culture or change-affirmative culture highlighted in the literature. similarly, the godrej group promotes an “agile and high performance culture” (godrej group 2016). this implies that the group is never satisfied with the status quo and fosters an incessant awareness of the opportunities brought about by the changing business environment. grey hayes, chairperson and ceo of united technologies, states that “in today’s competitive business environment, it is essential that we have a workforce that can adapt quickly and recognise the opportunities that a changing business environment brings” (united technologies 2016). in congruence, wal-mart president and ceo doug mcmillon maintains that its employees have a “willingness to change” (wal-mart 2016). in support of fostering a culture receptive to change, most of the high-change organisations recognise that their employees are their most important asset and a contentious effort is made to instil employee wellness. this is specifically done by creating a work-life balance and opportunities for leadership and career development. pepsico ceo nooyi states that “the extraordinary men and women who make up this company are – and always have been – our most valuable asset” (pepsico 2016). the company preserves its most valuable asset by “fostering a healthy workplace”, “learning and development programmes”, and “making sure that men and women are represented equally in management roles” (pepsico 2016). according to the national australia bank’s annual report, “the success of our business is driven by our people. we focus on building capability, nurturing talent and having great leaders” (national australia bank 2016). similarly, dsm “aim[s] to provide rewarding career opportunities, high levels of employee engagement and a healthy work-life balance” (dsm 2016). stakeholder engagement from the document analysis it was evident that these high-change organisations not only place high regard on employee engagement, but also stakeholder engagement as a whole. this is specifically in line with the concept of “self-organisation” in the literature, where the focus is no longer on generating consensus with stakeholders but the establishment of engagement opportunities. the starting point for identifying creative solutions is now with the organisation’s stakeholders. in support of this viewpoint, the coca-cola company “engages with stakeholders around the world” (the coca-cola company 2016). in congruence, the crystal group “focuses on becoming a boundaryless organisation – the support and engagement of various stakeholders are actively seeked. our collaborations with our stakeholders create social and environmental benefits, develop synergy and result in widespread positive impacts throughout society” (crystal group 2016). 101 co-change-orientated communication co-coc: a definition and attributes the findings from the initial thematic analysis of the sample of literature and the document analysis of the annual and sustainability reports of selected high-change organisations culminated in a definition and attributes for co-coc. co-coc could be defined as the “daily communication and social processes of organisational members to collaboratively negotiate and co-create innovations and experiments towards identifying creative solutions to evolve with changes posed by the volatile business environment”. the “co” prefix encapsulates the collaborative nature of this process. it should also be noted that although co-coc specifically refers to how organisational members collectively make sense of change, this process also promotes collaboration and co-creation with external strategic organisational stakeholders. figure 2 provides a graphical illustration of the core attributes and antecedents of co-coc. figure 2: core attributes and antecedents of co-coc organizational agility b ot to m -u p co m m un ic at io n organizational agility employee empowerment employee engagement collaboration and co-creationencouragement of dissent meaningful dialogue change-able culture leadership agility stakeholder engagement innovation experimentation 102 slabbert figure 2 illustrates that against the acceptance of change as part of organisational life, co-coc is bottom-up in nature and elicits the attributes of meaningful dialogue, employee engagement, collaboration and co-creation and encouragement of dissent. these attributes are enabled by the antecedents of organisational agility, leadership agility, a change-able culture and stakeholder engagement. an emergent approach to organisational change, which focuses on how organisational members construct their social reality, where change becomes part of organisational life, necessitates organisational agility. this implies a flexible, open organisational structure to quickly respond and adjust, but ultimately evolve with the changes posed by the volatile business environment. this necessitates leadership agility, where the leader and managers connect with employees and truly value their input and participation to enable a receptive context, or change-able culture. such a context stimulates the opportunity for organisational members to have meaningful dialogue to collaboratively make sense of change and co-create innovations and experiments in response to the volatile business environment. co-coc should not be focused on the mere transfer of information, but on employee engagement, where the leader and management involve employees in organisational decision-making. this could, in turn, elicit a sense of self-discovery and employee empowerment regarding the value of their inputs towards organisational sustainability. change from below requires members of an organisation to learn how to effectively and constructively talk to one another at all levels of the organisation during the process of building a collective understanding of change. such a perspective naturally allows for the encouragement of dissent because knowledge develops through continuous debate and discourse. furthermore, there should be meaningful dialogue across the entire organisation to allow for the sharing of meaning and ideas. this also entails engaging with other external strategic stakeholders as a starting point towards developing creative solutions. pragmatic implications in addition to the antecedents of co-coc, some pragmatic implications, specifically pertaining to planned change projects and the role of the strategic communication professional, need to be considered. top-down communication and planned change projects it could be argued that some change projects might require a planned approach within an overall emergent change process. these projects will necessitate top-down change-orientated communication. however, the emphasis here should be on the fact that organisational leaders should facilitate the change process as opposed to merely inform; follow a charismatic, as opposed to authoritative, leadership approach; and implement employee engagement in all units, departments and teams at multiple levels of the organisation, instead of simply enrolling collaboration among organisational members (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 36). 103 co-change-orientated communication the role of the strategic communication professional the role of the strategic communication professional is no longer to control communication and to encourage participation towards resolution. instead, strategic communication professionals should act as facilitators to instil continuous discussion forums among organisational members where opinions can be liberally expressed and dissent instigated (ströh 2007). in the role as facilitator, the strategic communication professional should create “platforms for discourse and participation within and between the organisation and its stakeholders … which necessitates both relational and dialectical strategies to ensure marginalised voices are also heard” (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 373). to ensure critical reflection, strategic communication professionals can no longer be too closely aligned with the organisation (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 374). most importantly, ströh (2007: 133) emphasises that building and sustaining relationships lie at the heart of effective change initiatives, which could be achieved through “participation that builds trust and openness, not merely paying lip-service to involvement”. limitations, contributions and future research drawing from critical developments in strategic communication, this article presented a new concept, co-coc, which contributes to the body of knowledge on change communication and management literature, reaffirms the critical role of communication in the change process, and serves as a heuristic for future research. this concept addresses the need for theory development beyond mainstream assumptions, which could in particular assist strategic communication professionals to realise the need for the incorporation of contemporary developments in practice. although an analysis of organisational documents is regarded as highly authentic and meaningful, it could involve issues pertaining to credibility and representativeness (bryman & bell 2014: 275). organisational documents might not be an accurate representation of how different organisational members perceive situations within the organisation, or they might not be an objective reflection of the current situation. notwithstanding these limitations, the methodological strategy employed in this article should be considered as the foundation towards further development of co-coc as a fully-fledged concept at high-change organisations. conclusion contemporary organisations are in a continuous state of flux and have to be able to adapt to the demands of an interactive society in order to survive. the ceo and chairperson of general electric states that “no company can escape the waves of change” (general electric 2016). strategic communication from a contemporary, critical perspective “actively contributes to and shapes the processes and practices through which change emerges in the day-to-day of organisational life” (järventie-thesleff et al. 2015: 535). the need for communication approaches that are change orientated to sustain the organisation as part of the ever-changing environment, with the conceptual development of co-coc as the foundation, is self-evident. 104 slabbert references appelbaum, s.h., st-pierre, n. & glavas, w. 1998. strategic organisational change: the role of leadership, learning, motivation and productivity. management decision 36(5): 289–301. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251749810220496 bamford, d.r. & forrester, p.l. 2003. managing planned and 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https://www.unilever.com/images/unilever-annual-report-and-accounts2016_tcm244498744_en.pdf https://www.unilever.com/images/unilever-annual-report-and-accounts2016_tcm244498744_en.pdf https://www.unilever.com/images/uslp-mobilising-collective-action-summary-of-progress-2015_tcm244-424809_en.pdf https://www.unilever.com/images/uslp-mobilising-collective-action-summary-of-progress-2015_tcm244-424809_en.pdf http://2016ar.utc.com/assets/pdfs/utcar2016_fullreport.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2015.1093327 https://s2.q4cdn.com/056532643/files/doc_financials/2016/annual/2016-annual-report-pdf.pdf https://s2.q4cdn.com/056532643/files/doc_financials/2016/annual/2016-annual-report-pdf.pdf https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.361 https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318900134001 159 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends among students at a south african university beauty makofane and toks oyedemi* abstract pregnancy among teenagers and unmarried young adults is common in south africa. this presents challenges and concerns due to the association with lower socio-economic status, lack of paternal support and commitment among male partners, disruption of schooling that potentially accompanies pregnancy, and many others. it also raises critical sociological and communication questions: do parents talk to their children about sex-related issues? what are the young adults’ idea of love, sex and relationships? what are the patterns of motherhood and pregnancy among university students? many studies have explored teenage pregnancy in south africa, but there is limited focus on young adult students at universities, especially rural universities. through a survey of 150 students at the university of limpopo in south africa, this study shows that parental communication about sex is not a popular communicative practice among many students, and for those whose parents have talked to them about sex, the parental communication tends to have limited influence on the students’ attitude to safe sex. in this study, for a third of the students who are mothers the concerns about young motherhood continue to shape their economic and socio-cultural experiences. keywords: motherhood, parent-adolescent communication, teenage pregnancy, university students, south africa, sex-related issues * beauty makofane (makofanephodiso@gmail.com) is a postgraduate student in the department of communication, media and information studies in the school of languages and communication studies at the university of limpopo in south africa. toks oyedemi (toks. oyedemi@ul.ac.za) is a lecturer in the same department. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 159-180 160 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi introduction pregnancy among teenagers and unmarried young adults is common in south africa (jewkes et al. 2001; wood & jewkes 2006). a study by jewkes, morrell and christofides (2009) notes that about 30% of teenagers in south africa claim to have been pregnant (cf. holt et al. 2012; ardington et al. 2012). although this rate has been gradually decreasing over the years, it is still high (willan 2013). for instance, a study by the southern africa labour and development research unit (saldru) at the university of cape town shows that teenage childbearing (13-19 years) has decreased from 30% in 1984 to 23% in 2008. for years pregnancy among teenagers and unmarried young adults has been predominantly portrayed as a social problem in many countries such as the united states (geronimus 1991; stepp 2013), britain (chevalier & viitanen 2003) and south africa (macleod 1999; willan 2013). the concerns are usually because of its association with lower socio-economic status, the disruption of the teenagers’ education and schooling, access to health care resources, and quality of life of the children. in south africa, adolescent pregnancy remains a critical problem and many teenagers still report unwanted pregnancies (wood & jewkes 2006). historical accounts of studies indicate that many young south africans engage in sexual risk-taking, unprotected sex, low levels of condom and contraceptive use, and often have concurrent partners (buga, amako & ncayiyana 1996; ehlers 2003; hoffmanwanderer et al. 2013). many socio-cultural pressures and beliefs influence teenage pregnancy. some teenagers are encouraged to become pregnant by their partners to prove their love, some are pressurised to prove their womanhood through fertility, others are encouraged by grandmothers to produce a baby for the home, and mothers often voice the assumption that teenage pregnancy is infinitely preferable to the possibility of infertility caused by contraceptive use (wood, jewkes & maepa 1997). the baby is usually accepted into the mother’s family and looked after by elder women; the mother is often able to return to school. but the trend in teenage pregnancy may be decreasing, as indicated in some studies. the 1998 south african demographic and health survey (sadhs) indicates that 35% of women had a child by the age of 19 (department of health 2002), while in the 2003 sadhs survey this had decreased to 27% (department of health 2007). according to moultrie and mcgrath (2007), teenage fertility fell by 10% between the 1996 and 2001 census. statistics south africa (2013) stated in the general household survey 2012 that the prevalence of pregnancy among 19-year-olds fell from 12.7% in 2010 to 10.25% in 2012. the study of teenage pregnancy and motherhood among unmarried young adults can be engaged from the acknowledgement of the reconfiguration of family structures in today’s postmodern society. the postmodernist view of self and 161 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends self-culture provides an analysis that single parenting may be a conscious selfdecision. but for students who are parents, social concerns are always about the implications for both the single parent and the child, and increasingly, the role of the state. the south african institute of race relations (sairr) 2012 report indicates that 34% of south african children live with both their parents, compared to 39% who live with their mothers only, while 3% live with their fathers only, and 24% live with neither of their parents. in south africa, some 81% of indian children live with both their parents, followed by 78% of white children, and 51% of coloured children. only 28% of african children live with both their parents. at 41.9%, african children comprise the highest rate of children that live with their mothers only, 34% of coloured children live with their mothers only, 16.1% of white children and 11.2% of indian children (sairr 2012). the sairr (2012) report states that research has shown that young girls who grow up without fathers tend to experience lower self-esteem, higher levels of risky sexual activities, and more hardships in romantic relationships. the report also indicates that these girls are more likely to fall pregnant early, bear children outside of marriage, marry early, or divorce their partners. the sairr report acknowledges that children who grow up in functional families with both parents may benefit from the parents’ modelling behaviours, and are able to teach their children about relationships, especially the emotional and financial responsibilities of having children. this therefore assumes the importance of parent-child communication about sex and relationships. another issue about pregnancy among teenagers and young adults is the concern about low socio-economic status and poverty. statistics south africa’s 2012 report on the social profile of vulnerable groups in south africa states that 65.1% of children live in low-income households with a per capita income of less than r650 per month. this level of economic stress and poverty explains why south africa’s social grant support is one of the largest social assistance systems in the world. the child support grant, together with the old age grant, constitute about 75% of total grant spending (south africa.info 2014). data shows that since 2003 the percentage of children who benefit from grants has increased from 15% in 2003 to more than 59.2% by 2011 (statistics south africa 2012). considering all these trends and the concerns about teenage and young adult pregnancy, specifically the role of family in sex education and in modelling standards about relationships, this research examines parental communication about sex with young adults at the university of limpopo in mankweng, south africa. this study examines the extent of youth’s communication with parents about sex, and how this may influence the youth’s attitude to sex, pregnancy, love and relationships. in doing this, some critical research questions are engaged: what are the current trends of motherhood and pregnancy among students 162 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi at this university? do their parents communicate to them about love, sex and relationships? does this communication impact the attitude of youth towards love, sex and relationships? what are the opinions and attitude of youth to love, sex and relationships? this study intends to provide an understanding of pregnancy and motherhood trends and the attitude to sex-related matters among a relatively more educated and more mature cohort of young people than the commonly studied 13 to 19 year cohort of teenagers. understanding sexual relationships and attitudes to pregnancy among youth factors that motivate sexual relationships among the youth low socio-economic status and poverty seem to be influencing factors in sexual relationships among adolescents in sub-saharan africa. luke (2003) observes that most studies on sexual relationships among adolescent girls in sub-saharan africa indicate that relationships with older partners and those that involve economic transactions are common and are associated with unsafe sexual behaviour. the receipt of financial benefits is a major motivation published in research as young women often are at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. in a study in rural uganda, 75% of female participants stated that the expectation of gifts was the main reason they had sex (moore & biddlecom 2006). this trend is also present in south africa. for example, wood and jewkes (1998) observe that major contributing factors to teenage pregnancy are the economic pressures due to poverty and intergenerational sex between partners. poverty is a major social concern in south africa, and it affects many youth. poverty is often the reason for the commodification of sex in which women in poor circumstances agree to sexual relationships with men in exchange for financial support (adams & marshall 1998; hallman 2004). financial benefit is, however, not the only motivation for sexual encounters; love is another reason given by females for engaging in sexual intercourse (kelly & parker 2000). in an earlier study by bardwick (1999) it was reported that female students justified their participation in premarital intercourse as a commitment to their partners. in this regard, women see sexual intercourse as an important medium for communicating love in a relationship. peer pressure also contributes to the decision made by many youth to have sexual intercourse (selikow et al. 2009). buga et al. (1996) state that both girls and boys experience the same peer pressure to be sexually active. for many young men, the pressure has to do with proving their masculinity by having multiple sex partners; this wins a young man status and admiration. according to macphail and campbell (2001), some boys encounter negative pressure towards the use of condoms, and girls sometimes encounter pressure from sexually experienced peers 163 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends who sideline them from sexual discussions because they are considered inexperienced and young (wood et al. 1997). a study by the southern african hiv and aids information dissemination service (safaids 2011) indicates that peer pressure is a major cause of teenage sexual relationships and adolescent pregnancies. adolescent girls often face peer pressure from their boyfriends and on social networks to engage in sexual intercourse. safaids (2011) notes that an early sexual debut has become a trend in most societies and this often pressurises adolescent girls to engage in sexual intercourse because of the fear of being stigmatised by their peers. as a result, many girls become pregnant as they are not fully aware of the consequences of sexual intercourse and the use of contraception. the youth’s attitudes towards sex and teen pregnancy the study by mothiba and maputle (2012) on teenage pregnancy in the limpopo province of south africa confirms the observation that there are several factors associated with the increased risk of an early pregnancy. these include lack of knowledge about sex and how to use contraceptives, barriers to access contraceptives, including negative attitudes of health staff, peer pressure, sexual coercion, low self-esteem, low educational expectations, poverty, family breakdown, and heightened sex-based messages in the media. panday et al. (2009) observe that there is a changing attitude to sex and pregnancy among youth. in the early 1990s, youth’s attitude commonly indicated that pregnancy was welcomed, specifically among young black women and their families. pregnancy was seen as a sign of love, womanhood and fertility, and potential bride wealth as a groom pays a higher bride price for impregnating a woman prior to marriage. young men, on the other hand, felt pride in bearing a child as a sign of their masculinity. these observations were noted in many studies in the early to late 1990s (cf. preston-whyte & zondi 1991; caldwell & caldwell 1993; jewkes et al. 2001). one of these studies, by wood et al. (1997), indicates that young men in south africa wanted to have sex at an early stage of a relationship and produce children as a sign of masculinity, especially those in rural areas, claiming they have been taught to do so from the initiation schools. however, as panday et al. (2009) argue, with a shifting socioeconomic landscape and increasing access to education many youth are becoming more ambitious, especially those in urban areas, and socio-cultural beliefs about sex and pregnancy are gradually changing. pettifor et al. (2005) provide empirical evidence of this in a study that shows that two-thirds of adolescents who have ever been pregnant in south africa report their pregnancies as unwanted. despite what seems to be a normalisation of teen pregnancy in black and coloured communities in south africa as a result of the high prevalence of pregnancy in these groups, and to some extent previous cultural 164 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi acceptance, early childbearing is highly stigmatised. girls are confronted with trauma, fear, shame, and embarrassment of having to reveal an early pregnancy to family, partners and peers (panday et al. 2009). the analysis of teenage pregnancy tends to concentrate on negative social and economic factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy. however, there are many instances that female adolescents view immediate pregnancy and parenthood in a positive light (panday et al. 2009). this claim is supported by various international research studies indicating that some adolescents intentionally become pregnant (cf. unger, molina & teran 2000; cater & coleman 2006; condon & corkindale 2000). in this regard, as cater and coleman (2006) argue, becoming pregnant is a positive decision that offers a sense of purpose and future direction, especially as a way of correcting negative childhood experiences that are characterised by dysfunctional family relationships and poor academic experiences. parent-child communication and self-development stanoff (2010) observes that the quality of the parent-child relationship is important for promoting positive developmental outcomes. open communication, close parent-child relationships, and active involvement in the adolescents’ daily life increase children’s well-being. this observation highlights the importance of parent-child communication in the development of youth’s attitude to sex and relationships with others. studies have shown that parental communication is positively related to adolescent social and psychological growth (lambert & cashwell 2004). the argument about parental communication and youth’s development largely stems from the importance of communication with others in self-development. mead’s (1934) seminal analysis of the self provides a critical observation in personal identity and self-development. in mead’s analysis, self is developed in the process of communication with others. mead identifies two types of others whose communication influences how people see themselves and what people generally believe is possible and desirable for them (wood 2011). one is the “particular others”, who are specific significant people in our lives, such as mothers, fathers, siblings, peers and those whose communication are significant in our formative years. the other is the “generalised other”, which is made up of the views of society and social communities we belong to (mead 1934; wood 2011). the generalised others include institutions such as the school system, the media and religious institutions. for many people, family communication is often the first and most important influence on self-development; it dominates the early years and sculpts the foundations of the development of the self (bergen & braithwaite 2009; 165 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends wood 2011). issues of identity, ego development, self-development, and selfesteem are important in developing and maintaining relationships. communication with others, family, peers, and society in general, is important in the development of these critical identity markers. young adults who are self-assured about the self and identity are more confident in their readiness for intimacy and commitment. those lacking confidence in their identities tend to be easily influenced and may isolate themselves. these attitudes are consequently carried into sexual relationships and activities. some studies have found that low self-esteem is connected with relationship formation, onset of sexual activity, and rate of multiple sexual partners (favara 2013; goliath 1995; perskel et al. 1991). perskel et al. (1991) observe that those with low self-esteem may tend to be more concerned about what others think or say about them than their own feelings. they may engage in sexual activities for fear of rejection by their partners, more so than those with positive self-concepts. an increase in self-esteem tends to decrease the probability of not using condoms or the occasional use of condoms (favara 2013). stanoff (2010) observes mixed findings in the literature on parent-child sexual communication. generally, literature supports the assumption that parental communication plays an important role in reducing risky sexual activities (kirby & lepore 2007; miller et al. 2001), and it is also related to more effective contraceptive use (diclemente et al. 2001; levin & robertson 2002). however, some studies have also shown that the amount of parental communication is related to a likelihood of adolescents engaging in sexual intercourse (bersamin et al. 2006; clawson & reese-weber 2003). some studies report no link between parental communication and adolescent sexual activity or contraceptive use (clawson & reese-weber 2003; mcneely et al. 2002). these different findings may be mediated by the quality and quantity of the communication and the relationship between youth and parents (miller et al. 1998; nelson et al. 1999; resnick et al. 1997). mothers tend to play a more important role in communicating with their adolescents than fathers (diiorio et al. 1999; miller et al. 1998). nolin and peterson (1992) report that in their sample of adolescent boys and their parents, only half of the parents had engaged in a conversation with their sons about sex, socio-sexual issues, or contraception. considering the concerns about teenage pregnancy in south africa, it indicates a need for further academic inquiry in exploring parental communication about sex. also, noting the high regard for traditional and commonly held cultural beliefs in south africa, this study is necessary in order to explore how this may affect parent-child communication among university students, who are largely transitioning to adulthood. 166 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi methodology this study was conducted through a survey of students at the university of limpopo, a university with predominantly black students. this explains the fact that 99.3% of the survey respondents are black. the respondents were chosen randomly through convenience sampling from the first level of study to honours level. the sample comprised of 150 students consisting of 36 first-year students, 42 second-level students, 46 third-level, 12 fourth-level and 14 students from the honours level. after gaining permission from lecturers, questionnaires were distributed to students who willingly volunteered to participate in the study immediately after their classes. an informed consent letter was attached to each questionnaire, which served as an assurance to the respondents that their participation is voluntary and they are at liberty to decline. the letter also assured the students that no names or personal identifiers were required in the survey, and that information from respondents would be kept private and confidential. the questionnaire was designed to measure the pattern of parental communication about sex, the students’ opinions about sex, love, pregnancy and marriage, the trend of motherhood, and the rate of pregnancy among the students. the respondents were predominantly black students (99.3%) and unmarried (only 4% were married). there was diversity in other elements of the demographics of the respondents, as illustrated in table 1: table 1: demographics of survey respondents gender % race % female 60.0 black african 99.3 male 40.0 coloured 0.7 age level of study below 18 1.4 year 1 24.2 18-21 yrs. 47.3 year 2 28.2 22-26 yrs. 44.6 year 3 30.9 27-30 yrs. 4.7 year 4 7.4 30 and above 2.0 honours 9.3 place of residence who do you live with? urban (city) 7.4 living with single mothers 33.6 rural area (village) 60.8 living with single fathers 12.3 semi-urban 15.5 living with both parents 32.2 semi-rural 16.2 living with grandmother 8.2 other relatives 13.7 the data from the survey were analysed descriptively, which involved measuring occurrences and distribution of data based on the answers to questions in 167 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends frequencies and percentages. the findings are presented in this pattern with occasional use of tables and figures for illustration. findings pattern of pregnancy among students current trend of motherhood and pregnancy among students the majority of the students in this survey did not have children and were not pregnant at the time of this study, but about a third (30%) of them have children, with a quarter (25.7%) having one child, 2.7% having two children, and 1.4% having three children. the results of the survey show that 96% of the student respondents stated that they were not pregnant during their participation in the survey, and only 0.8% of the respondents reported being pregnant, with 6.3% of the male students claiming to have impregnated their girlfriends at the time of the survey. however, 37.3% of the students acknowledged they have a female friend who is a student and pregnant, 30.8% have a male friend who is a student and has impregnated his girlfriend. the students who would like to become pregnant and those that acknowledged that it is possible they will become pregnant before they finish their studies account for a quarter of all the students. specifically, 15% of the students stated that they would like to become pregnant before they graduate from the university, and 10% stated that there is the possibility they may become pregnant before they complete their studies and graduate. although the majority of the students said they did not have children and were not pregnant during the study, it was observed that a substantial amount of the students were mothers. specifically, a third (34.8%) of the female students have children, with 31.5% having one child (see figure 1). more than half of the students (56.1%) stated that their mothers are unemployed, with 12.9% temporarily employed, and 41.4% said their fathers are permanently employed, with 8.1% temporarily employed. this perhaps explains why 55.6% of the students’ families collect childcare grants and 25.9% of the students said their families receive old age pensions. these findings support national data that child support grants, together with the old age grant, constitute about 75% of total grant spending in south africa (south africa.info 2014). this economic stress and low economic status may not only have implications for the teenage and young adult pregnancy trend, but also for the quality of life for the babies born in this social class. for example, more than half (57.1%) of the female respondents who have children reported that their children live with their mothers (the child’s grandmother), 5.4% of them said that their children live with their fathers (the child’s grandfather), and 8.9% said their children live with the family of the father. only 23.2% stated that they live with their children, most likely with other family members, since they are all students and still at university. 168 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi figure 1: rates of female students with children pattern of motherhood among female students 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% series 1 none 1 child 2 children 3 children 65.2% 31.5% 2.2% 1.1% 0.0% figure 2: attitudes of male students towards their pregnant girlfriends if you have impregnated a girl while she is still at school, how did this make you feel? i felt like a real man i felt ashamed 7.5% 55.0% 12.5% 5.0% 20.0% i felt emotionally connected to her i was angry with her other feelings attitude of male students towards their pregnant girlfriends the study shows that male students tend to have a negative attitude towards their pregnant girlfriends. findings show that more than half (55%) of the male 169 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends students reported that they felt ashamed after impregnating a girl who was still at university. this challenges the cultural assumption of young men being expected to be proud of fathering a child, even if it is at an early age, as a sign of manhood (cf. wood et al. 1997); only 7.5% of the male respondents whose girlfriends were pregnant felt like “a real man” (see figure 2). the “other feelings” include those who broke up with their girlfriends, realised they made mistakes, have other forms of regret and detached attitudes. attitude of youth to love, relationships and sex opinions about love the results of the survey indicate that slightly more female students than male students believed there is true love and claimed to have loved someone genuinely. the data shows that 87.8% of the female respondents believed there is true love and 83.3% of them said they have loved someone genuinely. on the other hand, 83.3% of the male respondents believed there is true love, and 72.9% of them said they have loved someone genuinely. table 2: students’ opinions about love yes no maybe/ possibly male female male female male female do you believe there is true love? 83.3% 87.8% 16.7% 12.2% 0% 0% have you ever loved someone genuinely? 72.9% 83.3% 8.5% 4.4% 18.6% 12.2% opinions about sex most of the student respondents (81.3%) believed that if you love someone you should have sex with them. the study shows that 72% of all the respondents believed that sex before marriage should involve the use of protection. more female students (79.3%) were of the opinion that sex before marriage should involve the use of protection all the time, and 66% of male students shared the same opinion. an interesting acknowledgment among the students is that 12% of them stated that one should use protection for pre-marital sex, but acknowledged that this is impossible all the time. more male students (18.6%) than female students said that it is impossible to use protection all the time in pre-marital sex (see table 3). table 3: opinions about safe sex do you think sex before marriage should involve the use protection? male female no 3.4% 2.3% no, if you have a steady partner 11.9% 10.3% yes, all the time 66.1% 79.3% yes, but it is impossible 18.6% 8.0% 170 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi pattern of parental communication about sex and relationships findings from this study show that parental communication about sex and related matters is not a common activity among many of the families in the population studied. many students at this rural university who participated in the study have not spoken to their parents about sex, protection (contraceptive use and condoms), abstinence, pre-marital sex, choosing a partner, dating and relationships. the findings from this study indicate that slightly over half (56.1%) of the students have spoken to their parent about sex, but few have spoken to their parents specifically about pre-marital sex (38.6%) and about choosing sexual partners (33.6%). however, about half of the students (54.1%) have talked with their parents about contraceptive and condom use. the study also shows that 43.9% of the students have not spoken to their parents about sex, many of the students have not spoken with their parents specifically about pre-marital sex (61.4%) or about choosing sexual partners (66.4%) (see table 4). of all the students that have had discussions about sex and related matters, most of them (68.3%) have only spoken to their mothers (see table 5). this confirms findings from other studies that mothers tend to play a more prominent role in communicating about sex with their children than fathers (diiorio et al. 1999; miller et al. 1998). table 4: pattern of parental communication about sex and relationships have you ever spoken to your parents about yes no sex? 56.1% 43.9% contraceptives (pills and condoms)? 54.1% 45.9% abstinence? 53.7% 46.3% sex before marriage? 38.6% 61.4% choosing sexual partners? 33.6% 66.4% your relationships with someone you are dating? 47.9% 52.1% table 5: parental communication about sex-related issues by gender of parents which of your parents have you talked to about love, sex, relationships and marriage? percentages (%) mother 68.3 father 9.5 others 22.2 171 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends the students also offered explanations as to why their parents have not spoken to them about sexual matters. some of the students assumed that their parents had not spoken to them about it because the parents were of the opinion that such discussions may encourage their children to experiment with, and engage in, sexual activities. the following are direct extracts from the students’ responses: “my parents have not spoken to me because they think it will encourage me to explore it” (respondent 18). “maybe they think if we discuss it, they will be encouraging it” (respondent 102). others indicated cultural values as the reason for their parents not communicating with them, and them not being able to talk to their parents, about sex: “they are more traditional and find it hard to talk about such stuff with their children” (respondent 133). “our culture does not allow us to engage our parents about sex” (respondent 111). the respondents further indicated that another reason their parents had not spoken to them about sexual issues was because they could be embarrassed and uncomfortable discussing this with their own children; their parents might also think that talking about sex could make their children disrespect them: “it is not easy to talk to your children about this kind of issues; i think they have their reasons” (respondent 11). “it is not something that our parents are comfortable to talk about. they warn us about boys but never about sex” (respondent 22). some respondents also indicated that their parents might think they were still too young for sexual intercourse and discussions on sexual matters. the following responses bear witness to this: “i think [this] is because they think that i am still young [to be] having sex or that i am old enough to be responsible” (respondent 24). “they think i’m still young” (respondent 12). parental communication about sex and youth’s attitude to sex and relationships a key finding in this study is that whether or not parental communication about sex had taken place appears to be insignificant in relation to attitudes toward premarital sex. the findings indicate that 85.4% of the students who had spoken to 172 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi their parents about sex believed that if you love someone, you should have sex with him or her. also, 81% of those who had not spoken to their parents about sex shared the same belief. in fact, more students who had not had discussions about sex with their parents believed that one should use protection all the time when engaging in pre-marital sex than those who had spoken to their parents about sex. also, more of the students who had not spoken to their parents about sex believed that they may not become pregnant with their current partners while still at university, than those who had communicated with their parents about sex. specifically, 76.6% of those who had not spoken to their parents about sex believed that pre-marital sex should always involve the use of protection, compared to 71.6% of those who had spoken to their parents about sex. furthermore, 80% of those who had not had parent-child communication about sex believed that they may not become pregnant with their boyfriend or girlfriend, compared to 70.7% of those who had parent-child communication, who believed that they may not become pregnant. in fact, most of the students who believed that they may become pregnant with their boyfriend or girlfriend are those who had had parentchild communication about sex (see table 6). table 6: parental communication and youth’s attitude to sex have you spoken to your parents about sex? yes no if you love someone, will you have sex with him or her? yes 85.4% 81% no 14.6% 17.5% maybe 0% 1.6% do you think sex before marriage should involve the use of protection? no 3.7% 1.6% no, if you have a steady partner 12.3% 9.4% yes, all the time 71.6% 76.6% yes, but it is impossible 12.3% 12.5% do you think you may get pregnant with your boyfriend or girlfriend? yes, i would like to 19.5% 8.3% no 70.7% 80% maybe 9.8% 11.7% 173 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends discussion and conclusion this study shows that the pattern of motherhood is high among the student respondents from this predominantly black rural university. a third of the female students who participated in this study have children. although most of the students were not pregnant during the period this study was conducted, about a third of the female students had friends who were pregnant then, and about a third of the male students had friends who had impregnated their female partners. while studies have shown a decrease in the rate of teenage pregnancy in south africa (cf. willan 2013; saldru 2012), this study supports the commonly presented data that about 30 per cent of teenage girls in south africa claim to have been pregnant (jewkes et al. 2009; holt et al. 2012; ardington 2012). contrary to other studies and cultural beliefs that young men perceive their ability to impregnate a woman as a sign of proving their masculinity (cf. wood et al. 1997), many young men in this study were ashamed of the fact that they impregnated their girlfriend while still at university; some were angry that their girlfriends became pregnant and generally do not see impregnating a girl as a sign of their masculinity. only 7.5% stated that they felt like a “real man” after impregnating a girl. perhaps, as panday et al. (2009) argue, this change in attitude may be due to the shifting socio-economic landscape and increasing access to education among many youth, making them more ambitious. however, this may not be true for all young adults, as those students who would like to become pregnant and those who believed that it was possible they would become pregnant before they finished their studies together accounted for a quarter of the students in this study. perhaps this may be due to the acceptance of teenage pregnancy in some communities, as other studies have acknowledged (cf. makiwane 1998). parental communication about sex may not be present in many south african homes, at least among families of black youth from rural areas. this statement is supported by the findings of this study as more than three-quarters (77%) of the respondents were from villages and semi-rural areas. a high number of the students had not spoken to their parents about sex and pre-marital sex. while one may suggest that parents face cultural and social taboos about this form of interpersonal communication, the findings of this study showed the limited impact of such communication on youth’s attitude to sex. irrespectively, parental communication remains important. as scholars have observed (bergen & braithwaite 2009; wood 2011), family communication is usually the first and most influential on the self-development of many young adults, since it dominates the early years and sculpts the foundations of the development of the self and self-esteem among teenagers. studies have shown that self-esteem plays a huge role in decisionmaking about sexual activities (favara 2013; goliath 1995; perskel et al. 1991). this study also supports previous findings that mothers tend to play a bigger role 174 beauty makofane and toks oyedemi in communicating with their adolescents than fathers (diiorio et al. 1999; miller et al. 1998). fathers, when present, need to play an active role in modelling behaviour and engaging with their children on issues of pre-marital sex and its implications. contrary to some previous studies (cf. diclemente et al. 2001; resnick et al. 1997; whitaker & miller 2000) that report that parental communication will reduce the likelihood of youth engaging in sexual activities, this study finds that whether or not parental communication about sex had taken place, it appears to be insignificant in relation to attitudes toward pre-marital sex and safe sex, at least in the population used for this study. assumptions about what influences youth’s attitude to sex may be due to the increasing tendency towards the postmodernist ideology of selfculture, where young people make their own decisions irrespective of parental communication. also, a likely assumption about what influences attitudes to safe sex is the ubiquitous public awareness campaign about sexually transmitted illnesses (stis) and hiv. this notwithstanding, there is still a challenge around issues of safe sex, stis and hiv. for instance, these findings show that some of the respondents (19% male and 8% female) believed that using protection all the time in pre-marital sex is impossible. also, considering that men tend to play a dominating role in sexual encounters, these findings may have serious implications for the transmission of stis. although this study does not specifically engage the link between teenage pregnancy and the child support grant, it is clear that many young mothers depend on the child support grant. in fact, half of the students in this study (49.7%) believed that the child support grant provided by government encourages young unmarried adolescents to become pregnant. this has the capacity to negatively impact south africa’s budgetary allocation for many national social and economic programmes. the percentage of children who benefit from grants increased from 15% in 2003 to more than 59.2% by 2011 (statistics south africa 2012), and child support grants together with the old age grant constitutes about 75% of total grant spending in south africa (south africa.info 2014). finally, parental communication has value in shaping adolescents’ development of the self and self-esteem. also, since sex education is important for adolescents, parental communication should form part of this education, in addition to those available in many formal settings such as schools and religious institutions. ultimately, decisions about sexual activities are made by the youth themselves. nonetheless, sex education is an appropriate intervention in ameliorating some of the concerns that come with teenage pregnancy and young motherhood, such as its impact on a cycle of generational poverty, its association with lower socioeconomic status, the disruption of the teenagers’ education, and the quality of life for both teenage mothers and their children. 175 parental communication about sex and motherhood trends references adams, h. & marshall, a. 1998. off-target messages: poverty, risk and sexual rights. agenda 39: 87-92. ardington, c., branson, n., lam, d., leibbrandt, m., marteleto, l., menendez, a., mutevedzi, t. & ranchold, v. 2012. revisiting the ‘crisis’ in teen births: what is the impact of teen births on young mothers and their children? a southern african labour and development research unit policy brief. university of cape town. bardwick, j.j. 1999. psychology of women. new york: harper & row. bergen, k. & braithwaite, d.o. 2009. identity as constituted in communication. in: eadie, w.f. 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(sixth edition). boston, ma: wadsworth. wood, k. & jewkes, r.1998. love is a dangerous thing: micro-dynamics of violence in sexual relationships of young people in umtata. pretoria: medical research council technical report. wood, k. & jewkes, r. 2006. blood blockages and scolding nurses: barriers to adolescent contraceptive use in south africa. reproductive health matters 14(27): 109-118. wood, k., jewkes, r. & maepa, j. 1997. adolescent, sex and contraceptive experience: perspectives of teenagers and clinic nurses in the northern province. pretoria: centre for epidemiological research in south africa. 125pb redefining the communication relationship between donors and non-profit organisations in the context of corporate social investment abstract this article proposes redefined relationship indicators for the stakeholder relationship between corporate donors and the nonprofit organisations (npos) they fund as part of their corporate social investment (csi) activities. the study is based on exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis of data from two corresponding surveys, one conducted amongst csi representatives of south african organisations and one amongst social development npo managers. the analysis and interpretation of the survey results were supplemented by literature and the findings from partially structured interviews with six key informants. the redefined relationship indicators are based on two key findings from the survey results and subsequent interpretation. the first finding is that the relational indicators by theorists such as hon and grunig (1999) are not entirely suited to describe and measure the relationship between the private sector organisations and npos. the second key finding is that the relationship is viewed differently by the two parties and indicators used to describe and measure the relationship should reflect these differing views. the redefined relationship indicators reflect the specific context of the relationship between corporate donors and recipient npos and not only inform practitioners and future researchers on approaching corporate-npo relations, but also illustrate the importance of context in stakeholder communication. keywords: corporate social investment; npo management; development communication; stakeholder relationships introduction as part of the bigger notion of businesses’ citizenship, their contribution to sustainable development and their societal involvement, many corporate organisations fund non-profit organisations (npos) as catalysts, partners and implementers of their corporate social investment (csi) agendas (coronado & fallon 2011; gokulsing 2011; karoula & halme 2008; lewis 2003; rossouw 2010). with the allocation of csi budgets as cash, goods and services to social development npos, the importance of these npos as a stakeholder group to dr louise van dyk department of communication science, unisa, pretoria vdykli@unisa.ac.za prof. lynnette fourie research programme leader: communication school of communication studies, north-west university (potchefstroom campus) lynnette.fourie@nwu.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.9 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 125-144 © uv/ufs mailto:vdykli%40unisa.ac.za?subject= mailto:lynnette.fourie%40nwu.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.9 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.9 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.9 127126 louise van dyk & lynette fourie donor organisations becomes undeniable (burgos 2012; karoula & halme 2008; matthews 2014). when considering this corporate-npo relationship against the stakeholder theory, it is clear that other stakeholder groups, such as shareholders, customers, suppliers and employees seem to fit better into the framework of value creation, trade, capitalism and ethics that the stakeholder theory propagates (freeman, harrison, wicks, parmar & de colle 2010; freeman, wicks & parmar 2004), while groups like communities and activist groups show complexities which the stakeholder theory cannot really accommodate (van dyk & fourie 2012b). against this background, corporate-npo relationships were explored by means of two corresponding surveys; one amongst csi representatives of south african private sector organisations and one amongst npo managers. in this article the results present a set of redefined relationship indicators as perceived by both corporate and npo respondents that serve as a guideline for measuring and describing stakeholder relationships in this context. stakeholder literature stakeholder theory is a capitalistic theory of organisational conception that developed from the general systems theory. stakeholder theory postulates that organisations have stakeholders who are influenced by the organisation and could be harmed or benefitted by their association with the organisation (freeman 2001), and who in turn could benefit or harm the organisation to the point that organisational survival depends on these individuals or groups (freeman et al. 2010). differentiating itself from the stockholder theory, the main premise of the stakeholder theory is that an organisation should be attentive to all individuals and groups with a legitimate stake in the organisation and not only to those groups with a monetary stake (freeman et al. 2010). managing of stakeholder relationships seems to focus on balancing the interests or needs of the parties in the relationship (ledingham 2003), which must be done through deliberation and two-way communication (steyn & puth 2000), and which should have a long-term focus (broom, casey & richey 2000; friedman & miles 2002; hon & grunig 1999; ledingham 2003). relationship indicators the relationship indicators defined in the seminal work by hon and grunig (1999) are control mutuality, trust, commitment and satisfaction. the first indicator, control mutuality, represents the power balance and level of agreement about the power arrangement in the relationship (hon & grunig 1999). the issue of power sharing has also been identified as an important indicator of stakeholder relationships by other researchers (cf. jahansoozi 2002; ledingham & bruning 1998). it is not infrequent that power imbalances are found in relationships, but some control must reside on both sides. 127126 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos the second indicator, trust, is the relationship indicator about which there is most agreement among relationship theorists (cf. goodman & hirch 2010; grunig 2002; jahansoozi 2002; ledingham 2003; ledingham & bruning 1998; schnackenberg & tomlinson 2014). trust is a complex and latent issue and hon and grunig (1999) operationalised trust in the context of stakeholder relationships as consisting of integrity (the belief that the other party is fair and just), dependability (the conviction that the other party will make good on promises), and competence (the belief that the other party has the ability to do as it promises). the third indicator, commitment, can be summarised as the extent to which the parties perceive the relationship in question as actually worth their energy and time (hon & grunig 1999). authors such as bruning and galloway (2003), ledingham and bruning (1998), and matzler and renzl (2007) also regard commitment as an important relationship outcome. the fourth indicator, satisfaction, represents the extent to which parties perceive the relationship as being positive. enforced feelings of positivity are said to entice the parties in the relationship to engage with each other and to try to maintain the relationship (hon & grunig 1999; matzler & renzl 2007). despite being more than 15 years old, the indicators and instrument developed by hon and grunig (1999) are still influencing scholars today and are widely used in empirical studies (cf. dhanesh 2014; daewook & choi 2013; eyun-jung & shin 2015). the solid reputation of the creators of the instruments and the recognition the questionnaire received from the institute for public relations (ipr 1999) also reflect its popularity and respectability. the work of hon and grunig (1999) and grunig (2002) forms the starting point for researching corporate-npo relationships in the context of csi as reported in this article. development context of corporate-npo relationships in south africa csi is a local and international priority and the importance of csi for developing nations can be seen in international trade discussions and government priorities in recent years (bernstein 2005; steyn & de beer 2012). in south africa, corporate governance is defined by the king code of corporate governance as consisting of three aspects, namely leadership, sustainability and corporate citizenship (iodsa 2009). the leadership required for good governance is leadership characterised by ethical values, responsibility, accountability, fairness and transparency. the code sets out principles for the board of directors and management of organisations. the sustainability guidelines refer to issues of economic, natural and societal sustainability and responsibility. csi is usually demonstrated by donations, financial assistance and other contributions to act on the aforementioned responsibility towards the broader economic, social and environmental needs of the community around them. through financial assistance and other contributions within the context of csi, corporate organisations relate to the communities around them. npos often fit into the 129128 louise van dyk & lynette fourie development sector as implementation agencies that act as a link between corporate organisations and the communities themselves, thereby playing a significant role in distributing social investments to the community and effecting social change (rossouw 2010). from a funder’s perspective, the link that npos provide to recipient communities enables the donor to mobilise their social investment (shumate & o’connor 2010). whatever the special role of npos in social development might be, they do not function without operational challenges such as lacking infrastructure and other resources (boafo 2006), as well as dependence on and competition for resources (byrne & sahay 2007). the most important resource npos are dependent on is donor funding (helmig, jegers & lapsley 2004; hodge & piccolo 2005; lewis 2003). their dependence on donor funding is a direct result of the non-market nature of npos where they cannot generate funds in the same way that profit organisations do (helmig et al. 2004). both corporate organisations and npos are instrumental in developing south africa and the fact that they have to relate to each other in order to affect the csi mandate of corporate organisations emphasises the importance of the relationship between the parties. therefore, this relationship is worthwhile investigating. research process despite relying heavily on a quantitative statistical approach in the analysis of responses, the research was executed in the spirit of interpretivism. an interpretivist stance is specifically suited for this inquiry as the state of a stakeholder relationship lies in the perceptions of the parties in that relationship (babbie & mouton 2001; bruning & ledingham 1999). interpretive research is focused on the meaningfulness and nature of social patters and actions and understanding these relationships is based on people’s interpretations thereof (babbie & mouton 2001; blaikie 2004). in order to ensure the inclusion of the different variables that were required to inform the measurement of this stakeholder relationship, the research was conducted systematically. it included the generation of items, the refinement of those items, collecting the data and testing for validity and reliability. sampling and data collection after initial qualitative interviews with six industry informants, the 46 items by hon and grunig (1999) were adapted and newly formulated items were added to form the inventory of 5-point likert-scale items that, after expert panel review, came to 106 items. the term “corresponding surveys” is used because the two surveys set out to measure the stakeholder relationship between corporate donors and the npos from both sides of the relationship. this was done by using corresponding (or mirroring) items, but two separate questionnaires, enabling the researcher to formulate the items specifically for each population. for each of the two populations (south african npos and csi representatives of private sector organisations doing business in south africa) two separate samples 129128 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos were drawn. the sample for the npo survey was drawn randomly from the prodder ngo directory of 2008 and the sample for the csi representatives were drawn using purposive and snowball sampling. the csi sample was drawn from the 2000 and 2012 trialogue csi handbook, a client list from a black economic empowerment consultant firm and internet searches to obtain contact details of csi representatives of companies listed on the johannesburg stock exchange. of the 413 questionnaires e-mailed to npos a total of 106 were returned. a total of 137 survey questionnaires were distributed to csi representatives via e-mail link of which 67 were completed. data analysis the data was statistically analysed using ibm spss. with the purpose of redefining the relationship constructs in mind, the data was reduced by means of exploratory factor analysis at a construct level. the small realised samples prevented calculations of all the items combined. a principle component analysis was conducted for each construct with an oblique rotation (promax rotation) in order to establish the underlying constructs. the exploratory factor analysis of the responses to the donor survey yielded 24 factors for the four relationship indicators (control, trust, commitment and relational realities) and the npo survey yielded 22 factors for the four relationship indicators represented by 80 and 83 items respectively (of the original 106 items). the factors that emerged from the analysis were tested thereafter for internal consistency (by calculating the cronbach’s alpha coefficient for each). cronbach’s alpha values of 0.6 and upward were considered an acceptable internal consistency (abu-bader 2011; ccs 2011) specifically because a diversity of constructs consisting of mostly latent variables were measured (field 2009). in addition, for some factors emerging from the exploratory factor analysis, only two items were grouped into a factor. in three of these cases a cronbach’s alpha value lower than 0.6 was considered acceptable, as field (2009) indicated reliability analysis on very few items may turn up a lower cronbach’s alpha value. as a result of the reliability testing the number of items was reduced to 60 items grouped into 17 factors (donors) and 62 items grouped into 15 factors (npos). the same qualitative interviews used to guide the formulation of additional items for the item-inventory were again analysed using the factor groupings from the surveys as themes. the interview data was used to interpret, together with literature, the survey results. ethical considerations and limitations because the research was based on the participation of people and the collection of their perceptions to gain an understanding of the indicators of the relationships between them, the ethical principles of voluntary participation and anonymity were of importance. informed consent was obtained from all participants and respondents to ensure that their participation was voluntary. all participants and respondents were given the option to withdraw from the project at any time before, during or after the interview (two-week limit). as donor relations are a sensitive topic, especially for npos, the anonymity of every participant and respondent was ensured. 131130 louise van dyk & lynette fourie the exploratory approach to this study resulted in three noteworthy methodological limitations: ■ as a result of the small realised samples the statistical calculations were limited in terms of scope and usability. ■ the intent of measuring the relationship from both sides posed various challenges. the fact that the exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis as populationspecific calculations were done separately for each of the two surveys resulted in different measures for the two surveys, making a comparison of means impractical. ■ the surveys were further limited because respondents were asked to judge their relationship with donors in general (in the npo survey) or with npos in general (in the donor survey). this decision made the measurement accurate but less specific because it disregarded the unique circumstances of each individual relationship. presentation and interpretation of results the results are based on the factor groupings that proved to be reliable as well as meaningful in the bigger context. the results reveal two aspects of corporate-npo relationships; one is that the relational indicators by relationship theorists such as hon and grunig (1999) are not entirely suited to describe and measure the relationship between the private sector organisations and the npos which receive funding from their csi expenditure. the factor groupings reveal that the context of the relationship itself is part of how the relationship is described and perceived by the parties in it. the second key finding is that the relationship is viewed differently by the two parties and indicators used to describe and measure the relationship should reflect these differing views. by analysing the data separately for the two populations that took part in the study, it is clear from the way respondents answered that npos and corporate organisations do not always view the relationship the same. figure 1 illustrates and summarises the factor groups and the discussion that follows is structured according to the relationship indicators control, trust, commitment and relational realities. control and power control and power in the donor-npo relationship were in some respects similar to the generalised idea of control in stakeholder relationships, yet in other respects unique to this context. likewise, in some respects donors and npos viewed control and power in their relationship similarly, but in other respects they had very different perceptions of control and power. the first contextual element of the indicator control and power was control mutuality, which was defined similar to other stakeholder relationships. however, while this aspect formed the total picture for general stakeholder relationships it was only an element of control and power in this context. donors and npos defined this contextual element very similarly with the statement, “we have some sense of control over our relationship with [the other party]” loading the highest in both analyses (0.918 in the 131130 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos donor survey and 0.837 in the npo survey). statements such as, “[the other party] really listens to what we have to say” (factor loading for donor survey 0.693 and for npo-survey 0.830) and “[the other party] believes our opinions are legitimate” (factor loading for donor survey 0.656 and for npo survey 0.799) loaded highly in both sets of responses. figure 1: factor solution for relationship indicators and contextual elements as viewed by both parties donor indicators and factors npo indicators and factors relationship indicator alpha factor groupings (contextual elements) relationship indicator alpha factor groupings (contextual elements) control/ power 0.855 control mutuality (7 items) control/power 0.884 control mutuality (8 items) 0.770 acceptance of donor dominance (3 items) 0.669 acceptance of donor dominance (3 items) 0.741 sustainability and responsibility (4 items) 0.809 donor dominance (2 items) trust 0.947 integrity and intention (11 items) 0.543 possible future independence (2 items) 0.839 skills (3 items) trust 0.888 integrity and intention (9 items) 0.794 willingness to allow decision making (2 items) 0.883 competence (5 items) 0.765 consideration of the other (2 items) 0.722 willingness to allow decision making (3 items) commitment 0.767 desire to relate and maintain (3 items) commitment 0.811 desire for long-term relationshpi (5 items) 0.735 loyalty and importance (4 items) 0.782 affective commitment and desire (4 items) 0.765 obligation to relate (3 items) 0.614 compliance commitment (2 items) relational realities 0.856 own transparency (3 items) 0.504 cause commitment (2 items) 0.800 transparency of the other (3 items) relational realities 0.902 own transparency (4 items) 0.700 accommodation (4 items) 0.831 transparency of the other (7 items) 0.708 profit/output demands (2 items) 0.804 accommodation (4 items) 0.601 expenditure reporting requirements (2 items) 0.536 insatiable needs (2 items) 0.526 understanding differences (2 items) 0.555 internal constraints (2 items) mirroring the qualitative findings (van dyk & fourie 2012a) and literature on donorrecipient relations (helmig et al. 2004; lewis 2003), the dominance of the donor and dependence on those donors were discernible contextual elements of the indicator control and power in this relationship. the level of acceptance of their dominance by the donors and the acceptance of donor dependence by the npos therefore describe a part of the control and power within this context. donor respondents grouped the following statements together to describe this contextual element of control and power in their relationship with recipient npos: 133132 louise van dyk & lynette fourie ■ “we dominate our relationships with the [npos] because we provide the money” (factor loading: 0.892). ■ “we dominate in our relationship with the [npos] because we must comply with governance regulations” (factor loading: 0.765). ■ “we dominate in our relationship with the [npos]” (factor loading: 0.742). the npos also grouped together statements to represent their perceptions of the dominance of the donors in their relationship: ■ “we cooperate with our donors because we want to secure future funding” (factor loading: 0.784). ■ “we are dependent on our donors for survival” (factor loading: 0.679). ■ “our donors hold a powerful position in our relationship” (factor loading: 0.522). for donors, concern with sustainability and responsibility in their relationship with npos formed part of their perception of control and power. this contextual element centred on the donors’ intention to help secure sustainability for the npos, and the responsibility in terms of their own power; and their responsibility to ensure participation by the npos formed part of the element. statements grouped together to define this contextual element included the following: ■ “we try to secure sustainability for the [npos]” (factor loading: 0.888). ■ “when we interact with the [npos] we try to go about our powerful position in a responsible way” (factor loading: 0.777). it is not surprising that donors viewed sustainability and responsibility as important in their relationship with recipient npos as this element is exactly what csi is known to be, namely a manifestation of corporate responsibility (iodsa 2009). furthermore, it falls within the greater quest for sustainable development in south africa. when linked to the donor-specific element of sustainability and responsibility, npos defined the control and power by also referring to perspectives on their possible future independence from donors. this contextual element was unique to the view of npos and revolved around their perception on donor independence. their perceptions are expressed in the following statements: ■ “independence from donors is an important long-term goal for us” (factor loading 0.899). ■ “in the future, we will be able to survive without our donors” (factor loading: 0.692). trust trust in this relationship was also a mixture of general stakeholder ideas and contextspecific aspects. the first contextual element to define the trust in this relationship is trusting on the basis of integrity and intention. for both parties in the relationship it was important to consider their own and the other party’s attempt at doing good. the statement, “[the other party is] fair in their relationship with us” loaded highest for both donors (0.963) and npos (1.014) and the statements, “[the other party is] honest with us” (factor loading for donor survey 0.955 and for npo survey 0.916) and “[the other 133132 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos party treats] us fairly and justly” (factor loading for donor survey 0.922 and for npo survey 0.806) loaded highly onto the factor that formed the contextual element of trust on the basis of integrity and intention. the second contextual element of trust was trust based on the skills or competence of the other party. the perception that the other party can work independently and has the ability to be successful formed part of this element. the competence of donors was defined, in the view of npos, like the description by hon and grunig (1999) with statements such as: ■ “our donors have the ability to accomplish what they say they will do” (factor loading: 0.914). ■ “i feel confident about the skills of our donors” (factor loading: 0.650). while the competence of the donors was defined similar to general stakeholder relationships, the skills of npos were not viewed in the same light. the limitations in terms of access to skilled staff and infrastructure, as seen in literature on npo management (cf. boafo 2006; coffman 2005), were different for npos than for other stakeholders. this unique characteristic was reflected in statements such as, “the [npos] can be left to work unsupervised” (factor loading for donor survey 1.040) and “the [npos] are known to be successful at the things they try to do” (factor loading for donor survey 0.485), and should be reflected in the interpretation of these statements. the willingness to surrender decision-making power to the other party was another contextual element of trust in this relationship and this willingness to let the other party make decisions in the relationship was important to both parties. hon and grunig (1999) grouped statements about the willingness to surrender decision-making power with other issues of dependability, but in this relationship it seemed as if the respondents viewed it as a specific element of trust. both parties grouped the statements, “we are willing to allow the [other party] to take decisions that could affect us” (factor loading for donor survey 0.844 and for npo survey 0.765) and “i am willing to let [the other party] make decisions for us” (factor loading for donor survey 0.831 and for npo survey 0.952) together. for the donors, consideration and concern with the opinion of the other party was a distinct contextual element of trust in the relationship. consideration of the other party was also centred on attitude during decision making and links to the willingness to let the other party make decisions. the statements, “the [npos] take our opinions into account when making decisions” (factor loading: 0.995) and “whenever the [npos] make an important decision, i know they will be concerned with us” (factor loading: 0.729) both loaded highly onto this factor. commitment unlike many elements of the indicators control and power and trust, the indicator commitment was viewed differently by the two parties. while some similarities were evident, the contextual elements for each party were unique. 135134 louise van dyk & lynette fourie ■ while donors seemed to view the desire to have a relationship and the desire to maintain that relationship as the same element and linked loyalty to the importance of the other party, the npos viewed the desire to have a long-term relationship as a separate element and other desires as part of a more affective commitment. from the donor survey, the statements were grouped together to form the contextual element: ■ “the [npos] are trying to maintain a long-term commitment to us” (factor loading: 0.922). ■ “the [npos] want to maintain a relationship with us” (factor loading: 0.776). ■ “i would rather work together with the [npos] than not” (factor loading: 0.625). npos, on the other hand, grouped statements together to focus the elements solely on the term of the commitment: ■ “our donors are trying to maintain a long-term commitment to us” (factor loading: 0.956). ■ “there is a long-lasting bond between us and our donors” (factor loading: 0.784). ■ “our donors commit to long-term (longer than three years) funding” (factor loading: 0.725). their desire to have a relationship with their donors, the loyalty they perceived, and perceptions about them caring about their donors were grouped together (separate from perceptions about the term of the commitment). this difference indicates that the dependence on donor funding made the npos more sensitive to the funding term, while other things were considered to be niceties. perceptions of the obligation to relate to npos formed another contextual element of overall commitment of the donors. this element of commitment was viewed similarly by both parties in the relationship. the duty of corporate organisations to contribute to their societies and adhere to governance requirements are at the core of the contextual element obligation to relate. the statements, “when we interact with the [npos], we keep compliance to governance requirements in mind” (factor loading for donor survey 0.582 and for npo survey 0.719) and “it is important to comply with the regulations that guide corporate social investment” (factor loading for donor survey 0.577 and for npo survey 0.686) loaded highly on to this contextual element of commitment. the npos added another perception to their definition of commitment by grouping together two statements regarding commitment to a cause. the statements that loaded together to form this contextual element are, “corporate companies should contribute to the society in which they operate” (factor loading: 0.849) and “we are committed to the causes we promote” (factor loading: 0.757). relational realities the realities experienced by the two parties in this relationship are to some extent similar, but the differences are undeniable. transparency was seen as being especially important in the donor-npo relationship and was demanded from both sides. the 135134 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos perceptions each party had of its own transparency and the transparency of the other party defined the relational realities. the following statements grouped with factors regarding transparency by both parties: ■ “[the other party is] free to access our financial reports” (factor loading for donor survey 1.035 and for npo survey 0.622). ■ “we are financially transparent to [the other party]” (factor loading for donor survey 0.931 and for npo survey 0.981). ■ “we openly share information with [the other party]” (factor loading for donor survey 0.781 and for npo survey 0.655). the npos also saw the expectations of donors regarding the transparency of npos as part of their transparency in this relationship, as reflected by the following statements: ■ “our donors require us to be transparent regarding our operational expenses” (factor loading: 0.835) ■ “our donors require us to report all the details of how our funding was spent” (factor loading: 0.776) ■ “our donors expect us to disclose other sources of funding to them” (factor loading: 0.418) the transparency of the other also formed part of the conception of the realities in this relationship and the latter perception was defined by these statements: “[the other party is] truthful about funding issues” (factor loading for donor survey 0.850 and for npo survey 0.894), “[the other party is] open about their real situation” (factor loading for donor survey 0.798 and for npo survey 0.953), and “[the other party shares] information openly with us” (factor loading for donor survey 0.788 and for npo survey 0.875). the profit-making nature of the corporate donors is a distinct characteristic and is specifically important when contrasted with the non-profit nature of the npos. the pressure on npos resulting from the profit-driven demands of the donor is a reality for corporate-npo relations and dissonance about these demands could be the cause of conflict. both parties regarded the demands originating from the profit-driven nature of the donors as part of their perceptions of the relationship and both parties included the statements, “[the npos] realise the fact that [the donors] try to make as much profit as possible” (factor loading for donor survey 0.911 and for npo survey 0.730) and “[the npos] understand that it is important for [the donors] to be profit-driven” (factor loading for donor survey 0.879 and for npo survey 1.003). from the factor groupings it is clear that the npos also viewed other realities of their donors together with the profit-driven nature, as can be seen from the statements, “we understand the realities of the corporate world” (factor loading: 0.742) and “we try to take the realities of the corporate world into account when we interact with our donors” (factor loading: 0.697). while the npos viewed the requirements of their donors as part of the demands rooted in their profit-driven nature, the donors viewed the requirements around funding issues as a separate element of the realities of this specific relationship, as indicated 137136 louise van dyk & lynette fourie by the statements, “we require the [npos] to report all the details of how our funding was spent” (factor loading: 0.875) and “we require the [npos] to be transparent regarding their operational costs” (factor loading: 0.787). other contextual realities experienced by donor organisations included accommodation in the relationship. aspects such as feelings of support, consideration and satisfaction are included in accommodation. linked to accommodation, donors also used the level of understanding of the differences between the parties to distinguish between a good corporate-npo relationship and a bad one. the donors indicated that they saw accommodation of the other party as a distinguishable element of the realities of this relationship. they grouped the following statements together to define their perception: ■ “when we fund [npos], we support the goals of that [npo]” (factor loading: 0.806). ■ “the different needs of the [npos] are greater than what we can satisfy” (factor loading: 0.716). ■ “we try to take the realities of the [npos] into account when we interact with them” (factor loading: 0.688). ■ “the [npos] and funders can work together when it comes to social development” (factor loading: 0.588). instead of grouping some of the differences with statements on the nature of business as the npos did, the donors understood differences between the two parties as a separate contextual element that spoke of the realities of this relationship. the statements that loaded highly on to this factor are: “the [npos] understand the realities of the corporate world” (factor loading: 0.881) and “both parties in a corporate [npo] relationship understand the difference in organisational goals between them” (factor loading: 0.460). another contextual element that formed part of how donors defined their relationship with the npos who received funding through their csi is the internal constraints faced by the npos. by grouping the statements, “the [npos] themselves are the main cause of time constraints when it comes to implementing funded projects” (factor loading: 0.894) and “the [npos] are slow when acting on promises made to us” (factor loading: 0.501) together to form this factor, the donors indicated an agreement with the literature on npo management that lists various internal constraints that restrict the efficiency with which npos operate (cf. brown & kalegaonkar 2002; helmig et al. 2004). further highlighting the context of corporate-npo relationships, npos perceived their insatiable needs as one reality of their relationship with donors that defined the relationship. the statements that loaded onto this factor are “our different needs are greater than what our donors can satisfy” (factor loading: 0.755) and “our different needs seem neverending” (factor loading: 0.693). the vast needs of npos tie in with many other realities such as understanding and accommodating differences and the contrasting profitable nature of corporate donors. 137136 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos the discussion and interpretation of the results are based on the factor groupings and the items that loaded onto those factors, qualitative findings yielded from partially structured interviews with six key informants, and literature on the context of csi and npo management. taking the interpretation of the results one step further, the authors suggest a redefined set of relationship indicators that accommodate the context of the relationship as well as the context and perceptions of both the parties. contextualised relationship indicators the discussion that follows explicates the redefined relationship indicators contextualised for donor-npo relationships. summarised definitions are presented in figures 2 to 5 to serve as suggestion for how this relationship and its indicators could be viewed and measured in future studies. control/power figure 2 summarises the redefined relationship indicators for control or power in the relationship between corporate donors and recipient-npos. figure 2: ‘control/power’ redefined for donor-npo relationships control mutuality control mutuality measures the general control/power balance in the relationship. the degree of control mutuality depends on whether the parties in the relationship experience some degree of control and whether they believe the other party listens to them and their opinions control/power control mutuality control mutuality measures the general control/ power balance in the relationship. the degree of control mutuality depends on whether the parties in the relationship experience some degree of control and whether they believe the other party listens to them and their opinions donor dominance the npos define control further by the dominant position of the donors (apart from them being dependent on their donors) sustainability and responsibility sustainability and responsibility in the relationship depend on donors’ intent in securing sustainability for the npos they fund and the responsibility with which they use their power acceptance of donor dominance/dependence acceptance of dominance is the degree to which the donors accept that they are dominant in their relationship with npos possibility of future independence npos define their control in the relationship also by the degree of confidence they have in becoming independent of donors in the future. their perceptions on whether they think independence is important acceptance of donor dominance/dependence acceptance of dependence is the degree to which npos accept that they are dependent on their donors for survival donor perspective npo perspective for donors, control and power in this relationship consist of control mutuality, acceptance of their dominance and the dependence of npos on them, and the sustainability and responsibility with which they accept their control. for npos control and power in the relationship were defined as control mutuality and their acceptance of their dependence on donors. control as perceived by npos also included their ideas on the possibilities of being more independent in the future. 139138 louise van dyk & lynette fourie control mutuality was defined as the measurement of the balance of power/control in the relationship. the degree of control mutuality depends on whether both parties experience some sense of control and whether they believe the other party is attentive to them and their opinions. acceptance of the dependent npo/dominant donor position was seen slightly differently by donors and npos. for donors, acceptance of their dominance was defined as the degree to which the donors accepted their dominance in their relationship with npos. npos saw this element as the degree to which they accept that they depend on donors for survival. npos saw the dominant position of donors as being separate from their dependence on donors and they defined control by distinguishing between the two. donors indicated that they saw control as the sustainability and responsibility with which they play their part in their npo relationships. sustainability and responsibility depend on whether donors intend to secure sustainability for the npos they fund and whether they use their powerful position in a responsible way. for npos control also meant the possibility of gaining independence from donors in the future. the degree of confidence they had in the possibility of their own dependence and whether they value independence partly defined control from their perspective. trust trust, as redefined as an indicator of the relationship between corporate donors and npos on the receiving end of corporate funding, is summarised in figure 3. figure 3: ‘trust’ redefined for donor-npo relationship integrity and intention trust on the basis of integrity and intention is measured by the degree to which both parties find the other party fair, just and honest trust integrity and intention trust on the basis of integrity and intention is measured by the degree to which both parties find the other party fair, just and honest willingness to allow decision-making the degree to which parties will surrender decisions that may affect them or decisions taken on their behalf willingness to allow decision-making the degree to which parties will surrender decisions that may affect them or decisions taken on their behalf skills/competence trust on the basis of the skills is the extent to which donors believe npos can be trusted to work unsupervised and whether npos are known to be successful consideration of the other consideration of the other party is the degree to which donors believe their opinions are taken into account by the npos and whether the npos are concerned with them skills/competence trusting the competence of donors is the extent of the npos’ belief that their donors are competent and can be relied on to keep promises donor perspective npo perspective both parties defined trust in this relationship as consisting of integrity and intentions, skills and competence and willingness to allow the other decision-making power. 139138 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos donors also viewed consideration of the other party as part of trust in their relationship with npos. they indicated that integrity and intention can be measured by the degree to which both parties find the other party to be fair, just and honest. both donors and npos valued integrity and intention in their relationship with each other. while both donors and npos considered skills and competence as part of trust, donors defined it as the extent to which donors believe npos can be trusted to work unsupervised and whether they (npos) are known to be successful. npos defined skills and competence as part of trust as the extent to which npos believe their donors are competent and can be relied on to keep their promises. both donors and npos saw willingness to allow the other party some decision-making power as the willingness to surrender some decisions to be made by the other party on their behalf. this included relationship decisions by the other party that may them. donors also indicated that consideration of the other party is important for trust. consideration of the other is the degree to which donors believe their opinions to be taken into account and the degree to which they believe the npos are concerned with them. commitment commitment in the relationship between donors and recipients is summarised in figure 4: figure 4: ‘commitment’ redefined for donor-npo relationships desire for a long-term relationship the desire for a long-term relationship depicts the npos’ opinions about the long-term commitment they perceive from their donors commitment desire to relate and maintain the desire to relate and maintain a relationship considers the level to which donors value working together with the npos they fund and how they judge the relationship maintenance attempts of the npos affective commitment and desire affective commitment and desire to relate represent the degree to which npos value their donors and perceive their donors as loyal to them obligation to relate the obligation to relate represents the degree to which donors feel they are responsible for their society and have an obligation to adhere to the regulations pertaining to corporate governance loyalty and importance loyalty and importance reflect the donors’ desire to have a longlasting bond with npos, the value they attach to their relationship and whether they experience loyalty from the npos cause commitment cause commitment represents the degree to which npos believe they and their donors are committed to societal causes obligation to relate compliance commitment is the belief that their donors should comply to governance regulations and also keep those regulations in mind during interactions with them donor perspective npo perspective commitment was defined differently by donors and npos. according to donors, commitment is defined by the desire to relate to npos, loyalty and importance as well as the obligation to relate to npos. npos, on the other hand, defined commitment 141140 louise van dyk & lynette fourie as the desire for a long-term relationship, affective commitment and desire perceived from donors, commitment to compliance and the cause. for donors, the desire to relate and maintain indicated the level to which donors value working with npos and their judgement of their relationship maintenance attempts. loyalty and importance reflect the desire of donors to have a long-lasting bond with the npos they fund, the value they attach to the relationship, and the degree to which they experience loyalty from the npos they fund. lastly, from the perspective of the donors, their obligation to relate to npos as part of csi represents the degree to which they believe they are responsible for the society in which they operate and the obligation they have to adhere to governance requirements. npos saw the desire for a long-term commitment as the opinions about the length of commitment they perceive from their donors. affective commitment, on the part of npos, represents the degree to which npos value their donors and perceive their donors as being loyal. furthermore, npos defined compliance commitment as the belief that their donors should comply with governance regulations and keep those regulations in mind when interacting with npos. relational realities the realities of a relationship between groupings from two sectors in society as viewed by the two parties in such a relationship are summarised in figure 5. figure 5: ‘relational realities’ redefined for donor-npo relationships relational realities own transparency own transparency is the extent to which each party believes themselves as open and transparent about finances and other relevant information in the relationship insatiable needs insatiable needs cover the perceptions of npos regarding their needs and the ability for donors to satisfy those needs profit/output demands the demands rooted in the profitdriven nature of corporate donors are measured by the extent to which donors feel that npos understand the nature of their endeavours and whether npos believe in the importance thereof accommodation accommodation is the degree to which both parties feel supported, differences are taken into account and parties are working together understanding differences understanding differences between the two parties is the degree to which donors believe npos to understand the realities of their world and the general differences between the two parties expenditure reporting requirements expenditure requirements represent the extent that donors require reporting from npos on how funding was spent donor perspective npo perspective own transparency own transparency is the extent to which each party believes themselves as open and transparent about finances and other relevant information in the relationship transparency of the other transparency of the other is simply how open and transparent the parties believe the other to be with information regarding the relationship accommodationaccommodation is the degree to which both parties feel supported, differences are taken into account and parties are working together internal constraints internal constraints measured the extent to which problems internal to npos cause challenges in the relationship such as time constraints and tardiness when acting on promises transparency of the other transparency of the other is simply how open and transparent the parties believe the other to be with information regarding the relationship both parties perceived transparency and accommodation to be the unique realities that help define donor-npo relationships. donors experienced npos’ understanding 141140 redefining the communication relationship between donors and npos of the profit demands, expenditure reporting requirements and other differences as important and also saw internal constraints on the side of npos as part of the realities of this relationship. npos viewed their insatiable needs as part of the relational realities of relating to their donors. they saw transparency as an important contextual element of the realities of this relationship and defined it in terms of each party’s own transparency as well as the perceived transparency of the other party. accommodation was viewed from both sides of the relationship as the degree to which both parties feel they are supported and the parties are working together. donors’ perception of their profit/output demands points to the extent to which donors felt npos understand the nature of their activities and the extent to which they believed npos view their profitable nature as important. for donors, the understanding they perceive npos to have about their profit/output demands form part of the realities of the donor-npo relationship. donors also viewed internal constraints on the side of npos as a reality in this relationship and defined it as the extent to which problems that are associated with npos cause challenges in their relationship with their donors. from the perspective of npos, a reality in their relationship with donors is the insatiable needs and the ability of donors to satisfy their needs. conclusion the research reported in this article used the relational indicators as formulated by hon and grunig (1999) as a starting point for the exploration of corporatenpo relationships within the context of csi in south africa. it was found that the relational indicators are not entirely suited to define and measure the relationship between corporate organisations and the npos which receive funding from their csi expenditure. although the indicators by hon and grunig (1999) and other relationship theorists are by no means worthless in this context, redefining them can facilitate a much better understanding of the relationships. the redefined relationship indicators that emerged from the analysis do not only inform practitioners and future researchers on how possibly to communicate in and approach corporate-npo relationships, but also illustrate the importance of context when considering all stakeholder relationships. understanding the context of a specific relationship will be beneficial in accurately describing and effectively managing that relationship. a better understanding of individual relationships can aid in corporate goal achievement and will further strengthen the managerial power of the stakeholder theory, even when the stakeholder group in question shows complexities not usually encountered in either’s separate circumstances. the research was exploratory in nature; however, the research remains valuable as it addresses a need for csi practitioners, npo management and other researchers to consider both rigour and relevance in relationship management. 143142 louise van dyk & lynette fourie the rigour of established theory and the relevance of considering the specific 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their respective developmental stages, lines and dynamics; the learning processes and environments involved in the interaction; the multiple personal and group perspectives that can be relevant to the interaction; and the nature of the artefacts/communications mediating the interaction. however, these changes do not only affect the practice of public relations and communication. these fundamental changes require that scholars and practitioners challenge their own assumptions, and come to grips with the implications of paradigm shifts in various fields. gower (2006: 185) has however suggested that public relations scholars have not kept up to date with changes in other disciplines, such as management sciences. in the case of public relations, the underlying paradigm that has dominated much of public relations theory for over 20 years is the excellence model developed by james grunig and various collaborators (phillips & young 2009). as a result of this dominance, communication professionals have been slow to come to grips with these shifting paradigms, partly because there is no clear line that demarcates the shift between modern and postmodern communication practice, and partly because practitioners are held captive by their own modernist assumptions. wang (2011: 1462) notes that “under the name of science we readily accept the universality of methods, theories and paradigms” unaware of the problems these may bring in applying them across time and geographical boundaries. while paradigms are useful frameworks for conducting enquiries and for analyses, they also tend to obscure our ability to see beyond the limitations of their boundaries. thompson (1993) observes that the nature and extent of adherence to these assumptions is very often justified on the basis of “social consensus”. grunig (2009: 16) suggests that while the behavioural management paradigm should not be abandoned by scholars and practitioners as a modernist paradigm in favour of the interpretive paradigm, digital communication does have “the 3 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication potential to truly revolutionise public relations – but only if a paradigm shift in the thinking of many practitioners and scholars takes place”. according to de klerk and verwey (2013: 4), paradigm shifts contrast and reveal both the differences and the interplay that exists between competing paradigms and, as such, frames the nature of the paradigmatic issues that require resolution. paradigm shifts are thus always subject to paradigmatic debate and scrutiny of the moral reasoning on which it is based. sardar (2009: 443) observes: the discourse we need must clarify what ethical principles we are accountable to, which must be upheld in the choices we make, with all the humility and modesty we apply to our understanding of our problems, searching for solutions with all the uncertainties, and hence risks and imperfections, we accept as routine elements in our affairs. against this background this article argues for the need to span paradigmatic, disciplinary professional boundaries if public relations and communication is to assume the influential role that has been afforded to it in post-bureaucratic communication contexts. the article also reflects on the implications this holds for public relations and communication scholarship in the south african context. crossing paradigm boundaries mcsweeney (2006: 22) suggests that an increasing number of studies point to the demise of the bureaucratic organisation and the emergence of the post-bureaucratic organisation. this “discourse of ending” is often expressed as a “paradigm shift” or profound movement beyond bureaucracy. clegg (1990: 176) argues that modernism is premised on increasing functional differentiation of social phenomena. organisations are the frameworks which link these differentiations, and the management of modernity involves practices for integrating the core processes of differentiation. holtzhausen (2002: 253) sees modernism reflected in many areas of public relations practice, theory and research. stokes (2005: 556) argues that modernist approaches to public relations are mostly tactical and short term, and characterised by a tendency to examine issues through instrumental approaches that evaluate how effectively organisational goals and pursuits can be realised. this approach is also reflected in grunig’s (1992) view of strategic public relations management as a process of winnowing constituencies and negotiating to increase stability and reduce uncertainty. wang (2011: 1462) accordingly suggests that a paradigm closely reflects the needs, values and aspirations of the historic, cultural and social context that has nurtured it. rationalist models of strategic management (grunig 2009; grunig & pepper 1992; vercic & grunig 2000) accordingly advance a behavioural managerial paradigm in which the management of communication is a key function. holtzhausen (2002) suggests that this focus 4 sonja verwey on management and strategy might well have brought about a significant crisis in the brief academic existence of public relations as scholars and practitioners increasingly challenge the legitimacy of managers setting the goals for the organisation and the “rationality” of management decisions. increasing numbers of academic texts have also interrogated the very bases of the modernist (functional) paradigms on which public relations theory and practice had historically built its theoretical foundations (holtzhausen 2002). this strongly suggests a further need to expand theoretical approaches, and to “free communication management from the iron cage of the excellence study” (sandhu 2009: 87). however, in response to these scholarly challenges, grunig (2009: 15-16) notes: using a normative prescriptive theory, my colleagues, students, and i have long provided evidence that public relations has greater value both for organisations and society when it is strategic, managerial, symmetrical, integrated but not sublimated, diverse, and ethical – as captured by our generic global principles. dozier and lauzen (2000) advocate the re-conceptualisation of public relations as intellectual domain and caution about the dangers of coupling the intellectual domain too tightly to the institution that serves as focus of the domain. they argue that the intellectual traditions of public relations scholarship have traditionally been too closely coupled to what mumby (1997) refers to as “framing of the modern positivist project” (dozier & lauzen 2000). holtzhausen (2000: 95) contends that public relations and communication management should be understood as a product of both democracy and capitalism, and as such it is not exempted from the scrutiny of postmodernism. bridging perspectives postmodernism represents a broad theoretical approach, and postmodern philosophers and theorists emphasise that there is no central postmodern theory (christensen, torp & firat 1995). in response to the modernist emphasis on single, dominant theoretical perspectives and philosophies (meta-narratives) postmodernists embrace multiplicity and diversity, and question even their own theoretical perspectives (chia 1995). while traditional theory construction is founded on the belief in the factual nature of a knowable universe because it is viewed as an accomplished phenomenon, it seems as if postmodern strategic communication must like postmodern organisational theory reject the very notion of (normative) theory at the institutional level because of its emergent condition (verwey 2010). 5 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication nÿstrom (2000: 109) argues that instead of emphasizing scientific rigour, formal logic and rationality as a basis for understanding and managing society – as in the modern bureaucratic organisation – postmodernism may be seen as characterised by pluralism, fragmentation, ambiguity and indeterminacy, defying attempts to generalise and extrapolate from past experience. nÿstrom (ibid.) proposes a balanced approach to both modernism and postmodernism, so that theory generation and implementation can assist in understanding and evaluating individual, organisational and societal action. nÿstrom (2000: 114) asserts that such a balanced, creative approach should assist in bridging the gap between academics and practitioners in describing and understanding their relevant realities. this view is also evident in grunig’s (2009: 9) defence of the strategic behavioural management paradigm when he argues: the strategic management paradigm contains elements of both modernism and postmodernism. thus, i would call it a semi-postmodern approach to the role of public relations in strategic management. the erosion of an authoritative point of reference has resulted in approaches that at once challenge the notion of a single reality, and suggest alternative ways of viewing and making sense of reality (christensen et al. 1995). edwards (2005: 269) suggests: the choice of focal levels of analysis is profound and central to the development of any model; it affects the conceptual framework, research methods, locus of interest and, consequently, the full measure of a theoretical and empirical approach to a phenomenon. van de ven and poole (1995: 516) argue that it is when various conceptual approaches are seen in relation to each other that opportunities for new theory development emerge. while there is no doubt that there is an array of approaches that are currently available to theorists, researchers and consultants involved in the management of communication, many of these are single-paradigm approaches that are based on similar sets of assumptions which do not provide for alternative ways of viewing and making sense of complex realities. what is required is a multi-paradigm approach to theory-building that has the potential to integrate different explanatory perspectives that are represented in the public relations and communication literature into a framework that provides a higher level of explanation. however, de klerk and verwey (2013) suggest that a lack of a coherent body of knowledge exists in multi-paradigmatic contexts. this is because unlike singleparadigm approaches, which are based on similar sets of assumptions and which develop through evolutionary extension, multi-paradigm approaches require 6 sonja verwey paradigm crossing and interplay to emerge. goia and pitre (1990: 591) argue that multi-paradigm approaches offer new insights because they “start from different ontological and epistemological assumptions” and therefore can tap different facets and provide uniquely informative views of the complex events that are studied. goia and pitre (1990: 591) also suggest that although a greater abundance of theories can contribute to a greater understanding of complex realities, the incommensurability of paradigms can also lead to “fragmentation and provincialism in the field” with scholars refusing to consider theories that have their origins in other paradigms. evidence of such in the field of public relations can be found in the view of grunig (2009: 15) who notes: to reach this state as a profession, however, public relations practitioners and scholars must minimise the extent to which the symbolic, interpretive paradigm of public relations affects their thinking and institutionalise public relations as a strategic management, behavioural paradigm. bowers (2014: 4) points to the constraints such a position may have on: ♦ the grasp the practitioner may have of significant aspects of the problem situation and context, especially of those aspects which would present themselves only from within alternative paradigmatic viewpoints; ♦ the limited variety of methods to use for intervention, especially of those methodologies that are aligned with the alternative paradigms; and ♦ effectiveness suffers a lack of informed guidance from proper theory and a coherent multimethodological approach to naturally multi-paradigmatic problem situations. however, because the boundaries between paradigms tend to be ill-defined and blurred, goia and pitre (1990: 592) suggest that they could be more usefully conceived as “transition zones” that could be bridged through the use of higherorder concepts. this requires that an individual paradigm must be viewed from a vantage point beyond the particular paradigm. schultz and hatch (1996: 530) propose that paradigm interplay represents a paradigm crossing strategy that simultaneously recognises both contrasts and connections between paradigms. as such it produces new forms of understanding that could be equated with paradox. paradox denotes “contradictory yet interrelated elements – elements that seem logical in isolation but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously” (lewis 2000: 760). in this regard bowers (2014: 4) notes that the paradox of paradigm incommensurability (and also multi-methodology) must be acknowledged and that “we must learn to accept a degree of incommensurability”. 7 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication bowers (2012: 329) further argues that by engaging in the moment of becoming (of an issue or problem) with multiple paradigms the practitioner “allows each paradigm to complement or compete with the others in terms of ontological, as well as epistemological and methodological relativism – a relativism dependent upon facets of the specific problem situation of concern”. such a multiple perspective view should however not be regarded as a demand for integrated theories or resolution of disagreements or paradoxes; it should rather be viewed as an attempt to connect the many different theoretical perspectives through their transition zones (edwards 2005: 596). it must be noted however that any multiparadigm approach is still rooted in a basic set of ground assumptions from which the theorist can view their second-order vantage point preferences. multiple paradigm perspectives offer the possibility of understanding why agreement is simply not possible, or why agreement is possible despite differences in ontology, epistemology and methodology (which may only evolve through consideration at a meta-level). goia and pitre (1990: 256) suggest: given that a uniquely correct perspective does not exist, and given the multiplicity of organisational realities, a pluralistic multiple-perspectives view becomes a necessity for achieving any sort of comprehensive view. against this background mahoney (2011: 144-145, citing zerfass 2009) also suggests that there thus are two possible future scenarios for communication – one a recidivist normative state (as propagated by grunig) in which traditional approaches to public relations and communication and advertising will be revived, or the emergence of a multi-paradigmatic strategic approach that differs from integrated communication because it spans all organisational endeavours and activities, and offers the possibility of a coherent multi-methodological approach to naturally multi-paradigmatic problem situations. spanning the boundaries of practice and praxis unfortunately, current public relations and communication practice still suffers from a lack of informed guidance from proper theory, and a coherent multimethodological approach to naturally multi-paradigmatic problem situations. research findings from a study conducted by tindall and holtzhausen (2011: 75) though suggest that strategic communication can be viewed as a “common denominator for all forms of communication practice across different contexts”. as such, hallahan et al. (2007: 16) suggest that “strategic” communication should not be defined too narrowly, but should remain the rich, multidimensional, inclusive – even contradictory – descriptor of communication practice that it currently is. hallahan et al. (ibid.) note in this regard: although it emphasises the role of communication as management practice, it does not necessarily imply power and control of management over 8 sonja verwey stakeholders. it also allows for the study of participatory communication practices that include stakeholder communication, change management, and complex analysis of stakeholder environments. ‘strategic’ further includes the study of all communication practices, including those of public relations, advertising, and marketing as well as others. the possibilities that a strategic communication paradigm may offer at a metalevel of analysis can only evolve if public relations professionals challenge their existing intellectual assumptions, and develop multi-paradigmatic approaches to strategic communication practice. de klerk and verwey (2013) contend that such a comprehensive view is offered by the emergent approach of strategic communication. within this approach, communication as strategy is conceptualised as emergent because it arises from the interactions of others (seidl 2007: 201). as such, strategic communication is defined by hallahan et al. (2007: 3) as the “purposeful use of communication by an organisation to fulfil its mission”. this purposefulness should also be understood as purposeful in terms of purpose of being. wilson (1996: 73) suggests that previous strategic management approaches to public relations are limiting in three ways: ♦ rationalist and utilitarian approaches to the identification of key publics and their relationship to organisational goals are almost always translated into economic terms; ♦ solutions are most often based on “short-term” problem-solving; and ♦ decisions are frequently based on a self-interest approach and “less concerned with relationships than profit”. in contrast, the emergent approach to strategic communication is described by de klerk and verwey (2013: 10) as follows: strategic communication is about how an organisation functions to advance its mission by intentional, persuasive means of communication, not only via marketing and corporate and other institutionalised forms of public communication, but via all of the organisation’s communication. what this in fact means, is that communication is no longer ‘a’ function or a role in the organisation, but through its enactment is reflexively shaping the organisation itself. this corresponds with the view of barry and elmes (1997: 432-433) that all stakeholders become active participants in shaping strategy through emergence and by enacting “fictional futures from creative interpretations of the past”. 9 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication king (2014: 35) defines the concept of emergent strategy as a communicatively constituted construct “derived from the interaction between reader/hearer response, situated context, and discursive patterns” and which draws on the “social constructionist view of organisations”. king (2014: 35) suggests that strategic communication may therefore be better regarded as emerging regardless of intent, and as an iterative approach which will help promote a culture of sensitivity to the dynamic interaction between the organisation and its differently situated stakeholders. yip, ernst and campbell (2011) contend that the ever-increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s world calls for a shift away from “managing and protecting” boundaries to boundary spanning – the capability to create direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in service of a higher vision or goal. the centre for creative leadership (yip et al. 2011) has identified a number of critical boundaries that have to be worked across: ♦ vertical boundaries – across hierarchy (7%); ♦ horizontal – across functions and expertise (71%); ♦ stakeholder – beyond the boundaries of the firm (17%); ♦ demographic – across diverse groups: gender, ethnicity and nationality (17%); and ♦ geographic – across regions and locality (26%). one of the key findings from the study conducted by the centre for creative leadership (yip et al. 2011: 17) is that the increasing interconnection of today’s business landscape requires the bridging of boundaries to tap the innovative outcomes that lie at the intersection of groups working together, instead of in erecting barriers to manage the boundaries. boundary spanners are therefore individuals who are involved in the creation and development of interorganisational partnerships and collaboration, also within the organisation (marchington & vincent 2004; sullivan & skelcher 2002). a concern with bridging boundaries and transcending barriers is also evident in disciplinary debates: wagner et al. (2010: 5) note that the “mid-century isolation of disciplinary silos declaimed by boulding, appears to have given way quickly to boundary-crossing”. popa, guillermin and dedeurwaerdere (2015: 47) state: if the dominant discourse on interdisciplinarity in the 1980s and 1990s has mainly focused on articulating the contributions of different disciplines into a coherent framework, the more recent analyses of 10 sonja verwey transdisciplinarity have shifted the focus towards the extended coproduction of knowledge (by scientific and extra-scientific actors) and the importance of ‘unsettling’ established assumptions. evidently research foci ought to shift towards the social processes which constitute both society and the organisation. such a shift requires new research approaches that will aid the understanding of how social rationalities produce perceptions of reality. this will require a poly-contextual rather than mono-contextual grasp of how these social realities are constituted. popa et al. (2015: 47) suggest that “transdisciplinary research would benefit from adopting a pragmatist approach to reflexivity. such an approach relates reflexivity to collective processes of problemframing and problem-solving through joint experimentation and social learning that directly involve the scientific and extra-scientific expertise.” according to midgley (2011) this entails: ... the process of making boundary judgments and the content of any analysis. whether it’s an analysis concerning the world, or an analysis concerning knowledge generating systems that give rise to understandings of the world. this actually means that it is possible to accept any number of theories about either knowledge generating systems or the wider world. alvesson (2002) conceives a boundary as delimiting a particular value system or a point beyond which a particular meaning ceases to be a satisfactory way of making sense of an event. boundaries must therefore be understood in terms of how they are defined by individuals, and may be characterised by tensions that exist between the different meanings and interpretations held by individuals (alvesson 2002). according to lewis and smith (2014: 132), from this perspective “tensions appear inherent and ubiquitous in organisational life, arising from the interplay among complex, dynamic and ambiguous systems”. boundary-spanners are shown to “exist as dynamic, structurally contextualised agents whose actions are shaped by a combination of organisational and contingency pressures and their own individual psychology” (baker 2007). according to lewis and smith (2014: 132), a “contingency perspective approaches tensions as problems, solvable through rational analysis and formal logic” while a paradox lens accentuates the “need for a holistic understanding of tensions and cognitive and social influences on decision-making”. popa et al. (2015: 54) contend that by emphasizing the role of “collaborative deliberation and practical knowledge generated through processes of social innovation and experimentation, pragmatism challenges the tendency to frame scientific reliability, social relevance and social legitimacy as distinct requirements on knowledge, to be traded off against one another”. what is required from public relations and communication professionals is the ability to transcend 11 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication their own paradigmatic assumptions, and develop multi-paradigmatic approaches to tensions that emerge in the context communication practice. these tensions dictate a need for the communication professional to transcend the boundaries of their own values and thought frameworks in order to create direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in service of a higher vision or goal. wang (2011) suggests that the development of new technology has historically been a dominant driver of paradigm emergence and shifts in communication science. the impact of connectivity on the content and focus of communication refers mainly to two aspects, namely extending the reach of communication and rapidly changing the patterns of communication access. the rapid changes that are brought about by developments in communication technologies further challenge communication professionals to transcend boundaries, and enact their roles as boundary spanners by developing multi-paradigmatic approaches to tensions that arise in their field of practice. at least four tensions challenge communication professionals to transcend their traditional conceptual and methodological preferences. transcending boundaries of power and influence van den dam, nelson and lozinski (2008: 1) identify two long-term shifts in communication trends as a result of the emergence of social media; firstly, a shift in communication patterns – from point-to-point, two-way conversations, to many-to-many, collaborative communication – and secondly, a shift in the control of the communication environment to open platforms. this shift was facilitated by the development of web 2.0 which went beyond the information-sharing capabilities of web 1.0, and created possibilities for connecting, communicating, collaborating, social networking, individual and group publishing, blogging, crowd-sourcing and the transformation of traditional media. the evolution of the global economy has therefore seen a rise in the digital marketspace where stakeholders are no longer passive but they have become active participants in the dialogue surrounding brands. the development of web 2.0 has not only led to virtually limitless connectivity and low-cost access, but has also resulted in a need for new communication models in the digital market space. it has also introduced the possibility of disintermediation. disintermediation greatly democratises access to the means of communication and to information and knowledge through direct access to one-to-many communication channels (verwey 2001). the emergence of new communication models which emphasise many-to-many forms of communication has transformed recipients into active participants, content consumers into content generators, and recipients into producers (mullins 2011; obasanjo 2007). van dijk (2009: 46) suggests that the gravitation towards content production activities through co-creation and coproduction afford users more power over content which can be exercised through 12 sonja verwey cooperation, compromise, or conflict in order to either add or detract from business value. the traditional approach of one voice has shifted to the emergent approach of many diverse voices, where power and influence is exerted bottom-up instead of top-down. transcending boundaries of function as noted by hallahan et al. (2007), communicators find it increasingly difficult to differentiate between traditional communication activities and their effects. pr practitioners are increasingly relying on paid advertising to communicate critical messages on issues. marketers, in turn, are leading cause-related marketing and cooperative programmes that once were the exclusive domain of public relations. the nature and medium of brand communication are being rapidly altered by the move of users to environments that offer less expensive, but more expressive, capabilities to facilitate both one-to-one and group communications with more people than ever before (verwey & muir 2014). this has resulted in the need to have multiple context-related messages (omni-messaging), rather than singlemessage approaches across a number of communication platforms. in the globally interactive era, many influences shape stakeholder perceptions as stakeholders themselves participate in shaping and reshaping the meaning of brands and how this meaning is communicated (needham 2008). as a result, hallahan et al. (2007) and zerfass and huck (2007) suggest that any claim to exclusive responsibility for a particular domain of practice is increasingly being challenged by practitioners and theorists alike. while the purpose of integrated communication has always been to coordinate disparate activities, the boundaries between these activities are rapidly blurring due to convergence, and have given rise to increased interdependencies within communication network structures (hallahan et al. 2007; miller 2009). in this sense, collaboration has become a boundary spanning activity. boundary spanning therefore entails more than just the integration of activities, as articulated in the notion of integrated communication, and instead focuses on how an organisation communicates across organisational endeavours (hallahan et al. 2007: 7). transcending boundaries of modalities media convergence can be described as the process whereby the content of many different media forms become accessible through a variety of media types and devices. the resulting convergence of information and the emergence of big data has contributed to the fusion of recognised genres of public communication, and the “fluidity” of the organisational communication environment resulting from greater media availability and accessibility (sriramesh & vercic 2009: 80). mueller (2010) notes that this convergence has forced the communication professional to engage with multiple media platforms and communication genres – thus further spanning the boundaries of practice and further blurring role boundaries. de klerk 13 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication and verwey (2013) suggest that in view of this convergence it has becomes highly questionable whether “above” and “below the line” distinctions are still relevant, or can be conceptually grounded in disciplines that still emphasise these differences. transcending boundaries of structure and form in the 2012 melbourne mandate, communication management and the discipline is conceptualised as “something that defines what the organisation is rather than what the organisation does” (rensburg 2012: 8). this view of the communicatively constituted organisation, rather than the communicating organisation, suggests that communication is no longer ‘a’ function or a role in the organisation, but is instead reflexively shaping the organisation itself through enactment (de klerk & verwey 2013). this notion of the organisation as communicatively constituted in terms “organising” and “enacting” are most frequently linked to the influential theory of weick (1979), which regards communication as the basis for human organising. other theorists such as luhmann (1986; 1995; 1996) also argued that communication(s), and nothing but communication(s), create social systems. luhmann (1986: 174) identifies communication(s) as the basic elements of the social system, and says that: social systems use communication as their particular mode of autopoietic reproduction. their elements are communications which are recursively produced and reproduced by a network of communications and which cannot exist outside such a network. micro-level analysis of the social interaction that continuously shapes relations inside and outside the organisation will deepen our understanding of communication processes that have important implications for the relational aspects of public relations. this requires understanding public relations and communication as an interaction, as opposed to the modernist notion of communication as top-down monologue, rather than bottom-up dialogue. more specifically, more qualitative and collaborative research approaches are required to provide a richer description and generate more meaningful insights in respect of organisation-stakeholder relationships. implications for south african scholarship in this article an argument has been made that the possibilities that a strategic communication paradigm may offer at a meta-level of analysis can only evolve if public relations scholars and professionals challenge their existing intellectual assumptions and develop multi-paradigmatic approaches to strategic communication. in their article on the emergence of the strategic communication paradigm de klerk and verwey (2013: 372) state: combining multi-paradigm characteristics draws attention to the many possibilities that exist for investigating how they might interrelate, 14 sonja verwey and enhance our understanding of the complex nature of the strategic communication paradigm. strategic communication therefore requires a set of theoretical propositions of a higher level and with the potential to integrate various levels of understanding. while at the paradigm level some debates may not seem resolvable, at the meta-paradigm level they may, in fact, be complementary. while paradigms continually evolve in all disciplines in response to the tensions that arise as a result of change, these often become dominant modes of enquiry as a result of reliance on traditional conceptual and methodological preferences (mitchelstein & boczkowski 2010). unfortunately, while such dominance may provide strong guidance, particularly with regard to framing theory development and research, it can also limit creative conceptual thinking because scholars become trapped within a particular set of assumptions. this gives rise to the kind of “disciplinary hegemony” that has been so evident in the field of public relations and communication scholarship. as a result, new paradigms do not emerge because scholarly efforts are concentrated on paradigm extension, rather than on paradigm development. wang (2011: 1459) observes: once accustomed to a paradigm, we are no longer aware of its existence. to grasp the essence of rapid changes, we are often encouraged to ‘think outside the box’ but the question is, are we aware of the existence of ‘the box’ and what it looks like? unfortunately, it can be argued that public relations and communication scholarship in the south african disciplinary context have become so trapped within the functional behavioural management paradigm of the excellence approach, that it suffers from what zelizer (2011: 10) describes as “sub-disciplinary nearsightedness”. this “near-sightedness” holds profound implications for scholarship and research in the field. firstly, there is a lack of critical scholarship in the field because theorising outside of the dominant paradigm is not encouraged or tolerated. the lack of critical engagement stems from a dependency on a particular framework of thinking, which also results in what wang (2011: 1458) refers to as a “stability” that more closely resembles inertia. as a result, “continuity rather than change” (ibid.) has characterised south african scholarship in the field. one need only undertake a cursory analysis of south african research outputs in the field at both master’s and doctoral level to confirm the extent to which this paradigm still dominates. this results in what hill and martin (2014: 18) refer to as “narrow and distilled” thinking. 15 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication this narrowness relates to the second implication for scholarship which relates to what wang (2014: 373) identifies as euro-american centrism in theory development and research. as wang (ibid.) suggests, the notion of geo-cultural theory should also be considered precisely because western concepts, theories and paradigms are not universal, but actually exist within paradigmatic boundaries that neglect both cultural and paradigm differences. wang (2014: 374) explains this difference as follows: “geo-cultural theories explain and predict only those phenomena that fall within a certain geographic or cultural boundary, whereas the culture-general approach does not specify such limitations.” wang (2014) acknowledges that the postmodern pre-occupation with the specific rather than the universal also limits the development of theories involving different paradigms and cultures, but argues that between “extreme universality and extreme particularity, scattered in various fields of study there have also developed concepts and theories that reflect features of not a mechanistic, but an organic worldview”. wang (2011a: 226) suggests that “while interpreting incommensurable concepts and theories may seem challenging, finding where in-commensurabilities may lie is equally, if not more, challenging”. it can be argued that south african public relations and communication scholars are so locked into american (and to a lesser extent eurocentric) paradigms that we have not considered the possibilities that lie in the transition zones between paradigms. we therefore lack the sensitivity to recognise the potential of incommensurability among paradigms for developing our own geo-specific theories. in this manner our framing of paradigms further constrain our ability to transcend the boundaries of our assumptions, and to devel this results in the third implication which relates to research. ytterstad (2015: 3) argues that researchers within a particular paradigm tend to operate within a strategic version of the truth which results in a too rigid view of truth and a focus on salience in framing research – thus making it ill-equipped to account for emergent frames. creaven (2007: 15) sees emergence as a function of internally-related objects or structures “because the relations which define or compromise them as such grants their constituents power and capacities they would not possess apart from their interaction or combination as parts of a whole”. guba and lincoln (1994) argue that all science is based on paradigmatic thinking involving distinct assumptions on the nature of reality (ontology), how we can come to know that reality (epistemology), and how we can systematically access what can be known about that reality (methodology). in this regard, grunig (2003:90) suggests that paradigmatic challenge is not a necessary condition for innovative theory-building when he argues that “it is not always necessary to produce new structures nor is it necessary to limit the search to existing structures”. goia and 16 sonja verwey pitre (1990: 584) however argue for a multi-paradigm approach that offers ways of transcending or bridging blurred paradigm boundaries, and suggest: … a metaparadigm perspective might allow disparate approaches to theory building to be considered together. such a perspective can produce views of organisational phenomena that not only allow scholars to recognise inherent and irreconcilable theoretical differences, but also encourage them to adopt a more comprehensive view by accounting for those differences. while public relations research and theory development has grown tremendously over the past 25 years, botan and taylor (2004) suggest that the need for more theory development has given way to a need for a greater diversity of competing theories. to a great extent, public relations and communication research in general has suffered from what goia and pitre (1990: 599) regard as “intellectual provincialism” where “paradigms are accepted to be fundamentally incommensurable and noncomparable, and therefore proceed with only one perspective without attempting to account for disparate views”. this has often been the case in south african public relations and communication scholarship, which has narrowly focused on the behavioural management paradigm with a resultant emphasis on only researching and developing theory from this paradigm, and a dismissal of the possibilities for integrating alternative paradigm-based theories. while south african scholars may have been productive in generating research in the field, they have not been innovative in “exploring the conceptual grounds for accommodating different approaches to theory building” (goia & pitre 1990: 599). weick (1989) suggests that creative theory-building can only result from “multiple thought trials from various perspectives”; this is not possible in a field of scholarship that suffers from a lack of “disciplined imagination” to the extent that south african public relations and communication scholarship does. gower (2006) notes that much of public relations research has focused on what practitioners do. in applied theory-building research, a central mission is to conduct research that both advances an academic discipline and enlightens practice in a professional domain (van de ven 2007). the importance of questioning the values, background assumptions, and normative orientations shaping research has been increasingly acknowledged, particularly in the context of transdisciplinary research, which aims to integrate knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge (popa et al. 2015: 45). edwards (2012: 10) suggests that the ways in which we delineate our field and objects of our research, implies a set of “rules” that establish appropriate empirical tools, statements of research problems, and evaluations of solutions to those problems for the group of scholars loyal to the paradigmatic assumptions that underpin it. edwards (2012: 11) argues that 17 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication as a result definitions of the research object will tend to “privilege the dominant perspective, potentially presenting ontological difficulties for those challenging this paradigm, and perpetuating their marginalization”. the prevalence of a functional paradigm in public relations research has accordingly produced a static field with limited room for alternative perspectives (cheney & christiansen 2001). such dominance creates fragmentation in the field and a lack of critical engagement occurs between or among scholarly groups, resulting in “careful mutual avoidance, a superb disregard on all sides” (dogan 2004: 11024). edwards (2012: 23) suggests that it is time to consider how to define and situate public relations in a way that better reflects the plurality of views in the field, and create a more balanced context for their interaction. edwards (2012: 14-23) states that the “emphasis on pr as a means of realizing organisational interests in functional approaches means that they prioritize formally constituted organisations as sites of pr practice”, whereas an understanding of public relations as flow “allows researchers to transcend the organisational context and take analyses beyond any kind of boundary, recognizing the fluidity and evolution of pr over time and space”. because the functional paradigm is so well-established in south african public relations scholarship, there is a marked lack of disciplinary debate and contestation, and a preoccupation with establishing “excellent” communication practices through symmetrical two-way communication and building positive relationships between organisations and their publics. there exists a need for south african scholars and researchers in the field to not only develop a greater reflexivity and openness, but to consciously clear the territorial boundaries that constrain paradigmatic variety and interaction, also because “these rules communicate and reinforce those assumptions across a range of different academic outlets, including textbooks, journal articles, monographs and technical (practice) publications where there must be some explicit articulation of the field and its jurisdiction” (edwards 2012: 10). johansson and lindhult (2008) suggest that what is required is a research landscape that is “free from domination and that allows for rational and cooperative search for truth”. jahn, bergmann and keil (2012: 2-3) argue that “bringing reflexivity into processes of knowledge production is both the claim and main purpose of the transdisciplinary research practice”. popa et al. (2015: 47) argue for systemic integration of reflexive processes within a framework that “integrates broad epistemological and normative orientations”, on the basis of which different methodological options can be envisaged, revised or adjusted through collaborative inquiry and practice, and through further debate, experimentation and evidence. it is therefore evident that going forward south african public relations and communication researchers will have to embrace boundary spanning roles that will enable collaboration between variously situated participants from a variety of disciplinary, social and 18 sonja verwey institutional contexts, and embrace mechanisms of stakeholder participation to actually transform values, practices and institutions through experimentation, social innovation and collaborative learning. failure to do so will further reinforce the validity of the functional paradigm, and will further constrain our ability as public relations and communication scholars to resolve complex problems that arise in emergent contexts. conclusion this article has argued for the need to span paradigmatic, disciplinary professional boundaries if public relations and communication is to assume the influential role that has been afforded to it in postmodern communication contexts. for far too long public relations and communication practitioners have tried to manage the boundaries of the discipline and practice through the dominance of single-paradigm approaches. for more than two decades the behavioural managerial paradigm has dominated both theorising and practice in the field. in this sense, the constructs that public relations and communication professionals employed had become moral imperatives which served to presuppose certain features of organisation, while excluding the possibility of others. in the process, public relations professionals may have become too closely coupled to the institutions that they served, thus limiting their ability to challenge their own intellectual assumptions. in response to the modernist emphasis on single, dominant theoretical perspectives and philosophies (meta-narratives) postmodernists embrace multiplicity and diversity, and even question their own theoretical perspectives. as such postmodernism may be seen as characterised by pluralism, fragmentation, ambiguity and indeterminacy, defying attempts to generalise and extrapolate from past experience – thus also rejecting the notion of (normative) theory at the institutional level. instead postmodernism encourages crossing of paradigmatic boundaries, thus providing for the possibility or the emergence of a multi-paradigmatic strategic approach that differs from integrated communication because it spans all organisational endeavours and activities, and offers the possibility of a coherent multi-methodological approach to naturally multi-paradigmatic problem situations. the rapid changes that are brought about by developments in communication technologies further challenge communication professionals to transcend boundaries, and enact their roles as boundary spanners by developing multi-paradigmatic approaches to tensions that arise in their field of practice. this article identified four such tensions, and considered the implications that these hold for public relations and communication scholarship. the article concludes that going forward south african public relations and communication researchers will have to embrace boundary spanning roles that will enable collaboration between variously situated participants from a variety of disciplinary, social and institutional contexts, and embrace 19 paradigms, perspectives and practice of public relations and communication mechanisms of stakeholder participation to actually transform values, practices and institutions through experimentation, social innovation and collaborative learning. failure to do so will further reinforce the centrality and dominance of the functional paradigm, 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a recent hsrc report (shisana et al. 2014) indicated that south africans’ knowledge on hiv/aids has declined in the last few years and risky sexual behaviour amongst certain groups has increased. this shifts the thinking about hiv/aids communication away from focusing on communication alone to issues around the uptake of hiv/aids communication. this crisis of hiv/aids communication suggests investigating future directions for communication about the virus in the hope that a new direction might stimulate the uptake. instead of continuing the trajectory of strategically incorporating participatory techniques in project‑based hiv/aids communication that is conceived “outside” the target community, this article investigates participatory hiv/aids communication that emerges from “within” society. through a review of existing literature, this article investigates the hiv/aids communication of hiv‑positive south african celebrities, and indicates how they participate in hiv/aids communication and how they express their life stories in public (public self‑expression). furthermore, some hiv‑positive celebrities invite the public to share their life stories on a public platform – in line with the freirean principle of participatory development communication. this form of hiv/aids communication is also characterised by the sharing of real people’s personal views regarding all aspects – not only biomedical – of the virus. keywords: hiv/aids communication, celebrities’ social engagement, public self‑expression, participatory development communication, participatory hiv/aids communication, future of hiv/aids communication, health communication * dr mariekie burger (mburger@uj.ac.za) lectures in the department of communication and media studies in the school of communication at the university of johannesburg. communitas issn 1023‑0556 2015 20: 200‑217 201 a future direction for hiv/aids communication introduction the inherent nature of older forms of hiv/aids communication is educational‑ instructional as the message is conceived “outside” the recipient community and then persuasively diffused to the recipient community in the hope that the message will result in behaviour change (tomaselli 2011a: 8‑17). this form of one‑directional information transmission was modelled on the failed modernisation approach to development communication (ibid.). following the successes of community‑driven participatory development communication, the newer forms of hiv/aids communication initiatives strategically incorporate selected techniques of participatory communication, such as involving the recipient community in the message production process (tomaselli 2011a: 8‑17; tufte 2006: 691). instead of continuing with this trajectory of refining the incorporation of participatory techniques in hiv/aids communication, this article investigates how a truly participatory developing communication framework can form the basis of participatory hiv/aids communication. thus, the focus of this article does not fall on hiv/aids communication that is conceived “outside” of a society, but instead on hiv/aids communication that emanates from the “inside”. more specifically, the purpose of this article is to investigate the hiv/aids communication of a specific group of south african citizens and celebrities who communicate publicly about the virus with the aim of broadening current scholarly understandings of different forms of hiv/aids communication in the country. this is done though reviewing existing literature on the topic. firstly, this article discusses the principles of participatory development communication to construct principles of participatory hiv/aids communication. secondly, it maps the ways in which different groups of south african celebrities communicate about the virus, differentiating between celebrities whose hiv status is not known and those who have announced publicly that they are hiv‑positive. the article concludes by reading hiv‑positive celebrities’ hiv/aids communication against the foil of participatory hiv/aids communication. in so doing, this article does not only describe participatory hiv/aids communication, but, based on the communication of hiv‑positive south african celebrities about the virus, provides a practical example of participatory hiv/aids communication. the trajectory of hiv/aids communication in south africa four forms of hiv/aids communication initiatives dominate in south africa: an early project‑based form transmitting biomedical information, a newer project‑based form strategically incorporating elements of participatory communication, the social movement form, and the less described, truly participatory communication form of hiv/aids communication (burger 2014). 202 mariekie burger early project‑based hiv/aids communication in south africa was based on the development communication model, whereby extension workers educated local communities in primary health care and agriculture (chabot & duyvendak 2011: 311‑315). based on early behaviour change models, a causal link between information transmission and adopting new practices was assumed due to a subsequent change in attributes and beliefs (baran & davis 2003: 366; obregon & mosquera 2005: 234‑237; littlejohn & foss 2005: 199; tomaselli 2011a: 8‑11). primary research confirmed this assumption to be an oversimplification, as did research about the effects of communication, and research in the field of development communication (mefalopulos 2005: 150‑152; tomaselli 2011a: 8‑11; griffin 2003: 199). examples of this approach are found in the early department of health interventions, komanani, and the early versions of lovelife (tomaselli 2011a: 11). following the successes of participatory development communication in addressing social problems and bringing about sustained development, the second form of hiv/aids communication in south africa strategically incorporates techniques of participatory communication. on the most basic level, these communication interventions motivate the recipient community to partake in message formulation (cambridge 2007: 191). examples of such actions could for instance be to ask school children to design posters after a talk on hiv/aids. on a more advanced level, the target community could be involved in activities such as soul city’s script writing, formative and evaluative research, and casting (tufte 2006: 691; usdin et al. 2004: 156). this refines the erskine childers model of “development support communication” (dsc) (colle 2006: 495; cambridge 2007: 191). various models have been designed through the years to describe such community participation, but in essence they all assume that participation indicates affinity and the likelihood of adoption of messages and empowerment (narayanasamy 2009: 6; mefalopulos 2008: 91; tufte & mefalopulos 2009). this, in turn, would signify that the recipient community takes ownership of the communication initiative – conflating participation, ownership and empowerment. another element of participation that is strategically incorporated concerns the so‑called context within which the communication messages are received (cf. obregon & mosquera 2005: 234‑237). the contextual factors are often reduced to addressing public services (such as provision of condoms, and making antiretroviral medication available), but may include a range of other factors such as cultural, language, power‑political, economic, geographical, age‑bound or gender‑specific aspects. in this way, the work by the soul city institute of development and health communication made great strides to ensure that contextual factors are considered (usdin et al. 2004: 156; tufte 2006: 691). another characteristic of this form of hiv/aids communication is to refine behaviour change models to incorporate the contextual factors, and in this way to design the social ecological model of communication, the health 203 a future direction for hiv/aids communication behaviour (semchb) model, and the aids risk reduction model (arrm) (fisher 2012: 291‑294; storey & figueroa 2012: 75). the resultant newer form of hiv/aids communication that emerged embeds educational messages in entertaining dramatic formats modelled on the south american telenovela (burger 2012: 6; storey 2006). both the early and the newer forms of communication about the hi virus discussed so far are project‑based because the communication projects are initiated outside the target community and have the goal of changing the target group’s undesirable behaviour (tufte & mefalopulos 2009: 10). in this way, participation is merely a strategic tool employed to persuade a target community (chabot & duyvendak 2011: 311‑315; narayanasamy 2009: 5‑6; jacobson 2012; tomaselli 2011a: 8‑17; tomaselli 2011b: 25‑48). a third form of hiv/aids communication in south africa is social movement‑based, seeking – through the work of citizens – change in the distribution of public resources (cf. barker 2012: 176‑177; habermas 2011: 337; zirakzadeh 2011: xxi; huesca 2006: 754). in prompting governments to provide care for all citizens, aids activist zackie achmat and the work done by the treatment action campaign (tac) directed government policy to avail arvs to hiv‑positive south africans (tomaselli 2011a: 8‑17). the social movement form of hiv/aids communication is linked to freire’s (1996) view of inviting communities to voice their concerns, as this helps them realise their problems and through collective action these can be addressed (cf. thomas 2006: 476‑477; tufte & mefalopulos 2009: 3). in contrast to the “top‑down” assumption of project‑based hiv/aids communication, the community “drivenness” of social movements awarded the label as “bottom‑up” communication (riaño 2006: 447‑450; thomas 2006: 476‑479; white 2006: 482). however, social movement hiv/aids communication is similar to project‑based communication, which is primarily goal‑oriented. essentially, the main difference between the two forms of hiv/aids communication lies in the citizenry reaching for the “power within” to bring about change (nikkhah, redzuan & abu‑samah 2012: 41). based on the participatory approach to development communication, a participatory approach to hiv/aids communication would embrace the true characteristics of participatory communication, and not cosmetically and strategically employ some characteristics in service of externally directed processes. participatory development communication is seated in the democratic principles of celebrating diversity (multiplicity, plurality), having faith in the “power within” the community, and the freirean ideas of verbalisation of the self; this is a step on the path to realising what the depth and breadth of social problems are (burger 2009: 107‑113; carlsson 2005: 211‑212; erikson 2005: 36‑37; gumucio‑dagron & tufte 2006: xx‑xxx; white 2006: 482; 204 mariekie burger habito‑cadiz 2006: 427; nikkhah et al. 2012: 41). it is furthermore assumed that social developmental problems are not only material (on the level of resources), but are also non‑material (on the level of respect, identity and recognition) (al‑zoubi & rahman 2014: 93; burger 2009: 107‑113). from this perspective, the implication is that empowerment involves affording communities the responsibility and power to engage in and monitor institutions that affect their lives (al‑zoubi & rahman 2014: 93). an outflow of these baseline principles is that instead of an outward orientation, faith is shown in communities to take responsibility for their current health or hiv/aids problems and find solutions. this places the emphasis on communities to verbalise their own thoughts about the virus, the assumption being that this might point to solutions for health problems. this links with castells’ (2001: 63) view that many social actors embark on social drives to affirm their own identities whilst partaking in a social action. he argues that whilst such a social actor partakes, the person’s identity is impacted, and in this way is “the locus of action”. by applying these principles of participatory communication to communicate about the virus, participatory hiv/aids communication would involve volunteers and should not bar people who might not have expert scientific knowledge on the topic. in addition, such communication should take place in public and should also involve a range of topics that are linked to the virus, as this would imply that the virus is not only a medical condition but that it is part of life. including more than just medical issues in hiv/aids communication means that talks about the virus are integrated in the everyday lives of people – it is thus part of “the rest” of one’s life. not only knowledgeable people, but ordinary people, should have the opportunity to express their views. the implication of hiv/aids communication that involves ordinary people expressing their views and talking about related aspects is that public hiv/aids discussions may potentially involve personal expressions that might seem trivial. however, that may help destigmatise the virus and may also mean that the participatory communication involves aspects other than the material or physical aspects of the virus. in fact, including non‑material aspects, such as how the virus may impact on one’s self‑concept or one’s identity, is closely linked to self‑expression. another aspect of participatory communication is to consider aspects other than the biomedical aspect, such as how the virus is tied to sexuality, gender‑based power relations, intimacy, spirituality, religion, urban legends, religion, traditions and culture. the implication may very well be that such public self‑expressions may involve the sharing of seemingly trivial and perhaps very personal views on public platforms regarding a range of issues linked to the virus. based on this premise, this article investigates the ways (as part of the target community of hiv/aids 205 a future direction for hiv/aids communication communication campaigns) that south african celebrities express their personal views about the virus and the disease and how they invite the public to follow. the reason why celebrities’ hiv/aids communication is investigated is that they influence many aspects of society, are credible agenda setters, attract media interest, have a considerable influence on society, are well‑known (they are “known for being known”), and become trendsetters (anderson 2007: 46; cooper 2007: 11; littler 2008: 242; poniewozik 2005; pillet 2009: 16; o’shaughnessy & stadler 2006: 396; giles 2000: 3‑4). furthermore, celebrities’ activities, expressions and whereabouts are often boasted about in the media, and media audiences seem to have an insatiable curiosity about both the public and private lives of celebrities (turner 2004: 5). by implication, this means that it is likely that what these celebrities do or say are talking points for their fans. in fact, their fans often display a “participatory culture” by creating their own online fanzines, fan blogs and fan material (barker 2012). regardless of how the public “participates” in the lives of their favourite celebrities, the public displays a considerable interest in celebrities’ lives. many celebrities support a social agenda, as showing social care is the hallmark of any good celebrity (littler 2008: 237). in this way, many celebrities are utilising social issues to advance their careers by associating themselves with good causes, such as providing humanitarian, environment and animal aid (stole 2006). most of these social causes are chosen carefully to avoid running the risk of damaging the celebrity’s image. for this reason, environmental causes, animals and showing care for children and war refugees are often regarded as “safe” choices. linking the public profile of a celebrity to good causes may not only be beneficial to celebrities, but it may also benefit charity organisations. in fact, many recruited celebrities are guardians, spokespeople, the “face” of an organisation, or are simply invited to be motivational speakers at special events in favour of an organisation. in this way, non‑profit organisations seemed to have joined the marketing trend of employing celebrities to advance their work and thus gain access to the already existing fan bases of celebrities to diffuse their messages and advance their work (littler 2008: 240). however, associating a celebrity name with an illness is risky, as some diseases may be stigmatised or may be linked to social taboos. furthermore, if there is congruence between the private life and public life of a celebrity, such as the celebrity being hiv‑positive and then being involved in a social drive about the virus, the table is turned (braunstein‑minkove, zhang & trail 2011: 96). in other words, not all social drives of celebrities are necessarily inauthentic and “safe” and solely employed for marketing or image building purposes. the public seem to have taken an interest in this kind of celebrity activity. the celebrities and the causes they support constantly enjoy media attention, as celebrities and the media have a symbiotic relationship: the media needs to 206 mariekie burger provide in the needs of the public – they are dependent on media audiences – and celebrities need media attention to build their own public profiles and fan bases (o’shaughnessy & stadler 2006: 399). the traditional criticism against the media carrying such popular content is that it will lead to a dumbing down of society, as the media’s focus of being a watchdog for society and stimulate public debate around matters of public interest and concern for the democracy dispensation is diverted. even though this argument is not negated, this article argues that some media attention devoted to the public causes supported by celebrities may be beneficial for society – especially if the media deals with matters of hiv/aids. mapping the hiv/aids communication of south african celebrities in south africa, many celebrities are publicly expressing their views on hiv and aids. of the more than 400 south african celebrities who are involved in social development initiatives in the country, just over 100 are involved in hiv and aids communication. different kinds of well‑known people and celebrities were found to be involved in the communication about hiv/aids: sports stars, television and radio personalities (including djs), television and film actors/actresses, musicians (singers, groups, house music djs), comedians, politicians, beauty queens, princesses, models, fashion designers, journalists, religious leaders, and even a judge. in fact, some celebrities are not only involved in publicly expressing their views about the virus (public self‑expression), but they support their communication by taking action (such as riding a bicycle over a long distance to raise funds or publicly taking an hiv test to motivate others to follow suit). a number of trends of how different professional groups of celebrities are involved in hiv/aids communication were identified. sports celebrities tend to be involved in once‑off events, typically playing a match to raise awareness about hiv/aids or to raise funds for an hiv/aids charity. this is exemplified by all south african test cricket captains who sign a pledge before each test match to support the fight against hiv/aids. other sports celebrities often link their names to the hiv/aids cause by endorsing a particular drive, especially whilst doing something actively in their line of expertise (for example, coaching) when they provide hiv/aids communication (often in the form of educational and/or motivational talks). an example is j.p. duminy who visited schools as part of the get the facts campaign, encouraging the youth to let their passion for cricket extend to the passion of fighting against the pandemic. another example is found in the sports heroes walk against hiv/aids initiative, where many celebrity sport stars such as desiree ellis (footballer), wili mtolo (marathon runner) and baby jake matlala (boxer) walked their part between johannesburg and cape town and 207 a future direction for hiv/aids communication engaged with the public along the way. furthermore, sports celebrities are often goodwill ambassadors for a sporting body’s hiv/aids initiatives, such as former cricketer shaun pollock’s ambassadorial work for unicef’s unite against aids; soccer star lucas radebe being a patron for starfish greathearts; and soccer star teko modise being an ambassador for brothers for life. often, and as part of these activities, they publicly take hiv tests. the only south african celebrity athlete who made her hiv‑positive status publicly known, evelina tshabalala, was involved in setting up an hiv/aids charity foundation. celebrities who have become known for their media work are often involved in once‑off events involved in hiv communication. they typically appear at functions to raise awareness about hiv/aids or to raise funds for an hiv/aids charity; for example, the involvement of chumani pan (known for his role in the drama series montana), lebo pelesane (former muvhango actor and model), sports anchor zolelwa majeke and also sello “chico” twala (musician and producer) in the grand unity soccer match at the meadowlands stadium (the event was organised by the sa football players’ union’s hiv and aids prevention project, show me your number, and by state of the union). television, film or radio celebrities often link their names to the cause of hiv/aids by endorsing a particular hiv/aids drive, such as actress portia gumede’s involvement in the rand aids association and the youth against hiv/aids and poverty (yahap). television, film or radio celebrities are often goodwill ambassadors for hiv/aids initiatives. many examples exist, such as vusiwe ngcobo being an ambassador for lovelife, welile tembe and sophie ndaba for scrutinize!, and terry theto, lee‑roy wright and kabonina qubeka for dance4life. some of them have publicly taken hiv tests (as did almost all the many soccer and rugby ambassadors for brothers for life). interestingly, the biggest public announcement of celebrities who are hiv‑positive is seen by media celebrities koyo bala, tender mavundla, lesego mosepe, jabu sithole, the late dj khabzela and criselda kananda. radio personalities often reveal their hiv‑positive status during a radio show, after which they tend to use their show to talk about the virus and the implications thereof on one’s personal life; they also invite members of the public to phone in and share their life stories with the nation. the celebrity, if he or she is hiv‑positive, gives personal advice and can be a true empathetic listener due to personal experience and knowledge in this line (cf. richley & ponte 2008: 719). celebrities presenting radio or television shows often use their shows to provide platforms for supportive discussions on hiv/aids matters. in the same way, journalist lucky mazibuko uses his sowetan column to engage with matters concerning the virus (bbc 2011). 208 mariekie burger musicians are often involved in once‑off events, partaking in hiv communication, typically appearing at concerts to raise awareness about hiv/aids or to raise funds for hiv/aids charities; performers include mandoza, pitch black afro, gang of instrumentals, bongo maffin, yvonne chaka chaka, mafikizolo or ladysmith black mambazo performing at the nelson mandela foundation’s 46664 aids concerts. the last four celebrities and a whole list of other musicians (such as chris chameleon, danny k, mduduzi chabalala of mandoza, kabelo mabelane, jozi, sipho hotstix mabuse, johnny clegg, karen zoid, dozi and many more) are ambassadors for the 46664 aids concerts. many of these celebrities are also involved in other hiv/aids initiatives; for example, doc shebeleza is the leader of the african musicians against hiv/aids (amaha). many musicians, such as the internationally acclaimed group freshlyground, produce music with messages about hiv/aids. politicians tend to establish hiv/aids charities under their own names, and those who have lost someone who was hiv‑positive tend to speak about it publicly (albeit not often). examples are found in the work of the nelson mandela foundation. it should be noted that mandela lost a grandson who was hiv‑positive, and ifp leader mangosuthu buthelezi lost a son and a daughter to aids. the only south african religious leader who is actively involved in communicating about the virus is archbishop desmond tutu. he established various hiv/aids charities under his own name, notably the desmond tutu hiv centre, the tutu hiv foundation, and the mobile hiv testing clinic. beauty queens, royalty and models tend to be involved in once‑off charity events, often only appearing without talking about the virus. along these lines, miss south africa 2011, melinda bam, attended the charity event for the mohau centre for children infected with and affected by hiv/aids and launched campaigns in aid of the thuthezela aid community centre and the save our home project. similarly, south african‑born princess charlene of monaco visited the cotlands hiv/aids hospice, and tansey coetzee (miss south africa 2008) visited the dudu zwane hospice for hiv affected and infected children on world aids day. bokang montjane (miss south africa 2010) partnered with the national youth development agency to establish the bokang legacy confidence camp for girls where she gives motivational talks. comedians tend to produce shows that carry hiv/aids messages and they are often ambassadors for hiv/aids initiatives. examples include kenneth nkosi, pieter dirk uys and desmond dube. however, celebrities who are hiv‑positive are of great interest to this article as they are even more involved in public hiv/aids communication than celebrities whose hiv status is not publicly made known. 209 a future direction for hiv/aids communication the hiv/aids communication of south african hiv‑positive celebrities of the south african celebrities who are involved in hiv and aids communication, the handful of celebrities who are hiv‑positive tend to be more involved in hiv/aids communication than other celebrities. even though they do so in different ways, they tend to share their personal life stories with the public in what can be called “public self‑expression” (burger 2014). some hiv‑positive celebrities who are involved in once‑off communication on hiv and aids are announcing publicly that they are hiv‑positive and deliver a message to the public. for example, sabc2 television weatherman, jabu sithole, announced his hiv‑positive status and advocated a change in the way people conduct their sexual lives. popular kwaito music star, tebogo “zombo” ndlovo, from the group abashante, disclosed his hiv‑positive status on the popular music show live on national television and encouraged fans to be tested for hiv. although these once‑off hiv/aids communications may have had an immediate impact when they took place, these messages are not sustained over a long period and will not have a lasting impression on public hiv/aids communication in the country. other celebrities are more involved in hiv/aids communication initiatives than only once‑off instances and some are actively advocating the causes of hiv and aids. the idea of sharing one’s life story with the world is found in the last group of celebrities who, to varying degrees, continue to share their life stories with the public through the work of hiv/aids organisations which they establish. in this group, two relative simplistic examples are found where the founders are not extensively involved in public hiv/aids communication. one example of a celebrity involved in starting up an hiv and aids charity is marathon runner, evelina tshabalala. she publicly announced her hiv‑positive status and is upheld as living proof that eating healthy and taking arvs can lead to a healthy life when living with aids. she is a founder member of positive heroes, an initiative claiming that people can live positively with hiv. not long before his death, dj fana “khabzela” khaba announced his hiv‑positive status in a pre‑recorded message on radio during his yfm breakfast show and urged his listeners to speak openly about sex and hiv. he received an award in recognition of his contribution to the fight against the virus. tender mavundla also publicly disclosed her hiv‑positive status in 2007 when she appeared on the south african television programme idols. she also took part in motivational talks at conferences and corporate functions, high schools and universities. although this form of hiv/aids communication signifies that south african celebrities have a long‑term involvement, the next form of hiv/ aids communication by celebrities is sustained over longer periods of time. in this category of south african celebrities, having a longer involvement with public 210 mariekie burger hiv/aids communication, dj khabzela and tender mavundla made a remarkable impact due to announcing publicly that they had contracted the hi virus. another example is found in the work of celebrity actress lesego motsepe, who publicly disclosed her hiv‑positive status on both bob mabena’s breakfast show on the radio station kaya fm, and on john robbie’s show on talk radio 702; she used these opportunities to encourage safe sexual practices. motsepe continued her involvement in hiv/aids communication through afrikarize! – an hiv/aids initiative aimed at creating new conversations about hiv/aids and addressing the socio‑economic problems of the youth. she also holds regular puppet shows to teach children about the virus (madikwa 2011). the third type of hiv‑positive hiv/aids communication by celebrities is linked to a long‑term public commitment with issues around the virus. more so than the short‑term hiv/aids communication of hiv‑positive celebrities, these celebrities share their personal life stories with the public through their hiv/aids communication. one example of such sustained commitment to the cause of hiv is found in the hiv/aids work of the well‑known south african constitutional court justice edwin cameron, the first senior public official to disclose his hiv‑positive status. apart from his official position, cameron’s life story is that of seeking human rights for people living with hiv; his engagement with hiv and aids is in the line of his legal work. he co‑drafted the charter of rights on hiv and aids, co‑founded the aids consortium, and founded the aids law project. cameron’s award‑winning non‑fiction book, witness to aids (2006), grapples with the meaning of hiv/aids and the threat of death. more recently, in justice: a personal account (2014), he traces the justice systems in the country, punctuated with his own personal life story about how he grew up in an orphanage due to his mother not being able to support him, how he battled to make his hiv status known publicly and how antiretroviral medication saved his life. another example of an hiv‑positive celebrity who shares his personal life story with the public in his writing, is lucky mazibuko. in his column in sowetan (the largest daily newspaper in africa), just call me lucky, he wrote his life story about living with hiv for 23 years, and he seeks to demystify the virus by sharing with the public lessons learned from it; namely, to be selfless, share experience, time, love and possessions, and to have compassion for humankind. he extended his life philosophy of helping hiv‑positive people to live “through the humanity of others” by founding the lucky mazibuko foundation, which offers scholarships to hiv‑positive people (lucky mazibuko foundation 2014). as an aids activist, he made it public that he did not want to take arvs himself until it was freely available to all citizens. mazibuko has shared his life story on many national and international television and radio stations and presented a 13‑part sabc2 television series known as positive where he investigated the 211 a future direction for hiv/aids communication reality of living with hiv. due to public demand, this historic series enjoyed a re‑run in 2001. not only does he share his life story with the public, he also serves on many bodies in africa to help those infected with the virus. another example of an hiv‑positive celebrity who shares her personal life story with the public is criselda kananda (metro fm n.d.; parent24 n.d.; tvsa n.d.) on her radio show positive talk. through positive talk and motivational speaking, she speaks to the public about how she contracted the virus, how she discovered that she was hiv‑positive, and how she has coped with the virus for 16 years. the public can identify with her story, as it is a familiar story for many south africans: she married a man without knowing his hiv status and upon the birth of their daughter she discovered that she was hiv‑positive. her husband left her soon after the birth of their child, and as a single mother, kananda relied on knowledge she gained from her nursing background and went from strength to strength with her radio talk show. today she is well‑known for her hiv/aids communication. in fact, she was acknowledged as one of the ten most influential women in the country through a city press/rapport award. importantly, she not only shares her personal life story with the public through positive talk but, as it is a talk show, she invites the public to follow suit. members of the public who phone in, tell their life stories and these weave together with hers to provide a platform where the public sharing of her and their personal life stories (public self‑expression) forms the basis of her hiv/aids communication. to sum up, in contrast to south african celebrities whose hiv status is not known, hiv‑positive celebrities tend to share their personal life stories with the public. judge cameron entered the autobiographical literary world by publishing books that were exceptionally well‑received; evidenced by being translated and receiving literary awards. cameron gave a highly personal autobiographical account of his traumatic life story about coming to terms with being in an orphanage, homosexuality, being severely ill with the virus, and finally taking antiretroviral treatment during a prominent judiciary trial. his books elicited much public discussion. similarly, lucky mazibuko shares a very personal account about his experiences with regard to the virus. in his column, he emphasises humanity in his public self‑expressions. like cameron’s books, mazibuko’s life story elicited much public debate – especially through the social media platforms linked to sowetan live, the online version of the newspaper. following the nature of her work, criselda kananda’s radio talk show facilitates her continued public self‑expression about hiv/aids and she invites the public to follow her example. the question is: how do these opportunities of public self‑expression fit in with the participatory approach to development communication? 212 mariekie burger conclusion participatory hiv/aids communication and public self‑expression based on the participatory approach of development communication outlined in this study, it can be argued that participatory hiv/aids communication should provide democratic access and everyone who wishes to take part in public discussions about the virus should be able to: ♦ verbalise their views publicly; ♦ express themselves freely regarding all aspects of the virus; ♦ be concerned with biomedical aspects, but should also include other contextual aspects (such as how the virus impacts matters of sexuality, gender‑based power relations, intimate aspects, spirituality, religion, urban legends, religion, traditions and cultural aspects); and ♦ engage with both the material and non‑material (such as recognition, identity, and selfhood) aspects of the virus. the hiv/aids communication of the hiv‑positive celebrities discussed in this article – especially the cases of judge edwin cameron, lucky mazibuko and criselda kananda – overlaps largely with these foundational principles of participatory communication as the hiv/aids communication of these celebrities does not only focus on the biomedical aspects of the virus, but speaks to personal experiences of identity and selfhood and also invites the public to participate in the hiv/aids debate. the public’s responses are invited by reading cameron’s books, by commenting via the internet on mazibuko’s column, and by texting or phoning in to kananda’s talk radio show. it can thus be said that the contribution of these south african celebrities to the existing hiv/aids communication initiatives should be taken seriously as an important form of communication about the virus. in fact, the public self‑expressions of prominent people and celebrities should not only be regarded as important – prominent people attract considerable attention – but because this form of communication about the virus is in line with the main principles of participatory communication. furthermore, if a celebrity does not only express the self, but stimulates members of the general public to also participate in “public self‑expression”, it is even more noteworthy as it may indicate a future path of hiv/aids communication in the country. it is concluded in this article that popular public participation, by means of the public expressing their personal views and experiences with matters around the virus, is a neglected form of hiv/aids communication in south africa. it is thus proposed that future research should be done on the impact of personal life story telling on the broader south african population. 213 a future direction for hiv/aids communication references al‑zoubi, m.s. & rahman, 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(ed.). social and political movements: volume 1 – theorizing about movements after world war ii. los angeles: sage. 125124 125124 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer: a study of some south african newspapers abstract this article investigates the perceived accessibility of business news in some south african newspapers of which the target reader is the average consumer of news in a predominantly black readership market. a sample of readers and editors/journalists were interviewed as part of an explorative, qualitative research design. the respondents were of the opinion that newspapers, such as city press, sowetan and sunday world, fail to write business articles that are easily understandable because the financial jargon used in stories confounds the average news consumer. however, 95% of the respondents agreed that the business section of daily sun uses simple language in its reporting. it is argued that a new set of guidelines to report business or financial news is needed to rectify the status quo. eight guidelines for reporting business news for the average news consumer are proposed. keywords: journalism; financial journalism; business news; financial reports; south africa; readers; jargon; news; city press; sowetan; sunday world; daily sun introduction and rationale business or financial journalism has grown in popularity and in reputation. this is the result of journalists uncovering some of the world’s biggest corporate scandals. the scandals include enron, the subprime crisis in the united states, africa’s “protracted economic crisis” of the late 1970s and early 1980s (kariithi 2002), alexander forbes’ secret profits scandal relating to bulking the bank accounts of the many pension funds it administered (cameron 2009), and south africa’s bread cartel saga (knowler 2010; visser & allix 2014). during the earlier years of the newspaper industry, business news was aimed at business people, investment bankers, traders and policy makers, but this is no longer the case as business news has gained a wider audience (roush 2006; tambini 2008; brand 2010). the realisation that business news affects almost everyone, not only an economic elite, has compelled news organisations to provide business news to all news consumers, irrespective of class or economic status. bongolethu futuse postgraduate student, department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, soshanguwe north campus (bongo. futuse@vodacom.co.za) dr pedro diederichs department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, soshanguwe north campus (diederichspd@tut. ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 124-135 © ufs mailto:bongo.futuse@vodacom.co.za mailto:bongo.futuse@vodacom.co.za mailto:diederichspd@tut.ac.za mailto:diederichspd@tut.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.10 125124 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer 125124 tambini (2008: 8-11) contends that business journalism plays a pivotal role in any society as it tracks, records, analyses and interprets economic changes that take place in the society. business journalists help to inform the public of a government’s economic policies and economic approaches (ibid.). business publications are used to critique or review the execution of government policies and private companies to enlighten readers, investors and potential investors. viewed from this perspective, business journalism is important in every society because it helps to inform and educate the public about economic issues, government economic policies, business activities and stock market movements. it empowers the public to make informed decisions and to question, where necessary, government and/or business authorities. by their very nature, most business stories have a direct impact on the day-to-day lives of most people. it is for this reason that business news should be written in simple, accessible language so that those who are affected are informed of the consequences of, for example, a rise in the oil price or an increase in interest rates. however, the fundamental problem of business news reporting persists as business journalism is more complex and specialised than ever before and business journalists require specialist knowledge if they are to present an independent view in their coverage (tambini 2008). the authors argue that business and financial reporting in south africa is not insulated from this view. the esoteric nature of business journalism, as described by tambini (2008), was and still is a fundamental problem faced by the business editors of publications that focus on average news consumer in south africa. these publications include sowetan, daily sun, sunday world and city press, the four newspapers that form the investigative focus of this study. shaban (2014) argues that “business reporters are supposed to make the complex worlds of finance and commerce intelligible to non-experts”. beyond just simplifying business stories, presenting business news to the average news consumer has also led many newspaper executives and business editors to reflect on whether they cover relevant financial stories that impact on the lives of their readership. another crucial question business editors and journalists have to contend with as they cover business news is the need to adopt visual layout techniques, such as tip boxes, tables, jargon busters and simplified graphs, to report on complicated business stories. aim of the study based on the above discussion, it is evident that newspapers covering business news face many challenges in making such news accessible to their readers. the aim of the study is therefore to gain a better understanding of the degree of accessibility of business news in four south african newspapers that focus on the average news consumer in a predominantly black readership market, and to find ways to make business news more accessible by the selection of user-friendly story topics and simpler language. 127126 bongolethu futuse & pedro diederichs background business journalism is the branch of journalism that tracks, records, analyses and interprets the economic changes that take place in a society. it can include anything from personal finance, business at the local market and shopping malls, to the performance of well-known and less well-known companies (loiko 2011). to explain its development and standing as an integral part of the news environment, it is necessary to provide a brief history. business journalism began in europe in the mid-16th century (biz journalism history 2006; roush 2006; brand 2010). according to biz journalism history (2006), the first business news was presented as the fugger family’s newsletter in 1568. the fuggers used the newsletter to inform their clients of news that could affect the european economy during this period. they hired the first business journalists, whose job it was to write reports on the prices of products and services and the arrival and departure of ships. a newsletter titled price currents, styled on the fuggers’ newsletter, followed in the 17th century in amsterdam (tawe 2012: 21). roush (2006) records that in 1843, james wilson, a scottish hat maker, established the economist newspaper in london, and the wall street journal was launched in 1889 in the united states. in south africa, two news agencies played an important role in the history of business journalism. they are the now defunct south african press agency (sapa) and reuters. reuters news is the oldest news-wire agency that focuses on financial and/ or economic news. reuters played an important role in the development of south africa’s financial news, with sapa and other local print and broadcast media houses relying on its services for financial news. furthermore, reuters provided training to some of the country’s business journalists. with regard to the development of the financial press in south africa, brand (2010: 40-41) states that the earliest newspapers in the country were “purveyors of business intelligence”. when business reporting commenced in south africa, business news reports were read by merchants and bankers whose fortunes depended on conditions in the markets and on the political action of rulers. business reporting “… focussed largely on market reports, shipping news and government proclamations: the kind of information the city’s merchants needed to make sound business decisions” (ibid.). as early as the 1850s, before traditional business newspapers, daily business supplements and magazines were launched in south africa. eastern cape herald (now known as the herald), the country’s oldest newspaper, published its first issue on 7 may in 1845 in port elizabeth, eastern cape. it was followed by the witness (formerly known as the natal witness), mercury and cape argus. in 1871, the argus newspaper group launched three newspapers that were instrumental in publishing business and economic news in south africa, namely cape times, diamond fields advertiser and daily news (formerly natal mercantile advertiser) (south african information 2006). other local newspapers that played a crucial role in the development of the country’s business journalism include the star, pretoria news, rand daily mail and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/personal_finance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shopping_mall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/company 127126 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer the sunday times. the sunday times has covered local and international business news through its flagship business supplement, business times. business day is south africa’s oldest business daily and reports on corporate news, economic policy, corporate governance and financial markets, and targets key decision makers in commerce, industry and government (times media limited 2013). business report is south africa’s second largest business daily supplement (launched in 1995 by the independent newspapers group) in the star, cape times, the mercury and pretoria news (south african information 2006). the four newspapers discussed in this article (sunday world, sowetan, city press and daily sun), focus primarily on black readership in south africa and carry financial news on designated pages. the sample of readers interviewed was defined as “average consumers of news”. average consumers of news in south africa are “… predominantly black, proud, hard-working men and women. they are the working class, who eke their living wage by working on the factory floors. they are a generation of proud parents and young adults ‒ aspiring to better opportunities, lapping up new technology and building a better tomorrow” (daily sun ads 2012). research methodology the study used a qualitative research approach, using convenience sampling to obtain samples of readers and editors/journalists to be interviewed. an exploratory research design, which is qualitative in its ethos (patton 2002: 193), was followed to gather data that could assist in achieving the research objectives of the study. primary data was collected through personal interviews and focus group discussions with the participants using a structured set of questions. focus group discussions were set up with the participants, who were asked whether they understood the business stories that were published in the business sections of the four newspapers. faceto-face, telephonic and email interviews were conducted with a sample of business editors, senior business and economics journalists, and media analysts to obtain their views on how the local business media reported business news for the average news consumer. for this purpose, the researchers established five focus groups from the sample of 40 readers and 18 editors/journalists. data was analysed using qualitative data analysis. the researchers identified specific terminology (jargon) and themes, and the data was then classified into categories. all the data collected through focus groups and interviews was coded. the recorded interviews were transcribed and coded into themes. in the other key component of data analysis, the researchers examined the responses and compared them to key questions aimed at identifying trends. findings viewpoints of readers the findings presented in this section represent the readers’ perception of challenges to the accessibility of business news. the majority of the participants pointed out that 129128 bongolethu futuse & pedro diederichs the business sections of the newspapers that primarily focus on readers such as themselves, namely sowetan, city press and sunday world, were not user-friendly or understandable to them. principally, they pointed out that the “big english” these newspapers, which focus on average news consumer, used to report on financial news made the news inaccessible. this view is in line with the views expressed by the editors, financial editors and financial journalists, who noted that the financial sections of newspapers were not accessible to this market. the readers were of the opinion that the business stories covered by these publications were not the type of stories that appealed to them, and that newspapers needed to ask readers what issues they would like to read about. this can be illustrated by the following examples of responses by the readers: “the reason i don’t read business sections of sowetan, city press and sunday world is because they use difficult english in their stories. when i read an article with big words my mind just switches off” (reader interviewee 1). “reading business news from our papers is like reading a science textbook. financial journalists use bombastic english. the feeling one gets is that these journalists forget that they also write for people with basic english” (reader interviewee 2). the sample of readers also disliked the use of jargon in financial articles. to them business jargon was the main stumbling block to reading and understanding business news. all the readers interviewed singled out the continued use of business/financial jargon as a key factor that exacerbated the problem of the inaccessibility of the business sections of newspapers that focus on the black mass market. readers identified words, phrases and business terminology such as “due diligence”, “earnings before interest”, “taxes, depreciation and amortization (ebidta)”, “hostile takeovers” and “dividend yields” from sowetan, city press and sunday world as difficult to understand. these comments confirm the problem with understanding jargon: “the problem created by the finance terminology and language is, if you fail to understand that one word, you end-up missing the entire meaning of that article and usually i stop reading halfway through the article” (reader interviewee 3). “i gave up the fight because the more you read, the more you get confused. in my view, business sections are not meant for contractor workers such as myself. the use of the complex business terminology seems to suggest that business news is for the well-educated members of our country. this situation is not improving, it is getting worse by the day” (reader interviewee 4). to deal with jargon and complex business terms, reader interviewee 5 suggested that newspapers should include sidebars or tables to explain the terms contained in news reports, as this could reduce the confusion among readers: “proper research will make it easier for journalists to write simpler, including on the most complex topics in the world, and when they have conducted proper research they will have no need to use mysterious business terminology in their reports” (reader interviewee 5). 129128 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer with regard to the possible challenge presented by the relevance of issues, all the readers interviewed felt strongly that financial news sections did not cover news that was applicable to them. they viewed the financial news section as an imitation of traditional business publications. further, they said that the newspapers that targeted them duplicated the business stories covered by traditional business newspapers and supplements without adapting the stories to make them more accessible to a different readership. thus, their plea was that the stories should have an angle that appealed to less affluent or blue-collar workers: “it is obvious that their stories are not relevant to us. you can pick up a copy of sowetan and you’ll see nothing that talks to the average consumer of news or the ordinary man on the street. one gets the feeling that they carry business sections as a formality. this is shown by the little interest they place on covering stories that affect the lives of the poor” (reader interviewee 6). the majority of those interviewed said that the business sections of sowetan, city press and sunday world focused on american and european news stories, while neglecting local business stories that affect the lives of the poor: “my main complaint with the local business press is they focus too much on international business stories. we read more about business stories from g7 countries, such as the usa, france, russia, germany and italy” (reader interviewee 7). the readers interviewed said that they wanted to read business stories about successful local business people who had started out by selling vegetables and through hard work and determination grew their businesses. the respondents agreed that inspiring stories were what they wanted to read in sowetan. they asked for more local business stories, which were educational, rather than those that focused on the macro-economy internationally. the results also pointed to the unintended consequences of business news reporting. the inaccessibility of the business sections of the four newspapers meant that some readers did not read the financial news sections in their totality. interestingly, 97.5% of those interviewed reported that they mostly read sports news, current affairs and entertainment and celebrity news, while only 2.5% said that they read the business news published in sowetan, city press and sunday world. the majority indicated that they had stopped reading business news because they found that business stories from their preferred newspaper were not written in a simple and understandable manner. however, the picture was different when it came to daily sun as all the respondents indicated that they enjoyed reading daily sun’s business stories because simple english was used and the choice of stories was relevant to them. fifteen percent of those interviewed said that they bought sunday world to read the latest celebrity and entertainment news, as well as shwashwi, a section of the newspaper that published celebrity gossip and pokes fun at celebrities. reader interviewee 8 said she did not read the business section as it was too serious and formal. ten percent of those interviewed said they regularly read city press, but mostly for political and sports news, and the jobs section. 131130 bongolethu futuse & pedro diederichs fifty-five per cent of those interviewed were daily sun readers. most of these readers indicated that they read the entire newspaper primarily because it covered topics, which affected the lives of its readers, in a simple and straightforward manner. this finding is in line with 100% of the total sample who indicated that of all the publications that claimed to focus on the ordinary reader, daily sun out-performed competing newspapers because it published stories that were relevant to its market and presented the stories in a reader-friendly manner. viewpoints of media professionals the sample of media professionals interviewed was of the opinion that the business sections of the newspapers targeting the average news consumer were not accessible to this target market because of the way in which the stories were written. in terms of story selection, these newspapers did not focus on issues that were relevant to this market. the senior editors interviewed agreed there was a need to simplify business articles in their publications so that ordinary readers could easily understand them (editor/journalist interviewee 9). on the question whether the business articles published in city press were accessible to the average news consumer, editor/journalist interviewee 11 said, “i don’t think so. our business stories could be made a lot simpler. there are many business stories that talk to blue collar workers and we are not writing about them.” when the same question was put to editor/journalist interviewee 7, the answer was, “what kind of a question is that? of course it is not. it is gibberish to think that local newspapers, especially those that focus on the black/african readership cover business news in a simple way for the man in the street.” editor/journalist interviewee 5 echoed these sentiments, “in my view, educated newspaper readers don’t struggle to understand business news reports that are covered by the different newspapers, but the not so well-educated do. there is a lot of work that needs to be done here to ensure that the local financial press is accessible for the poor reader.” the pursuit by publications, which focus on the country’s poor, to imitate traditional business publications and business supplements is at the centre of this problem. traditional business publications are those newspapers, magazines or supplements that report solely on financial news, such as business day, financial mail, business report and sunday times business times. the editors said the publications that focused on the poor mimic the more traditional business newspapers because these publications had a tendency to “set the agenda” (editor/journalist interviewees 7, 9, 10, 13). on the question of the accessibility of news to the average news reader, editor/ journalist interviewee 13 said, “… where there is any type of financial reporting among these newspapers it is normally rewrites of public relations statements put out by companies”. this participant said the reason these newspapers were struggling to write business stories more simply was they could not afford to employ journalists with the required skills, as these came at a high premium. the participating media practitioners interviewed identified the following factors as contributing to the current state of affairs. 131130 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer relevance of issues the business content that the four newspapers publish was not necessarily relevant to this readership. editor/journalist interviewee 10 said this was because these newspapers were merely “lite versions” of established business papers and supplements. in other words, instead of producing stories that affect the lives of the poor, they reproduce the same business stories published in business day and business report for their readership. this problem was so widespread that some of the journalists said that sowetan and business day reporters attended the same media conferences and wrote stories that were similar, although the reporters served different markets. conflict of business interest the other key challenge that perpetuated the irrelevance of business sections was the “conflict of business interest” that often arose between newspaper executives and advertisers. according to the journalists interviewed for this study, big advertisers often expected a return on investment for the money they spent on advertising in newspapers. some companies went as far as requesting that articles be written about their companies in return for the advertisements they placed in newspapers. this, in turn, kept business relationships alive. the business reporters for city press, sunday world and sowetan reported incidents where editors were prepared to abort business pages over an advertisement and went into print without a business section. lack of a specific business model the publications under discussion that focus on the average news consumer have been unable to compile business sections that have general appeal to their readers because there is no model newspaper among them that has mastered the art. newspapers that cover business news for black readers have mimicked well-established publications, such as business day, financial mail and business report, in their selection of stories and their story treatment. this practice is partly responsible for the fact that there has been no significant improvement in the local coverage of business news for average consumers (editor/journalist interviewee 7, 9, 11, 13). jargon financial reporters battle to explain finance or business terminology in their news reports. the majority of the publications under study carried stories that used business terminology that was not explained to the readers. as stated above, this led to some readers avoiding the business news section. shortage of skilled financial reporters under-resourced newspaper houses, the dearth of experienced financial journalists and the juniorisation of the newsroom (where newspaper managing executives hire inexperienced/junior journalists to take over from experienced journalists) were factors that have led to the disappointing reporting on financial news among publications that focus on black readers. senior editors (editor/journalist interviewees 5, 6, 10, 11, 133132 bongolethu futuse & pedro diederichs 14, 15) noted that the content currently being produced by these publications internally was of “poor quality” and, according to some, the stories were written by journalists who “… do not understand the material they are dealing with”. editor/journalist interviewee 13 said newspaper houses needed to invest more in training future financial journalists, adding that student journalists recruited into financial journalism needed to be competent in mathematics, accounting and economics. copy and paste journalism another factor that contributed to the state of affairs relating to the quality and relevance of business news was business reporters who “copy and paste” media releases and published them without modifying them to highlight story angles that interest their readers. some journalists published media releases verbatim as their own original work without doing any background research to enhance the story, thereby adding value for their readers. suggested solutions having outlined the key challenges facing the business sections of the newspapers that focus on average news consumers, participating editors, business journalists and a financial journalism lecturer proposed the following guidelines, which could be adopted, to improve the way in which the newspapers covered financial news. guideline 1: eliminate financial or economic jargon financial journalists should, at best, write financial stories without using any economic jargon. in instances where this was unavoidable, the journalist should explain the terms. financial journalists who write for average readers should cultivate a habit of writing simply. guideline 2: educate and inform because the average consumer of news tends to have little or no knowledge of financial matters, financial journalists should adopt an educational approach in their stories. financial journalists should not assume that their readers understand the issues. they should be concise and to the point. guideline 3: focus on practical value financial journalists who write for the average news consumer should write stories that are of practical value and stories that seek to empower their readers. topical subjects, such as entrepreneurship, education on savings and investment, interest rates, food prices and inflation, should be explored. these stories should advise readers on where to go to access assistance, should they need it. guideline 4: select stories that impact the lives of the poor business editors should select stories that have a direct impact on the lives of the poor, and write these from the point of view of the poor. some news issues were so 133132 simplifying financial reports for the average news consumer broad that they impacted different people in different ways, but these should be broken down to indicate how the different sectors of society could be affected. guideline 5: use of graphics to explain complex issues editors should think out of the box and come up with strategies that lure readers to the business sections. financial editors and journalists should find creative and innovative ways to explain business stories to their readers in a concise, but clear manner. for instance, daily sun used tip boxes and even comic strips to explain complex stories on subjects such as income tax and bank fraud. guideline 6: write stories around people when writing about complex subjects, such as access to business funding and the challenges faced by south african small, medium and micro enterprises in building their businesses or accessing funding, instead of basing the article on research studies and expert opinion, journalists could, for example, identify successful entrepreneurs and write profile them, showing how they raised funding and met the challenges they faced in building their businesses. guideline 7: focus on local news average consumers preferred locally generated content. local readers related to local stories because they shared similar backgrounds or similar circumstances. guideline 8: answer the ‘so what?’ question financial journalists should provide the average reader with a reason to read business reports, and this should always be a major theme of every business article published. this can be done by publishing business reports that answer the “so what?” question in relation to a particular development or topic. for example, the journalist should explain why the financial crisis in the united states or an economic downgrade affects the economy and the poor. conclusion the purpose of this article was to indicate that business journalism plays a pivotal role in every society. it helps to inform and educate the public on economic issues, government economic policies, business activities and stock market movements. this empowers the public to make informed decisions and to question, where necessary, the government they have voted into power, as well as business authorities. business stories have become more specialised and complex, posing serious challenges to business journalists on how to present their stories in a user-friendly way. an overwhelming majority of average readers who were interviewed for this study held the view that the business sections of sowetan, city press and sunday world were not accessible in their current form as these newspapers used what the participants referred to as “higher grade english” and “confusing business terminology”. key challenges that perpetuated the inaccessibility of business news sections were the 135134 bongolethu futuse & pedro diederichs use of economic jargon, as well as the juniorisation of newsrooms, which has lowered the quality of the business stories published in these newspapers. the majority of the sample of readers perceived daily sun as a model for reporting business for the average news consumer of news. it was considered as a model publication because it used plain language in its business reports, its slant was educational, and it covered stories relevant to its readers. references biz journalism history. 2006. history of business journalism. 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africa’s 2014 general election abstract political engagement through social media is not limited to adults, but there is evidence that young people increasingly use social media for online political participation (yang & dehart 2012). this article highlights some aspects of the role of social media in young people’s political engagement during south africa’s 2014 general election. the uses and gratifications theory, as well as the information society theory, provides the theoretical framework against which the findings are analysed. questionnaires were distributed to 200 students from the university of fort hare. the participants were selected systematically in order to present the university’s population at the time of the study. the results of the study indicate that young people are not apathetic to politics and that the use of social media as part of a political campaign was considered to have a positive effect on young people’s voting decisions. key words: social media; political engagement, political communication; youth; south africa; political participation; uses and gratifications; information society introduction and background social media has had a significant impact on almost all areas of society, including political life. politicians use social media as an effective tool to reach out to potential voters with political campaign messages (baker 2012; chadwick & howard 2010; biswas et al. 2014); while at the same time citizens use social media to access political information, keep abreast of the latest political developments, and engage in the political process (yang & dehart 2016). it is important to note that political engagement through social media is not limited to adults, but that there is evidence that young people increasingly use social media for online political participation (yang & dehart 2012). wei (2016: 180) states that the use of mobile media in making political decisions is becoming popular in many countries. especially younger people are using social networking platforms such as twitter to develop a new biography of citizenship, which is characterised by a more individualised form of activism that yolisa mhlomi postgraduate student, department of communication, university of fort hare (ymhlomi@gmail.com) prof. oluyinka osunkunle department of communication, university of fort hare (oosunkunle@ufh.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 149-158 © ufs mailto:ymhlomi@gmail.com mailto:oosunkunle@ufh.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.12 151150 yolisa mhlomi & oluyinka osunkunle deliberately situates their struggles outside the party political realm. while there is evidence that south african youth may not be participating actively in mainstream party politics, their political participation indicates that they are politically active in different ways (mutsvairo 2016: 163). for example, during the 2015 #feesmustfall campaign and the #rhodesmustfall movement, social media played a crucial role. mukhongo and machaira (2016) argue that social media platforms enable the user to be proactive in the sense that they do not only consume information, but also produce or create content, thus making them drivers of change. allen and light (2015: 1) suggest that social media platforms might have transformed the nature of relationships and the balance of power between political institutions and the youth. this article argues that there is a growing trend amongst young south africans to communicate information about their political engagements using social media platforms. this is contrary to briggs’ (2016) views that political participation is often considered to be a pursuit of older generations. south africa is a young democracy and development will only be possible when citizens are involved and encouraged to participate in political activities, which in turn will lead to the improvement of government policies aimed at developing the country and improving the lives of citizens, especially young people. however, most young people do not realise yet that their right to vote is important for the future of the country. according to milan (2005), young adults are less likely to vote compared to people over the age of 30. during the 2014 general elections in south africa, it became evident that political parties view social media as an important element of their campaigns. the aim of this article is to explore some aspects of young people’s use of social media to engage politically. theoretical framework this article employs the uses and gratifications theory as theoretical framework. the uses and gratifications theory argues that media users seek out a media source that best fulfils their needs and desires. deuze (2011) writes that this theory examines consumer behaviour with regard to new media products and services. it is also used for the description and classification of audience behaviour. deuze (ibid.) further states that there are five basic uses and gratifications that people receive from using the media products, namely, surveillance of the environment, decision-making, entertainment and diversion, and self-understanding. for many young people, social media provides in all five aforementioned areas. to highlight the link between social media and uses and gratifications, matei (2010) says that a medium such as social media or social networking sites will be used as long as the motive for its selection and use gratifies the user and leads to their satisfaction. when applied to the context of this article, this means that politicians will select and use social media for their election campaigns as an important way to reach especially younger members of the voting public. this transactional relationship is mutually beneficial as politicians fulfil their task of reaching voters, while potential voters (in this case, young people on social media) satisfy their need for political information. social media thus affords both parties the opportunity to engage (council of europe 2016). 151150 social media and youth political participation in south africa’s 2014 general election in addition to the uses and gratifications theory, the article is underpinned by the information society theory. considering the nature of the relationship that political parties now have with their voters, these authors argue that the youth are actually practicing the values of a media-society or information society. mcquail (2010: 104) writes that there is an increasing use of technology for communication in society, which is evident in the continuous technological developments in the society. the information society theory is characterised by interactive communication platforms, which allow the potential voter and the political candidate to disseminate information and provide feedback to one another. youth in south africa’s context the national youth policy (2009-2014: 12) describes youth as those between the ages of 14 and 35. this population now comprises the born frees, those people who were born after 1994. it must be noted that apartheid south africa did not provide recognised channels for political participation and this played a significant role in shaping youth people’s political options towards political events and outcomes at the time. the country’s youth was therefore highly politicised during the years of resistance from the mid-1970s. this experience shaped the context for youth participation and also the manner in which they would relate to institutions during the post-apartheid era. this is evident in recent events and protests such as the #feesmustfall campaign and the #rhodesmustfall movement. julianna (2008) argues that the political context of the local environment, as well as the level of education, determines the level of youth participation in political events. according to swartz and arnot (2014: 2), lack of schooling contributes to young people’s exclusion from civic privileges and democratic participation. the south africa youth population comprises significant differences across the social strata. for instance, rural, poverty-stricken and unemployed youth do not have the same access to social media that has become prominent in africa. however, southern africa has witnessed a significant growth in access to mobile communication and, more recently, the expansion of mobile internet has introduced a variety of affordable messaging genres. mobile instant messaging and chat platforms can be considered platforms for political participation; this involves new political players with the role of both gate openers and gatekeepers to content and participation on social media sites. political participation amongst the youth political participation is defined as the actions by members of a population aimed at influencing the decisions of government officials, such as voting in elections, meeting with community members, communicating with political representatives, and involvement in co-operative action such as strikes (resnick & thurlow 2015). as mentioned earlier, south african youth have never been passive when it comes to various forms of activism in communities. apart from physical protests, young people are increasingly active on social networking sites to develop a new biography of citizenship that is not passive but engaging towards ensuring development. in essence, this is what participation is all about, allowing people to take part in decisionmaking on issues that affect them, and providing platforms for debate on such issues 153152 yolisa mhlomi & oluyinka osunkunle towards solving problems and ensuring development. this should be the case in any democratic system as citizens have the right to voice their opinions to capture the attention of policy makers towards addressing events or topical issues in the public sphere (briggs 2016). political participation has three prominent features, namely voting attendance of national elections, partisan attachments, which is the feeling of closeness and loyalty by members of a party, as well as protest activities, which are usually a way to show dissatisfaction by members of the community to their leaders (utter 2011). it can be argued that participating in politics through social media supplements the traditional behaviour of participation, rather than replacing it, especially amongst young people. for an example, over the course of the 2008 presidential election in the united states, adolescents who engaged in political activities on social networking sites were likely to engage in offline partisan events, and politically oriented social media use predicted growth in offline participation over the course of the election cycle. in addition, research has shown that viewing candidates’ pages on social networks appears to increase political effectiveness and engagement. while there are some notable exceptions, research has found positive implications of social media use on political participation (utter 2011: 55). political campaigning amongst the youth is another important aspect. resnick and thurlow (2015: 1) argue that the importance of campaigning amongst young people is based on the notion that as much as young people are considered to be agents of change, they are also seen as a lost generation who have a narrow mind-set that is based on their economic vulnerability. social media campaigns politicians have recognised the potential of canvassing through the internet. therefore, the simple brochure information model paved the way for a new model whereby candidates are able to influence traditionally isolated voters (for instance, younger voters), and communicate with possible groups of voters and provide them with a platform to become involved in campaigns (utter 2011: 55). in terms of social media and modern political campaigns, there are four distinctive patterns of emergent campaign practices that have been facilitated by digital and social media, namely microtargeting, personalisation, interactivity, and sustained engagement (ridout 2013: 85). micro-targeting of voters is fuelled by advances in communication and database technology, through which campaigns can now target certain people with specific information. by doing this, campaigns have a better chance of appealing to the specific issues that are most important to different voters. for example, campaigns have created targeted websites that focus on a certain voter demographic, such as students, the elderly, catholics, etc. (ibid.). the aim here is to reach out to the public and get them to like and, subsequently, vote for the party. the second trend of modern campaigns relates to the personalisation of politics, which involves a growing trend in political campaigns to depoliticise politics. this is where candidates use niche media, such as biographies, comedy talk shows and 153152 social media and youth political participation in south africa’s 2014 general election other casual media to promote information about the personality of the candidate. this trend can be extended to the types of information disclosed on social media. it brings about a connection between voters and the candidate, which can lead to increased political support and participation (utter 2011: 55). the third aspect that campaigns are embracing is increased interactivity. networkbased technological advances allow voters to communicate directly with the campaigns and get additional control over their involvement. initially, interactivity took the form of asynchronous messaging between voters and campaign staff, for example, voters emailing a campaign office or posting on a campaign website and staff responding later to the issues posted to them. in this period, candidates often avoided online interaction with voters because they feared they would lose control over the campaign messaging. however, through social media this strategy provides voters with realtime communication with the campaign. candidates are no longer seen as just faces on the television, but as people with whom voters interact. when done successfully, supporters will develop a sense of community and connectedness with the candidate and fellow supporters (ridout 2013: 85). the fourth aspect is sustained engagement, where candidates maintain the connection with their supporters or party members through the use of networking sites (ridout 2013: 86). this means that voters are now able to engage with would-be office holders and policy-makers as they map a way forward towards a successful government that will prioritise the development of the citizens. the general belief is that pre-election communication should be sustained after the election to provide the electorate with the opportunity to be involved in their own development as they are allowed to communicate their views and opinions through the same channels as during the campaigning period. this engagement is essential for the citizens or voters, as they have gained a sense of trust in the candidate they voted for, and because they had the opportunity to communicate directly with the candidate during the campaign period, a connectedness was created with him or her as a person. social media therefore provides politicians and the electorate with a sustained and fitting platform where they go beyond the campaigning or pre-election period to the post-election era where the citizens are able to express their opinions and views on certain issues of concern to the society or their communities (lileker 2013). south africa’s political generations south africa’s post-apartheid society consists of five different political generations. while all south africans were shaped by the dominant trends within each era, they were also affected in different ways depending on their racial classification. the first generation is the pre-apartheid generation. this is the oldest and smallest group. the pre-apartheid generation reached their politically formative years before the historic victory of the national party (np) in the 1948 election and the burden of the system of racial classification and segregation. while this unit still constituted a significant proportion of the electorate in 1994, they have since shrunk to less than two percent of all voters (mattes 2012: 137). 155154 yolisa mhlomi & oluyinka osunkunle the second generation is the early apartheid generation. this group include persons who turned 16 between 1948 and 1960, meaning that they have no working memory of life before the rise of the np and the imposition of legislation enforcing racial classification and separation. although this generation would have had some experiences with various forms of popular protest against apartheid, such as bus boycotts, pass protests, the kliptown congress and the creation of the freedom charter, almost all of these protests were planned to plea to the scruples of more rational fragments of white opinion to affect political reorganisation (meredith 2010). the third generation is the grand apartheid generation, consisting of those who turned 16 between 1961 and 1975. their early memories are filled with the stirrings of internal black resistance, such as the poco uprising, the marches that led to the sharpeville massacre in 1960 and foreign news of gathering decolonisation, and even kenya’s mau-mau rebellion. this generation’s memories of late adolescence and early adulthood also carry the recollection of the post-sharpeville reaction of the np government, which banned all black political movements and imprisoned prominent leaders such as nelson mandela, walter sisulu and oliver tambo (mattes 2012: 137). however, white confidence and african quiescence came to an abrupt end in 1976 with the rise of the black consciousness movement and the soweto uprising, an event that ushered in the struggle generation, consisting of people who turned 16 between 1976 and 1996 (mattes 2012: 137). the principal theme of this era was violent resistance and reaction (mattes 2012: 138). the fifth generation is the born free generation. the generation is exposed to an entirely diverse world, which differs completely from that of their parents. they are not constrained by any boundaries as to where they can go, work or live, and which race they may date or marry. they consume news provided by a reformed public broadcaster and have access to privately-owned radio and television broadcast news, as well as to satellite television and social media. this period also witnessed the rapid expansion of a new black middle class (mattes 2012: 138). methodology a quantitative research approach was followed in this study. two-hundred questionnaires were distributed to gather information from a sample of randomly selected youths, who are students at the university of fort hare’s alice campus. the students served as the target population. data was analysed quantitatively and presented through charts, mostly using simple percentages. ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the university research and ethics committee (urec) at the university of fort hare and individual consent was obtained from the participants. systematic sampling was used, which involves that the elements of the population are listed and every nth element on the list is chosen (systematically) for inclusion in the sample (beiske 2007). information obtained from the university student admission office indicated that the population of fort hare students in the year 2014 was 8536. a list of student numbers was obtained and participants were contacted via email. in this manner, 40 students were selected from each level of study: first years, second years, 155154 social media and youth political participation in south africa’s 2014 general election third years, fourth years and postgraduate students, which brought the total to 200 participants. the choice to select participants from the different levels of study was to ensure the participation of different age groups from 18 to 30 years. the questionnaire covered different aspects in terms of the effects of social media in the political decisions taken by these respondents during south africa’s 2014 general elections. issues, such as the forms of social media they were exposed to, and how and if social media succeeded in changing their perspectives, were examined. all 200 questionnaires were returned. the respondents were not required to fill any personal details, such as name or student number, and their participation was voluntary. data analysis age distribution from the 200 questionnaires distributed and received back for analysis, 20 respondents (10%) were in the 17 to 19 year age bracket, 146 (75%) in the 20 to 25 year age bracket, and 34 (17%) in the 26 to 30 year age bracket. gender distribution the gender distribution consisted of 72 (36%) females and 128 (64%) males. level of study of the 200 respondents, 48 (24%) were first-year students, 42 (21%) second-year students, 54 (27%) third-year students, 24 (12%) fourth-year students, and 32 (16%) postgraduate students. access to the internet and use of social media when asked about access to the internet, and specifically how they preferred to access political information, 70 (35%) of the 200 students indicated that they used mobile phones, 40 (20%) used smartphones, 28 (14%) used tablets, 38 (19%) used personal laptops and 24 (12%) used computers in the university’s computer laboratories. this question sought to establish the various social networks that were most accessible for the youth to engage politically. a total of 106 (53%) of the respondents used facebook for engagement, 46 (23%) respondents used youtube, while 48 (24%) used a combination of channels to expand their political information. social media’s impact on voting here, the respondents were asked whether they considered social media effective in engaging the masses in campaigning and elections. most of the respondents indicated that they considered social media effective as a way to engage large groups of people, based on their experience during political campaigning in the run-up to the 2014 elections. of the 200 respondents, 76 (35%) strongly agreed that social media was effective in engaging citizens, and 82 (41%) agreed, while 28 (14%) disagreed, and 14 (7%) strongly disagreed with the statement that social media was effective in engaging citizens. 157156 yolisa mhlomi & oluyinka osunkunle social media’s influence in choosing a political party and political engagement when asked to comment on whether social media influenced their decision in the process of choosing a political organisation to lead the country, the participants responded as follows: 126 (63%) answered “yes”, 40 (20%) answered “no”, and 34 (17%) were “not sure”. when asked about their view on social media as a form of political communication, 152 (76%) respondents indicated that they perceived social media as having a positive effect on political engagement with young people, while 48 (24%) of the respondents indicated that they viewed the internet as a negative channel for political engagement. voting participation in terms of the 2014 general elections, 152 (76%) of the respondents indicated that they voted in the elections, while 48 (24%) did not vote. motivating factors for voting of the 200 participants, 38 (19%) indicated that their voting decision was influenced by information on social media, 108 (54%) based their voting decision on the history of a specific political organisation; 20 (10%) indicated that they were influenced by their families, friends and the community, and 34 (17%) said that they were resistant to political engagements. discussion and conclusion it is evident from the findings that social media campaigns play an important role in political campaigns and most respondents confirmed that they accessed information online during the 2014 elections. this is in line with the findings that most of the respondents have access to the internet and are active users. incorporating social media into a political campaign or political communication strategy, especially to reach young people, is thus a crucial element. respondents indicated that, in their experience, social media made it possible for voters to engage with policy makers, be involved in their own development, and enabled them to communicate their views and opinions through the same channels during the campaigning period. most of the respondents indicated that they considered social media the best way to engage young people politically. the participants were also asked to indicate what they view as threats or opportunities for using social media as a tool for political engagement. most of the respondents were of the view that social media contributed towards facilitating political activities, rather than inhibiting these activities. this is partly attributed to transparency in information dissemination. however, some participants indicated that social media also has the potential to be harmful as reputations can be destroyed. it was the view of most of the respondent that political parties’ use of social media and the information posted online were motivating factors for them to be in interested in politics, the campaign process, as well as the desire to vote. 157156 social media and youth political participation in south africa’s 2014 general election although small, this study serves as indication that social media is of special interest for political campaigns and political communicators in reaching and engaging with young people. this ties in with the findings of yang and dehart (2016) that social media provides an effective platform for the youth be involved in political engagement, considering their availability 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deaf culture; cultural identities; south african sign language; subculture introduction ours is a shrinking world where people from different countries or regions share products, world views and ideas, and frequently cross international borders to work, study or travel (dong et al. 2008: 29). in a multicultural society such as south africa, people are often exposed to various cultures from within the country itself as well as from around africa, europe, asia and beyond. moreover, communication technologies have also made it easier for individuals to socialise with people from other countries and cultures. for these reasons, intercultural communication skills play an important role in our society. intercultural communication “involves interaction between people whose cultural perceptions and symbols’ system differ enough to influence the communication event” (samovar et al. 2013). as this definition suggests, culture influences the rules we use to communicate and the way we avela ntsongelwa postgraduate student, department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (ntsongelwaa@ufs.ac.za) prof. milagros riverasánchez department of communication science university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (riveram@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 165-177 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ntsongelwaa@ufs.ac.za mailto:riveram@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 167166 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez interpret words, gestures and situations (zhijing 2009: 6). therefore, we can conclude that each cultural group perceives reality differently. a person usually belongs to more than one cultural group (scollen & scollen 2001: 170). for example, the participants of this study are from different religions, races and ethnicities; they also speak different languages and have different cultural and geographical backgrounds. each of those differences creates a potential cultural grouping that can bring people together or separate them. where there is a dominant culture there will likely be subcultures. corte (2012: 56) says, “a subculture is an aggregate of individuals who have a similar style, values and taste”. typically, when we think of people from different cultures, we think of people from different races, ideologies, affiliations, regions or countries. this is not accurate. for instance, this study’s participants included hearing and deaf students. from an intercultural communication perspective, the hearing students would be considered members of a dominant culture while the deaf students would be considered as members of a subculture (sun 2013: 75). the significant difference between the hearing and the deaf culture is that the hearing culture uses spoken language, which is auditory and linear in nature (mcguire 1992: 34). people belonging to this culture are considered as having hearingcentred identities (overstreet 1999: 6). on the other hand, the deaf culture in south africa uses south african sign language, which involves facial gestures, and various body and hand movements. the speakers involved in the interaction also use the area around them to express meaning (university of the witwatersrand 2018). grushkin (2017: 508) also says that signing “may appear to be occurring in time and space, with multiple syntactic and semantic elements embedded within the movements and facial/ body grammar”. these differences in language highlight some of the key differences between the hearing culture and the deaf subculture. this study set out to investigate the way hearing and deaf students communicate and develop working and social relationships at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, south africa. centred on the cultural identities of the deaf subculture and the hearing culture, the study specifically explored how these two groups interact and how they perceive each other in the context of intercultural communication. the ultimate goal of the study was to suggest strategies that might assist in improving the quality of intercultural communication between these two communities. for the purpose of this study, the use of the word “deaf” refers to hearing loss that prevents the receiver of a message from hearing or understanding speech or sounds (farmer et al. 2006: 119-122). theoretical framework theoretically, the study was guided by the identity negotiation theory, which explains how one’s identity is negotiated, co-created, reinforced and challenged in an intercultural communication context (tu 2005: 36). according to ting-toomey (2015: 1), “the term negotiation in the identity negotiation theory refers to the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages between the two or more communicators in maintaining, 167166 intercultural communication between deaf and hearing students threatening, or uplifting the various socio-cultural group-based or unique personalbased identity images of the other”. when people are involved in intercultural communication, they find themselves in an unfamiliar space. it may be that the language is unfamiliar or the social norms and the value systems are foreign. ting-toomey (2015: 5) emphasises how individuals experience “identity emotional security in a culturally familiar environment and identity emotional vulnerability in a culturally unfamiliar environment”. moreover, when individuals from different cultures communicate they create a new culture within which both individuals negotiate their identities in order to fit in (tu 2005: 37). the third culture, according to mcguire (1992: 16), “forms a bridge between the different cultures”. useem and useem (1967) define the third culture as “cultural patterns created, learned and shared by the members of different societies who are personally involved in relating their societies, or sections to each other”. the third culture acts as a bridge that assists individuals to adapt their own culture and enables interaction with the other culture (lyttle 2009: 60). literature overview intercultural communication involves the coming together of people who are culturally different and how they deal with their differences while attempting to communicate (sun 2013: 75). although there are many factors that mark cultures as different, scholars such as oommen (2013), san antonio and ofori-dwumfuo (2015), stewart and wright (2015), chang et al. (2016), mulaudzi (2006) and ballard (2014) have focused on religion, cross-cultural communication, identity and language. religion is a form of social identity. however, for many people it constitutes a culture as it provides its faithful with a set of values, beliefs and guidelines on ways of behaving that are acceptable or unacceptable (samovar et al. 2013: 57). a study by oommen (2013) found that having a strong religious identity could negatively affect a person involved in intercultural communication. this is because intercultural communication is in essence about the unfamiliarity and dissimilarity between people and how they navigate these differences to communicate (gudykunst 1995). a message that goes against a person’s beliefs affects a person’s mental wellbeing and their ability to communicate successfully during an intercultural interaction (oommen 2013: 119). in a university setting, being able to communicate with people from different cultures is a key skill. a study by san antonio and ofori-dwumfuo (2015) found that one of the biggest communication challenges affecting domestic and international living-learning students at an american university was a lack of cultural understanding. the findings of the study suggested that the difficulties to communicate among students was a result of cultural differences, cognitive development, cultural maturity and self-perception (san antonio & ofori-dwumfuo 2015: 135-136). senyshyn and chamberlin-quinlisk (2009) and stewart and wright (2014) further explored the intercultural communication interactions of tertiary students. in their study, senyshyn and chamberlin-quinlisk (2009) found that students experienced nervousness and anxiety before interacting with students from another culture. because of their interactions, many of the students 169168 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez experienced behavioural changes, such as becoming better listeners, gaining in selfconfidence and becoming more comfortable in openly expressing their opinions. the findings of the study indicated that because of the intercultural interactions, students gained knowledge about themselves, the communities they belonged to, and the world (senyshyn & chamberlin-quinlisk 2009: 171-175). in a study involving japanese and malaysian students, stewart and wright (2015: 67) found that “exchanges between students from the two different cultures improved their knowledge about each other’s culture”. another important dimension of this study was whether or not students were knowledgeable about the other culture. the study found that students’ lack of cultural knowledge led to miscommunication (stewart & wright 2015: 68). when speaking about culture one cannot ignore identity. some studies on interracial adoptions highlight identity, culture and communication as themes. in one such study, chang et al. (2016) looked at chinese adoptees’ cross-cultural adaptation and identity formation. while adapting to a new culture, transracial adoptees went through a three-stage process characterised by acceptance of the cultural, racial and historical differences between them and their adoptive parents; prejudice from the society which they lived in because of their physical differences; and the uncertainty of meeting their birth parents and how that could affect their identity (chang et al. 2016: 4). focusing on the adoptive families, the findings of the study showed that the adoptees’ identity was built by their interaction with their birth and adoptive families. because of their physical differences, adoptees were usually viewed as outsiders in the communities where they lived. this usually motivated them to connect with their birth culture. the study found that upon reuniting with their birth parents, adoptees had trouble with regard to language and cultural norms (chang et al. 2016: 3-7). of all the factors impacting intercultural communications, mulaudzi (2006) and banytė and inčiūrienė (2012) highlight language as the most obvious difference between cultures. grammar can also be a differentiator in language (banytė & inčiūrienė 2012: 180-181). the results of a study done in lithuania indicated that the majority of respondents thought that learning the country’s language could improve intercultural communication and contribute to learning more about the country’s culture (banytė & inčiūrienė 2012: 183). in more intimate relationships the question of language and how it affects communication is even more critical. ballard (2014) found that deaf-hearing couples needed to be aware of their communication issues because a high percentage of these marriages failed (ballard 2014: 7-8). however, another scholar who also studied the dynamics of deaf-hearing and deaf-deaf couples had a different take on intercultural couples. measuring subjective levels of marital adjustment, renalds’ (2011) study on intercultural marriages found that one of the major challenges in these relationships was language fluency. the participants of the study were in agreement that understanding their partner’s language was very important for the survival of the marriage (renalds 2011: 74-75). ultimately, language is a product of a specific culture and for that reason it can be the cause of miscommunication between people from different cultures 169168 intercultural communication between deaf and hearing students (mulaudzi 2006: 220-221) regardless of the relationship that binds them. this is why language plays an important role during intercultural communication. as little research has been done on the dynamics of deaf-hearing non-romantic relationships, this study focused on the social and work-oriented interactions between deaf and hearing students in a tertiary education setting in south africa. methodology this is a qualitative study and it made use of in-depth interviews for data collection. a combination of purposive and snowball sampling was used to select the participants. the sample population of the study was made up of three deaf students, from a total number of nine deaf students, who attended the university of the free state. for each deaf student, three hearing students were purposively identified and interviewed. this number was chosen to ensure that the researcher could reach saturation point and because in real terms, hearing students vastly outnumbered deaf ones at the university. the researchers obtained clearance from the university’s ethics committee to interview the participants (ethics clearance number ufs-hsd2017/0581). a thematic analysis was the method chosen to analyse the data. results and discussion the purpose of this study was to explore the daily intercultural interactions between deaf and hearing students and how they perceived each other. the ultimate goal was to find strategies that could assist students during these interactions. ten of the participants were from the faculty of humanities, one was from the faculty of economic and management sciences and the final student was from the faculty of natural and agricultural science. seven hearing students were in their final year of study, two hearing and one deaf student were completing their postgraduate studies, and two of the deaf students were in their first year. the participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 24, and of the eleven participants two were male and nine were female. seven of the nine hearing participants have some ability to sign. all nine deaf students registered at the university were approached to participate in the study, but six declined. in this study, the hearing students are referred to as hs, hearing students who have a basic understanding of sign language are referred to as hss, and deaf students are referred to as ds. the researchers were able to identify five themes arising from the interviews. they were learning and understanding language as an important element in sustaining social and working relationships; the use of technology when communicating with the deaf; perception as a barrier between deaf and hearing students; the isolation of the deaf community on campus; and culture as the underlying factor during deaf-hearing interaction on campus. 171170 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez learning and understanding language as an important element in sustaining social and working relationships south african sign language (sasl) is one of south africa’s official languages. being a multicultural society, one can assume that most south africans understand the importance of language in the south african context. for instance, some of the participants were keenly aware that most hearing people are ignorant about sasl. in this study, participants from both communities felt that exposing hearing students to sign language was a means to bridge the gap between hearing and deaf students. “we need to spend more time together, socialise more, learn more signs, ’cause [sic] if i were to teach them signs and we are not together a lot, then they will forget. but if we are together more then it will be easier.” – ds1 “it’s possible to start with just meeting and writing and realising that a person is deaf and then [they] realis[e] that they might want to learn sign language. [because] we have many sign language classes, they can be involved in any of those…” – ds2 hearing student nine (hs9) felt that it was the responsibility of the hearing students to learn sasl because the hearing culture is the dominant culture. “[learning sign language] actually accommodates the deaf more and in a sense you get to understand or you get to gain much more insight into their perception and how one communicates in terms of the deaf culture.” – hss9 six of the hearing students who had taken sasl classes felt that learning the dialects of sign language was important in improving communication with their deaf friends and classmates. “i think the main thing is getting to learn the different dialects of sign language because there are dialects that we use in bloemfontein that’s [sic] different from what we would use in johannesburg or durban. so it’s really important to know your different dialects… and also new signs; you need to be in touch with the deaf community. for example, three years ago selfie was not a sign; now it’s a sign. so as technology improves… new signs are invented…” – hss2 hearing students suggested that nonverbal communication could also be perceived as noise in the deaf culture. the quotes below illustrate how the body, clothing and attention to physical and spatial attributes in the environment can be a source of interference when conversing with a deaf student. “it’s very important when you are signing with a person, you should not have… jewellery, hand bands, rings, chains. your makeup should be subtle, neutral makeup… [be]cause it’s very distracting. so like instead of the deaf person watching you they [are] gonna [sic] be watching your hair colour, your patterns… [that] mixes with your signs…” – hss2 “it’s very important; it’s actually the core of sign language. when you [are] talking to them [deaf students] you have to maintain eye contact, ‘cause [sic] if you look away it means you are angry … or something offended you…” – hss3 171170 intercultural communication between deaf and hearing students the use of technology when communicating with the deaf technological innovations such as whatsapp and facebook messenger have contributed to facilitating communication among people around the world. the researchers found that some of the hearing participants made use of technology to communicate more effectively with their deaf friends and classmates. deaf students felt that technology could offer better communication opportunities. deaf and hearing participants recognised this. “it actually helps; i think… it’s important. it works for me because i don’t know how i would do it… if whatsapp was not there. they respond immediately. thus far i have not encountered any problems when it comes to my messages with them like they are able to get what i am saying, respond back…” – hs1 “at times you know, i don’t have any basic way of really illustrating it, or for example she cannot read my lips, or i don’t really know how to illustrate with my hands so whatsapp does give me that option to… communicate.” – hs8 “there are many ways for us to communicate with the hearing world, there is [sic] videos, tablets, there is technology, there is [sic] lots of ways. we live in a technological world [and] there is [sic] lots of ways to communicate with the hearing world.” – ds2 perception as a barrier between deaf and hearing when people from two different cultures interact there are bound to be some communication difficulties. often these difficulties arise because of our history and experiences. when dealing with communication you cannot ignore the influence of perception. this was evident from the participants’ responses, which suggested that they had pre-existing assumptions about the other culture and their interest in connecting and interacting. “most hearing people are not involved in the deaf community and deaf things, our socialisation. they don’t even try to say hello, they just see she is deaf [they don’t bother it is just] bye. we will teach them signs, how to day hello, and then tomorrow they just forget.” – ds2 “i feel like they are an exclusive group and you have to really be part of, i don’t know. it’s an exclusive group and if they don’t include you, you can’t really say you are part of the deaf community … but i don’t feel like they accept me as part of their community since i dropped out [of the sign language class].” – hss3 “i think that people should move away from this notion that deaf people are not intelligent. deaf people are the same as you and me, it’s just that they … use their hands to talk.” – hss6 “well because we as hearing people we will never understand their way of living, because you have to remember back in the olden days they were not as much [sic] job opportunities for them… there was oppression against them, they were separated from the normal hearing people.” – hss6 173172 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez the isolation of the deaf community on campus besides being culturally different, deaf and hearing students occupy two distinct spaces on campus. hearing students have access to a multitude of facilities across the university, while deaf students have spaces specifically designated for their use, where they receive additional support so that they can succeed academically. the hearing participants discussed how laboratories that were meant to support deaf students are actually a barrier to interacting with hearing students. “the majority of campus is hearing so they [deaf students] don’t have enough friends that they can participate [in regular activities] with… i don’t feel there are enough people of their own on this campus… because we are hearing people and we do our own stuff.” – hss6 “i want to make the deaf people feel like they still part of the south african demographic, because not everything accommodates them…” – hss3 “because now in our university they have their own unit; they either spend time at the unit or at the sign lab because that is where they are. but if a hearing student could just go to the sign lab that would be better… that in my opinion may not be helping in uniting students ‘cause [sic] hearing students don’t actually interact with deaf students unless in class or at residences.” – hss5 culture as the underlying factor during deaf-hearing interactions on campus the participants in the study were aware of their cultural differences. hearing students understood that deaf students belonged to a different culture and that the deaf culture had its own language and ways of living. this is illustrated by the quotes below. “i feel like it’s a culture clash… it’s like with every different culture they have like their own rules, their own values, their own beliefs and i feel like we clash a lot because they are more direct, they are very direct.” – hss3 “because for you to be part of the deaf culture you have to be deaf or hard of hearing, but you can be a part of the deaf community by speaking their language, but that is as far as it goes.” – hss5 “because we have a good relationship, it does not matter where we stay, where we live, there is a good relationship between deaf people, worldwide.” – ds2 ds2 further elaborated on how she belonged to more than one cultural group: “i have two cultures, i have the deaf culture and also i have the xhosa culture. my family is xhosa so it’s a little bit difficult for them to understand, so we use our home sign language. so sometimes it’s confusing if both of my cultures mix. and also there is so many different cultures, my culture, [the] deaf culture has a lot of elements, a lot of rules, a lot of concepts and the hearing people they have a lot of different cultures, their own jokes, their own ways of communicating.” – ds2 ds2 was aware of the fact that while deaf students constitute a strong culture, she still operates in the larger, dominant hearing culture: “when i came to the university nobody signed, but i … tried to adjust and to fit into the hearing world, because the world is big; it’s not a deaf world.” – ds2 173172 intercultural communication between deaf and hearing students conclusion this study sought to understand the intercultural communication challenges between students from the deaf subculture and those from the hearing culture. specifically, the researchers sought to gain insight into the work and social interactions between members of the two communities and ultimately suggest possible strategies that could assist in improving the quality of their intercultural communication. the interviews with the participants indicated that deaf students at the university interacted with hearing students, mostly in class and during on-campus residence activities, but they did not take part in off-campus social or co-curricular activities that involved the rest of the student community. the reason for the deaf students’ lack of participation was that most hearing students do not know how to sign. therefore, interactions between the two cultures would require an interpreter. the absence of an interpreter would leave deaf students depending on lip-reading or mobile technologies, such as whatsapp, or paper to communicate. this would put deaf students in a vulnerable position in a cultural environment that is foreign to them. the most effective way to improve communication, therefore, would be for more hearing students to take a sasl class. interestingly, hearing students felt that it was difficult to become part of the deaf community unless they were actively taking a sasl class. however, once the class was finished, the activities in which deaf and hearing students could interact became extremely limited. deaf students, on the other hand, felt that hearing students were scared of communicating with them because of the unfamiliar language. as can be ascertained from the previous discussion, language proved to be the biggest barrier between deaf and hearing students. six of the hearing students who participated in the study were majoring in south african sign language as a subject. however, they also agreed that issues such as vocabulary acquisition and the various dialects often contributed to misunderstandings during communication between hearing and deaf students. the majority of the participants felt that hearing students should take the initiative to learn sasl. the university offers a year course for first year students that includes a unit in sasl; however, given the level of dexterity required to master sasl, this initiative is not likely to lead to greater communication effectiveness between hearing and deaf students. ultimately, most of the participants (hearing and deaf) felt that the language barrier could be contributing to the isolation of deaf students on campus. students from both the hearing and the deaf culture felt that technology could be leveraged more to assist in bridging communication between the two communities. the hearing participants, especially those who could not sign or had limited sign dexterity, noted their appreciation of technologies in contributing to the formation of social relationships with their deaf classmates. the findings also revealed the isolation of deaf students at the university. hearing students felt that the physical separation of the two communities led to their inability to socialise with deaf students on a regular basis. the centre for universal access and 175174 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez disability support (cuads) at the university and the sign language laboratories were seen as facilities that, while important in supporting deaf students, also hindered the opportunity for the hearing to interact with the deaf because these facilities are only accessible to deaf or sasl students. the participants were aware of their cultural differences and the important role that culture played during their interactions. for example, some students were aware that communication difficulties were often a result of both language and culture differences. one of the deaf participants (ds2) highlighted the importance of understanding the cultural differences that exist between deaf and hearing students. the participant highlighted how she belonged to more than one cultural group and how this factor was sometimes challenging during communication because of the different rules that govern each culture. the findings indicated that during communication between the deaf and hearing students, identity negotiation did occur. according to ting-toomey (2015: 1), “the term negotiation in the identity negotiation theory refers to the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages between the two or more communicators in maintaining, threatening, or uplifting the various socio-cultural group-based or unique personalbased identity images of the other”. in this study it was evident that participants were aware of their cultural group membership. they understood that they belonged to either the deaf or the hearing community and when referring to the other group they would often say “they”. the participants were also aware of the culture the deaf belonged to. this is evident in a response by a hearing participant (hs4), “it’s like with every different culture, they [deaf students] have like their own rules, their own values, their own beliefs…”. ting-toomey (2015: 5) also states, “individuals tend to experience identity emotional security in a culturally familiar environment”. this was evident as some of the deaf respondents indicated that they preferred the company of people from their own culture. ds2 stated, “[b]ecause we have a good relationship, it does not matter where we stay, where we live, there is a good relationship between deaf people, worldwide”. hs3, on the other hand, opined that the cultural differences were too much for her, that “i feel like it’s a culture clash. we… it’s like with every different culture they have like their own rules, their own values, their own beliefs and i feel like we clash a lot because they are more direct, they are very direct. i don’t know if there is a term for what they are, it’s overly direct…”. this response showed the student’s discomfort with the uncertainty she faced when communicating with deaf classmates. it is important to note that deaf students on campus preferred to use the facilities at cuads or the sign language laboratories, which were viewed by many of the hearing participants as a factor that contributed to the deaf students’ isolation. the fact that most of the deaf students on campus prefer to spend time in these segregated spaces, rather than accessing facilities open to all students, suggests they feel more comfortable with members of their own culture. this is supported by ting-toomey’s (2015) work, which indicates that people tend to be more comfortable in environments that are culturally familiar and that they may feel vulnerable in unfamiliar cultural spaces (ting-toomey 2015: 5). in essence, we communicate with the desire to form meaningful relationships, and these relationships are usually formed with people who 175174 intercultural communication between deaf and hearing students belong to, or understand, our culture (ibid.). this was evident in this study, especially from the deaf participants’ perspective. the deaf students were isolated from the rest of the student population and did not really perceive the hearing students as their friends. this could be because of the unfamiliar cultural space they find themselves in during classes or when working on class projects. as discussed earlier, when different cultures interact, they form a third culture. this culture acts as a bridge, which enables culturally different individuals to interact (lyttle 2009: 60). the existence of this third culture was evident in hs6’s response, “…to be part of the deaf culture you have to be deaf or hard of hearing, but you can be a part of the deaf community by speaking their language but that is as far as it goes”. hs6 was of the opinion that the basis of interaction between the two groups was only dependent on understanding the deaf culture’s language and that deeper social relationships between deaf and hearing students were not possible. in terms of identity negotiation, ting-toomey (2015: 5) states that a “competent identity negotiation process emphasizes the importance of integrating the necessary intercultural identity-based knowledge, mindfulness, and interaction, skills to communicate appropriately, effectively, and adaptively with culturally dissimilar others”. this is an area that needs further exploration. nonetheless, the authors are of the view that the university could create more opportunities between students from both cultures so that they can more freely and frequently interact with one another and develop a greater level of comfort with each other. this could be achieved through, at least initially, a currently required first-year module that includes sasl and more co-curricular activities that actively involve deaf students and students who know, or are interested in learning sasl. the researchers also recommend that the university consider the idea of introducing sasl to the broader university community as both a medium of instruction and a conversational subject. this is important as language was seen as a major barrier between the deaf and hearing students. limitations of the study and suggestions for future research the study was limited by the small number of deaf students at the university. out of a population of nine deaf students, the researchers were able to recruit only three. the researchers encountered significant resistance from older deaf students; therefore, the views of the deaf students presented in this study may be skewed and are probably not representative of the views of deaf students who, for instance, might be in their final year of study. moreover, as two of the three deaf students in the study were in their first year, they might still be trying to adapt to the larger university hearing culture and their views are likely to change as they acculturate to university life. moreover, as seven of the nine hearing students who participated in the study had taken sasl, it is possible that the findings of this study would have been different had some of the participants not known sasl or had some familiarity with the deaf culture and language. 177176 ntsongelwa & rivera-sánchez it should also be noted that the researchers were limited when directly communicating with the deaf students as the researchers did not have the ability to sign. thus, they had to use an interpreter during interviews and this might have led the researchers to miss important nonverbal cues that would have been apparent had they been conversant in sasl. nonetheless, this study is an important first step to begin interrogating university policies that could impede building a more inclusive environment between hearing and deaf students. a future study could explore if the findings of this study resonate with the experiences of hearing and deaf students at other south african universities. such a study could also include more hearing students, non-conversant in sasl, and explore their perceptions of deaf students and how these hearing students interact with members of an unfamiliar culture. references ballard, m.b. 2014. communication and longevity in deaf-hearing marriage. unpublished master’s dissertation. gonzaga university. banytė, i. & inčiūrienė, r. 2012. intercultural communication in higher education institutions. language in different contexts/kalba ir kontekstai 5(1): 178-188. chang, c.c., chen, z.j. & chatham-carpenter, a. 2016. constructing and negotiating identity in “birth culture”: an intercultural communication approach. china media research 12(1): 3-13. corte, u. 2012. subcultures and small groups: a social movement theory approach. unpublished doctoral thesis. uppsala 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[online]. available at: http://www.witslanguageschool.com/newsroom/articleview/ tabid/180/articleid/101/fast-facts-about-south-african-sign-language.aspx [accessed on 30 june 2018]. useem, j. & useem, r. 1967. the interfaces of a binational third culture: a study of the american community in india. journal of social issues 23(1): 130-143. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00567.x zhijing, c.l. 2009. intercultural communication: barriers and solutions. research paper. university of wisconsin-platteville. https://doi.org/10.1080/17404620903232529 http://www.witslanguageschool.com/newsroom/articleview/tabid/180/articleid/101/fast-facts-about-south-african-sign-language.aspx%20%5baccessed%20on%2030%20june%202018 http://www.witslanguageschool.com/newsroom/articleview/tabid/180/articleid/101/fast-facts-about-south-african-sign-language.aspx%20%5baccessed%20on%2030%20june%202018 http://www.witslanguageschool.com/newsroom/articleview/tabid/180/articleid/101/fast-facts-about-south-african-sign-language.aspx%20%5baccessed%20on%2030%20june%202018 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00567.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00567.x 75pb applied theatre as an alternative communication approach for the development of rural communities in africa abstract one of the major challenges in africa’s rural communities is whether people at grassroots level are fully aware of development or “social change” initiatives since many african governments and their agents rely on the use of conventional euro-american media to communicate with these people. blake (1997) and other communication researchers have frowned at contemporary africa’s over-reliance on the western mode of electronic and print media communication. blake states that africa possesses significant communication forms that are gravely neglected or minimally utilised. he makes a case for “dance, drama, song, and ritual” as media of effective communication in rural communities. this article advocates for the adoption of a development communication model that uses applied theatre praxis in the conscientisation of those at grassroots level about development initiatives/projects and the possible impacts these would have on their livelihood. the article suggests applied theatre as method to problematise, identify and challenge major constraints on development as an empowering weapon against ignorance and as a safety harness in the war against disease and poverty. discussions of models used by practitioners worldwide serve as reference points to highlight applied theatre as “a model of good practice”. keywords: applied theatre; theatre-for-development; theatre for education; development communication; health communication; hiv/aids; southern africa; lesotho; botswana introduction this article is inspired by the desire to find alternative means of communicating with rural african people in a situation where conventional means of communication seem not to produce the desired results. experience has shown that african governments, in line with the practice of their counterparts in the euro-american zones, indulge in the dissemination of information to the populace in a fashion that is culturally alienating and ineffective. despite the digital age, experience on the ground has shown that many impoverished african prof. patrick j. ebewo department of drama and film, tshwane university of technology (ebewop@tut.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 75-86 © ufs mailto:ebewop@tut.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.6 7776 patrick j. ebewo people, who do not have the means to eat three meals a day, may care less about technological innovation and development as a means of mass communication. information about development projects initiated by african governments are often disseminated through broadcast and print media. governments sometimes employ the services of radio stations and television channels, they publish information on their websites, in yearbooks, pocket guides and newspapers, or they disseminate information on social media, such as facebook, youtube, twitter, mxit, instagram and pinterest. based on the fact that average african households, particularly those in rural areas, are plagued by poverty, some of these devices may be difficult to acquire and access. according to figures from south africa’s 2011 census, of the 51.8 million people in south africa, 79.2% are from impoverished black communities, 10.5% have no schooling, and 13.9% have some primary school education. in south africa’s kwazulu-natal and mpumalanga provinces, the percentage of people aged 15 years and older with no schooling or a highest level of education less than grade 7 are 21.8% and 23.1%, respectively. impressive statistical evidence in developed countries shows the dependence of citizens on the public service to transmit to the people information about government policies and social transformation agendas. because of the gloomy economic and socio-cultural imperatives in africa, this methodology may not be very effective. some communication experts, including blake (1997), have frowned at contemporary africa’s over-reliance on the western mode of electronic and print media communication. dyllmyklebust (2014) studied the value of incorporating local narratives in development projects in local communities. smith (1999, in dyll-myklebust, 2014: 524) calls for “decolonisation of research methodologies as part of a wider project of reclaiming control over indigenous ways of knowing and being”. similarly, denzin and lincoln (2008) propose “a critical indigenous qualitative research approach along with interpretive research practice that aim to be ethical, transformative, participatory, and committed to dialogue and community”. using the media to promote development in africa has not been wholly successful. morrison (1991: 29) has pointed out that the hopes of the 1960s and 1970s of the mass media as the sine qua non of national development by western scholars of mass communication and development communication have been dashed as scholars have come to recognise that television, radio and newspapers communicate primarily with urban people in africa, resulting in an ever-widening gap between rural and urban dwellers. in contemporary society, some development communication models, starting from one of the earliest, the lasswell formula (1948), which is a simple formula that structures communication in terms of the communicator, the message, the medium used and the receiver, and the shannon-weaver model (1949), which is a linear one-way top-down system, are replete with shortcomings. this can be attributed to the fact that many of them bombard the assumed ignorant and passive villagers with messages from the sacrosanct media. this situation creates negativity and apathy in the consumption of development messages from some organisations. if rural people are to benefit from development, a more appropriate communication system must evolve. blake (1997) states that africa possesses significant 7776 applied theatre as an alternative communication approach communication forms, which are gravely neglected or minimally utilised. he makes a case for “dance, drama, song, and ritual” as media of effective communication in rural communities. in terms of an effective communication paradigm, rural people must be removed from the periphery of the communication process and placed in the centre. mda (1993: 1) insists that the existing communication system, which is authoritarian in nature, is non-conducive to and dysfunctional for development. he sees the need for the decentralisation and democratisation of the existing order to give rural populations access to messages produced by others and the means to produce and distribute their own messages. in searching for strategies to enhance the democratic exchange of information between governments and rural populations, applied theatre, particularly theatre-for-development (tfd), has been identified as a medium, the use of which could lead to empowerment and better communication with people in rural africa on issues of development. what is applied theatre? in theatre practice as a discipline, amongst other configurations, two broad categories of performance exist. the first is conventional theatre, which deals in the main with pre-packaged plays that are exhibited by either professional or amateur performers before an audience(s) in a defined performance space, popularly known as a theatre building, and which separates the actors on stage from the audience in the auditorium. most of the productions in this category are imaginative creative works (plays) that often dwell in the world of fantasy with emphasis on aesthetics and programmed “conventions”. the second category, “applied”, is significant to the purpose of this article as thompson (2006) and nicholson (2005) opine that the term “applied” echoes references such as applied mathematics, applied physics and applied chemistry; it also stands in opposition to “pure”. applied theatre abhors the world of fantasy and embraces the real world of living human beings. when theatre becomes applied, it shifts emphasis from aesthetics to utilitarianism. in opposition to the german bildung, which regards an educated person as one who has acquired a prescribed set of formal knowledge, applied theatre represents the knowledge society, where knowledge for the most part exists only in application. applied theatre stands squarely in opposition to conventional theatre that is elitist in conception. conventional theatre is elitist in the sense that the plays presented are pre-packaged with no contribution whatsoever from the audience. on the other hand, applied theatre advances the principles of democracy. it advocates that play production should be a community project and village-specific. the community should come up with the idea of the play and the whole community should watch the presentation as active participants contributing to the advancement of the play’s plot and subject matter. applied theatre is an outcome-based, participatory popular theatre practice. it has also become a field of study, which addresses the theory and practice of applying the arts of the theatre in non-conventional settings with a mandate that emphasises education, development, therapy and social change. according to prentki and preston (2009: 9), 7978 patrick j. ebewo applied theatre has emerged in recent years as a term describing a broad set of theatrical practices and creative processes that take participants and audiences beyond the scope of conventional, mainstream theatre into the realm of a theatre that is responsive to ordinary people and their stories, local settings and priorities. taylor (2003) states: applied theatre teaches community members to teach others, and helps communities process issues which directly impact them. it can also raise awareness of issues, pose alternatives, heal, challenge contemporary discourses, and voice the views of the silent or marginal … in applied theatre work, artists generate scenarios and create opportunities for the community to respond to their pain through theatre work. the community theatre is an applied theatre where individuals connect with and support one another, and where opportunities are provided for groups to voice who they are and what they aspire to become. the applied theatre becomes a medium through which the storytellers can step into the perspectives of others and gain entry points to different worldviews. unlike conventional theatre, applied theatre is not location-specific. in applied theatre, productions can take place in rehabilitation centres, schools, community halls, parks, streets, village squares, religious centres, hostels or industrial sites; in fact, anywhere that there are human activities that need education and “reconstructions”. taylor (ibid.) states that this art form “is an applied theatre because the art form becomes a transformative agent that places the audience or participants in direct and immediate situations where they can witness, confront, and deconstruct aspects of their own and other’s actions”. it is a practice that encourages “variations of actions and adoption of alternatives” (boal 1995: 13). this makes it an alternative communication tool in the education and conscientisation of people in many communities, particularly in africa. this is a special kind of drama production “with a job to do” (somers 2009: 194). in terms of viewing applied theatre as a production with a job to do, there is a spiralling interest in the relationship between the practice and community development. arguing for the use of theatre as an appropriate medium for development, byram (1980: 21) states “such media are low-cost, require no complex skills and draw on the resources and creativity of the people”. applied theatre is an umbrella term that covers areas of theatre practices known variously as “theatre-for-development”, “forum theatre”, “outreach theatre”, “participatory theatre”, “community theatre”, “theatre for education”, “interactive theatre” and “theatre of the oppressed”. whatever methodology is adopted by the practitioners in this sphere of endeavour, their objectives coalesce around the subject of encouraging human and societal development (desai 1991: 8). since the late 1980s, the practice of theatre-for-development (tfd) has gained ground in africa, the caribbean islands, latin america and asia (see ebewo 2001; 2004; 2005; 2007). although its practice is not unknown to developed countries, it is as part of the development process of developing countries that its relevance is profound. in terms of development, applied theatre’s major concern is with the role of culture as agency for the development of people’s minds. studies have indicated that cultural awakening is a crucial stage in the development of a people. “there is little point in introducing high technology to improve the efficiency of developing economies if one 7978 applied theatre as an alternative communication approach does not stimulate the minds of the people to take creative control of their destinies” (van erven 1992: 1). thus, applied theatre practitioners understand development to mean: the ability of the members of a community to relate creatively to themselves, their neighbors, their environment, and the world at large, so that each one might express his maximum potential. such development, then, has a lot to do with the distribution of power and of resources – who gets what, how, and why. it is, basically, a process of empowerment (pradervand 1989: xvii). this is theatre for education. often drama’s role in education is misconstrued, or at best it is seen as a tool for the development of the emotions only. theatre’s emphasis on education is not on basic formal education, which may be concerned only with the process of reading and writing, but with a more fundamental and utilitarian approach to literacy. experts in the field of adult education, notably the brazilian paulo freire (1972) and the latin american augusto boal (1979; 1995), label this “functional literacy”. this deals with the awakening of people’s critical awareness. thus, the mission of this kind of education is to “lead forth” and “cause to develop” the good that is latent in everyone. the goal of this education identifies and ensures desirable adaptability and changes in human behaviour. it is education for “social transformation”. these educationists emphasise “active approaches to learning … of peasants becoming the subjects of their transformation rather than remaining the objects of a propaganda exercise” (kidd 1984: 31). invariably, applied theatre practice is anchored in the grassroots approach to education and development, and it is meant to be an instrument of empowerment for socially deprived individuals. it serves as the people’s media and it is participatory and democratic in outlook; it prompts people in a society to change and modify their thinking or discover ways of combating challenges. when used for purposes of social intervention, these applied drama and theatre methodologies involve an active engagement between facilitators and their target audience in order to effect the process of conscientisation (freire 1972; boal 1979). chinyowa (2015) notes that this process of raising awareness through critical dialogue requires the active participation of the target audience, or “spect-actors”, who will serve both as the subject and object of learning and development. with assistance from the facilitators, the target audience is deemed to be capable of identifying its challenges, discussing and reflecting on why the challenges exist, and deciding on what course of action to take in order to change the circumstances. in order to gain access to the behavioural, emotional and psychological experiences of the targeted community, the indigenous performance cultures of the identified community are utilised. song, dance, storytelling, narrative styles, praise poetry and rituals are appropriated and integrated into the performance interventions. this makes it possible to gain access to the practices, values and beliefs of the target community. applied theatre as an alternative communication tool applied theatre is a communication instrument with the capacity to create transformational learning encounters between practitioners (or facilitators) and participants. of course, other kinds of performances have been used in various ways in the history 8180 patrick j. ebewo of mankind. in ancient greece, the dithyramb was a sacred hymn and performance exhibited in honour of dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; in ancient rome, theatre satisfied the romans’ religious and carnival urge; in medieval times, liturgical and morality plays were utilised in the propagation of christian faith; and in the contemporary world, performances have not only been used for entertainment but as instruments of propaganda and socio-economic transformation. in the realm of applied theatre, the practice functions mainly as an instrument of communication and education. as committed arts practice, applied theatre can be structured purposely to achieve predetermined goals in communicating issues about service delivery, labour migrancy, peace education, food security, voter education, pollution, child abuse, human rights, gender issues, drug abuse, etc. in a setting of long-term unemployment, the zap theatre project in australia gave alienated young people self-esteem and a voice (laughton & johnson 1996: 36-39); in the philippines, children silenced by poverty were given an identity and a voice through educational drama (santos-cabangon 1996: 143-144); and in papua new guinea, “awareness theatre” in a post-colonial culture became a force for education and development (sim & drewe 1996: 183-189). in africa, applied drama has had some impact on countries such as burkina faso, botswana, kenya, cameroon, nigeria and south africa. in lesotho in particular, author zakes mda (1993) used applied theatre to communicate with the basotho people on issues such as alcohol abuse, rural sanitation, agriculture and co-operative societies. for an in-depth illustration of how applied theatre could serve as an effective instrument of communication, two projects the present author was involved in in lesotho and botswana will be discussed (see ebewo 2008; 2017). applied theatre and the communication of hiv/aids in lesotho in the early days of reports about the outbreak of the hiv/aids epidemic, many african communities dismissed them with a wave of the hand. a major problem was, as it still is in some communities, widespread ignorance of the disease. many clung to the vain belief that aids does not exist, or that it is an ordinary sexually transmitted disease. in parts of africa, aids deaths have been attributed to witchcraft. in the initial stage of the epidemic in particular, many african churches regarded the disease as an “act of god” and punishment for promiscuous sinners, and these churches dismissed condom use as a solution for the fight against the disease. slowly and steadily growing at the initial stage, hiv/aids ravaged many communities throughout the world. infection statistics and deaths, which were low in the 1980s and early 1990s, later reached astronomical heights with dire consequences for many communities. sub-saharan africa, particularly southern and eastern africa, was the hardest hit region (jackson 2002: 8; annan 2000: 7). around the dawn of the new millennium, the epidemic reached a stage where the world health organisation (who) and the united nations (un) literally compelled nations to act fast against its further spread. as many myths and misconceptions about hiv/aids existed, several governments embarked on mass education of the populace on the disease and its destructive effects on the individual and society. mass media, talks, posters, handbills, 8180 applied theatre as an alternative communication approach conferences, seminars, workshops and other propaganda tools were employed to disseminate information on the disease. although governments and non-governmental organisations (ngos) have used multi-pronged strategies in the anti-aids crusade, more effective strategies to stem the epidemic are still being sought. while orthodox methods have been employed in most of these campaigns, educators and information experts have also seen the need to utilise unconventional methods, notably theatre, in the fight against the spread of the disease. this section of the article will recount the author’s theatrical presentations and experiences as part of an initiative involving high school students in lesotho. by the end of 2000, an estimated 58 million people had acquired hiv infection worldwide. of this figure, nearly 22 million people had already died. death rates continued to rise as most of the remaining 36 million progressed to aids (jackson 2002: 9). in 1999, the estimated adult hiv prevalence in lesotho stood at 24%; 240 000 adults and 8 200 children were living with the disease and aids deaths stood at 16 000 in a country of about 2 million people (unaids 2000). the aids infant mortality rate in lesotho was 80% in 1998. recognising drama as an effective tool of information dissemination, the national university of lesotho (nul) theatre group produced a play in 1998 that conveyed a deterring message about aids, particularly to the youth. the short drama was titled “flesh to flesh; dust to dust”. the play was structured to cover the main aspects of the problem: firstly, it emphasised that aids is a reality; secondly, it defined what aids is and what causes it; thirdly, it dealt with the ways in which the disease is transmitted; and finally, how to avoid being infected with it. the story revolves around a beautiful young woman who, together with her girlfriends, earns money through prostitution. her mother condones her behaviour because her daughter manipulates her with gifts. her father finds out about the practice and severely reprimands his daughter, warning her against the new disease (aids). the young woman does not listen and, before long, contracts hiv. characters involved in communicating the message are the health worker, the brothel owner (a madam), and a personification of aids itself (a masked and grotesquely costumed character in red). the health worker, who drinks at the local bar where the young women work, delivers an educational speech on aids to the bar patrons, who initially display misconceptions about sex and aids. his message is driven home and supported by the brothel owner, who encourages the use of condoms. to prove that aids is a reality, she fetches one of her girls, who has been reduced to a walking skeleton by the disease. the young woman, thin, coughing, with a rash all over her body, is accompanied by “aids”, which emerges from a coffin placed upright on stage to boast of its distressing deeds to mankind. at the end, the aids-infected woman does not only die, but one of her lovers confesses that he “used to … with her”; another young woman from the group slumps, crying out aloud that she also “used to” with the infected man. thus, the play reflects the ways in which the elements of drama are adopted in developmental theatre for the purposes of educating, informing, creating awareness, and conscientising people. with sponsorship from the donor community, in particular the us embassy, maseru 8382 patrick j. ebewo and the lesotho highlands development authority (lhda), this project toured major high schools and communities in lesotho. applied theatre against hiv/aids stigma and discrimination in botswana the prevalence of hiv/aids in southern africa had risen even more than feared, with botswana topping the list at 38.8% (unaids update 2002). by 2001 it was noted, “a procession of sobering statistics illustrates the graveness of the situation: fully one-third of the adult population is infected with hiv. three people die of hiv/aids every hour, every day. every hour of every day, five more people are newly infected” (ibid.). the negative impact of this disease in the world generally, and in botswana in particular, marked the upsurge of an enormous human development crisis. after a decade of persistent effort, with little impact on the spread of the disease, the world re-directed its anti-aids campaign. this required an understanding of the magnitude of the epidemic and some of the hidden factors behind its spread. the world’s aids campaign for 2002/2003 focused on stigma, discrimination and human rights as these were believed to be the greatest barriers to preventing further infections. it is known that the prevalence of stigma and discrimination promotes silence and pushes the hiv epidemic underground, as those affected are ashamed and reluctant to express their views. stigma undermines prevention because people are afraid to establish what their status is. there are three phases to the aids epidemic: the epidemic of hiv infection, the epidemic of aids, and the third epidemic of stigma, discrimination, blame and collective denial (mann 1987, in unaids 2002/2003: 7). there are well-documented cases of people living with hiv/aids being stigmatised, discriminated against, denied access to public or private services, or even being killed. in response to the global call to wage war against stigma, the university of botswana sponsored a project using drama as its mode of delivery in order to persuade and educate high school students to change their social attitudes by reducing and ultimately eliminating all forms of stigma and discrimination against people living with hiv/aids. a play, “the egret and the hawk,” which had stigma and discrimination as themes, was produced by members of the university of botswana traveling theatre. the scenario is as follows: a rich landlord (molefe) is determined to evict one of his tenants (seloma) because he has learned that the tenant is hiv-positive, although he has occupied his flat for eight years. seloma has done the right thing by publicly disclosing his status, but this infuriates the landlord who feels that seloma “must be crazy. someone is hiv-positive and he has the mouth to say it in public?” motau, a tenant-friend of the landlord, pleads for seloma but his pleas fall on deaf ears because molefe, encouraged by his business associate, gaborone, feels that seloma is not fit to live where other human beings live. he is cursed and condemned to hell. with pressure from his tenant-friend, his daughter, who is a high school student, and his wife, who is a nurse, molefe begins to change his attitude. misconceptions about hiv sufferers are dispelled when it is discovered that his tenant-friend, a person he associates with, is also hiv-positive, and that his wife, who prepares his food, works in the hospital’s aids clinic. mapo, a male nurse and colleague of molefe’s wife, gives molefe a good talking 8382 applied theatre as an alternative communication approach to on facts relating to hiv/aids, stigma, discrimination and human rights abuses. by the time the play ends, molefe is a changed man who believes that both the hawk and the egret should perch, and whichever says the other should not perch, its wings must break. the play was shown to students in ten selected high schools and communities in gaborone. it should be noted that each performance in the two projects recounted was followed by a post-performance discussion, a device to make the production participatory and to empower the audience to contribute to the issues raised. this methodology made for effective central, rather than peripheral, communication. the utilisation of arts projects, such as applied theatre in the education of people in africa on the dangers of hiv/aids, attests to the importance attached to drama as a medium of communication. in lesotho, the aids drama production afforded the communities an opportunity to discuss issues, which were thought to be beyond their reach. the general impression was that the play had succeeded in making an impact, particularly in dispelling taboos relating to sexual matters. in the hiv/aids education drama, staged in lesotho, it became obvious that prior to the presentation in lesotho schools, many students had never seen or heard of condoms. those who knew about condoms were apprehensive about their use. through the drama, some myths were dispelled through practical demonstrations with a condom to determine its elasticity and durability. kerr and setumo (2001: 30) reported on a similar incident in botswana when female students talked at length about sex after watching a play dealing with aids. conclusion in some parts of africa, conservative attitudes towards theatre and drama have placed it very low on the utility scale. although this attitude has begun to wane, some people still regard drama with condescension, viewing it as the intangible exhibition of mundane “primitive” dances and nudity. in the contemporary global world, drama and theatre as a profession and a discipline in the academe has gone far beyond this prejudicial or parochial notion. as a source of creativity, drama operates on the principle of play. as play theorist izzo (1997) argues, “playing” enables people to create symbolic alternatives to reality. it affords a neutral space for rehearsing actions that may not be easily transmitted without consequences in ordinary life. the playing of the drama therefore can be viewed as a form of “staged authenticity” that wields the power to act as a commentary on even the most sensitive issues. the combination of different features of play, such as enjoyment, freedom, spontaneity, improvisation and imagination, functions as social engineering mechanisms for “fixing”, “unfixing” and “refixing” reality. it is the intense absorption arising from the playing of the drama that moves the co-players to another state of being. as play exists outside the boundaries of ordinary time and space, it creates an alternative order of existence that provides participants an opportunity to generate new symbolic worlds. knowledge gained through acting can eventually be transferred to real life situations, as boal (1995) has consistently argued that the “image of reality” can be translated into the “reality of the image”. 8584 patrick j. ebewo the purpose of this article was to present theatre beyond entertainment as a pivotal platform in the communication of human and societal development. theatre for development is a didactic tool in the education and conscientisation of the rural poor about the world they live in. applied theatre’s emphasis on community participation is a means of giving people a voice to deliberate on topics that can change their lives for the better. theatre-for-development challenges development agents to always consider beneficiaries’ input in all projects that are meant for the upliftment of the community. most of the plays presented through this methodology dramatised beneficiaries’ appreciation of local projects; this appreciation improves the sustainability and respectability of the projects. the organisation of applied theatre activities in local communities is an avenue to integrate, empower and educate local people on how to improve their livelihood. theatre-for-development’s emphasis on community participation aligns with the peasants’ charter of the united nations food and agriculture organisation (fao 1981): participation by the people in the institutions and systems which govern their lives is a basic human right and also essential for realignment of political power in favour of disadvantaged groups and for social and economic development. rural development strategies can realise their full potential only through the motivation, active involvement and organisation at the grassroots level of rural people, with special emphasis on the least advantaged, in conceptualising and designing policies and programmes and in creating administrative, social and economic institutions, including cooperative and other voluntary forms of organisation for implementing and evaluating them. as an alternative means of communication, applied theatre could be used by governments and their agents in africa to communicate effectively with citizens, especially in rural areas, on issues relating to development. references annan, k. 2000. preventing infection, promoting reproductive health: unfpa’s response to hiv/aids. new york: united nations. 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(ed.). handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. london: sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483385686.n1 desai, g. 1991. theatre for development in africa. research in african literatures 22(3): 6-9. dyll-myklebust, l. 2014. development narratives: the value of multiple voices and ontologies in kalahari research. critical arts: south-north cultural and media studies 28(3): 521-538. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2014.929214 ebewo, p.j. 2001. theatre and socio-political consciousness in lesotho: a study of selected plays by zakes mda. journal of research 9: 121-141. ebewo, p.j. 2004. theatre for development in southern africa and its implications for swaziland. uniswa research journal 18: 47-59. ebewo, p.j. 2005. theatre for development practice in rural africa: limitations as agent of conscientisation. marang journal 14-15: 32-41. ebewo, p.j. 2007. revival of laedza batanani as strategy for poverty alleviation in rural botswana. in: preece, j., van der veen, r. & raditloaneng, w.n. 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(1992: 74) and semetko and valkenburg (in de vreese 2005: 56) and include conflict, human impact, human interest, attribution of responsibility and violence. both studies focused on a number of south african newspapers, but this article reports specifically on the results as they pertain to the star, a leading south african newspaper. the period under investigation is 15-23 february 2013. the fantasy themes identified have indicated that, in pistorius’ case, he was mostly depicted in a negative light, while there were very few instances where he was portrayed positively. conflict was the most common primary news frame found in the frame analysis. keywords: fantasy theme, frame analysis, framing, oscar pistorius, the star * willemien marais (maraisw@ufs.ac.za) and dr lydie terblanche (terblanl@ufs.ac.za) lecture in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. andré grobler (andre@sapa.org.za) and boitumelo litabe (boitu1823@yahoo.com) were postgraduate students in this department. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 80-94 81 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting introduction when oscar pistorius shot his girlfriend, reeva steenkamp, in the early hours of 14 february 2013 his actions not only had far-reaching consequences for his own life, but also caused unprecedented public interest and resultant media coverage in south africa and abroad. this includes a first for south african journalism: a television news channel dedicated entirely to pistorius’ trial (the oscar pistorius trial – a carte blanche channel 2014: online). the trial began on 3 march 2014 and at the time of writing is still continuing. local and international media outlets rushed for details of the incident, and a glimpse of pistorius. it resulted in what was described as a “media frenzy” during pistorius’ first and second court appearance (evans 2013; obuseng 2013). it is not difficult to understand the media’s preoccupation with the incident: 26-year-old pistorius, nicknamed “blade runner”, grabbed world attention when he became the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes in the 400 m race at the 2012 olympic games. south african columnist justice malala hit the nail on the head when, in a column for the british newspaper the guardian on the day the news broke, he described pistorius as “no ordinary hero” for south africans (malala 2013): for south africans, and for many across the globe, it is impossible to watch pistorius run without a stir of emotion, without wanting to break down and cry and shout with joy. pistorius is no ordinary hero; he is that rare thing, a man with an almost-impossible narrative. his is not a rags to riches story, a poor boy made good – we have many of those in our country and on the african continent. his story is more intense. to be without legs and to become the epitome of excellence in the very field where one is not supposed to excel – that is the stuff of legends. that is why many of us, when talking about pistorius, become hyperbolic sportswriters. we like an impossible story. this explains the huge media interest in oscar pistorius. the story gained more media weight with the social status of pistorius’ girlfriend, reeva steenkamp, who was a south african celebrity in her own right. patel (2013) argues that the steenkamp shooting incident was different from other news stories. steenkamp appeared on the cover of men’s glossy magazine fhm, and was the face of various product brands (tomlinson & allen 2013). “this is a classic fall of a hero,” william bird, director of media monitoring africa told patel (patel 2013). following the shooting incident, most of the media attention turned to pistorius and steenkamp as individuals. many questions were raised about the representation of steenkamp’s identity in the media and the emphasis on her attractiveness and celebrity status (patel 2013). most of the attention was on pistorius, though, as 82 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe journalists started focusing on his life, which malala (2013) described as those things that have “always been niggling and worrying about him”. very quickly, strong opinions in support of and against pistorius surfaced in the media, especially on social platforms. it was described as the most talked about story by the weekend following the shooting incident (patel 2013). pistorius’ first court appearance at the pretoria magistrate’s court and the resulting media attention was, to an extent, unknown in south africa. evans (2013) states that social media tracker memeburn suggested that 85% of all discussions around the pistorius bail hearing had occurred on twitter. it developed to such a degree that at a pre-trial hearing in june 2013 the sitting magistrate had warned against “trial by media” (evans 2013). this came after leaked evidence from the crime scene was aired on an international television station. context of the research this article reports on research conducted as part of two studies focusing on media reportage in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and pistorius’ bail application. the first study examined how print media portrayed pistorius after he shot steenkamp, but before his bail application. it was informed by bormann’s fantasy theme analysis (1972), based on his symbolic convergence theory, to identify fantasy themes. the second study was a deductive frame analysis of the primary news frames in articles published in print media during pistorius’ bail application. the news frames identified were a combination of the common frames identified by neuman et al. (1992: 74) and semetko and valkenburg (in de vreese 2005: 56) and include conflict, human impact, human interest and attribution of responsibility. both studies focused on a number of south african newspapers, but this article reports specifically on the results as they pertain to the star, a leading south african daily newspaper. the period under investigation is 15-23 february 2013. the concept of fantasy theme the concept of “fantasy theme” refers to the creative and imaginary interpretation of shared interpretations and occurrences, which thus provide perceptual frameworks. although a fantasy theme is concrete and specific in its original form, one of its traits is that after it is accepted by members of the community it does not have to be retold in its totality. fantasy themes play an important role within societies; providing people with the tools needed to analyse, interpret, and make sense of the world around them. fantasy themes appear in all discourse forms and chain out by means of a text (e.g. print media), and verbally in small and large group communication (cragan & shields 1995: 33-34). 83 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting bormann’s (1972, 1975) fantasy theme analysis guidelines were used to conduct the analysis: • choose a subject (bormann 1972: 401): in this instance, oscar pistorius is the subject of analysis. • collect the appropriate and relevant rhetorical evidence (ibid.): this article reports on newspaper articles that were published in the star during the period 15-20 february 2013 (see table 1). table 1: analysed articles heading publication date deadly valentine 15 february 2013 he is familiar with boschkop police cells 15 february 2013 ‘oscar month’ falls from grace 15 february 2013 ‘i introduced them and they became close’ 15 february 2013 website deletes ‘i am the bullet in the chamber’ 15 february 2013 oscar’s dark side 15 february 2013 model was on the verge of stardom 15 february 2013 reeva’s family decide to open up amid grief 15 february 2013 slaying shows women are in the firing line 18 february 2013 spotlight may have been too bright 18 february 2013 prayers for oscar 18 february 2013 blade runner accused of being out of control 18 february 2013 sabc ‘insensitive’ for showing reeva in show 18 february 2013 pistorius pulls out of races 19 february 2013 time to stop horrendous crimes 19 february 2013 no visitors arrive as anc women’s league takes aim 19 february 2013 ‘reeva died in my arms’ 20 february 2013 another sponsor drops paralympian 20 february 2013 • search for patterns of characterisation, environment, actions and dramatic situations (ibid.). • develop categories to describe the content (bormann 1975:176): see table 2. 84 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe table 2: portrayal of pistorius in the star she was gunned down and shot multiple times by her world famous paralympic boyfriend, oscar pistorius, who spent the day in custody on suspicion of murdering her in a crime of passion. (deadly valentine: botho molosankwe, lebogang seale, angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 870) oscar pistorius is not unfamiliar with the surroundings of the boschkop police station where he spent last night. he was a guest at the establishment when he spent 17 hours in a cell after student cassidy taylor-memory laid a complaint in september 2009, claiming that pistorius had assaulted her. (he is familiar with boschkop police cells: staff reporter, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 867) at that time, the athlete was involved with samantha taylor, who said pistorius was a ‘player’ when it came to women. (‘i introduced them and they became close’: unknown, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 862) the man known as the blade runner certainly is no stranger to controversy. in september 2009, he spent the night in jail after being charged with common assault by cassidy taylor-memory after she alleged that pistorius had slammed a door on her after they had a fight at his house. earlier that same year, pistorius was admitted to hospital with facial injuries after he crashed his speedboat at the vaal river. beeld reported at the time that the police had found empty bottles of alcohol on the boat, but his blood was not tested for alcohol use. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) shortly after that, pistorius prohibited media photographers from taking pictures of an accident scene on the n4 highway in which a friend of his was involved. beeld reported that his friend had knocked over a pedestrian who died on the scene. asked why they could not take photos, he was quoted as saying: ‘because i am oscar pistorius’. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) in september last year, pistorius apologised after publicly lashing out at a brazilian athlete, alan oliviera, who beat him to the gold medal in the t44 200m at the paralympics games in london. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) ‘oscar is certainly not what people think he is,’ taylor said. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) a charge of defamation was laid against pistorius after he allegedly threatened to break the legs of van der burgh’s friend, former soccer star, marc batchelor, who played for chiefs, orlando pirates and moroka swallows. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) pistorius was not scared to defend himself, a new york journalist who interviewed the olympian once said. the journalist was shocked to see the athlete grab a gun and creep down the corridor when he heard a noise in the house. (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) in november, pistorius tweeted: ‘nothing like getting home to hear the washing machine on and thinking it’s an intruder to go into full combat mode into the pantry! waa.’ (oscar’s dark side: angelique serrao, 15 feb 2013, ref no: 866) • place the repetitive themes in groups, according to fantasy types (bormann 1972: 401). see table. 3 85 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting table 3: pistorius’ portrayal as positive, negative or neutral according to fantasy types positive negative neutral world famous paralympics hero: deadly valentine (botho molosankwe, lebogang seale, angelique serrao: 15 feb 2013, the star) blade runner: deadly valentine (botho molosankwe, lebogang seale, angelique serrao: 15 feb 2013, the star) oscar’s dark side (angelique serrao: 15 feb 2013, the star) spotlight may have been too bright (mail on sunday: 18 feb 2013, the star) spotlight may have been too bright (mail on sunday: 18 feb 2013, the star) athlete: oscar’s dark side (angelique serrao: 15 feb 2013 the star) ‘i introduced them and they became close’ (unknown: 15 feb 2013) guns, girls and danger oscar’s dark side (jonathan mcevoy: 17 feb 2013) paralympics star: sabc ‘insensitive’ for showing reeva in show (reuters: 18 feb 2013 the star) no visitors arrive as anc women’s league takes aim (karabo ngoepe: 19 feb 2013 the star) disgraced athlete: no visitors arrive as anc women’s league takes aim (karabo ngoepe: 19 feb 2013) the runner: spotlight may have been too bright (mail on sunday: 18 feb 2013 the star) paralympics champion: prayers for oscar (lali van zuydam: 18 feb 2013 the star) paralympian: ‘reeva died in my arms’ (unknown: 20 feb 2013 the star) another sponsor drops paralympian (angelique serrao: 20 feb 2013) time to stop horrendous crimes (comment by ray mccauley: 19 feb 2013) olympian: oscar’s dark side (angelique serrao: 15 feb 2013 the star) reeva’s doomed love speech (zwelakhe shangase: 15 feb 2013) 86 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe positive negative neutral star: guns, girls and dangeroscar’s dark side (jonathan mcevoy: 17 feb 2013) most recognisable athletes: blades give him fame and fortune (david isaacson: 15 feb 2013 the times) fantasy types according to kuypers (2005: 215), fantasy types refer to an umbrella term for a cluster of recurring, related fantasy themes. in this instance, fantasy types include “blade runner”, “paralympics” and “player” (see tables 2 and 3). the pistorius story caused an uproar because pistorius was not only a national, but also an international sporting icon, who was loved by many across the globe. he was also a role model to the disabled community who had transcended the boundaries of disability and sport. people revered him and this incident caused major disappointment among the masses. they were not only hurt and disappointed about the crime, but also about the fact that this happened to their star and that there could be no going back. this is evident in the article titled, ‘spotlight may have been too bright’ (the star 18 feb 2013), where bill schroder remarks, “it’s never going to be the same again. the icon has fallen”. this article only reports on fantasy themes in the coverage of the star during a specific period. more research is necessary to determine whether the fantasy themes identified here did indeed contribute to a shared vision. frame analysis the concept of framing has rapidly grown as a research method in communication research (iorgoveanu & corbu 2012: 91). it has been specifically used in mass media research, but from frame research literature there is no clear definition that holds up on what framing in mass media research is. goffman (in iorgoveanu & corbu 2012: 92) suggests that framing is a “schemata of interpretation, referring to a cognitive structure which guides the perception and the representation of reality, allowing individuals to label various issues and events”. since goffman, various refined definitions have been proposed to explain the concept. however, scheufele (1999) is of the opinion that “framing has been characterized by theoretical and empirical vagueness”. developing goffman’s views further, entman (1993: 52) argues that framing basically includes selection and salience. 87 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting nisbit (2010: 46) states that at its base “in storytelling, communicators can select from a plurality for interpretations”. what do journalists use to decide? gitlin (1980: 6) argues frames are principles. these principles are used to decide what aspects of a news story to use, which elements to pay attention to, and how to present it to the readers of the newspaper. therefore, journalists use frames cognitively to help them decide what is important and to present it to their readers in a packaged way. the primary objective of the frame analysis was to identify the primary news frames used in the coverage of the oscar pistorius bail hearing by the star during the period 19-23 february 2013. methodology the news frames identified were a combination of the common frames identified by neuman et al. (1992: 74) and semetko and valkenburg (in de vreese 2005: 56): the conflict frame refers to the news media’s “game interpretation of the political world as an ongoing series of contests, each with a new set of winners and losers” (neuman et al. 1992: 74). semetko and valkenburg’s conflict frame is broader than neuman et al.’s, referring to conflict between individuals, groups, institutions or countries (semetko & valkenburg, in de vreese 2005: 56). the human impact frame, according to neuman et al. (1992: 74), focuses on “descriptions of individuals and groups affected by an issue”. the human interest frame brings a human face or emotional angle into the event, issue and problem (semetko & valkenburg, in de vreese 2005: 56). the attribution of responsibility frame is defined as “presenting an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for causing or solving to either the government or to an individual or group” (ibid.). it was not possible to identify primary news frames in every single unit of the data sample. one unit was identified in the star and placed in a “no frame” category. articles without any prominent news frame, text article or graphic are defined as containing only core news facts (de vreese 2005: 54). period of analysis the period of analysis covers the bail hearing from 19-22 february 2013. articles published on 19 february 2013 did not cover the bail hearing itself, but were published on the first day of the hearing. all news articles on the bail hearing up to the last day – friday, 22 february 2013 – were sourced. this included articles and related graphics published on saturday, 23 february 2013, which covered the friday’s court proceedings. 88 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe sample and unit of analysis articles were sources by sa media at the university of the free state. only news articles and related graphics were sourced, not opinion columns or letters. articles were selected based on the presence of the words “oscar pistorius” in the articles. a total of 17 text articles and graphics units were sourced from the star for the research sample. for the purposes of this article, any computer-generated diagrams, graphics and pictures, such as floor plans, firearms and human figures, were treated as graphics. the graphics also included text articles written in column-form. the columns consisting of information are marked and identified on either side of the column by highlighted bullet points or text. the distinction between visual and text or verbal items follows the proposal by coleman (in iorgoveanu & corbu 2012: 95). coleman defines “visual” as “the media content that is processed by the eye alone” (ibid.). the author states that visual components of media news include “photographs and moving images, drawings, facial expressions, body posture, maps, but also graphics” (ibid.). in the context of this article, text or text articles refer to “the verbal content, namely the written words, the language used by journalists” (ibid.). the text articles in the data sample could be identified further as written articles under a headline, one or more sub-headlines, and with a lead sentence. the star published 14 text articles and three graphics during the five-day period. the overall sample for analysis from the star was 17 units. table 4 indicates that both newspapers carried most of the oscar pistorius bail hearing articles on their front page (page 1). table 4: page distribution of sample articles page number the star (articles) the star (graphics) 1 6 3 3 1 4 3 6 3 13 1 total 14 3 as indicated in table 1, the star published its articles mostly on the front page (6 text; 3 graphics), within additional reportage on pages 3 and 4. during the sample period, the star published graphics only on the front page. table 5 contains a summary of the primary frames as identified in the star. 89 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting table 5: primary frames in the star frame the star conflict frame 6 human impact frame 5 attribution of responsibility frame 3 human interest frame 2 no frame 1 total 17 discussion of findings conflict frame the conflict frame was utilised the most in the star. six text articles were identified with a conflict frame. an example was a text article on 21 february 2013 on the front page. the headline was “defence gives oscar hope” and appeared underneath a banner-type sub-headline: “punching holes in detective’s testimony boosts athlete’s bail bid”. the sub-headline in prominent lettering created a strong conflict frame. it set up a fight theme with words such as “punching holes” in the argument in court between the defence advocate, barry roux, and the state’s initial case investigator, hilton botha. the conflict frame was further supported by sentences in the article, such as: “by yesterday afternoon, advocate barry roux sc had punched holes in botha’s testimony, forcing the veteran warrant officer to backtrack…” and “roux also tore apart botha’s evidence…”. the star on 22 february 2013 in a front page text article said: “lead investigator removed from pistorius case”. the headline created a winner-loser theme. these findings support international trends. neuman et al. (in semetko & valkenburg 2000: 95) indicate that the media makes use of a few central news frames to tell their news stories and draw their readers’ attention, and “that conflict was the most common in the handful of frames in u.s. news they identified”. human impact frame the second most common news frame identified in the star (n=5) was the human impact frame. it looks at groups and individuals that are affected by an issue. an example of the human impact frame in the star is found in an article focusing on the paralympic movement under the headline “paralympic movement will survive” on page 13, on 19 february 2012. the primary human impact frame was strengthened by the article’s sub-headline: “others will continue to inspire the world, writes laura williamson”. the article focused on disability athletics’ “excitement” and “momentum” in world sport, which had come “crushing down” with the news of oscar pistorius’ arrest and reeva steenkamp’s death. 90 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe on the third day, 21 february 2013, the star had another text article with the headline “reeva’s parents want answers” and a sub-headline “couple ‘are just interested in finding the truth’”. the article’s focus was on steenkamp’s parents’ request for only one thing: knowing what had happened. the text article further focused on what their daughter was and could have been. it includes an interview with steenkamp’s brother, adam, who said that he had never “expected my younger sister to become the well-known personality” at the time of her death. the article also mentions that “the family had to adjust quickly to the intense media hype surrounding them”. human interest frame the human interest news frame is closely linked to the human impact news frame; it was identified in two the star articles. this frame brings a human face or emotional angle into the event, issue and problem. in the star, this frame was identified as the primary news frame in a front page article on 22 february 2013. the text article, with the headline “reeva phone poser”, focused mainly on pistorius’ emotions. it used emotional words such as “wept”, “weary eyes” and phrases such as “worried look on his face” and “burying his face in his hands and shaking uncontrollably”, which evoke a strong human interest news frame. neuman et al. (in semetho & valkenburg 2000: 96) found that the human impact and human interest, which they see as one frame, was a common news frame, next to conflict. attribution of responsibility frame the star published three articles that fitted the responsibility and attribution news frame. this frame presents an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute or give responsibility to somebody. it was either caused by or must be solved by government, an individual or a group. the star published a story under the headline “oscar’s gun wishlist” with a sub-headline “these are the powerful weapons pistorius applied for weeks ago”. the text article quotes from a 2011 article on pistorius in the british newspaper, daily mail, that pistorius “sleeps with guns in his bedroom” and “one baseball bat and one cricket bat lie behind pistorius’ bedroom door. a revolver is at his bedside. a machine-gun by his window”. it further focuses on the “powerful weapons” and the “need” for it. the text article highlights two of the firearms, displayed in a prominent graphic. these are a smith & wesson model 500 revolver, the “world’s most powerful handgun”, and the comment of a defence force analyst and expert on a .223 vektor rifle, which he described as a “powerful rifle”. the article quotes the defence force analyst as saying he “could not understand what the need for the firearms would be”. 91 fantasy themes and frames in the star on oscar pistorius in the aftermath of the 2013 shooting the star had a prominent graphic picture of the six firearms, which included two revolvers, one rifle and three shotguns in a display setting. the investigation had found the graphic images of the .223 vector rifle to be incorrect; they rather resembled two different military assault rifles, which are illegal in civilian hands in south africa. the star used a picture resembling a swedish heckler & koch military assault rifle. summary: frames conflict was the most common primary news frame found in the frame analysis. putman and shoemaker (2007:1) state that conflict “highlights incompatibilities, disagreements, or oppositional tensions between individuals, groups and institutions”. the human impact and interest frame was the second most used news frame. most newspapers the world over compete in a tough market environment and “journalists and editors are at pains to produce a product that captures and retains audience interests” states bennet (in semetko & valkenburg 2000: 96). this news frame helps the storytellers to achieve this. “such a frame refers to an effort to personalize the news, dramatize or ‘emotionalize’ the news, in order to capture and retain audience interests,” semetko and valkenburg (2000: 96) opine. from the analysis it is evident that the star had followed tried and tested news frames in telling the story of the oscar pistorius bail hearing to the public. “criteria of newsworthiness include drama, conflict, novelty, timeliness and visual appeal,” states gans (in calaghan & schnell 2001: 189). news frames that fit into one of these categories would always be used by the media, the author contends. why must we examine the work of journalists from time to time and investigate the frames they use to tell a story because journalists should help the public to understand social events. “journalists are considered ‘sense makers’, but it is important to acknowledge that they may also present the news in such a way that it distorts as much as it attempts to make sense of our world” (reese, in linström & marais 2012: 33). final remarks how information is presented, be it through words, layout, choice of visuals, etc., has a definite influence on the message conveyed. both fantasy themes and frame analysis can be used to identify what these messages are. the fantasy themes identified have indicated that pistorius was mainly portrayed in a negative light, with a number of phrases using violence (“full combat mode”) and almost gang-style expressions (“threatened to break the legs”). the frame analysis has confirmed this by indicating that conflict was the primary frame in most of the articles under investigation. the presence and slant of the attribution of responsibility frame, which also brought to light expressions such as “powerful 92 willemien marais, andré grobler, lydie terblanche and boitumelo litabe weapons”, further supported the findings. the frame analysis indicated that the human interest frame was present in two of the articles, bringing a human face to the person associated with violence in most of the other articles. these two studies focused on the initial aftermath of the shooting; 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[online]. available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-2278514/reeva-steenkamp-oscar-pistorius-law-graduategirlfriend-explode-media-says-agent.html [accessed on 1 august 2013]. http://oscartrial.dstv.com/ 9998 9998 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication in a rural community abstract effective communication between healthcare provider and patient is crucial, yet research indicates that this communication relationship is often unsatisfactory in both developed and developing countries. several studies exist on providerpatient communication, but a synthesis of findings on ideal communication appears to be lacking. thus, this study argues that health literacy and effective communication are important catalysts to enhance the coordinated management of meaning in health communication. for this study, in-depth interviews were conducted in the mafikeng community in south africa’s northwest province to collate a variety of patients’ perspectives on the challenges they face when communicating with doctors. recurrent among the findings were semantic, psychological, physiological, institutional and structural barriers that could hinder effective communication. practical implications are that all stakeholders should be proactive in promoting effective health communication. theoretical implications have a bearing on policy formulation, implementation and revision, particularly the indigenous language policy to promote research on the development of medical terminology in indigenous languages. keywords: communication barriers; doctor-patient interaction; health communication; health literacy; linguistic democracy; medicine labels; effective communication introduction the study reported on in this article is based on the premise that inadequate doctor-patient health communication could result in the misinterpretation of information and the resultant misuse of medication and consequently poor health and unnecessary loss of life (govender & pen-kekana 2008). several factors influence the success or failure of medical health communication by both health practitioners and patients. notably, high education levels might not necessarily imply health literacy (berkman et al. 2010). several studies have been conducted on provider-patient communication (see andaleeb 2001; williams et al. 2013; kennedy et al. 2014). however, a resulting synthesis of ideal dr rachel moyo indigenous language media in africa, department of communication, north-west university, mahikeng campus (moyorachel@gmail.com) prof. abiodun salawu indigenous language media in africa, department of communication, north-west university, mahikeng campus (abiodun.salawu@nwu. ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.8 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 98-112 © ufs mailto:moyorachel@gmail.com mailto:abiodun.salawu@nwu.ac.za mailto:abiodun.salawu@nwu.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.8 9998 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication 9998 communication appears to be lacking. as such, a study by heritage and maynard (2006), which traced the main perspectives and lines of development that have emerged in 30 years of recorded doctor-patient interaction in the united states, concluded that it was difficult to generalise repeatedly observable medical interactions. reasons provided were the complexities of disciplinary, methodological and ideological divisions that these authors (ibid.) viewed as relatively enduring features of the medical field. based on the findings of that longitudinal study, it is logical to pursue effective healthcare provider-patient communication and to promote health literacy. a community approach could yield plausible solutions as patients mostly deal with the same healthcare providers and are likely to encounter similar communication challenges. in this study, the researchers sampled patients from different educational backgrounds. considering doctors’ tight schedules, often abstract health jargon on doctors’ prescriptions, the volatility of oral communication in the explanation of instructions, and the fact that medicine labels in pharmacies in south africa are written in english and afrikaans only, there is a challenge of enhancing effective communication with patients. in addition, oral explanations by doctors and pharmacists can be inadequate or patients might forget the information. consequently, patients are vulnerable to the incorrect interpretation of prescription instructions and medicine use that could have adverse effects on their health. it has to be acknowledged that some studies on health communication yielded positive health outcomes. where oral communication is concerned, a study by schillinger et al. (2003: 88), on the extent to which physicians assess patients’ recall and understanding of information conveyed during an outpatient encounter, found the following: “recall and comprehension was associated with improved glycemic control among patients with diabetes mellitus and low functional health literacy”. however, schillinger et al. (ibid.) pointed out that outcomes vary across racial, ethnic and socio-demographic lines, elaborating that “the prevalence of functional health literacy, especially among elderly persons, ethnic minorities and the socio-economically disadvantaged, coupled with the disproportionate burden that type-2 diabetes mellitus places on individuals, suggests that problems with health communication may contribute to disparities”. of interest to the current study is that evidence of positive findings in some studies include or refer to measures taken to improve communication. for example, an american study by kennedy et al. (2014) focused on a peer-facilitated communication skills building course for service providers and patients at a clinic in arizona. the findings indicated that service improved after the course and provider participants experienced an 18% decrease in patients’ complaints. a study by williams et al. (2013: 15), on patient reported barriers to provider-patient communication, indicated that a large number of patients could not participate in healthcare due to several factors. these factors included “structural, such as poor continuity of care; predisposing, such as differences in personal traits between patient and clinician; interactional, such as power imbalance between patient and clinician; and preparatory factors, such as providing information about options”. williams et al. (ibid.) also noted that the more common view among clinicians was that patients did not want to participate. therefore, exploring challenges faced by patients in communicating with doctors is key to unlocking health communication. 101100 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu aim of the study the main research question centred on patients’ perception of the nature of doctorpatient health communication in the mafikeng community in south africa’s north-west province, with a sub-question that focused on suggestions from participants, based on their perceptions of this communication relationship, of how doctor-patient health communication could be improved. the following aim was identified: to garner in-depth, rich, grassroots evidence about patients’ perception of the nature of doctor-patient health communication in the mafikeng community in order to identify and describe challenges faced by patients when they communicate with doctors. it is important to note that this study only investigated the perception of the nature of doctor-patient health communication in the mafikeng community from the perspective of patients. additional research is required to investigate the matter from the perspective of medical doctors in order to provide a more complete picture. evolution of theory on health communication health communication has been defined as referring to “any type of human communication whose content is concerned with health, where the focus is on health-related transactions and the factors that influence these” (rogers 1996, in berry 2007: 2). across developed and developing countries, the service provider-patient interface has frequently been described by patients as “discriminatory, marginalising, and abusive” (govender & pen-kekana 2008: 90). this finding serves as a motivation for heath literacy education that could enhance effective healthcare provider-patient communication. however, such effectiveness can only be sought after determining the challenges patients face in doctor-patient health communication. although situated in the broad field of health communication, this study focused specifically on doctorpatient communication dynamics, and specifically from the perspective of patients in a largely rural community. problems of communication between doctors and patients are largely entrenched in transactional exchanges between the two parties. therefore, theories drawn from interpersonal communication were found pertinent to guiding the study. wood (2016: 14) defines interpersonal communication as “a selective, systemic process that allows people to reflect and build personal knowledge of one another and create shared meanings”. interpersonal communication is systemic, so, “situation, time, people, culture and personal histories interact to affect meanings” (wood 2016: 15). if the abovementioned factors are not diligently considered in doctor-patient communication, there is likely to be adverse effects on patients’ health. several theories of interpersonal communication have been propounded but the coordinated management of meaning theory (cmm) (littlejohn & foss 2009), which advocates participatory communication, has been found particularly relevant in guiding doctor-patient communication. coordinated management of meaning theory the cmm theory is based on the assumption that meaning creation is achieved by applying rules based on the content of communication; the actions being performed; 101100 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication the situation; the relationship between the communicators; individual backgrounds; and cultural patterns. in this case, healthcare ethics should embrace a two-way communication process, which involves the patient in decision-making (berry 2007). pearce and cronen (1970, in littlejohn & foss 2009) argue that the goal of communication is for communicators to reach a level of coordination. cmm began as an interpretive theory primarily focusing on interpersonal communication, then developed a critical edge in work in a wide range of communication settings, and has now transformed into a practical theory that collaborates with practitioners to improve the patterns of communication (pearce & pearce 2000). coordination is about conjointly creating meaning by the participants, while management of meaning is the process by which people tell stories in order to interpret the world around them and place themselves in it (pearce 1999). thus, cmm could be crucial in doctor-patient communication as it is likely to produce desirable health communication outcomes. however, one major problem of cmm, according to barger (2004), is that it becomes difficult to determine under which conditions people’s lives improve, given that incidents of cmm not producing desired results in therapeutic and consulting cases often go unreported. barger (ibid.) reiterates the significance of ethics in health communication, including that patients should know their rights regarding health communication and receive satisfactory service from practitioners. this knowledge is enhanced by health literacy which, as mentioned earlier, is lacking in both developed and developing countries (leavitt & leavitt 2011). ccm and culture according to an institute of medicine report published in 2003, the concept of culture has increasingly become a core component in the development of health communication theory and application (littlejohn & foss 2009). the goal of culturally sensitive health communication theories is to utilise the concept of culture to develop more effective and efficient health communication programmes amongst the members of various cultures (ibid.). in order to address the concept of culture in health communication, scholars and practitioners have introduced culturally based constructs into existing health communication theories. one such construct is the participatory approach, which could yield healthy communities as it recognises all communicating participants’ voices. participation is based on the premise that the active engagement of relevant stakeholders in the communication process renders patients empowered (tufte & mefalopulos 2009). participation becomes a pertinent proposition in health communication, but it has to be enhanced through health literacy. chambers (1994; 2002, in cleary et al. 2015), an influential early practitioner and scholar of participatory approaches, argues that the capacities of facilitators, in this case healthcare providers, and the style of facilitation are crucial. this implies adequacy and expertise from doctors, as well as good rapport with patients. cmm and its tenet of participation largely draw from the transactional model, which states that “the transactional nature of interpersonal communication implies that communicators share responsibility for effectiveness” (wood 2016: 22). transactional 103102 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu models illustrate simultaneous interaction of complex, multi-layered elements of the communication process, which influence one another (barker & gaut 2002). a “transaction” occurs when two people are in conversation and the emphasis is on verbal and non-verbal behaviour as it occurs in the context of the encounter (hill et al. 2007). however, to describe a transaction as complementary does not imply that the responses are always appropriate (ibid.). therefore, doctors should collaborate with patients in decision-making so that patients understand the reasons for certain actions; thus empowering patients to be in charge of their health decisions. communication barriers wood (2016: 22) refers to the inevitability of noise (communication barriers) in a communication encounter. physiological noise refers to factors affecting the proper functioning of the body, such as hunger, pain or fatigue. psychological noise refers to the qualities in us that affect how we communicate and how we interpret others. for example, failure by patients to express themselves and to open up to a doctor, say due to lack of courage or cultural differences, may lead to wrong diagnosis, just as failure by a doctor to give full attention to a patient and clarify information may result in misinterpretation (wood 2016). semantic noise exists when words (language) are not mutually understood, for example due to the use of medical jargon, which could result in patients misinterpreting information. linguistic democracy in health communication littlejohn and foss (2009; cf. hussey 2013) state that cultural competence by health practitioners is important as it facilitates greater respect from patients. the institutional and structural silencing of patients’ and communities’ non-english voices prevents community involvement in their health welfare (hussey 2013). therefore, a democratic language policy could be viewed as crucial in giving patients a voice. according to levin’s 2006 study, language and cultural barriers were cited by more parents of patients as a major barrier to healthcare than structural and socioeconomic barriers (hussey 2013). studies have shown that miscommunication caused by the language barrier results in increased patient avoidance behaviour, which may result in later presentation of disease, adding to the uncertainty and emotional stress experienced by patients (deumert 2010; saha & fernandez 2007). in order to enhance meaning, organisation and design are key aspects of plain language communication, considering that patients may understand and retain only half of what they are told during a clinical encounter (mccarthy et al. 2012). however, retention and comprehension could improve significantly if patients are asked to restate, in their own words, the information communicated to them (bertakis 1977, in martin & lipman 2013). arguably, patients can only perform this function if they are competent in the language used. symbols are arbitrary, meaning that words are not intrinsically connected to what they represent. the arbitrary nature of language is evident, for example, when communicators discover that their words do not have the same meaning in another culture (martin & lipman 2013). therefore, it is crucial 103102 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication for both parties in a communication transaction to put in as much effort as possible in order to understand each other. while other countries may have a national language to facilitate communication, south africa has 11 official languages. although various measures to improve communication, such as interpreting services, are available (department of arts and culture 2013), current findings indicate ineffective implementation. a study on the viability of interpretation conducted at madwaleni in the eastern cape indicated that communication was often in the hands of untrained or inexperienced interpreters, as well as professional medical staff, junior or student nurses, patients’ family members and auxiliary staff (hussey 2013). typically at madwaleni, a communication barrier often exists between doctor and interpreter and between interpreter and patient (ibid.). another method of overcoming the language barrier is code-switching, “a linguistic phenomenon where speakers change between two languages in a single sentence or conversation” (hussey 2013: 191); this is only possible if both parties understand both the languages used. it has been noted that, apart from a few exceptions (in tanzania, somalia, ethiopia and eritrea), most african countries have promoted and entrenched a neo-colonial policy in which english, french or portuguese continue to be dominant. thus, the gap of social class, race, gender and particularly language often separates service providers from clients (mpasha & lesebe 2015). these authors state that “health education materials should include local languages. these health education materials such as videos, story boards, tv, radio, songs and community theatre should be incorporated effectively to introduce health messages where there is a lack of literacy” (mpasha & lesebe 2015: 93). health literacy and policy the us healthy people report (2010, in kickbusch 2001: 293) defines health literacy as “the capacity to obtain, interpret and understand basic health information and services and the competence to use such information and services to enhance health”. a broader definition by nutbeam (1998, in kickbusch 2001: 293) says “health literacy represents the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health”. nutbeam (2006, in berkman et al. 2010: 12) elaborates that “in addition to literacy and numeracy, rhetorical discourse (effective speaking, listening, and writing), the ability to use technology (particularly the internet), motivation, cognitive ability, and networking and social skills” also constitute health literacy. the main theme emanating from the definitions above is the ability to use different communication resources to enhance health communication. across definitions, outcomes are related to the health of the individual, but vary in nuance. one could argue that a population’s health literacy would be higher if healthrelated materials and communication incorporate more universally integrated principles of clear language, making these materials easier to understand (berkman et al. 2010). therefore, policymakers should consider developing clear standards for both the format 105104 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu and content of prescription drug labels, for example. such strategies may improve the “likelihood that patients will understand, safely administer, and adhere to their drug therapy” (shrank et al. 2009: 798). yet, even seemingly insignificant factors, such as a physician’s illegible handwriting, could contribute to medical errors (bhosale et al. 2013; sadananda 2016). in fact, sadananda (2016: 40) writes that “30 000 british die every year due to medical errors” that result from “unclear abbreviations, dosage indications, and illegible writing out of the 3.2 billion prescriptions written in the uk every year”. the goal of health literacy is to enable the patient to make informed judgments about when, for example, it is advisable to seek expert advice from a health professional, knowledge of how to find the appropriate professional, and the ability to explain the health problem and personal concerns that made the consultation necessary (schulz & nakamoto 2013). a study by stevenson et al. (2004) on analysis of consultations found scant evidence for the occurrence of shared decision-making, with one party often blaming the other for lack of effort. the lack of synthesis in the various studies on doctor-patient communication justifies the current study. research methodology the study was conducted as a qualitative cross-sectional survey of patients’ perceptions of doctor-patient health communication. the population of the study comprised black people living in the mafikeng community who have been patients and have consulted with private doctors in mafikeng. the study focused on private doctors because the majority of these work alone, without the help of nurses, as is often the case in the public sector. the sample comprised 30 interviewees, both male and female, from the ages of 18 and above, across educational backgrounds, and within the 11 linguistic backgrounds of south africa. a snowball sampling strategy was used based on whether the respondent had consulted with a private doctor and obtained a prescription and medicine. this method was deemed appropriate as people generally prefer to keep health matters confidential, and snowball sampling is often used when members of a population are difficult to locate (tichapondwa 2013). permission for the study was obtained from the research entity, indigenous language media in africa, while an ethical clearance certificate was also applied for through the appropriate institutional structures. research participants were briefed and informed consent was sought from the interviewees. data gathered was based on the following concepts: reception and interaction; instruction; prescription interpretation; and understanding medicine labelling. question types used were adopted from du plooy (2009) and geilfus (2008) and included dichotomous, follow-up, mirror and open-ended questions in order to elicit underlying information and suggestions. data was transcribed from the interviews by means of emic analysis in which the interviewees’ categorisation of behaviour was regarded as the reality in the study context. the researchers moved from emic to etic analysis where the interviewees’ views were evaluated through conceptual categories from the literature and theory to provide a grounded and detailed description of patients’ perceptions of challenges faced in terms of doctor-patient communication (lindlof & 105104 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication taylor 2011). categories were then compared and their interrelationship formed the basis for the theoretical and practical implications for health communication. discussion of findings the findings were based on four conceptual categories deemed crucial in health communication: doctor-patient reception and interaction; prescriptions; instructions; and medicine labels. the majority of the respondents were setswana (22; n=30), the dominant language in the north-west province. the rest of the sample was made up as follows: zulu (2), xhosa (4), ndebele (1) and sesotho (1). the following sections provide a discussion of findings that relate to the study’s main objective, namely to describe patients’ perception of the nature of doctor-patient health communication in the mafikeng community. doctors’ confirmation of patient’s proficiency in the language used when asked which language the doctors they have consulted with use, the majority of the research participants indicated english. some participants indicated that the doctor used their (the doctor’s) local language, while others indicated that the doctor used both english and a local language(s). all the participants indicated that the doctor they consulted did not confirm whether the patient understood the language they (the doctor) were using before proceeding, nor did they ask the patients which language they spoke. one participant said, “if a doctor speaks to me in a language i don’t understand, i quickly switch to english since it is the official language in south africa”. however, the same participant added, “the problem with some foreign doctors, even if they use english, you may fail to understand them because of their accent”. one major challenge emerging from this result is the inadequacy of patients’ linguistic democracy in their interaction with doctors due to linguistic differences. interpretation services were not viewed as the best option as it carried the risk of misinterpretation, which is in line with previous findings (hussey 2013; deumert 2010). instead, participants’ suggestions to overcome the semantic barrier include access to doctors who have been living in the community for a long time, as well as the production of health education media and materials in local languages, supported by findings from hussey (2013) and mpasha and lesebe (2015). the authors of this article argue that all stakeholders, including patients, should be proactive in ensuring attainment of the best health outcomes. patients’ preferred language/s in doctor-patient communication the majority of the participants indicated that they prefer to use their home language when communicating with doctors, yet they indicated that this is difficult since the majority of private doctors do not speak a local language, or in some cases are not south african. however, 11 out of 30 participants cited english as their language of preference when communicating with doctors, indicating that english is the medium of instruction in south africa. two of these participants acknowledged the importance 107106 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu of using mother-tongue languages for the less literate and elderly people. one respondent explained their preference of english as follows: “it is easier to express myself in english because my home language may be difficult to express some medical concepts and terms … doctors take advantage of patients who can’t express themselves in english and make decisions for them, for example, one doctor suggested several tests for my mother without clarifying what exactly he was investigating and without agreeing with her.” a major concern expressed that emerged from the interviews was that doctors should get the correct information on patients’ problems to avoid misinterpretation. one participant preferred using both english and isixhosa, indicating that due to certain cultural taboos, particularly where a doctor and patient differ in gender, some concepts are difficult to express in isixhosa. one can then switch to english, which relates to “code-switching”, as mentioned earlier. doctor-patient reception and interpersonal interaction the major challenge identified in terms of the participants’ perception of doctor-patient interaction, both for explanations given by both parties and for instructions from doctors, was the language barrier. related was the challenge of the accent of foreign doctors and, in some instances, white south africa doctors. as a result, some participants indicated that they sometimes end up withholding information because they are not confident to express themselves in a second language. one concern raised was that even if doctors have nurses or other healthcare staff who can assist in interpreting, these nurses/staff are not trained interpreters, which can result in misinterpretation. another concern that emerged was the failure to understand medical terminology, especially in instances where the participants felt that the doctor did not explain thoroughly enough. participants’ suggestions for improvement of doctor-patient health communication in this regard include the use of trained interpreters based on the province’s dominant language; doctors learning the language of the community to embrace local culture through staying in the community for a long time; and that doctors use simple language to explain medical terms, which is also advocated by cmm (littlejohn & foss 2009). several other challenges of human nature, particularly psychological, were mentioned by participants, for example, indications that some doctors ask patients questions but do not elaborate on patients’ responses. the perception that certain race groups receive preferential treatment was also raised, and one participant mentioned that “whites do not get into queues at some white doctors”. some participants experienced doctors as unfriendly, lacking patience and compassion, unreceptive, inconsiderate, or intimidating. physiological barriers were also reported. some participants experienced doctors as impatient, reportedly as a result of tight schedules or fatigue. statements supporting the above include: “in some doctors, there are long queues. the doctor does not have enough time to attend to each person adequately.” 107106 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication “some doctors if you ask questions they feel threatened and see you as a forward somebody; you can see the facial expressions and you end up being quiet.” “some doctors are unconcerned. they continue to write a prescription even if you tell them you are not improving because they want you to continue coming to their surgery; they don’t want to carry further tests or refer you.” “when i went for a review, the doctor said i have a different problem without carrying further tests and felt neglected.” “patients fear the unknown. doctors don’t counsel patients, they don’t have euphemism, so patients develop a phobia to ask doctors. if you are told you have one month to live, its crushes you.” some participants indicated that they had to seek clarity to understand doctors’ instructions. those participants who indicated that they sometimes understand oral instructions better also mentioned the dilemma of then forgetting this information. patients’ challenges in understanding prescription content and medicine labels the majority of the participants was concerned about some doctors’ illegible handwriting and the use of medical jargon, which support findings by sadananda (2016). the major concern is the need to take medicines correctly, according to the doctor’s instructions. the following concerns were noted (here participants included references to both doctors and pharmacists): “so that i know whether i can get the medicine over the counter because it is more expensive with a prescription.” “so that i know the side effects and make an informed decision.” “at one time i was given a wrong dose for the child’s medicine at the pharmacy and the child would spend the whole day sleeping. i googled and discovered that the dose written was much higher for children.” “at one time the pharmacist gave us alternative cream for my sister’s daughter and she reacted the whole body, so we had to go back to the doctor, and it was very expensive for us to consult and to buy other medications again … since then, i do not like substitutes.” one participant indicated that sometimes both doctors and pharmacists do not explain which medicine is for what ailment or symptom in instances where one is given more than one type of medication: “sometimes doctors prescribe many pills for one problem and you do not know which one is more important than the others.” concerning medicine labelling, the majority of respondents indicated that they had problems understanding the labels. most of them said they had to seek clarity from pharmacists. one issue raised was inadequate information on the label, and that oral 109108 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu explanations on use could easily be forgotten (shrank et al. 2009; cf. schillinger et al. 2003). participants’ suggestions in this regard include that medicine labels should have universal pictures in order to be more informative and to enhance understanding. for example, one participant said: “the label just says 2 times per day and i don’t know which 2 times of the day, some don’t indicate whether it should be before or after food. the instruction sheet inside has so much information i do not know where to start and it has medical jargon which i don’t understand.” improvement of doctor-patient health communication as a secondary objective, the participants were asked for suggestions on the improvement of doctor-patient health communication, based on their perception of challenges that they experience in this regard. the language barrier was prominent among challenges that emerged from analysing patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication. the majority suggested the recruitment of trained interpreters to help patients express themselves in instances where the doctor’s and patient’s language differs, although it was reiterated that it is not the best solution due to the risk of misinterpretation. one suggestion was that doctors should ask patients their language of preference, where possible. another suggestion was that a doctor should learn the language of the community in which they are serving for basic communication; this is possible if doctors stay longer in the particular community. further, it was indicated that doctors should use simple english to explain health conditions and the names of medicines to enhance understanding. concerning reception, several suggestions were presented by participants. primary among these is that it is essential that there should be a good rapport between the doctor and patient to ensure quality service. other participants suggested that doctors attend workshops that are contextual, for example, language or culture specific. concerning health media, some respondents preferred the use of typed and printed prescriptions to those that are hand-written. one participant suggested that doctors should devise questionnaires so that patients who are not comfortable expressing their problem could write it down. another participant indicated that doctors’ surgeries should be information hubs that provide patients with free or affordable information on different health issues. the same participant pointed out that entertainment magazines seem to be more readily available than healthcare information in some doctors’ surgeries. where the patients’ initiative is concerned, some participants suggested that patients need a lot of exposure to deal with sensitive and cultural concepts. as such, health literacy and awareness campaigns were found to be useful engagements nationwide so that patients could open up on their health issues. another indication was that patients should know their health rights in order to lodge complaints when something goes wrong in the process of seeking medical attention. one participant suggested that patients should use non-verbal communication in instances where they struggle 109108 patients’ perception of doctor-patient health communication to express themselves in a second language. generally, the respondents’ suggestions were an appeal for commitment from both sides to improve communication. policy improvement the majority of the participants voiced the desire for the implementation of a language policy in the health sector. suggestions included that basic language interpretation be incorporated in health training. the government was urged to enforce policy that allows patients to use the dominant language of a particular province and that a doctor who is not competent in that language should employ an interpreter. with regard to health literacy, one crucial concern is that health literacy should be implemented through various programmes to reach a wider audience, and that the quality of these programmes be monitored and evaluated regularly. to enhance an inclusive policy, it was suggested that the government forms a partnership with the private health sector to standardise healthcare practice to accommodate patients from different socio-economic backgrounds. this emanated from the concern that patients do not follow up on their health progress with private doctors because these medical professionals’ services are more expensive. it was also suggested that effective tools for quality assurance be implemented, particularly in the private sector. one participant suggested the use of patients’ suggestion boxes in all private surgeries, “monitored by government employees”, as well as patient surveys as some of the tools for monitoring and evaluation. concerning health media policy improvement, it was suggested that medicine labels should have universal symbols for easier identification and should entail informative pictures to help patients understand how to use medicines. it was also suggested that medicine labels be written in a third language, the dominant language of a particular province, and be distributed as such; and that research should be conducted to find appropriate words or terms that describe medical terminology in these languages. the concern was that currently medicine labels in south africa are written in only english and afrikaans, to the exclusion of all other official languages. to summarise the patients’ perceptions of doctor-patient health communication in a largely rural area, the major themes emerging from the findings were: a lack of linguistic democracy resulting in semantic breakdown; ineffective doctor-patient reception and interpersonal interaction in general and health communication in particular; ineffective instructions; illegible prescriptions or prescriptions that are difficult to understand, resulting in wrong dosage instructions; and inadequate medicine labelling. conclusion the study’s findings concluded that, based on the perception of participating patients, doctor-patient health communication is inadequate in the mafikeng community due to several semantic, physiological, psychological, institutional and structural barriers. the authors are of the opinion that effective implementation of the cmm theory could improve doctor-patient health communication. the practical implications of the study are largely entrenched in the promotion of health literacy. incorporation of 111110 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu interpreters or the use of interpretation services in health training programmes were also suggested. theoretical implications include the improvement and implementation of a health communication policy, particularly a language policy; 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(third edition). london: sage. littlejohn, s.w. & foss, k.a. 2009. encyclopedia of communication theory. london: sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384 martin, a.l. & lipman, r.d. 2013. the future of diabetes education: expanded opportunities and roles for diabetes educators. the diabetes educator 39(4): 436-446. https://doi. org/10.1177/0145721713486526 mccarthy d.m., waite k.r. & curtis l.m. 2012. what did the doctor say? health literacy and recall of medical instructions. medical care 50(4): 277-282. https://doi.org/10.1097/ mlr.0b013e318241e8e1 mpasha, l.e. & lebese, r.t. 2015. the importance of indigenous languages in health-care services: some observations from limpopo province, south africa. ethnomedicine 9(1): 89-95. pearce, w.b. 1999. using cmm: the coordinated management of meaning. california: pearce associates. pearce, w.b. & pearce, k.a. 2000. extending the theory of coordinated management of meaning (cmm) through a community dialogue process. communication theory 10(4): 405-423. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2000.tb00200.x sadananda, n.b. 2016. doctor’s handwriting. mjms 1(1): 38-45. saha, s. & fernandez, a. 2007. language barriers in health care. journal of general internal medicine 22(2): 281-282. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0373-3 schillinger, d., piette, j., grumbach, k., wang, f., wilson, c. & datier, c. 2003. closing the loop: physician communication with diabetic patients who have low health literacy. archives of internal medicine 163: 83-90. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.163.1.83 schulz, p.j. & nakamoto, k. 2013. health literacy and patient empowerment in health communication: the importance of separating conjoined twins. patient education and counselling 90: 4-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2012.09.006 shrank, w.h., patrick, a., gleason, p.p., canning, c., walters, c. & heaton, a.h. 2009. an evaluation of the relationship between the implementation of a newly designed http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northwu-ebooks/detail.action?docid=332720 http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northwu-ebooks/detail.action?docid=332720 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/16.3.289 http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northwu-ebooks/detail.action?docid=744850 http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northwu-ebooks/detail.action?docid=744850 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384 https://doi.org/10.1177/0145721713486526 https://doi.org/10.1177/0145721713486526 https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e318241e8e1 https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e318241e8e1 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2000.tb00200.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0373-3 https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.163.1.83 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2012.09.006 pb112 rachel moyo & abiodun salawu prescription drug label at target pharmacies and health outcomes. medical care 47(9): 1031-1035. https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e3181a81181 stevenson, a.f., cox, k., britten, n. & dundar, y. 2004. a systematic review of the research on communication between patients and health care professionals about medicines: the consequences for concordance. health expectations 7: 235-245. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1369-7625.2004.00281.x tichapondwa, s.m. 2013. preparing your dissertation at a distance: a research guide. vancouver: virtual university for small states of the commonwealth. tufte, t. & mefalopulos, p. 2009. participatory communication: a practical guide. washington, dc: the world bank. williams, j.n., elwyn, g. & edwards, a. 2013. knowledge is not power for patients: a systematic review and thematic synthesis of patient reported barriers and facilitators to shared decision-making. patient education and counselling. [online]. available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.10.031 [accessed on 28 august 2017]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.10.031 wood, j.t. 2016. interpersonal communication: everyday encounters. (eight edition). boston: cengage learning. https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0b013e3181a81181 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1369-7625.2004.00281.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1369-7625.2004.00281.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.10.031 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.10.031 73pb a drought risk reduction message that sticks: a communication model for foundation phase children abstract too often, children’s communication needs are not considered when it comes to important messages – especially concerning disaster risk reduction. drought has a significant impact on children both mentally and physically, however, they are rarely told how to make themselves more resilient. messages aimed at drought resilience are mostly presented in a format that children will not understand, or care to understand. children have quite unique communication needs with regard to message content, language, media and culture. these needs were researched and moulded into an existing cyclical communication model that may prove to be a useful guideline in constructing a message towards drought resilience for foundation phase children. the main aim of the adapted model is to offer messages containing the “stickiness” factor. keywords: drought; disaster; communication; children; resilience; risk reduction; foundation phase introduction this article presents a synopsis of an early section in a study developing a narrative communication approach towards drought resilience for foundation phase children. although the study delivered a number of data sets, the focus will only be on the development of a communication model that guided the development of the drought risk reduction message. of all the hazards people face, drought is believed to be the most complex but also the least understood of all natural hazards; it also affects more people than any other natural hazard (wilhite 1999). in many cases children count among the most vulnerable – destroyed or distraught by the impact of drought and their inability to make themselves more resilient. in order to increase drought resilience, behavioural change is required. to achieve behavioural change, the message must be of such a nature that it “sticks” in children’s minds. considering the complexity of drought, the model (or blueprint) used to create the message must be thoroughly reflected on. even though academics have studied communication dr cindé greyling doctoral graduate disaster management training and education centre for africa, faculty of natural and agricultural sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein cindegreyling@gmail.com dr lydie terblanche department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein terblanl@ufs.ac.za prof. andries j jordaan director disaster management training and education centre for africa, faculty of natural and agricultural sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein jordaana@ufs.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.6 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 73-88 © uv/ufs mailto:cindegreyling@gmail.com mailto:terblanl@ufs.ac.za mailto:jordaana%40ufs.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.6 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.6 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.6 7574 cindé greyling, lydie terblanche & andries j jordaan for many years, miller-day, pezella and chesnut (2013) state that only 3,7% of all published articles in leading communication journals from 1997 to 2010 focused on children. the authors point out that this is much less than the 10% estimated in previous research. although this study focused on south african children, the message creation can be universally applied. part of the initial process of the study was to construct a model according to which the message could be developed – the construction of this model is summarised here. methodology firstly, the most suitable communication model was sought. thereafter the specific communication needs of foundation phase children were researched in order to arrive at the best possible model to be used in creating a message towards drought resilience. therefore, existing literature and secondary data was used to arrive at the conclusions made. according to patton (2001: 226), a literature review answers the question of what is already known. what is known can then be adapted to suit different circumstances. once the model was constructed, a message was developed according to the guidelines of the model. the message “stickiness” was tested by participant observation to record the children’s response to the developed material. according to jorgensen (1989: 12), participant observation – where direct observation is the primary method of data gathering and can be conducted by a single researcher – can be used for almost any study regarding human existence and is appropriate to critically examine claims to knowledge. observation allows the researcher to collect live data that can potentially be more valid than second-hand accounts (cohen, manion & morrison 2007: 398). since data could not be collected for the entire population, typical case sampling was used. there was no need for the testing to deliver representative results. the secondary data that guided the development of the communication model was representative in itself. the testing was merely used as a method of triangulation and illustrative of the outcomes of the secondary data. reducing drought risk for children for any risk reduction initiative to be effective, shaw et al. (2004: 42) emphasise that five stages should be involved: knowing, realising, deepening, decision and action. these stages lay a heavy burden on any risk reduction effort. it requires that the process by which children receive information, process it and act on it, needs to be understood. using the rohrman awareness model (1998) with its three levels of risk appraisal, decision for prevention, and risk reduction, shiwaku et al. (2007: 580) propose an educational framework that enhances awareness and promotes action for disaster reduction, community education, family education and school education. this framework emphasises that whatever is taught should not be for the sake of providing information only. the experience should specifically enable children to identify risks and hazards in their environment, assist them in making conscious decisions and teach them to take action to prevent the risks, and ultimately support displaying risk-reducing 7574 a drought risk reduction message that sticks behaviour. these goals could be achieved through generating curiosity about hazards and disasters by using an effective communication process (rambau 2011: 50). this means that the communication process by which children are involved in risk reduction needs to be entertaining, imaginative and educational at the same time in order to change consciousness and behaviour. besides the need to be entertaining, imaginative and educational, the success of such a communication process is further challenged by the fact that today there are higher levels of multiculturalism as more and more people migrate to locations outside their culture zones where languages, perceptions and attitudes towards disaster differ (clerveaux, spence & katada 2010: 202). framework for a drought risk reduction communication model the most basic communication model was developed by shannon in 1948. it is still taught to communication students today, which could be viewed as testament to its enduring value (foulger 2004a). shannon’s simple linear model consists of five parts, as elaborated by blackburn (2007: 60) as follows: ■ information source producing the message ■ transmitter encoding the message ■ channel through which the message is sent ■ receiver decoding the message ■ destination referring to the person for whom the message is intended figure 1: shannon and weaver’s model of communication information source transmitter receiver noise source destination message messagesignal received signal (source: corman, trethewey & goodall 2007: 3) when this model was initially developed, shannon had the telephone or telegraph in mind. since then, much has changed in the communication arena. this rapid development is discussed at length by holmes (2005), referring to the current “second media age” that describes cyber communication and the advance in electronic and wireless communication. littlejohn and foss (2009) present a chronological development of communication theories from the classical period until 2008. the development of the field of communication is closely related to social developments through time, ranging from multi-cultural theories, feminism, the rise of interpersonal communication theories and an interest in the non-verbal aspects of communication to mass media and advanced technological theories. however, miller (1996) states that some aspects of both written and oral communication have remained unchanged. 7776 cindé greyling, lydie terblanche & andries j jordaan she argues that “communication is still the social glue that holds together nations, corporations, scientific disciplines and families”. figueroa et al. (2002) share miller’s sentiment in defending the validity of different types of communication models by arguing that no theory is right or wrong, it is only appropriate or inappropriate – depending on the environment and situation in which it is applied. a model like, for example, shannon’s five-step linear model, was too simplistic and speculative to apply in the study discussed in this article, thus rendering such approaches inappropriate. one reason is that linear models lacks what berlo (1960, in corman et al. 2007: 4) calls fidelity – which describes the effect of the message. linear models also assume that the receiver will indeed receive the message and that they will understand it. although the effect of noise (that can interfere with the message clarity) is included in most linear models, the general assumptions of such models were too generous for the purposes of the study under discussion. since the rise of linear communication models, many other models have been created by various scientists to suit their specific area of communication (e.g. marketing, public relations, advertising, politics) with the aim of including factors that were not applicable in typical linear models like shannon’s, such as feedback, language barriers, gatekeepers, culture, perception and different types of media. some of these models include schramm’s (1957) face-to-face model; berlo’s (1960) sendermessage-channel-receiver (smcr) model and barnlund’s (1970) more complex transactional model accounting for the continuous, unrepeatable, irreversible nature of communication (littlejohn & foss 2009). miller (1996: 3), however, warns against over-simplifying communication as packaging messages and transmitting them. such an approach denies the complex interaction of knowledge, language, habit, presumptions, values and interests that all affect the communication process. communication should rather be thought of as an art. accordingly, a good starting point among the available models for the current article was to analyse foulger’s (2004b) ecological model of the communication process. foulger (2004b) attempted to address the gaps in other communication models by: i. assigning an active role to the receiver of the message; ii. allowing for different interpretations of the message; iii. recognising the different types of language use in different media; iv. proposing that receivers learn about the media by using the media; v. noting that the creators of the message actually invent and evolve language; and vi. that the messages constructed can in fact be imperfect representations of the meaning actually imagined. he argues that the roles of the message creators and message consumers are both reflective and introspective in that people create messages in reaction to other people’s messages, and that the interpretation of the messages is influenced by each person’s own perspective. 7776 a drought risk reduction message that sticks figure 2 : ecological model of the communication process creators consumers exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback imagine and create using within within have perspectives of observe, attribute and interpret use, select, invent and evolve message languages media cultures learn, socialise and observe message in (source: foulger 2004b) simply put, the ecological model of the communication process assigns an equally important role to the sender and the receiver of any message to aid the success of the message. drought risk reduction message characteristics according to foulger’s (2004b) model, message creation by the creator lies at the core of the communication process. firstly, the sender must have a very clear idea of the message to be sent, and secondly, the sender must have a good understanding of how to create the message in the most effective way. messages that are unique and rather point out “do’s” than “don’ts” prove to be more effective for young children (unicef 2006: 14). kolucki, iskanderova and grover (2006: 2) also advise that less is more and simple is best. a message needs to be noticed to establish a connection through which the communication can be sent before it can be understood. kirkorian, wartella and anderson (2008: 51) found that young children do not understand messages they do not pay attention to, and that they cannot learn from content they do not understand. these authors also assert that repetition is valuable to ensure that the message sticks in the children’s minds – be it by means of repeated exposure to the message or by repeating the same message in a variety of ways. gladwell (2013: 101-118) found exactly the same in his analysis of the children’s television programmes sesame street and blue’s clues. the moment children could not make sense of what they were looking at, they looked away. as soon as the children perceived something as confusing, including too much action, puns and complicated wordplay, they lost interest. the same study also found that repetition is valuable, as well as the integration of reality and fantasy. although psychologists 7978 cindé greyling, lydie terblanche & andries j jordaan advised the producers of sesame street not to fuse reality and fantasy in order to avoid misleading the children, the opposite happened: the moment that fantasy and reality were separated, the children lost interest. however, as soon as the fantasy characters and the adults engaged, interest levels would rise again. the same proved true for a narrative approach – children did not pay much attention to, understand or remember information presented in a non-narrative manner. fisch (2000, in kirkorian et al. 2008: 51) agrees by suggesting that narrative and educational content should be integrated as much as possible. hamilton and weiss (2005: 1-11) explain this notion by reasoning that stories are at the core of all the aspects that make us human and that it is the oldest form of education. they argue that children are born with an innate ability to make sense of their world by means of stories and that stories are the way by which the brain stores information. the above suggests that the message towards drought resilience for foundation phase children should be simple, repetitive, narrative and imaginative and should focus on the positive actions needed in order to reduce drought risk as illustrated in figure 3. figure 3: partial communication model towards stickiness: the message creator childrendrr message simple, repetitive, narrative, imaginary, positive exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback imagine and create have perspectives of observe, attribute and interpret (source: adapted from foulger 2004b) language characteristics of a drought risk reduction message the message content must be converted into a language that foundation phase children will understand. children face numerous challenges with regard to languages other than their mother tongue (jongejan, verhoeven & siegel 2007). therefore, the ideal would be to convey the message in the mother tongue, especially to young children who have not yet, or only partially, acquired the skill of understanding a second language. according to pretorius and machet (2004: 45), the ability to read entails more than just being able to recognise letters and decode words; it also refers to the ability to understand whatever was written. in order to arrive at this understanding, children are required to simultaneously process, retain and retrieve information. this makes a considerable demand on their working memory – a memory system assumingly involved in the active processing of current information (jongejan et al. 2007: 837). 7978 a drought risk reduction message that sticks the successful processing by the working memory, or the way in which children make sense of language, depends on various aspects, as explained below: ■ orthographic awareness. orthographic awareness refers to the child’s ability to know in which sequence words are put together to form meaning, that is, spelling and spelling rules (arab-moghaddam & sénéchal 2001: 141). ■ phonological awareness. phonological awareness refers to the child’s ability to link letters with their corresponding sound and to then combine these sounds into words (ibid.). ■ semantic awareness. semantics involves understanding what words mean as a whole, and in parts, in sentences and discourse. skilled reading requires the effective processing and combination of orthographic, phonological and semantic formation (nakayama, sears & lupker 2010: 477). ■ syntactic awareness. according to lipka and siegel (2007: 108), syntactic awareness refers to the child’s ability to understand the grammatical structure of a language. all languages have rules that determine how words can be put together to form sentences. although it can be confusing on the one hand, on the other hand it can help a child make sense of a new, difficult word – provided that the child has a good syntactic awareness. the above is pivotal to the child’s vocabulary, which is dependent on prior knowledge or previous exposure to words used to code or decode meaning (rvachew & bernhardt 2010: 35; miller & keenan 2009: 103). determining the language or prior knowledge of a child may not be easy to establish without testing their knowledge. however, lists of words, phrases and sentences that foundation phase children should know are available from various national and international sources: dolch word list (2014); fry words (2010); perkins (1998) and rasinski (2003), as well as from the national curriculum (department of basic education 2011) and workbooks (department of basic education 2014a; 2014b). the learning outcomes of the nationally prescribed curriculum for foundation phase children in south africa provide one way of estimating the language ability of these children. as can be derived from these curriculum outcomes, a message aimed at foundation phase children would require a large portion of visual elements. the first two grades depend largely on visual content to support reading development. madigan (2005: 1) suggests that visual symbols greatly aid understanding where reading or language ability falls short, and that the use of pictures can even help children understand abstract ideas. although lester (2006) points out that linguistic theorists do not consider pictures as a language because there is no formal grammar, he argues that words too are collections of symbolic images. all words originate from icons, but have evolved to such an extent that it is no longer possible to connect them with the original pictograms. this underlines lester’s (2006) notion that people understand the world by reading pictures – which is emerging once again in our image-entrenched modern culture. 8180 grade r grade 1 grade 2 grade 3 emergent reading skills • recognises and points out common objects in pictures • arranges a set of pictures in such a way that they form a story • interprets pictures, e.g. makes up own story and ‘reads’ the pictures • acts out parts of a story, song or rhyme • holds the book the right way up and turns pages correctly • pretends to read and adopts a ‘reading voice’ • recognises own name and names of some other children in the class • begins to ‘read’ high frequency words seen in the classroom and at school, e.g. door, cupboard) shared reading as a class with teacher • ‘reads’ enlarged texts such as poems, big books, posters • makes links to own experience when reading with the teacher • describes characters in stories and gives opinions • predicts what will happen in a story through the pictures • answers questions based on the story read • draws pictures capturing main idea of the stories emergent reading skills • develops book handling skills (holding the book and turning pages correctly) • interprets pictures to make up own story, i.e. ‘reads’ the pictures • reads logos, labels and other words from environmental print • recognises own name and names of peers • reads labels and captions in the classroom • develops basic concepts of print including • concept of a book • concept of words and letters • directionality: starts reading at front, ends at back; read from left to right and top to bottom of a page shared reading as a class with teacher • reads big books or other enlarged texts • uses pictures and the book cover to predict what the story is about • discusses the story, identifying the main idea and characters • sequences the events in the story • recognises cause and effect in a story, e.g. the girl got into trouble because she broke a window • gives an opinion on what was read • answers open-ended questions based on the passage read • interprets information from posters, pictures and simple tables, e.g. a calendar shared reading as a class with teacher • reads big books or other enlarged texts (e.g. fiction and non-fiction books, poems and songs) • uses visual cues, i.e. pictures and the cover of a book to predict what the story is about • identifies key details in what was read • expresses whether a story was liked and is able to justify the response, e.g. ‘i didn’t enjoy the story because…’ • answers higher order questions based on the text read, e.g. ‘in your opinion…’ • discusses different cultures represented in stories • interprets pictures and other print media, e.g. photographs, calendars, advertisements, newspaper and magazine pictures, posters shared reading as a class with teacher • reads enlarged texts such as fiction and non-fiction big books, newspaper articles, plays, dialogues and electronic texts (computer texts) • reads book and discusses the main idea, the characters, the ‘problem’ in the story, the plot and the values in the text • answers a range of higher order questions based on the passage read • reads different poems on a topic • uses visual cues to talk about a graphical text, e.g. advertisements, pictures, graphs, charts and maps • finds and uses sources of information, e.g. community members, library books • uses table of contents, index and page numbers to find information • uses key words and headings to find information in non-fiction texts • uses a dictionary to find new vocabulary and their meanings table 1: reading skills to be taught in home language grades r–3 (source: department of basic education 2011: 26) 8180 a drought risk reduction message that sticks the use of pictures to communicate with children not only supports understanding, but can substitute words when needed. according to guijarro (2013: 345-346), the visual component of communication (or stories) can be used to reflect that which the sender (or author) is not able to express in words. furthermore, visual components can be used to create narrative tension and emphasise importance as well as create a connection between the characters in the story and the child reader and/or viewer – which is not always possible with words alone. authors haust (1989), guijarro (2011), ishii (2007), madigan (2005) and lester (2006) agree on the importance of visual components for communication with children. kolucki and lemish (2011: 27) sum up child-appropriate language, characters and stories by suggesting the use of the following: simple language, descriptive and sensory words, known contexts, repetition and the use of both human and non-human characters. the above suggests that the language used to communicate with foundation phase children must be textually and/or visually suitable, as illustrated in figure 4. figure 4: partial communication model towards stickiness: language creator childrenlanguage textually and/or visually suitable exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback use, select invent and evolve have perspectives of learn, socialise and observe message in (source: adapted from foulger 2004b) media requirements of a drought risk reduction message children have access to various communication media including digital, audio and print books, magazines, radio, television, mobile phones, computers, tablets, etc. however, as noted by kolucki and lemish (2011: 6), not all children in all areas have access to the different types of media – especially in rural and remote areas children often rely on more traditional media, like print and radio. buckingham (2005: 6) points out that access to media has two dimensions. firstly, it refers to physical access; in other words, do the children for example have access to television, radio, a library or a computer? secondly, it refers to the ability of the children to actually use the medium, that is, whether they are able to manipulate the technology to receive the message. with traditional media, access is rarely a problem. books, for example, can be sent to any location and opening a book is seldom a challenge. radio and television signals are also quite readily available and the devices fairly easy to operate. yet, with new 8382 cindé greyling, lydie terblanche & andries j jordaan media, buckingham’s study (2005) found some significant inequalities – the so-called “digital divide” that is closely related to socio-economic status: the less affluent, the less access to modern digital technology. the current trend with regard to engaging children with content is, however, multiplatform (thorn 2008: 21). children’s toys and television programmes, for example, are no longer singular items – the same content is presented across various media. accordingly, a superhero character will be available to children as a toy, movie, television programme, song, storybook, smartphone application, etc. by doing this, content creators attempt to hit as many targets as possible – if a child cannot read, maybe they can play with a toy. if they do not have access to movie theatres, maybe they can get hold of a book or dvd. this approach is not only useful for profitdriven endeavours. peek (2008: 4) highlights the value of age-appropriate material disseminated through various print and electronic media as a tool to educate children about disasters and engage them in preparedness activities. the above suggests that the media used to communicate with foundation phase children are required to be both physically and manipulatively accessible, as illustrated in figure 5. figure 5: partial communication model towards stickiness: media creator childrenmedia physically and manipulatively accessible exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback use, select invent and evolve have perspectives of learn, socialise and observe message in (source: adapted from foulger 2004b) cultural guidelines for a drought risk reduction message language, knowledge, beliefs, values and attitudes are heavily influenced by culture (ishii 2007: 18). cultural differences and subsequent indigenous knowledge and heritage should be taken into account when creating disaster risk reduction messages (wisner 2006: 84) because cultural differences will also impact on children’s knowledge of risk and hazards (peek 2008: 18). nonetheless, lester (2006) asserts that pictures can to a certain extent bridge the gap between cultures to communicate a universal message because they are a globally understood “language”. one should also pay attention to the emergence of a so-called global “children’s culture” that groups children from around the world into a like-minded cluster regardless of any regional and/or cultural differences (buckingham 2005). one of the factors that may 8382 a drought risk reduction message that sticks cause this phenomenon is that although children across the world grow up in diverse cultures, kolucki and lemish (2011: 15) note that the developmental stages remain much the same. one example of this global culture is the distribution of the american children’s television programme sesame street to more than 150 countries. all co-productions are based on the original template and tailored slightly to suit local conditions. the south african version is called takalani sesame. an hiv positive character, kami, was introduced to address the hiv/aids issue. the american character big bird was replaced by moishe, who is modelled on a meerkat (tamagnan, meredith & kato 2015). this confirms the existence of a global children’s culture, but also encourages local cultural elements, or that local cultural elements can be enhanced by including global culture elements. kolucki et al. (2006) reported on a successful educational children’s book project in the kyrgyz republic, where existing culture and new creations were effectively combined. the books were so popular that they were developed into an animation series. the above suggests that it is necessary to include both the local and the global children’s culture in creating a message for foundation phase children, as illustrated in figure 6. figure 6 : partial communication model towards stickiness: culture creator childrenculture include local and global children’s culture exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback use, select invent and evolve have perspectives of learn, socialise and observe message in (source: adapted from foulger 2004b) adapted drought risk reduction communication model for foundation phase children when taking all of the above into account, some elaboration and adaptation of foulger’s (2004b) ecological model of the communication process are needed to best communicate a drought risk reduction (drr) message to foundation phase children. if a message is to be turned into what gladwell (2013: 89) describes as an “epidemic”, like sesame street and blue’s clues, there are three rules to observe: the law of the few, the stickiness factor, and the power or context. the message should be communicated: 8584 cindé greyling, lydie terblanche & andries j jordaan ■ by an outstanding character (of which there are few) ■ in a memorable way (to make the message stick) ■ with an understanding of the environment in which the message is received (within a larger culture, there are smaller subgroups that influence the larger group; gladwell [2013] found that influencing the smaller subgroups often alters the behaviour of the larger group). the adapted model of foulger’s (2004b) ecological model of the communication process serves as a guide in order to create this so-called stickiness that may cause an educational “epidemic”: figure 7: drr communication model for children creators consumers language textually and/or visually suitable exchange roles, become creators when they reply or provide feedback imagine and create have perspectives of observe, attribute and interpret use, select, invent and evolve ddr message simple, repetitive, narrative, imaginary, positive media physically and manipulatively accessible culture include local and global children’s culture using within within within learn, socialise and observe message in (source: adapted from foulger 2004b) discussion and conclusion the drr communication model for children (figure 7) was used as a guide to develop a drought risk reduction message for foundation phase children. firstly, it was necessary to determine age-appropriate message content for foundation phase children. much of the drought risk reduction information available is presented as complex data sets or at a level that exceeds the comprehension ability of a foundation phase child. accordingly, 8584 a drought risk reduction message that sticks the most crucial information was moulded to suit the demands of foundation phase children, as indicated by the drr communication model for children. after the message content was determined, it had to be coded into an age-appropriate format. this was done by analysing the preferred coding options for foundation phase children. it soon became apparent that words alone would not suffice – the larger part of a foundation phase child’s understanding depends on visual stimuli. therefore, the textual and the visual coding needed to be used in unison and as per age-appropriate requirements. once the message is coded, it must be sent via the most suitable communication channel. as suggested by the drr communication model for children, it must be physically and manipulatively accessibly – the study discussed in this article found that a picture book is the most appropriate channel for foundation phase children. local and global cultural needs were also taken into account before the message was finalised and packaged. it was found that the message developed according to the guidelines of the drr communication model for children did indeed stick, that is, foundation phase children paid attention to the message, understood it and remembered it well enough to engage in a discussion about it. five observations with a total of 33 foundation phase children were conducted. it was also found that the children remembered the message up to seven months after the initial exposure. the limitations of the study included the ever-changing global children’s landscape. however, the model allows room for adaptation in recognising both the local and the global children’s culture in message development. and, although great care was taken to adhere to scientific objectivity in preparing the message, constructing the data collection tool, and during analysis, potential research bias is a possibility. this drr communication model for children allows opportunities for further research in that it can be used to develop and test other types of messages. furthermore, the impact of each component of the model (message, language, media, and culture) can be researched in order to determine the weight it carries in message creation. references arab-moghaddam, n. & sénéchal, m. 2001. orthographic and phonological processing skills in reading and spelling in persian/english bilinguals. international journal of behavioural development 25(2): 140–147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01650250042000320 blackburn, p.l. 2007. the code model of communication: a powerful metaphor in linguistic metatheory. sil international. buckingham, d. 2005. the media literacy of children and young people. a review of the research literature on behalf of ofcom. centre for the study of children, youth and media, institute of education. university of london: london. 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implementation of this policy in rural areas. this article explores the extent to which ict policy and regulation were implemented in rural south africa, with specific reference to the eastern cape province. focus group interviews and in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data from 28 high school learners, two local municipal mayors and two women support group leaders in the chris hani district municipality. a theme analysis indicated that the universal service and access agency of south africa (usaasa) is failing to fulfil its mandate of promoting universal access and service. it is recommended that the provincial government in the eastern cape design an ict strategy for its municipalities and that there should be easy access to thusong service centres in rural areas. keywords: information society; information and communication technology; policy; education; universal access; universal service; digital inclusion; digital literacy; eastern cape introduction and background in most rural areas, people primarily depend on agriculture for their livelihood. access to information is thus paramount to their economic and social development. however, the apartheid-era telecommunications infrastructure in south africa was biased in favour of white and urban areas (braman 1998; van audenhove 1999; horwitz & currie 2007), leaving rural areas poorly connected in terms of information and communication technology (ict). not only does this restrict access to information, but it also restricts citizens’ right to communicate and take part in democratic processes. redressing this imbalance has become one of the focus areas of the south african government since the advent of democracy. grasia chisango department of public relations and communiction, walter sisulu university (gchisango@wsu.ac.za) prof. carol lesame faculty of humanities, university of limpopo (carol.lesame@ul.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 48-61 © ufs mailto:gchisango@wsu.ac.za mailto:carol.lesame@ul.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.4 4948 challenges of ict policy implementation 4948 the country’s ict policy sets out the vision for ict development and is associated with national development goals as set out in the national development plan (ndp) (department of public service and administration 2012). the aims of the ndp include eliminating poverty and reducing inequality, growing an inclusive economy, building capabilities, enhancing the capacity of the state, and promoting leaders who work together to solve complex problems throughout society (government information communication and information system 2013). the objectives of the ndp include quality education and skills development for all south africans by 2030. one of the milestones for the ndp includes making high-speed broadband internet available to all citizens at competitive prices (government communication and information system 2013). most ict policies include telecommunication, especially telephone communication, broadcasting (mainly radio and television), and internet-related services. the policy can be national, regional and international. most ict policies have common objectives, including increasing the benefits from information technology, providing ict services at a reduced cost, and improving the quality of services and products (united nations economic and social commission for asia and the pacific/escap 2014; 2016). two critical issues in ict policy are access and civil liberties (nicol 2003). accessibility to ict remains a challenge in many countries, often as a result of the price of this technology or the fact that technology is not readily available. civil liberties include human rights, such as the right to privacy and the right to communicate. ict policies and strategies also have to do with activities that influence the quality of life, including agriculture, education, health and culture. they can be merged into national policies, for instance, extending internet access to rural clinics can improve the delivery of health services (ruxwana et al. 2010; naidoo & fourie 2013). aim and methodology the aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which south africa’s ict policy has been implemented in rural areas through exploring the level of ict access and use by rural women and high school learners in the chris hani district municipality in queenstown in the eastern cape. the study also assessed how the national ict policy has improved access to and use of ict by women and high school learners. focus group interviews and in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted to gather data from participants, which included 28 high school learners, two local municipal mayors and two women support group leaders in the chris hani district municipality. two local municipalities in the district, intsika-yethu and emalahleni, were selected based on similarities in geographical size and primary economic activities, namely subsistence farming (mccann 2005). an interpreter assisted where participants were not comfortable with speaking english. ethical clearance was obtained from the department of education and school principals before collecting data from focus groups at high schools. all participants were informed about the details of the study, as well as that they could end participation at any time without consequences. all participants used pseudonyms in order to protect their identity. 5150 grasia chisango & carol lesame south africa’s ict policy framework the role of ict in rural development south africa’s ict policy framework is informed by various pieces of legislation, including the electronic communications act of 2005, the electronic transactions act of 2005, and the broadband policy. the department of communications (doc) is the policy-maker and the independent communications authority of south africa (icasa) is the regulator. the aim of the various policies is to address issues of accessibility, availability and affordability of ict services in the country. a number of development challenges face south africa, including socio-economic inequality, high levels of poverty and an unemployment rate that stood at 27.7% in mid-2017 (statistics south africa 2017). the national government acknowledges that ict plays an important role in the integration of services for the development of rural areas. it promotes the use of ict in all sectors, including agriculture and small enterprises (department of communications 2011: 6). hence, one of the doc’s main functions is developing ict policies and accompanying legislation in order to create conditions for the accelerated and shared growth of the south african economy (ibid.). informed by the 1996 constitution, the current south african ict policy upholds “the idea of universal service or equitable provision of ict services based on the principle of equality before the law, in terms of provision of telecommunication services in all areas, regardless of whether the area is urban or rural or whether the persons are poor or rich” (lesame et al. 2011: 207). the telecommunications act of 1996, introduced through the 1996 constitution, addresses the issues of universal access and service. the availability of ict enables people to enjoy the benefits of technology, including e-education, e-health and various communication platforms. the aim of having a universal service policy is “linking communities and economic interest for reaping the benefits arising from the optimisation of information flows between the productive sector and the markets” (lesame et al. 2011: 208). the electronic communications act of 2005 the electronic communications act (eca) of 2005 also endorses the principles of universal service and universal access. one of the objectives of the eca is that the government has to “provide the universal provision of electronic communication networks and electronic communications services, broadcasting services and connectivity for all” (department of communications 2011: 7). the government, through icasa, facilitated the licensing of under-serviced area licenses (usals) to address the participation of small, medium and micro enterprises (smmes) in ict markets; at the same time addressing the aim of universal access to all. this study sought to establish whether the principles of the eca were effectively implemented in the rural intsika-yethu and emalahleni local municipalities and whether local inhabitants were able to connect to the global village. 5150 challenges of ict policy implementation the electronic transactions act of 2005 the government realised that by using electronic transactions, rural communities would be using their resources more effectively as money that would have been used for transport purposes could be channelled to other household needs. hence, the implementation of the electronic transactions act (eta), which promotes the use of electronic transactions by small enterprises and universal access. the use of e-commerce also enables rural enterprises to expand their markets. the universal service and access agency of south africa (usaasa) is responsible for furthering the goal of universal access and service (oyedemi 2009). usaasa facilitates the installation of telecentres nationally. telecentres, or technology information centres (tics or tscs), provide services such as internet access, facsimile and photocopying services, video facilities and ict training services to rural and underserviced areas (universal service and access agency of south africa/usaasa 2008). multi-purpose community centres also disseminate information, which is required by communities in their daily lives (naidoo & fourie 2013). a key issue that should be noted is that, in order to enjoy the benefit of ict, the services should be affordable, as indicated by general notice 987 no. 31333 which states, “affordable communications for all, citizens and businesses alike, throughout south africa, is at the core of its vision and is the goal of its policy”. the broadband policy the united nations’ world summit on information society (wsis) resolved that ict infrastructure is an essential foundation for the information society (department of communications 2010). the expansion of infrastructure is essential for the provision of content and services. in 2007, the south african government approved the building of an information society (department of communications 2010). the south african national broadband policy was gazetted in july 2010. the policy focuses “on increasing the accessibility, availability, affordability and usage of broadband services throughout south africa” (department of communications 2010: 6). broadband services promote economic growth, for instance, by reducing the cost of communication. increased access to information can also make it easier for smmes to promote and sell their products and services (sekeleni 2015). broadband services also promote social benefits, such as improved quality of education and improved quality and access to health services. however, affordability remains an issue of concern, especially in the rural areas that formed part of this study. the intsika-yethu local municipality is one of the poorest municipalities in the eastern cape, with 25 043 households experiencing chronic hunger. the chris hani district municipality as a whole has a high malnutrition and hunger index (chris hani district municipality 2012-2017). poor households therefore are forced to spend the bulk of their income on food, rather than on ict services. furthermore, there is a high dependency on grants and remittances as the main source of household income due to the high unemployment rate. 5352 grasia chisango & carol lesame broadband infrastructure is critical in achieving digital inclusion, enabling universal, sustainable and affordable access to icts, and providing connectivity and access to remote and marginalised areas (department of communications 2010: 4). the 2011 census results indicated that 64.8% of households had no access to the internet. in an effort to analyse the impact of ict programmes nationally, the doc launched the south africa e-barometer in august 2011. this measures the progress of the national ict uptake and use (government communication and information system 2013). results and discussion as mentioned earlier, the aim of this study was to explore and assess how south africa’s ict policy has been implemented in rural areas, specifically for the benefit of women and learners. in this section, the research findings are discussed at the hand of themes drawn from the data. theme 1: knowledge of ict this theme sought to bring to light the level of ict knowledge among emalahleni and intsika-yethu women. the level of awareness of ict affects the uptake and usage of ict in a community. from the in-depth interviews conducted, it emerged that most women in the two municipalities are aware of different types of ict, but knowledge of utilisation is limited in both municipalities. respondent 3, a women support group leader from emalahleni, mentioned that women in agriculture and development projects, such as poultry, catering and piggery, mainly use mobile phones, which allows instant communication. however, not everyone owns a mobile phone. communication usually centres on the women’s projects, such as catering. however, they cannot access the internet, which is required to access market information for their produce. some of the women from both municipalities lack ict skills to search, select and process information. according to the research findings, some women lack basic literacy skills, an aspect that municipal training programmes do not address. most of the respondents also lack strategic skills, that is, the ability to use a computer and network sources to improve one’s position in society. according to respondent 1, a government leader from intsika-yethu: “those who have access to these resources do not know how to fully utilise these resources, they have a challenge of lack of the background knowledge on how the ict infrastructure can assist them.” this was echoed by respondent 4, a government leader from emalahleni: “most women afford the cell phone for making calls and sms, very few people are able to use the internet.” it emerged from the interviews that the thusong service centre/tsc situated in cofimvaba only offers ict services, but not ict skills training. in emalahleni, the ict container was not yet operational at the time of the study; thus, there was no ict skills training offered in the municipality. it should be noted that an ict hub is now operational in emalahleni. 5352 challenges of ict policy implementation according to respondent 1, intsika-yethu sought to find six people who could present ict skills training to other people in the municipality, but only three were available: “the concept of ict is fairly new and is not moving as fast as one would wish; there is not much that is being done by those with access to promote the use of ict to other women who are not well-versed on the use of ict, so it is moving very slowly to transfer the usage of ict skill”. there are no programmes in either municipality to assist women in obtaining ict skills. the digital skills gap emulates the income gap, where those with a higher income are generally better skilled in the use of ict because of easier access. the researchers found that in these two communities in the eastern cape the digital divide is deepening. theme 2: accessibility of ict accessibility of ict is a challenge to some women in rural areas and this study sought to ascertain the degree of ict access in emalahleni and intsika-yethu. as mentioned earlier, the telecommunications policy was adopted in 1996 to pursue values that “promote equal access to telecommunication services or universal access to these services, whether one resides in an urban or rural area” (lesame et al. 2011: 206). the responses obtained from the research participants do not reflect the goal of the telecommunications policy. according to respondent 4, “emalahleni is a deep rural area, so computers, laptops and mobile phones are easily available at government offices, therefore women who are not working in any government setup are only limited to the cell phone. some do not even have the cell phone; remember one has to buy the cell phone.” in intsika-yethu, women face similar challenges. respondent 1 commented that, “usage of ict is quite a big challenge because the municipality is rural, very few women have access to ict [and also] only women working in government institutions are privileged to have access to ict.” both these responses point to the fact that an ict physical access gap exists in emalahleni and intsika-yethu. some women rely solely on government social grants and a few are employed at government institutions. those who work at government institutions can more readily access ict compared to other women in the community; hence, the physical access gap in this society. these findings support the digital divide theory, as argued by fuchs and horak (2008), who state that the income gap also creates a social divide, that is, the working class who can afford computer and internet access, and those who cannot. physical access to ict infrastructure in both emalahleni and intsika-yethu is limited. respondent 1 mentioned that there is only one thusong service centre (tsc) in the municipality, situated in cofimvaba town. it has ten computers for use by the residents of about 200 villages. although there is an ict centre in tsomo town, respondent 2, a women support group leader, confirmed that this is not a multi-purpose community centre. during the time that the interviews were conducted, three ict containers 5554 grasia chisango & carol lesame were delivered, one in indwe, one in lady frere, and the other in dordrecht. these small towns form the emalahleni municipality. previously, there were no ict centres in emalahleni municipality, making it difficult for residents to access ict services, often forcing them to travel to queenstown, the biggest town in the chris hani district municipality. according to respondent 4, the emalahleni municipality comprises 17 wards, which include more than 200 villages, excluding farms. the available tscs thus cannot cater to the ict needs of the entire municipality. in 2007, world leaders made a commitment at the wsis to “turn the digital divide into a digital opportunity for all”. however, inadequate physical access in emalahleni and intsika-yethu socially excludes residents from the information society. most people in these municipalities rely on government social grants; therefore, they cannot afford computers or internet access at home. accessibility to ict is also a major concern at the high schools where the study was conducted. literacy is changing with the changing world of technology; it has expanded to “include literacy in information and communication technologies” (harste 1994). therefore, e-literacy is not only the ability to read, write and count; it also entails computer skills. while access and availability remain issues, inroads have been made to expose rural learners to ict, for example at the kwadukuza resource centre in the kwazulu-natal province. however, this is not the case for most learners in intsikayethu and emalahleni. from the focus group interviews conducted at cofimvaba senior secondary school and gcinubuzwe senior secondary school, it was clear that both schools are producing learners who lack computer skills. learners at both schools mentioned that there are computer laboratories at their schools. however, not all the learners may access these computers. at cofimvaba secondary school, not all learners are taught computer application technology (cat); only three classes out of 21 are cat learners (these 21 learners represent 14.3% of the total number of learners at the school). learners are not allowed to use mobile phones on school premises and the cyber laboratory is only meant for cat learners. at gcinubuzwe, computers are available but, according to focus group members, none of the learners use them and they are not used during the teaching-learning process. in addition, the computers are not connected to the internet. a learner stated the following: “i was at a school where i was learning computers, but now i am here, i am no longer doing them.” learners at gcinubuzwe are highly disadvantaged and this contributes to the widening of the digital divide. from the focus groups, it became clear that these learners are aware that there are schools where learners use ict and a number of the participants indicated that their lack of access to ict might disadvantage them at tertiary institution level. if the principles of the international telecommunication union (itu) ict development index’s (idi) sub-indices of access, affordability and availability are applied, south africa is not an information society, as some learners do not have 5554 challenges of ict policy implementation access to ict in the classroom. the scenario at both schools where the research was conducted contradicts the government’s e-education policy. the policy states that “every south african manager, teacher and learner in the general and further education and training bands will be ict capable (that is, use ict confidently and creatively to help develop the skills and knowledge they need as lifelong learners to achieve personal goals and to be full participants in the global community)”. the challenges that learners at both these schools face could be a result of inadequate learning resources that incorporate ict usage and limited technology infrastructure that hinders the effective introduction of technology into schools (hennessy et al. 2010). research participants from gcinubuzwe stated that there are no computer laboratories in the surrounding communities. these learners are thus not able to tap into the mainstream of information and knowledge where they can “learn and play, expand their imagination and creativity, and collaborate with their peers across the african continent and the world” (the world bank group 2007). in addition to the lack of ict access, the school does not have a library (nor does the surrounding community, for that matter). in this regard, the department of education has failed as it is mandated to provide libraries to schools. failure to provide ict services to all citizens, as stated in legislation, is thus excluding these learners and the residents in these communities from the information society. at gcinubuzwe, a research participant stated that they travel to lady frere to access and use ict services, but sometimes they are forced to travel to queenstown (which costs r60) if there is no network access available in lady frere. according to webster’s (1995) spatial definition, ict compresses space and time; however, in these areas, residents are forced to travel in order to connect to others via ict. compounding the situation sketched above, a number of villages that form part of the intsika-yethu municipality do not have electricity. the residents of these villages, which include gqogqorha, ntsume and tsakane, are unable to charge their mobile phones or devices, or watch television. according to a policy brief by advocacy group solidarity for african women’s rights (2010: 9), “irregular or non-existent power supplies act as significant barriers to access and use of icts, particularly in rural areas”. this indicates failure by the government to provide universal service and access to ict infrastructure and facilities. theme 3: ict literacy level amongst rural women one of the secondary objectives of the study was to evaluate the level of ict literacy amongst rural women. it emerged from the study that the majority of women in both intsika-yethu and emalahleni have low levels of ict literacy. respondent 1, a government leader, commented that: “the municipality is very rural and there is a challenge of literacy in the area, so it hinders the curiosity of people, they do not want to be associated with ict.” this was echoed by respondent 3, a women support group leader, who mentioned that most women in emalahleni have lower levels of education; some never went to school and therefore find it difficult to use technology. 5756 grasia chisango & carol lesame the comments above serve as evidence for a lack of motivation to use ict as a result of a low level of education. van dijk (2008) calls this tendency lack of motivational access. ict literacy, combined with motivational access, is key for successful ict usage. the low level of education and the lack of motivation to access and use ict amongst some women in intsika-yethu and emalahleni create a barrier to the uptake and use of ict. according to respondent 4, a government leader: “with the ict, the main language, that is, english, on the computer is not our language; remember our home language is xhosa and a few afrikaans and english, and so it does affect them.” the rural women in these areas are fluent in their mother tongue (isixhosa). english, required for computer usage and especially internet access, is foreign to most of them, which makes it even more difficult for the ict illiterate women to embrace technology. this language barrier adds to the widening of the digital divide in society. low literacy levels in a community might mean low chances of being employed, as well as low entrepreneurship skills; this perpetuates poverty in that society. theme 4: affordability of ict to rural women low income coupled with low levels of education and lack of personal motivation to access and use ict services are barriers to ict usage. there are costs related to accessing and using ict. it was thus important to establish the affordability of these services for rural women as a stable income is also a requirement of ict access and use. most women in intsika-yethu and emalahleni find it difficult to use ict because of the inherent costs. respondent 3, a women support group leader, stated that: “most women are so poor; they do not have their own internet.” all the research participants in the study indicated that most people in both municipalities are poor and rely on government social grants as their source of income. the majority of the women do not work and the social grants are inadequate to buy food and clothes. they are, therefore, unable to access and pay for ict equipment and services. some female learners at gcinubuzwe school mentioned that they work in town during the school holidays so that they can purchase mobile phones. respondent 4, a government leader, shared the same view that not all women have a mobile phone, “remember one has to buy the cell phone”. the female learners at gcinubuzwe said that most of the parents purchase inexpensive mobile phones, and as a result, “we cannot access all the information”. the limited abilities of these mobile phones made it difficult for learners to conduct research for their schoolwork and socialise on social networks; hence, they are disconnected from the global culture. moreover, the price for fixed broadband is high in developing countries, further limiting access to the information society (international telecommunication union 2009). most people are limited to voice and text messaging due to expensive mobile telephony. 5756 challenges of ict policy implementation theme 5: possible approaches to overcome ict challenges in rural areas the theme on possible approaches was developed in an attempt to unearth solutions to the challenges in the uptake and usage of ict, which face some rural women and learners. the possible solutions were sought from the research participants. respondent 1, a government leader, and respondent 2, a women support group leader, both from intsika-yethu, agreed that the community should be trained in basic ict skills at thusong service centres by the municipality, so that they are able to assist themselves and their families. the respondents said that while some parents have smart phones, they are still unable to assist their children with homework. advocacy by schools, the municipalities and the government is another possible solution that was suggested by respondent 4, a government leader from emalahleni. respondent 4 commented that some women have smart phones but are unaware of the programmes on their phones, so advocacy is a necessity. information on health issues, weather forecasts, and the ability to send and receive emails is available on these phones. respondent 3, a women support group leader from emalahleni, said that women who lack ict skills should seek assistance from those who have the knowledge. respondent 3 acknowledged that women’s forum groups should create awareness through the special programmes manager of the municipality. secondary school learners at both gcinubuzwe and cofimvaba suggested that the department of education should ensure that all learners are taught cat. at gcinubuzwe, the research participants were of the view that an internet connection would be of great help to the school and make their studies easier, while at the same time preparing them for the world of work. at cofimvaba, the learners who participated in the study articulated that libraries should be made available by the government in the villages because learners who attend school there do not have access to libraries. the participants stated that these libraries should be equipped with ict. another challenge is the lack of electricity in some villages in intsika-yethu. this state of affairs indicates that the government has failed to provide services in the municipality. recommendations based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made. they are made with the view to enhance digital inclusion and digital literacy approaches to overcome the challenges faced by rural women relating to their ict use. designing intervention programmes for learners the eastern cape provincial government should design an ict strategy for the province, which is to be implemented by local municipalities. the national department of basic education should include ict skills in the curriculum for both primary and high school learners. it should also be investigated whether subjects such as computer 5958 grasia chisango & carol lesame application technology and information technology should not be made compulsory in school. access to basic ict equipment, including computers and internet access, should be ensured at schools. this could be coupled with a computer literacy programme for educators, together with the provision of the software required in teaching and learning. in addition, measures to protect ict infrastructure should be implemented. provincial education departments should also investigate the possibility of conducting ict literacy programmes for teachers at schools. designing intervention programmes for rural women as mentioned above, the first step would be for the eastern cape provincial government to develop an ict strategy to be implemented at municipal level. thusong service centres should be easily accessible in rural areas and should be installed in wards by usaasa and other stakeholders, such as non-profit organisations that fund ict projects. ict skills should be taught to all disadvantaged people who seek such skills from the mpccs and tscs. local municipalities could work with science and technology institutions, such as the meraka institute, which provides training, technical implementation and monitoring of projects (eliasz & von staden 2008). the government could subsidise ict services and equipment so that poor members of society are able to use ict services in the language of their choice. e-government services, in particular, should be available in the local language. the thusong centres should be made relevant to the community; that is, electronic networks should meet the needs of the communities, including, for example, information on agriculture, markets and health. the local community should take part in the design, implementation and management of the thusong centres, as this would enable them to influence decisions that affect them. community participation also builds a sense of ownership. monitoring and evaluation of ict programmes in rural areas it is crucial for the government to evaluate the effectiveness of those ict policies that already are in place. measures should be implemented to monitor and support ict projects in rural areas. provincial governments could also involve academic institutions in the monitoring and evaluation of ict projects. local tertiary institutions could make a valuable contribution by conducting research that provides insight into the effectiveness of ict programmes in communities (eliasz & von staden 2008). conclusion from the data analysis above, it is clear that some rural women and high school learners in the emalahleni and intsika-yethu local municipalities in south africa’s eastern cape province face a number of challenges in ict uptake and use. issues of affordability, accessibility, availability and low ict literacy levels are negatively affecting ict uptake and use. the challenges contribute to the widening of the digital divide in south africa. although ict policies exist, implementation appears to be lacking. this concurs with singh’s (2010) findings that in the area of ict, the south african government appears to be following an agenda that conflicts with the hopes and rights of the majority of 5958 challenges of ict policy implementation south 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(draft chapter for the handbook of internet politics). london: routledge. [online]. available at: http//www.utwente.nl/gw/mco/ bestanden/digitaldivide.pdf [ccessed on 03 july 2012]. webster, f. 1995. theories of the information society. new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500169908537877 www.utwente.nl/gw/mco/bestanden/digitaldivide.pdf www.utwente.nl/gw/mco/bestanden/digitaldivide.pdf 194 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? abstract with a specific online article as point of departure, this article1 investigates the phenomenon of “bad behaviour” on the part of socalled “celebrities” online. it focuses on the article in question to be able to show what is at stake, namely, the fact that ordinary people are affected by celebrities’ online actions, specifically in the form of either confusion regarding their own behaviour, or by imitating the actions concerned. this is followed by raising questions regarding online behaviour and “normalisation” and exploring these through the work of relevant authors such as goffman (2006), maisonneuve (1995), huizinga (2007) and others, with a view to make sense of the fact that even supposedly shocking behaviour on the part of celebrities seems to be judged in terms of different criteria compared to everyday actions on the part of ordinary people. the role of advanced electronic technology in affecting people’s behaviour is also noted, before turning to plato and (particularly) aristotle’s notion of mimesis (imitation) to be able to understand what might be termed the “celebrity effect”. the related question of identification with the images of celebrities is also briefly examined before concluding with a reference to boorstin’s (1992) famous account of a “celebrity”. keywords: online communication; mass communication; media texts; communicational interaction; image studies; visual communication; celebrity; identity studies; mediated communication introduction in an article on the yahoo style website, marie claire dorking (2017) claims that when so-called “celebrities” – arguably the contemporary kitsch counterparts of ancient greek olympians – “behave badly” online, their behaviour has a recognisable impact on the behaviour of ordinary people, including children. in other words, the bad example they set has consequences when it comes to children’s informal education – what is communicated to them about how to act appropriately as human beings from the world around them. this is hardly surprising, considering that even most adults are generally impressionable when it comes to “celebrities” (in a culture that valorises the latter), and children are understandably more so. prof. longina strumska-cylwik division of general pedagogy, social science faculty, university of gdańsk, poland l.strumska@ug.edu.pl prof. bert olivier department of philosophy, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa olivierg1@ufs.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.13 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 194-206 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:l.strumska@ug.edu.pl mailto:olivierg1@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.13 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.13 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.13 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 195 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? dorking relates how celebrity rob kardashian launched a disturbingly graphic onslaught on his former fiancée, blac chyna, on instagram, which led to the suspension of his instagram account (mail online 2017). not that it mattered; he simply transferred his assault to twitter, to be witnessed by millions of followers. she further reminds her readers that this kind of online “bad behaviour” has been going on for some time between so-called celebrities, including taylor swift and nicki minaj – it is nothing unusual, except that it has consequences. here we have to quote dorking (2017) at length to be able to get across what is at stake: heck even the president of the us isn’t exempt from behaving badly online. in fact donald trump’s most popular tweet to date is a video that shows him fake-pounding a personification of cnn. ok so celebrities behaving badly is nothing new, but the way we learn about it is. somehow social media has created a whole new platform for the naughtiness to be witnessed, shared and then interpreted in a series of funny memes. but what effect is all this virtual naughtiness having in the real world? at home children are consistently told that calling people names is unacceptable. at school a verbal attack on a classmate would result in punishment, bullying is not tolerated. online, however, celebrities who slam other celebrities are rewarded with a trending hashtag and global attention. go figure. dorking (2017) also cites two psychologists, who agree that such behaviour goes against the supposed educational consensus that children should be taught how to behave decently. again, it is necessary to quote her in full: ‘over time, the attitudes and behaviors that we are concerned with right now in social media will bleed out into the physical world,’ karen north, a psychologist and director of the university of southern california’s digital social media program told associated press. ‘we’re supposed to learn to be polite and civil in society. but what we have right now is a situation where a number of role models are acting the opposite of that … and by watching it, we vicariously feel it, and our own attitudes and behaviour change as a result.’ catherine steiner-adair, author of ‘the big disconnect: protecting childhood and family relationships in the digital age,’ believes the effects are already being witnessed. the psychologist says many of her students are confused about why celebrities and politicians can engage in namecalling and other unacceptable behaviour on social media without the punishment they would ordinarily receive. it seems intriguing that behaving badly is acceptable online but not in real life. with gadamer’s (2004: 122) account of the etymology of the word “theory” in mind – that it derives from the ancient greek word for a spectator at a drama or religious festival, namely “theoros” (who is present at a sacred event), and from “theoria” (as that which is “present to what is truly real”) – one might be tempted to compare events witnessed in media, or online, with the sacred ancient greek olympics. this festival, in honour of zeus, created the opportunity for athletes from different greek cities to compete but also for spectators to enjoy the competition. these games probably served different social and cultural purposes; they were a form of entertainment for the masses but also fulfilled sport-cultural and religious-ritual functions (see penn museum [1]), which did not prevent some athletes from surreptitiously accepting bribes to lie about their “polis” (city-state) of origin, however, in this way bathing their supposed home city in undeserved glory (penn museum [2]). 196 strumska-cylwik & olivier by comparison (and contrast), the bad behaviour on the part of celebrities, in full mediated view of the (twitter) “following” public today, is precisely a form of “cheap” entertainment, as the sustained attention to celebrity antics demonstrates. furthermore, given the pervasive function of the media in contemporary culture, it is plausible to claim that, while there is (strictly speaking) nothing sacred about celebrities’ behaviour, the avidity with which it is scrutinised and imitated by their followers (no doubt by way of identifying with them; see dorking 2018) does bestow upon it the status of something pseudo-sacred despite being wholly secular. after all, celebrities are arguably the contemporary (secular) counterparts of the ancient olympians (with sincere apologies to the latter). however, while the ancient “theoros” or spectator was present to and at the sacred athletic events, celebrity followers usually have only mediated access to celebrities’ actions. strictly speaking the formal rituals that accompanied ancient greek olympics – and still attach to contemporary olympics – are largely absent from celebrity actions; of course, except if one were to argue that actions like the kind of ex-fiancée-bashing on the part of rob kardashian may be regarded as being itself a kind of pseudo-ritual that celebrities perform repeatedly in order to keep their followers’ eyes glued to them. research objective and methodology what this article proposes to do is to scrutinise the implications of the online actions on the part of celebrities by asking certain pertinent questions and attempting to answer these. methodologically speaking the approach is largely hermeneutic (or interpretive) in the sense of textual interpretation (including that of images where these are concerned) of online material as well as of relevant theoretical texts. the authors are guided in this by gadamer’s (1982: 274-275) historical understanding of the “hermeneutic problem” as comprising the three components of understanding (implicit interpretation), interpretation (explicit understanding) and application (the relevance of the interpretation in question for the situation of the interpreter). hence, as will become apparent in the course of the article, the interpretation offered of “bad online behaviour” on the part of celebrities will be brought to bear on the present (early 21st century) situation of people who are familiar with the use of the internet and its potential influence on their own, and others’ behaviour. furthermore, the hermeneutic approach allows the authors, as in all cases of the interpretation of communicational phenomena, to avail themselves of various theoretical or interpretive perspectives to be able to make sense of the issue(s) under discussion. online behaviour and normalisation assuming that it is based on incontrovertible evidence, it is hard to disagree with the title of dorking’s article, that celebrities behaving badly online has a significant impact on the way people live in real life. from what she reports it is further clear that such online actions normalise, promote and reinforce negative behaviour patterns on the part of those who avidly “follow” the lives and actions of celebrities. what seems to be particularly worrisome is the endless popularity and huge interest that surround such behaviour in contemporary media, as evidenced by the high level of activity shown by 197 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? online users (referred to later in the text). at the same time, the following questions arise: what are the right and the wrong forms of behaviour nowadays? which norms do they relate to? are we witnessing changes in norms? or are we rather witnessing the emergence of new and at the same time different online standards (diverging from norms in force in real life)? or maybe we are dealing with a transition from the ethical plane to the aesthetic or emotional one (in which the idea is to make a certain impression, to stimulate or trigger certain emotions through provocative and antisocial behaviour that breaks rules and moral norms). although it is difficult to answer these questions unambiguously, the authors are inclined to believe that communicational interactions on the internet are primarily concerned with aesthetic and emotional discourse, whereas ethical discourse seems to be insignificant in comparison. this appears to correspond broadly to habermas’s (1987: 121, 113-157) distinction between “strategic” and “communicative” (inter-) action, where the former serves the instrumental purpose of wielding power over interlocutors, while the latter represents a sincere attempt at communicating, providing, as far as possible, the grounds for claims, statements and arguments. by this we mean that such online behaviour appears to conform to expectations pertaining to aesthetic (that is, perceptually appealing) appearance and to the need to use it in such a way that the emotions of interlocutors (assuming there is a communicational exchange) and of the “following” public are strategically manipulated for the benefit of the celebrities concerned. this is evidenced by numerous media presentations online, especially those that focus on problematic behaviour of celebrities (dorking 2017), exacerbating the need for reflection on them. at the same time, another question arises (that in a sense refers to the authenticity and credibility of such behaviour), namely how the problematic behaviour of celebrities fits into the shape and the expectations of the contemporary culture they happen to live in. is it possible that such behaviour is merely a response to this culture’s specific (albeit tacit) needs at the aesthetic and emotional level, in which to attract attention to oneself – even by means of (sometimes extremely) shocking behaviour, usually in pursuit of “celebrity fame”, no matter how ephemeral – means the same as “to be” or to exist (benjamin 2015)? it is worth noting here that celebrities (despite their problematic or reprehensible behaviour) seem not only to be significant figures in the modern world (defining legitimate ways and patterns of behaviour), but they also become new authorities (judges and public opinion leaders, as well as the embodiments of universally recognised style and taste, lifestyle, and sometimes even exemplary “morality” or a philosophy of life which offers itself for imitation and emulation). it is well-known that people have a strong need to belong to some group, or the need for affiliation, so they seek “emotional identification with other people to establish some sort of organic bond” (burszta 1998: 164). celebrities, on the other hand, often become brands in and of themselves, so they can use their status to build their own empire and effectively attract people to themselves. it does not matter whether they are the ones with real merits or achievements, or 198 strumska-cylwik & olivier only those who are “famous for being famous” (boorstin 1992). it turns out that in contemporary mass culture there is a suitable place for both the former and the latter, and they play a significant role in the creation of public opinion. that is the reason why a number of companies as well as media (including social networks) are eager to use images representing the power of celebrities to successfully advertise almost anything (from promoting goods, articles or services to promoting specific behaviour, lifestyles or ways of co-existing with other people). the increasing popularity of celebrities is associated with the rapid growth of social media, such as twitter, facebook and instagram, in which they are willing to be used, and which enables companies and institutions to reach out to a wide range of audiences quickly and effectively. it turns out that celebrities and their images are a much more effective way to attract the attention of the audience than the usual advertising messages (euromonitor international 2014). apparently, the example of celebrities exercises a strong and significant attraction for the lives of ordinary people who often draw “inspiration” from them, imitating and copying their ideas and behaviour. this is hardly surprising, given that celebrities are ubiquitous in the surrounding social world – especially in the world of media. it is worth pointing out (goffman 2006) that, generally, a person in his or her actions, behaviour and the roles they fulfil, follows and copies the existing social world (specific rules, patterns, traditions, ways of interacting, or fulfilling certain social roles in a given community and culture). this also applies to the phenomenon of mutual respect towards one another, which is governed largely by the cultural habitus and the rituals of behaviour that maisonneuve (1995) has been paying particular attention to. with such rules and rituals, people’s lives become more predictable, homely, domesticated or “tamed”. they allow them to maintain a specific social order (in which they are chastised, among other things, for behaviours that are deemed in the cultural context to be undesirable, arrogant, impudent, eccentric, malignant, reprehensible, “out of place” and which, through existing rules, are properly sanctioned). in this way, the boundaries of proper and wrong behaviours are outlined, and the rules in force become, in a sense, instructions, signposts indicating how people should behave and deal with others or with their own emotions (goffman 2006: 5-11, 6667; maisonneuve 1995). contrary to the above (as noted in the article referred to earlier), and perhaps surprising to some, in the virtual world such broadly normative guidelines (and standards, rituals) are not generally applicable. instead, contemporary social media have created a platform where almost anything can be presented, and that makes us more and more often aware of reprehensible and mischievous behaviour on the part of media users, particularly so-called celebrities. paradoxically, such behaviour is rewarded with increased popularity, global attention of the audience and their intensified media activity, not only “liking” and “tweeting” but also sharing certain anti-social posts on social media with other users, converting them into a series of funny memes or even creating their own posts based on them – which can also be interpreted as a sign of creating a new form of entertainment. usually it results in even greater popularity and interest in the presented forms of antisocial behaviour, and often in their imitation and transfer to the real world. as a consequence, it leads to the legitimation of reprehensible 199 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? and antisocial behaviour in contemporary media (at the same time normalising and reinforcing it in everyday life). the recipients of the messages concerned not only interact with other audiences (exchange opinions with them), but they also create their own perspective on and version of the events in the form of produced posts or films (due to which they themselves become actors and creators of more or less sophisticated forms of entertainment or “fun” – which raises the question of what passes for fun). in such a situation, it is difficult to resist north’s fear (expressed in dorking 2017) that “over time, the attitudes and behaviour that we are concerned with right now in social media will bleed out into the physical world”. such fears are neither groundless nor isolated, as we can see in habermas’s view that humanity has attained dominion over nature to a great extent, but passively adapts to the changes conditioned by technological progress in the social sphere (reut 1995: 191-192). it is worth noting here that the concept of fun associated with the kind of media (and mediated) behaviour in question differs from its original understanding. it does not coincide with huizinga’s “homo ludens” concept, in which fun is an autotelic value (it is a purpose in itself) and as such lies at the base of human action, just like a competition or a game which in its original form is supposed to give a person a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. such fun, though based on voluntarily accepted rules, requires their mandatory fulfilment. it is also accompanied by an awareness of otherness in relation to normal life (huizinga 2007: 15-37), unlike the phenomenon in question, which is worrisome precisely because – as north and others have observed – it “bleeds into” normal life. evidently, therefore, fun is understood differently in the presented perspective of media coverage online, which overthrows all “normal” social rules, and blurs the boundaries between truth and fiction, or the real world and the media. the only lasting and valid rule here is that there are no fixed rules, which means they can be freely changed and adapted to current needs. what strikes one is the inventiveness, if not arbitrariness, with which celebrities approach the question of their behaviour, or, for that matter, their creative activities, for example singer miley cyrus’s “daring” appearance in the music video of her song “wrecking ball” (2013; johns 2017). arguably this goes far beyond the manner in which avant garde modern art in the 20th century, according to hughes (1991: introduction), managed to sustain a constantly surprising and disorienting sense of “newness and possibility” before eventually “petering out” in institutionalised late modernism. therefore, it is not surprising that the fun in such a context of what may be described as arbitrary invention is increasingly devoid of its original (autotelic) function: fun for the sake of fun (to bring spontaneous joy, satisfaction, contentment), and it is more and more often subordinated to something else. as a result, satisfaction and contentment are more and more often combined with, or dependent on, some specific, hidden conditions demanding to be fulfilled. at the same time, it requires continuous adaptation to new and constantly changing rules relating to how people should play, rest and relax, and what they should derive pleasure and satisfaction from (satisfaction with what kind of life, entertainment, mutual relations with other people, and so on). every time a celebrity uses the internet 200 strumska-cylwik & olivier to communicate yet another (in fact, supposedly more) “shocking” action compared to the previous one, on their part, it takes viewers, “followers” and the general public into more aesthetically and emotionally (and willy-nilly, also ethically) uncharted waters, such as when reality television star kim kardashian posts a nude photograph of herself climbing a tree in nothing but a pair of boots (fox news 2017). for many “open-minded” people such an action is, in itself, no cause for concern – by now the way in which “celebrities” vie with one another for public attention is familiar to most people – but the “no holds barred” ethos (if one could call it that) underpinning such actions has consequences in social reality far beyond the confines of the internet, as the article referred to at the outset indicates. upon reflection, these considerations mean that fun, considered in such a perspective (released from the conventional rules in force), cannot be regarded as completely neutral and innocent, nor can the media coverage in question, which is an excellent medium for its propagation (given its often cheaply grounded sensation, based on many representations of inappropriate celebrity behaviour) and in this way the atmosphere of specifically conceived “entertainment” is built up. as schulz von thun (2001: 9-20) observes, there are no completely neutral or “empty” messages, but instead each of them (as well as every statement) serves something – it is always created for something, for some purpose and for someone. this means that each message conceals a specific intent, a specific purpose, an appeal that is subordinated to specific ideas, motives and expectations, implicitly demanding an appropriate response. one also has to recognise that numerous media messages increasingly represent more and more risky and extreme (often anti-social) behaviour or actions to better engage and attract the attention of the audience and achieve the intended goals of those who post the messages most effectively. one of the notable examples of this is the “branding oneself” phenomenon (olivier 2011), which manifests itself in reducing oneself to the status of a commodity for the use of others, and further reflects a modification of one’s sense of self-worth. furthermore, the willingness to provide a significant amount of information about oneself, including personal likes and dislikes, on a website, does not reveal a desire for privacy. on the contrary, such information deliberately posted on the internet clearly reflects what individuals want to reveal (or “show off”) to anonymous others. at the same time, we recognise that this practice is observed quite commonly, not only in the celebrity environment, but also among the so-called “common people” (olivier 2011). as pointed out by numerous studies, modern technologies favour both the creation of such messages and the emergence of anti-social behaviour (aggressive and self-aggressive), especially on the part of young or immature users, who often do not notice hidden threats and accept the content they are offered with great trust and good faith (often treating them as harmless entertainment, fun and relaxation). however, technology is changing people, robbing them of their autonomy, dehumanising them and affecting their own sense of identity in unpredictable ways, as stiegler (2013) argues at length, where he exposes the influence on the minds of consumers being targeted by the culture industry through technical communicational means. as he points out, consumers are driven back to their “minority” (the state of being unenlightened) 201 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? through the use of what he calls “mnemo-technical devices” such as smartphones, laptops and tablets (stiegler 2013: loc. 429-488; olivier 2011; strumska-cylwik 2014; aftab 2003). the phenomenon under discussion here, namely, the demonstrable effects of celebrity misbehaviour on online users, is just one of the manifestations of what stiegler describes as the loss of “majority” or enlightenment. elsewhere he describes current global developments as part of a process of “stupidification” that is occurring worldwide – in the context of the current “hyper-consumerist” and “addictogenic” society, because of the increasing reliance of consumers on the mnemo-technical devices referred to above, instead of one’s own capacity for memory and understanding (stiegler 2015: loc. 286). against this backdrop it is not surprising that online messages, (only) seemingly with impunity, move audiences into an enchanted world of media reality where the “impossible becomes possible” and “what is not allowed is allowed”. it turns out that in the situation when their audience does not seem to be sufficiently aware that the images or content presented (e.g. the images of celebrities or stars) do not represent a “true” reflection of reality, but are merely a kind of created hyperreality (baudrillard 2006: 151-158; belting 2012: 23-25), they pose a particularly serious threat to members of such audiences. it happens especially when the untrue, inauthentic worlds that are presented in them are based on intentionally created scenes, events or pictures, for example pictures, backgrounds and people perfected by software (such as photoshop) procedures, or based on enhanced, idealised versions of events that make us think that the lives of celebrities are light, easy, pleasant and uncomplicated (which, as a result, evokes in people the will or desire to follow their example, their lifestyle, to be like them). in such a situation, it is no surprise that celebrities are gaining even more power in the field of “ordinary”, “grey” social reality or everyday life, giving recipients what they believe to be new life opportunities in their imagined worlds that, as appadurai (1996: 29-39) noted, are built on available images in the media. they also give the recipients opportunities to create imagined identities that make them dream the dreams that have been unattainable so far (appadurai 1996; pucek 2005). how should one understand the ‘celebrity effect’? in the light of the above, no one should therefore wonder why the online actions of celebrities should have such a noticeable effect on other people’s behaviour. this may be further substantiated by considering that, as both plato, in the ion (1997: 942-943) as well as in the republic (1997: 1199-1207), and his pupil, aristotle, in the poetics (n.d.: 3308-3354), already pointed out more than 2000 years ago, people characteristically imitate. although these two thinkers evaluated imitation differently, they agree on humans being what they called “mimetic” beings. interestingly, they distinguished between “diegesis” (telling, narrating) and “mimesis” (imitating, showing, embodying, representing) – two concepts used to this day in literary and film theory. a particularly relevant observation by aristotle in his poetics (n.d.: 3312) casts light on the imitation and the images in question here, namely online users imitating the questionable actions of celebrities: 202 strumska-cylwik & olivier …the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. we have evidence of this in the facts of experience. objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. although aristotle here comments on learning through imitation or reproduction, even where the reproduction in question is of nothing pleasant to behold (corpses, and so on), one might see in it something parallel to the less-than-commendable examples set by celebrities online: could it be that it is precisely the questionable character of their behaviour that those (particularly children) who copy celebrities find so compelling? after all, the “bad behaviour” in question consisted in a celebrity posting explicit images of another celebrity (blac chyna) described as “revenge porn” (mail online 2017) online, and it is telling that, since the time of plato and aristotle it has been known that images fascinate people, sometimes in an arguably morbid manner where certain images are concerned. this is conspicuously related to the complex question of identification; an individual identifies with someone or something when he or she experiences him or her affirmatively via their image (either in direct perceptual terms or indirectly via a reproduced image) as embodying a desirable quality or attribute. the “locus classicus” in this regard is lacan’s (1977: 1-7) psychoanalytical study of the so-called “mirror stage”, where he demonstrates that the infant’s “therapeutic” identification with its own mirror image forms the basis of all subsequent identifications in the social sphere, precisely because this image represents a “fullness” or “wholeness” and unity that the physically awkward infant still lacks at that stage, and therefore desires. if one adds to this nancy’s (2005: 6; see also olivier 2009) contention, based on his phenomenological examination of the image, that images are characteristically “desirable”, it is not difficult to understand the tendency, on the part of particularly young and inexperienced online users, to be attracted to the questionable images available to them on many online websites. conclusion does all of this seem familiar? how many of us have viewed a favourite movie or series several times, if only for that vicarious thrill one experiences when your favourite character(s) performs actions that one can, and does, identify with? it is a safe bet that many people do this. why? because it is a mimetic enjoyment – when i see the character of sun bak (a superior martial arts exponent) defending one of her “cluster” of “sensates” in the wachowskis’ television series sense8 (wachowski et al. 2015) against the people who are hunting them just because they are “different” from other human beings, she “embodies” the “difference” that i value in people, and ineluctably i identify with her in the narrative, but particularly via her image. the reason is that the latter constitutes a locus with which one identifies in a more-or-less “direct” manner. 203 what are the implications of celebrities ‘behaving badly’ online? but this does not only happen in movies; it happens when we read novels (at the level of diegesis, with one’s imagination supplying the iconic site of identification), and also in real life (lacan 1977), where one identifies with an older sister or brother, or with a good chess player, or sports personality. the latter brings us back to the (largely) virtual sphere of (among others sports) celebrities, because arguably comparatively few people today identify with the captain of a school sports team, or the school’s top academic scholar. our lives in the culture of what castells (2010: 355) calls “real virtuality” – the fact that virtual reality, or cyberspace, permeates our otherwise “real” lives – are shot through with the images of celebrities engaging in all kinds of actions, mostly intended to bring them the sustained attention of their “followers” on twitter and other media. and as we know from aristotle and plato, for better or worse, being mimetic creatures, most people identify with, and worse, actually and actively imitate them, no matter how questionable their behaviour might be. that “celebrities” – or rather, their mediated images – are the ones with whom people, including children, identify these days, leading to a kind of “cognitive dissonance” on the part of those who identify with them, is highly ironic, considering what a “celebrity” is. contrary to what many people think, celebrities are not a very recent phenomenon – celebrities go back to at least the middle of the previous century. this much is evident from the work of boorstin (1992: 57; italics in original), who defines a celebrity as follows (1992: 57; italics in original): “the celebrity is a person who is known for his [or her] well-knownness”. needless to stress, this is tautologous, but deliberately and unavoidably so, because, as boorstin shows, unlike people who have become famous for their deeds, discoveries, literary, scientific, philosophical, cinematic and/ or other cultural achievements and contributions – such as plato, shakespeare, mary wollstonecraft, einstein, amelia earhart, laurence olivier, gandhi, mandela, luce irigaray, and many others like them – the only thing that a celebrity is well-known for, is that they are well-known, and not for any concrete, lasting (constructive) contribution to society. it is worth mentioning that not all celebrities are associated exclusively with negative forms of behaviour/action. many of them also play a positive role (taking part in social campaigns, charities, promoting healthy lifestyles and socially desirable behaviour). a representative example is chef jamie oliver, who promotes and implements the so-called “healthy way” of eating in british schools (whose activity has been oriented towards chasing children away from unhealthy eating habits, encouraging them to eat vegetables, fruit and healthy food). endnotes 1 the financial 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(dirs). 2015. sense8. usa: a netflix original television series. _goback 39 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media for public relations activities abstract social media holds important implications for the public relations profession. researchers have identified many benefits that could be reaped when social media is used by organisations for public relations activities. however, there also are many challenges. according to phillips’ model of digital communication tools there are four variables associated with the benefits and challenges of using social media. this study investigated, by means of an online questionnaire survey, the perceptions of a randomly drawn sample of gauteng-based public relations practitioners regarding such challenges and benefits. the results revealed that twitter and facebook are the most preferred social media for engaging with stakeholders. further, it was found that when social media is used for purposes of public relations actions, public relations practitioners tend to perceive the possible social media benefits associated with the four variables to be more salient (or at least equally salient) than the possible social media challenges associated with the variables of this model. keywords: social media; public relations; strategic communication; perception; digital communication introduction this article reports on a study conducted to determine the perceptions that public relations practitioners have regarding the benefits and challenges associated with the use of social media for public relations activities. according to grünig (2009: 8), the use of social media has provided the opportunity for public relations to be conducted more strategically in a twoway, interactive and symmetrical manner. this despite the fact that many practitioners are still using online media in the same way as they used old media, that is, by means of one-sided asymmetrical communication. one important feature of social media is that it permits people to share content, opinions, experiences and insights (owyang & toll 2007: 2) in such a way that each participant in the communication process is not only a provider of information to one or more people, but also millicent mavimbela faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa (millicentmavimbela@ yahoo.com) prof. dp conradie research professor faculty of humanities tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa (conradiedp@tut.ac.za) prof. hb dondolo faculty of humanities tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa (dondolob@tut.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 39-52 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:millicentmavimbela@yahoo.com mailto:millicentmavimbela@yahoo.com mailto:conradiedp@tut.ac.za mailto:dondolob@tut.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 40 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo always a potential recipient of feedback or other information from any other participant in the communication process. in other words, such sharing facilitates interactive two-way communication. two-way communication platforms allow public relations practitioners to engage with their stakeholders (wright & hinson 2009: 5) and to design effective campaigns that can reach online stakeholders (hanna et al. 2011: 265). theoretical framework this study was conducted against the backdrop of the four models of public relations activities (grünig & hunt 1984; grünig & grünig 1992), namely the press agentry/ publicity model, the public information model, the two-way asymmetrical model, and the two-way symmetrical model of public relations. these four models describe different forms of communication that can occur between an organisation and its stakeholders. more specifically, the four models differentiate in two ways between communication activities: firstly, with regard to the intent of the communicator (i.e. to persuade or influence or to create shared understanding), and secondly, with regard to the direction of the communication (i.e. one-way, two-way asymmetrical or twoway symmetrical). as social media is usually associated with two-way symmetrical communication that can create shared understanding, the models provide public relations practitioners with useful information on how they could incorporate social media in their communication mix. the first of the models, the press agentry/publicity model, views public relations as a messaging, publicity, information and media-relations function. using this approach, public relations practitioners may use persuasion and manipulation to influence stakeholders’ behaviour (rensburg & de beer 2011: 155). grünig (2009: 8) argues that, since the advent of social media, neither public relations practitioners nor journalists working in traditional media are able to control the flow of information. more specifically, grünig (ibid.) observes that social media makes the control of communication largely impossible and that the assumed control of messages and influence has always been an illusion rather than a reality of public relations practice. the second of grünig and hunt’s (1984) models of public relations is the public information model. in this model, information is disseminated to the audience without the aim of changing attitudes. the model states that public relations practitioners first use social media as an information dump – in the same way that they use traditional media, newsletters and publications (grünig 2009: 7). the theory further suggests that websites are used to disseminate information and to post publications and news releases. social media like facebook and youtube fit in the public information model. according to phillips (2009: 6), social media has dialogical, interactive and relational properties that are suited for public relations activities. it could be expected that this approach would force public relations practitioners to abandon their traditional one-way communication, message-oriented and asymmetrical communication. however, history shows that even with the introduction of online media, public relations practitioners still tend to use social media in largely the same way that they previously used traditional media. in the third model, the two-way asymmetric model, 41 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media practitioners use persuasion and manipulation to influence audiences to behave as the organisation desires. although this process does involve feedback and research on how stakeholders feel about the organisation (waddington 2012: 2), this is not done with the intention of adapting organisational behaviour (turney 1998: 1). in this model the organisational communicator’s intention is rather to make the organisation’s own message more persuasive. according to phillips (2009: 6), organisations mostly practice the asymmetric model of two-way communication to manipulate stakeholders’ cognitions, attitudes or behaviour. the fourth model, which is especially applicable to the current study, is the two-way symmetrical model. this model “emphasizes communication exchange, reciprocity, and mutual understanding” (grünig & grünig 1992: 8). when using social media, there is always the possibility for recipients of posts/messages to reply or make comments, which results in a two-way exchange of information that can lead to a higher level of mutual understanding. grünig (2009: 1) therefore argues that because of these interactions between communication participants and the resulting likely improvement of mutual understanding, social media makes it more feasible than before to achieve organisations’ goals of high quality and long-term relationships. the difference between the two-way asymmetrical and two-way symmetrical model lies in that communicators’ intent when using the two-way asymmetrical model is mainly to manipulate, persuade or influence, and although feedback (i.e. two-way communication) is required, it is not with the intention of achieving shared understanding. while waddington (2013: 6) argues that social media enables organisations to create information that would spread extensively and quickly, there is also a downside. this is that organisations have little control over the discussion of their products or services, as it is contributed by their stakeholders. when using social media, stakeholders automatically engage in the conversation; they can freely share information about the organisation, which makes the communication process difficult to control. of particular relevance for this investigation is phillips’ (2009: 1) model of digital communication tools, which was developed to show which digital communication tools can typically be used in the above-mentioned four major public relations models (see figure 1). phillips’ (2009) model of digital communication tools for different public relations models includes four variables (represented by arrows in figure 1) that could have an effect, depending on the model and the pr activities. this study focused largely on the challenges and benefits (as discussed below) that can be perceived to be associated with each of these four variables: 42 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo figure 1: phillips’ model of digital communication tools (adapted from phillips 2009) the first of the four variables in the model is time cost. according to figure 1, pr activities represented on the right-hand side of the figure (i.e. the two-way symmetrical model) are expected to require more time than those on the left-hand side (i.e. the press agentry/publicity or public information models). from this, it can be concluded that for practitioners wishing to use social media in their pr activities, time is a challenge that needs to be recognised and managed. on the other hand, from the viewpoint of external stakeholders, the instant nature of communication via social media could be seen as constituting a benefit. the second variable depicted in the model is the level of control. according to figure 1, pr activities situated on the right-hand side of the figure (e.g. the two-way symmetrical model) are expected to take place with management having less control over the communication content and proceedings than would be the case with pr activities depicted on the left-hand side (i.e. the press agentry/publicity or public information models). from this, it may be concluded that for practitioners involving social media in press agentry/publicity model public information model two-wayasymmetrical model two-way symmetrical model static web page typical intranet static social media space faq page search advertising rss wiki open third party editable information use of content sharing sites website allowing public to send information blog without comments enabled press releases community recommendation/ voting open api open source brochures frequently updated website/ database accessed content web advert social media space with updates seo public meetings blog with comment enabled interactive media space twitter open social media site interactive online community contribution p r o d u c t i o n c o s t high control low control high trustlow trust time cost 43 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media their pr activities there is a challenge, namely lack of control. this could lead to further problems, such as media abuse by individual employees. these are challenges that need to be recognised and managed. contrastingly, from the viewpoint of the external stakeholders, the accompanying transparency of communication could lead to a better corporate reputation, which could be perceived as a benefit. the third variable shown in the model is the level of trust. according to figure 1, pr activities represented on the right-hand side of the figure (i.e. the two-way symmetrical model) are expected to require more trust than those on the left-hand side (i.e. the press agentry/publicity or public information models). for example, when corporate information is provided to stakeholders via social media, this necessarily involves a loss of privacy, and the pr practitioners have to be trusted not to provide incorrect information or information that could be detrimental to the organisation’s image. this is a challenge that needs to be recognised and managed in the organisation. however, from the viewpoint of external stakeholders, useful and honest communication in the two-way symmetrical model could be seen as a benefit in that it could be a tool to manage and build stakeholder relationships and to also enhance an organisation’s corporate image. the fourth variable is production cost. some of the communication tools portrayed in figure 1 are not cheap, especially those providing two-way communication. high cost could therefore be seen as a challenge. it is, however, also possible that if the use of these tools lead to beneficial outcomes, using social tools may be viewed as being cost-effective. problem statement and research objectives it is clear from the preceding discussion that there are certain challenges and benefits that can be associated with the use of social media for purposes of corporate communication with stakeholders. in line with this discussion, the following research objectives were set: ♦ to investigate the perceptions of pr practitioners in gauteng regarding the challenges they face when using social media for pr activities; ♦ to investigate the perceptions of pr practitioners in gauteng regarding the benefits they gain when using social media for public relations activities; ♦ to investigate if the challenges associated with the use of social media for pr activities are perceived by practitioners to be more salient or less salient than the benefits. in order to achieve these objectives, the following research questions were formulated: ♦ research question 1: what are the perceptions of pr practitioners in gauteng about the challenges they face when using social media for pr activities? ♦ research question 2: what are the perceptions of pr practitioners in gauteng about the benefits that could be associated with using social media for pr activities? 44 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo ♦ research question 3: are the challenges associated with the use of social media for pr activities perceived by practitioners to be more salient or less salient than the benefits? the above research questions were addressed by examining specific challenges and benefits that, according to the literature, especially phillips’ (2009) digital communication model, could be associated with using social media as a corporate communication platform. research methodology the study made use of a cross-sectional research design (henning 2004: 25) that followed a largely quantitative research approach. quantitative data was obtained from close-ended questions in a questionnaire survey, and were analysed using spss. a descriptive approach (bellamy 2012: 308; fox & bayat 2007: 45) was used to investigate the perceptions that a sample of gauteng-based pr practitioners have regarding possible challenges and benefits that they perceived to be associated with the use of social media as a corporate communication platform. for each of the various perceived challenges and benefits, a five-point likert scale was used to record the extent to which the respondents agreed that each item could be a challenge or benefit. the five response options available to the respondents were “1 = completely disagree”; “2 = disagree”; “3 = neutral or unsure”; 4 = agree” and “5 = completely agree”. in addition, the respondents were asked an open-ended question to describe the reason behind their choices. sampling the sample of respondents was obtained by using random sampling to invite, via email, gauteng-based members of the public relations institute of south africa (prisa) to participate in the research. due to a high level of non-responses, this process had to be continued until the entire sampling frame had been approached, which means that, strictly speaking, this approach could also be described as an attempted census of all members of the accessible target population. the study’s sampling procedure did, however, exhibit one important advantage associated with probability sampling, namely that all members of the accessible target population had an equal chance of being selected to participate in the study. on the other hand, the fact that the study was limited to only gauteng-based practitioners, limits the generalisability of the findings. the realised sample of this study consisted of 48 gauteng-based members affiliated with prisa and who had actively been using social media for pr activities for at least a year prior to when the study was conducted. a survey questionnaire was used to collect the data. the respondents were first contacted via email in order to obtain their consent to participate in the study, and the questionnaire was accessed electronically by the respondents via the online survey software survey monkey™. 45 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media reliability the reliability of the study’s findings was investigated by calculating cronbach alpha scores (ritter 2010: 5; brown 2002: 17) for the scales used to measure the respondents’ perceptions of the challenges and benefits involved in using social media for purposes of public relations. a cronbach alpha score of 0.7 is considered to be a minimum requirement for reliable quantitative data, and in cases with less than 10 items, even lower scores can be indicative of a satisfactory internal reliability (pallant 2013: 87). in this study a cronbach alpha score of 0.824 was obtained for the 5-point likert scale items representing perceived challenges of using social media for pr activities. a cronbach alpha score of 0.886 was obtained for the 5-point likert scale items representing perceived benefits of using social media for pr activities. from this it can be concluded that the data obtained from these two sets of scale items had good internal consistency and reliability. results and discussion perceived challenges to using social media for corporate communication table 1 contains four mean challenge scores, where each score indicates the respondents’ level of agreement that an issue is a challenge to using social media for pr activities, as well as the confidence intervals (on a 95% probability level) that were statistically calculated for these four mean scores. the table also provides more detailed information about the percentages of respondents who chose the various response options. mean scores and confidence intervals for items representing challenges four issues were mentioned in the questionnaire as possible challenges to using social media for building relationships with the stakeholders, namely media abuse (including issues, ethics and anonymity), privacy (e.g. the risk of private information being accessed), time consumption, and possible damage to the corporate image (including rumours, assumptions and stories resulting from using or not using social media). from table 1 it is evident that the highest mean challenge score is with regard to the challenge of damage to corporate image. this means that this was the issue that most of the respondents perceived as constituting a challenge. however, the confidence interval calculated for this mean score overlaps with the confidence intervals calculated for all three other mean scores. in fact, all four confidence intervals overlap with each other. this means that, in statistical terms, these mean scores do not differ statistically (on a 95% level of probability) from each other. in other words, statistically all four issues were perceived in more or less equal measure as constituting challenges to using social media for pr activities. 46 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo table 1: agreement/disagreement that specific issues are challenges of using social media issue agreement/disagreement that an issue is a challenge mean challenge score standard error of mean confidence interval * (lower & upper limit) disagree + disagree completely unsure agree + agree completely media abuse 14.6% 20.8% 48.0% 3.55 0.1752 3.21 3.89 privacy 27.1% 18.8% 43.8% 3.326 0.1814 2.97 3.68 time consumption 31.2% 13.6% 48.0% 3.295 0.1966 2.91 3.68 damage to corporate image 12.5% 16.7% 62.0% 3.795 0.1579 3.49 4.10 * 95% confidence interval in terms of perceptions of media abuse as a challenge, it can be deduced from the percentages in table 1 that most of the respondents (48%) either agreed or agreed completely that media abuse is a challenge. from the open-ended responses it can be deduced that the respondents felt that with the use of social media there is always a possibility of user-generated content being abused, resulting in people becoming victims of social media and causing them to end up discussing issues with strangers. in terms of perceptions of privacy problems as a challenge, it was found that 43.8% of the respondents agreed/agreed completely that privacy issues constitute a challenge. one respondent, who agreed strongly with this statement, qualified this view by stating that, “[h]ackers can photoshop pictures and distort information, thus damaging the brand name. terrorists and thieves can steal information and impersonate people (deformation of characters), as well as money laundering and strategies; and they can communicate on unregulated platforms” (sic). regarding perceptions of time consumption as a challenge, it was determined that almost half (48.0%) of the respondents agreed (or agreed completely) that time consumption is a challenge. a typical reason for disagreeing with the statement was that if a dedicated person was employed to do the pr work, time consumption would not be a problem. however, for those who strongly agreed that time consumption is a challenge, a typical reason was a statement such as, “[m]anaging social media eats up a lot of time; as one needs to be responsive for two-way communication to happen. analysing platforms and reports to weed out hackers/offenders needs technologysavvy people to manage it effectively.” in terms of perceptions of possible damage to the corporate image being a challenge, the percentages in table 1 indicate that 62.5% of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that possible damage to the corporate image is a challenge. from the open47 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media ended responses it may be deduced that a great deal of emphasis was placed on good management and planning that are needed to avoid damage to the corporate image. perceived benefits of using social media for corporate communication table 2 lists seven mean benefit scores (each representing the respondents’ level of agreement that an issue is a benefit arising from using social media for pr activities) as well as the confidence intervals (on a 95% probability level) that were calculated for these four mean scores. the table also provides more detailed information on the percentages of respondents who chose the various response options. table 2: agreement/disagreement that specific issues are benefits of using social media issue agreement/disagreement that an issue is a benefit mean benefit score standard error of mean confidence interval* (lower limit & upper limit) disagree + disagree completely unsure agree + agree completely low cost 13.5% 8.3% 62.5% 4.28 0.136 4.01 4.55 instant communication 13.5% 14.0% 60.4% 4.29 0.127 4.04 4.54 transparency 4.2% 18.8% 50.0% 3.94 0.142 3.66 4.22 stakeholder relations 4.2% 18.8% 50.1% 4.0 0.148 3.71 4.29 measuring outputs 23.2% 12.5% 56.2% 4.11 0.141 3.83 4.39 spreading messages 6.3% 16.7% 52.1% 4.0 0.154 3.70 4.30 managing reputation 12.5% 10.4% 60.4% 3.77 0.196 3.39 4.15 * 95% confidence interval from table 2 it is evident that the highest mean score representing benefits perceived to be possibly associated with using social media for corporate communication with stakeholders was found with regard to both the transparency and the low cost of social media. however, table 2 shows that the confidence intervals calculated for these mean scores overlap with the confidence intervals calculated for the three other mean scores. this means that, in statistical terms, none of the mean scores differ statistically (on a 95% level of probability) from each other. in other words, all seven issues were perceived in more or less equal measure as constituting benefits to using social media for public relations activities. 48 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo regarding perceptions about the low cost of social media benefitting the use of social media for pr, table 2 indicates that a majority (62.5%) agreed/completely agreed that social media provides for a low cost platform for corporate communication. respondents typically motivated their responses in the following terms: “cost effective” and “costs less than tv and radio” (sic). thus, it can be concluded that social media is seen as a relatively inexpensive and cost-effective way to reach a large number of stakeholders. in terms of perceptions about the instantaneous nature of online communication, it was found that the majority (60.4%) agreed/completely agreed that social media can be seen as a platform that offers a useful opportunity to communicate instantly with one’s stakeholders. this supports the statement of matthews (2010: 18) that social media offers an opportunity for direct and instant corporate communication. one respondent explained that if there were active participants on social media, grievances would immediately be known, which would improve transparency and contribute to the knowledge of target audiences. overall, the respondents considered social media as being fast and immediate and as such beneficial to building relationships with stakeholders. with regard to perceptions about the transparency of social media in conversation, it was found that 50% of the respondents agreed/completely agreed that transparency was a benefit. among the reasons provided for agreeing were that “the information is easily accessible” and “i agree if the organisation’s communication is always transparent, honest and trustworthy”. half (50.1%) of the respondents agreed/completely agreed that social media is suitable for managing and building relationships with stakeholders. the respondents motivated this viewpoint by means of statements about the “two-way nature” of communication via social media, which was contrasted to communication via traditional media where feedback is either not possible or at least difficult to monitor. it was also pointed out by the respondents that social media is “easy to access” as messages can be “delivered to your phone” and to “larger audiences”, including “stakeholders who have limited resources”. the majority (56.2%) of the respondents concurred that the possibility of measuring social media outputs is beneficial for corporate communication. motivations for this viewpoint included comments such as: “absolutely! it allows organisations to do a dipstick audit instantaneously of how it is being perceived by its stakeholders.” most of the respondents (52.1%) also agreed/agreed completely with the statement that social media is beneficial for spreading messages to stakeholders. among the reasons provided for this view were statements such as: “it falls within the sphere of mass communication”, “the reach is amazing”, “large groups/communities can be generated and reached with one message”, “yes; it is suitable; as every single stakeholder has a cell phone”, and “most of the stakeholders are using social media”. in agreement with the above motivation by respondents, drury (2008: 274) maintains that organisations who are not using social media are missing an opportunity to manage conversations taking place online. finally, the results indicate that almost two-thirds (60.4%) of the total sample of respondents agreed/completely agreed that social media is suitable for managing corporate reputation. looking at the qualitative data, it was found that a great deal of 49 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media emphasis was placed on the importance of giving honest feedback to stakeholders who engage with organisations. this is necessary to avoid damage to the corporate image, for example: “if carefully controlled and managed” and “again: i concur with this statement provided managing reputation doesn’t mean to defend the defenceless organisation, changing the apparent truth into lies, engaging and listening to people”. conclusions regarding the salience of perceived challenges and benefits as mentioned previously, for each of the four variables in phillips’ (2009) digital communication model there are several issues that can be perceived as either challenges or benefits associated with using social media for pr activities. this section addresses research question 3 by formulating conclusions for each of these four variables in terms of the relative salience of these competing challenges and benefits. it is clear that the respondents tended to view the possible benefits of using social media as generally being more salient than the possible challenges, from which it can be concluded that the respondents tended to favour the two-way symmetrical model for their pr activities. the first of the four variables investigated was time cost, which can be associated with the potential challenge of time consumption, as well as with the potential benefit of the instant nature of communication via social media. the percentages in table 1 and table 2 show that although time consumption was perceived by a large proportion of the participating practitioners as a challenge that they need to recognise and manage, an even larger proportion of respondents perceived the instant nature of communication via social media as a benefit. also, the mean benefit score for instant communication was found to be significantly higher than the mean challenge score for time consumption (as deduced from the fact that the confidence intervals of the two means do not overlap). from this it can be concluded that the benefit associated with this variable was perceived by the participating practitioners as being significantly more salient than the challenge associated with this variable. the second variable that was investigated was the level of control. it was postulated that pr activities conducted within the two-way symmetrical model were likely to result in management and practitioners having less control over the communication content (as compared to pr activities in the propaganda or information models). this loss of control can be perceived as leading either to the challenge of media abuse by individuals, or to the benefit of transparency of communication. the percentages in tables 1 and 2 indicate that the proportion of respondents who perceived media abuse to be a challenge was similar to the proportion of respondents who perceived the transparency of communication to be a benefit of social media. in addition, the mean benefit score for transparency was not found to be significantly higher than the mean challenge score for media abuse (as deduced from the lack of overlap of the confidence intervals of the two mean scores). it can therefore be concluded that the challenge and benefit associated with this variable were perceived to be more or less equally salient. regarding the level of trust variable, it was found that the majority of the participating practitioners agreed that possible damage to corporate reputation was a challenge 50 mavimbela, conradie & dondolo associated with using social media. on the other hand, most respondents also perceived social media to be associated with three benefits, namely managing corporate reputation, building relationships with stakeholders, and spreading messages to stakeholders. although the mean challenge score and the three benefit scores of these issues were not significantly different (because the confidence intervals of the means did not overlap) it can nevertheless be concluded that the practitioners perceived more benefits than challenges with regard to this variable. with regard to the last of the four variables, namely production cost, it was found that almost two-thirds of the participating practitioners perceived the cost of social media to be a benefit rather than a challenge. the overall conclusion that can be drawn for the results of this study is that, when social media is used for the purpose of pr activities, practitioners tend to perceive the possible benefits associated with the four variables contained in phillips’ (2009) digital communication model to be more salient (or at least equally salient) than the possible challenges also associated with the variables of this model. recommendations in terms of the challenges of using social media for pr activities, the following recommendations are made: regarding the issue of media abuse (including issues of ethics and anonymity), it is recommended that prisa/organisations develop policies to guide their pr practitioners, social media specialists and communicators on the ethics of using social media to help protect both the organisation and the stakeholders. when it comes to privacy (e.g. the risk of private information being accessed), it is recommended that pr practitioners should know the boundaries of what to post and what not to post. organisations also need to understand that they should not disclose private information that would destroy their relationship with their stakeholders. on the issue of possible damage to corporate image (including rumours, assumptions and stories resulting from using or not using social media), organisations are advised to respond to negative feedback in a timely manner. if this is done well, it can help prevent negative messages from going viral, and it may reduce potential damage to corporate reputation. on the issue of time consumption, organisations are advised to have a designated person/team who deals solely with social media. with regard to the potential benefits inherent in the use of social media for pr activities, the following recommendations are made: organisations should capitalise on the cost-effectiveness and instantaneous nature of these platforms in order to help them communicate with large audiences in a relatively cheap and fast manner. it is recommended that organisations do so without abusing the freedoms and opportunities provided by social media and that organisations should also utilise traditional media for enhancement. 51 perceived benefits and challenges regarding the use of social media it is recommended that organisations engage in transparent conversations via social media, and that, for purposes of managing and building relationships with stakeholders, organisations respond timely and honestly to any questions posed or issues raised on social media. with regard to measuring social media output, it is noted that the reach of a pr campaign or programme is not only measured by the number of press clippings achieved, but can also be measured by the number of blog posts, conversations, comments, re-tweets, bookmarks, etc. that the campaign generates online (matthews 2010: 22). therefore, it is recommended that practitioners constantly measure their social media input in order to measure and manage benefits. meyer (2015: 1) suggests that measuring the actual costs involved against the effectiveness of social media is vital when monitoring social media. in order to spread messages to a large number of stakeholders, it is recommended that organisations incorporate social media platform/s that would help them to reach a larger number of stakeholders. finally, stakeholders should be encouraged to respond via social media to the organisation’s posts or tweets, and to participate in a dialogue with the organisation to make known their views and needs. this would be in line with the research of gill (2008: 6), who found that social media has given rise to a new style of communication that is characterised by conversation and community. it is important for pr practitioners to understand these new communication platforms in order to effectively utilise social media as a means to engage with stakeholders (gordon 2010: 2). references bellamy, p.c. 2012. principles of methodology: research design in social science. london: sage. brown, j.d. 2002. statistics corner: questions and answers about language-testing statistics: the cronbach alpha reliability estimate. university of hawai’i at manoa 6(1): 17-18. 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[online]. available at: https://nuphoriq.com/measuring-the-value-of-social-media-marketing/ [accessed on 05 may 2018]. owyang, j. & toll, m. 2007. tracking the influence of conversations: a round table discussion on social media metrics and measurement. new york: dow jones. pallant, j. 2013. spss survival manual. london: mcgraw-hill. phillips, d. 2009. a grünigian view of model pr. lever wealth. [online]. available at: http:// leverwealth.blogspot.co.za/2009/01/grunigian-view-of-modern-pr.html?disqus_ reply=5552359#comment-5552359 [accessed on 30 october 2016]. rensburg, r. & de beer, e. 20111. stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputations. communitas (16): 151-169. ritter, n.l. 2010. understanding a widely misunderstood statistic: cronbach’s α. new orleans: texas a & m university. turney, m. 1998. further perspective on the mutual satisfaction phase of public relations: asymmetric v. symmetric public relations. [online]. available at: https://www.nku. edu/~turney/prclass/readings/read_master.html [accessed on 24 may 2018]. waddington, s. 2012. a critical review of the four models of public relations and the excellence theory in an era of digital communication. cipr chartered practitioner paper. [online]. available at: http://wadds.co.uk/2013/06/18/cipr-chartered-practitionerpaper-grunig-and-digital-communications/ [accessed on 17 august 2016]. wright, d. & hinson, m. 2009. an updated look at the impact of social media. public relations journal, 3(2): 1-21. 2011.we https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.007 https://nuphoriq.com/measuring-the-value-of-social-media-marketing/ https://www.nku.edu/~turney/prclass/readings/read_master.html https://www.nku.edu/~turney/prclass/readings/read_master.html http://wadds.co.uk/2013/06/18/cipr-chartered-practitioner-paper-grunig-and-digital-communications/ http://wadds.co.uk/2013/06/18/cipr-chartered-practitioner-paper-grunig-and-digital-communications/ _hlk513285121 _hlk498158832 _hlk512330627 _goback _hlk513198133 _hlk483863562 _hlk483899539 _hlk513231837 _hlk513231565 _hlk482896300 _hlk483406563 _hlk512721592 62 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model: an external organisational-orientated perspective yolandi slabbert* abstract to fill the gap in existing literature to build organisation-stakeholder relationships (osrs) and to expand the body of knowledge on the process of osr-building, slabbert (2012) developed a model that provided a partnership approach to describe the process of osr-building with strategic stakeholders. this model was tested among in-house corporate communication professionals at jse -listed organisations. the main aim of this article is to describe a follow-up study that further explored how the principles of this model resonate with the process of osr-building in practice, specifically in selected south african public relations (pr) and communication agencies. by further exploring the principles of the sequential, integrated, sustainable organisation-stakeholder relationship model (sisosr), this study explored whether osr-building from a modernistic perspective is still relevant in practice or whether it resembles a postmodernistic move evident in recent academic literature. although the findings indicate that the osr-building process presented by slabbert’s 2012 model is more conducive to in-house corporate communication professionals’ practices, it does tend to resonate with osr-building in practice which could be evident of communication professionals’ slow uptake of postmodernistic approaches. the research findings were used to provide guidelines for possible amendments of the sisosr model to align it with osr-building in practice. this could be used as a starting point for future studies in addressing the process of stakeholder relationship building from a postmodern perspective. keywords: organisation-stakeholder relationships (osrs), organisation-stakeholder relationship (osr) building, strategic stakeholders, corporate communication, public relations, modernism, post-modernism, sequential, integrated, sustainable organisation-stakeholder relationship model (sisosr) * dr yolandi slabbert (slabby@unisa.ac.za) lectures in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 62-83 63 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model introduction the key towards creating economically, socially and environmentally sustainable and high-performance organisations in contemporary society lies in building and maintaining stakeholder relationships (sloan 2009: 26), which are often regarded as an intangible asset of successful organisations (malmelin 2007: 298). the establishment of mutual value for the organisation and strategic stakeholders is dependent on proactive organisation-stakeholder relationship (osr) building and recognising stakeholders’ shared responsibility in addressing organisational problems (maak 2007: 329). according to meintjes and grobler (2014: 162), the success of the organisation has a direct relation to the organisation’s ability to manage and address diverse stakeholder needs and demands, which underlines the increasing need for organisations to establish stakeholder partnerships (valackiene 2010: 101). the addition to the king iii report of chapter 8 on governing stakeholder relations, and the prominence in south africa of various stakeholder standards such as corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate sustainability and the triple bottom line are further examples of the increasing emphasis on stakeholder relationship building. this dominant focus on organisational stakeholders provides “added impetus and importance to the role of corporate communication” (malmelin 2007: 298), and in essence signifies the relevance of and need for practising corporate communication strategically. this is emphasised by de beer (2011), who postulates that “governing stakeholder relations will be the mantra for corporate communication”. despite the acknowledgement of the significance of osrs and the centrality thereof in corporate communication, there is a paucity of research indicating how to actually build these osrs (kim 2007: 167). according to preble (2005: 414), “... surprisingly little effort has been made to construct a comprehensive stakeholder management process model that can facilitate the actual practice of stakeholder management within contemporary organisations”. as a result, slabbert (2012) developed a sequential, integrated, sustainable organisation-stakeholder relationship (sisosr) model from a corporate communications perspective to describe more accurately the osr-building process with strategic stakeholders. the model depicted the ideal osr-building process to ultimately establish organisation-stakeholder partnerships (osps) with strategic stakeholders. the principles of the original sisosr model were both quantitatively measured and qualitatively explored among in-house senior communication professionals at jse-listed organisations. since the model’s principles were only explored and measured with corporate communication professionals within the organisation, the need to explore further the principles of the model with public relations (pr) professionals in selected pr agencies was realised. 64 yolandi slabbert another key consideration of this follow-up study is the paradigmatic debates between modernism and postmodernism in communication management and public relations evident in academic literature (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013; holtzhausen 2002; toth 2002; mumby 1997). a modernist approach dominates various areas of public relations and communication management in theory and practice (holtzhausen 2002: 253), and is regarded as a rational approach that adds value to objectivity (toth 2002: 245). grunig’s excellence theory (1984) is a typical example of modernism where strategic public relations management is regarded as a process to examine constituencies where negotiation is used to maximise stability and minimise uncertainty (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 364). sandhu (2009: 87) argues that communication management needs to be freed “from the iron cage of the [e]xcellence study” and a movement towards pluralism, temporality, fragmentation, de-differentiation and ambiguity associated with postmodernism should be established (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 364). since the excellence theory was one of the cornerstones of the sisosr model, which could as a result be regarded as a modernist approach to osr-building, it further underlines the need for this follow-up study to simultaneously determine whether a “modernist” approach to osr building resonates with practice and/or whether there is a movement towards “postmodern” osr-building approaches. this is an essential exploration as it is argued that “communication professionals have been slow to adapt to the shift in paradigms” (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 377). based on the above overview the research problem of this study was to explore whether selected south african pr and communication agencies’ osr-building approaches resonate with the modernistic principles and process of the original sisosr model. the findings were used to develop guidelines for amending the sisosr model to align the model more closely with osr-building in practice and to provide a basis for future research in stakeholder relationship building from a postmodern perspective. the remainder of the article is structured as follows: a brief elaboration on the characteristics and building blocks of the original sisosr model; the key thrusts underlying the shift to postmodernism; a description of the methodological approach that was utilised in this study; the presentation of the key findings; and subsequent elaboration on and the proposed guidelines for amending the sisosr model to increase the relevance thereof in practice. the article concludes with a discussion on the limitations and contributions of the study. an overview of the sisosr model this section provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of slabbert’s (2012) sisosr model in the form of a brief discussion of the characteristics and building blocks of the model. 65 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model characteristics of the original sisosr model the sisosr model has the following intrinsic characteristics (slabbert 2012: 307-8): it is sequential, integrated, and supportive of a sustainable process. although this model was specifically focused on strategic stakeholders, who are all internal or external organisational groups with a continuous high degree of stakeholder salience with which the organisation shares a reciprocal interest that should be nurtured through proactive, mutually beneficial relationship building to ensure organisational survival, it is generic as it does not focus on a specific strategic stakeholder, industry or communication situation. the sisosr model also provides a proactive approach to osr-building with strategic stakeholders in particular (therefore excluding publics or secondary stakeholders), and it is strategic in nature as it emphasises the contribution of corporate communication as osr-building function to achieving organisational effectiveness. the building blocks of the original sisosr model the sisosr model consists of three interlinked building blocks, namely the strategic communication foundation, the theoretical foundation, and the conceptualisation of osr-building. building block one: strategic communication foundation the sisosr model emphasises the responsibility of the corporate communication function in driving osr-building with strategic stakeholders. slabbert (2012: 38) defines corporate communication as “an umbrella term for all internal and external strategic communication with the core purpose of building and maintaining sustainable osr with strategic stakeholders to contribute to organisational success”. various key thrusts are prevalent in this definition. corporate communication should be practised from a two-way symmetrical communication perspective to allow sustainable osr-building. in the context of the sisosr model, johansen and nielsen’s (2011: 209) perspective that “… traditional unidirectional means of stakeholder communication must be replaced or replenished by two-way communication” is of relevance. this implies that twoway symmetrical communication should represent an interactive communication process concerned with establishing a balanced dialogue between the organisation and strategic stakeholders in order to stimulate transparency and sincerity with a view to building mutually beneficial osrs. five essential corporate communication functions, namely research through environmental scanning and evaluation research; issues management; reputation management; knowledge sharing enabled by an internal organisational culture of knowledge; and adherence to organisational ethics and values, have to be implemented to ensure successful osr-building. 66 yolandi slabbert environmental scanning should be applied continuously throughout this process to detect any issues of concern that could hinder osr-building. evaluation research was accepted in the original sisosr model as a two-pronged approach that is relevant at different phases of the sisosr model, as will be contextualised in building block three. the relevance of issues management to the original sisosr model is that it serves as a proactive, continuous process to manage and resolve issues of concern, which could include the formation of active publics, conflict between relational parties and potential crises, which are detected through environmental scanning, to ensure the continuance of the osr-building process. thiessen and ingenhoff’s (2011: 9) perception of reputation management is supported in the context of the original sisosr model, which emphasises that it is the aggregate of individual perceptions of an organisation’s past performance and future outlook, and that reputation management is regarded as “relational capital” that strengthens relationships and builds trust; it is the organisation’s “reservoir of goodwill”. from this perspective it is argued that a positive organisational reputation is a prerequisite for adequate osr-building with strategic stakeholders, and that corporate communication professionals should also manage the organisation’s reputation throughout the osr-building process. knowledge sharing implies that stakeholders are recognised “as partners who create both economic and social value through collaborative problem solving” (halal 2001: 28). it is further argued in the context of the sisosr model that the foundation of knowledge sharing is an internal organisational culture that allows employees to create, share and utilise knowledge (ribiére & sitar 2010: 36), which is defined in the context of the sisosr model as “an internal culture of knowledge”. the sisosr model also supported the notion that osr endeavours should be aligned with the organisation’s ethics and values. this argument is based on the premise that since two-way symmetrical communication is by nature ethical (huang 2004: 333), it will assist the organisation to align all of its osr activities with the organisation’s ethics and values. building block two: theoretical foundation this building block of the original sisosr model represents an integration of the most prominent theories and concepts utilised in osr-building literature, and includes freeman’s (1984) stakeholder concept from a normative, relational perspective; ferguson’s (1984) relational paradigm; ledingham’s (2003) theory of relationship management; and grunig’s (1984) excellence theory. in the context of the original sisosr model, grunig’s excellence theory encapsulates the principles of the aforementioned theories and concepts as follows: it supports the stakeholder concept in underlining the importance of having a stakeholder mindset according to which research should arguably be conducted to identify strategic stakeholders and develop communication programmes aimed at them; 67 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model it underscores the relationship management paradigm through the focus on the relationship between the organisation and stakeholders; and it resembles the relationship management theory and the stakeholder concept by promoting twoway symmetrical communication to allow for the establishment of mutually beneficial osr. furthermore, the excellence theory emphasises the importance of practising corporate communication strategically and its contribution to the organisation’s overall strategic management. based on the sisosr model, the excellence theory served as a toolkit for osrbuilding with two main contributions, namely a strategic contribution, to elevate corporate communication as an osr-building function to the desired strategic level; and a pragmatic contribution, that excellence in corporate communication is specifically regarded as a collection of practices that assist the organisation to build sustainable relationships with strategic stakeholders. building block three: conceptualisation of osr-building on the basis of the prerequisites required for a successful osr-building process represented by building blocks one and two, building block three of the sisosr model encapsulates the phases and sub-phases of the actual osr-building process. ♦ phase one: strategic stakeholder identification the sisosr model presents a new strategic stakeholder identification methodology that emphasises the following key points: that strategic stakeholders should have stakeholder salience (mutual power dependence, legitimacy and urgency); the benefits of building an osr with strategic stakeholders should outweigh the costs; and there should be a high level of mutual involvement in the organisation and stakeholders’ business activities (koschman 2009; grunig & huang 2000; mitchell, agle & wood 1997; grunig 1984). ◊ sub-phase a: strategic stakeholder perception analysis (sspa) the original sisosr model indicates that after the process of identifying strategic stakeholder groups, the perceptions of these strategic stakeholder groups should be analysed, as it could affect the osr-building approach that will be employed. this process was uniquely termed in slabbert’s (2012) study as “strategic stakeholder perception analysis” (sspa). it should be noted that the perceptions identified by means of the sspa constitute those of strategic stakeholders specifically to serve as a starting point for osr development. furthermore, slabbert (2012:278) argues that these perceptions will also assist the organisation to define the osr antecedents, which constitutes the next sub-phase of the model. 68 yolandi slabbert ◊ sub-phase b: osr antecedents the sisosr model underlines that, prior to the development of an osr, various osr antecedents had to exist (kim 2007:170). the following four osr antecedents are prevalent in the sisosr model: trustworthiness; organisation-stakeholder association; mutual consequence; and expectations (kim & radar 2010:62). these collectively served as a sub-phase preceding osr development. ♦ phase two: osr development this phase of the sisosr model focuses on an exploration of the elements of an osr and the unique proposition of an osr development continuum, which presented four original osr types. since the sisosr model presented a partnership approach to osr-building, this continuum illustrates how a foundational osr could evolve and grow in intensity over time to become a mutually beneficial osr, a sustainable osr, and eventually an osp (a foundational osr practised over a long period of time to reach the level of two-way engagement, whereby stakeholders are actively involved at organisational board level to promote a mutual experience of stewardship and collaborative problem solving). ◊ sub-phase c: osr evaluation this sub-phase indicates that once a foundational osr has been established, it has to be evaluated to detect strategic stakeholder issues that could be addressed during stakeholder engagement as a measure to strengthen the foundational osr to become a mutually beneficial osr, which is the next relational stage in the proposed osr development continuum (slabbert 2012: 279). osr evaluation is specifically concerned with identifying strategic stakeholder issues that can be used as topics for stakeholder engagement, which constitutes the next sub-phase of the original sisosr model. ◊ sub-phase d: stakeholder engagement various theorists argue that once an osr has been established, certain osr outcomes will exist, which may include control mutuality (the extent to which relational parties agree on who has the rightful power to influence the other), trust, satisfaction and commitment (grunig & huang 2000: 42). since these outcomes were accepted as osr elements in the sisosr model, stakeholder engagement was instead presented as an osr outcome and a subphase after osr evaluation. stakeholder engagement represents 69 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model the organisation’s endeavours to involve strategic stakeholders in decision-making and to encourage participation in organisational activities (greenwood 2007: 315). in the context of the sisosr model, proposing stakeholder engagement as an osr outcome implies that stakeholder engagement can only occur after the establishment of an osr, because this engagement moves beyond the management of common interests to a higher level of intensity of stakeholder participation in decision-making, problem-solving and organisational activities. it is also a strategy to strengthen the foundational osr into a mutually beneficial osr. the sisosr model further proposed that two-way engagement will be experienced at osp level, whereby both the strategic stakeholders and the organisation facilitate the engagement, resulting in the art of thinking and solving problems collectively (fossgard-moser 2006: 170). ♦ phase three: osr maintenance the osr development continuum mentioned earlier proposes that once a foundational osr has been established, it should be nurtured to evolve in intensity into a mutually beneficial osr, a sustainable osr and ultimately an osp. this phase is congruent with stafford and canary’s (1991: 220) perspective that a continuous relationship requires maintenance – especially when a staged, process approach is proposed for osr-building. although the sisosr model could be critiqued for, among others, being a modernist approach, it should be highlighted that this model aimed to provide a progressive process approach to osr-building to achieve osps, which necessitates a two-way symmetrical communication process. furthermore the sisosr model was specifically developed in alignment with the principles of chapter 8 of the king iii report on corporate governance, which in itself is embedded in the two-way symmetrical model of communication (de beer 2011) to promote stakeholder inclusivity (stakeholder interests are considered when deciding on the best interests of the organisation). against the above summation of the sisosr model as an example of a modernistic approach to osr-building, the following section provides a brief overview on postmodernism in communication management and pr. key thrusts underlining postmodernism overton-de klerk and verwey (2013) identified shifts from modern and postmodern organisational practice which they conceptualised as “core driving 70 yolandi slabbert forces” towards an emerging paradigm of strategic communication. for the purpose of this study, some of these shifts will be used to serve as key thrusts to underline postmodernism in communication and pr (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 370-376): institutions are increasingly forced to make use of asymmetrical dialogue instead of symmetrical dialogue due to media convergence and digital connectivity; the recognition of multiple voices and the possible encouragement of dissent/conflict; the organisation as the writer of its own brand script is replaced by a notion of continuous collaboration from other, mostly unexpected writers; the positioning of the pr or communication professional as an organisational activist as opposed to being part of the dominant coalition (decision-makers) of the organisation, which could best be achieved by pr/communication agencies as they are in a position to resist domination from organisational management; and the positioning of the communication manager as a facilitator of forums and channels for discourse and free participation, which necessitates that the communication manager should not be too tightly aligned with the organisation to allow critical reflection. in spite of this realisation, postmodernism in public relations and communication management is not free from criticism. toth (2002: 243) for example argues that besides the philosophical criticism that postmodern theorists attach to the modernistic practice of pr and communication management, a “cash value” (mumby 1997: 23) must be added in order for modern pr and communication professionals to accept postmodernistic ideas. furthermore, grunig (2009: 10) specifically underlines the necessity of a modernistic approach to communication and pr by stating that “public relations practitioners and scholars must minimise the extent to which the symbolic, interpretative paradigm of public relations affects their thinking and institutionalize public relations as a strategic management, behavioural paradigm”. research methodology this exploratory follow-up study is built from an interpretive paradigm through the application of a qualitative research design to obtain insights from pr professionals to determine whether the modernistic process of osr-building as promoted by the sisosr model resonate with practice or whether there is a move towards postmodernistic osr-building approaches. semi-structured one-on-one interviews were used through an interview guide with predetermined questions to offer flexibility to the interviewer (greeff 2007: 296). a two-phased data collection approach was followed for the purpose of this study. firstly, in order to obtain professional opinions on the proposed modernistic osr-building process and principles of the original sisosr model, it was necessary to obtain a sample of leading pr agencies. the population of this 71 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model article consequently comprised pr agency winners of the 2013 prism awards, which is an annual awards ceremony hosted by the public relations institute of south africa (prisa) to honour the best campaigns of south african pr and communication agencies. a multi-stage sampling strategy, where sampling occurs in stages using smaller units at each stage, was employed. purposive sampling was initially applied to determine the sampling frame of the study, which consisted of pr professionals from ten pr agencies who were selected as gold, silver or bronze winners for specific pr campaigns in the johannesburg region in 2012. convenient sampling, based on availability and willingness to partake, was further applied to obtain the sample for the study. the sample included five senior pr professionals at the following pr agencies: pr worx; tribeca pr; redstar communications; and ogilvy pr. these participants could be regarded as pr specialists, with 10 to 20 years’ experience in the field, and between the ages of 35-45. the participants either held a position at management or director level in the agency. one participant was also the founding member of the agency. it should be noted that the focus was on the osr strategies that these pr agencies develop for their clients (in their capacity as advisors to organisations), and not on the osr strategies that are employed within the pr agency itself. to further supplement the findings from these pr professionals, the second phase of the data collection process comprised another semi-structured one-on-one interview with the ceo of business dna. this participant has 30 years’ experience in the communication industry, specifically in journalism, public relations, academia, research and consulting, and is an accredited business communicator with the international association of business communicators. this participant was purposively selected in an attempt to determine further the relevance of the sisosr model based on the fact that this agency specialises in guiding organisations in building and maintaining stakeholder relationships. to avoid the possibility of a loss of standing in employment when confidential information is divulged (stake 2000: 447) the identities of the participants remain confidential and reference is not made to the agency names in the reporting of the findings. the interviews were recorded with prior consent of the participants and transcribed. a combination of creswell’s analytic spiral and marshall and rossman’s analysis process, as synthesised by de vos (2007: 334), was used as a qualitative data analysis technique for both phases of the data collection process. this analysis process consisted of nine integrative steps to manage, organise and categorise the data. the semi-structured interview guide was categorised according to the building blocks of the sisosr model to aid the data analysis process and to add new themes or patterns to these existing categories. the coding scheme was informed by the elements and sub-elements of each of the interview guide 72 yolandi slabbert categories which specifically represented the proposed phases and sub-phases of the modernistic osr-building process. data was labelled according to these elements and organised into these categories. the final stages of the data analysis process entailed the testing of emergent understandings against existing literature; searching for alternative explanations, especially related to the key thrusts that underline postmodernism; and presenting the data. trustworthiness was proposed as an alternative for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research (janesick 2000: 393) and was established through the elements of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (morse et al. 2002: 5). key findings prior to reporting the main findings relating to the three building blocks of the sisosr model, it should be noted that it was evident from the interviews from this follow-up study that the principles of the original sisosr model generally appear to be more conducive to in-house corporate communication professionals’ practices than to the approaches pr professionals develop for their clients. according to one participant, “there is no white-label approach, we play it by ear”. another participant argued that “we rely on our experience”. someone else posited that “your model is specifically applicable to large corporate organisations that require reporting … a more tactical approach will be used for smaller, brandorientated clients”. despite these perspectives, valuable input was given by the participants, which could serve as guidelines for amending the sisosr model to align it more closely with osr-building in practice and as a starting point for the exploration of osr-building from a postmodern perspective. building block one: strategic communication foundation the participants predominantly confirmed that the proposed sisosr model could be regarded as normative due to its two-way symmetrical communication nature, which is congruent with the critique associated with a modernistic approach as argued earlier. according to three of the participants, two-way communication in itself is definitely regarded as essential for building osr; the problem, however, lies with communicating symmetrically. participants made statements such as “at the end of the day, you want the stakeholder to dance to your tune” and “there is always going to be a degree of manipulation … both parties will have a bias”, which are more in line with two-way asymmetrical communication practices. this finding is specifically supportive of the postmodern trend for asymmetrical dialogue brought about by, among others, media convergence and digital connectivity. in contrast, another participant stated that there should be respect for the conversation between the organisation and the strategic stakeholders and that “collaborative communities” (a coalition between the organisation and strategic stakeholders to achieve shared goals) need to be established. this argument is again congruent with 73 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model some of the characteristics of two-way symmetrical communication that underline the sisosr model, namely collaboration and negotiation; mutual understanding and a shared vision; and collaborative problem-solving between the organisation and strategic stakeholders. on the basis of these perspectives, it could be argued that, in reality, there will be interplay between two-way symmetrical and two-way asymmetrical communication. the implication of this finding is that that twoway asymmetrical communication should be added to the two-way symmetrical communication foundation of the original sisosr model. the five proposed essential corporate communication functions of this building block of the sisosr model, namely research (environmental scanning and evaluation research); issues management; reputation management; knowledge sharing enabled by an internal culture of knowledge; and the alignment of osr endeavours with the ethics and values of the organisation were generally well received and supported by the participants. some new insights gained from the interviews specifically pertained to two of these corporate communication functions. firstly, the argument posed earlier that a positive organisational reputation is a prerequisite for successful osr-building was predominantly regarded as idealistic and not representative of practice. one participant argued that a positive organisational reputation “is not a prerequisite, it is just easier; when the reputation is negative it will just require more time” to build osrs. similarly, another participant posited that “a positive organisational reputation is not a prerequisite, it is not a reality … i think where you want it to be is neutral, because on that basis you can influence either way. we need to determine if we can change the negative; if not, ring-fence and move on – build positive bias elsewhere, outweigh the negative”. another participant concurred by stating that “you want your reputation to be neutral to shift the perception positive over time – then you get a much stronger foundation” [sic]. based on these insights, the proposition of a positive organisational reputation is not deemed accurate and could be replaced by a neutral organisational reputation to more closely align the model with osr-building in practice. secondly, an interesting remark made with regard to knowledge sharing enabled by an internal culture of knowledge within the organisation was that one has to be cognisant of the behaviour-driven culture. this implies that in-house corporate communication professionals and/or pr professionals need to determine how information in the organisation will be cascaded down and operationalised within the organisation; the same information needs to be communicated to different internal organisational stakeholders in different ways. this is an essential consideration to ensure an internal organisational climate conducive of knowledge sharing and subsequent internal osr-building on which to build effective external 74 yolandi slabbert osrs. in support of this perspective it was argued that “you need to have trust inside your house before you can build trust outside”. two participants specifically emphasised additional factors related to an osr strategy that merit consideration as part of the strategic communication foundation building block of the sisosr model. firstly, it was argued that the initial step in an osr strategy is to ensure alignment between the organisation’s reputation, the internal organisational culture, and the organisation’s vision and mission. it is therefore essential that the organisation’s strategic business opportunities and business plan are aligned. although alignment of the corporate communication strategy with the organisation’s business objectives, vision and mission is inherently implied by the proposition of practicing corporate communication as a strategic function, it can be inferred that it could be highlighted as a more prominent consideration of the sisosr model. secondly, a participant argued that “an aspect that is often overlooked in stakeholder management strategies is the regulatory aspects relating to stakeholder management in, for example, the consumer protection act; the protection of information act; media regulation; electronic communication regulation; press regulation …”. since regulatory aspects were not considered in the original sisosr model, it could be emphasised in the sisosr model. building block two: theoretical foundation five of the participants concurred that the essence of corporate communication is to build osrs, which necessitates that corporate communication should be practised at the strategic level of the organisation, which directly supports a modernistic approach to communication management and pr. despite this acknowledgement, various issues pertaining to corporate communication as a strategic osr-building function were raised by four participants. firstly, it was argued that the lack of credibility associated with corporate communication could largely be ascribed to corporate communication professionals’ lack of business skills. in affirmation of this, participants stated that “the foundation of business in general should be the same for communication”; however, “they [corporate communication professionals] don’t understand business”, and “one reason why communication does not sit at the strategic table is that they [corporate communication professionals] are not good at business”. moreover, participants maintained that “… in order to do communication, you need to understand economics … how a business works is placed in microand macroeconomic conditions”; “all communication strategies have to take current social and economic complexities into account … you need to understand the socio-political environment, because you need to be able to advise before decisions are made … unfortunately, corporate communication people in this country cannot do it”. from a postmodernistic perspective it could be inferred that such a generalist organisational knowledge approach is 75 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model essential to allow easier absorption of diverse voices not only in establishing an organisation’s brand, but also to encourage possible dissent and meaningful debate with organisational stakeholders. participants unanimously agreed that corporate communication professionals’ lack of business skills and knowledge of the economy and socio-political environment could be ascribed to the fact that, as a starting point, communication qualifications do not adequately equip students with the skills required to practice corporate communication properly. comments included the following: “the contents of communication qualifications are shocking”; “universities do not prepare [communication] students for the reality of the job … they have a complete misperception as to what pr and communication people do”; “our university system is failing the industry … they create misguided perceptions of reality among students … the academic foundation is about 20 years behind”. one participant posed the following questions: “… [i]s the right communication qualification important? totally. is the right communication qualification available? not at all.” additionally, one participant stated that practising corporate communication effectively is a balancing act between the right qualification and the right level of experience in the industry; “you cannot expect a junior to function on strategic level”. it can be deduced that besides the key requirement of integrating businessorientated subjects into the curriculum of communication qualifications, corporate communication as a strategic osr-building function necessitates the skills of specialised corporate communication professionals, that is, individuals with the relevant qualifications and level of experience. the lack of credibility in the corporate communication field could also be due to the absence of a professional body for communication practitioners. one participant mentioned that endeavours were underway to change this: “the council of communication management (ccm) is in the process to develop a registration system for pr and communication professionals. this system will be similar to project management, whereby you cannot do project management on a big contract if you are not sufficiently qualified with the relevant experience.” although these issues of professionalisation of the communication industry and lack of business skills sprout from a modernistic era, it still seems to be issues that the communication industry is confronted with today. based on the above findings it could be inferred that tertiary institutions urgently need to revise their communication/pr qualifications’ curriculum to provide students with a suitable grounding in business management, economics and politics to accurately advise and guide management in decision-making. corporate communication professionals with business management knowledge could assist in adding credibility to the profession and could contribute to the strategic management of the organisation in addition to practising corporate communication strategically. academics 76 yolandi slabbert could partner with communication professionals from the industry to ensure that qualifications are relevant and in line with activities in the practice. endeavours to regulate and professionalise corporate communication are seemingly a move in the right direction in building the credibility of the corporate communication industry. building block three: conceptualisation of osr-building the participants largely supported the phases and sub-phases of the proposed osr-building process of the original sisosr model. new insights from these interviews that relate specifically to phase one; sub-phase b; phase three; and subphase d of the original sisosr model, as described earlier, are discussed in the following section. ♦ phase one: strategic stakeholder identification three participants indicated that they do not have formal strategic stakeholder identification strategies in place for their clients; instead, “we rely on the expertise of our internal council of stakeholders” (a group of senior stakeholders within the agency who are in a position to advise and guide based on their knowledge and expertise), which at times is “a guess which stems from experience”. although the absence of official strategic stakeholder identification strategies is not supported in the context of the sisosr model, the fact that the participants mentioned that they rely on internal expertise in the agency again emphasises the importance of seniority and experience for corporate communication professionals to sufficiently build osrs. ◊ sub-phase b: osr antecedents in congruence with the organisation-stakeholder association and mutual-consequence osr antecedents a participant mentioned that “… prior to building an osr, a common ground should be reached, which requires commitment”. this ties in with the argument posed earlier that common ground should be established between the organisation and strategic stakeholder by means of two-way symmetrical communication, specifically by means of negotiation, and both the organisation and the stakeholders should be committed to honouring this common ground or shared objective, because “both parties have skin in this game”. ♦ phase three: osr development in relation to the proposed osr development continuum, some participants argued that osr building is cyclical instead of sequential. one participant argued that “… there is never a pinnacle in a relationship where you have reached the end … an osr is like a personal relationship – you fight and 77 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model make up continuously”. in contrast, another participant postulated that “one can never truly unwind a partnership”, despite emerging issues that could damage the osp. the latter argument is specifically in line with the argument made earlier that the common ground between the strategic stakeholders and the organisation should still take precedence over emerging issues. in order to manage these issues, issues management, conflict management strategies, and other osr maintenance tactics were integrated in the original sisosr model and are therefore still regarded as relevant. ◊ sub-phase d: stakeholder engagement some participants criticised the proposition that stakeholder engagement should be an osr outcome. for example, it was stated that “stakeholder engagement and relationship building happen simultaneously”, and “it is continuous … from initiation you are potentially engaged”. conversely, and more in line with the original proposition of stakeholder engagement as an osr outcome, one participant argued that “… sometimes a relationship leads you to engagement”. since the purpose of the sisosr model was to describe the osr-building process, which implied the dissection of the process into phases, it is still accepted that stakeholder engagement is a more advanced process that requires an osr to be in place. in addition to the above findings that are related to the sisosr model’s building blocks, one participant mentioned that organisations should “socialise” stakeholder relations and management strategies to accommodate the “real-time stakeholder”. this implies that organisations need to “be in a space where they act in the same way as their stakeholders – thus via social channels”. this viewpoint is specifically in line with postmodern thinking where institutions are increasingly forced to make use of asymmetrical dialogue due to media convergence and digital connectivity. social channels also allow continuous collaboration from other parties in defining the organisation’s brand. from the above findings it could be inferred that although there was some evidence of a movement towards postmodernistic thinking (e.g. two-way asymmetrical communication), a modernistic partnership approach to osr-building does seem to resonate with practice which, as a result, could be evidence of a slow uptake of postmodern approaches among communication professionals. 78 yolandi slabbert guidelines for amending the sisosr model the above findings culminated in the following guidelines pertaining to the process of osr-building of the sisosr model to align it more closely with osrbuilding in practice: ♦ a revision of the sisosr model has to take cognisance of the interplay between two-way symmetrical and two-way asymmetrical communication. it can be inferred that common ground, representative of a shared vision, collaboration and negotiation between the organisation and strategic stakeholders, has to be established. if asymmetrical communication tactics are employed by either the organisation or the strategic stakeholders, it should not be to the detriment of the common ground, as this would arguably have a negative impact on the osr. despite the reality of twoway asymmetrical communication, it could still be argued in the context of the sisosr model that common ground, which stems from two-way symmetrical communication, remains the cornerstone for a partnership approach to osr-building. ♦ it is important to consider that successful osr-building is dependent on its alignment with the organisation’s mission, vision and strategic business objectives. although this was inherently implied in the original sisosr model, it is essential that it should become a more prominent part of the strategic communication foundation building block in recognition of the alignment of the corporate communication strategy with the overall business objectives of the organisation. ♦ regulatory aspects (such as the consumer protection act, protection of information act, media regulation and electronic communication regulation) that govern communication in the process of osr-building has to be integrated as part of the strategic communication foundation of the organisation as it could influence the progression of an osr. ♦ the proposition of a positive organisational reputation as a prerequisite for osr-building needs to be revisited. based on the findings it was argued that a neutral organisational reputation (if not already positive), is more realistic as it could be influenced either way. in line with these guidelines, two implications for possible implementation of the sisosr model should be considered. firstly, since the sisosr model is built from a corporate communication perspective, strategic osr-building would arguably require a change in corporate communication as an industry and practice to enhance the credibility of the field. this could be achieved through, inter alia, the professionalisation of the field by means of, for example, the endeavours by the 79 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model ccm; renaming corporate communication to “stakeholder relations” to move away from corporate communication being regarded as a technical media monitoring and publicity function; and, most importantly, corporate communication professionals becoming more business cognisant as it is critical for them to understand how business works in order to sufficiently align osr strategies with business objectives. this necessitates amendments at educational level, which means that tertiary institutions would have to make the necessary changes to equip communication students with business skills. it should also be re-emphasised that to sufficiently build osrs, corporate communication professionals need to have the relevant qualifications, coupled with experience. secondly, a change in the mindset of the organisation’s board and executive members would be required as substantial resources and time would be needed to expand the corporate communication department to ensure successful osrbuilding. executive buy-in would be essential because both the department and the organisation as a whole would need to approach all stakeholder actions from a shared worldview. limitations and contributions of the study the following limitations were identified in this study: firstly, the study utilised a qualitative research design, which has the limitation that the findings cannot be generalised. the guidelines for amendment and related implications are therefore only a starting point and further quantitative testing of these findings is required to make definite amendments to the sisosr model. secondly, although a two-phased data collection approach was employed to counter the small realised sample of pr agencies, it is still regarded as a limitation that necessitates further exploration among a larger sample of pr agencies. it should be noted that the participants were regarded as specialists in the field of pr and stakeholder relations based on their level of experience and seniority to provide initial input on the process of osr-building to serve as the basis for further research. the modernistic nature of the sisosr model could be seen as a limitation as it is not representative of the move towards postmodernism evident in academic literature. however, the sisosr model aimed to provide a progressive, partnership approach to osrbuilding in line with the notion of stakeholder inclusivity which necessitated a modernistic two-way symmetrical communication approach. the main contribution of this article is the guidelines and related implications proposed to ensure a closer alignment of the sisosr model with osr-building in practice which provided a starting point towards blurring the lines between modern and postmodern approaches in osr-building. this resulted in another core contribution of this study, namely that a modernistic, partnership approach does seem to resonate with practice. this is an important finding as it could be 80 yolandi slabbert an indication that communication professionals are indeed slow in accepting postmodern thinking, which leaves room for further theory development and research, not only in osr-building, but also in communication management and pr as a whole, from a postmodern perspective. conclusion despite the identification of some evidence towards postmodernistic thinking, this study indicated that a modernistic partnership approach to osr-building does seem to resonate with practice, which could be indicative of communication professionals’ slow uptake of postmodern osr-building practices. this provides an opportunity for further research and theory development to inform practice of the much needed move towards postmodernism in communication management and pr. future research should therefore focus on closing the gap between practice and academia by expanding the body of knowledge in osr-building within a postmodern or even integrated perspective. in conclusion, falconi (2009: 4) states that “the effective governance of stakeholder relationships is the new global frontier”, which underscores the need for further research and theory development in osr-building from a much needed postmodern perspective. 81 a strategic organisation-stakeholder relationship-building model references de beer, e. 2011. stakeholder 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(2004), who conducted a meta-analysis of 48 health campaigns, found that there was a small effect size of short-term campaigns of .09. this means that across a number of different behaviours, only 9% of the people who were analysed as part of the related campaigns, reported behaviour change after exposure to campaign messages. still, media campaigns have been shown to have indirect effects through institutional and interpersonal routes (hornik & yanovitzky 2003). these authors explain that some individuals may be exposed to media messages via institutions, 183 interpersonal communication about sexuality not through direct exposure. or, individuals may be exposed to messages through social interaction with family members, peers, and members in the community; thus people learn about practices that are socially acceptable and those that are not. a number of empirical studies have shown that interpersonal discussions about mass media campaigns have the capacity to moderate campaign effects resulting in changes in behavioural intentions, social norms, attitudes and beliefs, and ultimately leading to behaviour change amongst the target audiences (cf. dunlop, cotter & perez 2014; reimuller, hussong & ennett 2011; south african government information 2010). in terms of theory, research on interpersonal communication about media campaigns premises from mass communication effects theories, which focus on the effectiveness of the messages on audiences in society. a pivotal theory that explains the interface between mass and interpersonal communication is the two step flow theory by katz and lazarsfield (1955), which assumes that from the media, information is mostly received by opinion leaders. opinion leaders are identified as the most frequent consumers of media messages. in a second stage, these opinion leaders then interpret the content of the media and use it to influence other members of society concerning the content of the messages. based on assumptions by theories such as the two step flow, which posits that interpersonal discussions have the capacity to influence behaviour, it was important for this study to find out from the adolescents whom they engage in interpersonal discussions with, that is, their conversations partners. in addition, understanding the reasons why they talk about sexually-related topics and hiv/aids with these conversation partners might provide insight into the kind of influence that occurs in the communication that occurs. in order to achieve this, interviews were conducted with adolescents to solicit their responses to the following questions: are young people willing to talk to their parents about sexuality and hiv/aids-related topics? why would young people be willing (or not) to talk to their parents about sexuality and hiv/aids-related topics? would young people be willing to talk to their friends about sexuality and hiv/aids-related topics? why would young people be willing (or not) to talk with their friends about sexuality and hiv/aids-related topics? the main objective of this study is to determine what the views of adolescents are, not only on who they would to talk to, parents or friends, but also the reasons why they would want to talk to their preferred conversation partner(s) about sexuallyrelated issues. 184 elizabeth lubinga interpersonal health communication between adolescents, adults and peers studies on how to achieve behaviour change through interpersonal discussions among adolescents are important for a number of reasons. firstly, because of the recent statistics (as already discussed), which show that young people are still vulnerable with regard to hiv/aids (statistics south africa 2013). secondly, adolescence is a crucial development stage; a stage when behaviour is easily influenced, based on the social development theory. for example, catalano and hawkins (1996: 156) in their social development model state that at this stage, adolescents learn patterns of behaviour from socialising units such as family, school, religious and other community institutions, and peers. research has been conducted on the effects of interpersonal communication with adolescents, with a number of studies addressing the effects of adult-to-child (cf. romo, bravo & tschann 2014; ladapo et al. 2013; sutton et al. 2014; white 2012; wight & fullerton 2013) and peer-to-peer (lefkowitz, boone & shearer 2004; zisser & francis 2006) interpersonal discussions about sexual health-related issues on adolescents’ behaviour. some of the studies have examined the gist of the conversations and the subsequent effects: that is, positive or negative conversation valence (boone & lefkowitz 2007; romo et al. 2014). conversation valence studies, for instance, have shown that better parent-adolescent communication has been associated with fewer incidences of risky sexual behaviour, while negative communication has been related to risky adolescent sexual behaviour (boone & lefkowitz 2007). in another study by romo et al. (2014: 7), the girls who reported that they communicate more at home about sexual topics also reported more positive attitudes, for instance, that they would feel comfortable using, buying and carrying condoms and asking their partners to use them as a preventative method. this study involved 48 mother-daughter dyads talking about sexual health and hiv transmission. studies on preferences in regard to conversation partner(s) by young people provide results that are mostly gender-biased (miller-day 2002; namisi et al. 2009; noller & callan 1990). for instance, noller and callan (1990) found that mothers are the preferred choice of conversation partner about sexual communication. this is because mothers are often perceived by adolescents to be more accepting of their opinions than fathers. miller-day (2002) also found that adolescents feel closer to their mothers, therefore they prefer to talk to them about sensitive topics. a largescale study involving 14 944 adolescents at various sites in south africa and tanzania by namisi et al. (2009) was gender-biased, but also based on the gender of the respondent. the study showed that young women preferred to talk to their mothers, while young men preferred to talk to their fathers about sexuality issues. however, it should be noted that many of the participants in this study 185 interpersonal communication about sexuality reported that they do not talk about sexual topics with older people. at some of the sites up to 87% of the participants reported that they did not talk to their parents about sexual topics. the study by namisi et al. (2009) is similar to the one whose findings are reported in this article as the focus of both studies includes providing reasons why the adolescents prefer to talk about sexually-related topics. the difference between the two studies is that the study by namisi et al. (2009) was quantitative, with the information derived from 155-item questionnaires. the length of the questionnaire implies that there was not much of an opportunity given to participants to express their views on the subject. researchers caution about the consistency of reports about sexual communication (miller et al. 1998; wight & fullerton 2013). miller et al. (1998), for example, found inconsistency in reporting in 26% of mother-child pairs. this implies that if information about sexual communication is reported by parents, it may not necessarily reflect the same or even similar views from the children. yet most of the studies on interpersonal discussions report findings based on responses by the parents. it is noteworthy too that parent-child conversations do not always guarantee behaviour change among the adolescents. wight and fullerton (2013), in an evaluation of 44 programmes which mostly focused on parent-child communication on sex, found that sexual behaviour outcomes only improved in about half of the studies. it appears that not many studies have been conducted about communication with friends about sex-related topics. literature analysing the content or effects of conversations between friends, in comparison to parent-child studies, is scarce. however, a study on conversations with peers, by lefkowitz et al. (2004), found that conversations between friends were more frequent among females. they also found that more frequent and comfortable conversations between friends were generally associated with more liberal sexual attitudes and more positive condom-related attitudes. another study by busse et al. (2010) on communication with friends about sexual initiation found that females engaged in more frequent communication, but that the effects of the conversations did not differ from those of the males. in other words, there were no gender differences in terms of the effects of communication with friends. conversations based on media campaigns research about parent-child discussions is driven by media campaigns which often encourage parents to talk to their children about health-related issues. more often than not, most of the media campaigns do not indicate how they should discuss such topics (boone & lefkowitz 2007; lovelife 2006). as boone and lefkowitz (2007) point out, such media messages urge parents to talk to their children, but do not offer guidelines about how this should be done. an example 186 elizabeth lubinga of a media campaign aimed at encouraging conversations was constructed by the south african health promotion organisation lovelife in 2006 with the tag line “talk about it”. in addition to the messages targeted at young people, some of the lovelife billboards targeted parents. for instance, one of the advertisements addressed parents specifically: “if you aren’t talking to your child about sex, who is?” the rationale of the campaign, according to lovelife (2006), was that pre-campaign surveys showed that young people, who reported that friends and siblings were their primary source of sexual education, often found that information inaccurate. the billboard message, according to lovelife, was designed to encourage parents to talk more openly to their children about sex and other matters. it is unclear whether empirical studies were conducted among parents to determine the effects of this campaign message; thus, whether or how any resultant conversations took place. a study on conversations between mothers and adolescents, by boone and lefkowitz (2007), examined the form and the content of the conversations, with a view towards establishing what it is that parents talk about with adolescents. these authors attempted to determine the communication strategies that parents use to communicate with their children, and whether parents talk about different sex-related topics in a similar manner. they found that in conversations about different health-related topics, such as sexuality, drugs and alcohol, nutrition and exercise, the mothers spent more time asking questions rather than discussing the negative consequences or lecturing the children. the study, which examined 49 dyads between mothers and adolescents, focused on the mothers, but did not analyse the responses of the adolescents in terms of their own communication strategies and form. similarly, romo et al. (2014) found that mothers asked more questions in the conversations, rather than talking about the message content. interestingly, a study among young people on another lovelife campaign, which was intended to encourage interpersonal discussions in 2005, the “get attitude” campaign, indicated that the campaign failed to stimulate discussion for many of them (zisser & francis 2006), even though they said that they were more likely to speak to their teachers than to their parents or friends. it is important to find out who the preferred choice of conversation partners is, especially if effective media campaign messages are to be constructed. furthermore, for effective campaigns to be designed that ensure that the right conversations are held with the right conversation partners, it is necessary to determine what the views of the young people are. methodology a mixed-method study was conducted in which the respondents were interviewed using a schedule with both open-ended and close-ended questions. as such 187 interpersonal communication about sexuality both qualitative and quantitative questions were asked, both forms of data were collected and analysed, and a quantitative and qualitative interpretation was made. according to creswell and plano clark (2007: 10), “this kind of research is ‘practical’ because individuals tend to solve problems using both numbers and words, combine inductive and deductive thinking …”. this approach allows for a better understanding of the subject, given that it is examined using both approaches. with regards to this study, the quantitative data (close-ended questions) enabled the researcher to determine whom the adolescents would be more willing talk to, with the qualitative data (open-ended questions) informing on the reasons why. a total of 320 learners, both female and male, were randomly selected from 11 secondary schools in the vhembe district of the limpopo province. all the learners were aged between 13 and 19 years. this age group was selected on the basis of falling within the adolescent bracket, but also being the target audience of various mass media campaigns, such as those of lovelife and soul city. the participants were all first-language speakers of tshivenda. all the respondents were asked the same questions in two different languages: english and tshivenda. sixteen posters were designed based on four topics, namely, intergenerational relationships, peer pressure, alcohol abuse and multiple partners. these themes were sexually-related and also identified as indicators and determinants of hiv infection in the 2008 and 2009 human sciences research council (hsrc) south african national hiv prevalence, incidence behaviour and communication survey and the south african national hiv communication survey, respectively. the 2009 hsrc survey identified high-risk consumers of alcohol as one of the most at-risk populations in terms of exposure to hiv and aids. also, the number of young people who had sex with partners who were five or more years older than them increased from 9.6% in 2005 to 14.5% in 2008 among males, and among females from 18.5% in 2005 to 27.6% in 2008. there was a higher hiv prevalence among teenage males and females who reported having sexual partners who are five or more years older than themselves (shisana et al. 2005). more recently, shisana et al. (2014) reported that young women aged 15 to 19 years are more likely to have sex, not with their peers, but with older men. one-third (33.6%) of the young women reported having had a partner more than five years their senior, compared to only 4.1% of the young men. this trend is motivated by subsistence needs, as well as being linked to materialism (which is in turn motivated by peer influence) and consumption (hunter 2002; leclerc-madlala 2008; pettifor et al. 2004). regarding multiple relationships, in 2002 among people aged between 15 and 49 years, 9.4% of the participants reported having two or more partners, a number that increased to 10.6% in 2008 (shisana et al. 2009). the 16 posters in this study mostly varied in terms of the form of the messages, but also the language used. some of the posters were literal, some included verbal 188 elizabeth lubinga metaphors, others visual metaphors, or a combination of both, while others included tshivenda proverbs and idioms. common among the posters were the themes, the literal verbal messages, and some of the visual messages. all of the posters carried a logo with the red ribbon and the text “stop aids” (see figure 1 below). figure 1: examples of two literal posters on the theme of intergenerational relationships before proceeding with the research, the main researcher received permission from the limpopo provincial department of education to conduct research among the learners at the schools identified. the researcher was instructed to seek further permission from the circuit managers where the schools were located, as well as the school principals. the research took more than a week at the different schools. the schools were in different locations in order to avoid the learners sharing information, thus compromising the study. at the schools, the learners were randomly selected by teachers in charge of life orientation, as instructed by their principals. a venue was allocated at each of the schools where the four researchers could guide the learners through the interview schedules. at the venue, two researchers interviewed the learners in english and the other two in tshivenda using an interview schedule in both languages. the interview schedule consisted of closedended and open-ended questions. using a 4-point likert scale, among other 189 interpersonal communication about sexuality questions, the learners were asked: “how possible will it be for you to talk about this message with friends?”, with 1 (not possible at all) to 4 (very possible). they were also asked: “how possible will it be for you to talk about this message with older people?”, with 1 (not possible at all) to 4 (very possible). both of these questions were followed by an open-ended question: “can you explain why you gave this mark?” the responses were written down by the researchers, but also captured on a voice recorder. all the information was transcribed verbatim. the interviews conducted in tshivenda were translated into english by a first-language speaker of tshivenda. they were cross-translated into english by another first-language expert to ensure validity. results the results from the study will be presented both quantitatively from answers to the closed-ended questions, and qualitatively with answers to the open-ended questions. in general, young people (n=1,280) mentioned that they would be very willing to talk to their friends (m=3.19, sd=1.12), on a scale of 1 to 4, with a median of 2.50, rather than to their parents (m=2.80, sd=1.16). whether young people would be willing to talk to their parents the first question sought to determine whether the young people who participated in this study would be willing to talk to their parents about sexuality and hiv/aidsrelated topics. the responses of the participants (n=1,280) showed that overall, young people would be willing to talk to their parents (m=2.80, sd=1.16), on a scale of 1 to 4, with a median of 2.50. in addition, a one-way manova was conducted to find out what topics the learners would be most willing to talk about with their parents. a significant effect was found of willingness to talk to parents on two topics. multiple, concurrent sexual partners was one of the two topics (f(12,945)=2.19, p<.01; pillai’s trace= 2.15, η2=.003). a follow-up test was conducted. the analysis of variance (anova) revealed a significant effect of the topic of multiple, concurrent partners (f(3,318)=3.80, p<.01; η2=0.04). on average, the participants were of the opinion that the possibility was higher that they would not discuss this topic with their parents (m=2.80, sd=0.14). the second topic was the role of peer pressure (f(12,945) = 2.19, p<.01; pillai’s trace=2.15, η2=.003). an anova revealed a significant effect of the role of peer pressure (f(3,318)=3.19, p<.01; η2=0.03). on average the participants were of the opinion that the possibility was higher that they would discuss this topic with their parents (m=2.82, sd= 0.10). in terms of which gender would be more willing to talk to their parents, there was no significant difference between males and females. 190 elizabeth lubinga why young people are not willing to talk to their parents the reasons why these young people would, or would not, be willing to discuss the topics were derived from their answers to the open-ended questions. a number of themes emerged from the open-ended questions. they were of the opinion that they would not be very willing to talk to older people about multiple partnerships, mainly because of age and/or cultural reasons. this is reflected in some of the responses below. cultural norms as a barrier to sexual communication with parents the young people felt that according to their cultural norms, it is not allowed for a young person to talk about sex with an older person, including parents, because it is considered to be disrespectful. two participants voiced it as follows: “older people they will say [sic] i am disrespecting them.” “they will think that i am not respecting them.” other participants explained that according to their cultural norms it is allowed to have more than one sexual partner in terms of relationships, especially in terms of customary marriage. they felt that since the practice of having multiple sexual partners was the norm in their culture, it was not worthwhile talking about it. one participant said he or she would not bother to talk about it with his or her parents because of what the parents were likely to say: “they will say it is a taboo in our culture but i want to help them get out of that life because it is bad and have one partner [sic].” a participant said it was because of the cultural beliefs of the adults themselves in relation to the practice of multiple sexual relationships that he or she would not be willing to talk to them: “older people believe in having more than one wife.” another participant felt that young people were not willing to talk to parents about multiple sexual partners because of the discomfort that such a conversation could evoke: “african children feel uncomfortable talking about this thing with their parents.” age as a barrier to sexual communication with parents in terms of age as a barrier to sexual communication, most of the participants felt that they were young and that older people, such as their parents, would question 191 interpersonal communication about sexuality why they are talking about sexually-related topics. these participants voiced a similar opinion: “at my age they will ask me why i am asking and they will say i am too young to ask about this.” “if i am talking about this with a person involved in it they will say [sic] i am still young i should shut up.” others related their age to feelings of inadequacy in terms of talking about the topic; for example, the responses of the following participants: “older people they cannot understand us [sic] because they will say you are still young you cannot tell me what to do.” “i will be scared to talk to them.” “i just can’t talk with them.” “i will be too shy.” others felt inadequate because in their view their parents and older people in general are not accessible in terms of communication: “older people, you will not know what to say to them and how to talk to them because some of them are not approachable.” “when we talk with older people they will say you are crazy because some of them they do not want young people to talk about it with them.” why young people would be willing to talk to their parents guidance and advice the young people said they would be more willing to talk to their parents about the role of peer pressure because their parents always advised them on the type of friends they should associate with. they cast their parents in the roles of advisors and problem-solvers, which are both motivating factors for them to talk about this topic, as reflected in the responses: “they are the ones that give me advice on how to choose friends even if i can choose friends for myself i need their advices [sic].” “the elder [sic] are the ones that will advise me when i tell them i am hiv positive.” “older people tell me good advice [sic] when i have a problem with my friend.” 192 elizabeth lubinga “they always guide their children not to listen to wrong advices [sic] from the friends.” the young people were also of the view that older people have ample experience, which they can use to guide them in terms of which friends they should choose: “they will advise us which friends must [sic] we choose.” “i can talk with elder people because they understand what is [sic] all about and they will also give me advice.” whether young people would be willing to talk to their friends thirdly, the question on whether young people would be willing to talk to their friends about sex-related topics was also answered using statistical tests. the responses (n=1,280) of the participants showed that in general they would be very willing to talk to their friends (m=3.19, sd=1.12), on a scale of 1 to 4, with a median of 2.50, in comparison to their parents (m=2.80, sd=1.16). in addition, a one-way manova was conducted to find out what topics the learners would be most willing to talk to their friends about. a significant effect was found on the willingness to talk to friends on two topics. the role of peer pressure was one of the two topics (f(12,945)=2.19, p<.02; pillai’s trace= 2.07, η2=.003). a followup test was conducted. the anova revealed a significant effect on the topic of intergenerational relationships (f(3,318)=3.40, p<.01; η2=0.04). on average, the participants said that the possibility was low that they would not discuss this topic with their friends (m=2.05, sd=1.09). the second topic was about intergenerational relationships (f(12,945)=2.19, p<.01; pillai’s trace= 2.15, η2=.003). an anova revealed a significant effect of the multiple relationships (f(3,318)=3.41, p<.01; η2=0.03). on average the participants were of the view that the possibility was higher that they would not discuss this topic with their friends at all (m=2.95, sd=0.82). in terms of which gender would be more willing to talk to their friends, there was no significant difference between males and females. why young people would be willing to talk with friends closeness and open communication with friends in terms of the willingness to talk with their friends about how peer pressure relates to hiv and aids, the participants cited a variety of reasons: “when i am with my friend i can tell everything i like.” “we talk about this things more often and we advice [sic] each other.” “we are very close; we can talk about anything we want.” 193 interpersonal communication about sexuality value of friendship some respondents were of the opinion that the motivating factor to have conversations about peer influence is because they value their friendships. in addition, because they value not only the friendship, but also have the interests of their friends at heart, they view such conversations as an opportunity to educate their friends: “i will tell them that they must give me a good advice [sic] because as a person i must get good advice.” “i wanted them to know that in life they should get good advice because bad advice will end you in trouble [sic].” “i can tell them not to take wrong advice from friends.” “i care about my friends and i wouldn’t want them to be infected by hiv and that means that i will do anything that i can so that they do not get the disease.” “we have more to talk about it will be helping others to understand the meaning of hiv and how they must avoid bad companies [sic].” why young people would not be willing to talk to their friends prevailing behaviour interesting reasons emerged about why the participants would not be willing at all to talk to their friends about intergenerational relationships and hiv/aids. among the reasons was the fact that some of their friends were already engaging in intergenerational relationships with older people, therefore they would not be willing to listen to them: “they cannot really understand because they love money a lot.” “some of my friends are addicted to sleeping with older people and it will be hard for them to understand.” “it is their style.” “they won’t believe me because they might have slept with elder people [sic].” prior knowledge the young people were also of the view that there is a glut of information available on sexually-related topics and hiv/aids. they therefore felt that it was not necessary to engage in further conversations about the topic: 194 elizabeth lubinga “they know about it and i trust them that they won’t do it.” “they understand about hiv/aids.” fear related to inadequacy some of the young people felt inadequate to talk to their friends about such sensitive topics. the feelings arose out of their personal views about self, but also related to how their friends would view them: “i will be shy to talk about sex things with my friend.” “i am shy to talk to them about what they are doing.” “some they will say i am a stupid because i am a christian.” perceptions towards sexual topics yet another group of participants felt that sexually-related topics, specifically hiv/aids, were unpleasant, therefore they were not willing to talk about them: “i will not talk this thing [sic] with my friend; we are not ready to do this thing.” “my friends do not talk about horrible thing [sic] like having sex with older people.” discussion and conclusion this study indicated a variety of reasons why young people would be willing to talk about sexuality and hiv/aids with parents or friends. they included cultural, religious and social factors, as well as self-perception or the perceptions of others. in relation to the first question, there were only two sexually-related topics that were statistically significant in regard to the willingness to talk to older people, such as parents. the respondents said they would not be willing to talk about multiple partnerships and hiv/aids with their parents, yet they were more than willing to discuss peer pressure and hiv/aids with them. perhaps it should be pointed out here that the topic that they were similarly willing to talk about with their friends was peer pressure and hiv/aids, although the reasons that were given were different. one could argue that they probably viewed the topic as a safer one to discuss with older people than multiple sexual relationships and hiv/aids. this finding concurs with what namisi et al. (2009) found, namely that young people preferred silence above speaking to their parents about sexually-related topics. in order to provide explanations about the reasons why they would be willing to talk, various themes emerged from their open-ended answers. in terms of multiple 195 interpersonal communication about sexuality sexual relationships and hiv/aids, which the participants were not willing to talk about with their parents, culture and age played a dominant role. most of the participants insinuated that culturally it was wrong, disrespectful and improper, a taboo even, for them to discuss such a sensitive topic with older people such as their parents. the literature provides support for culturally-related reasons resulting in an unwillingness to talk about sexually-related topics on the part of both parents and young people (cf. klu, frempong & odoi 2012; lambert & wood 2005; namisi et al. 2009). on the other hand, some of the young people seemed to believe that since it was culturally correct to have multiple partners, as it was a common practice, then the need did not exist to talk about the topic. it was also interesting that one of the reasons why the respondents felt inadequate to talk to older people was because of the perception that older people were not approachable. this differs from the findings of namisi et al. (2009) who found that young people experienced silence in their communication with older people. other reasons given in this study for why young people would want to talk about sexually-related topics, namely experience and the advisory role, were also not identified in the study by namisi et al. (2009). this may be because that study was quantitative, therefore it could not provide reasons for the findings. the third question about whether they would talk to their friends about any of the four sexual and hiv/aids-related topics indicated that young people were willing to talk about the relationship between peer pressure and hiv/aids, but they were not willing to talk about intergenerational relationships with their friends. their responses to the open-ended questions confirmed this unwillingness and yielded interesting themes. most prominent of the responses was the fact that some of the learners were already engaging in such relationships with people who were much older than them, termed as the “sugar daddy” syndrome. the young people provided the main reason why they thought their friends engaged in intergenerational relationships: materialistic tendencies, with their friends wanting material goods. these views about intergenerational relationships and the reasons for engaging in such relationships are supported in prevailing studies (cf. hunter 2002; leclerc-madlala 2008; pettifor et al. 2004; shisana et al. 2005; 2009; 2014). however, that young people are of the opinion that it would be futile to talk to their friends about changing their behaviour, especially if they were already involved in relationships with older people, is not mentioned in literature. the young people felt that because of their friends’ desire to possess material goods they would not heed their warnings. other young people were of the view that they had received ample sexuality education, especially from their school curriculum. they therefore thought that they had enough knowledge and did not need to talk to their friends about 196 elizabeth lubinga sexually-related topics. there were some young people who viewed conversations about sexuality and hiv/aids-related topics in terms of religion. religion is also mentioned in literature in relation to interpersonal discussions about sexuality and hiv/aids. for example, ragnarsson et al. (2009) argue that religious beliefs often frame individuals’ perceptions in conversations related to hiv/aids. the respondents mentioned that they would not be able to talk about such topics because exposing their religious stance on such issues would cause their friends to undermine them. in conclusion, the findings of this study have provided insight into the conversation partners and the reasons why adolescents would talk about sexually-related topics with these partners. such results would be beneficial to health promotion organisations that may be interested in designing effective programmes which would take into consideration specific factors relating to target audiences. the results of this study may not be generalisable because they are unique to the particular group which participated. if the study was replicated in a different group, for example among an urban-based group of adolescents or young people from a different culture, it is possible that the results may differ because of the differences in cultural norms. future studies could explore the views of adolescents from urban areas, especially given that they are exposed to various cultures. nonetheless, the study offers valuable insight into the interpersonal communication behaviour of adolescents on sexuality and hiv/aids. 197 interpersonal communication about sexuality references boone, t.l. & lefkowitz, e.s. 2007. mother-adolescent health communication: are all conversations created equally? journal of youth and adolescence 36: 1038-1047. busse, p., fishbein, m., bleakley, a. & hennessy, m. 2010. the role of communication with friends in sexual initiation. communication research 37: 239255. catalano, r.f. & hawkins, j.d. 1996. the social development model: a theory of antisocial behaviour. in: hawkins, j.d. 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introduction as a lecturer on the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state, one cannot help but notice the popularity of tattoos among the students. an act previously frowned upon by society and mostly reserved for men (vanston 2008: 1) is gaining popularity among university students. moreover, it is not limited to a certain group of students or a specific race or gender ink on skin is popular among a wide spectrum of university students. the question thus arises as to what has caused this shift in thought. what drives this trend? what are university students trying to communicate with their tattoos? is it a fashion statement only? unlike fashion, which is fleeting and changes with the dawn of each new season, ink on skin is permanent and fixed, and cannot be erased and discarded at will. it is permanent and once applied by a tattoo artist becomes part of the tattooed individual. this article reports on a research project that was undertaken to determine firstly both the scope and communicative value of tattoos especially among students of the university of the free state. the project follows on international research in this respect to establish the situation in south africa among students and young adults in bloemfontein. for fisher (2002: 91), american tattooing remained on the margins of society and could be perceived as part of a deviant subculture and “not a topic of serious intellectual interest”. in 2007, aguilar, in contrast, predicted that with the increase in tattoos by celebrity and professional sports heroes, the trend in tattoo communication and the whole idea of tattoos would continue to permeate societies throughout the world and “may soon be the dominant ideology” (aguilar 2007: 19). there appears to be a revival in the popularity of tattoos on the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state. celebrities and sport stars flaunt theirs and reality television programmes concerned with tattoos are popular. young people follow trends, admire celebrities, and are influenced by images in the popular media. the art of tattoos: then and now the fact that tattoos gained popularity in the recent past is a given in our postmodern society. though it was an act frowned upon in our recent past, it is now trending and is less of an act of defiance. many celebrities, including popular sport stars (david beckham, francois hougaardt, dale steyn), actresses (angelina jolie) and actors (johnny depp), musicians (p.diddy, kanye west, rihanna) and reality television stars (snooky), adore their body art. television programmes such as miami ink, la ink and even tattoo hunter are popular, while bookstores carry a range of books on the subject. throughout the history of tattoos a rhythmic 194 elbie lombard and luna bergh ebb and flow in its popularity indicates that it is a multifaceted phenomenon not limited in its meaning. various sources (kerner 2013; anon. 2010; demello 2000; steward 1990) begin the overview of the history of tattoos at different moments in history. what is clear from the literature is that the history of tattoos is ancient and that the motivations for tattoos are as varied as the peoples of the world. for the purposes of this article, a brief overview of its history will be presented to provide some context to this research. hambly (in steward 1990: 183) presents evidence of archeologists that indicate that the history of tattoos can be traced back to 12 000 b.c. as excavations of bodies from the stone age bore bone-deep patterned cuttings identified as primitive tattoos. őtzi the iceman’s preserved body (kerner 2013: 38), which is around 5300 years old, has been tattooed in simple patterns using carbon. researchers suggest that his tattoos could have served a medicinal purpose (kerner 2013: 38). tattooing as it is presently known, whereby ink is inserted underneath the surface of the skin, is an egyptian practice and can be traced back to between 4000 and 2000 b.c. (steward 1990: 184). kerner (2013: 39) states that it was mostly practiced among females and evidence suggests that it was seen as erotic and it signified fertility. from egypt, this practice spread to greece, persia, arabia, and crete, and by 2000 b.c. it had found its way through southern asia to the ainus people, who crossed the ocean and occupied present-day japan from where it spread to burma and continued spreading to the phillipines, borneo, formosa, and the south sea islands around 1200 b.c. (steward 1990: 184). for the ainus people, tattooing had magical powers, and for the burmese people it served both magical and religious functions. the polynesians, who inhabited many of the south sea islands, eventually reached new zealand where until today the “moko” style of tattooing forms an important part of the traditional culture and is significant in religious rituals and taboos. the origin of the word “tattoo” can be traced back to the polynesians and the tahitians: in polynesian the word “ta” means to strike something and “tatau” in tahitian can be translated as marking something (anon. 2010; demello 2000; steward 1990: 184). evidence suggests that the practice of tattooing not only spread southwards from egypt to eventually reach new zealand, but that it also spread from egypt northwards to europe. archeological finds bear testament to the popularity of tattooing among the iberians who preceded the celts of ireland, the picts of scotland, the gauls from france, as well as the teutonic races who invaded the british isles and scotland. the danes, saxons and norsemen invaded the british isles and adopted the custom of tattooing (steward 1990: 185). 195 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? tattooing then spread further to the west and became widely practiced during the greek wars (ibid.). in greece, it was common practice to mark criminals or slaves with tattoos (jones 2000: 13), but the romans marked only their slaves with tattoos (steward 1990:186). the ancient greeks called tattoos “stigmata” (rapp 2010: 1; jones 2000: 4); throughout the middle ages in europe, the practice of marking criminals with tattoos (“stigmata”) prevailed and therefore the negative associations with tattoos endured (fisher 2002: 93). caplan (2000: xvi), however, points to research that reveals that this stigmatising use was inverted when tattooing was used by early christians in roman areas as well as by some celtic christians, pilgrims and medieval monks as a voluntary and honourable token of their servitude to christ. this practice came to a halt in 787 a.d. when pope hadrian i banned this “barbarous practice”; yet, despite this decree, tattooing survived in britain and a number of early anglo-saxon kings were tattooed, one of which was king harold ii, killed at the battle of hastings (1066), who had his wife’s name tattooed above his heart (steward 1990:187). with the spread and rise in popularity of christianity, the practice of tattooing began losing its allure. captain james cook (cesare 2011: 4; fisher 2002: 92; steward 1990: 188) reintroduced the art of tattooing to europe. he called it “tattaw”, derived from the tahitian “ta”, which can be translated as “knock” or “strike” (as previously mentioned). men from captain cook’s crew returned home from their voyages sporting exotic tattoos. captain cook also took tattooed people from the south sea islands onboard to exhibit them in europe (cesare 2011: 4; steward 1990: 188). mainly because of captain cooks’ voyages, europeans started viewing the practice of tattooing as a form of cultural exchange (cesare 2011: 4) and by the 19th century tattooing became popular (and voluntary) in france and italy (fisher 2002: 94). it was during the same period that “fashionable society” in both england and the united states experienced a tattoo craze (fisher 2002: 94). what further contributed to tattooing anchoring itself firmly in american culture was the civil war (1861-1865): during this war the art of tattooing became popular among soldiers on both sides (fisher 2002: 93). by 1891, samuel o’reily invented the first electric tattoo machine (sanders, in cesare 2011: 5) which made tattooing more accessible to a broader public. an unforeseen outcome of this invention was the spread of disease; soon negative media coverage and waning interest by the upper class led to the dwindling popularity of tattoos, so much so that by the mid 20th century tattoos were seen as an unsavoury and deviant act (ibid.). during world war ii, tattoos became popular among soldiers, but because of the health risks associated with tattoos, the military began prohibiting it (fisher 2002: 96). during the years after world war ii, tattoos were associated with drunks, gangs and the working class (govenar 2000: 230). 196 elbie lombard and luna bergh the american “return to normalcy” movement gained momentum during the 1950s and it was during this time that tattoos became the symbol of rebelliousness, while popular culture characters such as the marlboro man and popeye showed off their ink (govenar 2000: 230). according to cesare (2011: 5), the “tattoo renaissance” began in the late 1960s and by the late seventies, with the emergence of “new social movements” (nsms) which aimed to address issues such as gay rights, environmentalism and feminism, it gained further momentum. the hippie and rock star subcultures also assisted in popularising tattooing once again (fisher 2002: 97). the tattoo revolution can be seen as the result of the desire by individuals for stability in an ever-changing, postmodern society (cf. bergh & lombard i.p.; cesare 2011). according to velliquette (in cesare 2011: 6), there is a correlation between the increase in social change and the increased popularity of tattooing. an act once seen as the hallmark of the subcultures on the fringes of society has now become mainstream and crosses all boundaries (newman 2012: 5). statistics from the harris poll as quoted by aguilar (2007: 2) indicated that by 2003, 16 percent of american adults between the ages of 25 and 29 had at least one tattoo; according to research by cesare (2011: 3) one in five adults in america had been inked by 2011. south african statistics on tattooing are not available, but from the research for this article it is clear that it is popular in bloemfontein. functions of the current tattoo it is all good and well that the art of tattooing is enjoying an upsurge, but what function does it serve, if any? according to turner (in rapp 2010: 4), “in pre-modern societies the body is an important surface on which the marks of social status, family position, tribal affiliation, age, gender and religious condition can easily and publicly be displayed”. marczak (2007: 39) states that the functions of tattoos throughout history are so varied that it cannot be summed up in one exclusive list. some of its functions throughout history include but is not limited to (marczak 2007: 39-40) rites of passage, mourning the dead, decoration, protection, to harness magical powers, membership, defiance of social norms, healing the mind/body split, punishment, recording important life events, and initiation into adulthood. tattoos applied onto the surface of the body thus functioned in pre-modern societies to convey such messages, but considering present day tattoos, would they have the same functions? referring to the research undertaken by marszak (2007: 40-41) it is evident that in many cultures in the south sea islands, tattooing still plays an important cultural 197 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? role and functions as initation practice into adulthood, an important traditional ritual. although such traditional rituals have largely been lost with modernisation, both blanchard (1994) and sanders (1989) state that a tattoo can function as a ritual. in a modernised society with precious few rituals or rites of passage outside religion, the tattoo can function as a reminder of a life event. mercury (in marczak 2007: 41) opines that one of the functions of the modern tattoo is healing the mind/body split: [t]he advent of cyberspace has created a rootless, placeless society, accessed by the seated and thinking. one’s place is nowhere or anywhere… the physical body never interacts with anyone. a result of this statelessness is psychic and physical numbness. tattooing, piercing, implanting, and branding are means of jump-starting sensate functioning that has lost its capacity for feeling. identification and proclaiming group membership are much quoted reasons for obtaining a tattoo today (marczak 2007: 40; blanchard 1994; sanders 1989). by applying established symbols on the body, the tattooee can claim group membership which is a very powerful message due to the permanence of a tattoo (ibid.). as much as tattoos can identify an individual and proclaim group membership, it can also exclude the tattooee from certain professions, and even though a huge shift in thought regarding tattoos and stigmatisation took place in the recent past, tattoos can still be seen as an act of defiance, and those wearing it as different from others (marczak 2007: 40-41). porcella (2009: vi) quotes atkinson who states that tattoos can unite the individual with a subculture, but simultaneously separate him/her from society, thus being both “symbols of exclusion and of inclusion”. in addition, a tattoo can serve as protection for its wearer, it can be a protective symbol or talisman (blanchard 1994; sanders 1989), a belief held very strongly among burmese and ancient peoples from central asia where tattoos were seen as magical, protective and something that could increase the tattooee’s powers (marczak 2007: 40-41). these beliefs remain popular among pagan and wiccan wearers in the western world who carefully select symbols with magical qualities to be tattooed on their skin (ibid.). in western society, tattoos often function to decorate; both sexes hope to attract attention which might increase the wearer’s popularity. according to marczak (ibid.), this might be a reason for tattoos’ popularity among western youth. sweetnam (1999) opines that tattoos are of greater value because of the pain involved in obtaining a tattoo, as well as its permanence. blanchard (1994) and sanders (1989) both stress that regardless of their particular psychosocial function for the individual, tattoos are images (even words become images as/within tattoos) and by modifying the body with tattoos, the individual has chosen to add 198 elbie lombard and luna bergh permanent decoration to his/her body. having this decorative function, tattoos are often associated with exhibitionism. although there is an element of desire to reveal tattoos, there is often an equally profound desire to conceal tattoos. revealing the tattoo has several functions, including showing the individual’s stylishness, identifying a group to which he/she belongs, and demonstrating an individual’s rebelliousness. the desire to conceal can stem from the deeply personal meaning of the tattoo for the individual or from the deeply embedded social stigma. while the tattooed person enjoys the positive attention from his/her peers generated by the tattoo, most of these same people feel embarrassed about the negative reaction they receive from others, especially when this reaction is from friends or family (blanchard 1994; sanders 1989). from this discussion one can deduce that despite the various functions that a tattoo might serve or the varied meanings attached to it, the underlying function of tattoos is to communicate and to create meaning. it is also a given that the tattooed person’s intended message with the tattoo might differ from the meaning understood by the onlooker. pitts (2003) supports this idea and writes that the meaning of the tattoo is left to the interpretation of a stranger. the fact remains that although the tattooee’s control over the interpretation of the tattoo is limited, the tattoo as a form of nonverbal communication communicates to all who see it. ambiguities regarding tattoos “a picture is worth a thousand words” might very well apply to the communicative function of tattoos. tattoos have been described as a relevant form of nonverbal communication (aguilar 2007: 2), “scars that speak and yet demand no reply: assertions of what is, frozen in the flesh” (benson 2000: 237). a number of authors (wymann 2010; doss & hubbard 2009; doss 2005; atkinson 2004; pitts 2003) reiterate that tattoos have communicative value. thus, tattoos as a form of nonverbal communication will communicate and will be interpreted by others who see them. fisher (2002: 101) states that even as tattooing becomes more prevalent in america, there remains a persistent taboo on tattoos. in general it seems that people with tattoos often feel that they should cover their body markings in public (especially in job situations) to avoid social or professional rejection. pitts (2003: 79) agrees that people with tattoos will often hide them because they want to control the meaning of them: by controlling who gets to see the tattoo gives the tattooee the chance to control the flow of information. caplan (2000) emphasises the complexity and ambiguity involved in the history and practice of tattooing. often getting a tattoo is not a deliberated decision 199 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? (fisher 2002: 100). several authors (cf. fisher 2002) compare the decision to be tattooed with impulse shopping (in a group). in this regard, fisher (2002: 100) explains some tattoo clients do not research the process of tattooing or the reputation or skill of the tattoo artist, and that linking impulsiveness with tattooing creates a fascinating tension for tattoos are, by definition, permanent. the choice of tattooist and design should, therefore, be a process rather than a capricious act. this impulsiveness can mean that the individual does not receive a well-designed tattoo, but in spite of the spontaneity of the act, the tattoo generally conveys multiple meanings for its bearer. the ambiguity thus lies in the fact that something which might be seen as a fashion fad has permanence, and the ambiguity in meaning lies in the fact that the intended meaning of the tattooee may differ from the interpreted message. research design research question the preceding discussing sketched the situation regarding tattoos in the united states. what is the situation regarding tattoos among south african students, and especially university of the free state (ufs) students? research objectives this research project was undertaken to determine both the scope and communicative value of tattoos especially among students of the ufs. a secondary objective was to use this exploratory study to extrapolate a conceptual framework as an explanatory tool that would facilitate further research in this regard. research strategy, methodology and expectations in order to study the frequencies of occurrence in a linguistic corpus (cf. stefanowitsch 2010: 1; biber, conrad & reppen 2000), the owner of the tattoo shop on the bloemfontein campus of the ufs was interviewed in 2010; and clients of the tattoo shop, as well as undergraduate communication science students, a larger random group and young working adults of the same age completed a questionnaire anonymously in 2012. the questionnaire was adapted for the local setting from one used in international research and was available in afrikaans and english. in a follow-up exercise in 2013, third-year communication science students requested fellow students from other departments to complete a slightly adapted questionnaire. the expectations were that (i) tattoos among the four groups discussed would not be predominantly culturally determined, that (ii) tattoos among these four groups 200 elbie lombard and luna bergh would not be visible all the time and, (iii) tattoos among these four groups would not be chosen specifically to communicate a rebellious message. although it is anticipated that the research project will ultimately include students on several campuses throughout south africa, this study focused on students in bloemfontein. their ages ranged from 19 to 26 years, in other words generation y (born between 1982-1999). characteristics of this generation vary by region, but this group is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communication, media and digital technologies, and being brought up with a neoliberal approach to politics and economics. results 2012 the exposition below represents the results obtained by means of questionnaires completed by the two student groups as well as the young, working adults. students registered in the department of communication science in the next few tables, the findings of the questionnaires distributed amongst a group of students registered as students in the department of communication science will be provided. number of tattoos table 1: number of tattoos number of tattoos 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 frequency (respondents) 3 13 17 9 2 1 1 0 the majority of respondents had two tattoos each. three respondents did not have tattoos, of which two are planning to have a tattoo done in future. thirty respondents who have tattoos are planning to get more done in future, while 14 indicated that they are not planning to have any more tattoos done. age the majority of respondents had their tattoos done when they were 20 years old (n=17). one respondent indicated that he was 11 years old when he had his first tattoo (a gang tattoo) done. the majority of the respondents were 21 years old (n=23). 201 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? table 2: age of participants age <18 18-19 20-21 22-23 24-25 >25 frequency (respondents) 0 3 23 10 8 2 first tattoo 10 14 17 3 0 0 visibility and parents the researchers asked the respondents by way of the questionnaire to indicate whether or not their tattoos are visible to onlookers or not, and whether the respondents’ parents had any tattoos. table 3: visibility of tattoos and parents with/ without tattoos yes no tattoos visible 29 17 parents 4 42 gender and religious affiliation table 4: gender and religious affiliation gender male female number of respondents 12 34 religious affiliation christian other none number of respondents 41 0 5 it is worth noting that 41 respondents proclaimed themselves to be christian, while five respondents indicated that they were not interested in religion. the members of this group of students were all from the department of communication science; the majority of students with tattoos study corporate and marketing communication, as captured below. table 5: fields of study related to number of tattoos corporate and marketing communication communication science media studies and journalism 23 7 16 202 elbie lombard and luna bergh the students’ reasons for having a tattoo are summarised in table 6 below. the categories were not specified as choices, but followed and were systemised from the respondents’ answers. table 6: primary reason for the tattoo enjoyed the pain 2 no reason 3 fun, cute, just wanted to do it 8 to feel young again 2 meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events 14 uniqueness, self-expression 3 for attention 1 peer pressure, influenced by others 6 like the designs, body art, decorations 5 personal 1 seems interesting 1 the following comments by some of the participants drew the researchers’ attention: “i enjoy the pain, which is weird.” “i wanted to feel young and alive again.” (the respondent is 22 years old) “dit vertel ’n storie van verlede en van alles wat al met my gebeur het.” (english translation: it tells a story of the past and of everything that has happened to me.) “a tattoo is a way of expressing yourself and your way of thinking. it (the tattoo) has to be something meaningful to you.” “nonverbal communication – i love to express myself through art.” “my first reason for getting tattoo is because i love attention, one more thing is because i enjoy decorating my body, i think tattoos make attractive body.” 203 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? students registered for other courses in the next few tables, the findings of questionnaires distributed amongst students registered for different degree courses, excluding students from the department of communication science, are presented. number of tattoos table 7: number of tattoos number of tattoos 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >7 frequency (respondents) 25 57 19 14 3 1 1 1 11 (2), 12 (1) 15 (1) 35+ (1) the majority of respondents had one tattoo each. the majority of respondents planned to have more tattoos in future, as revealed in table 8: table 8: planning more tattoos 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >7 37 13 13 1 1 1 1 4 age the majority of respondents had their tattoos done when they were 18 to 19 years old. the majority of the respondents were 20 to 21 years old. table 9: age of participants age <18 18-19 20-21 22-23 24-25 >25 currently 4 15 42 40 17 26 (3) 27 (1) 28 (4) 31 (1) first tattoo 23 39 22 5 27 (3) 204 elbie lombard and luna bergh visibility and parents table 10: visibility of tattoos and parents with/ without tattoos yes no tattoos visible 71 29 parents 1 (4) 2 (2) 3 (2) 4 (1) 106 gender and religious affiliation it is once again noteworthy that 92 respondents proclaimed themselves to be christian, while 20 respondents indicated apathy regarding religion. table 11: gender and religious affiliation gender male female number 57 65 religious affiliation christian other none number 92 anglican (4) roman catholic (4) rastafarian spiritual jeki 20 students’ main reasons for having tattoos were organised in the same way as for the previous group: table 12: primary reason for the tattoo enjoyed the pain 1 no reason 0 fun, cute, just wanted to do it 18 to feel young again 2 meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events 45 uniqueness, self-expression 10 for attention 5 205 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? peer pressure, influenced by others 23 like the designs, body art, decorations 20 personal 3 seems interesting 3 fashion 2 addictive 1 relieves stress 3 for improved self-esteem 2 rebelled 5 the following comments by students stood out: “getting tattoos is generally the prerequisite for being cool. however, my first tattoo was a gang tattoo.” “i just wanted to know what it felt like to have a tattoo drawn on my body, it was just a cool thing for me.” “expression of independence, and having the one thing i love the most, closest to me.” “’n tattoo is iets waarmee ek myself kan assossieer, ’n klein weerkaatsing van myself.” (english translation: a tattoo is something that i can associate with, a small reflection of myself.) “i got a tattoo to boost my image. when i was growing up i wasn’t a very popular person at school and so i had very low self-esteem so this tattoo helped me in many more ways than one.” “i enjoy expressing myself through my body.” one student gave reasons for not getting a tattoo: “it makes people to fear and disrespect you. i think for some jobs tattoos are not allowed. i also think that the body is the temple of god and that it should be respected and honoured.” other young people in the next few tables, the findings of questionnaires from young people who are not studying and who are mostly employed will be reflected. these participants were on campus on a specific day in 2012. this group is included in the preliminary study by way of comparison. 206 elbie lombard and luna bergh number of tattoos table 13: number of tattoos 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >7 3 4 5 3 3 1 8 (1) 10 (1) +-24 (1) the majority of respondents had two tattoos each. the majority of respondents planned to have more tattoos in future, as revealed in the following table: table 14: planning more tattoos 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >7 3 3 2 3 1 age the majority of respondents had their tattoos done before or when they were 18 to 19 years old. the majority of the respondents were 22 to 23 years old. table 15: age of participants age <18 18-19 20-21 22-23 24-25 >25 currently 1 5 11 6 first tattoo 7 7 3 visibility and parents none of the parents of the young people in this group had tattoos. table 16: visibility of tattoos and parents with/ without tattoos yes no tattoos visible 13 5 parents 0 20 207 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? gender and religion table 17: gender and religion of participants gender male female number 9 13 religious affiliation christian other none number 14 rastafarian 7 the main reasons for tattoos were categorised in the same way as for the previous two groups: table 18: primary reason for tattoo enjoyed the pain 0 no reason 2 fun, cute, cool, just wanted to do it 4 to feel young again 0 meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events 7 uniqueness, self-expression 1 for attention 0 peer pressure, influenced by others 2 like the designs, body art, decorations 5 personal 1 seems interesting 0 fashion 1 addictive 0 relieves stress 0 for improved self-esteem 0 rebelled 0 the following comments by participants in this group were telling: “my body is a canvas and i like to show through my outer body art who i am inside as an artist.” “i love art, when i discovered body art i thought it was the most exotic thing. the designs are based on things i love most, which are fairies.” 208 elbie lombard and luna bergh results 2013 as the researchers were interested primarily in the reasons for having tattoos and communicative value in terms of this group, the focus is on these aspects. the questionnaire distributed to this group formed part of a third-year communication science assignment in which the students also had to write an essay on tattoos. the questionnaire included two additional questions, namely, “may we take a picture of your tattoo to attach to the questionnaire?” and “what did the tattoo cost you in south african rand?”. the first of these two questions was included to fathom respondents’ communicative intent and mode more accurately. very few participants answered this question. a few answered yes and several no. among the latter group especially there were participants who indicated that they would be willing to participate in a confidential interview. in most cases only one tattoo (out of two or three) was visible. as indicated previously, most respondents with tattoos were planning more for the future. the patterns concerning the reasons for having a tattoo correspond with those of the previous groups, though – as is reflected in table 19 – one new reason for a tattoo was “hiding a scar”. a new category, permanence, emerged from this group as a reason for having a tattoo. the following represent some of the participants’ reasons: “it belongs to you and no one else.” “my tattoos are a reminder of where i’ve been and where i want to go.” “memorabilia, it is moments captured and painted onto the canvas of my life. my tattoos will live on in the intentions of the universe.” “some things you can’t say in words, your body will say it for you. my tattoos were and still are a journey, only i mapped it out for myself.” table 19: primary reason for tattoo enjoyed the pain 2 no reason 9 fun, cute, cool, just wanted to do it 99 to feel young again 0 meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events 184 uniqueness, self-expression 60 for attention 16 peer pressure, influenced by others 52 like the designs, body art, decorations 60 209 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? personal 11 seems interesting 6 fashion 11 addictive 4 relieves stress 2 for improved self-esteem 3 rebelled 3 permanence 15 discussion and analysis of findings the findings are in line with the researchers’ expectations in that the tattoos counted were not predominantly culturally determined (and also not by tradition, given the few parents with tattoos); the majority were visible all the time, but many were not; and very few tattoos were chosen to communicate a rebellious message. in the initial stages of the project in 2010, the owner of the tattoo shop pointed out that many clients have tattoos for the sake of the pain. according to this study’s findings that strong trend has now subsided. across all three 2012 groups, as well as the 2013 group, the category meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events represented the strongest reason for having a tattoo. the three other categories that came out strongly were like the designs, body art, decorations; fun, cute, cool, just wanted to do it; and peer pressure, influenced by others. the category uniqueness, self-expression also featured strongly in the 2013 results. at present then, young people on the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state choose tattoos for different reasons than a few decades ago in other parts of the world (cf. cesare 2011; fisher 2002). they are especially innovative in the way that christian symbols are not only used, but celebrated. for instance, several of the respondents added something about nature and the appearance of their tattoo and that it has meaning as a christian symbol. this is also in sharp contrast to what would be expected a few years ago, given the taboo on tattoos that prevailed in certain christian circles then. at first it appeared that sensory intelligence may offer a useful framework for analysis of the results. theorists working in the field of sensory intelligence agree that sensory profiles differ from person to person. there is general agreement that persons with a high tolerance for touch will enjoy the touch of other persons or objects, while persons with a high tolerance for visual images will enjoy colours and decorations. from this it can be deduced that persons who enjoy “having a 210 elbie lombard and luna bergh tattoo” may have a high threshold for touch, as well as visual images. like the designs, body art, decorations emerged as a strong category in this study, but since pain was no longer such a strong factor, this approach was not followed for this study. the complexity of the study under discussion lies in an attempt to analyse the current results coherently, yet it is especially implicit self-theories (incremental theory and entity theory) that provide a clear analysis of the results so far. the overall analytical approach is that of branding (naming a product or service in order to gain an identity, develop a meaning and project an image conducive to building brand equity for an organisation (cf. jooste, strydom, berndt & du plessis 2009: 217; clifton & simmons 2003)), more specifically personal branding (the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands (north 2010)). following park and john (2010) this study’s analytical approach (cf. bergh, lombard & van zyl 2013) can be represented by the following schema: figure 1: analytical framework the advantage of such an analysis is that it distinguishes two overall guiding approaches among respondents. park and john (2010) explain that people who endorse incremental theory (incremental theorists) view their personal qualities as malleable, which they can improve through their own efforts. in contrast to this, those who endorse entity theory (entity theorists) believe that their personal qualities are fixed, and that they cannot improve them through their own direct efforts. in order to enhance the self, they seek out opportunities to signal their positive qualities to the self and others. the latter category would represent the two strongest groups in this study in terms of reasons for having a tattoo. this study’s novel category personal, personal branding is motivated by the finding that tattoos among these students are not primarily and deliberately 211 tattooing amongst youth in bloemfontein: skin-deep communicative signs of a minority group? used for professional or commercial branding in combination with the finding that meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events; like the designs, body art, decorations; fun, cute, cool, just wanted to do it; and peer pressure, influenced by others represent the main reasons for having a tattoo among the said groups. for the purpose of dealing with diversity and individuality in the use of tattoos in the groups examined and in view of generalisation, the researchers (cf. bergh et al. 2013) posit the following continuum from an integrated marketing communication perspective (jooste et al. 2009; du plessis, bothma, jordaan & van heerden 2003) in relation to the analytical framework above: figure 2: personal branding continuum personal marketing personal public relations personal branding personal personal branding ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- conclusion as pointed out above, young people on the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state choose tattoos for different reasons than a few decades ago in other parts of the world. from the findings that indicate that the category meaningful, symbolic, stories, special events represented the strongest reason for having a tattoo it can be concluded that tattoos are by no means skin-deep communicative signs. given that the majority of respondents in all four groups discussed have tattoos, they are also not the signs of a minority group. 212 elbie lombard and luna bergh references aguilar, a. 2007. tattoos as worldviews: a journey into tattoo communications using standpoint theory. paper presented at the annual meeting of the nca, 93rd annual convention, chicago, il, november 2007. 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intercultural interaction within the rainbow nation in south africa is even worse when recent occurrences are taken into consideration. acting on erroneous perceptions and irresponsible labelling of people can pose a significant danger to tolerance and peaceful co-existence in south africa; it could even be a threat to democracy. this article endeavours to reflect on the “climate” which would enhance or prevent interracial communication, in particular. the qualitative and post-structural approach of iben jensen (2008) has been applied. the aim of the model is to allow the researcher to “think through an intercultural communication process and reflect upon it from a new perspective”. the proposition can be made that the possibility of meaningful interracial communication is slim, unless the races take the different contexts within a democracy into consideration, not misuse the power or lack of power of their position, avoid stereotyping, put the past behind them, communicate in a cultural sensitive manner about “emotional topics” and ask the question: do pronouncements and the meaning attached to them change if it is communicated by someone from another race? * professor paul schutte is the director of the school of communication studies at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 184-202 185 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? introduction and problem orientation “you can love who you are without hating those who you are not” – kofi annan (jackson 2010: 8). participation in political and social life is a fundamental value, which is supposed to have a meaningful and permanent impact on the quality of human life. this would be the theoretical ideal in any country and community, but especially in a multi-cultural context. however, the harsh reality and the principle of heterophily, in which “birds of a feather would rather flock together”, predicts the opposite (dodd 1994: 232). as the media confirms the growing gap between citizens, with opposing viewpoints, of different ethnic and/or racial origin in certain european countries, the lack of meaningful interracial interaction within the rainbow nation in south africa sometimes appears even worse. the rainbow nation metaphor implies a degree of blending of the different colours to form a coherent rainbow. the ideal of convergence would be a blending of cultures, within a context of cultural relativism. according to jandt (2007: 282), in the convergence model, (intercultural) communication would ideally be a process where information is shared by two or more individuals who converge toward a greater degree of mutual agreement. most importantly, though, is to develop an improved relationship between them, regardless of whether they agree on relevant issues or not. in addition, one could strive for greater accommodation of each other’s cultural beliefs and values. in his opinion piece scholtz (2009: 6) refers to prof. wasif shadid’s farewell speech at the university of tilburg in the netherlands where he said that even the people from the netherlands, who take pride in their tolerance towards differentlyminded people and different cultures, have changed their tolerant stance towards “a form of racism”. scholtz furthermore refers to julius malema, the former leader of the anc youth league (ancyl) and the current commander in chief of the economic freedom fighters (eff), as a real threat to tolerance and peaceful coexistence in south africa and mentions that malema could even be considered a menace to democracy. the same could be said of the former deputy president of the ancyl, ronald lamola, who propagates violence and even war (not communication or negotiation) to return the land to the black majority (louwcarstens 2012: 1). an opinion poll in 2009, amongst a representative sample of all south africans, also indicated an unwillingness and even an aversion to interact with a culture or racial group other than their own (gerrits 2009: 8). the spear saga (which refers to a much-maligned painting of president jacob zuma) and the issue of racism is also relevant in this context. in his reflection, burger (2008:14) claims that since 1990 there has been greater interaction between different races, but he typifies the superficial nature and mere 186 pj schutte formal functionality of the contact with no real deeper knowledge of each other, let alone intimate relationships and real friendships. thus, it seems there is little proof of real convergence. this research endeavours to explore, within this briefly described context above, the issue regarding interaction between citizens of different racial origin. exploratory research has been done to achieve the following objective: to explore and reflect on the “climate” which would enhance or even prevent convergence within the context of interracial communication. theoretical perspective for the purpose of this article, interracial communication may be seen as a subset of intercultural communication, where the transactional process of message exchange happens between individuals and/or groups in a situational context, and where racial differences are perceived as a salient factor by all communicators or at least one of the participants, whether it is an individual or a group (cf. orbe & harris 2008). the concept of race is problematic, discursive and surrounded by controversy, as racial classifications are mostly arbitrary, depending on the objectives of the classifier. most classification systems divide humans into at least four groups, primarily according to physical features and skin colour: red, yellow, black and white (orbe & harris 2008: 25). much can be said about the concept, but the significant fact is that “as long as people believe that differences in selected physical traits are meaningful, they will act on those beliefs, thereby affecting their interrelations with others” (marger 2005: 23). thus, race is part of culture, but a person’s culture is more than his/her race. in south africa most would generally consider the main races to be blacks, whites, coloureds and people of eastern or middle-eastern origin. for the purpose of this article the focus is limited to the black-versus-white groups, since the major incidents concern these two races. it could be claimed that it is not the physical and language differences as such, but the value that communicators attach to these differences and the influence on their communication or even lack of communication that cause problems in interracial communication (cf. sonn 1996: 6). intercultural/racial communication can be viewed and discussed from different theoretical perspectives. the post-structural approach of iben jensen was selected for this article. she proposes a model of applying four “analytical tools”, which are suitable to intercultural/racial communication, especially in complex societies such as south africa. the aim of the model is to let the researcher “think through an intercultural communication process and reflect upon it from a ‘new’ perspective” (jensen 2008: 6). 187 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? the four analytical tools will be briefly discussed within the context of occurrences in south africa where the black-versus-white issue surfaced. jensen’s model position of experiences this concept focuses on the subjective experiences of the communicators, which are related to the social position of the person or group in society. the person communicates with a “world” perception based on past and more recent experiences. the literature reflects that these experiences can be personal and include mediated experiences via radio, television or newspapers. the social position relates, amongst others, to aspects of gender, ethnic majorities/minorities, race, political affiliation (ruling party or opposition), and socio-economic status. according to jensen (2008: 7), relevant questions would be the following: ♦ where and how in the communication does the actor relate his/her experiences? ♦ how do different subject positions influence the actor’s way of positioning him/herself in relation to culture or power? ♦ in which ways does the actor’s social position influence the actor’s experiences and his/her interpretation of the communication process? cultural presuppositions presuppositions refer to the perceptions, knowledge, experiences and the affective component which communicators have of cultures/races different to their own. it would include the stereotyping of the other, based on the communicator’s own culture’s value system, as well as the understanding and interpreting of discourses in society. these presuppositions concern the categorising or labelling of “the others”. according to jensen (2008:7), the questions to identify this concept could be the following: ♦ how are “the others” described? ♦ how does the description and interpretation of “the others” denote a particular culture’s own values? cultural self-perception this concept focuses on the perception the communicator has of his/her own racial group and the extent or degree to which the communicator identifies with his/ her own group. this concept is to a certain extent the counterpart of the cultural presuppositions. in practice this enables the researcher to ask: 188 pj schutte ♦ what cultural communities does the actor identify with? ♦ does the actor identify himself/herself as distinct from other cultural communities? ♦ does the actor idealise his/her own cultural community? cultural fix points cultural fix points are the focal points in communication where the participants represent a specific view on a certain topic. it requires that involved individuals or groups identify with this topic and also position themselves on the issue within the discussion, either positively or negatively. within this concept one would be able to identify certain patterns in the conflicts that are salient in a given period of time. the questions to be asked are: ♦ what topics provoke emotional statements? ♦ is it possible to identify a point of disagreement? research method the above-mentioned questions have been applied to crucial events that occurred during the past few years, with reference to well-known political figures as well as ordinary citizens. given that communicators do not act in a vacuum, the recent and past socio-political context is taken into consideration. this method is qualitative and exploratory in nature, in the sense that certain racerelated occurrences – as mediated by the newspapers beeld, sowetan and city press, amongst others – have been scrutinised to reflect on the “mediated picture” of the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of the two racial groups regarding these issues, either as individuals or as part of an identifiable group. general comments from academics and media commentators will also be given in additional support of the findings. first the different occurrences and declarations will be set out, which will be followed by reflective argumentation with jensen’s model as theoretical framework. the first step was topical coding (cf. richards 2009: 93-113) to select all the articles from the above-mentioned newspapers that are race-related. in constructing a corpus the sampling was purposively aimed at selecting the articles in which the perceived differences of race are an integrated aspect of the communication behaviour (flick 2009: 258). the second step involved analytical coding to link the examples to one or more of the analytical tools of jensen’s model. analytical coding refers to “coding 189 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? that comes from interpretation and reflection on meaning” (richards 2009: 102) of the relevant examples. qualitative researchers who use written texts as their data “do not try to follow any predefined protocol in executing their analysis” (peräkylä & ruusuvuori 2011: 530). the researcher endeavours to draw a picture of the presuppositions that constitute the “cultural world” of the communication behaviour of the actors of “which the textural material is a specimen” (peräkylä & ruusuvuori 2011: 530). this can also be called axial coding, in order to identify and relate (sub-)categories to the four analytical tools of jensen’s model; thus, to identify the underlying racial issues to obtain an understanding of the possible rationale for the actors’ communication conduct (cf. flick 2009: 310-312). the third step involved a synthesis, based on inductive reasoning culminating from the analytical coding. context specific occurrences one relevant event is the reaction to the painting the spear, by artist brett murray. it is a portrait of president jacob zuma in the pose of lenin, with exposed genitals. according to charl blignaut, an art critic, it could be interpreted metaphorically as the naked emperor or taken literally as a man unable to control his sexual appetite (blignaut 2012). president zuma has had several extramarital affairs, impregnated a former friend’s daughter, and was involved in a rape charge. the painting evoked an extraordinary reaction from the anc, which petitioned the court to close the art exhibition and threatened to boycott city press if the image was not removed from its website. the vandalised painting was subsequently withdrawn from the exhibition. blade nzimande, the minister of higher education and training, and gwede mantashe, the secretary-general of the anc, described it as not only disrespectful, but also an example of stereotyping and racism, illustrating how racism had not been eradicated within the past 18 years: “these people (whites) don’t have any forgiveness. they still hate us like they hated us before” (molatlhwa 2012: 4). david makhura, the anc secretarygeneral in gauteng, was one of a handful who did not consider it related to racism (lamprecht 2012a: 2). mantashe denoted it as a form of hate speech. he perceived it to be on the same level as the song dubula ibhunu (“kill the [white] farmer”). black critics ignored the fact that murray is a so-called “satirical resistance artist” who was critical of the former regime and contributed to the design of posters for the struggle against apartheid, cosatu and the end conscription campaign (pople 2012: 10). it should be noted that a similar “shocking” painting (ngcono ihlwempu kunesibhanxa sesityebi: better poor than a rich puppet) by a black artist, ayanda 190 pj schutte mbulu, did not illicit any criticism. it depicts a group of south african leaders alongside american presidents barack obama and george w. bush. “in this work, jacob zuma is depicted with his exposed penis supported by a crutch, apparently to symbolize the frequency of zuma’s sexual behavior” (mabandu 2012: 5). regarding the above-mentioned song, eff leader julius malema performed the song, which originated during the struggle against apartheid, on several occasions. the isizulu phrase “dubulu ibhunu” in the song means “kill/shoot the farmer/ white man”. initially he ignored a gauteng high court interdict which banned the song as unconstitutional and against the law. during a visit to zimbabwe in 2010, malema went on to say that south african mines must be nationalised as “whites had done enough exploiting of minerals. it is now the turn of the black majority to do the same” (gama 2010: 4). malema’s visit to zimbabwe intended to demonstrate support for the government of president robert mugabe, as well as obtain information on the manner in which the white farmers have been dispossessed of their farms. as the leader of the eff, he repeated that mines and land must be “taken back” from those (whites) who “stole” them from the masses (tempelhoff 2013: 4). in november 2011 he was suspended from his post as president of the ancyl. he was found guilty by the disciplinary committee of anc of seeking to sow division by criticising president jacob zuma and bringing the party into disrepute by calling for regime change in neighbouring botswana. the leadership of the ancyl was dissolved in march 2013, with mantashe citing their ongoing lack of discipline and hostility towards the anc as reasons for this step (lamprecht 2013: 6). in another event, the leader of the democratic alliance (da) helen zille, mentioned on twitter that children from the eastern cape fled like “refugees” to the western cape due to the collapse of the school system in that province. children were also sent home because of a shortage of teachers (spoormaker 2012: 6). she was labelled a racist and even called “a racist bitch who deserves to die and burn in hell”, because she described the children as refugees (eybers 2012: 16). patrick mckenzie, anc mp, asked zille “why does she hate black people so much?” when she criticised anc women of the national assembly for not doing enough to earn their salaries; thereby implying the lack of correlation between the women’s high salaries and their productivity (gerber 2012: 2). another example where position and race came to the fore was when lulu xingwana, the minister of women, children and people with disabilities, shouted at a white air hostess: “shut up. is it because i am a ka….?” (du plessis & rossouw 2012: 1). this occurred on a flight when she requested to be upgraded to business class and was informed that there were no seats available on the fully booked flight. apart from this example, the media reported on several instances recently 191 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? in which the “k-word” featured in heated communication between members of the two races (van wyk 2012: 1; van der walt 2012: 3). in the final example, the anc invited some 70 representatives of afrikaner organisations for a “meaningful dialogue” on the alienation of afrikaners from the anc, but only 19 accepted. the rest expressed their doubt and refused to attend. dirk hermann, the general secretary of the labour union solidarity, phrased it as follows: “they can’t communicate on one day while they destroyed the afrikaner’s cultural heritage and discriminate against them with unfair socalled affirmative action” (lamprecht 2012b: 1; this author’s translation). general context the above-mentioned instances should be viewed against the backdrop of the broader socio-political context in south africa, as not all the specific episodes can be mentioned in detail. flip buys, the head of solidarity and chair of afriforum, stated that between 2000 and 3000 farmers have been murdered since 1994 (van rooyen 2010: 2). mail & guardian (2010: 36), however, reported that the number of murdered farmers exceeds 3000. for example, in april 2010 eugene terre’blanche, the former leader of the rightwing afrikaner resistance movement (awb), was allegedly murdered by two of his workers. this murder took place in a province where racial tension is on the increase. according to juanita terblanche, (not related to eugene terre’blanche), a da mp in the north west province, “this (murder) happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances by the ancyl and the north west cosatu secretary, mr solly pheto” (anon. 2010a: 1). a climate of “non-communication” and the use of violence is evident in south africa and is supported by the findings of research conducted by the medical research council in 2008. their youth risk report indicates that teenagers consider violence as the only method of conflict resolution, and not constructive participation, as 15% are armed with some kind of weapon; 36% reported enduring bullying in the past months; 21% had been involved in some form of physical fighting in the six months prior to the research; 19% belonged to gangs; 27% felt unsafe in the preceding month; and 21% attempted suicide (n=10270 teenagers between 14-17 years) (mbewu 2010: 11). these findings relate to the low position of south africa on the 2012 global peace index (gpi), whereby south africa fell from 98 in 2007 to 127 in 2012, in which respect for other people’s rights is one of the important indicators (gpi 2012). the high unemployment rate (35% of the youth aged between 15-34 and 15% of people between the ages of 35-64) (joubert 2012a), the relatively poor economy, 192 pj schutte the lack of service delivery at especially provincial and local level, and corruption, amongst other aspects, also create a breeding ground for ethnic and racial tension in an attempt to find a culprit for the situation. it should also be borne in mind that the ruling anc is a party supported by mostly blacks and, apart from cope, the other two main opposition parties (the democratic alliance and the freedom front plus) are supported mainly by whites. the da claims to be multiracial, but the majority of its members remain whites and coloureds. any criticism these opposition parties articulate is often labelled as racist. the fact that the majority of the supporters of the main political parties belong to a large extent to a particular race could be considered a stumbling block to interracial communication, as it fosters the perception that different races are generally in opposition to each other. application and analytical reflection although the analytical tools of jensen’s model can be distinguished from each other, they are closely related and not mutually exclusive. thus, there will be some overlap in the application, reasoning and interpretation of the above-mentioned occurrences. position of experiences this concept mainly focuses on the social position of the individual/group, as well as the subjective understanding/interpretation of the world/occurrences on the basis of past and more recent experiences. the strong reaction from the anc and many blacks to the spear, labelling it as an explicit form of racism, in contrast to the lack of reaction to mbulu’s painting (similarly featuring exposed genitals and denoting the same “message”) reflects how criticism voiced from the “out-group position” (white) is taken very negatively as opposed to an individual from the “in-group position” (black). it further indicates the tendency to generalise and stereotype a negative response from a person of another race. the fact that a white man also vandalised the painting to express his disapproval thereof did not nearly elicit the same publicity. this illustrates the cultural sensitivity for comments or criticism from a race or cultural position not your own. the verbal and non-verbal communication of the ancyl leaders, for example, indicate that they consider their position as youth leaders of the majority ruling party as very important. their communication articulates a position of power and illustrates its influence on the communication situation. it implicitly propagates the following principle: we (blacks) must do unto them what they (whites) had done unto us. another incident, which demonstrates this “actor’s social position” (jensen 2008: 4), is reflected in malema’s interaction with a white journalist, jonah 193 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? fisher, in luthuli house. during this interview he called the journalist a “bastard” and a “bloody agent” (masombuka 2010: 4). fisher was amused by malema’s response and laughed, upon which malema said to him: “this is a revolutionary house and you don’t come here with that white tendency, not here. you can do it somewhere else, not here” (mahlangu 2010: 1; majova 2010: 4). the physical position (own home: in luthuli house and in zimbabwe amongst his followers) is also evident in his belief that in his domain or within the “in-group’s” territory disrespect is permissible and one may say anything one desires. on another level, the communication behaviour of minister lulu xingwana, which brings the racial differences between her and the air hostess to the fore, illustrates that she perceives her “political position” so highly that exceptions should be made. certain members of the white population, and especially many afrikaans-speaking farming communities, perceive their social position as a neglected minority group exposed to murder (personal letters in newspapers; cf. van rooyen 2010; keogh 2011; louw-carstens 2012). the policies of black empowerment and affirmative action, as well as the initial rumours of nationalisation and the reality of dispossession of land from white farmers, heighten this experience of a position of powerlessness and marginalisation (lamprecht 2012b). white youth in general perceive affirmative action as discriminatory, since they neither supported nor participated in apartheid (lamprecht 2012c). as opposed to the above, black south africans’ widespread dissatisfaction, especially with their economic position, is articulated by commentator and black consciousness proponent andile mngxitama (2010:13) as follows: the truth is most blacks experience increased poverty, bad education and healthcare. on the other hand white racism in its multiple forms is rampant. economic racial inequalities lead to racism in the everyday interaction between blacks and whites. basically, life for blacks remains an experience of humiliation. this is not the fault of white people, it’s a result of the failure of the anc to end racism through transforming the economy to serve the majority instead of bee (black economic empowerment) for a few. whites practice racism because they can. we blacks remain a powerless majority... the terrible terre’blanche is dead, but racism and white supremacy are alive. it is in a certain sense ironic that members of both races have the perception that their current position in south africa is one of “powerlessness” and one that is unacceptable. cultural presuppositions and cultural self-perception these two related concepts focus on the perceptions and affective components that the two races have of their own race (in-group), as one side of the coin, as well 194 pj schutte as their perceptions of and affection for each other (out-group) on the other side (see description under theoretical perspective). during malema’s interview with jonah fisher, malema confirmed his perception of superiority, and racial undertones were clearly evident. his behaviour implies that the majority or ruling party may act as it pleases, irrespective of the consequences or the rights of other groups or minorities. although malema has been replaced by lamola, the rhetoric and war talk remains the same; the content has only been somewhat revised (anon. 2012: 16; lamprecht 2012c). given their influence in the ancyl and eff (a new political party), this may be setting the example for black and white youth to use a confrontational (racist?) style which is not conducive to equal participation, let alone interracial convergence. the incident with minister xingwana illustrates that the past, with its abusive labels and racism, is to a certain extent still alive. her reaction denotes the denial of the request by the white air hostess as racial discrimination. in her mind racism and discrimination are evident and defines her as “distinct from the other race” (jensen 2008: 7) in this case, the white air hostess. regarding the murder of farmers, and especially the murder of eugene terre’blanche, many blacks stereotype whites who condemn the brutal murder of terre’blanche as racists, just like him, even if the whites voiced their total disapproval of the awb and their past behaviour. in the township tsing, near terre’blanche’s hometown ventersdorp, some black people celebrated his death with these words: “i’m glad he’s dead” and “the dog is dead” (anon. 2010b: 1). the perception of hatred and racism was further heightened by a sms circulated in the limpopo province prior to freedom day in april 2010. the message spread was that whites would be killed by blacks on this day. the then national head of police, general bheki cele, ordered the police to be in a state of alert (de bruin 2010: 1), but nothing of the sort transpired on freedom day. the mere existence of the message heightened the perception that blacks are out to kill whites. the tendency of the general citizen to generalise, especially when it involves another culture and race, could stigmatise blacks as possible murder suspects in the minds of a great number of whites and could result in them avoiding any form of communication as far as possible. the discussed examples or occurrences and the response from citizens to the mentioned issues indicate a rather strong disagreement between many black and white south africans. this behaviour and the inherent verbal abuse, especially the labelling of individuals or groups, tend to evoke intense emotion, polarise even moderate citizens, and inhibit or even prevent constructive interracial communication. 195 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? these examples indicate that each group would rather identify with their own race who have adopted a general negative perception of the other race and tend to stereotype them. cultural fix points cultural fix points are the crucial points or issues in communication where the participants represent a clear opinion and point of view. it requires that the relevant individuals or groups identify with a specific topic and also take a position on the issue within the discussion, either positively or negatively. within this concept one would be able to identify certain patterns in the conflict that are salient during a given period. nearly all occurrences discussed above represent topics that provoke emotional statements of strong agreement or disagreement. for example, the utterances of many youth leaders and their aggressive communication, the murder of farmers, economic inequalities, the spear painting, affirmative action, etc. are without doubt highly emotional topics and provoke even more emotional statements. many white and even black south africans perceive malema’s song as totally unacceptable and even moderate whites perceive this song as a direct cause of the widespread murders and interpret it as a declaration of war. on the other hand, zwelinzima vavi, the secretary-general of cosatu, and cosatu supporters say that this struggle song should not be taken literally, but as a figure of speech (steenkamp 2010: 2). many white south africans believe president jacob zuma identifies with this song, due to his failure to distance himself and the government from the song. although malema has been expelled from the anc, it was largely due to his criticism of the party’s policy towards the government of botswana and his criticism of zuma, and not the repeated performance of the song; a song which judge leon halgryn declared a form of hate speech and the accompanying droning of supporters an instigation to commit murder (keogh 2011: 1). this illustrates the cultural value that criticism of someone’s political head and his party is reason enough to be expelled from the party and to dissolve its leadership, but that the promotion of hate towards another race is not reason enough. thus, the “interaction” which members of the ancyl and their followers proposed is not constructive debate, persuasion or communication but violence and even murder, if necessary, which is not conducive to interracial communication. this tendency to violence and a climate of “non-communication” is supported by the findings of research conducted by the medical research council in 2008. the writer of the comment and analysis column in mail & guardian states: it is depressing, but perhaps unsurprising, that this is the place we have circled back to: a standoff between those who, like julius malema, think that chanting 196 pj schutte ‘kill the boer’ mobilizes a proud history in support of a current, legitimate political project, and those – particularly afrikaners – who feel it violates their human rights” (mail & guardian 2010: 36). strong cultural and racial differences regarding beliefs and values emerge when so-called emotional topics are debated and it would seem that many black and white south africans continue to identify strongly with their specific race and perceive themselves as distinct from other races. conclusion synthesis and general suggestions the above-mentioned examples lead to the inductive proposition that the possibility for unbiased interracial communication, let alone possible convergence, is bleak. a general unwillingness to participate constructively on common issues that concern all citizens is evident in the mentioned newspaper articles. the south african context is complicated and conclusions can only be tentative due to the highly dynamic and even volatile political situation in the country (the recent power struggle both within the anc and between the da and the anc in the tlokwe municipality is only one example). the high crime rate; the high unemployment rate; corruption; the social dynamics due to poverty; the minimum wage for unskilled workers; the existing inequality on many levels; the lack of service delivery and non-implementation of policy/decisions; and ambiguous claims from political leaders on important issues exacerbate an already complex multi-cultural and multi-racial situation (cf. joubert 2012b: 2). one of the stumbling blocks seems to be that the experiences of the past remain in the minds of people. danny titus of the atkv (afrikaans language and culture society) shares this opinion and highlights the lack of adequate communication between south africans, with most of them still having the walls of apartheid in their minds. it continues to be the manner in which many see and communicate with each other (jackson 2010: 8). a further stumbling block is the tendency to oversimplify a complex situation into broad generalisations and stereotypes: blacks are doing this and whites are like that (cf. groenewald 1996: 13-15). the fact that one, incidentally white, artist critically comments on a specific black leader is interpreted and generalised as “whites hate blacks”. the fact that both a black and white person vandalised the painting to indicate their disapproval was downplayed, while the art of a black artist who portrayed the same message was ignored by the protesters of the murray painting. 197 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? this illustrates the selective perceptions of those who only take note of the instances that confirm their stereotypes, while overlooking and ignoring the instances that refute them. the unfortunate reality of the self-fulfilling prophecy comes into play when, for example, the labelling of whites as racist may contribute to the manifestation of this unwanted trait in that they will continue or adopt this behaviour if always labelled as such (neuliep 2006: 195; marger 2005: 77). the media could contribute by reporting on occurrences where the two races overcome their differences, such as the interracial prayer meeting for a better future in delmas (jackson 2012: 1). they could also make strategic decisions to not report or at least downplay occurrences where participants of the different races represent strongly different viewpoints, to use jensen’s terms, but which are in no way related to race as such, even if the participants play the proverbial race card in the hope to score opportunistic points. if reporters constantly emphasise racial differences when sensitive issues are discussed, it will bolster racism according to the agenda-setting role of the media. the power of labels plays an important part, as it communicates at many levels of meaning during the communication process (lull 1995: 71). labels establish or challenge a certain kind of relationship between individuals or groups, denoting and increasing either distance or closeness. orbe and harris (2008: 50) claim it is often the case that persons or groups with political, economic and social power “occupy positions that allow them to label less powerful groups of people”. the strategic use of labels increases and maintains the power base of those already in the most powerful positions, as is true of most of the above-mentioned examples. although official and/or institutional and informal interracial communication does take place within different contexts, it is often mere rhetoric. it could be assumed that there are a great number of instances of meaningful interracial communication, also on an interpersonal level, which are not reported in the media. yet, even the few examples mentioned above are indicators of racial tension and a lack of meaningful intercultural communication. there is no quick fix or easy answers, if any, to this complex issue. on the contrary, the greater the knowledge of the problem, the more racism seems like a possibly insurmountable stumbling block – especially when there is a great “distance” in the social position of the communicators, negative presuppositions exist, and highly emotional topics are on the agenda. despite the different perceptions, different positions and strong disagreement on certain issues, communicators should search, articulate and emphasise commonalities and similarities, as there are quite a number (schutte 2009: 4-11). that would hopefully draw people closer together. striving towards similarities, 198 pj schutte rather than differences, is indicative of the idea that a model of cultural synergy or convergence should be pursued. real and perceived differences do exist. unfortunately, in politics and where sensitive issues or differences about “cultural fixed points” are concerned, to use jensen’s terminology, perceptions are in most instances more important than the factual reality (martin & nakayama 2011: 82-85). this is a huge obstacle for communication between the different races. this harsh reality is confirmed by frans cronjé, of the south african institute of race relations, who stated at a public forum on february 16 2010 that the different races in south africa tend to stick to perceptions of their experiences of reality which do not always correspond with the factual situation. on the other hand, south africans should acknowledge their racial prejudices and not fear open discussion (joubert 2012c: 4). it cannot be addressed if its existence and the extent thereof are denied. it is impossible to avoid all “emotional topics”, especially in a country like south africa. the races should address the issues and be accommodating in their verbal and non-verbal communication, while debating these topics: whether they stereotype, generalise and recall the past or avoid them by rather communicating with empathy (asante, miike & yin 2008: 215-230). this would be the beginning of an improved climate for interracial communication. communicators should downplay their position of power, whether it is race, gender, political affiliation, social status, economic wealth, etc. and perceive each other as unique individuals all deserving of respect (cf. boon 1996). although it is necessary to consider the bigger picture and co-cultures, it should also be remembered that not every person is necessarily typical of the stereotyped perceptions of a certain race. thus, the following proposition can be made: the road to the “recovery” of meaningful interracial communication may be possible if all citizens of different races, whether individuals or in groups, whether privately or officially, whether orally or in written form, and especially reporters/editors and people considered to be leaders should take the following into consideration during their communication: ♦ people in a “privileged position”, whether real or perceived, should not misuse the associated power of their position (political, social, economic, gender, racial or member of the majority/minority), but rather interact as equals in a dialogical manner. ♦ all races should take a relativistic stance on their culture or race. while the different origins of people and own biases should be acknowledged, stereotyping should be eradicated and topics which will provoke emotional 199 interracial communication in south africa: is cultural convergence possible? reactions should be handled in a culturally sensitive way, even if there is disagreement. ♦ the context of criticism or differences of opinion, which is inherently part of a democracy and freedom of speech, should be taken into consideration. the content of the communication should be scrutinised if race is really a salient issue in the message, for example, do objective facts change if it is communicated by another race or someone from the “out-group”? ♦ all races, and especially young people, should address their racial perceptions and change their “war-like” demeanour during communication. the government should also realise that inequalities of any sort instigate racial tension and should be addressed in a culturally sensitive way. ♦ racial hatred should not be a matter for the courts. rather, all citizens, whether in civil society, in different political parties, in the media, of different races or ethnicities, must act and communicate in a responsible and culturally sensitive way to isolate the extremists of different racial groups, whether right or left. instead of violence, the different groups should interact and feel comfortable to disagree freely with each other. hopefully then the communicators who perceive race to be an important issue would give up their lonely cause of hatred. 200 pj schutte references anon. 2010a. awb leader hacked to death. sunday tribune, 4 april: 1. anon. 2010b. defiant malema sings it again. the mercury, 5 april: 1. anon. 2012. anc moet sy jeugleiers dissiplineer. 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(eds). cultural synergy in south africa: weaving strands of africa and europe. pretoria: sygma press. spoormaker, m. 2012. skoliere ly nog erger in o-kaap; want limpopo het nog onnies, sê kenners. beeld, 4 julie: 6. steenkamp, l. 2010. zuma en anc staan by hul man malema. beeld, 5 april: 2. tempelhoff, e. 2013. plaas nelson oor na soweto, sê malema. beeld, 15 julie: 4. van der walt, n. 2012. hy mag nog rugby speel ná k-woord. beeld, 4 julie: 3. van rooyen, f. 2010. president moet hom distansieer van liedjies, eis solidariteit. beeld, 5 april: 2. van wyk, p. 2012. modelle begrawe rassebyl ná twiets. beeld, 11 mei: 1. 179178 179178 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features abstract this article is based on a 2014 explorative study investigating the use of social media applications in an educational context by means of a systematic analysis of internationally published and researched studies. the purpose of this article is to present a brief overview of the evolution of the internet and the www in order to draw a “map” of the rapidly evolving and ever-changing social media landscape. the mapping exercise leads to an overview of the most prominent features of social media tools and applications. as a whole, the information presented in the article should be regarded as a glance at a vast, ever-changing terrain; a set of summarised “directions” intended for practitioners and researchers in the field of computer-mediated communication (cmc) who are less experienced or relatively new to the field. based on the study, key features of social media are highlighted and the role of social media in communication, interaction and collaboration are highlighted. furthermore, by highlighting the key features of social media, a profile of social media as a cmc tool is compiled, which must be considered when utilising social media in any context. keywords: social media; computer-mediated communication; social media landscape; web 2.0; social bookmarking; social networking services; virtual worlds introduction over the last century computer technology has developed very rapidly and permanently changed the ways in which people communicate. improved, smaller and easier to use technology, coinciding with the development of the internet and the world wide web (www), gives people access to unlimited sources of information and enables fast communication worldwide. currently, the www is the primary source of information for most people, while web 2.0-based social networking sites (e.g. facebook, twitter, blogs, wikis, etc.) are becoming the main means of communication, interaction and entertainment. thousands of social media applications and tools exist, creating a vast social media landscape from which users can choose media to suit their specific needs. the social media landscape is however evolving with increasing acceleration dr mercia coetzee department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein coetzeee@ufs.ac.za prof. annette wilkinson emeritus professor higher education studies, university of the free state, bloemfontein wilkinac@ufs.ac.za dr daleen krige department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein krigem@ufs.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.12 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 178-195 © uv/ufs mailto:coetzeee%40ufs.ac.za?subject= mailto:wilkinac%40ufs.ac.za?subject= mailto:krigem%40ufs.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.12 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.12 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.12 179178 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features 179178 (solis 2013): new applications are added daily to the repertoire of available technologies while existing applications are improved and adapted — motivated by user preferences and needs, or based on the successes of their predecessors — although many just as quickly disappear or become obsolete. for many people (including researchers) it has become impossible to know which applications exist or to keep up to date with new developments. against this background, the purpose of this article is to present a brief overview of the evolution of the internet and the www, subsequently define the term “social media” and then draw a “map” of the rapidly evolving and ever-changing social media landscape. the mapping exercise concludes with a synopsis (or profile) of the most prominent features of social media tools and applications. as a whole, the information presented in the article should be regarded as a glance at a vast, ever-changing terrain, a set of summarised “directions” intended for practitioners and researchers in the field of computer-mediated communication (cmc) who are less experienced or relatively new to the field. the article should, however, not be seen as a comprehensive source of all the historical and evolving social media tools and applications: only 15 social media categories are discussed with examples of some of the most used or most popular applications — supported by current statistics — in each category. this article was informed by a comprehensive qualitative, explorative study (coetzee 2014) which emanated from the field of communication science and which investigated the use of social media applications in an educational context by means of a systematic analysis of internationally published and researched studies. the study followed the guidelines of a comprehensive search of databases and websites to find applicable research about the topic (crombie & davies 2009: 2). an estimated 2 400 documents were originally evaluated for possible inclusion in the study sample, of which 220 were selected through a thorough iterative evaluation process for inclusion in the systematic analysis. the information presented in this article formed part of the social media “lens” through which an appropriate focus on the topic in the original (broader) study could be attained. this information is descriptive in nature, dealing with key social media tools and applications which were the focus of attention in research undertaken in the period 2006 to 2013. in order to clarify the term “social media” it is first necessary to consider the evolvement of the internet and web 2.0. social media: from computers to the internet and web 2.0 the development of the computer since 1930 had a slow, but serious impact on human communication. the establishment of arpanet, the first network of the us defence department’s advanced research projects agency (arpa), in the early 1960s triggered many computer-related developments (murage 2003: 39); it has since evolved to become a large, international collection of networks called the internet. the word “internet” is defined as a “vast global system of interconnected computer networks” (howe 2012). by 1985 the first internet was well established, and increasing amounts of data were transmitted at higher and higher speeds over more and more networks to more and more people (leiner et al. 2012: 8). the internet enabled near181180 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige instant communication by means of electronic mail, instant messaging, discussion forums, voice over internet protocol (voip), two-way interactive video calls and internet conferencing. in 1989 tim berners-lee developed the hyper text markup language (html) using specifications such as uniform resource locator (url) and hyper text transfer protocol (http), enabling geographically dispersed people to work together by combining their knowledge in a global web of hypertext documents on computers linked by servers (computer history museum 2008: 90). berners-lee called this system the world wide web (www). the www as a service of the internet is a system of internet servers that supports documents linked to other documents, graphics, audio or video files on the internet. high-speed internet connections, low connectivity charges, broadband access and online companies allowed the www to grow into web 1.0. web 1.0 contained “readonly” material, allowing users to view web pages but not contribute to the content. however, web 1.0 developed a few tools users could use to communicate with one another online. these include, inter alia, video and audio conferencing tools, discussion forums, bulletin boards, chat rooms, newsrooms, usenet groups, e-mail, listservs, instant messaging, internet relay chat (irc), internet telephony, and eventually social networking sites (snss) (yilmaz 2011: 115; saritas 2006: 74; lo 2009: 206; baird & fisher 2005: 17). after 2002 technological developments, such as improved broadband access and faster browsers, initiated the shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0 (baird & fisher 2005: 16; cormode & krishnamurthy 2008: 6). o’reilly (2007: 17) emphasises that web 2.0 is a platform on which web 2.0 applications run as services that provide users with control over content and that facilitate collaboration between individuals and groups. web 2.0 is also defined in the context of web platforms and technologies that support the content and functionality of websites. these platforms consist of various technologies that promote social networking, the forming of online communities, user interaction, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge (cormode & krishnamurthy 2008: 1). users obtain access to web 2.0 sites through a web browser that provides the user with a user interface, software and storage facilities (hughes 2011: 15; cullen et al. 2009: 17). a key aspect of web 2.0 is the opportunities that exist for users to not only create content, but also to contribute to the content of existing web pages. user-generated content (ugc) can be described as all the different ways in which people can add pages of various kinds to web 2.0 sites (pillay & maharaj 2010; bell 2011: 100; kaplan & haenlein 2010: 61), and is encapsulated in services such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, snss and many other web applications. ugc was the catalyst for the establishment of social content on web 2.0 and for those web 2.0 applications known as “social media”. the term “social media” can be defined based on either 1) the tools or the devices social media use; 2) the web applications that enable communication; or 3) as web 2.0 resources. social media can be described as internet and mobile-based tools and devices that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, enabling the construction, co-construction and dissemination of words, images and audio (dabner 2012: 69; junco & chickering 2010: 12). the term “social media” describes 181180 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features a range of user-centred, interactive web applications that facilitate the construction and dissemination of words, images and audio on the www (astd 2011: 3; dabner 2012: 69). social media is characterised as a collection of web 2.0 resources that emphasise active participation, connectivity, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and ideas among users (rutherford 2010: 703; dabbagh & kitsantas 2012: 3). in the context of this article, the term “social media” is seen as an umbrella term that embraces all three the above notions, and is defined as computer-mediated tools and applications using fixed or mobile computer technologies that allow people to create, share or exchange information in various formats, and to communicate in both a social and professional manner over a variety of web 2.0 platforms. fifteen categories of the current social media landscape are discussed next, with the focus on the most popular applications and tools in each category. key tools and applications in the social media landscape the social media landscape comprises social networks, blog platforms, wikis, niche networks, social bookmarks, virtual worlds, gaming sites, forums, message boards and many other social media applications, each with vast numbers of social media tools. because of the ever-changing social media landscape, it will be impossible to discuss all available applications and tools, therefore a list of current popular applications are selected from the literature studied, supported by statistical information on the use and popularity of these applications. blogs the term “blog”, a contraction of “web log”, refers to a web page consisting of an opinion, information, event description or personal diary entries, arranged chronologically with the most recent entry first, in the style of an online journal (anderson 2007: 7; armstrong & franklin 2008: 7). a blog is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries on which readers can comment. the posting and commenting process entails a conversation between an author and a group of secondary contributors who communicate to an unlimited number of readers (benkler 2006: 217; harris & rea 2009: 138). blogs can include digital material, graphics and visual, audio or video content (cullen et al. 2009: 18; bates 2011: 25; conole & alevizou 2010: 49; green & hannon 2007: 12). there are a variety of web services available that offer users storage space and tools to create their own blogs, for example blogger and word press. blog software also facilitates syndication, in which entries or key words can be “tagged” so that related items can easily be brought together, or to form links to other blogs or websites. blogs can also be published using rss feeds which allow readers to see when new postings have been made (armstrong & franklin 2008: 7). statistics show that 12.7 million people regularly write blogs, while 46 million people worldwide regularly read and/or comment on blogs (napier marketing 2014). 183182 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige bulletin boards and message boards the terms “bulletin board”, “online bulletin board”, “message board”, “pinboard” or “online notice board” are used interchangeably to refer to applications that allow people to post articles, pictures, photos, messages or comments on the postings of other people (rambe 2011: 284). each board is hierarchical in structure and can contain a number of sub-boards. currently the most popular pinboard worldwide is pinterest with 176 million registered users (digital stat articles 2016). flipboard, also a highly popular board, focuses on providing news items and discussions on popular topics. flipboard has 70 million users who flip 7 billion pages a day (kantrowitz 2013). conferencing services computer conferencing services (for example adobe connect) enable groups of people to hold discussions by reading and posting text messages on a computer system (feenberg 1987: 169; king 2008: 49). it allows participants to contribute and communicate simultaneously on different topics, and participation can be anonymous. asynchronous computer conferencing is used in contrast to synchronous conferencing, which refers to various chat systems in which users communicate simultaneously in real-time using text (hewitt 1997: 2; baird & fisher 2005: 18). another popular type of computer conferencing is videoconferencing – a means by which geographically distant people can hold discussions or meetings in real-time during which they are able to hear and see each other using dedicated computer equipment as well as telephone connections (baird & fisher 2005: 18; king 2008: 61; murage 2003: 28). e-mail e-mail is not only the oldest form of cmc, but also the best known, and one of the largest network applications on the internet (leiner et al. 2012: 3). e-mail allows a message to be sent to one or to many people, with the choice of attaching documents, pictures, videos or any other electronic item (baird & fisher 2005: 17). users can also send a message to an electronic mailing list. an electronic mailing list is used for widespread distribution of information to many internet users simultaneously (pcmag. com encyclopedia 2009). napier (2014) reports that e-mail accounts worldwide are predicted to grow to over 5.2 billion at the end of 2018. worldwide, 196.3 billion e-mails are sent and received each day (radicati 2014: 3-4). forums and discussion forums the terms “discussion forum”, “message forum” or “internet forum” are used interchangeably to refer to applications that allow people to hold conversations in the form of posted messages or comments on the messages of other people (rambe 2011: 284). “the central features of a discussion forum are a means of posting messages, a repository for storing them, and an interface for navigating through the ‘threads’ of messages and replies”, write kear et al. (2010: 218). each forum 183182 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features is hierarchical or tree-like in structure and can contain a number of sub-forums or discussion groups, each of which may have a separate topic. within a forum’s topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as desired (bigley 2012: 41; greenhow & robelia 2009: 128). threaded discussions on these applications are very much like e-mail, except that everyone subscribed can see all the messages. there are many threaded discussion programmes available, and these vary widely in their features (schroeder & greenbowe 2009: 3). media manipulating tools and mashups the terms “digital media manipulation” and “data mashup” refer to web applications that mix and combine the data and functionality of multiple web sources into one (armstrong & franklin 2008: 9; lamb 2007: 13). the characteristics of a mashup include combination, visualisation and aggregation in order to make existing data more useful for personal and professional use (crook 2008: 72). lamb (2007: 13) distinguishes between remix and mashup in the following way: ■ remix refers to the reworking or adaptation of an existing or of any number of digital media sources to either create a totally new work or to provide an alternate version of the original. ■ a mashup involves the combination of the data and functionalities of two or more totally different web applications. mashable, with 4.4 million users worldwide, is the leader in this category of social media applications. mashable connects various social media sites into one easy-toread blog with news, information and interesting facts. microblogging a microblog is a type of blog that allows users to publish short text updates. the posts are called micro-posts, while the act of using these services is called microblogging (kaplan & haenlein 2011: 106). twitter, the most well-known microblogging service, calls its posts “tweets”. tweets are micro-posts or short messages limited to 140 characters. communication over twitter is in real-time and the exchange of information is immediate (dunlap & lowenthal 2009: 131). users are able to reject the requests of anyone wishing to be a follower, allowing the user to define his or her own audience (tong & walther 2011: 8; preece & schneiderman 2009: 14). in addition to short messages, twitter users can share web links, photos, videos and other media content. twitter also allows users to make tweets exclusively available to only those followers to whom they want to give access (rockinson-szapkiw & szapkiw 2011: 360). twitter has 1.3 billion registered users, of which 100 million are daily users (digital stat articles 2016). multi-media and file sharing multi-media sharing allows people to upload photos, videos (vodcasts), podcasts and other audio files on third-party websites (crook 2008: 18). there is a wide variety of 185184 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige websites available for multi-media sharing, for example flikr and instagram for photos, dropbox for documents, youtube for videos, itunes for podcasts and vodcasts, slideshare for presentations, deviantart for art work, scribd for documents, and so forth. these websites allow users to post content and to tag these with keywords. viewers may also post comments or reviews, or rate the uploaded content from other users (armstrong & franklin 2008: 8; cullen et al. 2009: 18; green & hannon 2007: 14). youtube – with one billion users – is the largest and fastest growing web service for multi-media and the second largest search engine in the world. youtube content can be produced, stored, shared or downloaded (pillay & maharaj 2010: 3). millions of people participate in the sharing and exchange of multi-media on youtube, either by producing their own podcasts and videos, or by uploading movies and videos from other media sources (anderson 2007: 10). mediabistro (2014: 7) reports that youtube users watch an average of six billion hours of video each month and upload 100 hours of video every minute. the popularity of youtube, combined with the increasing availability of high-speed connections, has made video content a popular social medium on the web (armstrong & franklin 2008: 8). file sharing is the practice of providing access to digitally stored information such as multimedia, computer programmes, documents or electronic books. it may be implemented through centralised servers on computer networks, web-based hyperlinked documents, or the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking. users can use peer-to-peer software to search for shared files on the computers of other users. files of interest can then be downloaded directly through the network (farwell & waters 2010: 10). instagram, a photo sharing and special effects application, has 400 million active monthly users worldwide, uploading 80 million photos daily (instagram.com 2016). online chat synchronous chat refers to real-time, text-based communication between one-to-one or one-to-many users via a computer. once a chat has been initiated, a user enters text on a keyboard and it will immediately appear on the other user’s monitor (conole & alevizou 2010: 48). instant messaging (im) is a type of communication service that enables a person to communicate (“chat”) with other people in real-time over the internet using text. the programme will indicate who of these people are online and a chat can be initiated by anyone of the people online. im also allows one to include more than two people in a conversation by creating a chat room (baird & fisher 2005: 17). mobile phone short messaging service (sms) is also an example of online chat. sms enables the user to use instant messaging clients through their mobile device (vyas 2011: 38). internet relay chat (irc) is a web service that allows users to chat online, or to use im. irc allows the instant exchange of text messages between any two users – they do not need to belong to a specific chat group to participate (green & hannon 2007: 13). to join an irc discussion, the user needs an irc client and internet access. the irc client is a programme that runs on computers and sends and receives messages to and from an irc server. 185184 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features whatsapp is currently the most popular chat application with over 1 billion monthly users, handling 42 billion messages a day and sharing 8 796 photos per second (yeung 2016). snapchat, another popular chat application, has 100 million active daily users who send 9 000 photos (snaps) a second (digital stat articles 2016). online games being able to interact with other users is also possible using online game websites. alexa, the web information company, listed 37 664 online games in 24 categories in the 2013 list of most popular games (alexa 2014). the two most popular games worldwide are mmogs and mmvws: ■ massively multiplayer online games (mmogs) are games that take place in a computer-generated imaginary world with live interaction between internet users (green & hannon 2007: 13; conole & alevizou 2010: 49). ■ massively multiplayer virtual worlds (mmvws) are complex digital environments that allow participants to project a non-physical presence of themselves, using a custom-designed character (avatar) in a three-dimensional (3d) reality, and within that reality, to interact with other players (bates 2011: 27; green & hannon 2007: 13). podcasting and vodcasting podcasting allows a user access to online audio or video content through rss feeds (cullen et al. 2009: 18; green & hannon 2007: 13; harris & rea 2009: 138). originally called audio blogs, podcasts developed from efforts to add audio streams to blogs. audio podcasts are audio recordings of conversations, talks, interviews or lectures, usually in mp3 format, which can be played either on a computer or on a wide range of handheld devices and smartphones (pillay & maharaj 2010: 3; harris & rea 2009: 138). video podcasts (called vodcasts) are online video clips that can be played on a computer or handheld device, mostly in mp4 format. podcasts and vodcasts are freely available for download from the internet using software that can handle rss feeds. youtube is currently the most popular application to upload and download both podcasts and vodcasts (pillay & maharaj 2010: 3; anderson 2007: 10). social bookmarking social bookmarking, tagging and folksonomies allow the recording (bookmarking) of web pages, tagging these with keywords (called tags) and organising the tags into folksonomic metadata (cullen et al. 2009: 18; pillay & maharaj 2010: 3). social bookmarking sites (for example citeulike, digg, delicious and diigo) allow people to gather web pages they are interested in into a set of bookmarks (or favourites). bookmarks are held on a server instead of on the user’s computer and are available either for later use by the person or to be shared with other users (pillay & maharaj 2010: 3). bookmarks also allow entries to be tagged. some sites (for example delicious) collect and aggregate the tags on bookmarks that users have shared, while other sites (for example diigo) incorporate user annotations 187186 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige with the tagging (green & hannon 2007: 12) to create tag clouds. tag clouds are groups of tags (tag sets), which indicate the frequency with which particular tags are used. this frequency information is sometimes displayed as a “word cloud” in which tags are displayed according to their frequency of use in different sizes of text, with those most frequently used in the largest text (anderson 2007: 9). social networking services (snss) social networking consists of interactive web-based applications that facilitate social interaction among members in a virtual environment. social network sites (snss) are specifically designed to allow members to form subgroups of “friends” and online communities of people with common interests. snss enable users to connect to family, friends and colleagues, but also to meet new people and develop new friendships (conole & alevizou 2010: 48; tong & walther 2011: 12; merchant 2012: 7). users interact with one another through online messages or mails, or post personal information in which they describe themselves and their interests, and then display these messages (called status updates) to the people on their friend list (tong & walther 2011: 12; ghosh, chawla & mallott 2012: 105). personal information profiles may comprise photos, videos, images, audio content, links to other websites and/or user-generated content (armstrong & franklin 2008: 8; cullen et al. 2009: 17). there are currently hundreds of snss on the web, supporting a spectrum of different practices, interests, niche groups and user groups (steinfield, ellison & lampe 2008: 434). facebook, linkedin, google+ (or google plus), myspace, twitter, pinterest and bebo are some of the more popular snss (ghosh, chawla & mallott 2012: 105), although facebook is by far the largest. facebook has 1.65 billion active monthly users worldwide of which 1.9 billion use facebook daily for at least 20 minutes (facebook.com 2016). virtual worlds a virtual world is a computer-simulated environment that enables users to navigate in a virtual space and interact with others through avatars. the avatar may be a generic representation of the user that may or may not resemble the user. within the virtual simulation, a user can explore, socialise and solve collaborative challenges (harris & rea 2009: 138). virtual worlds are enjoyed as networking forums for individuals to meet and socialise, as marketing or training platforms for businesses, and as educational and research environments for schools and higher education institutions (dreher et al. 2009: 212). second life is one of the best-known virtual world applications with more than a million registered users, of which 600 000 are active monthly users. second life is an online environment in which users have avatars that live simulated “real lives”. users can go to school, college or church, can own a business, build buildings, host parties and even indulge in virtual sex (armstrong & franklin 2008: 9). 187186 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features wikis wikis (for example wikipedia) and collaborative editing tools (for example google docs) are web-based services that allow users unrestricted access to create, edit and link web pages (conole & alevizou 2010: 52; armstrong & franklin 2008: 9). a wiki (a hawaiian word for “quick”) is a web page or collection of web pages designed to enable any number of people to interactively create collaborative websites, or to contribute to or modify content by using a simplified online markup language (oml). wikis use basic file-sharing and content-editing tools to create navigable pages with hypertext-style linking between the pages (harris & rea 2009: 138; armstrong & franklin 2008: 8). wikipedia is arguably the best-known wiki. wikipedia has more than 470 million monthly users viewing more than 18 billion pages (alexa 2014). the english wikipedia alone (one of 200 wikipedias) hosts over 4.6 million articles which are edited by 73 000 people worldwide (wikipedia statistics 2014). the web 2.0 applications and tools discussed above illustrate the current social media landscape with those tools currently the most popular, although the included tools should only be seen as the tip of the iceberg. although these applications and tools may be popular now, new applications and tools are constantly being developed or improved and users may at any time move to other, newer media which may offer more or better features. in the context of this article it is therefore necessary to look at current trends and developments as well as predictions about the future of social media. social media trends and developments: future evolvements wellons (2014) predicts that by 2018, 2.44 billion of the world’s population will be using social networks. this will only be possible via technological apparatus affordable and accessible to many people worldwide. already in 2001, tim berners-lee predicted that a new type of www was needed: he posited that “if the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing” (morris 2011: 44). berners-lee calls this new web “web 3.0” or the “semantic web”, a web “in which computers become capable of analysing all the data on the web”. the development of the semantic web is led by the w3c, with the aim to convert the current web into a “web of data” that allows computers to understand the meaning of information and in that way enable users to easily find, share and combine information (ohler 2008: 7; morris 2011: 44; bradwell 2009: 27). web 3.0 will, in other words, interpret the meaning of data in a similar fashion to a human being (gylfason 2010: 4). web 3.0 is supposed to lay the groundwork for web 4.0, which will be the “intelligent web”, functioning on interaction between humans and machines in symbiosis (aghaei, nematbakhsh & farsani 2012: 9). web 4.0 can be described as “the ultra-intelligent electronic agent”. kurzweil (in gylfason 2010: 6) is of the opinion that web 4.0 will function like the human brain: “intelligent machines will combine the subtle and supple skills that humans now excel in (essentially our powers of pattern recognition) with ways in which machines are already superior, such as remembering trillions of facts accurately, searching quickly 189188 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige through vast databases, and downloading skills and knowledge”. computers running web 4.0 will be parallel to the human brain with a massive web of highly intelligent interactions and mind-controlled interfaces (aghaei et al. 2012: 9). with web 4.0 technology the masses of information on the internet will become even more accessible. kurzweil (in demers 2014) predicts that google’s hummingbird algorithm will enable computers to read: “we want [them] to read everything on the web and every page of every book, then be able to engage an intelligent dialogue with the user to be able to answer their questions”. kimzey (in wellons 2014) predicts that personalised content, supported by “extremely speedy mobile wireless broadband built into even the most affordable devices”, will become the norm to manage the huge amounts of data available. by adding emotional features to these intelligent devices, the next step will be the development of web 5.0. although web 5.0 (the “emotional web”) is still many years away, signals are that web 5.0 will be about emotional and intellectual interaction between humans and computers with computers able to communicate with humans like humans communicate with each other (benito-osorio et al. 2013: 286). careful comparison of the main aspects of the definitions of social media and the features of each of the tools or applications focused on in the 220 articles analysed and those discussed above, reveals a list of features of social media which can be grouped into six categories: ■ the technology and resources needed to use social media; ■ the way social media allows information processing and knowledge creation; ■ the characteristics of social media content; ■ the ways of communication possible via social media; ■ aspects of the communication process possible via social media; and ■ the variety of content that can be shared using social media applications. these features of social media are summarised in figure 1. figure 1 shows that social media enables users to participate in crowd-sourced, open projects through the sharing and processing of information that constitute online content and allow knowledge creation. social media allows online communities of interests to form and motivates social interaction and collaboration. social media can meet business and educational needs, but also the needs of the individual who wants to share a wide assortment of information with family and friends, or form new friendships and build new relationships. by extending the key features of social media (figure 1) with the characteristics of the social media tools and applications discussed above, enhanced by the features of new and future technology, a profile of social media as a tool of cmc can be compiled. the profile is presented in figure 2. 189188 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features figure 1: features of social media features of social media 1. social media depends upon: telecommunication networks; computer hardware; computer and network software; interactive web applications; high-speed internet connections; broadband access; links between websites; user-centric infrastructure; mobile tools and devices. 2. social media allows knowledge creation: 3. social media contect is/can be: • access to digital information • bookmark, tag web sites • classification of knowledge • contribute to existing information • create knowledge • create folksonomic meta-data • disseminate, exchange information • download information • produce and process information • remix, rework, adapt data • storing of data and information • asynchronous • business-centred • crowd-sourced • educational • informal • personalised • professional • synchronous • user-centred • user-controlled • user-generated 4. social media enables effective communication: 5. social media encourages • anonymous participation • communities of interest • focused conversations • instantaneous communication • online discussions and conferences • personal audience selection • personalised websites • rss feeds • social networking • two-way interaction • active participation • collaboration • connectivity • engagement • explorations/experimentation • feedback • networking • openness • social interaction • communication 6. social media can share: articles; audio content; comments; digital material; documents; games; graphics; messages; metadata; news; photos; pictures; podcasts; sounds clips; text updates; video content; visual content; web links, etc. (source: coetzee 2014) the profile shows that users of web 2.0 technologies prefer mobile, wearable and affordable technology with fast access to the internet and user-centric infrastructures. social media applications must support users in their search for applicable information and must allow users to create or edit online content in order to create new 191190 mercia coetzee, annette wilkinson & daleen krige knowledge according to their personal or professional needs. users are looking for social interaction with people of similar interests and they want communication that encourages interaction, participation, engagement and openness. users do not only want instantaneous access to all forms of content, but they also want to share a wide variety of content with others. figure 2: profile of social media as a tool of cmc profile of social media as tools of cmc computer hardware users need computers, phones, tablets, or other mobile, personalised, wearable and affordable tools and devices to access data and participate on social media. computer and network software social media runs on telecommunication networks, interactive web applications, highspeed internet connections, broadband access, user-centrific infrastructure. access to information social media must allow users to produce and edit information, find information easily, and to access, download, disseminate, exchange and store information. create knowledge users want to bookmark and tag information to create folksonomic metadata, and to classify, remix, rework and adapt data in order to create knowledge. communication users want snss with communities of interests where they can select the audience with whom to have conversations, online discussions or conferences. characteristics of the communication process social media must allow active participation, social interaction, instantaneous communication, engagement, anonymity, collaboration, feedback, openness. content that can be shared articles, audio clips, comments, documents, games, graphics, messages, news, photos, pictures, podcasts, text updates, video clips, movies, web links, etc. (source: coetzee 2014) the profile shows that users of web 2.0 technologies prefer mobile, wearable and affordable technology with fast access to the internet and user-centric infrastructures. social media applications must support users in their search for applicable information and must allow users to create or edit online content in order to create new knowledge according to their personal or professional needs. users are looking for social interaction with people of similar interests and they want communication that encourages interaction, participation, engagement and openness. users do not only want instantaneous access to all forms of content, but they also want to share a wide variety of content with others. 191190 mapping the social media landscape: a profile of tools, applications and key features the profile of social media as tool of cmc presented in figure 2 above summarises those key features of social media which must be considered when utilising social media in any context, including business, education, organisational, private or social. conclusion it is nearly impossible to predict what the future of social media will entail. by the time this article about social media is published, the information may already be outdated. revolutionary changes are happening every day, while the influence of social media on human communication is accelerating to an unknown level. the “map” provided in this article may therefore also be antiquated within a couple of years. the evolutionary nature of computer-mediated communication will continuously demand new editions of records of (then) current tools and applications. the profile, delineating the key features of social media communication, may however present more stable contours which may need extension rather than major change from time to time. as in the original study, a profile like this can therefore serve as a theoretical point of departure (or social media “lens”) through which applicable theory could be illuminated and narrowed down to a conceptual framework that directs any study in which the focus centres on social media tools and applications. references aghaei, s., nematbakhsh, m.a. & farsani, h.k. 2012. evolution of the world wide web: from web 1.0 to web 4.0. international journal of web & semantic technology (ijwest) 3(1): 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.5121/ijwest.2012.3101 alexa. 2014. the top 500 sites on the web. 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[online]. available at: http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/01/whatsapp-passes-1-billion-monthly-activeusers/ [accessed on 8 may 2016]. 109108 109108 sharing individual knowledge collectively: a theoretical framework for emerging knowledge organisations abstract scant attention has been paid to the role of individual employees in the knowledge management discourse, even though knowledge is recognised to be rooted in the individual. where organisational theorists believe that the collective knowledge of individuals needs to be managed, it is only possible if knowledge leaders emerge as change agents to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. hence an excessive focus in the knowledge management literature recently acknowledged the appropriation of individual knowledge through participation as distinct from knowledge practice focusing on managers or leaders who choose how to manage knowledge. the commonality of most recent research indicates an emphasised focus on knowledge management and knowledge leaders to implement strategic integrated communication to assist with the creation of knowledge organisations. where knowledge management focuses on human capital and knowledge based theory, strategic integrated communication emphasises that knowledge leaders should acknowledge the premises of the strategic intent of knowledge organisations through the management of information, innovation, creativity, cultural phenomena, participation and inputs from the environment based on trust, loyalty, integrity and credibility. this forms the basis to address the research problem that, despite the tremendous research opportunities to examine these constructs, limited research has been conducted from evolving organisational and knowledge leadership perspectives. keywords: knowledge management; change agents; organisational leadership; strategic integrated communication introduction according to rechberg and syed (2014), the term knowledge management is seen as an organisational activity that leads to success and is a stimulus for debate and subject to a wide range of interpretations. although research has been conducted on knowledge management for the last 20 years, it was only in the early 2000s that the focus shifted from the learning organisation initiative to the realisation of the importance of the use of knowledge management as an innovative tool for leadership and change. this was echoed by various researchers like baines (1997), bollinger and smith (2001) prof. rachel barker department of communication science, unisa, pretoria barker@unisa.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.8 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 108-124 © uv/ufs mailto:barker@unisa.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.8 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.8 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.8 109108 sharing individual knowledge collectively 109108 and scharmer (2001) who suggested that in learning organisations, leaders were responsible for learning at an individual and organisational level through the creation of a culture that respects knowledge, reinforcing its sharing to retain people and to build loyalty to the organisation through training, empowerment, to name a few, and to create knowledge infrastructures. despite this realisation, research conducted by johnson (2002), politis (2001) and bryant (2003) found that although leaders paid attention to the learning organisation initiative, it was not implemented in organisations. the most significant idea based on their research is the realisation that knowledge management should be applied to the entire organisation from top to bottom to ensure that this learning takes place through knowledge creation, codification, storing and sharing. the need for further research between leadership, knowledge management and change in the organisation, society and environment, as pointed out by bryant (2003), provides impetus to the identified gap in existing literature that a lack of studies exist to investigate the relationship between the use of knowledge management and strategic integrated communication by knowledge leaders during organisational change and transformation to create knowledge organisations. one example in support of this gap is bryant (2003: 41) who said, “researchers may want to explore the link between transformational leadership and managing knowledge at the individual and group levels”. furthermore, in an empirical study conducted by crawford (2005: 9) he came to the following conclusion: “given the substantial relationship between innovation and transformational leadership it seems deserving of further investigation”. based on recommendations made by rusly, corner and sun (2012: 349) that “further analysis of knowledge management implementation from a change perspective could possibly offer new insights and explanations regarding the increasing number of knowledge management failures”, this study sets out to address this gap and develop a theoretical framework for the use of knowledge management by knowledge leaders during change and transformation to create what is referred to as knowledge organisations. according to mishra and bhaskar (2011), successful organisations are “those that are better at sharing knowledge among individuals”. these statements provided impetus for the research problem that a lack of studies exist to investigate the relationship between individual and collective knowledge to create knowledge organisations. this study is exploratory in nature and seeks to address this gap and to enhance the field’s discussion with two main objectives: to critically review existing literature based on an interpretivist approach as research methodology; and to propose a theoretical framework to indicate the interrelatedness of these concepts. according to bryman and bell (2016), interpretivism stems from an epistemological position and refers to the critical application of analyses of various academic traditions to study the social world. the main findings will make recommendations for future research and/or perspectives which need to be considered by knowledge organisations to ensure long-term beneficial relationships with all stakeholders. the new proposed theoretical perspective presented emerged as a response to the need to realise the importance of knowledge creation and sharing by knowledge leaders in emerging knowledge organisations. the focus is hence on the sharing of individual 111110 rachel barker (tacit) knowledge to create collective (explicit) knowledge which can be used to the benefit of all. the article is structured as follows: individual and collective knowledge; approaches to change and transformation; strategic integrated communication; knowledge management; knowledge leadership; a theoretical framework for knowledge organisations; limitations and future research; and conclusion. individual and collective knowledge individual knowledge and identity are flexible and can change according to abilities, willingness and interest to participate (nonaka 2008). the degree of individual knowledge is personal and based on the individual’s willingness to acquire and/or share this knowledge which is difficult to manage (rechberg & syed 2014). individual sense-making refers to the relationship between the signifier (norm) and the signified (sens) (saussure 1983) and the meaning created (pratt 2014). this means that individuals should participate in the knowledge creation and sharing process in such a way that they interpret the world as their own understanding to ensure meaning is created to others. three types of individual (tacit) knowledge are prevalent in the literature, as indicated in figure 1: figure 1: types of individual knowledge practical knowledge individual knowledge emotional knowledge situational knowledge 111110 sharing individual knowledge collectively practical knowledge, or skilful knowing, is a skill not known and refers to concrete and context specific doing highly tacit and embodied which can be shared by clues and tools that individuals themselves do not observe (polanyi 1998). situational knowledge is closely related to heidegger’s (1962) concept of dasein or being-inthe-world, which means the individual needs to be physically present and willing and able to participate in the situational space to create and/or share this knowledge. emotional knowledge is gained through emotional intelligence, the individuals “gut feeling” which influences the understanding and again their willingness to participate in the knowledge management practices. the extent to which individuals participate will determine the quality and amount of knowledge gained, created and shared. collective knowledge is rooted in the individual’s willingness to participate in knowledge management to add value to the organisation. bhatt (2001: 70) defines organisational or collective knowledge as the “interactions between technologies, techniques and people” and felin and hesterly (2007: 200) that a mutual dependence or amalgamation between organisational and individual knowledge exists where “the individual and collective do not exist as a real, separate entity”. rechberg and syed (2014: 436) refer to it as “together” rather than “either” thinking where everything is part of the whole or system, which nonaka and takeuchi (1995) refer to as the “collective self”. approaches to change and transformation firstly, change processes involve three phases: preparation or planning for change, adoption to change, and the internalisation of change by embedding new modifications or accepting the need to adapt to change to the benefit of the organisation. according to rusly et al. (2012), beliefs on change should evolve from the personal change to collective attitudes or intentions of all members of an organisation. in the context of this article, the definition of change proposed by kanter, stein and jick (1992) has been adopted: “the shift in behavior of the whole organization to one degree or another”. according to crawford (2005: 6), “nearly every modern organization is confronting the change in information systems, from ledger cards to a digital area”, which he refers to as the trend towards “informatics”, which arguably affects all aspects of the organisation, including leadership, transformation and knowledge management. change occurs at two distinctive levels: individual and organisational (kim 1998), of which the key elements are presented in figure 2. in terms of change management, the traditional approaches like the action research model (systematic analysis of change), the three-step change model (unfreezing, moving and refreezing), and the phases of planned change approach (od, which focus on processes and participation) have been criticised by authors like overman (1996) and jaatinen (2002). according to them, these approaches are too rigid, that phases or steps are not chronologically ordered because of changes in the environment, that incremental and isolated changes rather than radical transformation are addressed, that they over rely on a management approach to reduce conflict, create order, control chaos and simplify the complexities in the turbulent environment and that it will not work in all organisations. furthermore, they argued that the underlying viewpoint is that information is power which needs to be controlled, hence the need for structures. 113112 rachel barker it is therefore argued that although these approaches were effective for many decades, the introduction of new technology, overload systems, better-informed employees and worldwide access to new approaches conflict or crisis usually resulted from poor planning and control. in more recent approaches like chaos theory (which touches on participatory nature to change management), complexity theory (rooted in systems theory), and the contingency approach (role of external environment to develop congruence), the focus shifts to dynamic environments moving away from planned change and organisational development to the management of change and transformation at a strategic organisational level. this supports the underlying purpose of this article, which sets out to emphasise the need for strategic integrated communication with the emphasis on true and interactive participation and a holistic perspective where all systems and subsystems are integrated to create shared ownership and commitment (barker 2013). jaatinen (2002) made convincing arguments for the importance of interdependence, participation and relationship building in terms of new approaches to change management. hence, it is posited that the process of the system becomes important where all the subsystems should participate to add to the richness of information, knowledge creation, codification and storing, shared responsibility, trust, transparency, connectivity, creativity and relationship building. this argument is supported by figure 2: change at individual and organisational levels individual level • motivation • competence • personality attributes • psychological dimension • emotional dimension (affective/cognitive) organisational level • resources • culture • climate • technology • structural dimension 113112 sharing individual knowledge collectively authors like grunig and hung (2000), who indicate the importance of the concepts of control mutuality, joint acceptance of degrees of symmetry, trust and satisfaction with the relationship to communication management and relationship building. today most organisations tend to follow a combination of the planned and emergent approaches to change management usually based on their specific strategic goals and objectives. on the other hand, transformation is seen as the step-by-step process of restructuring an existing organisation by removing what does not work, keeping what does and implementing new systems, processes, infrastructure and cultural values where needed (head 1997). this ultimately needs resources, structural and cultural processes aligned with the strategic intent of the organisation which could arguably be possible through knowledge management and strategic integrated communication. hence, transformation is seen more than the flow and management of information, but also includes connectivity, creativity, innovation and participation by all to ensure relationship building. strategic integrated communication this study reflects on integrative models which stress the need to consider interrelations amongst contexts and theories. the definition proposed by barker (2013) for strategic integrated communication has been adapted for the purpose of this article: the process of strategically managing mutually beneficial organisational and stakeholder relationships where the planning thereof recognises the added value of a strategic integrated communication approach through the integration of all functions. this process should be information driven, participative, innovative, interactive, and focus on consistency in brand, messages, knowledge creation and sharing, processes, culture and the strategic intent of the organisation. barker (2013) also posits that by using the cliché of the current “rapid changes in the environment and field of communication”, it is probably essential to reconsider, re-examine and review the current situation in the field. in the past the traditional media-centric approach of purchasing space and filling the space did not work. today the “creative idea” and “creative integration” to solve actual organisational problems becomes key which emphasises the need to refocus on the importance of a strategic integrated communication approach with creative, innovative and motivational appeal to ensure knowledge creation and sharing takes place. at this point the importance of knowledge leaders makes business sense and becomes important to ensure a holistic and integrated approach is followed with interactive engagement and participation with stakeholders to the benefit of the organisation. the importance of this argument is underlined by mårtensson (2000) who argues that communication is a missing link in strategic management and leadership approaches. knowledge management although numerous research studies have been conducted on knowledge management during the last 20 years, it was only in the late 1990s that the importance thereof in learning organisations were highlighted by baines (1997) who suggested that 115114 rachel barker leaders were responsible for learning, both personally and organisationally. learning organisations are skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and to modify behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights (garvin 1985). senge (1990), for example, argued that organisations need to be capable of learning in order to adjust to changes and expand their capacity continuously through innovation. in order to do this, knowledge management is usually used in learning organisations; hence, according to singh (2008: 5), knowledge management and learning go hand-in-hand in organisations. where learning organisations present a paradigm shift from the more traditional organisation to new perspectives of how organisations should function, how they should be managed and how they should cope with changes (hitt 1996), more recent approaches focus on emerging “knowledge organisations”. this set the scene for the 2000s where the focus shifted from the learning organisation to the realisation of the importance of knowledge management as an evolutionary step in the development of knowledge leaders and the need for innovation. for example, crawford (2005: 13) argues that innovation, as a personal construct, may be manifested outward through knowledge management behaviour. various authors contributed to provide a substantial theoretical basis for knowledge management and leadership. one such an example is a substantial research study conducted by politis (2001) who found that self-management, transformational and transactional leadership styles are related to dimensions of knowledge acquisition, emphasising the need for participative collaborative leadership in the face of transition to the knowledge society. in addition, rusly et al. (2012: 259) argued that substantial investment in technological infrastructure and processes does not always guarantee successful knowledge management; rather it is claimed that the main pillar of achievements rests on employees’ willingness and commitment to participate in the initiatives. another example is from crawford (2005) who established in his research findings that transformational leaders were significantly more innovative, which is often associated with characteristics of knowledge leaders, especially their ability to create and manage information and knowledge. however, according to singh (2008), information and knowledge are two different entities where information should only be seen as a building block for knowledge which can in turn be used to create wisdom in organisational lives. the findings in the study by crawford (2005: 14) provided evidence of a growing interest in the relationship between the ‘high touch’ nature of leadership and the ‘high tech’ aspect of the workplace … and demonstrated the link between person-centered transformational leadership and some technical construct, in this case knowledge management. this is emphasised by oluikpe (2015) who posited that the importance of knowledge management in the organisation should include both the capabilities to enable the capture and leverage of intellectual capital and the deployment of this capital to the advantage of the organisation. according to mårtensson (2000), the term “intellectual capital” is the preferred umbrella term because it refers to the possession of knowledge, applied experience, stakeholder relationships and professional skills, 115114 sharing individual knowledge collectively which links to strategy to create value to the organisation. based on the conceptual roots of intellectual capital identified by edvinsson, roos, roos and dragonetti (1997), the strategic contribution of knowledge is based on the way in which knowledge is created or developed as well as the way it is leveraged into value. in spite of this realisation, knowledge creation and development is mostly examined from the learning organisation perspective; whereas it is argued that in order to create this value, it should also focus on “knowledge sharing” to enhance the value, and ultimately gives an organisation a sustainable competitive advantage. one major issue, which has hardly been dealt with, is the integration of knowledge from both perspectives where the focus shifts from individual perspectives to an emphasis on knowledge residing within the organisation as a whole, which is then collective knowledge. for the purpose of this study, intellectual capital is linked to both strategic integrated communication, human and monetary sources needed for the processes and structures in the organisation and knowledge-based resources. this includes the management of leadership styles, technology, stakeholder relationships, innovation, creativity, participation, strategic intent and corporate culture of the organisation. the importance of creativity, innovation, participation and culture are according to chase (1998) the heart of creating successful knowledge organisations. based on these arguments and because knowledge management is a well-established phenomenon in various interdisciplinary fields today with increased application to the organisation and leadership perspectives, the theoretical basis chosen for this article is knowledge management. it is argued that knowledge management should be used by what is referred to as “knowledge leaders” in emerging “knowledge organisations” and be linked to other theoretical traditions in social sciences. in terms of the theoretical constructs, knowledge management includes three main components: technological (systems), communication (strategic integrated communication) and human (stakeholders), which are presented in figure 3 (adapted from barker 2008). according to bo (2013: 4), “a knowledge-based view proposes that ‘knowledge’ is the strategically important resource of a firm [knowledge organisation]”, which means that individuals should share and put information into action that strives to improve organisational performance. ardichvili, page and wentling (2003) re-emphasise the importance of the human component of knowledge management, arguing that one of the crucial aspects to determine organisational success is motivated by active participating members of the organisation in all activities. although most traditional approaches to knowledge management assumed this knowledge to be relatively simple, more recent approaches realise that knowledge is in fact complex, factual, conceptual and procedural. according to nonaka and takeuchi (1995), leading researchers in this field, the process of knowledge management is based on the ability of all members of the organisation to add value to the [strategic] integrated communication business processes through the creation, communication, codification and coordination of both tacit and explicit knowledge storing. tacit knowledge refers to “informal cognitive/mental and technical/ concrete know-how and skills which are personal, context-specific and difficult to 117116 rachel barker formalise or articulate because they are stored within the individual” (van dyk, greeff & barker 2015: 124). bollinger and smith (2001: 46) see it as the “unarticulated knowledge that is in a person’s head that is often difficult to describe and transfer”, which is arguably the key characteristic of emerging knowledge organisations. because the focus of existing research is also on knowledge creation, codification and storing to the benefit of the organisation, explicit knowledge refers to more formal and tangible, observable, precise and formally articulated and embedded in tools, processes and rules, which are transferable through written documents (nonaka 2005). for the purpose of this article and based on the argument that most existing research focuses on knowledge creation and storing, and less on knowledge sharing (milne 2007), this concept has been included as a focus area for this study. where individual knowledge subsides within the human minds in terms of innovation, creativity, participation, skills and their adaptability to change during transformation, to name a few, collective knowledge is formed through unique patterns of interactions, technologies, communication and humans which create and shape an unique organisational culture (bhatt 2001). these are indeed the profound components or knowledge management identified earlier. to build a knowledge culture in a dynamic organisation, it is argued that these emerging knowledge organisations should transform, develop and nurture systems and processes to ensure knowledge creation, storing, codification and sharing in a meaningful way to expand the “individual knowledge” (implicit) to “collective knowledge” (explicit). this knowledge should then be interpreted and applied or used to ensure learning is created to clarify and adapt the strategic vision of the organisation during change. this viewpoint is substantiated by rusly et al. (2012: 337), who said that it “represents a process of transforming an individual’s justified beliefs to a higher level to form an organisational belief system, which enhances the individual-possessed knowledge”. figure 3: components of knowledge management technological component (systems) infrastructure culture interactivity human component (stakeholders) needs-driven trust/commitment online relationships communication component (strategic integrated communication) socialisation externalisation combination internalisation 117116 sharing individual knowledge collectively one of the key discourses of the knowledge management perspective is hence the focus on explicit and implicit knowledge, but according to nonaka and takeuchi (1995) also include embodied, tacit and narrative knowledge and the “absent presence” of the body as an essential part of everyday communication because it allows for the creation and sharing of knowledge (barker 2013). despite the growing interest in knowledge management, it has been critiqued by researchers like andreeva and kianto (2012) for being too optimistic, which promises more than what it can deliver and that it is difficult to manage knowledge. furthermore, locating knowledge might also be difficult. however, massingham (2014) addressed these concerns in an empirical study using action research from a critical systems perspective and provided empirical evidence that knowledge management can be used to manage knowledge resources (strategic integrated communication, human, monetary and information-based). it can also be used during organisational change in terms of performance, strategic alignment, knowledge retention to enhance productivity and knowledge creation and sharing to improve problem-solving, but massingham (2014) agreed that it is difficult to implement. from a knowledge management viewpoint, networks of information and knowledge become key for organisations to be able to react to constant influences and changes in the environment, which necessitates ever-increasing networks and relationships with outside systems. this arguably creates “borderless aggregates” where an aggregate is seen as the classification of individuals within a community based on certain characteristics that they possess in common and who affect the organisation in some or other way. knowledge leadership since it was argued that emerging knowledge organisations are associated with adaptive approaches, the most prominent leadership theory used in the literature is usually the transformational approach. transformational leadership emerged in the 1980s and differentiates between four important skills: self-awareness (reading one’s own emotions and recognising their impact, knowing one’s strengths and weakness, self-worth and capabilities); self-management (emotional self-control, transparency, adaptability, initiative and optimism); social awareness (empathy, service and organisational awareness of decisions and politics at various levels); and relationship management (inspirational to others, influencing and developing others, act as change agent or catalyst, managing conflict, building bonds and collaborative teamwork) (van dyk et al. 2015). burnes (1978: 20) first defined transformational leadership as a process in which “leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of mortality and motivation”, where the process of transformation is based on empathy, understanding, insight and consideration; not manipulation, power or coercion. according to crawford (2005: 8), “few researchers address the link between information technology and leadership, and even fewer address the relations between transformational leadership and knowledge management”. during the change process, denrell (2005) concluded that leaders should comply with the following: empower individuals (like employees) to respond creatively; adopt 119118 rachel barker personal and active attitudes towards individual and organisational goals to contribute to resonant managerial (leadership) practices; be selfand socially aware (and therefore be able to recognise, understand and react empathetically to his or her own and others’ emotions and goals); be equipped with skills such as selfand relationship management (which are characterised by transparency, adaptability, collaboration and inspiration); be associated with a supportive organisational climate due to a constructive organisational culture that could be related to leadership practices; and their role in the change process is to inspire people. this is in contrast to the traditional managerial approaches which focus mainly on rationality and control to maintain organisational goals, resources, structures and the people involved with these. based on this, singh (2008: 6) highlighted the need for knowledge leadership, which she argues should be evident throughout the organisation and operate on all hierarchical levels from top to bottom. the role of these knowledge leaders is to provide strategic visions, motivate others, effectively communicate, act as a change agent, coach other around, model good practices and carry out the knowledge agenda … knowledge leaders should religiously explain the goals of knowledge management to all concerned (ibid.). table 1: key thrusts of new knowledge leaders key thrusts ■ combine aspects of transformative and transactional leadership styles ■ act as role models and change agents by encouraging learning through and stimulate them intellectually, institutionalise learning through the provision of incentives and training, foster a pro-learning culture through cross-functional and -discipline engagement ■ intensify explorative initiatives by seeking to create new knowledge and meaning ■ encourage the willingness for exploitation practices which aim to leverage existing knowledge through storage, transfer, sharing and application ■ have a direct effect on the application of knowledge through knowledge sharing based on strategic integrated communication and the strategic intent of the organisation ■ provide strategic visions, motivate others, communicate effectively, model good practices and carry out the knowledge agenda through interdependent relationships ■ religiously explain the goals of knowledge management to all concerned through interaction, vision, creativity, innovation and empowerment to create meaning because knowledge management was presented as the theoretical foundation for this study, specifically the importance and role of change agents or experts which can manage all information at all levels (individual and organisational), the term knowledge leaders has been adopted and highlighted in the theoretical framework. 119118 sharing individual knowledge collectively theoretical framework based on the above discussions, the author constructed a new theoretical framework which focuses on the relationship between the key constructs, which is presented in figure 4. figure 4: theoretical framework for sharing individual knowledge collectively in emerging knowledge organisations outside systems borderless aggregates innovation creativity s tru ct ur al p ar tic ip ar io n c on ne ct iv ity b eh av io ra l technical component knowledge leaders knowledge organisations communication component human component change transformation transformation change systems • databases • infrastructures • subsystems • processes • interactivity • intellectual capital • knowledge storing strategic integrated communication • knowledge creation, codification & sharing • information-based • meaning-based • strategic intent • holistic stakeholders • relationship building • trust • satisfaction • transparency • culture-based • engagement k n o w le d g e m a n a g e m e n t individual level organisational level change agents • skills • decision making • shared responsibility • relationship management • stewardship • learning culture • strategic vision • knowledge integration • implicit & explicit knowledge • motivation (reward system) • performance measures • empowerment • cultural change • knowledege application from figure 4 it is deduced that knowledge management allows for organisational strategies based on structural elements. these include intellectual capital, systems, processes and knowledge codification and storing in databases (technical component), connectivity through strategic integrated communication which is knowledgeinformation-meaning-based (communication component) and focused on behavioural aspects to ensure relationship building which should be culture-based to obtain trust, satisfaction, transparency and engagement by all (human component). it is argued that if tacit knowledge is made explicit, individual knowledge can be transferred, 121120 rachel barker shared and used at all organisational levels to create collective knowledge. due to the difficulty to transfer tacit and individually-owned knowledge to explicit and collective knowledge, the major contribution is that if knowledge leaders as change agents apply knowledge management it will lead to greater possibilities to manage and control this knowledge effectively, especially during change and transformation. in figure 4 it is hence posited that through the use of knowledge management, knowledge leaders can be used as change agents because it can either be described as an operational tool or a strategic tool. from a strategic perspective, knowledge management is firstly about the acquisition of information; secondly about the codification and storage of this information and knowledge in various databases which can be used for data-mining; thirdly to make the information available and accessible to all hierarchical levels in the organisation; and lastly, that this information should be shared and used through sharing, socialising, externalisation and exchange of information. in order to do this, participation becomes a key element to ensure the three components of knowledge management (technical, communication and human) are implemented through connectivity, structural and behavioural constructs. this will lead to creativity and innovation which are key elements for emerging knowledge organisations. it is further argued that if knowledge management is implemented in the organisation during change and transformation, knowledge leaders will emerge as change agents (or experts) with the necessary skills to enhance decision-making, shared responsibility, relationship management and stewardship at all levels of the organisation (from individual to organisational levels). this emphasises the need for knowledge leaders to have a sound understanding of people, processes, systems, strategic visions, and more aspects of the organisation. in order to do so, these knowledge leaders should rely on strategic integrated communication to fulfil the roles of both collaborator and catalyst, in other words, change agents. hence it is argued that if these change agents or knowledge leaders respond to changes in the outside systems and borderless aggregates during transformation, knowledge organisations could be created. these knowledge organisations will then create a learning culture in line with the strategic vision through integration of both individual (implicit) and collective (explicit) knowledge. reward systems and performance measures therefore become important to ensure motivation takes place to empower individuals to share knowledge which can be used do ultimately lead to cultural change. lastly, it is argued that in the long-term this process will enhance the value of knowledge organisations, specifically in terms of its culture, knowledge creation and sharing to the benefit of all. limitations and future research this research has limitations in its interpretations which are based on an exploratory study of existing literature, the author’s knowledge and elucidations thereof, and the introduction of alternative viewpoints which indicate the importance of other avenues for further research. more rigorous research could be conducted, especially to refine and test these theoretical viewpoints in practice through the development of a 121120 sharing individual knowledge collectively measuring instrument for knowledge management, which definitely sets the scene for envisaged future research. despite concerns on the use of knowledge management by knowledge leaders in emerging knowledge organisations, it is argued that the proposed theoretical framework is a good starting point to explain the knowledgeindividual-collective-relationship and could be a benchmark for more general studies. conclusion grounded in a competence-based literature review of existing perspectives, and in line with the main objectives, this article identified the most critical theoretical factors which provided impetus to the core concepts of this study. in line with the main goal of the article to examine how changes in the organisational environment can be managed, it was argued that knowledge management can present knowledge leaders the opportunity to implement strategic integrated communication to ensure knowledge creation and sharing. this will lead to sustainable relationship management which encourages the use of relationship-orientated systems and processes through a holistic approach. moreover, the theoretical framework highlighted that knowledge leaders should acknowledge the strategic intent and vision of these emerging knowledge organisations. these integrations were theoretically justified and compatible with existing viewpoints, but probably went one step further by contextualising it in a comprehensive theoretical framework. the challenge for knowledge leaders is to develop an organisational culture conducive to the sharing of knowledge and where learning becomes the norm because knowledge is continuously created and re-defined which makes it difficult to capture, control, organise and coordinate (alvessen 2001). while it is realised that it might be a little problematic to implement, and that it is not clear which elements of knowledge can be managed, it is argued that if knowledge management is used by knowledge leaders as change agent, it can encourage and support a range of positive outcomes in the dynamic changing environment and transformations of organisations. however, research has yet to reveal whether it is indeed implementable because research-based evidence is needed to provide the expected outcomes and the results of the sharing of individual knowledge to create collective knowledge. in spite of this, the importance of this article is re-emphasised by the growing interest in knowledge management, which has according to oluikpe (2015: 351), “moved the topic from a relatively new discipline to an important strategic source for competiveness”. references alvesson, m. 2001. knowledge work: ambiguity, image and identity. human relations 54(7): 863-886. 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investigation lies in its consideration of the value of the unstable connotative meanings of the visual signs of modern advertising communication. semiotics is touched upon as the broad theoretical background to the study. thereafter, the discussion moves to the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons in modern print advertising in south africa to ensure audience involvement in the construction of a plausible and implied marketing message. a typical example from south african print media (magazines) in each semiotic category (index, icon and symbol) are analysed to illustrate the role of the target audience as co-creator of the implied marketing message. the data illustrates that the meaning of these signs in print advertising may be unstable/vague even though a specific marketing message was intended. the analysis of these visual signs as impulse to support audience involvement is broadly based on leeuwen and jewitt’s (2001) visual analytical method and focuses on the characteristics of creativity by authors stuhlfaut and yoo (2013) and koslow (2015). keywords: marketing communication; visual communication; creativity in advertising; index; icon; symbol; unstable meaning and target audience attention; implied marketing message introduction communication in advertising constitutes a unique genre with a distinct set of characteristics. mcquarrie (2008: 110) maintains that advertisements use visual-based signs more than lexical signs. in line with this, larsen (2008: 69) shows that images form a more prominent component in the advertising portion of magazines. virtually, any perusal of advertisements will confirm that the space devoted to images generally dominates the space devoted to words. according to buchanan-oliver and bulmer (2006: 55), visual communication affects linguistic communication, and prof. angelique van niekerk department of afrikaans and dutch, french and german, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (vnieka@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.7 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 108-123 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:vnieka@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.7 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 109 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons advertisements use persuasive messages that consist of both visual and lexical signs. van enschot et al.’s (2008: 35) study of the rhetoric of advertisements emphasises that, rather than expressing something directly and literally, advertisers have a more aesthetic approach, usually by means of visual communication. the audience is required to become actively involved in order to co-create meaning on a connotative level. the target market thus acts as co-creators of the implied marketing message, as can be seen in the following examples from the bigger data set that this study is based on: an american swiss jewellery advertisement portrays different christmas gift options, such as a cross on a necklace. the heading reads, “be a wise man this christmas and give her gold”. a lipton iced tea advertisement shows a visual image of only a can of lipton iced tea, covered in skimpy women’s underwear. the text states, “the forbidden fruit”. the use of a cross to signify religion, or christianity to signify the church, is well known, but the use of skimpy women’s underwear to signify seduction in an advertisement for iced tea is a new sign. it has been used before in a mccain’s chips advertisement with the heading: “now there is one less thing to feel guilty about”. the meaning convention for these newer signs is thus not purely conventional and the marketing message is the result of shared meaning between the advertiser and target audience. skimpy underwear could be a sign of seduction, or the perfect body, or health and fitness, depending on the intended meaning shared between the brand owner/advertiser and the target audience. because of the innovative style of advertising communication, creativity is the impulse behind the creation of new signs (lexical and visual) and new connotative meanings of existing signs. aims and objectives this article examines the structural expression and nature of semiotic signs in print advertising communication and the enhanced involvement required by the target audience to make sense of the (connotative) meaning of visual sign types (index, icon and symbol) in modern advertising communication in order to construct a plausible implied marketing message. data and methodology the data came primarily from afrikaans and english magazines issued between january 2010 and december 2017. the afrikaans data included in this article was selected from three magazines, namely huisgenoot, sarie and weg, while the english data was drawn from the following magazines: you, fairlady, go and get it (bilingual). this covers a family magazine, a magazine with female content, and a magazine focused on traveling. the examples were selected from a much bigger pool of data gathered as part of an ongoing copy-writing project at the university of the free state. the data selected supports the elements of creativity identified by stuhlfaut and yoo (2013: 82-84). the data was selected arbitrarily from the bigger pool of data as typical examples of the connotative meaning of indexical signs, icons and symbols, which are used in advertisements. a qualitative approach was used for this study in order to identify unstable meanings of creative signs in advertising communication and still arrive at an intended plausible 110 van niekerk marketing message. the analyses were based largely on leeuwen and jewitt’s (2001) visual analytical method. first, the advertisements from the bigger (original) data set were placed into one of three categories based on the literature study, namely indexical signs, icons and symbols. during the second phase of analysis, the different denotative meaning options for the classified signs were listed. table 1 serves only as an example of phase two of the analysis. in the third phase of the qualitative analysis, the implied (and intended) meaning of the signs was identified based on the expected positive message about the brand. communicating something positive about the brand or about the target audience (supporters of the brand) is to be expected within the genre qualities of advertising (myers 1994). the implied marketing message in the analysis was formulated by taking into account the expected and plausible connotative meaning of the signs (even out of the context of the advertisement). theoretical point of departure this article entails a qualitative analysis of the connotative meaning imbedded in visual signs in addvertising in order to enhance target audience involvement. thus, the target audience has to be involved in constructing the implied marketing message. semiology is a diverse system of signs and includes much more than only icons, indexical signs and symbols, which is the focus of this study. barthes (1972: 29) stresses the fact that the concept (sign, icon, index) presented is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality, and in this case the reality of the advertised brand, “… it is a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation, whose unity and coherence are above all due to its function”. the function of the above-mentioned sign types to sell and activate specific associations to convey the implied marketing message was the focus of the analysis. advertising has always been known for its use of visual signs employing words and pictures. the negotiated meaning of these lexical and visual signs represent worldviews and belief structures and influence the way the intended target audience relates to their world (herbst 2005: 13). semetsky (2007: 179) maintains that signs are polysemic in character. for example, the word “church” is polysemic: the “church” came out late (referring to a long service); the “church” shows great growth (referring to an increase in membership); the “church” has been enlarged by an extra hall (referring to the building) (myers 1994: 66). ferdinand de saussure (1966), the father of semiotics, distinguishes between the concept and the sound-image of a word. he focuses on the lexical sign, which is the smallest unit of meaning. the lexical sign is a dual unit of form and concept that are coupled in the brain. thus, the linguistic sign is arbitrary and conventional. this means that there is no innate relationship between the linguistic sign and the matter to which it refers. for example, there is no relationship between the word “cat” and the four-legged animal that the word denotes. the basic linguistic sign is transferred from one speech community to the next. hence, the linguistic sign has to be learned and captured in the memory: this makes it conventional (saussure 1966: 44-45). 111 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons the two elements are linked and one element (the concept) evokes the other (the acoustic image). accordingly, a word and its meaning are separated (ibid.). the signified refers to the meaning dictated by cultural convention. this means that the signified is a cognitive concept (ibid.). in his research on visual literacy, moriarty (1994: 11) avers that this tripartition provides a broader field for visual analysis. peirce’s tripartition consists of sign systems that go beyond language (ibid.). the current investigation and data confirms peirce’s tripartition (indexical signs, icons and symbols) within sign systems. as people use signs to communicate, semiotics may be used as a metalanguage to describe human intention. it has already been mentioned that semiotics consists of more than the science of linguistics: semiotics includes innate (justified) and contrived (unjustified) signs, such as culturally specific artefacts. one sign may have several different meanings, according to different cultures (semetsky 2007: 180). the use of a gesture is an example of signs that differ according to the culture. the thumbs-up sign in most american and european cultures means that things are going according to plan or refers to approval. however, the same sign translates into rude and offensive messages in islamic and asian countries. in australia, it means “okay”, but if you move it up and down it is considered a grave insult (padmavat 2013: 7). in the age of the consumer, marketers prescribe and describe social culture in the way they communicate. the signs used in advertising communication have more than one meaning and the marketing message (implied marketing message) is the result of the “conversation” with the intended audience. the meaning ascribed to these signs is thus not fixed but negotiated between the brand owners and the intended target audience. the audience has to be actively involved to arrive at a plausible or implied marketing message. in this article the term “sign” is thus used to refer to icons, indices and symbols. symbols are arbitrary and man-made (linguistics 2000): all have a signal aspect, some physical pattern (e.g. a sound or visible shape) and a meaning (some semantic content that is implied or ‘brought to mind’) by the signal. but they differ in that icons have a physical resemblance between the signal and the meaning and an index has a correlation in space and time with its meaning. but a symbol is an arbitrary pattern (usually a sound pattern in a language) that gets its meaning primarily from its mental association with other symbols and only secondarily from its correlation with environmentally relevant properties. there is risk in the way audience involvement is created, in the sense that the advertisement’s message may be incomprehensible and/or an unintended meaning may be conveyed on a connotative level. hoeken et al. (2009: 56) also refer to this aspect in their qualitative investigation into the difference between form and content in a certain campaign. the research stresses the role of the target audience as a co-creator of meaning. despite the unstable connotative meanings of these signs in modern print advertising, they support a specific intended marketing message. this is illustrated by means of a few representative examples from the complete data set in table 1. 112 van niekerk indexical signs an index can be described as a sign that represents its object or concept by means of a temporary, spatial, or even a causal connection with the object (peirce 1935-1958: 143). dirven and verspoor (1999: 2) state that an index indicates something in the immediate proximity. this becomes more apparent if one considers the origin or the latin word “index”, meaning pointer or forefinger. indexical signs are common in advertisements because advertisers hope to create a relationship between the product and another concept by means of indexical signs, which usually have a positive connotation (vestergaard & schroder 1985: 38). davison’s (2009) research within the field of marketing indicates that an indexical sign’s designation of the concept to which it refers is based on an associated meaning. for example, a red traffic light indicates that one should stop. an index is strongly related or linked to the object that it refers to and thus must share a common feature with the object – if this were not so, it would not be able to refer to the object. an index contains a sort of icon, albeit an icon of a specific type. for example, smoke is an index of a fire because these occur in close physical proximity to each other, or because the one precedes the other. this does not necessarily mean that there is any similarity between smoke and fire, but there is a causal relationship in terms of time and space. similarly, a bullet hole is an index that a shot has been fired (peirce 1935-1958: 143; 230). a concept or sign can thus be deemed an index if it has a causal relationship with the object and confirms the object’s existence. dirven and verspoor (1999: 2) explain that there is no index without the matter or object to which it refers; in other words, the index implies the presence of the matter or object. indexical signs can also be cognitively abstract. each complete index will always comprise an iconic element or dimension. for example, the arrow of a weather vane is clearly an index because it refers to an object (the direction of the wind) that exists in the physical environment. however, a weather vane is not necessarily only an index because it also shows the four fixed directions of north, south, east and west (peirce 1935-1958: 143). the data provides evidence that indexical signs in advertising language have a conventional meaning (despite the unstable meaning options) in support of the implied marketing message. a flashy ribbon can function as an index pointing to a special gift inside the wrapping (in contrast to an object placed in a plastic shopping bag). icons iconicity is the structure in language that reflects the structure of experience in some way or another (croft 2003: 102). icons are semiotic systems that refer to signs with a physical form that closely resembles the characteristics of the situation to which they refer (crystal 2008: 234). the word “icon” is derived from the greek word “eikon”, which means “image” – although an icon is only an approximation of reality, as dirven and verspoor (1999: 3) posit: the traffic sign that warns drivers to watch out for children near a school depicts two or three children crossing the road on a zebra crossing. such a picture only corresponds approximately with reality; in reality there might be 113 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons a whole group of children or only one child crossing − yet the general meaning of the road sign is clear. fiske (1982: 50) defines an icon as being the similarity between two concepts. an iconic sign is thus a close image of what it represents (messaris 1997: ix). icons refer only to a single characteristic of a concept and are never used to mark any other characteristics of the concept. it is possible to identify the object represented by the icon without any additional information (peirce 1935-1958: 143). although an icon suggests the object to which it refers, mainly because it is similar in some way, the similarity between the icon and the object is not always based on a visible resemblance between the sign and the object. for example, the similarity may rest on an acoustic resemblance, as in the case of onomatopoeia in language (peirce 1935-1958: 140-144). the examples in the data analysis also confirm that irrespective of the unstable meanings of the signs (icon/index/symbols) used in advertising communication, a consensus meaning needs to be negotiated between the audience and the copywriter to arrive at a plausible marketing message. a passport full of visas may be accepted as an icon for success or being a world traveller; images (signs) of healthy human organs may be accepted as icons for healthy living or medical care; and an umbrella may be accepted as an icon for protection (from the sun/disease) or an icon for coverage (mobile phone network or short-term insurance). symbols a symbol may be described as a sign that has no obvious link or similarity with the object that it describes (peirce 1935-1958: 169-170). as mentioned before, there is no resemblance between the acoustic word “cat” and the four-legged animal it represents. only the agreement of the members of a particular cultural group allows the animal to be so named. saussure (1959: 66-67) emphasises that linguistic symbols are allocated arbitrarily and that there is no inherent relationship between the concept and the acoustic image. symbols (both linguistic and visual) contain a hierarchy of meaning. shelestiuk (2003: 233-234) writes that “[t]he direct meaning constitutes the first layer of sense and serves as a basis for the indirect (secondary) meaning – the second layer of sense, both of them united under the same designator (a name, a visual image, a significant object or person, etc.)”. the visual image of an angel can symbolise purity. alternatively, the visual image of an apple can mean temptation. the relevant and required meaning of a sign in a specific advertisement can often be deduced from the context of the advertisement (ibid.). brummett (2006: 13) observes that symbolic meanings (lexical and visual) eventually change. she maintains that the word “gay” (a linguistic symbol), which once meant “happy” or “joyful”, now refers to a sexual orientation. thus, the very nature of a symbol is that it can change and although the signifier or sign is the same, the signified might change. similarly, the meaning of visual symbols has changed over time in the same way. early in the twentieth century, american women who wore an anklet were thought 114 van niekerk to be immodest, whereas today it is simply regarded as a piece of jewellery with the sole function of adornment (nair 2011: 2). metaphor and metonymy are regarded as the fundamental mechanisms of symbolic transfer. this means that in certain cases symbols may be built on metaphor or metonymy. if a symbol can be seen as a static sign, then metaphor and metonymy are the fundamental types of logical connection between the meanings by means of their fixed or potential characteristics. one may differentiate between lexical and visual symbols. saussure (1959: 66-67) emphasises that linguistic symbols are allocated arbitrarily, and that there is no inherent relationship between the concept and the acoustic image. on the other hand, visual symbols are always similar to the symbols representing them in some way. this is because the similarity originally led to the evocation of the concept. hempelmann and samson (2007: 185-186) explain this as follows: a visual symbol for the concept of knife must always resemble that which it stands for, as this resemblance is how the concepts is evoked. such a symbol could not for example, be round like a circle, but must be elongated and pointed, regardless of how much it is abstracted or may rely on contexts in a picture such as a symbol for an object that is cut with the knife or a symbol for a hand that holds it. their iconicity, that is, their causal remembrance of which they stand for, will mean that different levels of abstraction lead to different degrees to which a visual pun is compatible with both its meanings. it is clear that symbols often rest on an iconic base. however, there are exceptions, such as visual symbols that have been created by convention in which there is no correspondence between the concept and its symbol. not all symbols have a symbolic foundation origin; for example, a stop sign on a red octagon. stop signs invariably have the word “stop” imprinted on them. a graduation cap may be accepted as a symbol for academic achievement, diamonds may be accepted as a symbol for romantic love, and a+ may be accepted as a symbol for excellence (academic grades, quality meat, rating of service delivery, etc.). the reason for the unstable meanings of signs in advertising language may be linked to the constant need for creativity. the use and meaning of these visual signs is a combined effect of cooperative communication between the target audience and the copywriter. the intended target audience expect the signs to have relevance in their construction of the implied marketing message. these signs often function as the point of attention in the advertisement to attract attention that will promote the consumption of commodities (herbst 2005: 14). 115 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons elements of creativity according to arens et al. (2013: 346), the effect visuals contribute to an advertisement’s success includes capturing the reader’s attention, arousing the reader’s interest in the headline, creating a favourable impression of the product or advertiser, and providing continuity for the campaign by using a unified visual technique. these goals are applicable to all three sign types referred to in this article, including a graduation cap as a symbol to indicate academic success (advertisement for eggs), a red ribbon as an index for a special gift (advertisement for a toothbrush), and an umbrella as an icon for protection (advertisement for sun screen). novelty and utility are regarded as two valuable elements of creativity (stuhlfaut & yoo 2013: 82-84) in the sense that new relationships are created between unrelated concepts. in terms of utility, the viewpoint is that the fertile ability to create variations of a concept determines the usefulness of such a concept. the example of an advertisement for a butchery in get it general circulation magazine (2017) demonstrates the impact of all five the listed elements of creativity (stuhlfaut & yoo 2013), namely novelty, utility, artistry, expressiveness and emotional response in the creation of new signs and/or meanings to attract attention. figure 1: ice cream as creative sign for special treats 116 van niekerk this advertisement uses an ice cream as sign for “special treats” (as supported in the heading: “treat yourself to some a-grade meat”). there is no logical link between ice cream and good quality meat. the intended target audience thus has to be actively involved to create the plausible marketing message: eating meat from an ice cream stick from this brand owner is a special treat. the implied link is created between a special cut of meat from this butchery as a special treat. the use of layout in this advertisement portrays the piece of steak in an upright position on a typical ice cream stick and the shape of the steak also iconically reminds of the form of an ice cream on a stick. this layout and the form of the ice cream stick resembles, at a graphological level, the form used by different and well-known brands for their (expensive) ice cream products, such as ola, in comparison to their (cheaper) lollies (ola 2017). van niekerk and jenkinson (2011: 116-134) refer to the creative use of font and layout to activate intertextual associations based on the iconicity related to font types and layout as graphological iconicity. there is for instance a generally accepted knowledge (iconic comprehension) of the difference of the font and layout used in a dictionary, in the bible, on cellphone screens, and in newspaper headings. in terms of the five elements of creativity (stuhlfaut & yoo 2013), this sign (ice cream as a sign for special treats) is new. the sign may also be used again for different luxury cuts of meat/different special treats. in terms of layout and colour, the advertisement is a work of art (in the sense that it is not merely a reality-based picture of the object as we know for instance from eating kebabs). in terms of expressiveness, the form of the (ice cream) stick is intertextually well-known from quality ice cream brands such as magnum (ola brand). the cut of the meat and the layout/placement of the product on the page of the magazine therefore activates an emotional response. van niekerk and jenkinson (2011: 124-125) also refer to the intertextual value of the iconic play with font and layout in advertisements. the deviations in the conventional font and layout function as signs to activate intertextual knowledge and help to create authenticity. this is the case when images of toys replace letters or words in a headline advertising toys or where letters are visually formed with seeds or fruit in a headline advertising a fruiterer. creating original and appropriate signs (with unstable meaning options) for a specific brand is thus the challenge to ensure the brand is recognised and remembered by the target audience. koslow (2015: 6) describes creative advertising as original and appropriate for the brand. such advertisements require more attention from the target audience to arrive at the intended and implied marketing message. analysis and discussion fourie (2001: 346) holds that “connotative meanings are relatively unstable: they can vary considerably according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual”. in terms of the examples referred to in the analysis and the elements of creativity mentioned by stuhlfaut and yoo (2013), there is no logical connection 117 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons between the “perfect” female body and a measuring tape; there is no logical connection between a bolt of lightning and a clean swimming pool; and there is no logical and direct link between the human brain and car tyres. meaning is thus negotiated and the target audience acts as co-creator of a plausible message. in addition, the signs in the examples have fertile possibilities in the sense that a variety of other measuring tools could be used to advertise the brand promising you the perfect figure. different elements of nature can be put to use to communicate the challenges experienced by swimming pool owners; and different parts of the human body can be put to use to connect tyres to the qualities of your physical body, such as using your eyes (watch out), using your feet (travel), and using your hands (protect). in terms of an emotional response, human nature does not stand neutral towards signs such as a bolt of lightning, the physical appearance of the human brain, or measuring tools/equipment. the qualitative analysis identified and classified the sign type based on the literature study in phase one of the analysis. the different connotative meaning options for the specific sign in each advertisement was listed in phase two of the analysis. the signs in the data illustrate the value of connotative meanings awarded to signs in order to arrive at a plausible marketing message; a plausible message is co-created between the target audience and the copywriter (see table 1). table 1 serves only as an example of the second phase of the analysis of all the data in which the meaning options for the identified sign types were listed. this table illustrates the unstable meaning of signs (intended and unintended meaning) and the involvement needed from the audience to construct a plausible marketing message. as explained before, the implied marketing message was constructed in the final stage of analysis by listing the most plausible meaning option (from phase two of the analysis) for the sign, based on the genre conventions of advertising that expect a positive claim about the brand name. 118 van niekerk table 1: co-creation of meaning between copywriter and intended target market sign and brand visual image intended meaning of visual sign unstable connotations (unintended meaning of sign) marketing message heading scrabble board (absa 2010) easy access/ simple solutions (to finance) fun and games (finance for a younger market; children) getting car finance with absa is as easy as using the right words/asking for help just say the word painting colour cards (outsurance 2012) options/ individual preference variety/ not boring/ excitement/ fun outsurance has the package to fit your individual preference english: insurance that fits your needs perfectly afrikaans: versekering wat jou behoeftes perfek pas bitten apple (dkny 2014) seduction healthy/ organic option/ fruity smell dkny will make you smell irresistible be delicious 119 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons three signs representative of the dataset in each category (index, icon and symbol) are discussed against the background of the unstable connotative meanings and the implied marketing message (phase three of the analysis). figure 2: lightning bolt (index) in the bioguard advertisement above, an index is used as a type of semiotic sign in order to deliver the marketing message. the bolt of lightning is an index or pointer that indicates rain. the marketing message lies largely in the visual aspect, although the lexical aspect echoes the visual correspondingly. there are temporal, spatial and causal links between the index and the object to which it refers. in other words, rain will follow the bolt of lightning (causal and temporal) and will take place in the same space and place. another characteristic of an index is that there is no significant relationship between the object and the index. despite the fact that the lightning (the index) refers to the rain, the two concepts – of lightning and rain – do not have the same meaning. thus, this case also concerns the connotation of the concept of a bolt of lightning (which indicates that rain is on its way) because the denotation of lightning refers to bolts of lightning only. the target market’s experience of the struggle involved in keeping a swimming pool blue after a thunderstorm would make it receptive to the marketing message. 120 van niekerk figure 3: human brain (icon) a semiotic sign in the form of an icon is used to support the marketing message in the advertisement for dunlop car tyres. the marketing message is contained in the lexical as well as in the visual elements of the advertisement, but the visual element in particular (a car tyre in the shape of a human brain) is most striking and also supports the marketing message. the dunlop tyre is depicted as being similar to a real brain, and is thus iconic. the concept or object that the icon represents can be identified without much aid or any additional information. this icon, namely an image of the human brain made from the rubber used for tyres, is used repeatedly and it signifies intelligence. in the case of this advertisement, the human brain may signify people who think before they act (in this case, think before they buy new tyres). figure 4: measuring tape (symbol) 121 the use of indexical signs, symbols and icons in the usn advertisement, a symbol (a measuring tape) is used to support the marketing message. the measuring tape may function as a symbol of slimming and weight loss, irrespective of its utility value and value as an instrument. measuring tapes are often used in advertisements for slimming products. there is no link or similarity between the symbol (the measuring tape) and the object or concept (slenderness) that it represents. the sign has been allocated arbitrarily and co-created convention dictates that a measuring tape may be a symbol of slenderness or slimming. in addition, in this advertisement the focus shifts from the concrete (the measuring tape and its default use) towards the more abstract meaning as a symbol of weight loss. symbols and other figures of speech seem to shift between concepts according to a specific pattern. as a result, the shift pattern will, for example, always be from the concrete to the abstract. however, the pattern in the case of metaphors and other figures of speech may be different; it may move from abstract to concrete, from concrete to concrete, and from abstract to abstract. although the empirical data set seems to indicate that symbols do shift from a concrete concept to an abstract one (measuring tape for weight loss), it appears that this is not always true in the case of advertising communication. thus, an advertisement using the sign a+ as a symbol for the excellence of a skin care product does not move from the concrete to the abstract. in this case, the transfer is from an abstract concept (a+) towards another abstract concept: skin care. the unstable connotative (symbolic) value of “a” is to indicate excellence. conclusion it is clear that the use of new semiotic signs and the new meanings of existing signs is one of the instruments that copywriters use to attract the attention of the audience by making the audience co-creators of the marketing message. because of the unstable meaning of these signs in advertising communication, they serve as the impulse for an intellectual game that requires audience involvement in order to construct the implied marketing message. it is evident (meaning options per sign in table 1) that meaning is negotiated between the intended target audience and the brand owners as there is no direct marketing message, but only an implied message. this value of this investigation lies in the exploration of the value of the unstable relationship between visual signs and what they may depict (meaning) in a specific advertisement to enhance audience involvement and thus attraction to the brand. references arens, w.f., weigold, m.w. & arens, c. 2013. contemporary advertising & integrated marketing communications. 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classical narration; anglo-saxon narration; art-cinema narration; epic-lyrical dramaturgy; descartes; hegel; geist; ubuntu; film communication introduction based on a novel by titus maumela, elelwani (wa-luruli 2012), directed by ntshavheni wa luruli and produced by florian schattaue, starring florence masebe, vusi kunene and ashifashaba muleya, is the first south african tshivenda movie. the movie explores the tshivenda culture in detail and tells the story of a young university educated woman, elelwani, who returns to the rural village where she grew up. while elelwani returns to introduce her new boyfriend to her parents, and to tell her parents about an opportunity for continuing her studies abroad, her father has a different plan for her return. elelwani’s father wants her to marry the local venda king and as such take on the role of queen of the venda. prof. ylva rodny-gumede department of journalism, film and television, school of communication, university of johannesburg (yrodny-gumede@uj.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v22.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2017 22: 16-30 © ufs mailto:yrodny-gumede@uj.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v22.2 1716 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani 1716 this article shows how the dramaturgy of elelwani challenges theories around narration and audience interaction, as articulated through the analysis of north american and european films, and instead presents a cinematic dramaturgy steeped in a relational ethic and conceptualisation of self, linked to the southern african philosophy of ubuntu. this is done by drawing on two distinct, and often juxtaposed, modes of narration, classical narration and art-cinema narration as set out by bordwell (1985; 2005). the article also draws on israel’s (1991) philosophical distinctions between the anglo-saxon narrative with links to a cartesian dualism between body and mind, and the epic-lyrical dramaturgy linked to hegel. the article demonstrates how elelwani challenges both of these modes of narration. this is done by overcoming the cartesian dualism perpetuated through the hollywood/ anglo-saxon model of narration, and instead giving the individual an active role in the knowledge creating process in the hegelian tradition. however, the narration of elelwani also moves away from art-cinema and the hegelian multi-layered epic-lyrical dramaturgy steeped in a european worldview and an artistic expression of the self, to instead present a novel cinematic dramaturgy, uniquely african. bordwell’s (1985) distinction between four modes of narration, namely classical narration, art-cinema narration, historical materialist narration and parametric narration, has informed much of the understanding of cinematic narration and audience engagement with film. in this article, the author draws on two of these modes. first, the classical narration often linked to hollywood mass circulation movies – a style of filmmaking involving a coherent and linear cause and effect narrative structure based on “cinematic realism”, characterised by coherence of time and space and a principal agent with clear-cut goals and problems (villarejo 2007: 153; bordwell 1985; 2005). second, art-cinema narration as exemplified through many european movies, based less on cause and effect narration and realism, and instead grounded in symbolism and artistic expression (bordwell 1985; 2005). the article first sets out some of the main ideas of, and juxtapositions between, these two forms of narration and the way in which they relate to, and have been expanded on in israel’s (1991) philosophical distinctions between two separate filmic processes. these processes are the anglo-saxon (hollywood) narrative, with links to a cartesian worldview, and the epic-lyrical narrative, with its links to hegel, exemplified through art-cinema narration (hedling 1992; israel 1991). some of the ideas of hegel’s aesthetics will also be expanded upon, i.e. the idea of art as an expression of spirit (geist) as they relate to israel’s (1991) conceptualisation of epic-lyrical dramaturgy. the article then proceeds to show how the idea of spirit and time in elelwani both relates to, as well as moves away from, hegelian ideas of spirit, premised on multi-layered experiences and realities. instead, it shows how reality and spirit are established through an african conceptualisation of self, informed by the moral philosophy and relational ethic of ubuntu. 1918 ylva rodny-gumede the hollywood model vs the art cinema model whereas “narrative” is commonly understood as the art of story-telling and the representation of an event or story reliant on cause and effect (bordwell & thompson 2013: 73), “dramaturgy”, a word emanating from stage performance, is the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation, “a comprehensive exploration of the context in which a play resides” (mccabe 2008: 64). while cinematic dramaturgy is less researched than dramaturgy within the performing arts (koivumäki 2016), there are many different types of dramaturgy practiced in film that draw on dramaturgy as conceptualised through the performance arts (potter 2015: 362). dramaturgy is not “filmed theatre” (bazin 2005: 76); instead, dramaturgy is a film’s dramatic structure and direction, in the words of bazin (2005: 77), the “embodiment of art and drama”. koivumäki (2016) further defines cinematic dramaturgy as all choices made by the author/director in order to build a cinematic performance for the viewer to experience. the analysis of film through its inherent dramaturgy, rather than narrative, is essentially a phenomenological approach that seeks to understand the essence of what is experienced ‒ an ontological and existential phenomenological attempt at understanding the being of ourselves. the approach emanated from hegel’s writings on the phenomenology of spirit and was further expanded on by husserl and heidegger (casebier 2009; inwood 2002; moran 2000). the analysis of cinematic dramaturgy also leads us away from understanding film as solely narration or the “showing” of things, characters or actions, towards an understanding of film as a thought and thinking process, a film-phenomenology with its own way of “attending to its world” (frampton 2006: 91). even though scholarly engagement with the philosophy of film is still in its infancy, film philosophy or philosophy of film is a growing scholarly field through the examination of the nature of film, film narration, emotional engagement, authorship and its societal role (wartenberg 2014; casebier 2009; colman 2009; wartenberg & curran 2005; freeland & wartenberg 1995; jarvie 1987). the philosophical study of phenomenology has influenced much of the theorisation of film through the writings of philosophers such as jean-luc nancy and merleau-ponty (colebrook 2009; fielding 2009), a philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness that stands in contrast to the cartesian dualistic worldview of objects acting and reacting upon one another (sobchack 1991; merleau-ponty 1989). merleau-ponty’s (1989) existential and semiotic phenomenology also challenges many of the basic assumptions of current film theory that reduces film to an object of vision and the spectator to a victim of a deterministic cinematic apparatus. instead, it explores the possibility of human choice and expressive freedom within the bounds of history and culture (sobchack 1991). the use of the term “cinematic dramaturgy” in the analysis of elelwani is apt as the director, ntshavheni wa-luruli, can be said to draw upon a theatrical dramaturgy rather than narration in many of the scenes. this is particularly prominent in the way in which elelwani, rather than narrating her story through a clear storyline, instead lets the spectator partake in a thought process that is her own journey to herself, and http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dramatic 1918 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani the development of spirit through community with others. no more evident is this than through how elelwani comes to accept the role of queen of the venda in the interest of the community. this, through a journey of self-discovery in which she takes on her new role, not as a sacrifice or in resignation, but as a conscious choice. israel (1991) outlines descartes’ presentation of the dualism between body and mind and the cartesian claim that the dualism between subject and object is disconnected. descartes ignores the individual’s interaction with the surrounding world and believes that his or her “truth” is determined in advance by the structure of the world of objects (israel 1991). conversely, hegel tries to overcome this dualism by giving the individual an active role in the knowledge creating process (israel 1991). by using conflict, climax and resolution, israel (1991) argues that the classic hollywood narrative, the anglosaxon dramaturgy, follows the credo of descartes by moving the spectator forward as a passive element to whom things happen. the truth is given in advance and there is only one interpretation. as such, the spectator remains a passive onlooker merely slotted into the power structure of the film/television programme (israel 1991). the anglo-saxon narration is premised on a linear, and often singular, narrative set out in a chronological order of conflict, climax and resolution and where the linearity of time is used to enforce a realist impression of the plot and film itself (bordwell & thompson 2013: 73; villarejo 2007: 153; israel 1991). by contrast, in art-cinema as conceptualised by israel (1991) through the hegelian epic-lyrical dramaturgy, the spectator is in dialogue with the narrative of the film through its many parallel lines of action, shifting time chronologies, rich nuances and ambiguities of interpretation. as such there are possibilities of interpretation ruled out in the linear anglo-saxon model (israel 1991). no more is this exemplified than through hollywood remakes of movies originally thought of as art cinema movies. while, for example, luc besson’s nikita (besson 1990) and the original swedish movie män som hatar kvinnor (transl. ‘men who hate women’) (oplev 2009) are both aligned more with art-cinema narration, the hollywood remakes point of no return (badham 1993) and the girl with the dragon tattoo (fincher 2011) employ a distinctly anglo-saxon linear cause and effect narration. film theorists have long debated narrative models and how they correspond with audience engagement, interpretation and cognitive processes (mccabe 2008; bordwell 1985; 2005; chatman 2005; heath 2005). some scholars such as bordwell (1985; 2005) argue that all forms of narration are premised on reception and cognitive processes on behalf of the audience, and hence there is no difference between the anglo-saxon narrative and the art-cinema narrative in terms of the cognitive processes, demanded by, and triggered in the audience. other scholars, while recognising that reception and interpretation of all art forms depend on cognitive processes, argue that they do so in different ways, and to different degrees (westphal 2011; žižek 2001). thus, they argue against a neo-formalism that understates the role of culture and ideology in shaping the film text, and the contexts in which films are produced in any one society (žižek 2001). 2120 ylva rodny-gumede israel (1991) cites the work of deleuze (1985) and the different cinematic adaptations of image of movement (l’image  mouvements), time and image of time (l’image  temps) and argues that the anglo-saxon model follows a mechanical image-by-image succession dependent on a near realistic linear-time narration that demands little in terms of audience engagement and cognition. on the contrary, narration in art-cinema often breaks with the linearity of time and as such demands of the audience to engage with the narrative in ways that rely on imagination and a dialectic relationship with the narrative (israel 1991). this distinction also comes through in the ways in which characters in the anglosaxon model are moved along with the plot with no agency of their own, and no articulation of self. in contrast, the epic-lyrical dramaturgy provides for characters to exercise agency and the development of self through multi-layered personas shaped by a hegelian understanding of history as dynamic, and the present containing within it traces of the past. this is further emphasized through bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and polyphony (flanagan 2009). bakhtin’s analysis of the works of dostoyevsky, for example, provides an understanding of the development of self as an “unfinalisability” and determined through interactions with others (flanagan 2009). the idea of imagination and development of cognition has also been highlighted in later years with regards to non-western movies, exemplified through bollywood productions that have become more accessible to western audiences (colm-hogan 2009) and that moves beyond dichotomies of mass production and art-cinema classifications. this can also be seen through the rise of an african film industry in which narratives and narrative structures contextualised from within local politics, cultures and locales increasingly apply a decidedly non-western gaze. film dramaturgy and the epic lyrical israel’s (1991) conceptualisation of an epic-lyrical dramaturgy emanates from hegel’s aesthetics, in which hegel provides an outline of what art teaches us about human nature and ourselves (houlgate 2014). to understand this, and to put art in context of human nature, hegel drew upon his philosophy of nature in which he shows that life is more explicitly rational than mere physical matter and thus more explicitly self-determining (ibid.). this occurs, in hegel’s view, with the emergence of human existence. human beings, for hegel, are not just accidents of nature; instead, they are reason itself that has come to life and consciousness of itself (ibid.). thus, for hegel, life itself becomes more explicitly rational and self-determining when it becomes conscious and self-conscious ‒ that is, life that can imagine, use language, think and exercise freedom (ibid.). such self-conscious life hegel calls “spirit” (geist) (houlgate 2005: 78), as further developed in the phenomenology of husserl’s lifeworld (moran 2000: 60). for hegel the unity of the world and the mind is spirit discovering itself (solomon & higgins 2010: 133) and “humanity connected through an all embracing spirit” (solomon & higgins 2010: 62), neither separate nor different from us (solomon & higgins 2010: 78). 2120 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani art, seen as objects created by human beings, gives expression to the spirit’s understanding of itself and renders the freedom of spirit visible or audible to an audience (houlgate 2014). as such, the art of movies makes human spirit (self-consciousness and freedom of expression) visible. art’s purpose is therefore to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. in an african context, such opportunities have been rare, particularly through cinematic expressions that are truly and uniquely african, and that talk to africans’ truths about their own existence. with regards to how art brings to mind truths about ourselves and our freedom, hegel analyses poetry and poetic expression. hegel identifies three basic forms of poetry: epic, lyric and dramatic poetry (houlgate 2014). in hegel’s view, all poetry is an attempt to give expression to the complex, yet crucial relationship between humanness and the divine forces of the universe (law 2000: 116). one of the central issues of poetry for hegel is the problem of ascertaining our position in the cosmos: what are we? why are we here? and to what extent if any are we free? (ibid.). for hegel, spirit moves towards self-understanding through human history (solomon & higgins 2010: 135-136) and as our consciousness evolves we find answers to the questions of what we are, why we are here, and to what extent, if any, we are free (law 2000: 116). for hegel dramatic poetry presents the most concrete form of art in which individuals are acting in pursuit of their own will and interest, and thereby coming into conflict with other individuals (houlgate 2014). however, dramatic poetry does not depict the richness of the epic world or explore the inner world of lyric feeling; instead, epic poetry presents spiritual freedom—that is, free human beings—in the context of a world of circumstances and events. “in the epic,” hegel (ibid.) states, “individuals act and feel; but their actions are not independent, events [also] have their right”. what is described in such poetry, therefore, is “a play between actions and events” (ibid.). epic individuals are situated individuals, caught up in a larger enterprise, as for example in the trojan war in homer’s iliad (ibid.). what they do is thus determined as much by the situation in which they find themselves, as by their own will, and the consequences of their actions are to a large degree at the mercy of circumstances. as such, epic poetry shows us the “worldly” character and attendant limitations of human freedom. in contrast to the epic hero, the subject of lyric poetry does not undertake tasks, journeys or adventures in the world, but simply gives expression to the self’s ideas and inner feelings through hymns, odes or songs (ibid.). hence, poetry for hegel shows us ourselves, our freedoms and the limits thereof. this stands in contrast to the cartesian dualistic worldview of cause and effect, mind and matter, subject and object, and human beings as disconnected from the world around them. hegel’s analysis of art as an expression of spirit can tell us something about how art provides the spirit with an understanding of the self. hegel’s account also provides us with a framework for analysing the dissolve of time, or circularity and infinity of time, as well as conceptual notions of reality. as much as juxtapositions between cause and effect and/or linear narrative models and art-cinema models can be challenged on grounds of interpretation and amalgamations 2322 ylva rodny-gumede of narrative forms, as well as challenges to ideas of audience interaction and spectator cognition as lesser in one than the other (casebier 2009; bordwell 1985), what is important for the analysis that follows is that hegel’s aesthetics and the conceptualisation of the epic-lyrical puts the emphasis on creating a communicative relationship with the spectator (israel 1991). the interpretation and imagination that is left to the spectator is empowering, non-determinist and open, unlike its oft thought counterpart, the anglosaxon linear model, which offers the spectator limited interpretation, imagination and closed readings (ibid.). further to this, the reading of art-cinema narration through the hegelian epic-lyrical shows us the genre’s emphasis on the development and cognition of multi-layered personas that defy the linearity and determination of time, and whose past, present and future lies in the dissolve, circularity and infinity of time. israel (1991) highlights russian filmmakers such as tarkovsky as epitomising the epiclyrical dramaturgy through movies such as ivan’s childhood (tarkovsky 1962), andrei rublev (tarkovsky 1966), solaris (tarkovsky 1972), the mirror (tarkovsky 1975), stalker (tarkovsky 1979), nostalgia (tarkovsky 1983) and sacrifice (tarkovsky 1986). kona (2010) argues that tarkovsky’s films invent a language of the spirit through the poetry of the cinematic image in which art, the individual, and the life of the spirit are interconnected. his films are about the “interior terrains where a person is one with oneself … on the borders of invisible realms” that “…can be felt rather than logically deciphered”. solaris (tarkovsky 1972), for example, addresses the anxieties that knowledge produces when you have to face your real self, and in movies such as stalker (tarkovsky 1979) and nostalgia (tarkovsky 1983), tarkovsky explores his characters’ quest for redemption (kona 2010). not only does tarkovsky emphasise the inner feelings and life-worlds of his characters, he also explores the phenomenon of spatio-temporal lapses and alternative time frames that disrupt the linear progression of events and instead creates narrative discontinuity (skakov 2012). however, little has these juxtapositions between narrative forms and explorations of time and self factored in all the nuances in between, particularly with regards to cultural expressions outside of northern europe and the euro-russian slavic sphere. hegel decidedly ignored africa in his explorations of art and self (wa thiong’o 2014: 36) and saw africa as still enveloped “…in the dark mantle of the night” (wa thiong’o 2012: 42). however, as a response to this in non-western traditions, stands narrative structures of magic realism, often quoted in the context of, and linked to, african narrative expressions (grzeda 2013; cooper 1998). magic realism has been used to explain how the spirit understands time and the dissolve of time and reality through bringing in elements perceived as magical and that deviates from reality (bowers 2004). casebier (2009), however, questions these juxtapositions and argues that film theorisation has been set back by debates of nominalism and idealism. instead, he argues for an understanding of film narration based on husserl’s phenomenology and develops a theory that stands counter to existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation. he argues for a theory that is realist with respect to both epistemology and ontological issues and that goes against a view of human identity wherein the human subject is constructed by, and in, a cultural context rather than being transcendent to it, as in 2322 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani hussel’s phenomenological account (casebier 2009: 112). as such, casebier (ibid.) argues that all narration is realist in its own right. taking casebier’s (ibid.) argument further, the problem of understanding the dissolve of time and reality in the context of african film lies in the idea of the perception and interpretation of the magical itself. the magical is neither magical nor part of reality, instead history and those who have come before us are ever present, not myth nor magical elements of the present. instead, what is perceived, often by western audiences, as magical or myth in the tradition of latin american magic realism, is part of the real and non-magical reality of everyday life in african culture. thus, when, in african tradition, the drink is poured on the floor, often interpreted in a western context as paying homage to the ancestors or the dead, this act is in fact honouring the present and the living ‒ the presence of the ancestor in the room. as such, the transference of magical realism to african film does not accurately capture a relational understanding of the self as neither dissolved in time nor informed by time past and neither does it capture the perceived magical as something lived and experienced in the present rather than unexpected and separate from the here and now or as a fusion of the real and the fantastic (flores 1995). instead, the dramaturgy of elelwani and the protagonist elelwani herself can better be understood through the sub-saharan relational ethic and moral philosophy of ubuntu. ubuntu and the conceptualisation of self the african philosophy of ubuntu has been likened to european ideas of communitarianism. both hold the community as “ontologically prior to person … and serves as an antidote to mainstream libertarianism” (christians 2004: 235). however, metz and gaie (2010: 275) argue that ubuntu stands apart from western morality of selfrealisation in that sub-saharan morality is relational in a way that other western approaches usually are not. ubuntu is often interpreted as “a person becomes a person through other persons”, which means that one cannot realise one’s true self in opposition to others or even in isolation from them (metz & gaie 2010: 275). metz (2007) argues that ubuntu is grounded in moral conceptions of human dignity where human beings have dignity by virtue of their capacity for constructing community through identifying with, and exhibiting, solidarity with others. further to this, a person’s humanness is developed through relating to others in positive ways (metz & gaie 2010: 275). emeritus archbishop desmond tutu (1999: 31) articulates this as: a person with ubuntu is open to others, and does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. building on this metz (2007: 337) argues that ubuntu entails goodwill and solidarity amongst people to enable them to achieve viable communities based on caring for one another and to build meaningful identities for themselves in ways that produce 2524 ylva rodny-gumede shared identity. they do so with the goal to produce harmonious relationships rather than discordant ones (metz 2007: 341). in order to achieve this, a certain sacrifice of self for the sake of others is needed (metz 2007: 337). thus, a sense of self and personhood is defined in relation to the community and a sense of mutuality of needs where self-hood and being is constructed through participation (mkhize 2008: 39-40). the construction of self through ubuntu is therefore done in community with others in ways that construct community in positive ways. choices made, and cause and effect, are intrinsically linked to a relational ethic of belonging and solidarity rather than one character’s subjective journey towards self-realisation. however, this does not mean an erasure of individuality or self; on the contrary, and here chasi (2014) makes an important impasse, in that he argues that through ubuntu individuals are also grown towards the best that they can be. in this sense ubuntu as an ethic can also be interpreted as epitomising the best of individualistic self-realisation. notwithstanding hegel’s ideas of africa and culture only emerging in africa as result of european colonialism (wa thiong’o 2014: 36), the hegelian ideas of epic-lyrical poetry will not only help us understand the dramaturgical narrative of elelwani, but also how the film ultimately presents a novel, and uniquely african dramaturgy, beyond the causal and/or linear and the symbolic epic-lyrical; a dramaturgy in which the idea of spirit is constructed through community with others, as much as through the uniquely individual journey of the spirit towards itself. the dramaturgy of elelwani in the first scene, we meet elelwani. she is yet to be presented to us as the future queen of the venda; however, when we first meet her in her bedroom in the royal village, a location not yet know to us, we guess at her importance to the narrative yet to unfold. as spectators, we are also given a clue to the overall narrative structure of the movie. through the simplicity of the room, we have the sense of attending a stage production, and we grasp at a storyline that is different from the linear, a storyline more aligned to the narration of the art-cinema. we are drawn in by elelwani’s words, “i am elelwani, my journey has brought me to myself”, words through which she presents herself to the spectator, as much as to herself. however, this is quickly dispersed as we enter the second scene, in which we leave the stage production and instead enter into the realm of the perceivably “real” and “tangible”. elelwani returns from the city to the village of her birth with her boyfriend vele. we are introduced to the main characters and the plot step by step, following a linear anglosaxon model, and are thus given a sense of an impending conflict between elelwani and her parents, on the one hand, and elelwani and vele, on the other; a conflict easily read as modernity versus tradition. elelwani no longer talks to the spectator; instead, her spirit is obscured and temporarily subordinate to the drama unfolding. in subsequent scenes, we see the conflict escalating through elelwani negotiating her life path with her parents as well as with vele. as spectators we are moved along the path of the linear, we know the conflict, we guess at a climax and reach the point of no return in the form of elelwani’s decision to follow tradition and to marry the venda 2524 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani king and thereby save her younger sister who has been chosen to take her place due to elelwani’s initial refusal to marry. the causal linear narrative is however broken and re-imagined as we at times find ourselves back in the stage production and the realm of the art-cinema. this is exemplified through the way in which the community elders enter the scene in impasses that break the linear with visuals and references to a culture that defies the causal linear narration. the stage production is also emphasised in elelwani’s interactions with her parents and in her pleas for self-determination. however, we are still in the realm of the linear, real and tangible. this is reinforced as we are visually led down a village path as elelwani undertakes the journey from her parents homestead to the village of prince thovele and the venda. prince thovele as a character is still unknown to the spectator, but we guess at his role as someone who might take the plot to its climax, and maybe even resolution. however, as elelwani reaches the village of her future husband, the causal linear narrative is yet again dissolved and we find the dramaturgy suspended between the linear and the lyrical. we now enter the realm of the spirit. elelwani, who has thus far been presented to us as a character in conflict and as a character facing a dilemma, now transitions into a multi-layered character who is no longer locked into a narrative model dependent on conflict, climax and resolution. instead, elelwani drives the dramaturgy in directions that give the spectator the power to imagine spirit in ways that go beyond the linear and where time is no longer conformant to the linear. instead, time is dissolved and premised on elelwani’s understanding of present as part of a circularity of time in which past, present and future are dissolved. this is emphasised through the relationship that elelwani forms with prince thovele. thovele, who has remained an almost mythical character, is, when we first meet him, presented to us as a tragic character disguised by a golden mask. he seemingly epitomises the hegelian epic character, a character at the mercy of the circumstances and the situation he finds himself in. as such, he shows the attendant limitations of human freedom (houlgate 2014). thovele is imprisoned on the outskirts of the village and prevented to take on the role as king of the venda through a succession feud devised by his sister, who, by keeping thovele locked away from the rest of the community, eagerly awaits the opportunity to seize the crown. thovele is not only physically imprisoned; he is denied his humanity, his ubuntu through community with others. as will become clear as the narrative unfolds, he is a character yet to be released through the humanity and ubuntu of elelwani. what unfolds is a drama contingent on elelwani’s journey towards an understanding of herself in relation to the community she belongs to. in her interactions with thovele, elelwani shows us that she has ubuntu. this, to paraphrase tutu (1999: 31), through being open to others, not feeling threatened that others are able and good, and by gaining self-assurance from knowing that she belongs in a greater whole and that her spirit is diminished when others are humiliated or oppressed. this is further developed with the return of vele. vele, who we have known in the realm of the real and a causal linear narrative, now returns as a comedic character. he is 2726 ylva rodny-gumede in disguise and initially unrecognisable to the spectator. whilst vele returns hoping for reconciliation, elelwani has made her choice, she has realised her role is that of queen of the venda. her destiny is grounded in a realisation of herself as part of the community she is shaped by, and importantly is to shape, past, present and future. we no longer see the conflicted young woman trapped between her own wishes and those of others, driven forward by a causal linear narrative; instead, she rises to herself within the realm of the epic-lyrical, but also through her understanding of self-realisation in, and through, community with others. as a film elelwani, and the character elelwani, represents spirit in the hegelian sense, as spirit discovering itself as a basis for the unity of the world and the mind (solomon & higgins 2010: 133), through “humanity connected through an all embracing spirit” (solomon & higgins 2010: 62), not separate or different from us (solomon & higgins 2010: 78). however, the unique ways in which her journey to self-realisation is narrated is also uniquely narrated and enmeshed in an understanding of ubuntu as the fundamental ethos underlining the realisation as self-premised on community with others, past, present and future. this is further emphasised through the recurrent appearance of a white lion, a symbol that in venda culture represents the spirits of the ancestors present in the surrounding landscape. in the last scene, we find ourselves back in elelwani’s bedroom in the royal village. she is now the queen of the venda. dramaturgically and visually, time is circular and infinite and yet suspended in the present as elelwani yet again speaks, “my journey has brought me to myself … i am elelwani. and i am free.” concluding remarks hegel’s analysis of art tells us how art provides the spirit with an understanding of the spirit, and provides us with a framework for analysing the dissolve of time, or rather circularity and infinity of time, as well as conceptual notions of reality. hegel’s aesthetics show us how the beauty of the non-linear dramaturgy lies in the relationship it creates with the spectator (israel 1991). here, the interpretation and imagination that is left to the spectator is empowering, non-determinist and open (ibid.). however, while the hegelian idea of drama, contingent on both the poetic and the lyrical, gives a framework for the analysis of both creative expression on behalf of the filmmaker as well as the spectator’s role in knowledge creation, it does not account for geographically and historically situated experiences. the dramaturgy of elelwani is neither causal linear or epic-lyrical, neither is it magical or symbolic. instead, the dramaturgy of elelwani is better described as transcendent and realist in its own right (casebier 2009), with the lived and the real explored through the human spirit grounded in ubuntu. thus, the dramaturgy is premised on, and formed by, elelwani’s journey to herself as she transitions and transcends both the linear and causal as well as the epic-lyrical. her journey represents not only a transition from modernity to tradition but also a journey that bridges the two. no one says this better than director ntshavheni wa-luruli himself: 2726 ubuntu and the cinematic dramaturgy of elelwani culture can only survive if it can adapt – if not, it’s doomed to die. this young woman is the present south africa, who is trying to forge a bridge between what it was [her past], and what it is [her present] … it integrates the old and modern culture and elelwani learns that there is no contradiction or conflict between african tradition and modernity, as both traditions can live side by side with the understanding that neither of the two is better than the other (wa-luruli, in kumalo-valentine 2010). as such, elelwani embodies the african spirit in its dramaturgy and through the character of elelwani herself. at the same time, the dramaturgy of the film acknowledges the spirit of the spectator as a co-creator of meaning, and the articulation of spirit premised on ubuntu – a spirit that is free to express itself precisely because it is premised on community, solidarity and belonging past, present and future. as such, elelwani’s journey to herself is a journey to humanity through ubuntu, and premised on a uniquely african philosophical understanding of spirit. such an understanding also moves the theorisation of elelwani away from an understanding of cinematic expression as narration solely, towards an understanding of the film as a film-phenomenology with its own way of “attending to its world” (frampton 2006: 91), and in this instance through the articulation of the uniquely african ethic of ubuntu.1 endnotes 1 the author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers of communitas for their insightful and critical comments, which have greatly added to the strength of the overall argument and narrative of the article. list of references bakhtin, m.m. 1984. problems of dostoevsky’s poetics. 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the mirror (1975) andrei tarkovsky 136 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected south african cellular service provider brands sonja verwey and clarissa muir* abstract the development of web-based technology has resulted in changing communication models which allows for a shift in the power of voice away from the brand to that of its stakeholders. consumers have increasingly become creators and disseminators of branded content. this is known as user-generated content (ugc). while collaborative networking can assist in building a brand’s reputation, expressive networking can destroy it just as easily. thus, brand managers are faced with numerous challenges since they no longer retain control over the brand and the conversations affecting it. however, brand managers are ill-prepared for this because it is not clear what brand management looks like when goals of share growth and dominance are replaced by concerns for brand protection, and brand strategies are aimed at brand defence instead of promotion. this exploratory qualitative study utilised a grounded theory approach to determine how brand managers of selected south african cellular service provider brands respond to the online brand reputation risks posed by ugc. preliminary findings indicate that brand managers need to ensure that online reputation management of ugc forms part of the integrated digital communication strategy of the brand. in addition, ugc should be managed pro-actively as a strategic business tool with the emphasis on generating income and building the brand, and not only as an operational communication tool. a number of management recommendations are made, and possibilities for further research identified. keywords: user-generated content, brand management, online brand risks, online brand reputation, integrated digital communication strategy * professor sonja verwey (sverwey@uj.ac.za) is head of the department of strategic communication, school of communication at the university of johannesburg in south africa. clarissa muir (cmuir@uj.ac.za) lectures in the same department. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 136-155 137 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands introduction the use of web 2.0 technologies has brought about a shift that places emphasis on user-content where creators and consumers, who were previously split into two worlds, now function in a world where the internet has given consumers the power to become creators. these consumers have become active participants that contribute to and co-create brand content online. this has created numerous challenges for brand managers as many brand perceptions are now created by user-generated content (ugc). ugc is the generation and sharing of content by utilising social media (upson 2010: 87). qualman (2011: 2) argues that the most important purpose of social media is to provide global connectivity to those who are geographically separated. this has particular implications for brand management because it extends the reach of a brand, making it possible to reach various publics across numerous platforms without the limitations of time and space. as such it can offer any brand a competitive advantage by providing the opportunity to engage with customers in real time and interact with a view to developing products and/or finding business solutions. moreover, social media enables businesses to grow and establish their brand reputation in the online realm. while social media can be beneficial and a highly effective tool in customer service and brand management, it can pose significant risk, especially in respect of online brand reputation. the collaborative and expressive nature of social media allows users to participate in the content that is being published and disseminated. this gives rise to what mullins (2011) and patricios (2011: 20) refer to as the collaboration economy where consumers become marketers and co-creators in building (and destroying) brands as they become increasingly involved in the dialogue surrounding a brand. qualman (2011: 2) refers to this shift from “wordof-mouth” to “world-of-mouth” as socialnomics. socialnomics presents numerous challenges to brand managers because information can be disseminated to very large audiences with relative ease. ugc can pose both financial and reputational risk to a brand; while it can assist in building a brand’s reputation, expressive networking can destroy it just as easily. the problem with ugc for brand managers lies in the loss of control over the management of the brand because it gives consumers and publics the power to influence the brand, as well as its reputation. it is for this reason that not all enterprises are prepared to engage in online brand management. regardless of these risks, or perhaps because of them, it is important that any brand maintains an online presence and that brand managers manage the powerful effects of ugc through online reputation management (orm) systems. orm tracks online conversations about a brand in the online environment so that they can be measured, monitored and shaped to the advantage of the brand. 138 sonja verwey and clarissa muir the digital consumer: from recipient to participant the evolution of the global economy has seen a rise in the digital market space where consumers are no longer passive, but rather participants in brand building. the development of web 2.0 has not only led to virtually limitless connectivity and low cost access, but has also resulted in a new communication model in the digital market space. van den dam, nelson and lozinski (2008: 1) identify two long-term shifts in communication trends as a result of the emergence of social media, namely a shift in communication patterns from point-to-point, two-way conversations, to many-to-many, collaborative communications as well as a shift in the control of the communication environment to open platforms. van den dam et al. (2008: 1-3) contend that the combined effect of these trends is altering the competitive landscape in communication and giving rise to emerging communication models. the emergence of new communication models, which emphasises many-to-many forms of communication, has transformed recipients into active participants, content consumers into content generators, and recipients into producers (obasanjo 2007; dmochowska 2008; mullins 2011). mullins (2011) and patricios (2011: 20) refer to this phenomenon as a collaboration economy where consumers collaborate as marketers and co-creators in building (and destroying) brands through their involvement in the dialogue surrounding a brand. very often this results in a treacherous relationship for the brand, since it has no control over behaviour that previously may have been deemed insignificant, but which become very significant because of the immediacy of access and reach offered by new technologies. as a result the associated risk for the brand may be high, while it is quite low for the consumer. the emergence of these media has empowered individuals and extended their influence in many spheres, including those of businesses or brands (dmochowska 2008). these new means of operating and communicating hold both opportunity and threat for both business and brands (sullivan 2010). one such means of communicating and operating is the use of media technologies in a social and interactive manner, which speaks to the human need for connection by fusing sociology and technology (obasanjo 2007; mullins 2011). social media is primarily about collaboration, users generating content, sharing and connecting (stokes 2008: 124). this is facilitated through sites such as youtube, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, linkedin, foursquare, myspace, mxit, and blogs. these sites allow for the creation of ugc, also referred to as the “participative web”, which is a main component of web 2.0 (wunsch & vickery 2007: 8). ugc is defined as the generation and sharing of content using digital media (upson 2010: 87). since no generally accepted definition of ugc exists, three main criteria for the classification of ugc have been identified by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd 2007): 139 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands 1. publication requirement: ugc must be made public on some media platform (e.g. published on a website or on a social networking site); 2. creative effort: a certain amount of creative effort is required which adds individual value to the work; and 3. creation outside of professional routines and practices: typically ugc is created without the expectation of remuneration. however, these criteria are subject to criticism. research suggests that not all media users become content generators (van dijk 2009: 44), nor does “participation” equal “active contribution” to ugc sites; thus, participation is a relative term when it is estimated that more than 80 percent of all users are in fact passive recipients of content (oecd 2007). van dijk (2009: 53) argues that ugc is neither exclusively produced by amateurs nor by professionals, and that the development of media content has always appealed to either as both entertainment and work. what is not in dispute is that new digital platforms are giving rise to a profound paradigm shift in the manner in which companies approach and engage their customers and conduct their business relations. fournier and avery (2010: 2) suggest that participative social web offers a “toolbox of tantalizing technologies” for delivering against brand management goals because web 2.0 technologies permit two-way conversations with customers, and rare opportunities for the brand to listen to consumers and respond. the emergence of web 2.0 further facilitates opportunities to collect in-depth information about consumer preferences and lifestyles, thus enabling micro-targeting and addressable, customised messaging. however, van dijk (2009: 46) suggests that with the full implementation of web 2.0 technologies, and the subsequent emergence of many ugc sites, business interest has shifted from consumption activities, and gravitated towards production activities which afford users more power over content which can add or detract from business value. such power can be exercised through cooperation, compromise, or conflict in order to influence brand behaviour. consumers that are motivated by common concerns for a particular business or brand issues can efficiently and effectively leverage the support of like-minded people around the world through the use of technology. the driving forces of finance, information, and technology have resulted in an increasingly connected world, which has given rise to increasing consumer activism, and growing threats to corporate and brand reputations. 140 sonja verwey and clarissa muir brand management and user-generated content there are numerous challenges facing brand managers in managing perceptions that are created as a result of ugc, but the most daunting challenge that ugc presents to a brand is that it can result in malicious content that is developed without any editorial controls and which can pose significant brand risk. stakeholder theory views the firm as “an organizational entity through which numerous and diverse participants accomplish multiple, and not always entirely congruent, purposes” (donaldson & preston 1995: 70). from a marketing perspective, stakeholder theory focuses the marketing organisation’s efforts on developing and nurturing exchanges with a multitude of constituent groups other than customers and shareholders (tomas & hult 2011: 515). it can be argued that a stakeholder perspective requires a broader approach that goes beyond being customer and profit-oriented due to its collaborative orientation. mitchell, agle and wood (1997: 853) suggest that there are three attributes that identify stakeholders as such, i.e. power, legitimacy and urgency. these three attributes are also important when considering the relevance of ugc to the management of brand reputation. it can be noted that the management of ugc is necessary, simply because the participative web affords such power to the individual user to generate content. however, when such content is also deemed desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed reality, and is viewed as urgent due to time sensitivity (the extent to which a delay is unacceptable to the stakeholder) and criticality (the importance of the demands to the stakeholder), the need for brand and reputation management strategies in responding to ucg becomes evident. reputation management, according to doorley and garcia (2010: 4) is the combination of performance, behaviour and communication surrounding a brand which is comprised of both tangible and intangible benefits. the professional communicator must engage in stakeholder conversations in order to protect and enhance an organisation’s or brand’s reputation. this has resulted in the development and use of orm tools and monitoring systems in the online environment (upson 2010: 87). orm involves tracking and monitoring search engine results pages, online media and all content in the internet sphere for all mentions made about a particular organisation or brand (mullins 2011). this practice has grown in importance, particularly in the online realm which stems from an attempt to regain some control over the brand and its reputation. this has resulted in an environment where communication professionals have had to develop and assume new roles in order to manage reputation in the online space where brands have become communication platforms. the creation, building and nurturing of a brand community means that organisations are not only participating in conversations that are happening about and around them, but also actively leading 141 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands and guiding those conversations (stokes 2008: 373). while all advertising on the web is interactive by nature, ugc sites offer a unique and more complex level of engagement. instead of inviting individual consumers into an environment of their own making, marketers advertising on ugc sites are entering a conversation initiated, maintained, and “owned” by consumers themselves (iab 2008: 7). this requires those marketers to behave differently, or risk what can be very vocal disapproval from those consumers. due to disapproval, brands are often hesitant to pro-actively employ ucg strategies in advertising, but if done correctly, it can help brands weave themselves seamlessly into online conversations. one prevailing method of ugc advertising, according to the iab (2008: 13), is to produce content that borrows the aesthetic, the attitude and sometimes the distribution modes of actual ugc. however, the iab (2008: 12) cautions that such a strategy can be a tricky proposition that demands full transparency and respect for the culture of ugc. ugc digital platforms offer flexible means of communication and their connected nature allow brand communicators to follow and track brand opportunities, and provide entry points for all businesses and brands that are responsive to the increased stakeholder demand for brand experience (khumalo 2010). this has resulted in a bottom-up shift in power towards consumers as online technology has given consumers a voice that can be exposed and heard globally, and where consumers have begun to value “word-of-mouse” information more than what professional communicators may say (argenti 2005: 15). it is for this reason van den dam et al. (2008: 4) argue that both traditional mainstream internet sites and major consumer brands are beginning to recognise the value of social networking, not only for the potential advertising income it may generate, but also for e-commerce and the built-in mechanisms it employs to communicate with customers. unfortunately, this trend is not always welcomed. fournier and avery (2010: 2) suggest that as more branding activity moves online, marketers are confronted with the realisation that brands are not always welcome in social media, and seem inauthentic and intrusive amongst the cultural conversations of the social media. however, as fournier and avery (2010: 4) point out, while brands struggled to leverage social media, consumers learned how to leverage brands for their own purposes and ends, thus turning brand marketers’ own capabilities against them in the form of online public complaints, brand parodies and viral media campaigns. increasingly marketers have lost control of their content and the reach, frequency and timing of the distribution of their messages (mangold & faulds 2009: 359). as a result, branding has become an open source activity where anyone and everyone has a say in matters of the brand (fournier & avery 2010: 1). 142 sonja verwey and clarissa muir open source branding and reputational risk open source branding takes place when a brand is embedded in a cultural conversation, and implicates participatory, collaborative and socially-linked behaviour in which consumers serve as creators and disseminators of branded content (fournier & avery 2010: 4). as a result, stakeholders are no longer passive users, but have become active influencers (brito, vanzin, ferasso & saldanha 2010: 114). open source branding is changing some of the fundamental principles of value creation that marketers have taken for granted for decades within previous paradigms. fournier and avery (2010: 1) argue that web-based power struggles between marketer and consumer brand authors challenge accepted branding truths and paradigms in that “small, short-term brands can trump large, long-term icons, marketing looks more like public relations, brand building gives way to brand protection, and brand value is a function of risks, not returns”. stokes (2008: 474) points to the resultant growth of orm because brands and individuals realise that the combination of search engines and social media mean that brand risk is only a quick search or post away. this has forced marketers to seek strategies aimed at collaborating and positively leveraging the influence of open source branding, and to devise new brand strategies aimed at brand protection rather than brand building. fournier and avery (2010: 4) identify three overarching managerial approaches to open source branding, each varying in its risks and rewards: 1. path of least resistance: cede control of the brand to consumers, bow to social media pressure, and admit to consumers. this strategy is regarded by many as inevitable in web 2.0, and the brand can also gain much coveted citizenship credentials as a result. 2. gain cultural resonance by being where the action is on social media and fitting in seamlessly with what is going on. “playing their game” requires mastery of the nuanced principles, styles and mechanisms governing the new cultural environment such that the brand can dilute its inherent intrusiveness on the people’s web. 3. leveraging the interconnectedness of web 2.0 consumers and feed into their evolving habits to tip the power scales back to marketers by providing the means to get consumers to work on behalf of the brand. van dijk (2009: 42) argues that the notion of “participatory culture” tends to emphasise the emancipation of the involved individual, who can satisfy their need for self-expression and creativity within digital spaces that are created for this purpose. tapscott and williams (2006: 150) refer to this phenomenon as “prosumption” which allows individuals to attain equal participation in the economy, and to co-create value with peers to meet very personal needs, or to engage in fulfilling communities. in this regard, grannel (2009: 66) argues that 143 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands ugc plays a dual role – both enhancing the individual and cementing the collective through the promotion of alliances and allegiances. klein (1999: 335) argues that this increased connection with brands afforded by participative web technologies has profound implications for brand reputation as consumers are entangled with the culture and identities of the brands they support and feel complicit in the brand’s behaviour. however, as fournier and avery (2010: 12) point out, the social collective is an inherently self-interested entity whose activities are not necessarily aligned with the best interests of the brand. as a consequence, brands are hesitant to disclose the strategies they engage to manage their reputation. web 2.0 brand management may now more appropriately be considered as risk management, a discipline focused on risk assessment and risk control. maucci and sordi (2011) define reputation as an asset as perceived by stakeholder communities, and reputational risk as a function of the stakeholders’ reaction to the reputational risk events. as emphasised by maucci and sordi (2011) and illustrated in figure 1 any reputation risk strategy requires a two-pronged approach: risk prevention and risk recovery. figure 1: brand reputation risk management (adapted from maucci & sordi 2011) unfortunately brand managers are ill-prepared for this, because as fournier and avery (2010: 28) point out, it is not clear what brand management looks like when goals of share growth and dominance are replaced by concerns for brand protection and are aimed at brand defence. web 2.0 brand strategies are more likely discovered than they are constructed, governed by serendipity versus preplanning, uncertainty versus certainty, and a reactive versus a proactive stance (fournier & avery 2010: 30). as a result, many brand managers have reverted to 144 sonja verwey and clarissa muir active listening as a strategy to assess online brand risks, hence the proliferation of tracking tools. such online strategic conversations are monitored not only for content, but also for the sentiments expressed by participants in order to limit both reputational risk and reputational impact due to dissatisfaction/abandonment (maucci & sordi 2011). in support of the aforementioned, existing brand strategies do not accommodate the notion of brands as short-term socio-cultural phenomena. instead, traditional approaches are focussed on cultivating long-term brand equity and customer loyalty, and brand managers find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the emergent and ever-changing nature of brands as socio-cultural phenomena. brand relevance has become more important than brand differentiation, and brand loyalty has been replaced by brand reputation. the nature and medium of brand communication are being altered rapidly by the move of users to environments that offer less expensive – but more expressive – capabilities to facilitate both one-to-one and group communications with more people than ever before. these shifts are creating a new brand environment that will require significant and bold changes by brand managers if they wish to remain a relevant part of their changing brand scape. it was against this background that research was conducted to determine how brand managers of selected south african cellular service provider brands manage online reputation risks posed to their brands by ugc. research methodology although literature has been published on online reputation management, very little research has been conducted on the reputational risk posed by the use of social media tools that allow for ugc. thus, this study was exploratory in nature and utilised a qualitative research design, which is referred to as the interpretive approach in social science research. this qualitative research design used a glaserian grounded theory approach to address the research problem. a glaserian grounded theory approach refers to a nonspecific way to refer to any approach, which is used to develop theoretical ideas (concepts, models, formal theories), that somehow begins with data (tin 2010: 99). it is theory that has been systematically obtained through social research and is grounded in data. glaser advocated a relatively unstructured method that does not produce a set of definitive findings or a description but instead produces an ongoing conceptual theory, which means that one does not begin with a theory and then prove it, but rather begin with an area of study and what is relevant to that area is allowed to emerge. this approach allowed for a relatively unstructured framework at the onset of the data collection process while attempting to investigate the research question which focused on how brand managers of selected south african cellular service brands manage the reputational risk posed by ugc. 145 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands the sub-questions were as follows: • does ugc pose a risk to cellular service provider brands? • how are cellular service provider brands responding to user-generated online brand risk? • what are regarded as best practices for managing user-generated online brand risk? the grounded theory approach and theoretical sampling grounded theory requires theoretical sampling which means that sampling is an emergent and ongoing process that evolves as the theory develops from the data (goulding & saren 2010: 71). this means that rather than predetermining the characteristics and size of the sample, the developing theory directs the researcher to new informants or sources of information (goulding & saren 2010: 71). in light of the aforementioned, the identification of a population was crucial at the start of the study and this was identified as the cellular service provider brands within the context of south africa. all five existing brands (cell c, mtn, vodacom, virgin mobile and 8ta) were considered and the three biggest cellular service provider brands were contacted. both cell c and vodacom agreed to form part of the study; however, mtn did not want to participate in the study due to the sensitive nature of its information at the time of the study. interviews conducted with cell c and vodacom led the researchers to the agencies that manage the online reputation for cell c and vodacom respectively. data collection data was collected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews with brand managers from both cell c and vodacom. both these brands have a very strong presence on social media sites such as twitter, facebook and youtube. these interviews directed the researchers to the agencies that manage the online reputation of the respective brands, followed by seven interviews with south african digital and online reputation management experts. the interview schedule consisted of open-ended questions that were categorised within four sections dealing with the important elements that emerged from the literature. the first section focussed on the gathering of general information pertaining to roles and responsibilities. this was followed by a section dealing with online brand management, ugc and the use within the brand or the agency, and finally, an in-house management section that was only completed in the event where a brand was responsible for managing the online reputation of the brand in-house. the use of open-ended questions allowed for probing and insight to be generated into the approach and strategies used by the various cellular service 146 sonja verwey and clarissa muir provider brands. all the respondents gave consent for the interviews to be recorded. notes were taken during each interview and recordings were transcribed to assist with the process of data analysis. data analysis data analysis consisted of thematic content analysis of the transcribed material and this process enabled similar themes, categories or relationships to be identified. this process of analysis is supported by the grounded theory approach which prescribes that analysis of the data involves coding strategies, meaning that the data was broken down into units of meaning and labelled to generate concepts. then, these concepts were clustered into descriptive categories and subsumed into higher-order categories or one underlying core category (goulding 1998: 53). the data analysis technique used was that of huberman and miles and entailed three linked processes that took place, i.e. data reduction, data display, data conclusion and verification (robson 2002: 473). this resulted in main themes being identified which pertained to the new brand context and how cellular service provider brands manage ugc. as with any research undertaken, it is crucial that the research results are reliable. the reliability of the research conducted was strengthened due to the fact that the same interview schedule was utilised for all the brand managers, the agencies servicing the brands and also the expert interviews, and yielded the same results in terms of the issues and themes that emerged. this data collection instrument was tested by means of a pilot study conducted prior to the data collection process. findings and interpretation the research conducted resulted in the identification of a number of key themes that highlighted the issues that need to be considered by brand managers when managing their ugc brand risk. these themes have been integrated into four main categories dealing with the new context that brands work within, how they respond to the online reputation risk, the new roles and responsibilities that have been ascribed to brand managers within the cellular service provider brands, and also the agencies that service these brands, and finally, the process of digital strategy development within this new brand context. a new brand context the consumer living in the collaboration economy is a highly individualistic person who is value-conscious and experience-orientated. this person places emphasis on being informed and takes control of their relationships with brands in the marketplace. as emphasised by dmochowska (2008) these individuals are empowered and have extended their influence in many spheres of business and brands. these individuals now function in an environment where the f-factor 147 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands (fans, friends and followers) plays an important role; this refers to the fact that a person interlinked with many other people on social networks may have more power to influence through collective collaboration than others who are less connected. with consumers having more influence in terms of the voicing of opinion and engagement, brands have lost control of consumers and this is one of the pertinent issues that became evident throughout the research. as highlighted by one of the digital specialist agencies, the loss of control has made it crucial to measure the influence that individuals have when using social media; various tools exists that estimate the influence of the individual on social media platforms. an example hereof is the net promoter score (nps), which is a tool that divides companies’ customers into three categories (promoters, passives and detractors). this is used to calculate whether an individual will recommend or promote a brand to others via social media platforms. recommendation or promotion by a customer using social media platforms has created an environment where brands can now use their own media to build their brand and relationships. this was highlighted by a number of respondents who emphasised that brands in the current environment need to take note of the concept of owned, bought and earned media. owned media refers to all media or communication channels owned by the brand, whereas paid media is all the media that the brand appears on, but this space needs to be bought. the advent and major growth of tools such as social media networks, search engines and digital public relations has given rise to a concept called earned media. earned media is important in the current field of brand and communication management as it has created an opportunity for brands to get exposure and free publicity. earned media feeds directly from both owned and bought media; the relevance of managing earned media in an integrated and strategic manner, in the current brand environment, is gaining significant importance. the research findings illustrate that the cellular service provider brands are attempting to manage this earned media space strategically as the brands are inventing new departments specifically created to focus on social media management and the inclusion of this new communication tool to the brand’s mix of messaging tools. the inclusion of social media as a new brand communication tool has resulted in web 2.0 brand management now more appropriately being considered as risk management (maucci & sordi 2011). as indicated by one of the cellular service provider brands, “so your brand is now co-owned with the consumer because they can feed back and everyone else can see what they feed back. you can’t control what’s happening there and i think it is a big risk”. the sentiments of maucci and sordi (2011) correlate with the findings as it was emphasised by the majority of the respondents that the use of ugc poses new risks to brands that need to be managed. 148 sonja verwey and clarissa muir responding to reputation risk with the increasing relevance of reputational risk and the management thereof, the value of monitoring tools within the social media space has grown in importance. as highlighted by upson (2010: 87) this has resulted in the development and use of various orm tools and monitoring systems. the use of these tools have resulted into an environment where the ability to discern brand risk potential has become a valued ability. the utilisation of monitoring tools by both agencies and cellular service provider brands was highlighted throughout the research. both the cellular service provider brands indicated that they utilise agencies to assist with the monitoring of online behaviour; these agencies work with in-house teams at the cellular service provider brands. as noted by one respondent, weekly and monthly orm reports are compiled followed by content plans or conversation plans that are usually developed by the agencies based on these reports. these entail the short-term plan going forward for the brand within this space. in support of using monitoring tools to manage risk, agencies highlighted the relevance of managing risk and the fact that different models are used to do so. one respondent noted that the agency prescribes to a three-tiered approach, namely low, medium and high risk. low risk deals with “simple questions that can be answered but if left unanswered they could turn into high risk questions”, medium risk addresses anything that “bears heavily on products or service”, and lastly, high risks refer to whatever “bears risk on share price, on integrity, ethics and governance”. in support of the aforementioned, respondents from two other digital agencies emphasised that it is crucial to distinguish between low, medium and high risk issues; they added that this could be done by differentiating between complaints lodged and crises discussed on social media platforms. a complaint would be categorised as a low or medium risk, while a crisis would be a high risk issue. this finding resonates with the statement of maucci and sordi (2011) who state that any strategy developed to address risk online should have a two-pronged approach: risk prevention (which would be complaints = low and medium risk issues) and risk recovery (which would be crisis = high risk issues). however, taking into consideration the various monitoring tools available, the research shows that no one-size-fits-all approach can be used as managing brand risk depends upon the nature of the brand. the use of a well-known and frequently used model was highlighted by one of the leading south african online reputation management agencies as a useful model for orm. this is the saidwot™ online reputation management model that highlights three basic actions that are important. the actions consist of listening (where are they hanging out?), analysing (what 149 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands are they interested in?), and engaging (should you be there and what do they want from you?). this model is used to ask important questions, and a four-step approach for the management thereof is adopted. the four m approach consists of monitoring, measuring, management and maximisation. monitoring refers to the concept of basically monitoring the conversations, behaviour and actions of consumers online. this is followed up with measuring that entails a review of the results produced during the monitoring phase and an interpretation of the behaviour and actions monitored. the next step in the process is management; it consists of the action plan followed by the brand and/or agency to address the results produced and to capitalise on opportunities. the last step is maximisation. this refers to maximising the businesses and the business decisions at a strategic level. the emphasis is on assessing the current situation and brand environment and managing the social media space, while maximising all opportunities available to the brand. throughout the research it became apparent that although brands constantly monitor and respond to reputational risks posed by ugc, many brand managers are not prepared for the challenges that risks pose to these brands. as emphasised by fournier and avery (2010: 28), brand strategies nowadays are being approached differently from traditional brand strategies. this was confirmed by the research as a number of the respondents referred to the fact that brand management is shifting from the goals of share growth and dominance to being concerned with brand protection and brand defence. this resonates with the statement of upson (2010: 87) who highlights that the role of the brand manager has shifted as this person now has new roles and role descriptors that are emerging. roles and responsibilities this shift in roles and responsibilities of the brand manager was emphasised by both cellular service provider brands, as well as the agencies interviewed. throughout the interview process it became apparent that a number of brands developed new departments within the organisational structures that are responsible for the management of social media (which includes ugc). this was reported to be a labour intensive function as it requires real-time responses 24 hours of the day, while building a relationship with customers online by means of relevant engagement. in light hereof, both cellular service provider brands employed agencies, as well as in-house teams, that assist with social media and reputational risk management. the in-house teams are used to manage and track online activity and deal with complaints and problems on social media. on the other hand, agencies are employed to monitor behaviour on social media such as facebook, twitter and youtube via various orm tools. the responsibilities of agencies and cellular 150 sonja verwey and clarissa muir service provider brands are blurred and although the responsibilities of both include the management of social media to build brand, these tasks are approached differently. as highlighted by a digital expert, the role of the agency is more consultative whereby risks are identified, management strategies are developed to deal with the risks, brand opportunities are identified, and companies are assisted with the execution of the social media and orm strategy. another significant finding with regards to the aforementioned was that the roles and titles of in-house team members and agencies that manage social media and reputational risks differ. the titles of the managers of social media, situated within the cellular service provider brands, include terms such as senior public media relations manager, executive head of media relations, and digital marketing manager compared to agencies utilising titles such as digital strategist, account manager, content and community co-ordinator, and head of the media division. the change in titles has not only manifested much sooner at agency level, but the titles used within agencies better represent involvement in the digital realm of the brand. even though titles differ, it is relevant to note that the individuals responsible for the overall management are in both cases part of middle to senior management. one social media manager from a cellular service provider brand reported that he is the lowest ranking person within the company reporting directly to the chief executive officer. however, it was emphasised that the majority of the individuals responsible for social media used by the brand are positioned at middle management level. this highlights the fact that the function of social media management is primarily managed at an operational level and not at a strategic level. as one respondent noted, the function of social media management is viewed as a communication tool rather than a strategic business tool. this was supported by a digital expert who stated, “i think the biggest risk for our clients is that they don’t view social media as a business process, they view it as a communication medium…”. throughout the research it was clear that with the focus being on the management of social media platforms as a communication tool, brands felt that they needed to manage the communication and engagement with their stakeholders, while the agencies were responsible for the development or co-development of strategy, monitoring and measuring of the social platforms, and the report back on these to the client. unfortunately these brands do not have structures where management of social media is centralised within a single or set of integrated departments. the function is divided between the brand/marketing and corporate communication and/or media relations departments, while the role of social media management is usually situated within corporate communication. it became evident how both the cellular service provider brands have divided the management of brand on social 151 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands media platforms between different departments. for example, the management of the brand in the social media space is being managed by brand and marketing departments, while the reputation of the brand is mainly the responsibility of corporate communication and media relations departments. this has resulted in social media and more specifically the brand’s holistic digital strategy not being managed as a strategic tool but being developed in parts and managed by isolated departments within the organisation. digital strategy is developed in isolation the concept of integration, an act or instance of combining into an integral whole, is a familiar term used within the field of marketing and communication; it is crucial that the digital function is addressed as an integrated function within the organisation or agency (witsepski 2012: 46). the current trend is to ensure that the various specialists from different departments working on a strategy or campaign are united and work as a team. for this to take place successfully it needs to be addressed at the structural level of the organisation taking into consideration all vertical and horizontal levels. a significant finding highlighted in the research is that none of the cellular service provider brands manage social media (and ugc) as an integrated element of the larger communication mix. both the cellular service provider brands have responsible individuals and departments with their core focus being on managing social media (which includes ugc) and have employed agencies to assist with the strategising and managing of this function. as highlighted by a digital expert, integration of digital tools with other communication mix elements is crucial; this became apparent through a statement such as “i think social media is just a component of building a brand”. in support of this, agencies noted that the lack of integration is a major challenge to brands, but can mostly be attributed to internal business processes. conclusion and recommendations the results of the research clearly indicate that reputational risk is an existing issue and needs to be managed effectively by brands when using ugc. ugc should be used and managed as a strategic business tool. the management thereof is currently divided between corporate communication, marketing and media relations departments; agencies are employed to assist at a strategic level, but are utilised on an operational level as they have limited involvement in the execution of the strategy, which they usually develop. this leads to fragmented operational management of social media as a communication tool, rather that the management of social media, and more specifically ugc as a strategic business tool. 152 sonja verwey and clarissa muir in terms of online reputation management, the research shows that digital experts and digital agencies are used mainly in a consultative capacity. even though brands are heavily involved in the development of their online and social media strategies, experts and agencies play a major role in the monitoring and measuring thereof. furthermore, most brand managers are above-the-line (atl) communication specialists and some of them lack the depth of knowledge and experience needed to manage social media. they find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the emerging scenario, but as time progresses and tools develop this should become an easier task. however, the research shows that the change in the knowledge and expertise of the individuals managing social media platforms will first be noted within senior management such as marketing and communication directors. the current shift in the responsibilities of marketing and communication directors within brands should be future requirements to be considered for this career. in conclusion, this study addressed the issue around how brand managers manage the reputational risk of ugc with respect to selected south african cellular service provider brands. it was found that brand managers need to ensure that the online reputation management of ugc forms part of the integrated digital communication strategy of the brand. ugc also needs to be managed as a strategic business tool with emphasis on generating income and building the brand rather than an operational communication tool merely used on an engagement and entertainment level. a recommendation for future research would be to conduct an international comparative study to ascertain whether the risks posed by ugc within south african cellular service provider brands differ from cellular service provider brands within another selected country or countries. this study should also be extended to other brand categories to determine if different types of brands require different approaches to managing online user generated brand risk. 153 managing online user-generated brand risk: an exploratory case study of selected sa cellular service provider brands references argenti, p.a. 2005. how technology has 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[online]. available at: ˂http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/14/38393115.pdf> [accessed on 25 june 2012]. 42 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa stefan sonderling* abstract this article develops a fanonian perspective to understand intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa. apartheid’s demise is communicated as a moral victory over evil and south african whites are persuaded to confess their past immorality. this article argues that moral interpretation is inappropriate and the demise of apartheid must be evaluated as a political power game. furthermore, it explicates fanon’s rejection of moral evaluations and his conception of the violent dialectic of colonisation and decolonisation and applies this framework to analyse intercultural communication in the postcolony. fanon’s hegelian violent dialectic of master and slave constructs human identities and provides the prototype for intercultural communication. fanon’s political realism also explains the mass african migration from the postcolonial necropolis to the promised good life in the land of their former european masters. african leaders promote the migration as a rightful revenge for colonisation and the migrants are represented as warriors on a crusade to conquer the lands of former colonisers inspired by communication of memories of their glorious past colonial wars: from hannibal’s invasion of rome to the muslim’s conquest of spain. keywords: colonialism, postcolonial, apartheid, violence of identity, white guilt, decolonisation, fanon, hegel, master-slave dialectics, communication as war by other means * dr stefan sonderling (sondes@unisa.ac.za) lectures in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 42-59 43 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa introduction “there is no negro mission; there is no white man’s burden” (fanon 2008: 178). the demise of apartheid is celebrated as the fall of the last bastion of colonialism and communicated as a moral and political victory over evil (moran 2002: 171). south african whites are urged to confess their guilt for complicity in past immoralities. communication of self-loathing and confessions of shame have become the politically correct rituals for whites. in turn, the spectacle of white symbolic self-flagellation triggers rituals of orgiastic pleasures in the new black ruling elites. many postcolonial media and communication scholars unquestionably accept this morality play as the common sense normative model for intercultural communication in post-apartheid south africa and for all global communication between the west and the postcolonial third world. this article questions the moral interpretations and argues that the demise of apartheid is beyond the simplistic evaluation of good and evil and needs to be understood in realistic terms of a political power game. in order to demystify the play of power behind the moral evaluations, this article draws on fanon’s critique of western morality and his theory of colonisation and liberation. fanon is used because he is considered as the canonical source for understanding the postcolonial world of the 21st century (mbembe 2012; wallerstein 2009). after having demystified the moralising discourse of decolonisation the article analyses the dynamics of power behind intercultural communication in south africa and between postcolonial africa and its former european colonial masters. a close reading of this afrocentric communication on colonisation and decolonisation reveals an african dream to colonise europe that manifests the continuation of the eternal war-like dialectic of master and slave. seen from fanon’s decolonisation perspective african emigration to europe can be understood as escape from the oppression and poverty perpetuated by the new indigenous postcolonial rulers. thus africans escape from their postcolonial necropolis (mbembe 2003) to the promise of a good life in the land of longdeparted former european colonisers. but in the communication of african leaders the migrants are imaginatively transformed into crusaders resurrecting ancient warrior traditions (mazrui 1975), and memories of their glorious past colonial conquests and lost empires: from hannibal’s invasion of rome to the islamic conquest of spain (mbeki 2005). communicating post-apartheid morality communicating white guilt emerged long before the discourse of postcolonialism prescribed self-loathing as the politically correct posture. an early manifestation is recorded by kapuscinski’s (1988) description of the fear among the white portuguese settlers in luanda as black liberation armies are closing in on the city. 44 stefan sonderling in the state of siege some whites spontaneously began to treat blacks with respect and “one of our neighbours had even got into the habit of stopping africans he didn’t know from adam, shaking hands, and bowing low” (kapuscinski 1988: 4). from such beginnings communicating colonial victimhood became a lucrative industry vociferously denouncing whiteness and european enlightenment rationality. this is typically promoted by a white south african academic: whites ... would try, in a significantly different way to the normal workings of whiteliness, to make themselves invisible and unheard ... one would live as quietly and decently as possible, refraining from airing one’s view on the political situation in the public realm, realising that it is not one’s place to offer diagnoses and analyses, that blacks must be left to remake the country in their own way. whites have too long had influence and a public voice; now they should in humility step back from expressing their thoughts or managing others (vice 2010: 335). samantha vice (2010) exhibits the mentality of the culture of defeat that transforms the shame of the defeated and humiliated south african white tribe into an act of purification: by communicating self-loathing whites can find redemption, and by eliciting pity they can claim to hold the moral high ground (schivelbusch 2004: 27-31). as if by moral imperative whites must atone for their past sins by self-flagellation and retreat into silence to repair their presumed damaged moral self. in vice’s (2010: 337) moral imagination whites must become politically mute and renounce their right to participate in the democratic political process because their involvement could corrupt politics. this is another way of saying that whites must not engage in any political communication because, as was the case in zimbabwe, political activity is deemed an illegal challenge to the ruling party, as a zimbabwean government spokesman warned: let me assure you whites here, that once you support mdc, zanu is not going to treat you as business people, but as politicians. then if you are treated as politicians, it is like signing your own death warrants. the political storm will not spare you. let you be informed that our reserve force, the war veterans, will be set on you (pilossof 2012: 48). political excommunication is justified because south african whites are foreigners and should not form an attachment to their country of birth (vice 2010: 331-332, 337). vice (2010) echoes steve biko’s (2005) claim that africa belongs to africans and whites who do not accept the cultural dictates of black power cannot live in africa. by making such a claim vice (2010) is recycling the old blood-libel that all whites are guilty by definition because guilt is genetically inherited. the evil character of whiteness cancels any individual differences between members of the group, and like ubuntu, the group’s 45 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa collective stereotype excludes a place for individuals (marx 2002). stripping away individuality can lead to dehumanisation and the entire group is seen as constructed of homogenous individuals. vice’s essay elicited hostile reaction in the mass media and sympathetic reception from academics whose essays filled one entire issue and part of a subsequent issue of the south african journal of philosophy (cf. baily 2011; benatar 2012; blum 2011; futter 2011; hook 2011; hurst 2011; janz 2011; jones 2011; mckaiser 2011; mills 2011; vice 2011; villet 2012; wanderer 2011). against the supportive essays, benatar (2012: 629) is critical of vice’s faulty logic and cautions against the dangers of rendering whites politically silent. vice’s (2010) essay is indicative of the wider phenomena of third world hubris and anti-western hatred (bruckner 2010; buruma & margalit 2005; marx 2002; mendoza, montaner & vargas llosa 2000). against the above one can ask whether moral evaluations are appropriate to judge the post-apartheid world. the paradoxical mix of anti-white ideology and moral pretensions raise doubt about the appropriateness of using moral criteria to evaluate postcolonial intercultural communication relations. indeed, the claims that whiteness is “inherently tied to domination and oppression” and that the accidental possession of a white skin forever condemns a person to be “irrevocably on the wrong side” (vice 2010: 326) imply a contingent position, rather than a moral imperative. indeed, as south african artist mbongeni ngema puts it: in the past the relationship between blacks and whites was clear cut because “we knew it was a racial conflict” (nyamnjoh 2006: 56-57). following nietzsche’s suspicion that morality may be the greatest danger to human existence because it is an imaginary evaluation devoid of reality (nietzsche 1956; sonderling 2008) this article turns to fanon’s writing (fanon 1973; 2008) to construct a framework to analyse intercultural communication relations in postcolonial south africa. beyond moral evaluation: understanding colonisation and decolonisation as war fanon (1973) considers history as a cyclical process of colonisation and decolonisation, domination and submission: colonisation is a violent conquest and decolonisation is a violent revenge. fanon rejects the claim that colonial exploitation is morally the worse form of domination, because colonial exploitation is no different from other forms of exploitation: “all forms of exploitation resemble one another ... all forms of exploitation are identical because all of them are applied against the same ‘object’: man” (fanon 2008: 65). from fanon’s marxist perspective, colonisation and decolonisation have no absolute moral value but are stages in the perpetual class war: “colonisation and decolonisation are simply a question of relative strength” (fanon 1973: 47). for fanon the reordering of the world can only be achieved through violence 46 stefan sonderling because decolonisation is the destruction of the colonisers’ world “no more and no less” (fanon 1973: 31). colonisation and decolonisation are based on reciprocity: colonisation was made possible by violence, and decolonisation must be violent. history begins with the violent colonial conquest and induces violent resistance. decolonisation is violent because it is a social revolution, “decolonisation is quite simply the replacing of a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species of men’” (fanon 1973: 27). thus, both colonisation and decolonisation are defined by an essential racial difference, “decolonisation is meeting of two forces opposed to each other by their very nature” (fanon 1973: 27-28). the colonisers are “first and foremost those who came from elsewhere, those who are unlike the original inhabitants, the ‘others’” and must be expelled (fanon 1973: 31). decolonisation is the erasure of the traces of conquest and creates a “tabula rasa” on which a new human being and social order can be built. this is a revolutionary “change in the order of the world” whereby “the last shall be first and the first last” (fanon 1973: 28). fanon suggests that the war of liberation precludes the native “coexisting” with the coloniser because this hinders the task of unifying the natives. decolonisation can unite the indigenous people by removing “heterogeneity”: by removing the foreigners a nation can be unified on “racial basis” (fanon 1973: 35). when confronted with violence some european moralists implore the native to consider the western cultural values for peaceful resolution of conflicts. but the native is not deceived by such moral talk: “as far as the native is concerned, morality is very concrete; it is to silence the settler’s defiance, to break his flaunting violence – in a word, to put him out of the picture” (fanon 1973: 34). for the colonised native european moral values are nothing more than “a collection of dead words” and moral values are deemed irrelevant because they have “nothing to do with the concrete conflict in which the people is engaged” (fanon 1973: 36). the coloniser must be buried or expelled, and there must be a complete break in the line of communication between coloniser and colonised. decolonisation is not achieved by “friendly discussion” but by “murderous and decisive” struggle between the two antagonists facing one another (fanon 1973: 28). in this meeting of the antagonists, speech is replaced by action, “when the native hears a speech about the nobility of western culture he pulls out his knife” (fanon 1973: 33). the native considers discussions of moral values as attempts by the coloniser to retain domination. moreover, the native considers moral values as irrelevant because he experiences first-hand the brutality of the coloniser “and no professor of ethics, no priest has ever come to be beaten in his place” (fanon 1973: 34). the native does not want to be equal to the coloniser but to be “more” than the settler, he wants to eject him and take his place (ibid.). the native dreams about eliminating the coloniser, possessing what he has and sleeping in his bed, preferably with the settler’s wife (fanon 1973: 30). the native “is an oppressed 47 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor” (fanon 1973: 41). for the native violence has the ultimate utility in the fight for freedom and is central in constructing a new postcolonial identity. the violent construction of colonial and postcolonial identities fanon suggests that violence is central in the colonial and postcolonial relationships: through violence the land was colonised and violence is central in the decolonisation. violence is instrumental and symbolic in the process of identity formation and it is therapeutic and formative: initially the violence of colonisation has undermined the natives’ sense of self, and the native learns his violence from the coloniser because white civilisation is intrinsically violent and corrupts the peaceful “noble slave”. this rousseaunian theme of pristine innocence is later modified when fanon discovers that violence is also intrinsic to the colonised society. like heraclitus, fanon accepts that violent conflict is the father of all things: “for the native, life can only spring up again out of the rotting corpse of the settler” (fanon 1973: 73). for the colonised slave the act of killing constructs two entities: the identity of the social group, and the identity of the individual human being. sartre explains that fanon shows how violence creates the communal sense of being whereby the “mad impulse to murder is the natives’ collective unconscious” and thereafter violence constructs the individual as it “is man re-creating himself” (sartre 1973: 16-18). to be human is to use violence: “the rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity” (sartre 1973: 19). fanon follows on hegel’s description of the primordial battle that establishes the social hierarchy of master and slave and their dialectical interaction. this primordial violence of a fight to the death for recognition is the origin of human consciousness, self-consciousness and identity. at first, consciousness arises from the fight itself and from the act of killing the opponent, as hegel puts it: [t]o speak of the ‘origin’ of self-consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to the death for ‘recognition’. without this fight to the death for pure prestige, there would never have been human beings on earth ... [t]he ‘first’ anthropogenetic action necessarily takes the form of a fight: a fight to the death between two beings that claim to be men, a fight for pure prestige carried on for the sake of ‘recognition’ by the adversary (kojève 1980: 11-12). sartre (1973: 19) writes that the colonised natives make themselves human beings by a double act of killing: first they become “brothers in as much as each of them killed”. in other words, participation in violence unites the natives and the act of 48 stefan sonderling killing constructs a fraternity. thereafter the act of killing produces individuals: through a more selective act of killing the colonised “make men of themselves by murdering europeans” (sartre 1973: 15). sartre (1973: 19) notes that for fanon killing is a productive and central aspect of colonial liberation because to shoot down a european is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppressed at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man (ibid.). the act of killing eliminates the master-oppressor and at the same time eliminates the oppressed-slave; from this massacre a new free man emerges. but killing the master does not yet produce a complete new identity: in line with hegel’s thinking, the killing only gives the former slave consciousness, but does not as yet produce self-consciousness. complete human identity consists of consciousness as well as self-consciousness and is conferred by an act of mutual recognition from another living human being against whom one fights. the hegelian dialectic of master and slave means that the new master (the former slave) needs to be recognised and acknowledged as the new master by the new slave (the former master). but such recognition cannot be given if the old master is dead, therefore it is important to keep the former master alive and in a state of perpetual submission. the dialectic of domination and submission continues: the former slave is a new master and gains self-consciousness by oppressing the former master. fanon, following hegel, puts it thus: man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognized by him. as long as he has not been effectively recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his action. it is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depends. it is that other being in whom the meaning of his life is condensed (fanon 2008: 168-169). this implies that in order to be confirmed as a human being the liberated former slave must continually impose himself upon the “other” and engage in perpetual violence to affirm his own humanity. in order to fully confirm his humanity he needs a constant challenge and human identity is “achieved only through conflict and through the risk that conflict implies” (fanon 2008: 170). this is reciprocal violence and, as sartre (1973: 20) notes, “[w]e were men at his expense, he makes himself man at ours”. this reciprocity opens new communication relationships: the former slave is compelled to colonise the white mother country to demonstrate that he is not inferior. 49 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa dialectic of perpetual war: african dream of colonising europe manifest in intercultural communication the violence of decolonisation does not disappear when independence is achieved but is used for post-independence struggles (fanon 1973: 59). according to fanon (ibid.), postcolonial violence is used for two purposes: internally for national reconstruction of the new postcolonial society, and externally when the free nation joins the global struggle between capitalism and socialism. but beyond the abstract ideological global war there is another meaningful conflict: a permanent war of attrition against the defeated colonisers. the defeat of the european colonisers and their expulsion was only the beginning of a dialectical process of identity construction. to become free the former slave must constantly impose himself on the former master. thus after gaining freedom and having expelled the european settlers, the colonisers’ mother country is doubly threatened with violence from the resentful returning settlers feeling betrayed by their government, as well as invasion by migrating former colonial subjects. as sartre (1973: 24) puts it: the union of the algerian people causes the disunion of the french people; throughout the whole territory of the ex-mother-country, the tribes are dancing their war-dances. the terror has left africa, and is settling here; for quite obviously there are certain furious beings who want to make us pay with our blood for the shame of having been beaten by the native. for the former master coloniser the double violence is purifying because it can free him from the guilt of colonisation: “our soil must be occupied by a formerly colonized people and we must starve of hunger” (sartre 1973: 25). the liberated new nations of the third world seem like the “rising tide” and threaten “to swallow up all of europe” (fanon 1973: 84). the former slaves demand and claim that the wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too ... for in a very concrete way europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries ... europe is literally the creation of the third world. the wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped people (fanon 1973: 102). so hordes of migrants are escaping from the repression of their postcolonial freedom. but migration is not benign: fanon (1973) notes that algerian migrants to france commit their acts of violence selectively: when they are in algiers their acts of killing are “narcissistic” as they “rob each other, cut each other up and kill each other”, thus they kill within their tribal “closed circle” (fanon 1973: 246-247). however, in france their acts of killing are selective and 50 stefan sonderling they create “an intersocial and intergroup criminality” that is specifically directed at the french (fanon 1973: 247). in an act of role reversal the immigrants residing in europe begin to describe their suburbs as if they were the colonial territories and the immigrant-invaders now see themselves as “decolonising the republic” (kipfer 2011: 1157-1158). in an attempt to prevent the third world from organising “a great crusade of hunger against the whole of europe” the europeans are urged to help develop the newly liberated countries (fanon 1973: 84). but development aid and money is considered as rightful reparation for sins of colonialism (fanon 1973: 81-83). however, demands for reparation conceal the reality of the postcolonial world: the postcolonial nation states are poor, not because the colonisers confiscated their wealth, but because the state is being dismantled by the new indigenous elites (bayart 1999). the people are brutalised by their own rulers who are the architects of their own poverty and force the people to migrate to the lands of their former colonisers (mbeki 2009). as against the postcolonial poverty, the land of the former coloniser seems to offer hope because africa looks like a desert and “there’s nothing here to take!” (virilio 2007: 62). such realities are concealed by the propaganda produced by the new postcolonial elites. the migrations inspire african leaders to dream about colonising europe and resurrect their ancient warrior traditions (mazrui 1975). in particular it is the memory of hannibal’s adventurous invasion of rome and the muslims’ conquest of spain that provide the paradigmatic examples of past african colonial adventures that inspire new colonial aspirations, as is evident in the communications of former south african president thabo mbeki (2005). mbeki sees an analogy between past african colonial conquests and the contemporary african migration to europe. attempts by europe to resist the african invasion are condemned by mbeki as “immoral” manifestation of “european racism” and “fortress europe” is urged to open its gates, destroy its walls, and allow the poor wretched of the earth easy access to “take” what they claim is their inheritance. mbeki (2005) warns that, as in the past, if europe resists, it will be colonised by force: “the african armies of hannibal and djabal tarik invaded spain and europe with the deliberate intention to vanquish their european opponents. they sought and required nobody’s permission to undertake their bellicose ventures”. mbeki acknowledges hannibal’s colonial ambition and glorifies the muslim colonial conquest of spain and presents the hordes of postcolonial africans escaping from the poverty and oppression as if they were the new african armies embarking on a jihad to colonise europe. according to mbeki (2005) 51 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa [t]he african poor who have tried to enter spain and europe through cetua and melilla would prefer that they are given permission legally to enter spain and europe, to serve as lowly workers rather than conquistadors/conquerors. but if “fortress europe” does not open its gates to the invaders, the african migrants will exercise their historical right to freely roam the world and they will follow in the footsteps of hannibal and the “arab-led african armies” that colonised spain in the eighth century. for mbeki (2005) these “africans who might be described as the modern descendants of those who served in the armies led by hannibal and djabal tarik” are inspired by historical precedents. mbeki (2005) claims that it is immoral for europe to defend itself by building up “fortress walls” because self-defence will lead to injury and death of the invaders. mbeki predicts that the migrants vie for blood, and despite the casualties ... millions of the poor of the south are massing in the forests, on the hills and the sea shore that surround fortress europe ... their number will continue to grow. they will persist in the effort to use their bodies as the assault force that will break down the wall of the fortress ... the deprived of africa and the world will not cower like dogs or flitter like bats, when confronted by the prospect of the witches’ sabbath of the maiden aunts. they will hammer upon the doors of the rich (mbeki 2005). mbeki is not the first postcolonial african to revive the discourse of conquest: the algerian president houari boumédienne is reported to have boasted in a 1974 speech at the united nation that “[o]ne day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. and they will not go there as friends. because they will go there to conquer it” (grayling 2011: 208). mbeki’s use of military analogy is also inspired by the history of the african national congress’ (anc) war against apartheid repression. indeed, mbeki acknowledges war and the military as grounding for african thought in his famous 1996 speech “i am an african”, delivered on the occasion of the adoption of the south african constitution. for mbeki, declaring that “i am an african” is an acknowledgement of being the product of the long african warrior tradition: i am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that hintsa and sekhukhune led, the patriots that cetshwayo and mphephu took to battle, the soldiers moshoeshoe and ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom. my mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our african crown, the victories we earned from isandhlwana to khartoum, as ethiopians and as the ashanti of ghana, as the berbers of the 52 stefan sonderling desert … it feels good that i can stand here as a south african and as a foot soldier of a titanic african army, the african national congress (mbeki 1996). while mbeki’s use of rhetorical devises makes the speech memorable (sheckels 2009: 331-332), success is enhanced by the references to the glory of the warrior tradition and the memory of past military epic battles. the attempts to colonise europe will not end and the master-slave dialectic is reappearing in afrocentric theories, decoloniality claiming that despite liberation western colonialism was not eliminated because it has a zombie-like persistence. therefore, it is not enough for postcolonial africans to have captured power at local levels but they need to capture the global world system and its power centres (grosfoguel 2012: 23). to gain complete liberation, eliminate coloniality, and acquire distinctive identities postcolonial africans must colonise the territory of their former european masters, and dominate the entire world. history is a cycle of victories and defeats, as schivelbusch (2004: 292) explains: “on the rotating wheel of fortune of victory and defeat, the positions of above and below are always being exchanged”. the struggle for liberation is a struggle for power and the only valid criteria to evaluate it are reciprocal exchanges of blows, and victories and defeats. as fanon (2008: 172) puts it: “there is war, there are defeats, truces, victories”. moreover, for fanon life has no moral telos, there “is no negro mission; there is no white burden”. life in the world is a perpetual struggle: “i am summoned into battle; a world in which it is always a question of annihilation or triumph” (fanon 2008: 178). in other words, this is a call for perpetual colonial wars of conquest and liberation. communication as continuation of colonial war by other means seen without moral preconceptions the relationship between africa and the former white colonisers is ambiguous. despite its freedom, africa vacillates between independence from, and dependence on its former colonisers: if the europeans do not interfere in africans’ affairs, the africans complain that they are being ignored; if europe pays attention to africa and extends its helping hand in development aid, the cry goes up that this is a new form of colonialism (ferguson 2002). in the african discourse whites are represented as eternally guilty and owing africa an immense debt. but behind such claims there is a trace of colonial nostalgia. while europe overcame its nostalgia for lost empires, a new colonial nostalgia is taking root in postcolonial africa, described as a “harkening back to colonialism as a better age” (bissell 2005: 217). for every assertion that africa has constructed a new human being there comes the rejoinder that the europeans should still assist the africans to become like them (ferguson 2002), and for every assertion 53 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa that the europeans must go home, there is the demand that europeans must send money to aid african development. in postcolonial africa upon meeting a visiting “whiteman” or “whiteman woman”, the despairing africans communicate a wish to be taken to “whiteman kontri” which they imagine as the promised land of plenty somewhere in the west (nyamnjoh & page 2002: 607). nyamnjoh and page’s (2002: 611) research into the encounters between white visitors and black cameroonian youth found that initial contacts “are followed by questions leading to demands for access or money”. for example, they record the following typical intercultural communication exchanges: ‘what e be visa condition for that una kontri? you fit send me letter of invitation? you fit carry me that side?’ [‘what are the visa conditions for that country of yours? could you send me a letter of invitation? could you take me along to that part of the world?’] this is immediately followed by precipitate reassurance that the would-be voyager will be no burden: ‘you no go spend any franc for me; i go take care of all expenses, i just want invitation for get visa.’ [‘you won’t spend a penny of your money on me; i will take care of all expenses. all i want is a letter of invitation to help me obtain a visa.’] (ibid.). in their determination to reach the west nothing is considered as an obstacle, even imprisonment for illegally entering the country is acceptable because “prison in the white man’s country is very good” and hardships are no deterrence to entry into the imagined paradise of europe or north america (nyamnjoh & page 2002: 612). conclusion: paradox of freedom and war envy fanon does not consider skin colour as indicative of original sin and rejects the tyranny of postcolonial moral crusade. according to fanon, “[m]y black skin is not the wrapping of specific values” and morality is not an absolute value because “the moral law is not certain of itself” (fanon 2008: 177). there is no moral duty for the postcolonial man of colour to impose a regime of moral guilt on whites (fanon 2008: 178). from this realist perspective devoid of moral mystification all past white privileges can be considered as the rightful benefits gained by war and conquest; equally, the new privileges of the liberated postcolonial people are also the fruit of war and conquests. ultimately these are stages in the eternal game of power; as foucault (2000: xiii) notes, there is fascism in every human being’s head, we cannot escape power and we love power to dominate others. while violence is integral to the formation of human identity it would be a mistake to assume that all interracial and intercultural communication encounters in postapartheid south africa are driven by hatred of the whites. indeed, there is an ambiguous relationship between the former colonial adversaries that has been 54 stefan sonderling reshaped since the end of apartheid. after the liberation from apartheid a new hierarchy of oppression has been constructed whereby formerly oppressed black south africans exhibit their imagined superiority vis-à-vis non-africans citizens, as well as african migrants and refugees while the “whites are treated as the group to aspire to be like” (nyamnjoh 2006: 62). liberation from colonial oppression and apartheid brought new meaning and dignity to the former colonised, while simultaneously it opened a void or an empty space formerly occupied by the colonial master. to escape from the postcolonial indigenous oppression africans become refugees with a vague memory of colonial oppression as well as memory of the unfulfilled promise to construct a new human identity. having been liberated and given human rights as citizens of the new postcolonial nations, these rights are useless when africans become refugees and merely men knocking on fortress europe’s gates. their human rights have no significance because to have rights one has to be a citizen of a nation. the african migrants, as well as the lumpen proletariat inhabitants of the african postcolonies, are in limbo: they are unwanted by their own leaders and they are unwanted by europe that does not desire to colonise them again. hanna arendt aptly describes this paradoxical situation: the army of refugee invaders, and the unemployed left behind in the postcolonies sense that they are held in contempt: “not that they are oppressed but that nobody wants to oppress them” (arendt, in rancière 2005: 299). as rancière (2005: 299) puts it, these people are “beyond oppression” and deemed as not worthy of oppression. in order to redeem their human value they demand to be oppressed, while simultaneously they desire to oppress the european other. in the postcolonial african states and on the european migration frontier the young men have no personal experience of the wars of liberation, but their bellicose spirit conjures a fantasy of male power and their “war envy” is expressed in staging surrogate wars to supplement their lack of first-hand war experience (mbembe 2011: vi). in other words, because the youth did not participate in the excitement of liberation wars they search for an opportunity to engage in their own wars that will allow them to exhibit their humanity and male prowess and gain rightful rewards of war: sense of human worth, employment, wealth, women and cultural acknowledgement as if they were warriors. the youth were freed from colonialism but they “know nothing of the cost of freedom” for they have “not fought for it” and their memory has “no trace of the struggle for liberty” therefore they need the challenge of conflict (fanon 2008: 172). indeed, all bellicose entanglements are proper expressions of being human, and war lays the foundations for all social relations. ever since europe and africa have become entangled, the dialectic of contestations, conflicts, wars, and love and hate relationships will not end. but without such antagonism and the dialectic of master and slave, and friend and 55 fanon’s perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial south africa enemy (schmitt 1976) there would be no human communication relationships at all. fanon confirms heraclitus’s observation that war is the father of all things, including language and communication. indeed, as clausewitz (1985: 402-406) notes, war is the continuation of communication by other means. such an understanding is important for comprehending life in the contemporary postmodern and postcolonial world because since the 11 september 2001 terrorist attack on the west, war is “becoming a permanent social relation” and a kind of “general matrix” to describe social organisations and relations of power in the contemporary world (hardt & negri 2006: 12-13). today, as it was in antiquity, war is good to think with: greeks and romans frequently used ideas connected to war to understand the world and their place in it. war was used to structure their thought on other topics, such as culture, gender and the individual (sidebottom 2004: 16). the implication of such reality for communication theory is that a model of war is an appropriate tool to describe social communication. as foucault (2003: 18) argues, “the binary schema of war and struggle, 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“story elements” and “style elements” qualify a text (sermon) as “narrative”. the rhetorical success of narrative communication when used in sermons was tested in traditional afrikaans-speaking apostolic faith mission congregations in bloemfontein. churchgoers completed questionnaires to convey their experience and opinion of the use of narrative communication in preaching during 12 sermons. the results were overwhelmingly positive. * marésa van der walt lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, where she completed a master’s dissertation on narrative and religious communication. willemien marais and professor johann de wet, of the same department, acted as her supervisors. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 116-135 117 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking inleiding in hierdie artikel word aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie, of vertellings, as retoriese strategie in die algemeen behandel, gevolg deur narratiewe kommunikasie as ’n retoriese strategie in die prediking van die christelike teologie. ’n gevallestudie om die argumentasielyne te toets, word ook verskaf. net soos die retoriek, naamlik die kunstige gebruik van spraak en skrif met die doel om te oorreed deur ’n verandering in houding en optrede teweeg te bring, is die antieke kuns van narratief, oftewel narratiewe kommunikasie, ’n onlosmaaklike en belangrike deel van ons moderne bestaan. narratiewe kommunikasie kan ook as ’n strategie (plan van aksie) van retoriek gebruik word, veral in die veld van religieuse kommunikasie met inbegrip van prediking waaroor daar weinig vanuit die kommunikasiewetenskap in suid-afrika navorsing gedoen is. wanneer narratief gebruik word, word ’n ervaring aan die ontvanger oorgedra. dit sal beskryf wat gebeur het en hoe dit gebeur het (brooks & warren 1970: 57). ’n gebeurtenis moet egter ’n beweging in tyd voorstel, anders is dit net ’n narratiewe stylelement en nie ’n verhaal of storie nie. kruger, rayner en wall (2004: 43) stel dat die gebruik van narratief effektief is om die reaksie van die gehoor teenoor ’n spesifieke boodskap te beïnvloed. josselson en lieblich (1999: 170) bevestig hierdie stelling deur te sê dat ’n narratief se doel nie net is om ’n situasie te beskryf nie, maar om mense te motiveer om op ’n bepaalde wyse op te tree sodat ’n sekere praktyk kan voortduur of kan verander. dus kan narratief as ’n retoriese strategie gesien word aangesien dit gebruik word om die ontvanger te oorreed om te doen wat die kommunikator met sy of haar boodskap beoog. perelman (1982: 110) glo dat historiese verhale, sowel as fiktiewe verhale wat deur die spreker uitgedink is, gebruik kan word om ’n retoriese effek te skep. selfs verhale wat doelbewus foutief is, kan strategies gebruik word om die ontvanger van ’n saak te oorreed (perelman ibid.). volgens perelman (1982: 108) is die enigste vereiste van ’n vertelling dat, wanneer aangewend as ’n retoriese strategie, die vertelling die ontvanger se verbeelding moet aangryp. abbott (2002: 36) verduidelik dat al die elemente van narratiewe bydra tot die retoriese krag daarvan. al hierdie elemente word saam gebruik om sterk of subtiele kombinasies van gevoelens en gedagtes by die ontvangers te skep, en dus het al hierdie elemente die een of ander retoriese funksie. sou een van hierdie elemente weggelaat of verander word, kan die effek wat die hele narratief op die ontvanger het, verander word (abbott 2002: 36). dus kan narratief, en al die narratiewe elemente, as instrumente van groot retoriese krag beskou word. 118 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet narratiewe tegnieke en stylelemente dit is nie net volledige narratiewe of vertellings wat as retoriese strategieë gebruik kan word nie. daar is ook ’n aantal narratiewe tegnieke en stylelemente wat retories aangewend kan word, soos byvoorbeeld analogie en metafoor, temas en taal, humor, asook onomatopieë en sintuiglike waarnemings. analogie en metafoor analogie, metafoor en ander simboliek kan as hulpmiddele gebruik word in die oordra van sekere begrippe (de wet 2006: 31). ’n analogie word gebruik wanneer een saak of verhouding met ’n ander saak of verhouding vergelyk word (perelman 1982: 114). “analogie” kan ook gedefinieer word as die vergelyking van twee verskillende voorwerpe wat die een of ander ooreenkoms toon (cultural dictionary 2010: 3). die gebruik en uitbreiding van ’n goeie analogie sal altyd nuttig wees tydens die oorredingsproses (perelman 1982: 118-119). so kan die beskrywing van oorlog in skaakterme byvoorbeeld die gruwels van oorlog in die wind slaan (perelman 1982: 119). analogieë word dan veral gebruik om komplekse of omstrede idees aan te raak en te verduidelik (porter s.a.: 3). aristoteles (in perelman 1982: 120) definieer “metafoor” as die proses waar ’n voorwerp ’n naam gegee word wat eintlik aan iets anders behoort. metafoor is dus ’n gekondenseerde vorm van analogie. berggren (in perelman 1982: 125) gaan so ver om te stel dat ware kreatiewe denke, hetsy in die kunste, die wetenskap of godsdiens, altyd metafories van aard sal wees. metafore word veral gebruik om sekere sake te beklemtoon of weg te steek (western washington university s.a.: 1). dit werk veral goed wanneer ’n vergelyking getref word tussen die situasie wat ’n karakter beleef, en ’n situasie wat die ontvanger beleef, of wanneer ’n vergelyking getref word tussen die ontvanger en ’n sekere situasie wat die oorreder beskryf (western washington university ibid.). so sal ’n predikant byvoorbeeld vir ’n gemeente sê hulle is israel wat moet kies of hulle die beloofde land wil binnegaan en of hulle in die woestyn wil bly. metafore kan ook beskrywend van aard wees wanneer dit saam met figuurlike taal gebruik word (porter s.a.: 3). temas en taal ’n tema is die verbindingselement wat ’n boodskap struktureel saambind en kan ook die algemene idee oor die lewe wees wat die oorreder wil oordra. die gebruik van temas staan dan dikwels sentraal tot die sukses van ’n retoriese boodskap, aangesien die mens ’n behoefte het aan die strukturele organisering van die boodskappe wat hy ontvang. narratief, en die temas wat daarin voorkom, is een van die mees fundamentele maniere waarop die mens gebeure en ervaringe orden en juis hieroor is narratief en tema so ’n kragtige oorredingstrategie (josselson 119 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking & lieblich 1999: 190). narratiewe en hul temas kan maklik deur die ontvanger geassimileer word om sodoende verandering teweeg te bring. alle retoriese strategieë is afhanklik van sekere taalelemente wat in kleiner eenhede afgebreek en bestudeer kan word (dubois, edeline, klinkenberg, minguet, pire & trinon 1981: 25). die taalelemente wat van toepassing is op narratiewe kommunikasie is die gebruik van kort sinne, die gebruik van eenvoudige woorde, die gebruik van die direkte rede, die gebruik van uitroepe, die gebruik van herhaling, alliterasie en assonansie en die gebruik van temporale oorgangswoorde (hattingh 2004: 3-6). gebruik van kort sinne wanneer narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie gebruik word, moet daar nooit te veel detail gegee word en te veel afgedwaal word nie (hattingh 2004: 3). die oorreder moet selekteer wat vir die saak nodig is en hiervoor is die gebruik van kort sinne nodig (hattingh 2004: 5). die oorreder moet eerder van aktiewe sinskonstruksie as passiewe sinskonstruksie gebruik maak (hattingh 2004: 8). gebruik van eenvoudige woorde wanneer narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie gebruik word, moet die woordkeuses met versigtigheid gedoen word. die woorde moet ’n spreekstyl in plaas van ’n skryfstyl reflekteer (hattingh 2004: 5). die woordkeuse moet ook so eenvoudig as moontlik gehou word en daar moet nie te veel variasie wees in die woorde wat gebruik word nie (hattingh ibid). mathewson (in hattingh 2004: 8) stel voor dat konkrete, spesifieke woorde gebruik sal word. veralgemenings en clichés moet vermy word en storiewoorde, of emosionele woorde, moet liewer gebruik word. woorde soos “wenner”, “verloorder”, “vryheid” en “moed” is kragtig en kan tot groot voordeel deur die spreker gebruik word (western washington university s.a.: 2). byvoeglike naamwoorde en bywoorde moet minimaal gebruik word (hattingh 2004: 8). die oorreder moet nie hoogdrawend voorkom deur gedurig beskrywings te gebruik nie (hattingh ibid). die ontvanger moet voel dat hy gewys word wat aangaan, eerder as wat hy voel dat hy vertel word wat aangaan. gebruik van direkte rede en dialoog dialoog en direkte rede kan ekstensief uitgevoer word in die skryf en vertel van die storie-teks (hattingh s.a.: 11). volgens hattingh (ibid.) is die bybel, die sentrale geskrif binne christelike religieuse kommunikasie, juis geskryf binne ’n milieu waar retoriek baie belangrik was. min mense kon lees en die gemeenskap van die dag het hul tradisies hoofsaaklik mondelings oorgedra. wanneer narratiewe kommunikasie as ’n retoriese strategie binne die konteks van 120 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet christelike religieuse kommunikasie gebruik word, kan die oorreder direkte rede en dialoog implementeer om die storie meer effektief te maak vir memorisering. memorisering speel ’n uiters belangrike rol wanneer opleiding, en so ook gedragsverandering, moet plaasvind. in die geval van sekere karakters kan innerlike dialoog ook gebruik word (hattingh 2004: 4). hier gee die oorreder ’n stem aan die karakter se gedagtes. dit kan ’n effektiewe tegniek wees om gehooridentifikasie met die karakter te skep. hierdie gehooridentifikasie kan bydra tot die oorreding van die ontvangers van die kommunikasie. gebruik van uitroepe die gebruik van sterk imperatiewe dra by tot memorisering wat dan lei tot oorreding (hattingh s.a.: 11). ’n “imperatief” word gedefinieer as ’n opdrag of versoek wat dringend gerig word (the free dictionary 2010a: 1). uitroepe en emotiewe uitlatings, bv. “o tog!”, “hardloop!” en “hou moed!” kan ook hier ingesluit en gebruik word (hattingh s.a.: 11). wanneer narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie gebruik word, moet die storie herleef word (hattingh 2004: 5). die verstand en liggaam moet saamwerk terwyl die angs in die liggaam beleef word en die verhaal met die oorreder se eie emosies gevul word. die gebruik van uitroepe en imperatiewe kan bydra om hierdie doel te bereik. gebruik van herhaling, alliterasie en assonansie herhaling is ’n effektiewe retoriese tegniek (hattingh s.a.: 11). dit kan die herhaling van woorde en/of sintaktiese konstruksies wees. dit kan ook die herhaling van klanke, grammatikale strukture of sekere begrippe insluit (nell 1986: 81). die herhaling van klanke en woorde kan aan die begin, in die middel of aan die einde van ’n sin of frase wees (nell ibid.). die herhaling kan in onmiddellik opeenvolgende frases, of in frases wat nie direk op mekaar volg nie, wees. repetisie en herhaling word dikwels gebruik om sekere belangrike punte te onderstreep (hattingh 2004: 7). herhaling kan ook gebruik word om sekere gebeure te vergroot en anders te laat voorkom as wat dit werklik is (dubois et al. 1981: 141). sekere standaarde en herhalende patrone kan ook vir dieselfde doel gebruik word (hattingh 2004: 7). hieruit kan temas en motiewe ook die maklikste afgelei word (abbott 2002: 88). alliterasie en assonansie kan ook as retoriese strategieë gebruik word (hattingh s.a.: 11). alliterasie is die herhaling van dieselfde klanke of letters, gewoonlik mede-klinkers, wat aan die begin van ’n woord voorkom (scaife 2004: 1). hierdie woorde sal altyd naby mekaar, en soms direk langs mekaar, gevind word. ’n voorbeeld hiervan is julius ceasar wat sê: “veni, vidi, vici.” 121 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking assonansie is die herhaling van dieselfde klanke wat binne-in ’n woord voorkom. hierdie klanke is meestal klinkers (scaife 2004: 3). hierdie woorde sal ook naby mekaar, of direk langs mekaar, voorkom. ’n voorbeeld hiervan is die aanhaling “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” uit die onse vader-gebed (scaife ibid.). gebruik van temporale oorgangswoorde die storielyn van ’n narratief is verantwoordelik vir die skep van ’n interpreteerbare, oorredende eenheid binne die narratief (josselson & lieblich 1999:170-171). binne narratiewe word gebeure temporaal aan mekaar verbind (josselson & lieblich ibid.). hierdie temporale orde van gebeure lei dan tot die sukses van die storielyn. die temporale orde word geskep deur gebruik te maak van temporale oorgangswoorde. voorbeelde van hierdie woorde en terme is “en toe”, “daarna” en “nadat”. gebruik van humor die gebruik van humor, en ook verskuilde humor, is ’n uitstekende strategie om die ontvanger van die kommunikasie minder krities en meer ontvanklik vir die oorreder se boodskap te maak (western washington university s.a.: 2). verbeelding en kreatiwiteit speel ’n belangrike rol wanneer narratiewe kommunikasie gebruik word. daar moet altyd gepoog word om die onsigbare op te roep en te bevry en die gebruik van humor kan bydra tot die bereiking van hierdie doel (hattingh 2004: 4). dit is egter belangrik om daarop te let dat die gebruik van humor as ’n retoriese strategie ’n ingewikkelde saak is. die oorreder bereik nie altyd deur die gebruik van humor die resultate wat hy wou nie en daarom moet humor as retoriese strategie met groot omsigtigheid aangewend word (western washington university s.a.: 2). gebruik van onomatopieë en sintuiglike waarnemings sintuiglike waarnemings en onomatopieë kan gebruik word om die narratief meer effektief te maak vir memorisering en oorreding (hattingh s.a.: 11). sintuiglike waarnemings is enige deel van die narratief wat die ontvanger se sintuie streel en groter sintuiglike betrokkenheid by die ontvanger vereis as net die blote aanhoor van die vertelling. hierdie waarnemings kan groter betrokkenheid vereis van die ontvanger se gehoor-, smaak-, sig-, gevoelof reuksintuig. onomatopieë, of klanknabootsings, is die gebruik van woorde om natuurlike klanke na te boots (scaife 2004: 4). op hierdie wyse word klank met die sintuie verbind sodat daar sintuiglike waarneming kan plaasvind. dit is die mees gebruikte vorm van sintuiglike waarneming. “die by zoem…” of “hy stap doef-doef-doef in die gang af” is voorbeelde van klanknabootsings. 122 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet gebruik van historiese konteks historiese en kulturele agtergrondinligting is dikwels nodig om te verseker dat narratiewe kommunikasie ’n suksesvolle retoriese strategie vorm (hattingh 2004: 9). binne die breë studieveld van semantiek, die studie van betekenis, word dit algemeen aanvaar dat konteks betekenis bepaal (hattingh s.a.: 5). daar kan twee soorte kontekste onderskei word binne narratiewe, naamlik die historiese konteks en die logiese konteks. die historiese konteks is die milieu waarin die teks geskryf is (hattingh s.a.: 5). die implisiete historiese konteks is die milieu van die narratief binne die teks en die eksplisiete historiese konteks is dié van die skrywer van die narratief. wanneer narratiewe retories gebruik word, is dit belangrik dat die oorreder die betekenis van die sosio-kulturele en geskiedkundige merkers besef (hattingh ibid.). die oorreder moet dan besluit of sekere van hierdie inligting noodsaaklik is om by te voeg of nie. hierdie besluit moet geneem word in die lig van die spesifieke teikengehoor (hattingh ibid.). te min inligting of te veel inligting kan moontlik ’n negatiewe invloed op die retoriese proses hê. narratiewe kan ook mites, geskiedenis en legendes insluit wanneer dit as retoriese strategie gebruik word (longenecker 2002: 132). mitiese taal kan net soveel soos metaforiese taal en simboliese taal binne narratiewe kommunikasie gebruik word. somtyds is die gebruik van mites, geskiedenis en legendes onafskeidbaar van die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie as ’n retoriese strategie. interpretasie van narratief as retoriese strategie die religieuse konteks die mens is vatbaar vir die retoriese mag van narratiewe kommunikasie (abbott 2002: 79). narratiewe kan ook sekere kulturele norme oordra en toepas, en juis daarom is dit so ’n kragtige retoriese strategie. tog het die ontvanger van die narratief ook ’n mate van mag wat hy oor narratiewe kan uitoefen – die mag van die interpretasie van die narratief. die ontvanger van narratief as ’n retoriese strategie absorbeer nie bloot die inligting binne die narratief, of die inligting wat deur die narratiewe stylelemente oorgedra word nie (abbott 2002: 79). die ontvanger sal dikwels sekere inligting miskyk of oorsien, en sekere inligting invoeg wat nie oorspronklik deel van die narratief was nie. dit word die onderlees en die oorlees van narratiewe genoem. in die wêreld van religieuse kommunikasie, veral kommunikasie binne die christelike lewensbeskouing, word narratiewe kommunikasie gereeld gebruik as ’n retoriese strategie. religieuse kommunikasie word beskou as die oordra en vertolking van geloofsisteme. snyman (1986: 6) stel dit dat alle religieuse sisteme 123 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking retories is, aangesien dit pogings is om religieuse waarhede te kommunikeer net soos wat politieke diskoers ’n poging is om politieke doktrines te kommunikeer, en dus noodsaaklik retories is. retoriese kenmerke word in die ou en nuwe testament van die bybel gevind (snyman 1986: 14). wanneer ’n mens retories besig is binne die veld van religieuse kommunikasie, dit wil sê wanneer hy/sy kommunikeer met die doel om die ontvanger te oorreed, moet hy/sy een of ander strategie gebruik ten einde sy/haar doel te bereik (snyman 1986: 14). hierdie strategie is dan dikwels narratiewe kommunikasie. dit stem ooreen met die siening van dechant en fasching (2001: 10) dat, vir die grootste deel van die mens se geskiedenis, die mens geïnspireer is deur, en sy optrede gerig is deur, die groot religieuse stories. storievertel is die primêre en mees deurdringende wyse waarop religieuse tradisies etiese optrede skep (dechant & fasching 2001: 6). binne die meeste religieuse tradisies is filosofiese en wettiese rede, sonder stories en rituele, nie in staat om ’n begrip van reg en verkeerd tuis te bring en optredes te rig nie. dit verklaar dan waarom jesus christus, die “seun van god” volgens die christelike kerk (rensburg 1989: 103), self ’n bobaas-storieverteller was wat deur stories sy groot waarheid kom vertel het (hattingh 2004: 1). in die nuwe testament en die vroeë christelike kerk het christus en die apostels in die kerk veral gebruik gemaak van die vrye dialogiese en verhalende wyse van prediking (hattingh 2004: 2). prediking en die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie dwarsdeur die nuwe testament van die bybel word daar op prediking en lering klem gelê (van rensburg & zeeman 1999: 83). volgens van rensburg en zeeman (1999: 83) is dit dan van uiterste belang dat die suiwer leer ooreenkomstig met die woord altyd tydens prediking gehandhaaf moet word. prediking kan dan gedefinieer word as die oordra van religieuse diskoers en die kuns van vermaning of lering (brainy media 2010: 1). dit is ’n publieke handeling en sluit ook die ernstige, opregte oordrag van advies in (brainy media ibid.). dit kan ook aandring op die aflegging van ’n sekere idee, lewenstyl of aksie wat deur die ontvanger van die preek gehou of beoefen word (merriam webster online 2010: 1). prediking word dus in hierdie artikel geoperasionaliseer as die oordra van religieuse diskoers binne die christelike kerk, met die doel om die ontvanger te vermaan, te leer, aanbevelings te maak en te waarsku. janse van rensburg (2003: 27) beskou effektiewe prediking as ’n samewerkende aksie tussen god en die mens. die een pilaar van effektiewe prediking is gebou op ewige waarheid, terwyl die ander pilaar geanker is in die mens se ervaring (janse van rensburg ibid.). juis om hierdie rede moet ’n preek ook die kognitiewe 124 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet en die emosionele aspekte van mense se bestaan aanspreek (janse van rensburg 2003: 40). volgens snyman (2007: 34) steek groot waarheid in die woorde van matthéüs 13 vers 34 in die bybel: “al hierdie dinge het jesus vir die mense in gelykenisse geleer en sonder ’n gelykenis het hy hulle niks geleer nie.” sweet en schmidt (in snyman 2007: 34) stel dit dat die verhouding van poësie tot suiwer doktrine in die bybel minstens 50 tot een is en die meeste van die res van die bybel bestaan uit stories en gelykenisse, wat veral in die lewe en die leerstellings van jesus christus gesien kan word. mclaren (in snyman 2007: 34) sluit hierby aan as hy opmerk dat die hart van jesus christus se leerstellinge oorgedra word deur die gebruik van die unieke literêre genre bekend as gelykenisse. volgens hedendaagse interpreteerders kan ’n gelykenis beskryf word as ’n storie (snyman 2007: 35). shillington (in snyman 2007: 35) beskryf dit as ’n metafoor of vergelyking gevind in die natuur en die alledaagse lewe. die duidelikheid en vreemdheid daarvan neem die gedagtes van die ontvanger gevange. ’n gelykenis is dikwels ’n kort storie van sedelike aard (wordnet 2003: 1). groenewald (1963: 10) ondersteun hierdie definisies deur “gelykenis” as ’n eenvoudige vertelling, ontleen aan die natuur of die alledaagse lewe, met die bedoeling om ’n praktiese les van diepe geestelike inhoud verstaanbaar en onvergeetlik voor te hou, te beskryf. gelykenisse, stories en narratiewe stylelemente was in ou testamentiese tye, nuwe testamentiese tye en in die eerste-eeuse christelike kerk goed bekend en dikwels gebruik as ’n vorm van prediking. dit was die beproefde vorm van onderrig van daardie tyd (groenewald 1963: 11). dit is dus veilig om te sê dat narratiewe kommunikasie reeds toe as retoriese strategie tydens prediking gebruik is. met die huwelik tussen kerk en staat in die vierde en vyfde eeue het daar ’n verandering in prediking gekom (hattingh 2004: 2). die prediking vir die massas het aansluiting gevind by die griekse denke met die klem op die argument en rede terwyl verhalende prediking as minderwaardig beskou is. prediking is al meer geskoei op logiese redenasies en die verhaal het plek gemaak vir die argumentatiewe, die ordelike en die logiese. in dié proses is die gevoel, die ervaring, die gevoel van geborgenheid, soeke na die sin van die lewe, die dialogiese en die verhalende grootliks buite rekening gelaat (hattingh ibid.). daar is egter vandag, in die een-en-twintigste eeu, ’n oplewing in die gebruik van narratiewe tydens prediking. janse van rensburg (2003: 1) verduidelik dat dit vir baie predikante ’n “nuwe” vorm van prediking is. narratiewe prediking word steeds minder gebruik as baie ander vorme van prediking en dit ontvang nou eers die aandag wat dit verdien binne die suid-afrikaanse konteks. hoewel narratiewe prediking reeds vir ’n wyle in akademiese kringe erken word, is daar predikante wat 125 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking onlangs eers daarvan bewus geword het as ’n praktiese vorm van prediking (janse van rensburg ibid.). die gebruik van narratiewe in prediking skep ’n wonderlike geleentheid om die evangelie op ’n opwindende en onverwagse wyse oor te dra en kan die effektiwiteit van die retoriese kommunikasiehandeling verhoog (janse van rensburg 2003: 3). die idee dat ons almal blote storievertellers en storieontvangers is, is baie aanloklik vir die mensdom (prickett 2002: 4) en juis hierom is die gebruik van narratiewe tydens die oordrag van belangrike sake en meesternarratiewe so aanloklik. volgens prickett (2002: 128) is die christelike godsdiens die eerste en oorspronklike meester-narratief. vir meer as ’n duisend jaar is dit gesien as ’n allesomvattende, finale en samehangende “teorie van alles”. teologie, sterrekunde, plantkunde, dierkunde en die organisering van die menslike samelewing het alles ingeskakel by, en soms afgehang van, die bybelse narratief (prickett ibid.). hoewel die idee van ’n verenigde en verenigende meester-narratief in die postmoderne wêreld bevraagteken word (prickett 2002: 131), behoort die oordrag van hierdie meester-narratief juis meer suksesvol te wees deur van narratiewe en narratiewe stylelemente gebruik te maak. die gebruik van narratiewe tydens prediking is vandag veral gewild onder jonger predikante (janse van rensburg 2003: 43). lowry (in janse van rensburg ibid.) gaan sover om te impliseer dat alle preke narratief moet wees. janse van rensburg (ibid.) voel egter dat die gebruik van totale narratiewe of vertellings slegs een van die genres is wat gebruik kan word om die evangelie te verkondig. die afwisseling en kombinasie van narratiewe met ander style van prediking blyk die sleutel te wees. juis om hierdie rede kan die gebruik van narratiewe stylelemente tydens die gebruik van ’n ander preekstyl aangemoedig word. soos met die gebruik van enige styl van prediking, is daar voordele sowel as sommige slaggate verbonde aan die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking. voordele volgens hattingh (2004: 2-3) het die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie tydens prediking bepaalde uniekhede en voordele wat dit in die oordra van die evangelie besonders nuttig maak: ♦ dit kommunikeer ’n saak lewendig, duidelik en maklik onthoubaar; ♦ dit besit ’n dinamiese karakter wat voorsiening maak vir beweging, ontwikkeling, doel en ook verskuilde sake; ♦ dit verkry en behou die aandag van die ontvanger maklik; 126 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet ♦ dit maak die ontvanger betrokke en neem hulle op reis saam met die oorreder; ♦ dit verbind die oorreder en die ontvanger aan mekaar; ♦ abstrakte waarhede word in die verhaal tot konkrete lewenswerklikhede gebring, omdat dit vol menslike gebeure en ervarings is; ♦ die ontvanger word genooi om met karakters te identifiseer en dit lei tot selfontdekking; ♦ daar is ruimte vir betrokkenheid, maar ook genoeg afstand om tot ’n eie selfstandige besluit te kom; ♦ geloof word makliker oorgedra deur vertelling as deur redenasie of deur argumente; ♦ dit is ’n uitstekende wyse vir die kommunikasie van sensitiewe materiaal en vir sake wat andersins moeilik tot woorde gebring word; ♦ dit bied ’n beter benadering vir ’n vyandige gehoor; ♦ ’n goeie narratief is toeganklik vir mense van alle ouderdomme en vlakke van begrip; ♦ ’n vertelling is dikwels meer interessant as ’n redenasie; ♦ die weerstand teen gesag en die anti-outoritêre gevoel wat nie absolute waarheid wil aanvaar nie, word beter deur die gebruik van narratiewe hanteer; ♦ narratiewe kommunikasie stel nie summier direkte eise nie en moralisering, wat makliker weerstand veroorsaak, kom nie voor nie; en ♦ die affektiewe word aangespreek, eerder as net die kognitiewe, en daar is ruim geleentheid vir emosie en vir die verbeelding. janse van rensburg (2003: 3-4) het die volgende voordele verbonde aan die gebruik van narratiewe en narratiewe stylelemente tydens prediking gevind: ♦ mense van alle ouderdomme geniet vertellings en stories; ♦ televisie-dramas, boeke, films en toneelstukke het die weg voorberei vir die gebruik van narratiewe tydens prediking. wanneer narratiewe tydens prediking gebruik word, is dit dus nie ’n vreemde ervaring vir die ontvanger nie. simpson (2009: 3) verduidelik ook dat die tyd verby is dat predikante net die stories van die bybel moet vertel tydens hul prediking.volgens simpson (ibid.) moet predikante ook die stories van hul gemeentelede, stories van die universele christelike kerk, stories van dié wat arm en 127 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking onderdruk is en stories van christene wat onderdrukkingsmagte oorkom en ontbloot het, vertel. hierdie stories kan ook vertel word deur van videotegnologie en die internet gebruik te maak (simpson ibid.); ♦ die krag van storievertel sorg dat die gebruik van narratiewe tydens prediking ook kragtige gevolge kan hê; ♦ die induktiewe aard van narratiewe prediking kan tot suksesvolle oorreding lei; en ♦ die tradisionele preekstyle is byna altyd linkerbrein-gestruktureerd terwyl baie mense regterbrein-geöriënteerd is. die gebruik van narratiewe tydens prediking skep ’n geleentheid om ook met die lede van die gemeente te kommunikeer wat nie logies-geöriënteerd is nie. venter (in janse van rensburg 2003: 44) stem saam dat die gebruik van narratiewe binne prediking ’n wêreld vol nuwe geleenthede laat oopgaan, maar hy beklemtoon dat dit slegs een van die moontlike benaderings tot prediking is. die oorgebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking kan nadelig wees en daar moet besef word dat nie alle skrifgedeeltes sal pas by prediking wat van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie gebruik maak nie (janse van rensburg 2003: 4). daar is ook ’n aantal ander gevare waarop gelet moet word wanneer die prediker van narratiewe kommunikasie gebruik wil maak. probleme en gevare kellerman (in hattingh 2004: 9) lys ’n aantal probleme en gevare waarop gelet moet word wanneer die prediker narratiewe kommunikasie as ’n retoriese strategie tydens prediking wil gebruik: ♦ verwringing van die mensbeeld in die goddelike openbaring kan maklik plaasvind; ♦ konteksverskuiwing kan ’n probleem wees en ’n verhaal se konteks wat vreemd is aan die gemeente moet vermy word; ♦ moralisering is ’n wesenlike gevaar; ♦ allerlei innerlike belewenisse kan ingelees word en dan kan daar maklik van die woord (of dan die boodskap) afgedwaal word; ♦ pedagogisering moet nie te volledig wees nie. alles moet nie verklaar word nie, aangesien daar iets aan die verbeelding van die hoorders oorgelaat moet word; ♦ die prediker moet hom nie allerlei vryhede veroorloof en dan nie die vertelling van die oorspronklike verteller voortsit nie; en 128 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet ♦ soms wil die hoorder hom nie laat inlei binne die grense van die bybelvertelling nie en dit kan tot ’n groot kommunikasiebreuk lei. narratiewe prediking is moeiliker as wat algemeen aanvaar word en daarom is dit belangrik dat die predikante wat hiervan gebruik wil maak, sal besef dat hulle die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking moet verstaan en dat hulle goed sal moet voorberei wanneer hulle hiervan gebruik wil maak (janse van rensburg 2003: 4). miller (in janse van rensburg 2003: 50) het ’n lys opgestel van die gevare en probleme wat voorkom tydens die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie in prediking: ♦ daar is geen waarborg dat die narratief die korrekte identifikasie van die ontvanger met die karakters en gebeure van die vertelling sal skep nie; ♦ narratiewe prediking kan moontlik lei tot die verlies van suiwer lering binne die kerk; ♦ narratiewe binne preke kan moontlik meer verstom, fassineer en vermaak as wat dit tot verandering in mense se lewe lei; ♦ die effektiwiteit van narratiewe preke hang af van die kreatiewe vaardighede van die ontvanger van die spesifieke preek; en ♦ die effektiwiteit van narratiewe preke hang af van die kreatiewe vaardighede van die prediker. daar is twee groot gevare betrokke by die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie tydens prediking, naamlik moralisering en literêre vryheid. hierdie probleme kom ook die meeste voor en hou groot gevaar in vir die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking (janse van rensburg 2003: 50). moralisering kom voor wanneer die prediker die ontvangers laat met die gedagte dat, tensy hulle sekere optredes implementeer, of sekere optredes afleer, hulle verlore sal gaan (janse van rensburg 2003: 51). hier word die ontvangers met die wet en met die gevolglike etiese optrede gekonfronteer, maar nie met die een wat die wette maak nie. narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking moet dus nooit die gevoel skep dat selfregverdiging en redding deur middel van goeie dade die weg vorentoe is nie (janse van rensburg 2003: 51-52). moralisering kom gewoonlik voor wanneer daar van ’n vyandige kommunikasiestyl gebruik gemaak word. hier sal ’n predikant nie eenheid met en liefde vir sy gemeente uitstraal nie, maar eerder veroordeling (janse van rensburg 2003: 52). hier word die belangrikheid van die rol wat ’n oorreder se verhouding met die ontvangers van sy boodskap speel, beklemtoon (janse van rensburg ibid.). dit is ook moontlik dat die inhoud van die boodskap op liefde dui, maar dat die predikant se stemtoon, 129 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking lyftaal en gesigsuitdrukkings ’n boodskap van afstand en oordeel projekteer. dus moet die oorreder aandag gee aan die nie-verbale boodskappe wat hy uitstuur wanneer hy narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking gebruik. daar is ook die gevaar dat die predikant sal toegee aan literêre vryheid om sodoende die vertelling meer interessant te maak (janse van rensburg 2003: 53). literêre vryheid is toelaatbaar solank dit die ware bedoeling van die skrif weergee en nie die historiese, teks-kritiese en teologiese konteks kontrasteer nie (janse van rensburg 2003: 54). binne die wêreld van narratiewe kommunikasie is daar ’n onvermydelike element van beperkte literêre vryheid, maar die oorreder moet altyd bewus wees van die moontlike misbruik van literêre vryheid, wat ingrypende gevolge kan inhou (janse van rensburg 2003: 55). baie van die probleme en gevare van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie tydens prediking kan vermy word wanneer die predikant tyd daaraan bestee om die regte preekstyl en die regte kombinasie van narratiewe stylelemente te kies. hier volg ’n lys van sommige van die veranderlikes wat die predikant in ag moet neem wanneer hy kies om narratiewe kommunikasie tydens sy prediking te gebruik (janse van rensburg 2003: 44): ♦ die aard van die skrifgedeelte wat hy wil gebruik, gesien deur die lens van die literêre genre van die teks binne die bybels-wetenskaplike konteks, byvoorbeeld histories (rigters), poëties (job), profeties (jesaja), apokalipties (daniël), gelykenisse (die verhaal van die verlore seun in lukas), wyshede (prediker) of briewe (romeine) van die nuwe testament (hattingh s.a.: 4-5). die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie pas beter by die historiese of poëtiese skrifgedeeltes as by die wysheid-skrifgedeeltes; ♦ die aard van die predikant, hetsy linkerbrein-dominerend of regterbreindominerend. predikante wat goeie verklarende preke lewer, moet eerder net narratiewe stylelemente gebruik en nie totale narratiewe preke lewer nie. predikante moet somtyds net hou by die preekstyl wat hom/haar die beste pas; ♦ die kulturele konteks waarin die preek sal plaasvind. binne die afrikakonteks is stories en vertellings tweede natuur en sal die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie binne prediking effektief wees; ♦ die demografiese samestelling van die gehoor sal ’n groot rol speel. ’n gemeente vol ouer gemeentelede, wat gewoond is aan meer tradisionele prediking, mag dalk nie totaal en al ten vinde vir narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking wees nie, terwyl ’n gehoor wat uit studente en tieners bestaan, sal floreer op narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking; en 130 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet ♦ persoonlike voorkeure van individue kan ook ’n rol speel om te bepaal of narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking positief of negatief ontvang sal word. wanneer ’n predikant sy gemeente goed ken, kan hy bepaal of narratiewe kommunikasie tydens sy prediking gebruik moet word, al dan nie. effektiwiteit van narratiewe kommunikasie in prediking: ’n gevallestudie lotter (2009) het ’n studie oor kerkgangers van die bloemfonteinse apostoliese geloofsending-gemeentes se reaksie op die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie in 12 preke gedurende 2008 en 2009 gedoen. daar was 295 respondente in totaal op die vraelyste wat anoniem ingevul is. tydens hierdie studie het die navorser van formele, gestandardiseerde vraelyste gebruik gemaak. die respondente was deel van ’n willekeurige proefgroep en die vraelyste het uit likertskaal-vrae bestaan wat horisontaal gerangskik is. die vraelyste is gebruik om die kerkgangers se ervaring van en algemene gevoel oor die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking in die bloemfonteinse apostoliese geloofsending-gemeentes te ondersoek. die volgende vrae, waarop die respondente “baie beslis”, “beslis”, “moontlik”, “beslis nie” en “baie beslis nie” moes antwoord, is in die vraelys ingesluit: 1. pas storie-vertel by u predikant se persoonlikheid? 2. is die preek relevant vir die gehoor? 3. is die preek verstaanbaar? 4. raak die preek u op ’n emosionele vlak? 5. sal u hierdie preek onthou? 6. verkry u predikant u aandag maklik? 7. behou hy u aandag regdeur die preek? 8. betrek hy u by die preek? 9. sal u die boodskap van die preek toepas in u eie lewe? 10. het die preek u meer geleer van die lewe in die algemeen? 11. val prediking in storie-vorm in u persoonlike smaak? die oorgrote meerderheid van die kerkgangers meen die preke is relevant (276 of 93,55%; n=295) en verstaanbaar (282 of 95,59%; n=295) vir die gehoor. die preke het volgens 252 (85,42%; n=295) kerkgangers hulle op ’n emosionele vlak 131 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking geraak en sal volgens 274 (92,88%; n=295) van hulle onthou word. die meeste kerkgangers voel dat die predikante hulle aandag verkry (276 of 93,55%; n=295) en behou (260 of 88,13%; n=295) regdeur die preek. die kerkgangers meen verder dat hulle by die preek betrek word (238 of 80,67%; n=295) en hulle dink dat hulle die boodskap van die preke gaan toepas in hulle eie lewe (278 of 94,23%; n=295). die meeste (272 of 92.20%; n=295) voel dat die preke hulle meer geleer het van die lewe in die algemeen en 259 (87,79%; n=295) voel ook dat prediking in storievorm in hulle persoonlike smaak val. dit is interessant om daarop te let dat 96% (n=295) van die respondente sterk gevoel het dat die preke wat narratiewe kommunikasie ingesluit het, verstaanbaar was. dit is een van die voordele van die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie (hattingh 2004: 2) en dus kan die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens die preke as geslaag beskou word. net 50% (n=295) van die respondente het egter gevoel dat hulle baie beslis by die preek betrek word. dit was die laagste positiewe reaksie op die vraelys. vos (in janse van rensburg 2003: iv) verduidelik dat die hoorder van die narratiewe preek sal deel voel van die preek wanneer hy verras of bedroef word deur die preek, of wanneer daar ’n deel van die lewe vir die hoorder in die preek geïnterpreteer word. aangesien dit (die betrekking van die gehoor) ’n belangrik doelwit van narratiewe prediking is, behoort die predikante by die bloemfonteinse apostoliese geloofsending meer aandag hieraan te gee om sodoende nog groter sukses met die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie te behaal. narratiewe stylelemente het in al 12 preke wat geëvalueer is, voorgekom. die stylelemente sluit in spreekwoorde; die gebruik van algemene en gedeelde ervarings; die afstuur op ’n keuse; ’n waarde-gelaaide boodskap; die voorkoms van temas en motiewe; direkte rede; alliterasie; en die stem en liggaam wat die storie versterk. die gebruik van humor, die gebruik van metafore en die self-openbaring van die verteller is die stylelemente wat by verre die meeste voorgekom het in terme van die hoeveelheid kere wat elkeen van daardie elemente gebruik is. daar is in die studie van lotter (2009) bevind dat die gebruik van volledige narratiewe, in samewerking met die gebruik van narratiewe stylelemente, meer dikwels tydens die aanddienste voorkom. tydens die oggenddienste fokus die predikant meer op die gebruik van slegs narratiewe stylelemente. geen verskil tussen die oggenddienste en aanddienste in die gemiddelde gebruik van narratiewe storie-elemente en narratiewe stylelemente is gevind nie. in die geheel beskou, het die respondente van die vraelyste oorwegend positief gereageer op die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens die prediking in die bloemfonteinse apostoliese geloofsending. die respondente het veral sterk gevoel dat die preke verstaanbaar was. die afleiding is dat narratiewe 132 marésa van der walt, willemien marais and johann c. de wet kommunikasie suksesvol as ’n retoriese strategie in die prediking van die apostoliese geloofsending in bloemfontein aangewend word. slotbeskouing narratief, en die gebruik daarvan, kan dikwels as rigtingwyser dien in ’n wêreld van onsekerheid (roberts 2004: 131). die mens konstrueer sy lewe met en deur verhale (gerber 2005: 24). deur verhale gee die mens vorm aan sy lewe en daarmee organiseer hy ook sy lewe. verhale in die mens se geheue, ongeag of dit oorvertel word of nie, help die mens om sin te maak uit die lewe. in en deur verhale ontdek die mens sy identiteit, en bou die mens sy identiteit (gerber ibid). nie net kan hierdie besef individue beskerm teen liggelowigheid wanneer hulle aan voortdurend veranderende retoriek blootgestel word nie (roberts 2004: 132), maar dit kan ook, wanneer sekere riglyne gevolg word, gebruik word om retoriese sukses binne prediking te behaal. dit is duidelik uit die literatuur dat die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking kunstige vermoëns en ’n groot voorraad kommunikasievaardighede benodig (janse van rensburg 2003: 58). wanneer daar nie kunstige organisering en vaardige voordrag binne ’n narratief voorkom nie, word dit ’n onaantreklike warboel van gebeure en kan dit nie meer as ’n narratief beskou word nie (janse van rensburg ibid.). in die afgelope dekades het “narratiewe teologie”, of narratiewe kommunikasie wat gebruik word as retoriese strategie in prediking, weer na vore getree (longenecker 2002: 133). een van die grootste redes hiervoor is die gepastheid van narratiewe kommunikasie binne die christelike diskoers, aangesien ’n groot deel van die christelike teologie op die gelykenis-gebruik, of storie-gebruik, van jesus christus gebou is. daar is vele voordele verbonde aan die gebruik van narratiewe kommunikasie tydens prediking, maar daar is ook sekere gevare waarop gelet moet word. mits die predikant hierdie gevare in gedagte hou, en die tegnieke en riglyne wat daargestel is toepas, behoort hy met groot sukses van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking gebruik te maak. 133 aspekte van narratiewe kommunikasie as retoriese strategie binne prediking verwysings abbott, h.p. 2002. the cambridge introduction to narrative. cambridge: cambridge university press. brainy media. 2010. definition of preaching. 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[aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://define.com/parable [besoek op 9 augustus 2010]. 43pb considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication: comments on jesus is a shangaan abstract satire is a genre of communication that enables people to say the unspeakable, often enabling powerful norms and powerful people to be questioned and challenged. as such, satire is a powerful weapon with which society may strike at and against oppression and other problematic orders. however, satire may also be misused to misrepresent and demean others. meanwhile, in online encounters where people are not subject to a wide gamut of social controls and moral obligations are weakened by anonymity, people are liable to use satire in ways that are experienced by others as offensive and hurtful. this is arguably pointedly problematic in contexts where historical developments have marginalised and tribally positioned people to be the butt of jokes. this article examines these and related concerns in the light of the animated video jesus is a shangaan to argue that it is worthwhile to present a scholarly account of what the african moral philosophy of ubuntu may say about how people should satirise. the conclusion is that there is a need for scholars to elaborate more systematically and adequately what ubuntu requires of satirical communication – how african excellence can be understood when communication is satirical. keywords: ubuntu; satire; african communication; shangaan; online communication introduction satire is a genre of artistic or theatrical production. it identifies and then mocks and besmirches generalised characteristics which are associated with its targets. ideally it is presented with a view to reflect how the vices identified in its targets could be improved. however, it is not satire when dramatic irony is used to merely lampoon those at whom the harsh humour of satire is directed. satirists use a wide variety of techniques as they separate themselves from the society to which they belong (schlegel 2005: 5) in order to be able to most powerfully challenge aspects of that society that they believe should be destroyed or overcome. however, there is wide agreement that satire is an offensive art which caricatures and parodies the enemy in ways (freud 1995) prof. colin chasi department of communication studies, university of johannesburg colinc@uj.ac.za ntsako lowane postgraduate student, department of communication studies, university of johannesburg ntsakol@yahoo.com doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.4 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 43-58 © uv/ufs mailto:colinc%40uj.ac.za?subject= mailto:ntsakol%40yahoo.com?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.4 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.4 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.4 4544 colin chasi & ntsako lowane that fundamentally distort and exaggerate, usually with malice that is often justified and made lighter because it also intends to be humorous (freedman 2009; schlegel 2005). wit is an important tool in the satirist’s arsenal as it 1) ridicules the enemy in ways that would otherwise be restricted, while 2) it makes the whole experience pleasurable in ways that also would have been inaccessible, and 3) presents an idea as more attractive and pleasurable than more deliberative approaches would likely allow (freud 1995: 745). because of its ability to enable people to say the unspeakable, satirical wit very usefully enables people to speak up against attempts to limit free speech (freedman 2009) or generally to express opposition to authoritarian dominance (freud 1995: 746-751). given the above, this article presents a case for further reflections on how satirical representations of “tribal” should appear online with its practice of fragmenting communities and directing violent speech against others. the authors are concerned that satire may appear to go against widely recognised african values, which archbishop desmond tutu (1997: 29) thinks should prioritise maintaining harmonious and friendly community relations which maintain and maximise social welfare: harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. social harmony is for us the summum bonum – the greatest good. anything that subverts, that undermines this sought-after good, is to be avoided like the plague. anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good. to forgive is not just to be altruistic. it is the best form of self-interest. what dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. it gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them. this view of african moral values which tutu expresses is fundamental to how metz (2007: 338) derives his view on what ubuntu teaches: “an action is right just insofar as it promotes shared identity among people grounded on goodwill; an act is wrong to the extent that it fails to do so and tends to encourage the opposites of division and ill will”. yet in contemporary society harmony cannot be taken for granted. people in online discursive practices tend to express more extreme views than would otherwise be the case in offline worlds (hargrave & livingstone 2009; lewis 2011). as such online discursive practices test how communities and individuals establish viable relations of solidarity and shared identity. the authors therefore think it is valuable to put forward tentative thoughts on how ubuntu may guide online satire in contemporary south africa. to this end, this article casts a critical gaze at an online video titled jesus is a shangaan (2012) and purposively selects online comments from a youtube site (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bekg59wqvge) on which the video is featured. overview of relevant literature online communication, satire, tribalism and the representation of africans are significant concepts which are difficult to weave together. we are content to render these concepts in a rather aleatory manner that nevertheless parsimoniously allows us to critically discuss how: ■ africans are represented in tribalistic ways; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bekg59wqvge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bekg59wqvge 4544 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication ■ shangaan people in particular are tribalised and hence often made the butt of tribal jokes; and ■ online communication often frees people to express themselves in extreme ways that are conducive to tribalising others. representing africans by tribalising identities dominant ways of representing africans by tribalising their identities are arguably the products of debates and moral discourses within which late eighteenth-century europeans contested how to relate “european and other, savagery and civilization, free labour and servitude, man and commodity” (comaroff & comaroff 2010) in a context in which the ideologies of race and tribalism were being invented (mudimbe 1988). some afrocentrists say that the west tragically destroyed pristine african tribal practices, progenies, ontogenies or histories that were characterised by harmony (appiah 2010). the above views suggest that one can present africans as though their contemporary discourses about tribes and about tribalism were created by westerners, as though africans have no choice and agency in the tribal discourses in which they are implicated and involved (vail 1989; mafeje 1971). but as this article will indicate, with reference to online discussions concerning jesus is a shangaan, africans have a role in how tribalism is imagined and acted out. for the purpose of this article it is not necessary to split hairs about the portions of blame or responsibility for tribalism that should fall on colonialism, apartheid or on various communities of africans. what matters here is that the claim that africans are tribalistic peoples is fundamental to thinking of africans as tribal peoples among whom tribalism is to be expected (vail 1989: 3). to understand tribalism it is important to define the word “tribe”. in this article the word “tribe” describes: a whole society, with a high degree of self-sufficiency at a near subsistence level, based on relatively simple technology without writing or literature, politically autonomous and with its own distinct language, culture and sense of identity, tribal religion being also coterminous with tribal society (southall 2010: 83). under the influence of social constructionists since the 1970s it has been widely seen as politically incorrect to speak of tribes. it has become common to substitute the word “tribe” with the word “ethnicity”, which appears to be marked with fewer pejorative connotations. while essentialist views of ethnicity are similar to common views regarding “the tribe” in that they emphasise primordial, ancestral, cultural and language bonds, social constructionists are keen to show that ethnicity does not involve suprahistorical and quasi-natural ties, but that it merely reflects social identities which are chosen, formed and constructed in historical-political circumstances (lentz 1995: 376). aside from fairly specific genetic markers that relate to proneness to certain diseases and ailments, there are, outside of states, hardly any societies today that have the kinds of autonomy or linguistic unity, and there are hardly any that, for example, have no people who are literate. in short, there are hardly any societies today that answer to the requisite stipulations and can be described as tribal or ethnic. to the extent 4746 colin chasi & ntsako lowane that communities that match the combination of these elements cannot be found, it is illusory to speak of tribes as though they exist. those who insist on dragging imagined or possible historical notions of such communities into lived contexts are fairly described as practising tribalism (southall 2010: 84). tribalising the shangaan and making them the butt of jokes the shangaan are über-tribalised; they occupy a distinct and particular misanthropic space in the pantheon of apartheid prejudice. they are tribalised as people who fall at the bottom of the hateful ladder of humanity that apartheid construed, enacted and institutionalised with consequences for how many live today. commenting on how hordes of xenophobic south africans ran through ramaphosa informal settlement chanting “kill the shangaan!”, britten (2008) recalls that she had earlier recognised that in her book the art of the south african insult: [t]o call a non-shangaan a shangaan [in south africa] is considered a grave insult, because shangaans are viewed as country bumpkins, if not actually subhuman. a substandard type of wors in the townships is known as shangaan wors. pedi people have bad body odour. xhosas are ambitious, cunning and tend to look out for each other; hence the xhosa nostra theory, also known as the iluminati. zulus are dumb but strong and brave — most security guards are zulu — and rely too much on indians. sothos are lazy; probe far enough into the family history of most criminals and you’ll find a sotho. and you won’t get far in durban if you’re a pondo. britten (2008) rues the fact that in post-apartheid south africa, tribal insults attached to the tribalisation of the shangaan are still thrown around in ways that irrationally deny shared experience and shared humanity to such an extent that they mark who gets to live and who dies. the point is that there is palpable need to think carefully about how the shangaan are made the butt of jokes. in many an offensive joke, as fanon (1986: 84-85) could say, the shangaan body is often, in a tribalistic manner, made into a horrid subject for objective examination, for discovery of blackness and ethnic characteristics in ways that so thoroughly thematise and dislocate individuals that they are overdetermined to not exist as persons in constructive community relations. nearly ten years after the formal end of apartheid, well-known comedian desmond dube – on the popular show dube on monday (2003) – spoke of shangaan people being so ugly that even baboons look better than them. he seemingly did not immediately see anything wrong with his statement. but after defending his “joke” for almost two weeks, he succumbed to pressure from shangaans who had lodged a complaint to the broadcasting complaints commission of south africa and the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc). he made a public apology in the form of a voiceover recording at the end of his show while the credits were running. this apology was not welcomed by some as they felt that it was not sincere. according to hlatshwayo (2003), the xitsonga language board chairperson mandla mathebula also rejected dube’s apology, based on the fact that “[dube] was in front of the camera – clear and bold when he called [shangaans] baboons”, and he was hiding when he issued an apology. 4746 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication the next section overviews literature on how online communication exaggerates and increases the tendency for some to use more extreme forms of communication that can harm others. online communication in richly mediated interpersonal communication encounters, individuals have much that demands that they attend to demands of the other. one could speculate that as encounters become progressively more mass-mediated, this richness is denuded, so that television and newspapers, for example, appear to have to find sensational content in order to gain audience attention. online media have enabled richer interactions on what have been dubbed social media, yet the tendency of social media interactions towards the sensational and provocative may indicate that users may be actively attempting to compensate for the inability to more fully engage with others that the richer interpersonal encounter still embodies. a well-known tendency in online communication is that significant numbers of people tend to resort to ethnic type-casting, using more and more extreme forms of expressions to describe others (hargrave & livingstone 2009: 162-170). turkle (2011: 280) partly explains why this happens when observing that in online communication: …we easily find ‘company’ but are exhausted by the pressures of performance. we enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention. we can have instant audiences but flatten out what we say to each other in new reductive genres of abbreviation. online communication is pressured to be meaningful, suggesting that those who engage in it are aware that “there is something missing in it”. the compensation is that the cyber-sphere tends to enable people to produce a wider range of viewpoints that express more diverse personae than is the case in the off-line world of face-to-face interaction with its greater sociality and greater social pressures which limit freedom of expression. the wide range of responses to jesus is a shangaan, often evidently using avatars to enable them to express themselves with fewer strictures, illustrates this. to be sure, freeing people to challenge figures of authority is often extremely useful because it limits abuse of power. however, it is to be critiqued that people sometimes use their freedom of expression to make the most marginal and weak the targets of offensive jokes. the next section describes the online satirical video jesus is a shangaan and discusses often strident online reactions, which can in many cases be read as focusing on ideas about how shangaan people are made the butt of tribal jokes. jesus is a shangaan an immediate problem that arises for presenting a scholarly reflection on tribal identities and representations is that there is such a proliferation of commonly held ideas concerning tribal identities and representations that this fact alone threatens to make discussions so broad that they barely touch on anything. the authors will attempt 4948 colin chasi & ntsako lowane to overcome this problem by focusing on a specific instance in which tribal identities and representations have meanings that can be imaginatively grasped vividly enough for us to be able to appeal to intuitions of the good and reasonable that the proverbial “common woman or man” can be expected to show. jesus is a shangaan (mducomics 2012a) is part of the izikhokho series of online animation productions created by mdu comics. it starts off with a zulu-speaking male who is ensconced in his hospital bed. he is telling his friend that he has hurt his toe. his doctor comes in and viewers then find out that the injured man is named jesus. the doctor informs jesus that his dna does not match that of god and the doctor further tells jesus that there is no easy way to tell jesus the terrible news – that jesus is a shangaan. in the next scene, while walking on the street, jesus speaks to himself saying that people will no longer take him seriously. if he does the “second coming”, people will say “the shangaan” has returned. jesus then buys four bags of oranges, uses the sacks to scrub off his “shangaan-ness” and states that he feels better after the bath. as he talks to himself in zulu, he realises that he pronounces his “s” exactly like a shangaan and laments to himself – with face in hands and a voice of disappointment – “i truly am a shangaan”. the animation ends with jesus writing a suicide note, wanting to die because he does not want to live as a shangaan. when mdu ntuli, the animator, first released the video on twitter in may 2012, he wrote: “jesus is a shangaan [not italicised in original] is a new izikhokho cartoon! i’d like to apologise to shangaan people in advance. enjoy” (mducomics 2012b). after a woman lodged a complaint with the human rights commission, ntuli said the cartoon “is purely fictional. every nationality has a joke on each other and that’s just how it is. for me, it is just ridiculous for any tsonga [shangaan] person to take this personally” (chauke 2012). as far as can be determined, to date, he has never issued any sort of apology for the video. what is disturbing for the authors is not so much that ntuli appears to think that it is important for people to, in olivier’s (2015) language, “get a life” and joke about themselves, but rather that he appears to give little relevance to black, racialised experiences of being tribalised. in other words, he appears to trivialise the everyday black problem of having to constantly seek ways to rise above being the fiction of a racialised and tribalised being, of being “[a] hoax… better to laugh at?” (fanon 1986: 87). however, the authors are accusing ntuli of failing to tell his joke well and of failing to locate it well within historical, cultural and economic, and other material conditions that matter. the authors are arguing not for denying space for jokers who see that there is satire to be expressed about the socially constructed mess that is racism and tribalism, but for saying that such satire gains strength and depth when it is located at the crux of how history, culture, and economic and material arrangements meet and interact to make a joke of people. among the online comments analysed for this article, c1 (commenters are to remain anonymous) said the following: black people! our ignorance is consuming us. it’s a cancer. read a god damn book! were we barbaric and cannibalistic animals or lesser human beings before 4948 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication we knew about religion (which was brought by colonialists to africa)?! ... i don’t think so... stop being sheep to outdated western ‘prescriptions’ for africa, which were meant to keep you docile and obedient while the colonialists loot the land and [expletive deleted] up our communities! read and question even your bible and koran! c1 suggests tribalism is a disease that attacks the body. such metaphorical use of disease has been investigated by sontag (1978), first in illness as metaphor and later in aids and its metaphors (1989). sontag suggests that such usages of disease as metaphor suppose that disease is the work of a foreign agent who enters and attacks the body – even when an outside agent is not at work. camus’ (1947) the plague is a brilliant existential narrative metaphor of colonialism – presented as the story of a plague that enters from outside and mysteriously afflicts a community that must find ways to re-establish health and control (o’brien 1970). specifically this comment accuses some africans of failing to have the education and concomitant critical consciousness to challenge and overcome western practices of othering africans. c1 also insinuates that, notwithstanding the vast variety of histories and contexts in which we find ourselves, as stated more than five decades ago by sartre (1963: 10), for many africans key notions of “differences are born of colonial history, in other words of oppression”. c1’s view reminds us that mafeje, for example, argues that in many african languages even the word “tribe” did not even exist until: [t]he colonial authorities helped to create the things called ‘tribes’, in the sense of political communities; this process coincided with and was helped along by the anthropologists’ preoccupation with ‘tribes’. this provided the material as well as the ideological base of what is now called ‘tribalism’. is it surprising then that the modern african, who is a product of colonialism, speaks the same language? (mafeje 1971: 254). the language of tribalism is a colonial language that expresses a colonial culture informed by economic and political realities that underpin societies (cabral 1973: 41). tendencies towards self-hatred and black-on-black violence are structurally encouraged by apartheid practices and logics of extreme exploitation and segregation (more 2008: 62). colonial and apartheid regimes were adept at exploiting these experiences using divide-and-rule tactics which further encouraged tendencies towards black-on-black hatred, denigration, jealousy and violence subsumed in tribalist expressions (fanon 1963: 52). to understand the anger with which jesus is a shangaan was received by some, one could perhaps attempt an archaeology of the knowledge and power relations by which colonial, apartheid and tribal relations are constructed and sustained in postcolonial and post-apartheid south africa. such an analysis may dwell on the significance of the satirist electing to give us the moment of denouement as one in which a shangaan man discovers that his belief that he is a messianic figure is shattered by western medical science data which reveals that he has no genetic relations with the biblical jesus. it may be recalled that, as mudimbe’s (1988: 33) writings on the invention of africa profess, western “civilizing” or christianising discourses functioned as ideological explanations and pragmatic justifications for inventing, exploiting and conquering an 5150 colin chasi & ntsako lowane africa that was accordingly presented as “beastly” and “barbaric”. the tribalisation of africa is a project that is deeply intertwined and implicated in racist, colonial and apartheid logics. in this context, anger and violence appear as forms of the naked truths of decolonialisation that fanon (1963: 37) thinks evoke “searing bullets and bloodstained knives”. c2 simply says: “a guaranteed r15 000 cash for anyone who can kill this cartoonist”. the peculiar colonial language of tribes enables colonialism and apartheid to produce “the other” that exists as a form that cannot speak (spivak 1998: 271-313) and that cannot be known except as a “being who is not what is western” (said 1995; mudimbe 1988; mbembe 1992). youtube commentators who commented on jesus is a shangaan did not explicitly comment on this. however, c3, below, can be read as founded on the understanding that all people are equal – which fundamentally challenges colonial and apartheid logics. c3 says: i honestly don’t think jesus minds being shangaan (sic) at all. the jesus that i know, who is also the king of the universe, always takes up a role so low that he is accessible to everyone and anyone. so yes, jesus would gladly be a shangaan and not only that … the poorest shangaan you can ever imagine (if being shangaan is something of low esteem, that is). in the authors’ view, c3 challenges the idea that some people are superior to others – which functions as the basis for colonial and apartheid “divide and rule” practices. fanon (1963: 52) speaks of colonial and apartheid orders functioning by dividing the world into compartments so that “apartheid is simply one form of the division into compartments of the colonial world”. in making the theological claim that jesus could as well be shangaan, c3 is perhaps indicating that all people are made equal and that the duty of all people should be to undermine the system of regional, economic and social compartmentalisation by which colonialism and apartheid misanthropically separate and rank people. here, the important point must not be lost: western colonialism is a narcissistic system that narcotically denies the existence of others even as it denies and “others” them (mcluhan 1994: 45). this is not to deny that colonised and tribalised peoples have agency. indeed, they act with consequences that are fundamental to how the tribe fixes contestations in ways that deny the worth of the interacting individuals whose interactions give texture, sense and meaning to enactments of community. contestations over identity are substances of the communication by which individuals and groups describe themselves. colonial practices distort these using “divide and rule” strategies to conjure up meanings that simultaneously limit the power and authority of indigenous scripts and knowledge regarding free, cooperative coexistence and participatory engagement (wa thiong’o 1981). the point is that under colonial and apartheid rule, language was used to replace indigenous knowledge and value systems with mores and norms that fix into place the “modern tribe”. the tribe that colonialism and apartheid invented claims to be traditional. but it is merely traditional in the attenuated sense of what ranger (2010) calls an invented tradition. for the apartheid government and its operatives, emphasis on the purported 5150 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication “primitive” aspects of black african groups, demonstrated by the rural squalor of many of the bantustans, illustrated black “traditional” lifestyles. this served to legitimise the exclusion of blacks from mainstream urban society which was increasingly white and prosperous. in the chain of beings that apartheid deemed to be on separate paths of development, some black people were presented as more barbaric than others (hayward 2007). in south africa, the othering of blacks that talk of invented traditional tribes permitted and legitimated the removal of blacks from their land and it justified their (re)assignment to what were called homelands or bantustans, based on purported tribal affiliations. today the invented traditional tribe is best seen in the remnants of the apartheid enacted bantustans. in artistic expression, one could say that the tribe exists in south africa today as a museum or garden culture. comaroff and comaroff (2009) give a scholarly and systematic account that expounds this point. for the purpose of this article the point is simply to say that the contemporary tribe is an illusion composed of categorisations and scenarios that are invented, often in the name of the people, but not for the people. in south africa, uncritical and uncaring usage of tribalising representations are arguably perpetuating the legacy of apartheid and its potentials for conflict and violence. this potential has been intermittently seen in the deadly xenophobic violence that has plagued the country since 2008 (nyamnjoh 2010). the psychological effects of apartheid’s structural violence continue to be felt today, even as the country battles to rid itself of the remnants of apartheid planning and practices (fassin 2007; commission 2010). for many, the work of getting out of structurally violent class and race positions involves overcoming the legacies and logics of apartheid. psychologically, colonial rule and apartheid denigrated black people, preventing them from becoming all that they could become so that they lived as mere shells of what they could be (biko 1987) leaving many experiencing shame and aspiring to inflict violence on fellow blacks (fanon 1963). this is particularly important for south africa, where issues of identity and diversity are so fraught with conflict. online media may have the potential to bridge some of these divides. it also has the potential to extend historical separations associated with apartheid. we should be careful not to present the view that everyone deems unpalatable and undesirable satirical material that deals with difficult topics in difficult ways. indeed, it is noteworthy that not all the youtube commentary thought that jesus is a shangaan is offensive. some commentators expressed the view that the satirist was exercising his right to freedom of expression. for example, c4 felt it was necessary to respond to critical commentators by saying: ah, people just get over yourselves! mdu is just utilising his talent which he was given by god. what happened to, ‘nobody can do against god’s will’ ?? the point im driving home here is, god wouldn’t have given mdu such a talent if it was against his will, so who are you to judge god’s creation??? @mdu, this is funny man, we always laugh at it in class, keep it up!!! what is witty for one person is not humorous to another. in the case of satire, what amuses narrators and some audience members is often structurally painful for those who are intended as the butt of the joke. 5352 colin chasi & ntsako lowane in the increasingly globalised world, digital-internet information and communication technologies have ensured that we can no longer be sure who audience members are. we also tend to know less about the information context within which our messages are interpreted. after all, online content is networked, linked, tagged and generally bound up with other individually or group-produced content which may constitute vulgar, derogatory and generally offensive but powerfully persuasive renditions of media messages (hargrave & livingstone 2009: 162-170). the repercussion is that communication acts intended to be satirical which are aired online are received by audiences that are “less finite, less predictable, less knowable” and communication and media scholars are duty bound to develop new ethics of humorous communication for the digital world (lewis 2011: 227). a particular implication is that in today’s world of viral and digital interconnectedness we must rethink what it means to tell ethnic jokes as these may now be received by a wide variety of others who do not share the same interpretive reference systems. this article is based on ubuntuism as a “philosophy” of politeness and conformity. as have been alluded to above, it would be more beneficial to impose a structure such as the difference between satire and choral poetry; or to even (at a stretch) consider pre-modernity, modernity and postmodernity as an analytical frame. as it stands, the argument remains a discussion of sentiments; a triumph of morality over ethics. there is no intellectual rigour. discussion (considering ubuntu for satire) if tribal identities and representations are myths which have consequences, how does one satirise about them? how does one make a joke of something which makes a joke of the people it is directed at? how may storytellers tell stories that go beyond the historically informed and linguistically constrained universes in which imagination takes place? for example, as shown in giliomee’s (1989) or butler’s (1989) histories of the formation of afrikaner ethnic/racial identity, how may south africans realise that racism is another term for an unjust discrimination whose other forms are seen in ethnic and tribal bias? what does ubuntu say about how satire may be performed in ways that ensure that tribalism and racism subside and draw to an end? as south africa strives to achieve development, clumsy communication on problems such as those of tribalism will not elegantly enable the country to deal with complex forms of othering. enabling people to gain and use freedom of expression is a wellresearched way to ensure that development can be achieved. freedom of expression will enable the flourishing of thought-provoking media content that sparks debate among otherwise diverse and divergent people and challenges their beliefs, views and ideals in ways that are conducive to the articulation of complex, open and sustainable democratic statehood. satirical media content is a powerful tool for this. satire as an ever-shifting and negotiated discursive practice is chosen and acted out by human agents. it requires constant ratification, redefinition and “taking-up” by satirists, audiences and targets who must take risks to manage their situations, knowing that satire may misfire and relationships may be both destabilised and reformed 5352 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication (simpson 2003: 8). an initial point to note is that the setting of satire assumes a relational perspective in which individuals are fundamentally in society and their value and worth, or at least the pleasures and harms that may be served to them are produced by and in social relations. satire hence provides valuable new insight into the isizulu aphorism, much understood as summarising the idea of ubuntu, which says umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person with others). finding that satire locates people in relations is not strange. on the one hand, it simply reveals the a priori fact that satire is a form of communication and communication does involve practices, by which individuals are related one with another. on the other hand, the ubuntu aphorism, “a person is a person with others” connotes that how people are enabled to participate in society matters (chasi 2014a: 301). if we wish to understand what ubuntu may contribute towards articulation of a desirable approach to online satire there should be every attempt to increase the extent to which individuals are granted the right to free speech, and individual participation in matters of concern should be secured. there is no evidence that africans have historically done anything but value freedom of expression (seleoane 2001; chasi 2014b). the authors are of the view that ubuntu does not prescribe limiting the production of satire, but that it rather encourages the production of satire that enhances social welfare. this view is echoed in a comment, c5, which responds to jesus is a shangaan by saying: nt [sic] funny, improve [sic] your work man. think of how the audience will receive your work before you publish it. dont [sic] be like a dj [sic] who’s playing himself instead of the crowd. the authors believe it is possible to present satire that enables everyone to be the most they can be. satire admittedly is violent, as is all other human communication (sonderling 2013). this is why for one to be called an artist of satire requires exercising fine skill and judgement. accordingly, in this article it is postulated that those who perform satire badly so that it carelessly misfires should be encouraged to improve their skills. censorship does not teach people to improve their skills. rather, enabling people to practise their skills as satirists better enables them to use this important tool for vital tasks, such as making people laugh and upbraiding authoritarians. if we fail to do this, we may end up with societies in which proverbial elephants in the room may remain undisclosed and undiscussed, with horrid consequences. digital online offers grand possibilities for africans in many states to challenge tribalistic and “war of civilisations” ideas that pit imagined ethnic communities against one another in ways that ironically perpetuate neo-colonial arrangements, apartheid separations, authoritarian rule and underdevelopment. investment in the creativity by which satirists and others can learn and apply excellence of the arts of communication to the work of breaking down undesirable orders is vital for african development. nineteenth-century existentialist søren kierkegaard (1940) decried that modernity, driven by the advent of the modern printing press, was levelling all people in the mocking satire of newspapers which were newly available in large numbers. in the 5554 colin chasi & ntsako lowane twentieth century, sociologist pierre bourdieu (1998) observed that television was lowering standards of public communication. the hope remains that in the twentyfirst century people can refuse to give in to the despairing thought that global digitalinternet interconnectedness dooms weak africans to becoming the eternal butt of harmful satire from global centres. with creativity, globalisation, which is in part enabled by digital-online technologies, can be used to ensure that in this era more than any other in human history, we can ensure that the metaphorical “floweriness of the different flowers [of humanity] is expressed in their very diversity”, so that different flowering peoples communicate to cross-fertilise one another in ways that make best use of the fact that each human being contains “in themselves the seeds of a new tomorrow” ( thiong’o 1993). this vision demands further articulation of ubuntu which meets big new global challenges by embracing the fact of global humanity in ways that “re-member” and “en-courage” (take into heart) a most altruistic sense of the african summum bonum of social solidarity expressed in the view that “persons are persons with other persons”. such ubuntu will surely embrace satire. increasingly, africans, as with other people in the world, engage others in online settings. as we do so, it is necessary for us to think carefully about the implications of not reimaging how tribal identities and representations have been constructed and overdetermined by colonial and apartheid practices. this is particularly so because online communication tends to promote and enable more extreme expressions to flourish. satire is a powerful approach to communication. africans can use the sharpness of satire in order to carve out new pathways to democracy and prosperity, just as they can use its bluntness to push back against authoritarian tendencies. the possibilities of using satire are many and varied and it is in the interests of africans to think of the best ways of using satire and/or accommodating it in everyday life, particularly as the advent of digital-internet interconnectedness ensures that satire comes from or reaches unintended audiences and/or hits unintended targets. in this context, it is important to think about how the african moral philosophy of ubuntu should direct how, why and to what end africans should communicate using satire. conclusion: for ubuntu in satirical (online) communication although the authors are of the opinion that online satirical communication and reactions to it should not be silenced, they are also conscious of the fact that in online settings the temptation will be for more harmful forms of such communication to flourish as social limits are loosened. the challenge is to find ways to increase people’s awareness of the need to use online spaces in ways that best reflect their aspirations for forms of community life that enable individuals to flourish in harmonious societies characterised by the recognition of shared humanity. thinking about the possibilities of translating ubuntu into an ethic that champions better online communication appears worthwhile in this context. 5554 considering ubuntu for satirical (online) communication there is a need for scholars to elaborate more systematically and adequately what ubuntu requires of (online) communication – how african excellence in communication can be understood when that communication is satirical. further work in this area is important, particularly given, as shown in this article, that tribalism, for example, thrives in conditions in which satire is poorly developed. one can imagine an african future in which satire is embraced to advance the establishment of forms of community that best enable individuals to be the best they can be. one line of future studies could consider adapting how the philosophy of ubuntu is thought to value humans for their capacity to have relations of solidarity and shared identity with other “normal humans” (metz 2007; 2012). such work should be challenged to advance new conceptual insights regarding how ubuntu can encourage relations of solidarity and shared humanity of identity, even with satirists who seek to improve humanity with their offensiveness. this challenge is particularly difficult to meet where satirists are digitally separated from those with whom they commune/communicate. from the viewpoint of ubuntu, which was developed in close-knit communal societies, digital-online satirical communication arguably requires nuanced re-conceptualisation to ensure its continued relevance. given that we do not have perfect insight into other people’s motives for actions, the pursuit of such a new approach to ubuntu may yield highly attractive philosophical foundations for making moral judgements that have consequences for cooperative (online) communicative actions by which democracy can be advanced. there is great, honest attractiveness and promise for scholarship on ubuntu that does not involve asking people to make judgements about the motives of others that are fundamentally opaque. finally, in the last paragraph of this article which references jesus is a shangaan, it is irresistible to observe that ubuntu has been read by bamford (2007) as having surprisingly broad, shared values and concerns with those articulated by nietzsche. those interested in pursuing bamford’s line of argument may find exploring nietzsche’s satirical the anti-christ (2007) most fascinating for the ways in which they urge people to be original and hence dangerous to tradition – in a manner that nietzsche thinks 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brand in south africa in that year was koo, owned by tiger brands in south africa. this brand, which has a relatively small advertising budget, was a surprise winner in the category that had been dominated by brands such as coca-cola and kfc. these brands spent far more on advertising to a lesser effect than koo, a significantly smaller company. koo had in fact spent r12 million on advertising versus coke’s r193 million, yet koo’s final ranking was the highest of all brands surveyed. the brand’s relatively simple outdoor marketing as well as the mama koo radio hour, a daily radio show featuring the various dishes homemakers can cook using koo products, helped bring the brand to all south africans and eclipsed its larger american-based rivals. this article considers the koo example as illustrative of the power of simple, traditional advertising in the multi-modal context. keywords: top brand survey, sunday times, koo, coca‑cola, multi‑modal context, advertising, marketing, brands * ronald irwin (ronald.irwin@uct.ac.za) lectures in media studies and production at the centre for film and media studies at the university of cape town. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 104-122 105 how koo beat coke introduction “for what is food? it is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. it is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviour” (barthes 1997: 29). koo, a fast‑moving consumer goods company and brand owned by tiger brands south africa, is the best‑known canned food brand in south africa. the company was founded in 1940 as a farmer cooperative, and now offers a product portfolio that spans ten categories. with 1320 employees and headquartered in bryanston in south africa’s gauteng province, the company posts r3.6 billion (approximately $327 million usd)1 in yearly revenue (davies 2011). one of the company’s primary means of advertising its products is via billboards sending simple messages to consumers that bring to mind barthes’s contention that food is, above all, a protocol and a collection of situations and behaviour. a koo billboard in isizulu exhorts the viewer to “qinisa umdeni wakho” or “give your family strength” while an isixhosa billboard shows a plate of grated beets set on a napkin and placemat. beneath this image is the tagline “kumnandi ekhaya” or “the joy of home”, further outlining the link between the canned product and the creation of a satisfied home. another billboard shows the koo product with the isixhosa “fudumez’uziteke” or “indulge yourself”. taken together, that indulgence must be aimed again at the homemaker. the tinned goods, in other words, bring “joy”, create “jealousy”, offer “indulgence” and provide a family “strength”. barthes (1997: 29) opines that in modern society food is no longer consumed as nutrition. there is more involved in the selling and the consumption of it, especially with regard to how it is presented to consumers and the rituals around how it is consumed: finally, the development of advertising has enabled the economist to become quite conscious of the ideal nature of consumer goods; by now everyone knows that the product as bought [that is, experienced] by the consumer is by no means the real product; between the former and the latter there is a considerable production of false perceptions and values (ibid.). however, in the mind of the academic, food is considered a frivolous study, “for we do not see our own food, […] we assume that it is insignificant” (barthes 1997: 28). for the scholar, food “connotes triviality or guilt” (barthes 1997: 30). on the contrary, barthes asserts that food is an important means of reflecting people’s values and fundamental perceptions about themselves. an interesting point to note is that 50 years after the publication of the barthes text upon which this discussion is based, a “frivolous” canned good product managed to unseat the 106 ronald irwin biggest brand name in south africa, coca‑cola, another food brand, for two years in a row as the number one brand in the country. south african domination of koo in the 2011 and 2012 sunday times top brands awards ranking, koo took the top brand position over coca‑cola. this ranking is according to sunday times’ top brands adjudication, which is circulated nationally in south africa (tns global 2011a; 2012). it is acknowledged as one of the primary markers of brand value in the country, and is also the most highly publicised. this was a true david and goliath story given the relative size of each company, and especially given the proportional advertising spend each company invested in the south african market. both brands are ubiquitous, but coca‑cola managed to outspend its closest rival by 94% in advertising outlay (tns global 2011b). both koo and coca‑cola have been in the south african market for the same amount of time, having both been introduced in 1940 (coca‑cola sabco n.d.; koo 2015). despite spending 6.4% of coca‑cola’s budget in 2011, and close to that in following years, koo seems to have created a greater perception of quality and customer loyalty (coca‑cola sabco n.d.). since 2012, koo has retained a favourable brand positioning in regard to sunday times’ top brands measurement. it was ranked second to coca‑cola for sunday times’ overall favourite brand award in 2013 (bizcommunity 2013) and 2014 (media update 2014). it also retained its position as the top tinned food brand in the country in both years. the brand’s relatively small size in comparison to coca‑cola makes it a worthwhile, if not a direct, product‑level competitor, for koo does not produce consumer beverages that compete with coca‑cola’s products. its 2011 and 2012 awards were notable because the company’s strategy was, very simply, to use traditional narrative branding methodology to attain impressive consumer penetration and knowledge about the brand. the strategy behind the company’s initial dominance over coca‑cola in 2011 is the research focus of this article. koo and the sunday times survey the annual sunday times top brand survey was in its 13th year in 2011 and provided what was called a “representative snapshot” across various categories: 33 in the general consumer space and 13 categories in the business landscape (tns global 2011b). to offer further insight into the survey, brands are rated by ranking “brand familiarity”, where respondents are allowed to rate brands they feel comfortable giving an opinion on, and by rating user experience. this enables people who know about certain brands to rank, on a scale from 1 to 10, their experience with the brand. these results are further broken down, and are scrutinised according to consumers who actually use the brand, and respondents who 107 how koo beat coke simply know a great deal about it. this allows for inferences to be made regarding how users respond to the brand as opposed to how non‑users perceive the brand. finally, the brand’s relative size in its market is considered. more specifically, there were 3000 face‑to‑face interviews in the seven major metropolitan areas of south africa, using the random sampling method (by suburb). males and females, over the age of 18, of all racial groups were involved. in addition to this, 500 face‑ to‑face interviews in the non‑metropolitan areas using random suburb sampling were conducted using the same social categories (tns global 2011b). the winners in the national category were divided into 24 sections with the top prizes or “grands prix” going to companies with the best marketing personality organised into classifications such as “south africa’s overall favourite brand”, the brand involved in the greatest “community upliftment”, and the “best green company” (tns global 2011c). the respondents who identified themselves as users of the brand had to have bought it in the last month in the tinned goods category, and in the soft drink category, the brand had to have been consumed in the past month. the winning index score was calculated using the brand’s “relative advantage on the delivery scale” by comparing ratings within the category. additionally, all character categories were anchored within a specific time. in the case of canned food and soft drinks it was one month (ibid.). using this “relative advantage” index score, koo ranked at a score of 93.96 as opposed to coca‑cola at 92.85 (tns global 2011c). koo could boast that 72% of the respondents in the category had actually used the brand in the last month, while non‑users were “aware enough to rate [the brand]”. this means that 100% of those interviewed are knowledgeable enough about the brand in order to rank it. users ranked koo at an average 9.05, while non‑users rated it at 7.84 (ibid.). of those interviewed for lucky star, koo’s nearest tinned goods competitor, only 58% of the respondents were users. these users only rated the brand at 8.93 (ibid.). the methodology employed by the tns research surveys was meant to examine “a brand’s or retailer’s penetration in the marketplace” (tns global 2011b). the index comes from three variables derived from the questions above: the actual usage of a brand or outlet in a specified time period, the rating it receives from its users relative to others in the category, and the rating it receives from those non‑ users aware of it, also relative to competitors in the category. the non‑user rating carries only half the weight of the user rating in the final algorithm (ibid.). the variables that the index measures are meant to reflect the “actual usage of a brand or outlet in a specified time period, the rating it receives from its users [compared] to […] the rating it receives from those non‑users aware of it, also relative to competitors in the category” (ibid.). 108 ronald irwin according to the research findings of a tns global survey, “a winner occurs in one of three situations” (tns global 2011b): ♦ if it is big and rated above average by both its users and its non‑users; ♦ if it is truly big but perhaps only rated as average by its users and non‑ users; or ♦ if it is smaller but very well loved by its users and is strongly aspired to by its non‑users. thus koo, a brand with far less invested in itself than coca‑cola and hardly known outside of the confines of southern africa, had nonetheless had tremendous penetration within south africa. it boasted 100% recognition, and a high value by both users and non‑users. koo’s brand, therefore, seems to have outshone coca‑cola’s, at least according to the (well‑respected) methodology of the sunday times competition and ranking. as indicated above, research into the methodology of how koo managed to upset coca‑cola indicated that the koo brand itself spent only 6.4% of coca‑cola’s direct advertising spend in south africa (coca‑cola sabco n.d.). or, more specifically, r12 million (approximately $1.09 million usd) compared to the r193 million ($17.5 million usd) of coca‑cola (coca‑cola sabco n.d.). whereas coca‑cola spent significant amounts on advertising in weekly newspapers, committee news, consumer magazines, financial magazines, television, radio, outdoor advertising, daily newspapers, cinema advertising, and internet advertising, koo chose to focus only on weekly newspapers, consumer magazines, radio, television, and, significantly, outdoor advertising. it is also significant that coca‑cola spent more money on outdoor advertising than koo (r34 559 445 versus r3 776 710) (mabaso 2011). these numbers hardly present what an advertising giant coca‑cola represents in south africa and indeed outside of the country’s borders. coca‑cola’s spending in south africa is immense, and its presence stretches across the african continent. africans buy 36 billion bottles of coke per year; one study conducted by the university of south carolina suggested that 1% of south africa’s entire economy (r17.5 billion/$1.5 billion) was in some way connected to coca‑cola’s operations (moore school of business 2005). during the 2010 soccer world cup, which was held in south africa, estimates pointed to the company putting as much as $600 million or r6.6 billion into world cup advertising alone, including paying $124 million (approximately r1.3 billion) for sponsorship rights and spending $475 million (over r5 billion) on worldwide advertising (bauerlein 2010). coca‑cola’s annual revenue worldwide is $47.51 billion (or r500 billion) and it has been estimated that 96% of the world’s population recognises the coca‑cola logo. according to the united states‑based interbrand best global brands report, as of 109 how koo beat coke 2013, coca‑cola was ranked the number three brand in the world behind apple and google after holding the number one position since 2000 (interbrand 2013). it comes as no surprise, then, that coca‑cola has traditionally been the number one brand in south africa, winning the sunday times grand prix every year since the rankings were instated in 1998, apart from 2011 and 2012 when koo received this accolade. coca‑cola’s dominance as the top brand in south africa is clearly owed to its massive advertising budget and its immense presence worldwide. the means through which koo dominates, not only its own sector of tinned goods but also the top overall rankings in south africa, is illustrative of how a brand can capture the so‑called hearts and minds of consumers using a portion of the advertising cost of a competitor. koo’s strategy to unseat coca‑cola was the carefully targeted use of a narrative branding campaign. its avowed purpose, according to the managing executive of tiger brands, zinn mabaso, was to present itself as “partnering with homemakers” to help them create “mouth‑ watering meals” (mabaso 2011). the various advertisements were meant to “help” homemakers in tough times. the brand worked carefully to foster an “intimate” relationship with its target market. this did not mean embracing a high‑tech, online approach to brand management. as mabaso (2011) says, “we at koo are just learning about the sms”. nonetheless, through focusing on print, radio and outdoor advertising, this brand managed to create 100% brand recognition for itself and dominate its category. strategic narrative branding outdoor advertising narrative branding at its most basic level is literally and figuratively telling a story that involves the brand as a character and invites involvement from the consumer. it differs from traditional branding in that it does not simply repeat the same message over and over. instead, it fosters a personal engagement on the part of the consumer. this is a departure from the advice offered by ogilvy (1962: 22): “but never give up a campaign just because you have grown tired of it; housewives don’t see your advertisements as often as you do. the best thing is to get a great campaign, and then continue it for several years.” instead, narrative branding is best suited to a brand that is looking for methods to keep consumers attached to an ever‑developing narrative around the brand. furthermore, it creates entertainment out of the brand by making the brand a character in the story that reflects the personal narratives told by consumers about themselves. it engages consumers by entertaining and involving them. understanding narrative branding, however, is only useful if the manner in which a brand actually sets out to appeal to a target market is identifiable. in the case of 110 ronald irwin south africa, the company identified that homeowners across the buying spectrum, but with a particular concentration at the lower living standards measures (lsms), were looking for assistance in providing “mouth‑watering meals” for their families. there was a cultural resonance that equated using the brand with providing for the family and gaining accolades from family members. most of the outdoor advertising that koo spent its money on was concentrated around the end‑of‑the‑year holidays, when many of the country’s urban africans travel to rural homes. the billboards placed on both sides of the roads communicated concepts of home and good cooking. more than that, the signs were in all of the 11 official languages of south africa. this, according to mabaso (2011), is the company’s answer to this question: “does the brand speak my language?”. according to mabaso, “south african consumers trust brands that communicate to consumers in their own language”. interestingly, the belief on the part of koo was that “english does not ‘connect’ to non‑first language speakers… [as] people ‘own’ the brand through language” (ibid.). the taglines that are used in the outdoor advertising campaigns, for instance, lose a great deal of meaning when translated into english, but resonate in local languages and cultures. this purposeful move away from a coherent single‑message brand campaign to a diverse campaign, designed to appeal to various cultural backgrounds, is at the heart of the narrative branding campaign. therefore, a campaign that speaks the right language will be more effective. an example of this is the billboard that reads “jealous down”. under the prominent koo can is the tagline “it’s the best you can do”. the picture is of a woman serving a bowl of beans to an older and a younger male, who look suitably impressed. the “jealous down” statement is a colloquialism favoured among the isixhosa community that could be translated as “i am so impressed that i am jealous, and my eyes are down in appreciation”. indeed, foregrounded in the advertisement is the concept that the serving of the food will result in appreciation from the receivers of the food, even though the beans are relatively difficult to see. the “it’s the best you can do” tagline reinforces that by using koo, the female homemaker (women are almost always shown as serving food to males in koo advertisements), will earn praise for her excellent cooking. the narrative invites the viewer to strive for that same recognition, for doing “the best you can do”, from those who receive the relatively simple meals provided. it posits a clear understanding that the point of serving the meals is to gain familial standing. it also shows the woman as the server, who is able to wield considerable influence within the advertisement because she creates the feeling of “jealous down” from the receivers of the food. in other words, to serve koo is to gain the upper hand in the familial setting. the advertisement shows the reaction from the men at the table, and the pleased, yet respectful, expression on their faces is an illustration of what creates the “jealous down” feeling on the part of another woman who might also be at the table, or 111 how koo beat coke be witnessing this social and familial victory. it allows the viewer to experience vicariously the feeling of giving respect to the woman who has served the mouth‑ watering meal to her family, and to be a part of the family’s homage. television this sentiment is further underlined in the koo television advertisement entitled “love story”2, as part of the “everyone has a koo story: what’s yours?” campaign. it shows a woman, once again, telling a story about meeting thabo as a child and winning his heart by serving him koo (mabaso 2011). the story then progresses to the woman as a married, successful woman who still retains thabo’s heart because of her buying and serving the koo product. the two subjects in the advertisement have moved from a township environment (there is even a pennywhistle soundtrack to this part of the story), to what appears as a more middle class lifestyle. through this change in lsms, koo has remained, and the woman has grown in stature in the eyes of her husband and family. this narrative continuity informs most of koo’s advertising and positions the brand itself as an enabler of a dynamic whereby the server managed to gain the admiration of those served. the simple narrative of the outdoor advertising encourages the consumer to equate the serving of koo with the building of a family, and in turn with the rise of the homemaker’s status within the household. the product taps into a much larger narrative of “home” and “respect” that is already ongoing, especially during the holiday season. of course, the story that is told in the “everyone has a koo story: what’s yours?” campaign has been carefully scripted and filmed to appear as if it is a kind of archival memory from an average black south african family. the story opens with a shot of what looks like a township house, made of cinderblocks, with an adult female voiceover while two black children, a male and a female, play outside. the narrator says, “i remember the day i stole thabo’s heart…”, followed by laughter. the girl serves the boy the product from a koo tin, and the boy samples it. he then turns to her and says in setswana “re a leboga moratoa waka”, or “thank you my respected love” (ndlela 2014). the almost courtly language of the boy to the girl indicates that she has literally won his respect, and therefore his love. the television advertisement is not given subtitles for the non‑setswana speaking audience as the narrative, presumably, would be lost on them. it is easy to see that whatever the boy is saying is a romantic endearment, but the target audience that equates serving food with winning the admiration of the family, and winning the respect and love of a husband, is picking up a slightly different but important narrative. winning the respect of the family in order to gain a man’s hand in marriage is almost universal, yet the interesting element of the commercial is that it additionally enhances the narrative of respect. 112 ronald irwin it accomplishes this by suggesting that the brand can help a woman capture a man’s love and maintain it over the years as she cares for her family. more importantly, the carefully chosen words of the boy indicate that the girl’s means of illustrating the respect due to her is through serving koo. it also suggests a maturity and strength beyond her years, as later we see her serving the exact same product as a grown woman with a family. this is a clear overture to female customers. the serving of koo marks a woman as extraordinary, worthy of respect, and worthy of marriage. later, the narrative will carry over into a woman’s role as the maternal provider. superimposed upon this narrative of romance and respect is the narrative of upward mobility. as the scene changes in the advertisement, a subtitle flashes on the screen saying “years later…” as south african jazz plays. the two children have grown into their thirties and have their own children who come running into a much more lavish, but still middle class, house to be served the same koo product. interestingly, the man is sitting down and looking up adoringly at his standing wife as she serves him the same delicious beans that won him over in the first place. foregrounded, just outside the shot with her back to the camera, is another woman sitting, presumably one of the grandmothers, looking on approvingly. the narrator says, “everyone has a koo story, what’s yours?” hereby inviting the audience to participate in the narrative, or to see themselves in this story. the picture then shrinks to a framed photo on the mantelpiece of what looks like a fireplace, and on the wall, once again, we see printed in neat handwriting “everyone has a koo story, what’s yours?” along with the koo logo and tagline “it’s the best you can do”. this purposeful positioning of the video’s story as not merely an advertisement, but instead a re‑enactment of the story, and presumably sent in by a consumer, is a sly and purposeful invitation to inclusion in the koo narrative. this is a reflection of the social narrative of food in south africa. the woman is seen as being wily, intelligent, and in a sense, winning over the hapless male with the help of koo. from the moment the product is shown in the advertisement we see her as the dominant figure on the screen. using the documentary/archival film style, the audience is led to believe that this story really happened. the perception created in the advertisement is a re‑enactment, or possibly a home movie, of a “real” interaction and romance. the humble tinned food takes prominence in the advertisement, and retains its usefulness as the characters move up in the world. this reflects the ubiquitous presence of the product throughout the south african market. research by tns global (2011c) indicated that buyers of the product covered every age group with a concentration of buyers between 18 and 49 years old. lsm 5 and 6 consumers made up the majority of koo customers; lsm 7 and 8 consumers took up 24%; and lsm 9 and 10 shoppers represented 15% (ibid.). indeed, the advertisement accurately reflected the hold the product has on the 113 how koo beat coke lower level buyers in the country, as well as those in the middle. more specifically, the advertisements were directed at black consumers in light of the language used and the narrative codes employed. radio and print media the narrative of building a home, which begins on the billboards across south africa and then migrates almost seamlessly to television, where homemaking is acted out, is continued on radio and in print. koo tailors its strategy to each medium. in line with barthes’ work, a chapter from mythologies titled wine and milk, the meaning of the koo product can be reframed. koo acts as a “resilient totem” as wine does to the french, and “supports a varied mythology which does not trouble about contradictions” (barthes 1957: 58). this product allows many narratives to hang upon it, ranging from narratives of growth and respect, to love and family. the mama koo radio hour is produced by johannesburg agency creatrix (2013) and was first aired in 2005 on selected radio stations. a character named mama koo gives listeners who call in multiple opportunities to share recipes and discuss how they use koo products in their homes. radio itself is one of the most effective forms of mass communication in south africa. the sabc estimates that as of 2012 its 18 radio stations attract 25 486 million weekly listeners, comparable to its 30 248 million weekly audience for its three television stations (south africa government online 2014). according to mabaso (2011), this show is a part of the strategy that koo has embraced as the “brand does not dictate to the consumer”. instead, “we just air what you say” as this is “intimate and empowering for stay‑ at‑home moms”. the innovation around the radio show is that koo consistently asks listeners how they improve a simple recipe and “make it mouth‑watering”. despite hard economic times, mabaso (2011) says, koo tells listeners that “you can still make a mouth‑watering meal at an affordable price”. the popularity of the radio show has solidified mama koo’s association with the brand itself. mama koo is a character in an ongoing, inclusive drama that involves listeners and gives them a means of agency. mama koo in effect acts as the personification of the brand itself, and the brand is consistently reaching out and seeking to include consumers in the all‑pervasive journey to gain status and respect in the household through providing “mouth‑watering” meals. the show has gone on to create its own facebook presence, a spinoff television feature, and, according to creatrix (2013), “continues to be loved by audiences who perceive [the show] as programming and not as advertising”. this perception of the show as entertainment rather than advertising illustrates the power of this kind of narrative branding. part of the effectiveness of this element of the advertising campaign is its simplicity. the figure of mama koo even finds her way into print advertising. 114 ronald irwin advertisements that appeared in print show a mock letter from mama koo. on the adjacent page, recipes are set in index cards that have been appropriately aged to look as if they have come from a well‑used kitchen. the letter is effective in that the koo logo is placed at the top of the letter, and is printed in simple italic comic font to replicate freehand writing. the letter contains an appeal to readers to send in their stories. the letter reads as follows (mabaso 2011): hello beautiful koo mama’s, mamasutsa’s, nosibillboco’s (sic) and bobaaskokke since i’ve been hosting the mama koo radio show, i’ve been captivated by your letters and recipes. so many of your stories are so special, it’s really hard to choose which ones to feature. i truly appreciate you taking the time to share your special koo moments and recipes with me. i’d like to invite you to be part of my show every week, and connect with women who inspire each other to prepare mouth‑watering meals for their families. i believe that everyone has a koo story. write to me to share your koo stories, memories and secret recipes. if your story is chosen to be featured on my show, i’ll send you a mama koo hamper worth r1500. listen to my show on the following radio stations: rsg, lotus fm, ukhozi fm, umhlobo wenene fm, motsweding fm and lesedi fm. it’s that time of year again. the festive season is here and you are going to be receiving lots of visitors and spending quality time with friends and family. no gathering is complete without mouth‑watering soul food, so i’ve shared some of my listeners’ secret recipes to help you create even more koo memorable soul moments. i look forward to reading your stories. please post them to: mama koo, private bag x18, rivonia 2128 happy memories, mama koo in this letter, we see the basic taglines of koo being promoted: the concept of “mouth‑watering meals”, as well as the “inspirational” women who “prepare mouth‑watering meals for their families”. more interesting is the invitation to consumers to include themselves on the show by sending in stories and indeed memories and secret recipes. it is not enough for listeners to enter the competition with their name and address. the letter solicits the listeners to actually provide their own stories in order to gain inclusion in the mama koo narrative, which is, of course, the koo narrative of women finding ways to provide for their families. 115 how koo beat coke the call for “secret” recipes is a call for a kind of confession – the sharing of private information with an older, more experienced character (mama koo). in this case, koo has created an initial “story” that invites consumer participation. however, if one considers the main ways through which it tells the story, one sees how “traditional” media can work incredibly effectively against larger, wealthier competitors that can easily dominate the high‑tech landscape. transmedia storytelling and ‘the last salesman’ koo depends primarily upon outdoor advertising, print advertising, and radio to promote its tagline “it’s the best you can do”, and to help consumers produce “mouth‑watering meals for their families”. the brand’s story is perhaps best encapsulated in its television commercial. the girl wins the respect and admiration of the boy through serving koo. koo has thus “helped” her not only to feed her friend, but also to capture his respect, engendering the “jealous down” reaction we have seen in the billboards. koo then assists the woman in retaining the man’s affection and respect over the years, and as a by‑product, the woman’s living standard is raised as well as her stature in the eyes of her family. koo helps to make this happen. scolari (2009: 587, quoting jenkins et al. 2006) says that transmedia stories such as these have unique, powerful features, for this is a narrative that is told across three different mediums, and transmedia stories “are stories told across multiple media. at the present time, the most significant stories tend to flow across multiple media platforms.” the salient point, however, is that (ibid.) each medium does what it does best — so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play. each franchise entry needs to be self‑contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. that is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice‑versa. because each media essentially works to its strengths, the whole picture of the koo story can only be absorbed through a bird’s eye view of the entire story (i.e. the campaign). each consumer, however, enters into the “story” through whatever media they consume, and each layer of the story expands simultaneously with the media platform. the story of the koo brand helping the homemaker resonates in different ways with different consumers. though if the characters in the television commercials and advertisements represent the consumers, and invite their inclusion in the story itself, then mama koo is the embodiment of the koo brand. herein lays the effectiveness of the koo strategy: their entire brand is constructed on a narrative of building a family using a recognisable character, like mama koo, who addresses consumers on a personal level in print and radio media. 116 ronald irwin in the case of koo, there is also the actual space on the labelling of each can itself that acts as a place holder where the brand can speak to consumers. wasink and se‑bum (2004, in keller 2012: 176) provides the following insight into the consumer psychology of labelling: packaging can be such an important brand building tool that it is sometimes called the ‘5th p’. since it is estimated that the majority of brand choice decisions are made at the point of purchase, the right package can instantly catch a consumer’s eye, communicate value, reinforce the brand’s equity, and provide key comparison information. according to keller (2012: 176), “many managers think the package’s main purpose is to encourage purchase. for many consumers, the package keeps on marketing the brand and influencing consumers long after it is purchased.” it has been called “the last salesman” and is an integral part of keeping customers aware of the brand after the sale. its importance can hardly be underestimated as a means of continuing the customer engagement cycle. the packaging of the product, and the attendant labelling, is a means through which consumers can hold a conversation with the brand. an example from the united states might be the immense success of spanx, a womenswear brand that specialises in tights and form fitting undergarments. sara blakely, the founder of the brand, is one of the world’s youngest self‑made female billionaires at the age of 41 (o’connor 2012). in 2012, forbes magazine profiled the brand, noting that it eschewed digital and above‑the‑line advertising in favour of word of mouth and the effect of the packaging (ibid.). the packaging worked at two levels: it was bright and eye‑ catching in an otherwise dull shelf space of pantyhose, and it even had cardboard inserts with cartoons “like in bazooka bubblegum” that was meant to encourage women to collect all of them. the jokes inside the packaging were risqué but maintained the consumer’s engagement with the brand after the purchase (ibid.). in the case of koo, the consumer engagement worked even when the company was not making an effort to interact with consumers. in 2011, according to mabaso (2011), an announcement of a forthcoming competition, placed on the packaging of the product, garnered over 300 000 letters sent directly to the company address enquiring about how to enter. this kind of customer engagement is the aim of hosting a competition. the can itself is a space where the company shares information with consumers who may not have access to the internet or even the radio. studies into the effectiveness of packaging as a brand building tool, an underrepresented segment of the branding field, have found that information about the product on the packaging in the food retail environment can create desire for the product at the point of sale and keep customers interested in the long term: 117 how koo beat coke for products such as food items, where the product is often not in its final form, the shopper frequently has to rely on the package to develop an impression of the product in its prepared state. product managers and design firms therefore seek to create packages that break through the clutter of the marketplace and communicate positive aesthetic, experiential, functional, symbolic and or informational benefits to the consumer (underwood & ozanne 1998: 208). in southern africa, coca‑cola has stuck with its highly recognisable packaging scheme, and has depended on its massive presence throughout the world to carry off its brand recognition. additionally, the company has embraced multi‑platform narrative branding. in 2013, the company embraced a “storytelling” strategy, encouraging customers to become part of the coca‑cola journey (van bael 2013). a 2013‑2014 south african initiative asks users to “share a coke” with other users. the company created a range of individual standard size and colour coke cans using 600 of the most popular south african first names imprinted where the coca‑cola logo is traditionally placed (fastmoving 2013). the same font and typography was observed, essentially co‑opting each name into the company’s marketing. there is a related online initiative at www.shareacoke.co.za that allows one user to type a name on a virtual coke can and share it on the various social networking sites. at a series of events throughout south africa, the company gave away personalised cans to consumers. this is a notable change for a company that has been highly protective of its packaging, and is perhaps an affirmation of the ways in which south african consumers interact with their favourite brands via their packaging. this initiative was implemented at the same time as coca‑cola’s retention of its number one position as south africa’s top brand in the 2013 sunday times top brands ranking (tns global 2013). jonathan middenhall, coca‑cola’s global head of advertising, referred to the campaign as the “very best” of the company’s innovative advertising (fastmoving 2013). a television advertisement followed that featured a dog searching for his name in lights. south africa was the first african country to air this campaign, called “share a coke with bobby” (fastmoving 2013). of course, these are campaigns with a technologically advanced feel, and that depend greatly on “content marketing”, or online sharing of entertainment. while coca‑cola’s signage throughout south africa is ubiquitous, these signs do not tell a story behind the simple emblazoning of the coca‑cola name. koo, on the other hand, notably has a comparatively small online presence. it might be posited that despite coca‑cola’s dominance in terms of the sheer amount of signage and advertising it uses to bombard consumers across all advertising spaces available to it, koo’s approach was focused, consistent, and more emotionally 118 ronald irwin moving to a select and large target market. the research illustrates that it is true that all south africans have a koo story to tell, and the much smaller brand has offered to let them tell it. importantly, koo is a genuinely south african brand in character and language, a brand that manages to be all things to all people, whether they are listening to the mama koo radio hour, reading the signage in their own language, or simply buying out of passive habit. the signage and the packaging of the koo brand manages to appeal to all demographics with much less fanfare and bombast than coke, and with almost equal effect. conclusion koo’s strength lies in the fact that it “tells a [consistent] story” about respect and family over all of the media at its disposal. koo does not use a blanket media strategy, but instead uses traditional, inexpensive media to link its brand narrative to the consumer. its efficacy is clear. the brand uses only a fraction of the advertising budget of coca‑cola to get essentially the same result. notably, the respondents for each sector, namely tinned foods and soft drinks, offered a clustering of population around the same lsm levels. in other words, it cannot be argued that coca‑cola is attempting to appeal to a lower lsm that might not have ready access to movie theatre, television and internet advertising, for example. this is simply not the case. the koo product clearly has a large presence across the buying spectrum in south africa, and has garnered immense customer loyalty across the entire population. the narrative itself, however, clearly has a myriad of different meanings to different consumers. while the outdoor signage and the radio show clearly are aimed at the black consumer, the printed advertising and the actual packaging tell the same story to those consumers who may love the koo product but who may be unaware of the meanings behind much of the advertising. it can be argued, in fact, that there may not be any one set of consumers in south africa who is exposed to all of the koo advertising in all of its formats. all of the advertising is linked in terms of its theme and general narrative, but it might come as a surprise to even a loyal koo buyer in one of the higher lsms that the mama koo radio hour, the brand’s strongest and most expensive platform, even exists. by the same measure, those exposed to the outdoor advertising, and who buy the koo product loyally, may never visit the company’s website or read its print advertising. the point of sale may be the only interaction some consumers may have with the brand. according to underwood and ozanne (1998), this is a standard element of the branding of fast‑moving packed goods: the split‑second decision a customer makes in the aisle to purchase the product out of loyalty or recognition. herein lies the strength of narrative branding, the creation of a set of characters and an ongoing, evolving story that lends multiple entries into the narrative. the meaning 119 how koo beat coke of the product is utterly elastic. like barthes’s french wine, the humble koo tin of food is “essentially a function whose terms can change” (barthes 1997: 29). the many connected, but still varied, representations of the koo product echoes barthes’s contention that food or drink might have “apparently plastic powers: it can serve as an alibi to dream as well as reality, it depends on the users of the myth” (ibid.). the myth here is obvious: koo cannot guarantee familial or social success, its role in the courtship between township people two decades ago is hard to gauge, and mama koo, as endearing as she might be, is a fictional character. it cannot be said that south african consumers prefer more traditional types of advertising, but it can be asserted that the effectiveness of this advertising cannot be denied in the south african retail climate. the pictures of delicious food on the packaging, though far removed from what is actually in the tin, can actually lend a part in the narrative itself, showing the buyer what is possible through buying the product. koo, it should be recalled, tries to “help” homemakers create “mouth‑watering” meals. what is pictured on the can is what is possible, not what is inside the can itself. thus, koo sidesteps the “duplicity” of communication mentioned by habermas (1984) in his theory of communicative competence. underwood and ozanne (1998: 207) posit that there is a degree “distortion” in the most “postmodern marketplace”. however, in this case, the distortion is in fact part of the narrative of mouth‑watering meals that in turn is part of a narrative of family, respect and social mobility that is integral to the narrative of the new south africa. coca‑cola, of course, has ensured that its brand is shown in even more proportion than koo. coca‑cola advertisements are aired on a grand scale on millions of outdoor signs, on radio and on television. nevertheless, this may be the reason that coca‑cola’s narrative is simply not as compelling as koo’s. endnotes 1 all the figures are cited according to the rate of exchange between the south african rand and the america dollar at the time of writing this article (august 2014). 2 to view this advertisement see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rliupurhnye 120 ronald irwin references barthes, r. 1957. mythologies. 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[online]. available at: <http://www.lincelot.com/coca‑cola‑journey‑content‑marketing‑ storytelling/> [accessed on 20 july 2014]. 71 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions abstract the growth of e-banking as financial institutions encourage customers to do online banking transactions opened opportunities for criminals and sophisticated fraudsters to perpetrate and abuse customers in their social, cyber and physical worlds. this emphasises the need for communication and knowledge sharing by the financial service industry to empower customers in identifying dynamic fraud from genuine customer behaviour. the boundary of liability with respect to fraudulent e-banking transactions is shifting from the banking industry to the customer, with the emphasis on concepts like co-liability. despite continuous efforts by the financial industry to increase customer awareness, the dominating lack of clarity about when clients have acted negligently has become problematic, which can lead to loss of customer trust and a demand for better security. this article addresses the lack of research on this through a critical analysis of knowledge management to enhance security and customer trust in e-banking. the study investigates fraud prevention and available e-security measures, the legal consequences on co-liability to negate these potential negative consequences to the benefit of both the financial industry and the customer, and proposes a conceptual theoretical framework for e-banking fraud prevention and co-liability through proactive communication. keywords: online communication; proactive communication; knowledge management; fraudulent e-banking transactions; e-security; customer trust; proactive communication of information; knowledge creation and sharing introduction the following quote by hoffman and birnbrich (2012: 390) sets the scene for this research to develop a conceptual framework for fraud prevention in e-banking: “as banking fraud might ultimately affect customer relationship quality and customer loyalty, fraud prevention and its effective communication is an important topic for academic research”. according to mhamane and lobo (2012), e-banking, also known as electronic banking or internet banking (yazdanifard et al. 2011), has become a prevalent mode for online and internet-based transactions. prof. rachel barker department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria (barker@unisa.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 71-86 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:barker@unisa.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 72 barker e-banking offers a variety of banking services, including electronic transfer of funds (eft), automatic teller machine (atm) services and direct deposits automatic bill payment (abp), a cheaper system when compared with traditional banking systems offering customers flexibility and comfortability (yazdanifard et al. 2011). despite its advantages, this considerable innovation opens up the possibility for fraudulent transactions and an intensification in cases of fraud associated with that present tremendous challenges to the banking sector to caution and inform customers who do not use this service due to fears. it also provides fraudsters with more opportunities to attack customers, especially because they are not physically present to authenticate transactions, and might even facilitate organised attacks. according to van der meulen (2013: 713), this fraud is among the most lucrative types of cybercrime in contemporary society. according to wei et al. (2013), e-banking fraud reflects the synthetic and integrative abuse on the interaction between resources, which includes the fraudster’s intelligence abuse in the social world, the abuse of internet banking resources and technology in the cyber world, and the abuse of trading tools and resources in the physical world. the results of a study conducted by carminati et al. (2015: 176) highlighted the significant growth of online or e-banking fraud, fuelled by the underground economy of malware. according to them, internet banking frauds are difficult to detect because the fraudulent behaviour is dynamic, spread across different customer profiles, and dispersed in large and highly imbalanced datasets (e.g. web logs, transaction logs, spending profiles). although the phenomenon of a “zero tolerance co-liability process on fraudulent banking transactions” is mentioned in current literature to prevent or negate potential negative consequences, this phenomenon has not been adequately researched, understood and conceptualised as a prevalent aspect of shared responsibility to the benefit of both the financial industry and the customer. in order to gain academic insight into this phenomenon, this study sets out to investigate the means by which fraudulent activities in e-banking are committed and the way in which the financial sector addresses this through the introduction of security measures, education, awareness and the management of knowledge through proactive communication to increase customers’ loyalty and trust and at the same time to enhance the bank’s reputation and customer retention. the theoretical discussion will be based on an extensive literature search using these concepts and inclusion and exclusion criteria. the problem statement for this research is that there seems to be no theoretical framework to address the applicability of the identified and characterised theoretical typologies derived from the knowledge management paradigm and e-banking fraud to elaborate on the need to enhance e-security and customer trust. key concepts fraudulent e-banking transactions fraudulent e-banking transactions are among the most money-spinning types of cybercrime today. according to van der meulen (2013: 713), the increased sophistication of attacks has complicated prevention and detection efforts, which in turn has allowed 73 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions their success to proliferate. this has increased the financial burden on both the service providers and the customers, where the latter are running increasing legal risks of being exposed to financial losses due to neglect. the internet is an effective communication device or tool for providing proactive customised and personalised delivery of interactive messages. jansen and leukfeldt (2015: 31) emphasise the need to educate online banking customers about how to avoid fraudulent schemes. according to andrews and boyle (2008: 60), the main inhibiting factor for many forms of transactions is that of perceived risk, especially in e-banking, which influences customer’s perceptions and behaviour to adopt or reject these offerings. various viewpoints exist on perceived risks depending on the predefined perspectives of the researchers to reflect the particular context under examination. because the purpose of this study is to examine the need to enhance security and customer trust in e-banking, the focus will be on security measures, proactive communication on possible risks of fraudulent transactions and how to educate customers through knowledge sharing on fraud prevention and the consequences of neglect. this type of perceived risk is defined by sathye (1999: 326) as the security and reliability of transactions; moreover, the risk of losing money through fraudulent transactions or that personal information might be misused (drennan et al. 2006). security measures for fraud detection and fraud prevention the two main approaches used by the banking industry to detect fraud patterns include tapping the data warehouse of the third-party (containing transaction information from many institutions) by using data mining programmes to identify fraud patterns and fraud pattern identification, which is based stringently on the bank’s own internal information (mostly through a hybrid approach) (bhasin 2015). most fraud detection methods are related to credit card fraud, computer intrusion and mobile communication. empirical analysis performed on real-world transactions revealed that most of the fraud had the following characteristics: a large number of different accounts accessed by a single fraudster; transactions involving small values in many accounts; more payment transactions than usual in a single account; and an increased number of login and password failures before the occurrence of fraud (kovach & ruggiero 2011). fraud prevention, on the other hand, describes the security measures to avoid unauthorised individuals from initiating transaction on an account for which they are not authorised (kovach & ruggiero 2011: 166). when fraud prevention for e-banking transactions fails, fraud detection is used to identify this unauthorised activity. the need for security is therefore a fundamental and increasingly important issue in the banking industry, which highlights the need for fraud prevention through proactive communication to ensure customer relationship quality and loyalty (hoffman & birnbrich 2012). due to a lack of research on fraud prevention, it will be the focus of this study. customer co-liability although the general assumption is that customers are not liable and that banks refund the financial losses of victims of e-banking fraud, the banking industry is moving towards customer co-liability and is investigating the need for a zero-tolerance policy 74 barker through increased efforts to educate and train customers proactively. according to van der meulen (2013: 718), and based on cases worldwide, trying to introduce a zero (co)liability policy, it can negate potentially negative consequences, by eliminating the uncertainty for consumers and simultaneously making discussions on clarity and constancy obsolete. due to the increase in fraudulent e-banking transactions, banks are starting to expect more from customers in response to years of awareness campaigns and argue that they count on a certain level of awareness that can be used as a vehicle to transfer the liability from the side of the bank to the customer. this is hampered by two concerns. firstly, there is the lack of clarity on the qualification of gross negligence and care, which can be open to interpretation. to address this concern, banks argue that the specificity of a warning allows for the transfer of liability to the customer. in other words, if perpetrators use a “known” attack that clients were warned against, and are successful, then the customer acted negligently and should be liable. this leads to the second concern of consistency, causality and reasonableness where the liability can be circumstantial (for example, if any form of social engineering was absent, lines of liability were not specified, burden of proof for customers and banks, etc.). one line of liability, which clients agree to in terms of use by opening and subsequently using the account, is the installation of antivirus software (usually provided by the bank online free of charge). in addition, ignoring the warnings of malware and phishing/vishing by clicking on links and responding to emails are serious fraud threats, but the inclusion of more specific terms of use might reduce the lack of clarity and consistency as banks will then be more transparent about their expectations. customer trust trust is a decisive instrument in stimulating purchasing over the internet and is a determining factor whether customers will accept e-banking. yousafzai et al. (2003) refer to two types of trust in e-banking: the traditional perspective of trust in a specific party (the bank), and trust in the integrity of the transaction medium (the web). according to yazir and majid (2017), trust depends on information and knowledge sharing, whilst reichheld and schefter (2000) consider e-trust as the degree of confidence customers have in online exchanges in e-banking. there are arrangements with customers that can increase trust and belief in relation to the bank and its intentions. they include reading security declarations and accepting them; enhancing communication and transparency about the bank in terms of fraud and security; clarifying security expectations; refund arrangement effectiveness; introducing layered security strategies and solutions to ensure proactive security and comfortability to use it; and differentiating between fundamental and legitimate activities that provide the highest degree of protection without overburdening. prevention tips and enhancing security in e-banking is not an easy task for banks because most of the attacks have already occurred before the banks realise it. however, they do have the following control prevention methods in place: kecrypt not possible to forge, fake or fool; multifactor authentication; new users who approve or request large transfers are immediately associated with high-risk behaviour and should be acted upon immediately; and spyware protection through built-in antispyware (a personal 75 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions firewall is another way to do this). most financial institutions apply these prevention methods and have come up with innovative approaches to develop and enhance trust with customers through proactive communication and education. effective knowledge management through proactive communication on anti-fraud management enhances customer relationships and ultimately loyalty and trust (hoffman & birchman 2012). in the context of this study, customer relationships refer to the relationship the bank builds with the customer where the quality of this relationship is dependent on the loyalty and trust of the customer towards the bank. for the purpose of this study, relationship quality is defined as the strength of the relationship to create, maintain and enhance the satisfaction, trust and commitment of the customer to enhance long-term customer relationships. according to liu et al. (2011) and randall et al. (2011), satisfaction refers to the evaluation of customers on products and services based on past experience, expectations, predictions, goals and desire to assess the quality of past interactions. ghane et al. (2011) argue that customer satisfaction is closely related to interpersonal trust and can be considered as an antecedent of e-trust and e-loyalty to ensure customers have the intention to revisit the website and make future transactions. in terms of fraudulent e-banking transactions, satisfaction of interactions will foster customer intention to continue using these services (ho & ko 2008). in a study conducted by hoffman and birnbrich (2012), they concluded that reliable and regular communication about fraud and the systems, methods and measures that are taken to prevent it will, inter alia, lead to increased levels of satisfaction, knowledgeable customers on anti-fraud measures, and fraud prevention that is positively associated with trust and commitment. this will ultimately lead to loyalty and successful long-term relationships. theoretical framework based on the pragmatic realist approach of miles et al. (2013:7) that there are regularities and sequences that link together phenomena from which constructs can be derived that underlie individual and social life, they posit that human relationships and societies have peculiarities and inconsistencies that make a realist approach to understanding them more complex – but not impossible. they agree with interpretivists that knowledge is a social and historical product and affirm the existence of the subjective, phenomenological and meaning as the centre of social life and that these processes should be transcended into theories to account for a real work and to test these theories in practice. this article follows a social science perspective, specifically communication science, focusing on individuals (not a computer science perspective concentrating on technological fixes or psychological approach converging on behaviour) through an exploratory, descriptive and critical analysis of existing information based on an interpretative approach. the accelerated capacity of online transactions and e-banking can either empower an individual or counteract the threats posed by the increasing fragmented media landscape and emergence of independent online media outlets. one way to counteract 76 barker this is to engage with the online community using proactive knowledge management communication by incorporating safety and security messages on the website to warn and reassure customers of prevalent fraudulent transactions. this emphasises that banks should put in place incentives, systems, methods and measures that are more robust to provide for the security of customers’ accounts if they want to impose liability from a legal perspective. because knowledge management is a multifaceted socio-technical process encompassing various forms of knowledge creation, storing, representation and sharing to the benefit of the organisation and its individuals, it is seen as information with specific properties and the introductory stage to knowledge (lueg 2001). contained in this definition are three key components of the knowledge management process relevant to this study: technology (web), human (customer), and organisation (banks). technology focuses on data gathering, mining and knowledge construction. the human component refers specifically to the knowledge creation and sharing of information through online messages during direct, real-time interactions. the organisational component includes the management of four interrelated elements: choice, adoption and implementation of procedures/methods to link individuals and groups; formal and informal informational settings where interaction occurs; organisational practices to address fraud; and the context in which interactions and messages are facilitated. the knowledge management theory is becoming more and more popular to study the proactive management of online communication as one way of facilitating messages to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions. this theory has received recognition since the mid-1990s. earlier knowledge management studies focused mainly on the capture and dissemination of knowledge. since the mid-1990s, the focus shifted towards the cop ideas, which led to the first community of practice (or communities of knowledge sharing) that emerged in 1997, and in the virtual world refers to vcops (barker 2006). although most traditional approaches to knowledge management assumed this knowledge as relatively simple, approaches that are more recent realise that knowledge is in fact complex, factual, conceptual and procedural. a tendency still exists to follow the tradition in thinking of communication as the transfer and processing of information, but more recently the focus is on proactively communicating with customers through the creation and sharing of knowledge (donate & de pablo 2015; barker 2016). one of the key discourses of the knowledge management paradigm is that embodied, tacit, implicit and narrative knowledge are important phenomena and fundamental to all human knowing (nonaka & takeuchi 1995) and an essential part of everyday communication because it allows for the transformation, sharing and processing of knowledge (barker 2009). the starting point of this study is therefore evidenced in the processes of knowledge management as a comprehensive approach to online communication in general, and in this article particularly with regard to proactive communication on fraudulent e-banking transactions. this is necessitated by the realisation of substantial operating costs for banks to refund customers’ monetary losses (gates & jacob 2009), as well as the considerable time and emotional loss of customers. customers have to detect the fraudulent transaction, communicate with the bank, initiate blocking and re-issuing 77 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions or re-opening a card or account, and dispute the reimbursement of losses (douglass 2009; malphrus 2009). the consequences for the bank is shattered trust and confidence, a feeling of insecurity, a lack of confidence and increased dissatisfaction because of a perceived service failure, which in turn affects loyalty and damages the bank’s reputation (gruber 2011). greer and moreland (2003) suggest that effective [online] communication requires customised content-based messages to warn and educate customers of potential e-banking fraudulent transactions. it also gives banks the opportunity to (re)assure customer trust in their services and allows a bank to evoke a shared understanding of values between itself and its customers (asif & sargeant 2000) to retain existing and/or attract new customers. knowledge management also allows banks to demonstrate their knowledge and competence regarding anti-fraud measures effectively, thereby creating a feeling of safety among customers that can improve customer relationship quality and loyalty (hoffman & birnbrich 2012). if applied to e-banking to create awareness for the prevention of fraudulent banking, it is argued that the knowledge management paradigm presents a way to proactively manage and control the messages that are acquired, transferred and assimilated. prevention of e-banking fraud against the background that internet or e-banking fraud is difficult to detect and analyse, it is argued that it is better to communicate with and educate customers to create awareness and knowledge through proactive knowledge management and knowledge sharing. this will allow banks and customers to build commonality and trust on the prevention of fraudulent banking transactions and move towards co-liability and ultimately a zero-tolerance policy. this will narrow the gap between bank-wise (globally) and user-wise (locally) attribute distributions who will become well-trained users on fraud (carminati et al. 2015). categories of fraud in the literature, the person conducting it categorises fraud. two types of fraud are identified. first-party fraud is when a legitimate customer betrays the bank; and third-party fraud is when the customer becomes a victim of criminals who steal identities, the use of lost or stolen cards, counterfeit cards, or gain unauthorised access to customer accounts by any other means (gates & jacob 2009; greene 2009). this study focuses on the prevention of third-party fraud that falls into two categories. firstly, there is payments fraud that refers to any activity that uses information from any type of payments transaction for unlawful gain and occurs when fraudsters gain access to and use customers’ accounts for their own financial benefit. secondly, there is identity theft, which might include fraudsters illicitly gaining access to customer accounts, but mostly refers to the opening of new accounts in the name of a customer (malphrus 2009; hoffman & birnbrich 2012; sullivan 2010; gates & jacob 2009). in the context of this study, the prevention of fraud describes the security measures to avoid unauthorised individuals from initiating transactions on an account for which they 78 barker are not authorised (kovach & ruggiero 2011: 166). one way to do this is to focus on the regulated financial institutions who must consider the security of service providers. these include, inter alia, new laws and systems, methods and standards for payment activities and instruments, whether new payment types carry an excessive fraud risk, who is liable when fraudulent payments occur, how losses are located, what customer protection should be in place, how notification of fraud should be handled, and how to minimise the incidence of fraud (gates & jacob 2009). on the other hand, the move towards co-liability introduces the need to manage knowledge and information on fraudulent banking transactions through proactive communication with customers to create awareness, educate, and at the same time introduce them to the concept of co-liability. types of fraudulent e-banking transactions based on the literature, fraudulent processes entail giving away personal information to fraudsters through phishing/vishing or malware victimisation. phishing/vishing victimisation is defined by lastdrager (2014: 8) as a “scalable act of deception whereby impersonation is used to obtain information from a target”. it occurs when customers respond to a false email, a fraudulent phone call, or a combination. fraudsters then “steal” access data by pretending to be a credible source requesting sensitive information like usernames or passwords (hoffman & birnbrich 2012). malware victimisation is the umbrella term for malicious software such as viruses, worms, trojan horses and spyware to steal credentials or digital data, or gain control over a customer’s screen (jansen & leukfeldt 2015: 24). this usually occurs by responding to a pop-up message and by installing a malicious application of a mobile device or banking app. despite various awareness campaigns, customers still tend to be ignorant and do not read or pay attention to information on their screens that might have prevented the fraudulent transaction and/or that they were not mentally able to stop the process because of trusting the intention of the fraudster. according to yazdanifard et al. (2011), the cybercrime trends created by malware, specifically trojans, are programmes that compromise the computer without the knowledge of the user. the number one worldwide-recognised malware in e-banking fraud, according to these authors, is known as the zeus trojan ‘defacto’ where zeus has become almost like a brand version of a trojan (ibid.). characteristics of e-banking fraud the most sophisticated characteristics of e-banking fraud are summarised by wei et al. (2013: 450) as follows: suspicious customers are active and intelligent in conducting fraudulent e-banking transactions; fraudulent behaviour is dynamic; fraud is hidden in diversified customer behaviour; fraud-related transactions are dispersed in highly imbalanced large data sets; and the occurrences of fraud appear in a very limited time which requires real-time detection. these aspects focus on fraud detection, not prevention, but they are mentioned for contextualisation purposes of the need for advances in e-security measures. 79 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions fraud legislation in a study conducted by mason and bohm (2017) in the united kingdom on the scale of bank-transfer fraud and the cost for customers to take action, they proposed various new measures and greater liability for banks to ensure that customers are protected by law. one such liability is described as “security updates” to prevent fraud, especially the legal issue which is straightforward: whether the bank had the authority under its mandate from the customer to debit the account. for example, if a card is used at an atm and the correct pin is entered, the bank can claim that it was the customer or a person authorised by the customer. according to chavan (2013), fraudulent e-banking transactions need to have a legal definition, recognition and permission if new methods and instruments are developed and implemented. potential consequences of a co-liability process customers who become a victim of fraud are negatively affected in various ways (malphrus 2009; button et al. 2014; hoffman & birnbrich 2012). firstly, monetary losses, even though it is typically refunded by banks. secondly, time in terms of the efforts customers have to make to restore the original situation. thirdly, customers might lose confidence and trust in the bank and feel that it is not safe and that the bank is incapable of protecting their assets and might want to switch to another bank. these accumulated e-banking fraud incidents ultimately have a profound negative impact on the reputation of the bank. based on the literature, the potential negative consequences for both the customer and bank indicated in table 1 are prevalent if customers are held liable for internet banking usage in general and fraudulent e-banking transactions specifically (van der meulen 2013; hoffman & birnbrich 2012; tassabehji & kamala 2012; yazdanifard et al. 2011; jansen & leukfeldt 2015; chiou & shen 2012). these concepts can typically be viewed in terms of three notable influences of the online environment on communication, namely, time and space compression, global consciousness and reflexivity, and disembeddedness in single locations (monge 1999). in the context of this study, time and space compression refers to the physical or “real” presence through new technologies; in this case e-banking, which links customers who are removed from the bank to communicate as if they are in a single location. in terms of global consciousness, new technologies allow customers access to stored information and knowledge in local and international repositories and security websites through an interchangeable process. disembeddedness in a single location aids in the reconnection of individuals at a distance by distributing knowledge through information to increase knowledge levels, thereby creating a new space – albeit not a physical space – in which customers feel safe. this re-emphasises the need for increased security and trust in e-banking. 80 barker table 1: potential consequences of a co-liability process banks customers positive monetary savings/less cost increased awareness clarity and consistency of definitions of concepts such as gross negligence less time-consuming to react to fraud less obligation (‘back door escape’) access to security methods and systems (antivirus software, security centres, etc.) increased transparency more knowledgeable on security and fraud through education retain customers increased interaction with banks negative refusal to refund can lead to negative publicity perceived risk and uncertainty (security/privacy, financial, social, time/ convenience and performance risks) loss of trust, loyalty, commitment, etc. demand for better e-security lose customers concerns about cybercrime inhibits online participation (inconvenience) new methods/systems a costly investment (for example, the usage of biometrics) no refunds problematic and cause for concern (financial loss) actions to be considered in new policies, measures and procedures mason and bohm (2017: 240) consider the following actions necessary by banks to enhance trust and responsibility. firstly, the government must change rules for reporting and dealing with theft from bank accounts and provide accurate figures on theft and fraud. secondly, training, education and provision of appropriate information technology to security staff on digital criminal activities is crucial. thirdly, banks must put more robust methods in place to provide security to customers with relevant incentives. fourth, consideration must be given to the general rule that machines may be assumed to work correctly, which ignores the susceptibility of commercial software being manipulated to the detriment of the customer. lastly, the problem should be treated less simplistically by the banks and it ought to be a requirement to inform customers that their accounts have been compromised. a conceptual theoretical framework for fraudulent e-banking transactions a conceptual framework explains, either graphically or in narrative form, the key constructs, variables or factors that need to be studied and the presumed interrelationship between these (miles et al. 2013). for the purpose of this study, a graphical conceptual framework is developed based on the current version of the 81 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions researcher’s map obtained from a comprehensive literature review and the important variables identified in the qualitative research. based on the preceding literature review and key theoretical constructs of the knowledge management process and variables identified from existing literature, figure 1 proposes a conceptual theoretical framework for e-banking fraud prevention and co-liability through proactive communication. proactive communication knowledge acquisition trust e-security reputation loyalty knowlegde transfer knowledge assimillation social/cyber worlds physical world customer relationship fraud prevention coliability (policy) customer • phishing/vishing • malware • awareness/education banks • systems/methods • knowledge sharing • live direct realtime experience • context figure 1: conceptual framework for e-banking fraud prevention and co-liability through proactive communication the focus in this conceptual framework is on fraud prevention using the three typologies of knowledge management to communicate with customers proactively. in this context, knowledge acquisition refers to the provision of instructing information on the website to customers when a new fraudulent action is identified and/or to remind them of existing methods and procedures. it encompasses data gathering and mining as well as knowledge construction. three main types of messages should be constructed: basic facts about fraud; updating of existing information and facts; and provision of new information and messages to prepare customers for what to expect and how to react to it. this is usually done through a security centre website, pop-ups to warn customers when they access their accounts, and detailed links to cover the broad spectrum and context of fraudulent transactions. knowledge transfer is necessary to move into creating and adjusting the communication messages by posting various messages and linking customers to websites for direct real-time interactions and by sharing information to ensure them of the safe and secure use of online transactions. examples of possible real-time 82 barker fraudulent transactions should be included on various websites and links to transfer this knowledge to the customer. knowledge assimilation should be substantiated through the control and management of the messages in the pre, present and post stages of fraudulent actions by presenting methods and procedures to ensure safe e-banking transactions, providing informal and formal settings for interaction (for example, hotlines and online links), stating company practices to address fraud and the context in which it is managed and controlled. this is usually corroborated through linking customers to the security centre, online fraud updates, media releases, general security messages (formal or informal), and detailed methods, practices and procedures to address it proactively and reactively. it is argued that the knowledge management paradigm offers the opportunity to manage and control proactive communication by means of these typologies through a series of messages and links to assure customers of safe and secure online transactions. these typologies should be used consistently and continuously to create awareness of fraudulent banking transactions in the social, cyber and physical worlds of both the customer and the banks. customers should be educated to create awareness on phishing/vishing and malware fraudulent banking transactions to prevent these actions. banks should constantly provide systems and methods and prompt customers on existing and/or new fraudulent transactions to ensure that the concept of “zero-tolerance liability” becomes a crucial concept in the prevention of fraudulent e-banking transactions. the starting point of this study is therefore evidenced in the processes of knowledge management as a comprehensive approach to online communication in general, and in this article particularly with regard to fraudulent e-banking transactions. in terms of the theoretical discussion of the knowledge management paradigm, the following three major typologies indicated above are relevant to this study: ♦ firstly, to acquire knowledge through data mining and knowledge construction to address it proactively (whether empathic, reminders against complacency, and to address ambiguity and uncertainty). ♦ secondly, adequate response and attitude towards fraudulent e-banking transactions by means of the transfer of knowledge to customers through the creation and sharing of knowledge in direct real-time interactions (e.g. setting the customers’ mind at ease and ensuring them of the safety and security of online transactions). ♦ thirdly, the assimilation of knowledge to address current fraudulent e-banking issues and to present methods and procedures to link customers to possible preventative or corrective actions to ensure authenticity and transparency in the trust-building process (e.g. through downloading of free software, steps or guidelines to ensure safe and secure use of online transactions, reduced risk strategies, and media releases). although it is realised that the main advantages created by e-banking is the ease of use any time and any place, no barriers to access, convenience, and the minimal cost 83 knowledge management to prevent fraudulent e-banking transactions of services, it is also posited that the application of the constructs in the conceptual theoretical framework will introduce customers to the importance of co-liability without losing trust, commitment or loyalty, or impact negatively on the reputation of the banks. conclusion by adopting a knowledge management approach, the study examined the importance of the management and control of messages on fraudulent e-banking transactions. this often results in the construction of opposing viewpoints, but a way to ameliorate this tendency is to promote the recognition of the fraud and proactively communicate messages to alleviate concerns and ensure customers of the safe and secure use of online transactions. this emphasis on the managing of messages resonates with the knowledge management paradigm and implies that online knowledge creation and sharing can be constructed and controlled through the three identified typologies: knowledge acquisition, transfer, and assimilation. the majority of banks are beginning to exploit their information “asset” for deriving of fraudulent e-banking transactions through data mining to gain a competitive advantage. customer retention and acquisition became an important determinant of a bank’s bottom line and if these typologies are applied in decision-making, they can reap immense benefits and derive considerable competitive advantage to withstand competition in future. the introduction of a zero-tolerance and/or co-liability policy or measures in future necessitates the need for banks to continue monitoring fraudulent transactions, and to proactively communicate and educate customers to ensure positive customer relationships and trust. the boundary of liability will also force banks to become more transparent and harmonise liability rules to enhance clarity and consistency between banks on gross negligence. it was argued that the boundary of liability with regard to online banking fraud is gradually starting to shift from the bank to the customer and despite various awareness campaigns to educate and introduce such a shift, the increase in sophisticated fraud attacks makes customers vulnerable to the “involuntary facilitation” of fraud. hence, van der meulen (2012: 717-718) posits that the introduction of a genuine zero liability policy can negate these potentially negative consequences by removing the uncertainty for consumers and simultaneously making discussions on clarity and consistency obsolete. it is concluded that this conceptual framework be tested empirically to obtain a deeper understanding of and account for the influence of control and management of messages on e-banking fraud to 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https://doi.org/10.1016/s0166-4972%2803%2900130-5 _goback 139pb centring the subaltern: interpreting mainstream media messages in a fractured country abstract this article reports on a study that examined the interpretation of mainstream media messages by young people living in joza, grahamstown, south africa. the investigation was prompted by the failure of mainstream media to predict the anc retaining its electoral dominance in the 2014 national general elections. instead of falling to the margins as anticipated, the anc, in areas such as joza, outstripped its previous share of the vote. the study asked why people living in the township had diverged so drastically from mainstream media predictions. as a theoretical departure point, the study considered that the variation of a black south african township voice is missed by mainstream media because of the sector’s subscription to the idea of a unitary public, which conceals the multiplicity of publics in a fractured country. through a combination of interviews and participant observation, one of the major findings is that young people in the township of joza demonstrated that they chose to ignore the messages about the corruption of the anc. the data suggests that they did so not because of overt racial solidarity, but due to the fact that in a context of high inequality and continued limitations on economic emancipation, the party shone brightly as a vehicle for economic development. keywords: media messages; unitary public; multiplicity of publics; ethnography; representation; subaltern introduction the so-called nkandla scandal is arguably one of the biggest political scandals in recent south african history. this article reports on a study that investigated how young people (south african delineation) in the township of joza, grahamstown interpreted the nkandla scandal. the choice of a young township audience was prompted because the voting patterns of this group (and the broader black majority) baffled mainstream media when this group opted to keep the ruling african national congress (anc) in government (grootes 2014). similar cases of unexpected election results worldwide tie this study to a current trend. media commentators mvuzo ponono department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (pononom@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 139-154 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:pononom@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 141140 ponono across the globe have been confounded by the outcome of popular elections. in 2016, the world media and various punters failed to predict, or accurately depict, what majority populations had to say about the running of their respective democracies. most notable are britain voting to leave the european union, donald trump’s shock election as the president of the united states of america, and jeremy corbyn’s remarkable electoral gains (younge 2017). in 2014, pundits in south africa also failed to discern the outcome of an election and were astounded by the direction taken by a majority. in the run-up to the 2014 general elections, mainstream media outlets and commentators were convinced that the numerous political scandals, nkandla chief amongst these, which beset the ruling anc would threaten its majority (calland 2014; holmes 2013). according to the popular media narrative, the multitude of scandals were an albatross that would lead to the anc’s unravelling at the polls (munasamy 2014). there was a sense that there would be a significant backlash from voters who regularly took to the streets to demand the delivery of basic services (alexander 2010). grahamstown, for example, where the research was conducted, presents a good case study. the city was awash with protest action with organisations such as the unemployed people’s movement keeping the local anc-led municipality busy (mali et al. 2011). the sentiment expressed in media discourse at the time was that the anc was running the country to the ground and the party would be made to pay by the electorate (munasamy 2014). however convincing this argument, the elections disproved the sentiment. the anc retained its majority in parliament, and suffered a less than expected decrease at the polls. despite the nkandla scandal’s centrality to the election news coverage, when the final results were tallied, the ruling party suffered a less than four percentage point decrease from 65.9% in 2009 to 62.1% in 2014 (iec 2014). interestingly, in the eastern cape, despite the much-publicised scandals, the ruling party improved its margin from 68% in 2009 to 70% in 2014 (ibid.). in the makana municipality, which includes grahamstown, despite many service delivery problems, the anc improved from 65% in 2009 to 68% in 2014 (ibid.). the mismatch between what was predicted or purported and the outcome sets up the primary question: why had mainstream media gotten the 2014 election outcome so wrong? to answer, the research drew inspiration from robins et al.’s (2008: 1069) insistence that an analysis of post-apartheid society should centre on the “perspectives of citizens themselves”. it is in this respect that the researcher focused on the perspective of black voters in south africa’s townships who had apparently been misinterpreted. this line of enquiry led to the more pointed research question: if the group in question did not follow the mainstream media’s prescription, how did they interpret events as reported by the media? how was this silent majority interpreting dominant messages? 141140 centring the subaltern context as an examination of the responses of marginalised township dwellers to a scandal and a detailed exploration of the everyday practice that influences those decisions, the context of the research focuses on insights that maintain that mainstream media has been accused of a narrow focus on a select group (friedman 2011). this article argues that, intentionally or otherwise, the urban poor living in south african townships is marginalised by the mainstream media industry that targets an elite audience for the purpose of revenue from advertisers (duncan 2000; jacobs 2002; wasserman 2011; glenn & mattes 2011). critics contend that the commercial logic of mainstream news production marginalises the poor in two respects: through institutional operations that privilege the views of the powerful (hall et al. 1978), and a market orientation that sells the audience as a commodity (ang 1996; duncan 2003). such a configuration of big organisations producing media focused on an audience in a high-income bracket creates an elite bias, or a media that functions for the interest of the middle class (friedman 2011; wasserman & jacobs 2012). glenn and mattes (2011) maintain that in a society with a commercial media system that reinforces an elite national discourse, certain sections of the south african population are often omitted as participants from the media sphere due to any combination of education, income, language and place of residence. due to the above, two decades into democracy, south african media still constitute an elite public sphere. the unemployed have little voice in the media, except as social problems (such as violent protestors) or as victims (msimang 2016). women and young people continue to be marginalised, and the overall effect is that media discourses can be inherently unbalanced or skewed to favour particular worldviews (ibid.). it is argued that mainstream media practitioners take little account of the meanings marginalised groups make of dominant news messages that circulate in the mediated public sphere (jacobs 2002; wasserman 2011; duncan 2013). it must be noted that the exclusion of marginalised groups from participating in the mainstream media system encompasses the south african broadcasting corporation, which working-class groups have access to (jacobs 2002; duncan 2003; glenn & mattes 2011; oelofsen 2017). in recent times, mainstream media producers’ prioritisation of middle-class stories, evidenced by the coverage of the reeva steenkamp and jayde panayiotou murder cases (duncan 2013; allison 2015; davis 2015) over working-class issues has been critiqued as a “crisis of voice” (couldry 2010: 13). theoretical framework by focusing on everyday practice, which is intended to enable readers to obtain a better insight into the reasoning of the marginalised, the study sought to understand why the majority continues to support the anc; an action that is oftentimes thought to hinge on stupidity rather than a rational and reasoned action (nobaza 2014; schutte 2014). in so doing, the theoretical starting point of this research is subaltern scholarship, which takes from orientalism the insight that the oriental, or other, is never a free subject of thought or action but contained and represented by dominating frameworks 143142 ponono (said 1978). applying this understanding to the interpretation of mainstream media, the argument made is that subalterns, to the detriment of rounded analysis, have long been considered passive or unsavvy political actors (guha 1984). what is worth noting is the dual issue of subaltern actors being afforded little space to self-signify (duncan 2013), and the power of civic institutions such as the media to use historical and racial bias to negatively represent subaltern groups involved (said 1978). when applied to media study, subalternity is useful in observing how social structures silence marginalised people. a picture of this scenario is vividly painted by duncan’s (2013) study of the marikana massacre, which found that only 3% of all the articles written at the time of the massacre consulted workers. business sources, politicians and other expert groups dominated coverage of the tragic mine wage dispute resulting in subordinate groups being predominantly represented by those deemed more authoritative. in this regard, spivak (1988) argues that subalterns seldom get the opportunity to self-signify because they are not seen to have the ability to do so. such a narrow and elite focused vantage point denies the subaltern a voice because they are ideologically interpellated into a continued position of subjugation and marginality (ibid.). given the above, the motivation behind the perceived marginalisation of township people in coverage of the 2014 general elections (and their subsequent misreading) could be due to the fact that their inferior rank puts them in a position where they are scarcely considered, or if they are, they are given pre-existing roles as dupes and voting fodder. subaltern scholarship was, therefore, useful for this study because it upended the thinking that the marginalised are duped by arguing that it is a grave limitation not to adequately consider the active role subalterns play in social action (guha 1982). adherents note that contrary to views of passivity, subalterns are active participants in a parallel domain of politics, which exists alongside the mainstream (chatterjee 2003). consequently, chatterjee (ibid.) argues, subalterns are active and political in a way different from that of the elite. to further our understanding of the behaviour of marginalised people, and their understanding of mainstream media messages, audience theory and interpretation also come into play. the study employed qualitative audience reception theory, which emphasises individual agency and the ability to independently make sense of messages in “determinate conditions of invisibility” (morley 1991). similar to the discussion on subalternity, the insight that emerged from this theory points to the fact that, despite the marginality, when considered in their own right, audiences are active and measured in their everyday decision-making. the point made is that when audience groups are ascribed value, and are seen as active participants, it is clear to see that messages are not linear but subject to variant interpretation. such insights enabled the researcher to contemplate the fact that the subaltern township public under review could have understood mainstream news about a black president in a variety of ways. 143142 centring the subaltern methodology morley (1992) argues that media consumption is an intricate process that cannot be reduced to isolated units that can be measured by quantitative analysis. to further the point, his contemporaries have pointed out that due to its inherently complex nature – its intrinsic link to a range of other domestic practices – media consumption can only be properly understood within context (ang 1996). in this regard, the argument proffered is that the necessary requirement of analysing the imbedded complexities of media consumption is to use anthropological and broadly ethnographic approaches (ibid.). these methods provide the adequately “thick” description (geertz 1973) required to carry out the necessary contextualisation that makes such multifarious study of everyday life possible (ang 1996). to this end, morley (1992) posits that the interview and participant observation are fundamentally appropriate ways to understand the relation of audiences to media that is consumed in context-specific environments. observation and interview, two methods that work well with the narrative enquiry, an offshoot of ethnography, which prizes the process of gathering information through story-telling, were designed to fit narrative enquiry (connelly & clandinin 1990). the narrative technique was a good fit for the study because it entails understanding the world through the eyes of those studied, providing a description of contextualised observation and interview responses (hesse-biber & leavy 2008). the narrative interview is concerned with reconstructing social events from the perspective of informants (bauer 1996) and how events, actions and happenings in the surrounding are woven into the narrated story (trahar 2009). the method was also useful because of its ability to understand everyday communicative interaction, namely storytelling and listening, as “sense-making mechanisms” used by people to make meaning of the world (connelly & clandinin 1990). the interview questions were structured in such a way as to allow respondents to narrate their life history and interaction with media materials. the data collected was also collated into narrative interviews, which are presented in the findings section. the data was collected over a four-month period (one month for acclimatisation and interview, and three months for observation). this length of time was, arguably, sufficient to find and observe respondents. the sample group identified is a cohort that has come under scrutiny by researchers concerned with a population of young people termed neets: “not in education, employment or training” (statssa 2013; cloete & butler-adam 2012). this study focused on this group for two reasons. firstly, despite international reports citing young populations as a potential for economic growth, young people in south africa have been labelled in contradictory potentialities (mattes & richmond 2014; das gupta 2014; lefko-everett 2012). they are described both as a possible societal menace or a “ticking time bomb”, and optimistically as “born frees” who are better off than the previous struggle generation “despite the fact that this generation suffers as much from low levels of education, schooling completion and unemployment” (malila 2013: 16). statistics provide evidence that it might be more difficult to realise the more optimistic prospects, with only 33% of 17 million young people aged 18 to 35 having obtained 145144 ponono a matric certificate (statssa 2013). furthermore, youth unemployment, which at the time of this study sat at 45%, was 20% higher than the adult rate (statssa 2014). secondly, this group has demonstrated relatively high levels of trust in the media, yet continue to feel alienated by mainstream media and express the view that the information they receive is not relevant to their lives (malila 2013; lefko-everett 2012). the participants sought for this study were both male and female youths aged 18 to 24 (later expanded to 35) and who reside in joza. it has to be noted that in conducting the research, the terms “youth” and “young adults” were used in the broadest sense. this is because it was difficult for the researcher to isolate the target group from their friendship circles in an ethnographic research project. thus, although the focus and core concern is youth aged 18-24, the researched also considered insights from 25-35 year olds, as permitted by the south african definition of youth. fifteen interview were conducted; however, due to space limitations, only the first three are presented here for analysis. findings zoleka, 25 zoleka was born in grahamstown. she completed her senior primary school (grade four to grade seven) in pedi, before matriculating at one of the township schools. the qualification makes her one of only a few participants to have completed high school. however, like so many of the young people encountered in the township, she stated that finances were the biggest hurdle preventing her from further study. she mentioned that government sponsored scholarship programmes were not readily available when she matriculated in 2008. what would become a familiar sentiment shared by most respondents, zoleka shared that, had she had access to funds, she would have studied further. instead, after finishing matric, she wandered – trying to find opportunity. she went to live in port elizabeth (a popular destination for grahamstown locals looking for greener pastures) for two years before moving with her cousin to johannesburg, lasting only six months before deciding to go back home. zoleka and many other respondents repeated the point that jobs are extremely scarce in grahamstown. she was not formally employed during the time of the study. regardless, she was no stranger to the world of work. she started working when she was still in high school, when she was living with her unemployed mother. her father lived out of grahamstown and did not support the family. the family had to find alternative means. “what we lived on mostly is the income i generate from doing hair. what i did was to make sure that after everyday school i do hair, so that i can get a bit of something. that is what sustained me. this is the money that also had to help my mother and my younger brother.” to further supplement the income she made as a teenager, zoleka also worked seasonally for the annual national arts festival in grahamstown in the “front of house” department. additionally, zoleka has also worked in salons, and at spur [a restaurant]. “i worked long-term at the salon, i stayed there for a while. at spur, they would call me to work during the festival most of the time. i also think that during that time i was focused 145144 centring the subaltern on rugby (a non-paying extramural activity) because we were playing provincial games. but now that i’m not working i’m always busy doing hair, almost every day.” when asked about the nkandla scandal, zoleka said that the fact that zuma built his house and renovated parts of nkandla, his home town, was not fair. she asked: “why are they going to build something in his area? i think that what zuma did is unfair. he thought only about himself and those closest to him and it seems that he is not concerned about the people. he doesn’t care about us. if he was developing people, it would be understandable. if he was developing the whole of kzn, and then he moves on from there so that it is equal, it would be fine. the way that he has done it is unsatisfying.” she was adamant that when you become president, you cannot start with yourself because that is not going to make people happy. “you have to start by satisfying the people. you must take care of people before you get to yourself and those close to you. what he did was extreme. what he did was also unfair. you can never be a public servant and start with yourself, and not think about people. he fixed himself up so that he can live comfortably. what does he want us to do? there are people on the street; till this day, there are hungry people who eat from dustbins. but zuma never thinks to build something for people without homes. what does he say when he sleeps, having had a meal, while there are people who go to bed hungry?” “so it really affected me that he spent all this money on himself. i mean you have to ask what all that money could have done for people. most of us could have been satisfied in many things. he could have built houses for the homeless or created so many jobs, or built orphanages or schools. as it stands, i do not think that anything worthwhile or major was achieved. many of us are not working, our parents are not working, where does he think we will get the money for things that we need, when he spends so much money on himself and his home? he could have started by listening to the people, to see if we agree with the project. we could have told him to start with job creation first. the story really makes me mad. what is more is that zuma, with all these things, his many wives, his lingering charges, our dissatisfaction with him, we still voted for the same zuma.” zoleka ended by pointing out that she gave zuma a “second chance” in the 2014 elections because she wanted to see if they [the anc] could correct themselves. “when someone does wrong, they deserve a second chance. i wanted to see what he would do when given a second chance.” in giving the anc a second chance, what zoleka made clear was the fact that they were not giving zuma a vote of confidence but standing by the political party. “we voted for the anc. we did not vote for zuma, we voted for the anc, and zuma is part of that structure. people here subscribe to the thinking that they are not voting for zuma but the anc – zuma can be voted out any time. when the anc first came into power, it was led by mandela and they are voting for him. so i do not think they will ever abandon the anc. i do not think that people will change their vote. people are not going to say that i am the anc but i hate zuma. they do not care about zuma. yes, zuma does do what he does, but the name, the anc, is important – because it was the party of mandela.” 147146 ponono noxolo, 32 the nuanced nature of the loyalty that the anc enjoys was captured by another participant, noxolo, who stated that it is not easy to just abandon the anc because she loves the party. furthermore, she also noted that the anc is the dominant party in joza, stating that the anc “is our party here in grahamstown, and all the other ones follow”. noxolo pointed out that the dominance of the party due to this wide allegiance in the area can also take the form of exclusion and bullying. the fact that the anc is in power means that the projects that are run in the community are controlled by the anc. “so if i am going to cross over to the da that will be detrimental for me because people in the community know me and i might lose out on employment. even though the projects are supposed to be for all community members, i know that if you are not an anc member, you are not going to be included in anc-controlled projects. so, it’s difficult for us to leave the anc because a lot of jobs come through the party. the voice of a person that is outside of the anc is not heard.” regardless, she admitted that even though she loves the party, she also has “doubts”, but those are allayed by the history of the movement. “i sometimes think about leaving but then again you think that the world today has changed because of the party. we are free because of the anc. we can do things now because of the anc. we can get free social services now because of the anc. these are some of the things that make it very difficult for me to say that i am abandoning the anc. we are free because of the party. we now have access to places that we previously had no access. our allegiance to the party is so strong that even when zuma was facing rape charges in 2008, the vote increased, it did not decrease. we got freedom through the efforts of nelson mandela. so some of us are not voting for zuma but the anc because the person who was in charge of the party before led the nation in a good way. i think that i will be happy with the party if they would change this leader who is embroiled in so many scandals. the party as it stands is fine.” noxolo was born in grahamstown and attended a township school. she did not obtain matric, leaving school when she failed grade 12. “i wanted to finish school but the problem that i had is that i was informed that you cannot go back to full-time classes after you have failed a supplementary exam.” noxolo did not attend education institutions that provided for the finalisation of matric because the required tuition fees were out of reach. had she had the opportunity to further her education, she says she “would have loved to be a social worker because there are many things that i see and realise i would help if i could. there are people out there who are really poverty stricken that i would love to help.” when furthering her education was no longer an option, noxolo moved to port elizabeth in search of opportunities. she came back three years later. she now lives in an area called old age home. “i lived at home, at my mother’s house, but there was an argument, family politics, and it was decided that i could no longer live at home. this was also due to the fact that i have two children. i had to look for my own place. i informed the ward councillor because i noticed that there is sometimes space created at old age home when people obtain houses in the government housing 147146 centring the subaltern developments like extension 10. what you have to do is go to the councillor with your story, and if you are lucky, they will allocate a house, which has been vacated by the person that has received government housing.” she now shares a one-bedroom house with her two kids and their father. to help support the family (the father of her children is also unemployed), she is a part-time street sweeper. as a way of explanation, she told me that jobs are scarce for young people in grahamstown. “you find that even old people are getting jobs and working. there are so many young people who are sitting in the township without jobs. some people are lucky because they are getting something. some people receive grant money for children, which helps them at least.” her desperation and willingness to endure any job is expressed by the fact that 2016 marked the tenth year she had worked as a street sweeper. and, as long term as the job seemed to be, she complained that the employer did not pay well. “you find that when you need to get paid this month, they postpone that to the next month. we are often not paid for january, we just work in january and only get paid in february. even then you only get paid around the 20-something, not on the 15th, even though the contractors get paid on the 15th, which is also our contracted day of payment.” the job that she does is for a contractor from port elizabeth, who is contracted by the makana municipality to clean the streets in grahamstown. the project also doubles up as a social development scheme. the contracts are on an annual basis and are renewed every year. “what does not change or rise is the money. we get r630 a month, and you work eight days a month. you have to report for work at seven in the morning and knock off at four in the afternoon. i work there because i cannot do otherwise, because i have to feed my kids. most of the time i think about quitting the job but i think of the many years that i have worked there, and so i might be first in line if there are full-time positions. so i keep working there just so that i am on the register, however difficult the situation is.” ncamisa, 32 ncamisa is an unemployed grahamstown native. she dropped out of school in the middle of grade nine. she was forced to do so as her father passed away at the end of her grade eight. the many financial difficulties she encountered after her father’s passing led her to leave school. “i was in standard seven [grade nine] and i had many problems. i had to go to my brother to ask for school fees, and they would tell me to come back another time. sometimes i would not have school shoes, and you would find that i could not attend school for weeks on end. so that affected my performance at school. all those problems convinced me that it was best for me to drop out.” ncamisa now lives in joza in a house that belonged to her parents, who have both since passed. she is left with two brothers (although she does not specify the number, she says that some passed away) and two sisters – who all have their own houses elsewhere. she shares the house with her two children. ncamisa told me she tries her best to look for avenues of income so that she can take care of her children. she said that jobs are scarce in grahamstown and as such, she was desperate for any kind of work. so far, the only opportunities she has had to work are part-time in kitchens (as a domestic worker) and 149148 ponono also as a security guard for hi-tec (a local security company) – but that job was a short part-time stint during the festival. despite the challenges or the scarcity of work, she said that one has to try because the r300 child grant is very little. “it’s meant for your child. i don’t think that it makes much of a difference in my life. the way that i am living, i do not see a difference because you have to buy porridge for your child, there is electricity, clothes, school fees. it is better that you find a job because the grant money just is not enough to sustain you. it just helps the child so they do not go to bed hungry.” ncamisa is adamant that the money “looted” by zuma could have helped create jobs for unemployed people. “the story angered me so much that i thought about leaving the party because of zuma’s many scandals. with that considered i guess that the corruption exposed does influence the way that i vote, because sometimes you are swayed by malema. he is honest and exposes the truth. but at the same time, when they are doing all those antics in parliament you realise that you are only awed by the antics. there is not much substance to the claims made by all those against the anc. so you remain loyal to the anc because you think that it’s the party of mandela. you think back to the fact that your grandfather was in the anc, so you must also follow suit.” even though ncamisa stated that the corruption scandals are distracting and the corruption exposed makes her doubt the party, she maintained that she has remained loyal to the anc. “we loved nelson mandela because we attained freedom through his efforts. we are now free. there was apartheid before, where you could not do certain things or hold certain jobs. we could not share the same public spaces with white people. if i am honest with you, i will never leave the anc. i still trust the party to deliver and to make things happen for me. houses have been built here in grahamstown, in areas like section 10. they have built toilets in places like vukani. so i can see that at least the party does do certain things. i have to trust the party more than the news. the anc works for us, even though it has its faults here and there. even if it deceives us sometimes by offering food parcels close to elections. at least they are providing something. you vote because you want to benefit at the end of the day. unlike other parties, and we’ve seen this with the da in the coloured area, when the anc promises something, like houses, they deliver. they bring projects and jobs here and there. believe me that is better than not having anything at all.” discussion an analysis of the interviews demonstrates that black south africans in this specific locale continued to support the anc, not because of racial solidarity, but due to the fact that the party offered the best ticket out of the depravity of their condition. the insights show that in order to understand the responses provided, and why people continued to vote for the anc despite the corruption exposed, it is important to consider socioeconomic context and history. one of south africa’s defining features is the social heterogeneity engineered by the apartheid state to secure industrial growth (chipkin 2007). rather than invest in a homogeneous culture, the history of industrialisation in south africa is a story of the creation of a modern economy for white inhabitants by reproducing a parallel agro-tribal order, which tied black south africans to poverty stricken subsistence-agricultural enclaves (mamdani 1996). 149148 centring the subaltern this reality was expressed hypothetically by south african marxists who theorised that apartheid can be understood as “colonialism of a special type”, which is to say that non-white south africa was the colony of white south africa (sacp 1962). the theory suggested that on the one hand, south africa invested in an advanced capitalist state and industrial society, with highly developed industrial monopolies and finance capital (ibid.). on the other hand, non-white south africa had all the features of a colony with the indigenous black populations subjected to extreme national oppression, poverty and exploitation, as well as a lack of democratic and political rights (ibid.). in a postcolonial vein that emphasises the continued inequalities of the past, critical scholars such as gqola (2010) have argued that south africans are free but not entirely free of apartheid. in this regard, critical analysis should strive to shift between apartheid and post-apartheid realities, and to see the two not only in terms of rapture, but in terms of association. such scholarship touches on the concept of elite continuity in south african society; the fact that the post-apartheid transition is characterised by a narrow absorption of black people into the elite and a continuation of deprivation for a large majority. sen (2000) writes that this is a global phenomenon, where unprecedented opulence and prosperity, democratic and participatory governance live alongside remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression. what this discussion comes down to is that post-apartheid south africa still exhibits features of old, which limits the freedoms of impoverished black people (mamdani 1996). the desperation for employment in grahamstown is reflected by events around the country. as south africa enters its third decade of democracy, the socio-political environment is becoming increasingly volatile as inequality deepens (runciman 2017). the country has high unemployment rates, and protests against a lack of basic services are almost a daily occurrence (runciman 2017). this means that the politics of the national democratic revolution, which promised the overhaul of an alienating and exclusive system, remains highly appealing to a class of people at the very bottom of south african society (chipkin 2007). in such a context of high inequality and continued limitations on economic emancipation, what the responses from participants have revealed is that people use whatever resources available to advance themselves. as such, we have to understand that people will possibly ignore mainstream media prescriptions and continue to vote for the anc, because the party offers the promise of development programmes and a historical legacy of advancing black people. chipkin (2007) explains that the dependency on political movements to uplift the majority is not surprising. this is because the birth of the south african democracy in 1994 came with the idea of freedom being intimately linked to political, social and economic transformation. in a country built on racial segregation, to countervail the effects of colonialism, the politics of the national democratic revolution and nationalist politics became a popular solution (chipkin 2007). the imagery conjured up by this political philosophy imagined the liberation of the oppressed majority could only be achieved through the establishment of an inclusive state. after the seizure of political power, or negotiations that facilitated its transfer, the 151150 ponono anc, as the liberator, was charged with leading the complete socio-economic rebirth of society through transferring wealth from the rich to the poor (mkhabela 2016). to this end, a developmental state was created to actively guide economic development to meet the needs of the people – the previously marginalised in particular (kotze & du toit 1995). such an understanding of south african history makes clear that the development and change that the previously oppressed required was both sustained and substantive, as they sought development that goes over and beyond the extension of civic rights (sen 2000). two decades in, after successful efforts to gain political emancipation, the anc remains the vehicle for social change in which millions of people are invested to improve their lives (mkhabela 2016). what the interview responses make clear is that after the sustained “unfreedom” that was apartheid, their hopes for liberation (economic and otherwise) lie with the liberation movement (sen 2000). these are the calculations that have to be factored into any analysis of the relationship between the anc and unemployed people living in the township and who view support for the party as a ticket out of poverty (mkhabela 2016). in this regard, sen (2000) writes that although people cannot change the past, they can shape the future by making reasonable choices that will benefit them. this means that people’s conception of their life world when it comes to development has a lot to do with not only political participation, but also economic emancipation. the freedoms people have, or the freedoms they are denied, are important to understanding a fuller picture of postcolonial subjectivity. therefore, in order to further comprehend the interpretation of mainstream media by constrained individuals, we have to understand that they are people recently liberated, and are living in historically underdeveloped areas. conclusion in all, the perspectives adopted by the study argued for the importance of understanding people within the structures or parameters of their lives. this was an important point because this insider perspective on subaltern lives provided valuable information about the gap between mainstream media and marginalised groupings. centring the experiences of this subaltern counter public enabled the people involved to be understood from their point of view. this meant that the researcher could attain greater insight into the reasons subaltern groups supported a political party that was roundly criticised by mainstream observers. a key advantage of this ethnographic approach thus was that it provided, as argued by willems (2014), a more dynamic process of communication when compared to more static understandings that centre on institutions or textual analysis. in this respect, the reception analysis adopted by the study explored the understanding that meanings come from human action, and in order to grasp meaning one has to understand actions undertaken within a context. a significant finding from this study is that a shift is observed – from seeing the people who voted for the anc as “clowns” (schutte 2014), to seeing them as intelligent beings who make smart decisions when their set of circumstances are considered. to imagine them any differently is to fail to understand the full impact of their decisions on their lives and it is to deny them any modicum of intelligence or agency. by diverting from the 151150 centring the subaltern mainstream media perspective of downplaying subaltern action, such a perspective enables us to see that those at the bottom persevere with the anc because this is where they see their lot improving. in this regard, the study argues that the decision to continue to vote for the anc was not taken by simple minds or people blinded by a historical legacy, but it was a weighty decision taken by people with a very small margin for error. in all, this is to contend that a good way to see human beings – even subaltern human beings – is as capable agents. references alexander, p. 2010. rebellion of the poor: south africa’s service delivery protests – a preliminary 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[online]. available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/ jun/16/a-shock-to-the-system-how-jeremy-corbyn-changed-the-rules-of-britishpolitics [accessed on 3 march 2018]. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19059-1_20 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19059-1_20 https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0211/p02111stquarter2013.pdf https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0211/p02111stquarter2013.pdf http://beta2.statssa.gov.za/publications/report-03-10-06/report-03-10-06march2014.pdf http://beta2.statssa.gov.za/publications/report-03-10-06/report-03-10-06march2014.pdf https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/16/a-shock-to-the-system-how-jeremy-corbyn-changed-the-rules-of-british-politics%20%5baccessed%20on%203 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/16/a-shock-to-the-system-how-jeremy-corbyn-changed-the-rules-of-british-politics%20%5baccessed%20on%203 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/16/a-shock-to-the-system-how-jeremy-corbyn-changed-the-rules-of-british-politics%20%5baccessed%20on%203 1716 1716 complexity and opportunity in science communication abstract science communication is resurgent at this time, early in the 21st century, when signs abound of a return to enlightenment and a change in structures of knowledge comparable to the 17th transition from feudalism to the early modern period. fears that a return to enlightenment renders critical theory and cultural studies irrelevant may be unfounded. science today is not defined by the newtonian physics up until the 1950s, but by complexity. unlike earlier models of transmission that defined communication research into the 1960s, complexity theory in science makes a dialogue or interactive model so much more necessary. complexity is infused into science communication, which as a hybrid field draws from many different disciplines external to its own cluster of subjects, and internally from different aspects of that cluster. the obvious subjects include mass communication, media studies, communication theory and new media studies. keywords: science communication; complexity; cultural studies; enlightenment introduction enlightenment is back, though it is too soon to tell what, if any, change it might have suffered during the longue durée of the recent counter-enlightenment period well known for its postmodern rejection of rationalism, and the “science wars”. nonetheless, “[a]s a designation of period, as an intellectual clustering, as a method of experimental inquiry, and as an ideal, even, of rationality and toleration to be pitted against the world’s zones of intolerance, it is back in circulation and generating new historical work” (o’brien 2010: 1426). the return to rationality (that theoretical, scientific and deductive aspect of reason distinct from the narrative, rhetorical, the historically situated form of reasonableness) is not only in the discipline of history (see toulmin 2001). a wider transformation of “structures of knowledge” is taking place between the sciences, social sciences and humanities (lee 1996; lee & wallerstein 2000). the term “structures of knowledge” refers to “those patterns of what can and cannot be thought that determine what actions can and cannot be deemed feasible in the material world” (lee 2006: 116). (whether or not lee’s definition resembles foucault’s prof. marc caldwell associate professor department of communication, university of fort hare mcaldwell@ufh.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.2 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 16-30 © uv/ufs mailto:mcaldwell%40ufh.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.2 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.2 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.2 1716 complexity and opportunity in science communication 1716 proposition of “discursive formations” need not concern us here.) in an article that reflects partly on the evident decline of cultural studies, lee (2007: 11) sheds light on what the structures at play today imply: the categories through which we make sense of the world we live in, the groundings that give authority to explanatory frameworks, the rationales for the organisation of intellectual disciplines and university departments; all are undergoing a transformation. furthermore, this upheaval is part and parcel of the exhaustion of the long-term processes reproducing the whole ensemble of the structures of the modern world. signs of this upheaval are evident in the academy, not least in the re-enchantment of science and the crisis in the humanities – both of which have been a feature for a few decades (griffin 1988; hall 1990; pan 1998). within this condition early in the 21st century, the communication field is flourishing when many of its longer-standing but less diverse peers in the humanities and social sciences are stagnant or in decline. the field of communication now finds itself in a position that is both enviable and fortunate, and one ought to consider whether the “restoration of enlightenment” (if indeed that is an appropriate label for the return of modernity from its expressivist to its rationalist tradition) has anything to do with it. this article assumes that the field of communication’s (including journalism and media studies) improved standing in the academy has been assisted by historical factors to do with the transformation of knowledge structures; that communication as a discipline finds itself in the right place at the right time. this is not intended as a backhanded criticism. the sciences, too, are carried along in that favourable current. include among the beneficiaries subjects and disciplines to do with business, management and medicine among others that self-identify in the turn to technology and practice (an empirical turn). but it is the emergence of one subject in the field of communication that is particularly significant, if the epistemic conditions assumed to exist are extant. the recent introduction of science communication to the bouquet of subjects offered as part of the field of communication may well be an epochal phenomenon made all the more feasible by a return to enlightenment in this age of transition post-1990. science communication’s emergence takes advantage not only of a tendency towards specialisation and practice in communication curricula, but also an increasing attention to communication in professional education and training. among these professionals are scientists themselves; but the perhaps the real impetus for science communication is the valorisation of the sciences. the term “science communication” has traditionally referred to public exhibitions of new technology, to the professional practices of journalism and the publishing of popular science books and magazines, and to public relations to promote or to explain science to various audiences or publics. beginning in about the mid-1800s, science communication developed from the exposition of science to include various forms of popular science writing by the later 1800s, and then to include the promotion of scientific knowledge through the nascent practice of public relations after the 1920s. it is informal, hence it differs from “science education” intended for audiences in formal educational institutions. science communication, on the other hand, 1918 marc caldwell brings knowledge of science … to citizens and consumers making decisions in today’s societies, societies generally characterised by dependence on advanced scientific and technological developments for their food supplies, economies, built environments, transportation systems, medical care, and general health and welfare (priest 2010). more recently, particularly from the 1990s onward, the term science communication has come to refer to an interdisciplinary field of study situated within the field of communication. it is typically social scientifically oriented, and therefore is expected to systematically gather empirical (qualitative or quantitative) data, to use survey methods, as well as to use ethnographic methods to analyse cultural content and other observations. but the subject’s breadth does not (indeed, cannot) remain so narrowly confined. it must learn from the experience of the humanities as much as it draws on the subject matter of the sciences. the fact/value distinction no longer prevails (at least not as intensely as before). as priest (2010) puts it: science communication in the more academic sense of a field of social or behavioural science involves attempts to understand, influence, improve, and critique these processes, including attempts to grasp their broader social, political, and philosophical significance and dynamics, alongside their immediate impact on individuals and groups. the relation of science communication to the knowledge of its parent body also needs to be considered. it would be a mistake to allow or even intend science communication to reconfigure the communication field or “megadiscipline” itself – to adopt a “science or nothing” stance, and to ignore the rich legacy of communication research steeped in the social sciences and humanities. some systemic recalibration may well occur, as happened when cultural studies “structured the way the identity of communication studies could be, and was, articulated” (maras 1998: 198). not that cultural studies emerged from this marriage without taking on the family resemblance of its partner (grossberg 1993). a not dissimilar cross-fertilisation may occur with science communication if it inherits the mantle of cultural studies; and there are good reasons to expect it may, and to steer the field of communication away from cultural questions and toward the service of science. but that does not imply abandoning or weakening its roots in the social sciences and humanities. even if, in the near future, communication teaching and scholarship does appear to abandon the familiar verstehen/erklären separation notably articulated by wilhelm dilthey in the 1890s (harrington 2000; 2001), max weber and r.g. collingwood, and hence developed in the interpretive tradition (see martin 1999), to become an under-labourer of the science establishment – a relationship winch (1958: 3-7) vigorously rejected in the heady wittgensteinian mood of the 1950s – the paradigm it would now encounter in the sciences will be found to be quite antithetical to the balkanising, positivist super-discipline usually referred to (in pejorative undertones) as newtonian “natural science”. the movement from quantum mechanics (consolidating in the 1930s) to chaos and then to complexity theory in about the 1990s calls for a transdisciplinary form of inquiry that roams across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. 1918 complexity and opportunity in science communication a transdisciplinary science communication may not be a choice. just as cultural studies emerged out of the crisis of modernity – even the “end of modernity”, in toulmin’s (2001) view – to articulate the problematic of its time, so too is science communication particularly committed to the problematic(s) of the current period. an argument to this effect is found in lee’s (2003) assessment of the historical conditions in the structures of knowledge that fomented and later undermined cultural studies. lee’s viewpoint subscribes to immanuel wallerstein’s world-systems analysis (wallerstein 1974; 2004), and with whom he collaborates in research that includes in its scope the enlightenment separation of the three systems of the humanities, the social sciences and the sciences (lee & wallerstein 2004). lee (2003: 197-205; 2006; 2007) is particularly persuasive in arguing that the repudiation of newtonian science through the development of quantum, chaos and then complexity theory have brought the knowledge structures that constitute modernity to a stage where the three knowledge systems are drawing together. the view of modernity that informs lee’s argument concurs broadly with both toulmin’s (1990) and charles taylor’s (1989) conception of modernity as a contradiction between broadly alternating enlightenment (rationalist) and romantic (expressivist) traditions that emerged in the bifurcation of the medieval thomistic tradition that occurred with the 17th century scientific revolution, and which continue to oscillate dialectically through the modernity they constitute (lash 1999). modernity began with the 17th century scientific revolution, and was supported philosophically by a bifurcation of faith and reason that was articulated in thomistic or scholastic philosophy. enlightened reason had no need of faith, and science became the new vehicle of human salvation. the effects of an unencumbered reason became plain to see in the horrors of the industrial revolution and then the french revolution of the late 1700s. public intellectuals of the time turned away from rationality to a recovery of feeling, sensibility and idealism in what in retrospect became known as the romantic antienlightenment. that period went into decline from the middle to the later-1800s when there appeared a resurgence of science. philosophically, that transition was from idealism to a return to realism – the dualistic and contradictory poles of modernity. science communication from this period to the 1930s can be understood as the communication of science (bucchi 2002: 107-109). after a period from the mid-1950s to the 1990s, when the romantic tradition emerged dominant in aesthetic modernism and postmodernism, there has occurred a “return to realism” which possibly indicates a resurgent enlightenment (dreyfus & taylor 2015; lee 2007; toulmin 2001). a view of modernity as an alternating set of enlightenment and romantic (or expressivist) traditions provides a useful backdrop against which to consider the current salience of science communication, and the opportunities this together with complexity theory (from science) offer to other subjects in the communication megadiscipline. an implication is that if scholars in science communication – a “growing area of practice and research” (burns et al. 2003: 183) – were to adopt a disciplinary approach (see pitrelli 2010; trench & bucchi 2010; gascoigne et al. 2010), their emerging field would probably run counter to the transdisciplinary imperative characteristic of complexity 2120 marc caldwell theory that defines science today, and which brings it into dialogue with the social sciences and humanities more so than at any other time in modernity. communication and modernity mapping the development of the communication field in relation to the recent longue durée of modernity shows three more or less distinct formations. the field emerged as disparate threads of speech (see gehrke & keith 2014), journalism (zelizer 2009) and signals (e.g. shannon 1948) between the two world wars and a decade or so beyond that period. using a distinction between communications (“referring to the institutions and practices of recording and transmitting symbols”) and communication (to do with an “ideal of community”) (peters 2012: 403), “speech” may be seen to represent communication, and “signals” represents communications. while maras (1998: 199) points out that the field displays a tension between the two mediated and unmediated forms, journalism may possibly be taken to represent that tension more so than do the interpersonal “speech” and the technical “signals” sides of the field. these terms may apply as three categories under which can be listed the various subjects found in the field of communication, with journalism possibly being re-designated instead as “media”; and, for that matter, by referring to “signals” as information and communications technology (ict). but why stop there? should these categories not be relabelled the humanities, the social sciences and the science and technology divisions of the field of communication? when these categories are mapped on a timeline of recent modern history – 1920 to the present – it reveals more than a mere taxonomy of the field of communication. lasswell’s (1958) review of the “emerging discipline” shows that the communication field was, until the late 1950s, barely a discipline in its own right, but mostly a topic in the established disciplines in the “three cultures”: humanities, the social sciences and in science. walter lippmann (in social science) and john dewey (in the humanities), from the turn of the 20th century into the 1920s, pursued questions of communication in the two antithetical traditions of modernity: enlightenment and expressivism. lippmann was more a “man of his time” than was dewey; nevertheless, while he “remained deeply committed to reason”, he also “recognised the limits of the enlightenment model of rational man” (jansen 2008: 73). it is only to be expected that an anti-enlightenment scholarship in the postmodern period would tend to have misread him, as jansen contends (2008: 71-73). a successive period spans roughly the period 1930 to the time of lasswell’s (1958) review of the discipline. lipmann’s science of public opinion was enthusiastically taken up; so much so that “[f]rom 1936 until the ‘communication’ field had substantially migrated to journalism schools by the early 1960s, public opinion (or survey) research was, indeed, hard to distinguish from ‘communication’ study” (pooley 2008: 58). part of that impetus lay in wartime and subsequent cold war government-funded psychological warfare programmes at the columbia university under bernard berolson and elihu katz, and at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign where communication pioneers lasswell, lazarsfeld and schramm made their mark (simpson 1996). during the war and into the 1950s, the positivist influence of natural 2120 complexity and opportunity in science communication science driven by the needs of the united states military was perennial in the nascent discipline, as illustrated by pooley (2008: 55, 56): federal money – from the military, cia, and state department, often in close coordination with foundations such as carnegie and ford – poured into these universitybased research institutes, as simpson meticulously documents. throughout most of the 1950s, and with no public acknowledgment, government funds made up more than three-quarters of the annual budget at lazarsfeld’s bureau, [hadley] cantril’s institute for international social research at princeton, ithiel de sola pool’s centre for international studies at mit, and similar research shops. … [a]fter the mid1950s when the campaign for third world hearts and minds heated up, prominent published research was based on secret propaganda work that was repackaged as disinterested science. along with communication science came a mathematised worldview that predominated in the social sciences well into the late 1960s, and came increasingly under critical scrutiny thereafter. but the turn to language and culture in the 1960s, which undermined the hegemony of the quantifiable material explanations of positivism and behaviourism into the 1970s, eventually reached an apogee in postmodernism beginning in the 1980s. the mood that descended particularly upon the humanities then and into the 1990s was one of crisis, of depletion and an exhaustion of relevance. the social sciences were not immune. scholars from both branches of knowledge gave to explaining their continued purpose and relevance in ways that their peers in the sciences would have found unthinkable. the current period early in the 21st century is characterised by two shifts in the reorganisation of thought that are analogous to a geomagnetic reversal. one is a return to enlightenment. the other, related to the first, is a change in the structures of knowledge comparable to the 17th century transition from feudalism to the early modern period. now that the pendulum finds in its return path the master categories of technology and practice, the communication field finds itself both with opportunities barely imaginable during the age of analogue media, and with a disturbing sense of deja vu. studies in digital and social media are coming to terms with the ubiquity of information and communication technologies in the social fabric. subject offerings in corporate, organisational and business communication that had a cinderella status in the disciplinary bouquet some decades ago are revitalised and increasingly in demand. but none of these highlight the epistemic shift in the structures of knowledge characteristic of the modern world-system (lee & wallerstein 2000) from which their buoyancy accrues in quite the same way as the emergence of science communication. science of complexity while the sense prevails that enlightenment has returned, the knowledge structures currently extent are quite unlike the traditional natural scientific separation of fact from value found in the newtonian worldview, in order to better serve an “unbridled” discovery of natural laws. gone also is the “clockwork universe”. post-1990 science provides us with “alternative models of physical reality in the form of relationally 2322 marc caldwell constituted self-organising [autopoetic] systems and fractal geometry, and alternative models of change and transition expressed in complexity theory and chaos theory” (lee 2007: 234). the genesis of complexity in science can be plotted back to the mid-1800s, in the more recent history of modern science, when a revolution of paradigmatic proportions began to undermine the hegemony of classical newtonian physics (prevalent until the late 19th century). the emphasis in newton’s physics was on “equilibrium and certainty and defin[ed] causality as the consistent association of antecedent conditions and subsequent events amenable to experimental replication and hypothesis testing” (lee 2006: 122). it was the cornerstone of the scientific method. scientific certainty began to be questioned after poincaré’s observations in the 1880s of relativity in the supposedly immutable laws of physics. max planck’s introduction of concept of quanta (the discrete units by which energy can be absorbed in matter) in around 1900 set in train a wave of research for the next 50 years in understanding atomic structure. werner heisenberg’s uncertainty principle famously represents the consolidation of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. as new fields founded in quantum theory emerged – notably nuclear physics – albert einstein (also of this period), among others, predicted that revolutionary quantum theory would itself be replaced by yet another development, in much the same way it had overturned newton. this phase led finally to chaos theory in mathematics that developed rapidly during the 1980s. as expected, there was more that quantum theory had and could account for. for instance, research found that physical behaviour could be predicted only to “a point in time”, beyond which it became random and eventually difficult to predict accurately in the longer term. this condition of chaos does not imply an absence of order – deterministic laws do still apply – but instead indicates a systemic complexity about which it became clear there remained so much more to find out. furthermore, the natural world began to resemble the social world. while chaos theory presents an advance driven by scientific questions about various anomalies in physics, the applications beyond the realms of traditional science have been transdisciplinary. a key theme has been to understand phenomena in terms of their complexity. the prevalence of complexity theory (and the paradigm) in current scientific research necessarily calls for expertise to be not only drawn from the social sciences and humanities, but also that the sciences enter into collaboration with those knowledge clusters (lee 2007). complexity also has a diachronic reach, enriching its realist perspective with the very same postmodern outlook through which critical scholars engaged science in the science wars (cilliers 1998). but that picture comes from a view of the science wars as one waged between hardened positions of science and anti-science, or of reason and culture. one of the ironies of that episode, however, as fuller (2001) points out, is that the names attributed to the science side were trained in the social sciences, whereas their apparently anti-science critics all had their training in the sciences. complexity cannot be given a simple definition, as cilliers admits (1998: 2). nor is complexity theory a single and coherent body of thought, “but is constituted by 2322 complexity and opportunity in science communication a range of different traditions and approaches” (ibid.). a comprehensive description of complexity is unnecessary here, and only a sketch of its most salient features is provided to serve the conclusion of this article. cilliers (1998: 2-7) presents a view of ten characteristics of complexity in science depicted in postmodern theory. listing and discussing these would provide too much detail; instead we shall consider lee’s (2007: 13) definition in relation to his comparison of the two cultures of the predominantly nomothetic natural science and the ideographic humanities as these appeared before the late 1960s. the tenor of science was “universal, positivistic, objective, fact-based and fact-producing … engaged in explaining order in a world where the past determined a predictable future via universal laws” (ibid.). the humanities, by comparison, comprised of particularist, chaotic, “qualitative disciplines where scholars dealt with an unpredictable and relativistic world of free human beings” (ibid.). the social sciences during this period remains between the opposition between universal science and the particularistic humanities – between truth and values – “by expressing the enlightenment ideal of endless progress in an ultimately law-like, and therefore predictable, world” (ibid.). certainly, the social sciences’ commitment to a naturalistic worldview and natural science methodology has been a key feature of its critique, beginning with winch’s (1958) initial salvo and followed by the sustained researches of cultural studies. before long the gap between it and the humanities narrowed to the point where they became all but indistinguishable. meanwhile, complexity science had also been moving away from its newtonian legacy. lee (2007: 17 italics added) explains how this is happening: [t]he concurrent emphasis in complexity studies on contingency, contextdependency, system creativity and multiple, overlapping temporal and spatial frameworks bears striking resemblance to the concerns of social scientists, and ‘objectivity’ associated with externalism is called seriously into question by the identification and study of the feedback mechanisms of complex systems, including historical social systems. it is not just that new models of complex systems are being made available to social scientists, or that developments across the structures of knowledge are having similar epistemological consequences, but rather that the ontology itself underpinning the claim to legitimacy of knowledge constructed on the ‘scientific’ model is undergoing a transformation. science communication the practice of science communication – or popular science writing and public exhibitions – has a long history which begins with the publication of scientific information for public consumption in the late 1800s, leading to a specialised but relatively small news beat that has gone through periodic booms and busts in tandem with newsworthy events such as the 1957 soviet launch of sputnik and the subsequent space race. presently the practice of science journalism is in decline in mainstream media due mainly to matters of media economics; and there are few good reasons to expect the online jungle to offer a more viable alternative. journalism treats science, celebrity 2524 marc caldwell and flower show events with the same criterion: they must be newsworthy. any other criterion is advertising (mooney & kirshenbaum 2009). the roots of a dedicated science communication begin in the post-world war two period following a conviction at government levels in mainly the united states, the united kingdom and the soviet union that science had not only an important public educational dimension (gascoigne et al. 2010), but was also a matter of national security. the early years of the cold war are a significant backdrop and stimulus to this awareness. in stalinist russia, for instance, the very fate of the soviet system was seen to rest on science; and its own internal science wars in the 1940s and 1950s both hinged on the patronage of its dictator and shaped its global policy for some time (pollock 2006). both britain and the united states were no less eager about promoting science to their own geopolitical ends (bud & gummett 1999; wang 1999). bauer and gregory (2007: 35) state that “[i]n terms of content, we find that the first expansion of the 1950s is dominated by astronomy, the beginning of the space race, and by nuclear power, both civil and military – all of which are government-funded, national programmes”. however the context of this information dissemination did little to foster enthusiastic public support for scientific endeavour. the science establishment was concerned about anti-science sentiment, which was not insignificantly informed by public resistance to new technology that inspired more fear and awe. during this period environmental and anti-nuclear activism did little to help sell science to a public being told what to do in the event of a cold war nuclear armageddon (bauer & gregory 2007: 33-35). after the berlin wall was toppled, science communication took a turn away from an interest in public technologies to commercial and private ones such as bioand medical-technologies. but a turn towards complexity is also evident, as bauer and gregory (2007: 35) point out: space and nuclear issues were replaced first by environmental news, then by computers, then in the 1990s by biotechnology as the dominant techno-scientific theme of the mass media. over this period the public space commanded by the physical sciences declined, while that of the bio-medical and social sciences increased. the post-cold war stimulus given to science communication is interesting for a number of reasons. among the more obvious reasons is a perceived need to bridge the gap between the scientific establishment and a potentially better-informed audience in order to improve the penetration of scientific knowledge into popular discourse. the knowledge economy and the commercialisation of science make a critical public necessary (bauer & falade 2008). this essentially educative ambition goes beyond wanting to stir public awe of science in the manner of popular television programming. while there is much that entertainment media can do to raise public awareness of, for example, how man’s footprint puts our fragile natural world at risk, or of how irresponsible sexual behaviour can be life threatening, the stakes of science knowledge are considerably higher than mere knowledge consumption. publicprofessional partnerships in scientific expertise may well improve the production of that knowledge as well as have more tangible effects in public health, the uptake of 2524 complexity and opportunity in science communication improved technologies in industrial and domestic environments, with the prospects of increasing demand for the scientific research that produces these from the outset. a freshly invigorated science communication is emerging as what some of its most active advocates predict will become a field in its own right (pitrelli 2010; bucchi & trench 2014; trench & bucchi 2010). gone are the caricatures of desperate scientists failing to explain their wizardry to an uncomprehending laity. instead, the emerging field displays a far stronger inter-disciplinary quality that has the potential to mobilise knowledge drawn from across the communication family of subjects, and to integrate these with the subject matter of science. science communication is an inter-discipline; it breaches boundaries that have traditionally kept apart the “hard” sciences from the social sciences and humanities. science communication embraces an intersectionality (to borrow a concept used in feminist critical theory) of perspectives and subject matters. it embraces, on the one hand, an historically realist, enlightenment worldview and, on the other hand, the amalgam of critical, culturalist, hermeneutic, postmodern and constructivist perspectives that collectively defined the social sciences and humanities in the second half of the 20th century. while the intersections between these knowledge clusters recognise that no single perspective “has all the answers”, it is less that kind of “deficit” that provides science communication with its potential to knit together the range of research available under the umbrella of communication (trench 2008). that potential comes from within science itself, particularly the science of complexity which, in the social sciences, is already evident in content analysis, text mining, and network analysis (bellotti & mora forthcoming; erikson 2013; gao et al. 2014; xu et al. 2011), “yielding explanations for social phenomena in a wide variety of disciplines from psychology to economics” (borgatti et al. 2009: 892). an intersectional understanding of science communication departs from earlier conceptions of the practice as a public relations endeavour given to transmitting information in the service of scientific interests (borchelt & nielsen 2014). it departs also from early museological practices of presenting science as a spectacle before publics (schiele 2014: 40-41). both forms have their roots in a deficit understanding of publics and audiences “which attributes negative public attitudes towards science to a lack of scientific knowledge” (kirby 2008: 41); a view that “ordinary folks ought to know better”. certainly public relations no longer subscribes to purely linear, one-way models of communication (grunig & hunt 1984; grunig et al. 2002), and museology also “examines the nature of the communication established with the visitors in a context where they are now the central concern of museum institutions” (schiele & landry 2012: 53). in the terminology of communication theory, the transition is from transmission to dialogue. the concept of dialogue is ubiquitous in communication scholarship, but excitement about the potential of the concept for creating and transforming organisations, institutions and social worlds has also been accompanied by vagueness of what the concept means (gergen et al. 2004: 40). salient concepts do not occur simultaneously across disciplines, but often emerge within one after it has been exhausted in another. 2726 marc caldwell dialogue is one such concept, which peters (2012: 34) argues is a “bad model” in its idealised form in communication theory. there are important forms of culture that are neither mutual nor interactive. but while the concept of dialogue will potentially help lead to a revision of science communication theory and method, its own scholars can take advice from the experience of their colleagues elsewhere in the field of communication. public relations theory has been similarly infatuated with dialogue, extrapolating interpersonal communicative forms into institutional and organisational settings; and it would appear from trench’s (2008) chapter on models of science communication that its long association with public relations practice (in the science establishment) has contributed in its movement from information transmission to dialogue with publics. but this speculation is not offered as a criticism of either field; nor even to necessarily attribute the shift to dialogue to that relationship. the adoption of dialogue as an approach in science communication is driven mainly from its realisation within science, particularly the implications of complexity theory. conclusion the field of communication has undergone significant readjustments in the 21st century; adjustments that have found a shift toward technologies and practices, and a cooling of the vitality found in cultural studies particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. few in the field seem willing to admit to a “narrative of decline”, and instead attribute its loss of vitality to its institutionalisation in the academy (turner 2012: 85). lash points instead to hegemonic and a post-hegemonic periods, roughly occurring either side of the 1990s watershed; or where cultural studies finds itself as “first-wave” and then “second-wave” formations. hegemony crystallised cultural studies as a field, and if “the hegemonic order works through a cultural logic of reproduction”, the post-hegemonic power, operating “through a cultural logic of invention, hence not of reproduction but of chronic production of economic, social and political relations” entails a shift from value to facticity (lash 2007: 56, 73): i want to argue that that epoch is now beginning to draw to a close. i want to suggest that power now, instead, is largely post-hegemonic. i want to suggest that cultural studies should look perhaps mostly elsewhere for its core concepts. i should also like to propose what some of these alternative concepts might be. i believe that these are not only concepts but also are the way in which power is beginning to work in a post-hegemonic age (lash 2007: 55). the intricacies of lash’s argument need not concern us here, except his indication of the epistemic transformation of knowledge structures that ought to discourage scholars in the field of communication (and cultural studies) to assume a “business as usual” attitude. the communication field’s subject bouquet has mutated; cultural studies too must mutate; it “must engage with the culture industries: with art, the media, architecture, design, information and communications technology, software and protocol design, and urbanism” (lash 2007: 74). 2726 complexity and opportunity in science communication however fears that the valorisation of science (indeed in conditions of a return to enlightenment) renders critical theory and cultural studies irrelevant may be unfounded in the sciences of complexity. as lee (2007) argues, just as cultural studies, from its very inception in the 1960s, “consciously challenged the validity of the separations of the disciplines of knowledge formation” (lee 2007: 232), so too we find at the heart of complexity science an understanding that natural phenomena do not always behave according to immutable and reversible newtonian principles. at the same time as there appears as a reorientation of subjects across the field of communication, science (and technology) communication as a field of research has quietly taken its place in the communication bouquet under favourable historical conditions that include a current valorisation of science not seen since the 1960s, when research first showed interest in “the role played 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(eds). the handbook of journalism studies. new york: routledge. 116 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities julie grant and andrew dicks* abstract participatory research and development methods are purported to improve communication between participants and researchers/extension agencies to allow more appropriate development strategies and empower local communities. given the impoverished conditions and disempowerment of south africa’s bushmen communities the application of such methods by researchers and development agencies would seem appropriate. nevertheless, few research initiatives within these communities have utilised participatory methods and it is difficult to determine the extent to which development agencies make use of these methods as typically these agencies do not critically report on such processes. the study uses participant observation and questionnaires to analyse whether participants perceive participatory workshops, namely freirean and grassroots comics workshops, as useful, enjoyable, replicable and sustainable. keywords: participatory research, development, bushmen, participant observation, freirean workshops, grassroots comics, development communication, collective dialogue * dr julie grant (juliegrant70@hotmail.com) is a post-doctoral scholar at the centre for communication, media and society in the school of applied human sciences at the university of kwazulu-natal in durban, south africa. andrew dicks (skyhussar@yahoo.com) is a research assistant at the same centre. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 116-135 mailto:juliegrant70@hotmail.com 117 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities introduction since the arrival of khoe and bantu-speaking peoples from the north into present day southern africa, the indigenous bushmen1 of the region have been the victims of land dispossession (crawhall 2004), persecution, prejudice and abuse (boonzaier et al. 1996; penn 1996). such treatment intensified under colonial rule (morris 1996; penn 1989), and within south africa, continued under apartheid (grant 2011). thus, bushmen have lived in hardship, experiencing a breakdown in community cohesion, accelerated cultural change and a disintegration of tradition. today, this accelerated acculturation into a modern way of life continues, with traditional bushman values and practices being suppressed by local and national policy and contemporary legal restrictions, resulting in a continued dependence on governments, economically and politically (dicks 2011; grant 2011; robbins 2004). this loss of tradition has resulted in difficulties for bushmen regarding how they affirm or assert their place in the world, which in the past would have been through their interaction with the natural environment, namely through hunting and gathering, folklore and other traditional practices. these factors all contribute to the current state in which the bushmen find themselves: living in abject poverty, and lacking adequate housing, sanitation facilities and livelihood opportunities, to name a few. despite legislation which enabled the !xun, khwe and ‡khomani, the subject of this research, to own land, these groups have struggled to benefit from this land, with disempowerment and a lack of capacity and sustained post-settlement support cited as reasons for their inability to develop their settlements and farms (grant 2011; robbins 2004). this project focuses on the !xun, khwe and ‡khomani communities, introducing an alternative more participatory approach to development than is typically promoted. to date, a number of development agencies have worked with the !xun, khwe and ‡khomani, including the south african san institute, farmafrica, open africa, the red cross and isibindi, in addition to a number of government departments, such as the department of land affairs, the department of environmental affairs and tourism, and the department of health. some of these agencies have run community workshops pertaining to financial management, arts and craft-making, healthcare advice and computer literacy, etc. (barnabas 2009; grant 2011). however, few, apart from dicks (2011), have sought to introduce more creative development alternatives to the bushmen, while research addressing their perceptions of the effectiveness of such workshops is rare (although dockney 2011 and grant 2011 do offer some insight). to address such concerns and in an attempt to contribute to the facilitation of empowered individuals, this research uses freirean and grassroots comics workshops to offer creative and participatory methods to community members, to encourage communication, facilitate self-development, future planning and problem-solving while an understanding 118 julie grant and andrew dicks of individuals’ identity construction is considered. the research also explores whether the participating bushmen perceive these techniques as useful, enjoyable, replicable and sustainable. without such research, economic and human resources might be misdirected into inappropriate development strategies that fail to enable the bushmen to achieve appropriate upliftment. background to the research communities bushmen communities are characterised by poverty, disempowerment, dependency, unemployment, alcohol and substance abuse, and neglect from government departments (grant 2011; robbins 2004; tomaselli 2005). three groups that have experienced such hardships are the !xun and khwe who live at platfontein, 15 kilometres outside of kimberley in the northern cape, and the ‡khomani, who live further north, 60 kilometres from the kgalagadi transfrontier park (ktp) bordering namibia and botswana. the !xun originate from angola and were employed in the portuguese army, fighting on behalf of the colonists in the angolan war of independence. when the war ended in 1974, a number of !xun families fled to namibia for fear of reprisal. many of these individuals then joined or were coerced into the south african defence force (sadf) again to fight against an independence movement, this time in namibia. the khwe, mainly from caprivi in namibia, were also employed by the sadf in this capacity. following the independence of namibia in 1990 and given that these soldiers had actively fought against liberation movements, the bushmen perceived themselves to be in a precarious situation. consequently, the sadf and the south african government gave the !xun and khwe the opportunity to relocate to south africa with the promise of housing. approximately 50 percent of the soldiers and their families accepted this offer. in 1990, they were relocated to schmidtsdrift, 80 kilometres to the west of kimberley, in the northern cape of south africa. in 1992, however, it was decided that there would be no housing made available through government funds. more significantly, that same year, the land on which schmidtsdrift was established was claimed, and subsequently awarded to a tswana community by south africa’s post-apartheid government. the !xun and khwe were able to secure compensation for this displacement, and in 1999 they bought the farm platfontein. by 2003, 1000 houses had been built on the farm, divided between the !xun on the one side of the settlement, and the khwe on the other, with a school and clinic bridging the two communities. between 2003 and 2004 the bushmen relocated from schmidtsdrift to platfontein where they reside today (robbins 2004). the ‡khomani are a group whose ancestors originate mainly from the lands that are known today as south africa and namibia. in 1865 a coloured community 119 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities under the leadership of captain vilander relocated from the western cape and occupied lands in south africa’s far northern cape that had traditionally been occupied by the ancestors of the ‡khomani. in 1931 the bushmen were further dispossessed of land when the kalahari gemsbok park, now incorporated into the ktp, was proclaimed. from then until the 1970s the bushmen were systematically expelled from the park while park officials and academics promoted the idea that bushmen were a dying race (grant 2011). successive governments failed to recognise bushmen in the census and re-classified them as coloured under the population registration act of 1950. when apartheid ended it became apparent that a number of bushmen were living in the rural areas of the northern and western cape. given that historically their ancestors and indeed some of these bushmen themselves had been expelled from their ancestral lands in the park and surrounds (grant 2011) in 1995 some, who adopted the name ‡khomani, instituted a land claim under south africa’s land restitution programme (chennells 2006). in 1999, the ‡khomani were awarded ownership of six farms and in 2002 they were given land within the ktp albeit with conditions attached (bosch & hirschfeld 2002; chennells 2006). despite a lapse of more than ten years little development has taken place on these farms. today it is estimated that approximately 400 individuals live on the farms, while formal housing is lacking, as are livelihood opportunities (grant 2011). currently all three communities, the !xun, khwe and ‡khomani, live in abject poverty, lacking basic service provision and adequate sanitation facilities to name but a few of the problems (dicks 2011; grant 2011; letsoalo 2010). despite ngo and limited south african government input (dyll 2009; grant 2011; robbins 2004) community members have struggled to improve their situation. participatory methods participation was popularised in the 1990s when it was recognised that proposed development and research outcomes had to be meaningful and favourable to potential beneficiaries in order that initiatives and research attract the support of beneficiaries to enable successful outcomes (crewe & harrison 1998). participatory strategies allow local people a greater input into the conceptions and processes of development and research. the methods transform development and research from a “top down” practice, dominated by external experts, to a “bottom up” process that recognises that local people are in the best position to determine the most appropriate research and development practices and outcomes reflecting their desires, values and concerns (chambers 1983; crewe & harrison 1998). essentially, participatory methods seek to uncover community, group and individual issues and their causes while enabling the said individuals to address these problems (servaes 1991). 120 julie grant and andrew dicks to be successful participatory methods require increased interaction between facilitators and participant groups, and within participant groups. as effective communication plays an important role in participatory strategies (fourie & kloppers 2009; ingle 2008), a particular body of literature surrounding development communication has emerged (durden & govender 2012; kincaid & figueroa 2009; servaes 1996). this field has developed in accordance with the changing nature of development practice, meaning that it is currently concerned with the process of participation and the larger context within which the research or development takes place (servaes 1996). valuing both the process and the potential future outcomes, this study utilises participatory workshops and attempts to understand the larger context of the bushmen’s complex situation to enable outcomes that are more representative of participants’ concerns. the contextual understandings are facilitated through participatory research coupled with past research retrieved in part from the long-term rethinking indigeneity research project of which this is part. the project seeks to understand a number of complex issues, focusing on the indigenous bushmen of southern africa. issues addressed that are pertinent to the present study involve the development and representation of contemporary indigenous bushmen populations and specifically how these bushmen peoples negotiate and make sense of their traditional huntergatherer identities in a modern and developing world (tomaselli 2012). getting creative: freirean and grassroots comics workshops fieldwork was conducted with the !xun and khwe participants from platfontein and ‡khomani individuals in the northern cape during september 2013. participants were recruited using snowball sampling which involves choosing initial participants based on their relevance to the research problem. these individuals then refer additional participants to the research team or vice versa (merriam 2009). given the researchers’ established relationships with the participant communities key individuals were identified and contacted. these participants referred the research team to other potential participants and efforts were made to include male and female participants from various age ranges and communities. one workshop was conducted at the wildebeest kuil rock art tourism centre adjacent to platfontein. this was completed by 19 individuals: eight females and 11 males between the ages of 15 and 25. sixteen individuals identified as khwe, with two people identifying as both !xun and khwe, while only one individual was !xun. two workshops were attended by ‡khomani individuals, one was held in the school hall at welkom a municipal settlement consisting of both ‡khomani and coloured individuals located approximately 10 kilometres south of the 121 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities ktp. although the study aimed to attract ‡khomani individuals, a number of coloured people from welkom asked if they could be included. consequently, the welkom workshop was attended by 19 individuals, 13 females and six males, 13 individuals identified as ‡khomani and six as coloured. participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 48 years. the andriesvale workshop, conducted in the local community centre, was the smallest of the workshops, with six participants completing it three females and three males, ranging in age from 30 to 52 years. all participants identified as ‡khomani. andriesvale is the main settlement of the ‡khomani land, located 60 kilometres south of the ktp. it was indicated that the low level of participation in this workshop was a reflection of the fact that community members were suffering from “meeting fatigue” due to the number of events that community members had attended with technical advisors and government officials in the days preceding the workshop. two specific methodologies were adapted for use in a combined workshop designed to empower individuals through motivating participants to think about their lives within their local environment, their goals and aspirations for themselves and their communities, and how to achieve these goals. the first method is an adaptation of ccms’s freirean workshop, which includes body mapping (durden et al. 2013; reddy et al. 2012), and the second is referred to as grassroots comics (dicks 2011; packalen & sharma 2007). these methods are appropriate to this research as they are participatory in nature, viewing the participants as valuable constituents within the research process (melkote & steeves 2001; servaes 1996). freirean workshop the freirean workshop takes its name from paulo freire, a brazilian educator and philosopher. he argued against accepted formal education structures, advocating for an alternative method of information disemination between teachers and learners, suggesting that learners should be actively involved in the learning process instead of being mere recipients of knowledge from an authoritative source. freire encouraged the “conscientization” of the individual in the learning process, encouraging learners to think critically about their situations, their individual problems and experiences, and the social contexts in which they are embedded (freire 1970/1996). the adapted workshops, consisting of a discussion generator and body mapping exercise, as detailed below, are built around these freirean principles and as such are participatory in nature. freirean workshop: discussion generator workshop facilitators initially used a discussion generator to foster dialogue among the participants. in this instance, a “speed-dating” activity was introduced. 122 julie grant and andrew dicks participants were divided into two groups forming an inner and outer circle. the inner circle was instructed to listen to the individual from the outer circle standing in front of them, who would share their favourite things about living in their community, either platfontein, welkom or andriesvale. the outer circle rotated every 30 seconds so that individuals were able to share their favourites with a new individual every 30 seconds. once everyone had completed the circle, the groups were switched, with the listeners becoming the talkers and vice versa. this process was then repeated. instead of individuals sharing their favourites, they were asked to share what problems they experienced while living in their communities. following this, participants were asked to share these realisations with the group, with facilitators writing it on a flipchart. participants could then draw from or refer to these realisations during the body mapping and grassroots comics exercises. freirean workshop: body mapping the discussion generator was followed by a body mapping exercise, a creative therapeutic tool that uses visual artistic expression. facilitators used a step-bystep guide to instruct and assist participants to create their own body maps. body mapping involves having one’s body outline drawn onto a large paper surface, with colour, pictures, symbols and words being used to represent experiences lived through the body, thereby encouraging participants to externalise emotional experiences to think about their own bodies, thoughts and feelings. participants must consider the step-by-step tasks and what they mean to them personally. through this self-reflection participants explore their identity: what makes them who they are, while identifying and considering their passions, strengths and weaknesses. it is envisioned that this will enable participants’ realisation of alternative problem-solving techniques suited to their person and inspire more favourable living in a communal, as well as a general sense. consequently, participants make meaning through the creative process of symbolisation and to develop a map that connects different aspects of one’s being. the body mapping exercise lasted for approximately three hours and at the end of the workshop professional photographer and team member, thomas pierce, photographed participants alongside their body maps, printing and supplying copies of the photos to participants immediately. participants were given the opportunity to keep their body maps. 123 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities figure 1: platfontein participant robert kabwata with his body map grassroots comics after a short break to relax and discuss their body maps over lunch, the participants engaged in an exercise to create their own grassroots comics. the concept of grassroots comics was introduced by leif packalen and sharad sharma (2007) who have worked with the method in parts of asia, europe and africa2. grassroots comics are made by people based in the community, rather than by campaign and art professionals. during the workshop participants identified community concerns, as they perceive them, attempting to uncover the cause of these issues, with participants being empowered to voice their concerns, 124 julie grant and andrew dicks contributing to discussion and debate within the context of their own living space (packalen & sharma 2007). participants then use the format of a comic story to dramatise and communicate specific problems, offering possible solutions to these problems. essentially, the control and motivation of the comics is in the hands of participants, as the researcher merely facilitates the proceedings. the message and stories of the comics represent the feelings, opinions and fears of the participants and potentially the broader community. consequently, these workshops utilise community-driven forms of communication, while the completed comics can be placed either in public spaces around the community or in places where the messages of the comics would best reach their intended audience. due to time constraints, the research team combined the grassroots comics and freirean workshop (two somewhat lengthy exercises) into a one-day workshop3. thus, the initial template designed as a guide for conducting grassroots comics, a process that usually continues over several days (packalen & sharma 2007), was condensed into one half-day session. instead of participants producing their own individual comics, participants collaborated in groups to produce a collective grassroots comic message and create the comic itself. initially participants divided into groups of four individuals. they were introduced to some technical aspects of drawing grassroots comics and asked to draw a series of images to depict a problem or issue that they felt affected their community, and a possible solution (if one could be provided). for the purposes of this research, participants were encouraged to use the issues/problems identified during the discussion generator exercise. these issues included unemployment, substance abuse, domestic violence, hiv/aids and tb, amongst others. participants were also free to identify alternative issues present within their community. while it is preferred that participants formulate their own comic story (relating to problems/issues within the community), it is recognised that people may be selfconscious about this and prefer drawing from relatable issues, such as the manner in which representations of the bushmen might affect how people from outside the community (tourists/visitors, researchers, etc.) interact with them. although this may be a less empowering scenario, it is nevertheless valuable in that it can help demonstrate the potential for grassroots comics to stimulate problem-solving alternatives for participants. figure 2 depicts the dangers of non-treatment of tb. in the comic, a man suffers from tb but continues to consume alcohol and smoke with his friend. another friend tells the sick man to go to the clinic to receive treatment, but the man continues to drink and smoke until he eventually dies from tb. 125 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities figure 2: an example of grassroots comics as produced by participants agency and empowerment the combined workshop was intended to encourage participants to “step back” from their everyday lives to reflect and develop a critical understanding of their situation and that of their communities. the aim of the discussion generator was to enable participants to become familiar with other participants and with research facilitators to encourage communication, disclosure and debate. participants were asked to consider and articulate their short and long-term aspirations and goals regarding their own future and that of their community. they were also encouraged to identify problems within the community and in their personal lives and through the use of participatory techniques, identify actions that work towards addressing these problems. additionally, participants evaluated the manner in which they represent themselves to the other, (people from outside the community such as tourists/visitors, researchers, development workers, etc.). the research therefore focuses on the agency of the individual and the community, considering factors of self-development and self-representation to facilitate a workshop process that is empowering to the participants. consequently, the process is as important as the long-term outcomes of the workshops and the study. 126 julie grant and andrew dicks the research also aimed to be empowering in the sense that it provides participants with a platform from which they can address the concerns of the individual and community while considering prospective goals for the future. at the same time community members are the driving force behind the research and participants are armed with techniques that can be directly utilised to help enable personal and community goals. this is a departure from much of the research focusing on these communities that typically adheres to strict critical or comparative research methods, considering certain aspects of culture or traditional practices (i.e. hunting, gathering, craft-making, etc.). body mapping and grassroots comics were specifically selected for this study given their appeal to past participants (dicks 2011; reddy et al. 2012). both are creative forms of expression requiring participants to express themselves on paper through painting and drawing. as the ‡khomani have been the subject of much research, most using conventional techniques, namely interviews, concentrating on the extractive gathering of information, it is intended that these participatory research techniques will offer an alternative, more varied form of interaction. furthermore, given the nature of the methods, it is expected that community members who cannot read or write a not uncommon situation among the ‡khomani (grant 2011) will not be restrained or inhibited by body mapping or grassroots comics. an additional advantage of these participatory methods is that the material output produced can be revisited or consulted by the person who created it, or by an alternative reader whenever necessary, meaning that these images or posters can raise awareness relating to specific topics and among different people across time as well as space (bessette 2004). data collection and analysis techniques following the completion of the workshops, participants were asked to self-complete questionnaires for the purpose of analysis. due to limited abilities in literacy some participants struggled with this task and were assisted by other participants or researchers. the questionnaires were used to determine if participants perceived that the workshops and the techniques used in the workshops facilitated improved realisation and articulation of participants’ short and long-term aspirations and goals regarding their own future and that of their community. they were also used to examine if participants perceived techniques used in the workshops as enabling in so far as they facilitated improved individual abilities to identify concerns within their personal lives and that of the community, allowing these individuals to conceive of ways to address such issues. the questionnaires allowed for an examination as to the extent to which workshop techniques were perceived as enjoyable, sustainable and useful in addressing personal and community concerns in the future. analysis was also informed by 127 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities field notes and informal interviews and interactions that arose during the course of the fieldwork. although purposive snowball sampling was employed to attract participants, the small sample size limits the extent to which the findings can be generalised to the greater community/population (merriam 2009). nevertheless, the findings do give an indication of the value of using similar workshops as research and empowerment tools in the future and also allows for the improvement of the workshops through participant recommendations. it was unnecessary to analyse the data quantitatively, but rather to refer to the questionnaires and additional data as personalised responses regarding participants’ experiences over the course of the workshop and as a resource for any comments/recommendations they might have had regarding certain activities. thus, the study adopted a qualitative thematic analysis. data analysis and findings an analysis of observations and participant questionnaires reveal that during the workshops participants actively engaged with each other, the researchers and the tasks. findings were relatively consistent regarding the respective communities. this analysis therefore does not explicitly differentiate between communities, apart from where findings differ. the workshops as a whole were favourably received by all participants who completed the tasks, with all 44 participants stating that they enjoyed the workshop. forty of the individuals commented that the workshop was useful, with only one individual noting that they had not learnt any new skills. workshops were described in the questionnaires as “relaxing”, “informative”, “educational” and “recreational”. one individual commented, “we learnt a lot about ourselves”, a remark that was not uncommon. questionnaires uncovered that participants valued that the workshop had enabled the sharing of information and allowed individuals to be heard, while participants perceived that their communication skills had been improved. one individual stated that she had been empowered, “[t]o ask questions when i don’t understand something”, while another participant noted that she had learned “[h]ow to communicate with the community”. more generally, it was stated that such “workshops could, in future, [enable] better understanding between individuals and the community”. all participants commented that they had enjoyed working with each other and the researchers/facilitators, who had been helpful, approachable and suitably articulate regarding task explanation. this was an important point given that the workshops were conducted in afrikaans: a second language to facilitators and many of the individuals from the !xun and khwe communities. of the 26 participants who indicated previous involvement in community workshops, nine stated that they had participated in similar workshops. although the intention of the question was in regard to workshop techniques, participants 128 julie grant and andrew dicks may have applied the question to workshop content (topics that arose during the course of the workshop), as four of the nine participants who stated they had attended similar workshops, listed a number of issues after their answer including “alcohol abuse”, “teenage pregnancy”, “hiv/aids” and “condom use”. these overarching topics were discussed as part of the workshops and may have been covered in other workshops, hence such reporting. questionnaires also indicated that participants would welcome similar participatory workshops in the future and on a more regular basis with increased numbers of participants. while this is encouraging, facilitators noted that participant focus/attention was difficult to manage and maintain as group size increased. larger group size resulted in greater diversity regarding the time taken to complete task steps, with some individuals engaging in alternative activities to occupy themselves whilst waiting for other participants to catch up. facilitators therefore recommend a maximum of 16 participants. for a larger sample of participants, rather than increasing participant numbers in workshops, the provision of additional workshops would be advisable. participants from all three workshops informally commented to facilitators on the usefulness of the discussion generator exercise as an icebreaker and an information-sharing forum. one individual noted in the questionnaire that “[t]he icebreaker activity… was very enjoyable”, despite the questionnaire focusing on the other dominant components of the workshop. although all participating groups grasped the discussion generator exercise with ease, the people of welkom were initially reluctant to share their thoughts. following some probing, participant interaction increased. in contrast, the andriesvale and platfontein participants immediately embraced the exercise and ran with it for longer than the allotted time. notably, participants of the andriesvale workshop took charge of the exercise and spent approximately two hours discussing the fractured nature of their community, explaining how past development projects and business ventures had failed and how their community was in a state of perpetual dissolution. thus, the exercise shifted from being a simple ice breaker to a more in-depth discussion that formed a significant part of that particular workshop. given that the aim of the research was for workshops to be “needs-driven” as determined by participants, although it was desirable to complete the various aspects of the workshops within the allocated time, it was deemed more important that participants be allowed ample time to be heard. overall, by the completion of the exercise, all groups had achieved high levels of interaction and discussion to enable an in–depth understanding of their opinions and frustrations regarding peoples’ living environments. furthermore, as facilitators recorded the various comments and opinions that emanated from the exercise, the process was deemed valuable insofar as it acted as an ice breaker 129 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities while the recorded data was used for reference by participants when creating their body maps and contributed to the themes that were adapted within the grassroots comics. the dominant workshop activities, body mapping and grassroots comics, were positively received by the participants. while 24 individuals stated that they enjoyed the body mapping exercise the most, ten preferred the grassroots comics activity, with six participants enjoying both equally4. various comments articulated the informative, exploratory and personal nature of the body map exercise. these included, but are not limited to, comments relating to the realisation that body mapping “helps you plan for the future”, “[w]as good and very informative… i got to talk about my own feelings… the body map brings out a lot of emotion”. another individual stated that “i did not know about my real self, but now i can see who i really am and what my likes and dislikes are”. similarly it allowed one particular participant to “[e]xplore within myself, my personal roles for my responsibilities”. body mapping encouraged respondents to be self-aware and self-reflexive, considering their goals in life and the possibilities that are available to them. some individuals commented informally that they experienced a renewed sense of self-awareness. all participants completed their body maps, stating that they were proud of the final product. in particular, all of the participants from the andriesvale workshop retained their body maps, whilst some individuals, namely !xun and khwe participants, opted not to keep their maps, valuing the process itself rather than the final product. in addition, 38 workshop participants indicated that they would use the body mapping techniques in the future to help solve problems and/or plan for the future. through the body mapping activity, one individual from platfontein suggested that he had “learnt and could demonstrate” the process such that other individuals could benefit from it. the response to the grassroots comics method was also favourable, with 36 participants stating that they would use techniques learned from the activity in the future. the method was deemed “informative”, with it being recognised that the activity “helps you identify problems” and “gives you ideas about how to deal with problems”. one individual noted that the activity provided “a platform to mobilise people to come together, find solutions and make decisions”; such comments were not uncommon. participants perceived that following the identification of problems, the construction of a narrative/story around the issue aided them in conceiving of a way to address such problems, while the use of comics in this manner was identified as relevant given that the messages could be appreciated by a broad range of people. it was stated that “old and young people can understand what’s going on in every picture”. the potential usefulness of the comics was also recognised, with participants stating, “i think the comics are going to transfer a message to the community”, and that they are “good because they can help 130 julie grant and andrew dicks improve the community”. consequently, through the exercise participants were enabled to communicate an important message via a comic narrative that could be easily understood. participants realised that through this simple, inexpensive activity, they themselves possessed the power to help their community, rather than rely on external agencies or extension workers. overall, participants were satisfied with the comics that they produced. generally, participants enjoyed the workshop and reported that it had enabled an improved understanding of “the self” as well as a greater understanding of those around them through the group work activities. during the course of the platfontein and welkom workshops, participants’ actions indicated that the workshops, which lasted from approximately 10 am until 5 pm, were too long, with some participants being distracted at times and also exiting the workshops for short breaks. questionnaires echoed this indication. twenty people from these communities stated that the workshop was too long, but none of the andriesvale participants indicated such concerns. the platfontein and welkom workshops comprised of more participants than the one at andriesvale, these workshops thus lasted longer, with more individuals taking different lengths of time to complete the steps. these larger workshops required more repetition of workshop instructions to ensure that everyone could hear and understand the steps, whereas the smaller group was more intimate and allowed for more one-on-one interaction. nevertheless, almost all the participants completed the tasks and workshops, with four individuals leaving the workshops early (one individual had to return to work). overall, the length of the combined workshop was taxing in terms of the attention required throughout the seven–hour period. furthermore, some of the self-completed questionnaires lacked accuracy and detail, possibly due to respondents’ desire for the conclusion of the workshop. the separate workshop components, body mapping and grassroots comics, are complementary to one another, but also independently beneficial to participants. combined workshops could be run over a two-day period, with each day focusing on one particular component with the same or different participants. alternatively, body mapping or grassroots comics workshops could be run independently. shorter workshops would allow time for questionnaires to be administered by research assistants and/ or interviews or discussions to be introduced at the completion of the workshops for improved understanding and analysis (greeff 2011). thirty-one participants across the three workshops commented that the workshops were over-explained. it is unclear if this response was a result of the question being misunderstood. during the course of the workshops, especially those at platfontein and welkom, individuals often asked for the repetition of instructions. despite this no one reported that explanations were unclear. such ambiguities in regard to the clarity of the questionnaire could be addressed through shorter workshops, 131 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots comics workshops within three bushmen communities allowing improved data collection techniques, as already noted. one somewhat disappointing aspect of the workshops was that they proved to be challenging and perhaps disempowering to individuals without adequate writing skills. while all individuals were encouraged to express themselves through drawing, certain tasks resulted in the majority of participants choosing to express themselves through writing. some less literate individuals subtly declined to complete these aspects of the workshops. although the step could have been completed through drawing, it seemed that unless these individuals could complete the step in the same manner as everyone else, they chose not to participate in it. despite such concerns, these individuals remained in the workshop until it concluded, re-joining the activities where they could and generally enjoying the experience. nonetheless, this indicates that for certain people, more conventional interactive methods, or alternative participatory methods may be more suited. conclusion the objective of this research was to assess the extent to which more creative and participatory research methods, namely the freirean workshop and grassroots comics, are perceived as useful, enjoyable, replicable and sustainable by participants, determining whether these participant-driven exercises are beneficial to participants with regards to community and self-development, future planning and problem solving. the freirean workshop and grassroots comics exercises were chosen for their creative appeal, but specifically as a means to empower participants/community members to discuss their aspirations and frustrations regarding the contexts in which they live. the approach does not attempt to propose a comprehensive solution to the range of issues experienced by any given community. instead, it serves to offer creative and empowering techniques to community members to promote dialogue and awareness, and to identify concerns, whilst allowing a realisation of strengths to encourage participants to address issues and enable resolution. on an individual basis the workshops aimed to encourage individual self-efficacy and self-development, empowering participants through demonstrating that they have the capacity to identify issues and conceive of ways in which to address these concerns individually and as a community. essentially the workshops sought to motivate individuals to take charge of their future and that of their community, promoting community-driven solutions to community problems as perceived by community members, thereby fostering cohesive communities and community self-reliance. this was the first time that the participatory methods of body mapping and grassroots comics have been combined into one full-day workshop. in this sense, the research constitutes a pilot study. the interactive, multi-method workshop 132 julie grant and andrew dicks yielded positive results and demonstrated the potential for collective dialogue and capacity building among community members. participants indicated that both the freirean workshop and the grassroots comics activities were enjoyable, useful and informative. in theory these workshop methods can be replicated by community members without the presence of researchers and outside facilitators. participants did suggest that they would utilise the workshop techniques in the future, however, the sustainability and replicability of the techniques cannot be fully explored without follow-up interviews to determine if participants have organised similar workshops, or promoted and used the said techniques or materials individually or collectively. acknowledgements thanks to the workshop participants and the !xun, khwe and ‡khomani for allowing us access to their communities. for the use of facilities we again thank the communities, in addition to the mcgregor museum in kimberley and welkom primary school. we are grateful to moshe maghudu, piet jonas, petrus wilson, david morris, dion noubitsen, shanade barnabas, prof. kg tomaselli and also our hosts in kimberley for their support in our endeavours. we would also like to acknowledge the financial support of prof. kg tomaselli’s rethinking indigeneity project and the school of applied human sciences at the university of kwazulu-natal. endnotes 1 although the term san is often used when referring to these groups, we have chosen to use bushmen, the term of choice among participants. 2 packalen and sharma have established an online guide to the grassroots comics process including details of grassroots comics initiatives (see www.worldcomics.fi). 3 the excursion comprised nine days, thus it was only possible to conduct one fullday workshop in each of the three communities. consequently, the research team had to adapt the workshop methods. 4 although there were 44 workshop participants in total, not all participants answered all of the questions in the questionnaire, hence quoted numbers do not always total 44. http://www.worldcomics.fi 133 perceived benefits of freirean and grassroots 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(ed.). 2012. cultural tourism and identity: rethinking indigeneity. leiden: brill. _goback 1 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication marc caldwell* abstract the term dialogue is a tantalising synonym for “communication”, and is often considered more “communicative” than transmission. in fact, we have come to refer to transmission and dialogue paradigms at a time when the current popularity of the latter lies partly in its ability to represent all human contact. the theory of dialogue draws extensively on buber and bakhtin, from which it is identified with positive terms such as engagement and interaction. transmission is not only positioned in opposition to dialogue, but in being imagined as “vertical” it is made to represent power, domination and monologue. hence it is generally treated negatively in communication scholarship. this article reconsiders dialogue and transmission in terms of communication problematics, arguing that each term draws its sense less from essentialist meanings than from the two epistemological fields – rationalism and expressivism – that constitute modernity, and which periodically hold influence over the kinds of questions that may be asked in the discipline. the formation of cultural studies serves to illustrate how communication can be historicised in a manner that rehabilitates transmission by drawing attention to the term as partly constitutive of the field. keywords: dialogue, transmission dialogue, cultural studies, rationalism, expressivism, transmission epoch, dialectic-dialogic articulation * professor marc caldwell (mcaldwell@ufh.ac.za) is head of the department of communication at the university of fort hare, south africa. communitas issn 1023-0556 2014 19: 1-21 2 marc caldwell introduction few terms have been more successful in colonising the communication field than “dialogue”. the concept has played a significant role in turning organisation studies away from the positivist and behaviourist frameworks which had gained in strength in communication research in and around the 1940s (tompkins & wanca-thibault 2001: xxi; turner 2006: 413-415), and as good as rejected the now negatively-inflected concept of “transmission” with which mass communication in particular was assumed to be synonymous (berelson & janowitz 1953; hovland, janis & kelley 1953; klapper 1960; shannon & weaver 1949). the “turn to culture”, which gained prominence in the human and social sciences in the 1960s, galvanised the movement against what has become known as the “transmission paradigm” in the communication field which was steadily reformed in the methodologies of social semiotics and phenomenological hermeneutics which, in time, “wiped out almost all the old assumptions about mass communication and the validity of ‘old theory’” (fourie 2011: 2). concepts such as language, conversation and discourse became the new banners of communication; but dialogue has risen as the field’s master imaginary. dialogue has emerged as a centrepiece of contemporary communication theory. it reflects most deeply the nature of human interaction and stands in contrast to the overwhelming one-way, monologic character of communication in our technological age. but the concept “dialogue” has become distended and typically invoked without much academic rigour and sophistication (christians 2005: vii). “since the beginning of the phenomenological study of communication, dialogue has been highlighted as a key feature of communication and the ideal of mass communication” (fourie 2011: 9). that much is no less true than in organisational communication research, where there is a strong impression that transmission or conduit models of communication have little bearing on day-to-day organising (see boden 1994; brown et al. 1989; ford & ford 1995; hung 2001; mcphee & zaug 2009). but there are critics of this over-emphasis who draw attention to tensions between dialogue and transmission (see stewart & zediker 2000: 225-229) and index their arguments in core elements of martin buber’s (1958) and mikhail bakhtin’s (1981) accounts of dialogue. other critics apply a view of communicative dichotomy to their studies of organisation (armenakis et al. 2011; barki & pinsonneault 2005; elving 2005; mintzberg & waters 1982; robertson et al. 1993). this article draws attention to these fault lines in organisational studies – between advocating dialogue above all, moderating enthusiasm for dialogue, and building transmission into dialogically-relevant models – as an example of the maturation that normally follows the embrace of a new concept, but stands back from the fray in order to consider the underpinning problematic that makes contradictions 3 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication between transmission and dialogue a defining feature of the communication field in general. that is, the field is a modern problematic which, therefore, ought to be defined by a contradiction between the two broad paradigms – expressivism and rationalism (or empiricism) – that have held sway from the enlightenment to the present. the article considers the historo-epistemological field by which the “dialogical framework” as a problematic – the pre-understanding or “structural unconscious” which “represents the overall framework of a system that puts the basic concepts of a theory in relation to one another” (chang 1996: 37) – promotes dialogue at the expense of transmission in communication studies; occluding a fuller-fledged conception of communication. certainly, restoring transmission need not be achieved by redeeming positivism, but may be done by properly understanding dialogue. the article begins with a brief description of tensions inherent in the concept of dialogue as represented in communication research using buber’s and bakhtin’s theory. the main thrust of the article then follows, beginning with the idea of a problematic by exploring how these tensions are central to the field of communication, seeing how the field is invested in a paradox of divergent epistemological fields that constitute modernity. the article finally explores an articulation of dialogical and transmissive tropes in communication theory. references to organisational communication remain instructively convenient in order to avoid undue abstraction. dialogue dialogue is mindful, equitable, empathic, and seeks real meeting points between opponents (eisenberg et al. 2010: 40-46). dialogue is certainly all that, but it is also a power for the emergence of organisation from within the cooperative interactions conducted between individuals who have something to contest. we may consider dialogue as an ideal or “model” condition in organisation, but dialogue is social and the social seldom is orderly. the idea of dialogue and its supportive framework can be credited for bringing into view dimensions of institutions and practices that are left opaque in the imaginary of sending and receiving information (see grandori & kogut 2002; kellett 1999; van every & taylor 1998). on the other hand, as gergen et al. (2004: 40) point out, the “increasing excitement about the potentials of dialogue for creating and transforming social worlds [has been] accompanied by a certain vagueness as to what is meant by dialogue”. merely having a conversation does not, as many assume, “constitute true dialogue” (gergen et al. 2004: 41). 4 marc caldwell it is not the priority given to dialogue in studies of organisational discourse that gergen et al. (2004) object to, but its reification as talk or conversation. dialogue is coordinated action, embedded in context, situated in history and culture, and may serve negative as well as positive ends (gergen et al. 2004: 43-44). dialogue is also not a typical or definitive descriptor of engagement, with monologue denoting its paradoxical opposite. dialogue is a tension, a continuum, between buber’s i-thou and i-it relationships (buber 1958). and while “communication is the relationship” between people (fairhurst 2001: 385), it is in the tensions between buber’s two definitive conditions that we find dialogue to occur. dialogue is reified as an ideal type, possibly also because it is imagined to be paradoxically counterpoised to transmission. the either/or dilemma that a paradox poses justifies choosing dialogue at least by virtue of the current interpretive and post-positivist problematic that sustains discourse in and of the communication field. a dialectic or contradiction, however, requires a both/and approach which posits, in this case, a tension between dialogue and transmission; likened to that “between the constructed social world and the ongoing process of social construction” (fairhurst 2001: 385). “contradictions and ironies not only reveal the way that power operates in organizational discourse, but also unearth the fault lines in which resistance can emerge” (putnam & fairhurst 2001: 113). resistance remains a form of dialogue even as it resembles the i-it forms of monologue. hence a dialectical tension may be seen to exist between mutual acceptance of the other-as-person (the i-thou relationship) and the objectification of the person (monologue). the axis of this dichotomy can be laid across a different axis representing a tension between acceptance and resistance (or rejection). buber “walked the ‘narrow ridge’ between excessive concern for self and excessive concern for the other” (heath et al. 2006: 345); that is, between dialogue and monologue. baxter and montgomery (1996: 15) describe a relational dialectic as a condition where “tensions are played out, relational force against relational force”. however, it is not the contradiction in itself that makes for antagonism between parties in dialogue. “[a]n antagonistic contradiction takes place when the parties align with different oppositional poles. in this instance, each party functions as an advocate of a dialogic force that is oppositional to the other’s wishes” (baxter & montgomery 1996: 67). the notion of dialectics in baxter and montgomery’s use of buber and bakhtin can be confusing. dialetics is “the abstract product of dialogue” (friedman 2005: 36. italics added). scholars of dialectic assume that “relationships are organized around the dynamic interplay of opposing tendencies as they are enacted in interaction” (baxter & montgomery 1996: 6). 5 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication problematics of communication there is a curious line in one of clifford christians’ numerous defences of his concept of proto-norms in the context of global media ethics: philosophy is a discipline; communications is not, in my understanding of it. communications is a problematic, a field of interest. it is an academic area but is interdisciplinary and focused on crucial issues that are not neatly contained within a discipline’s boundaries. therefore, the subject matter of ethics is driven by philosophy and not by the field of communications per se (christians 2010: 140. italics added). it is the phrase in italics that is of interest here. indeed, communication is a problematic insofar as it is a phenomenon about which its questions derive from the various disciplines that investigate it. but there is another sense in which to research communication entails to engage in a problematic: that is, the pre-theoretical framework in which certain knowledge is produced, but other knowledge remains unavailable. communication is a field of interest whose questions are constituted against a pre-theoretical background of two competing modern problematics, empiricism and expressivism, which in the discourses of the field may be deemed as a “transmission view” and a “ritual view” respectively (carey 2009); or as a monological view and a dialogical view (botan 1997; massey 2001). each is not a theory as such, and only in a limited sense can each be considered a paradigm or a perspective. instead, each operates as a pretheoretical background against which questions may be posed and paradigms constructed. each, in a sense of a historical epistemology drawn from gaston bachelard, is a problematic brought about historically through an epistemological break (bachelard 1984; lecourt 1975: 26-29, 79-86; maniglier 2012). bachelard refined both concepts with reference to the philosophy of science. foucault (1980) defined problematic as episteme, or discourse. althusser (1969: 13) used bachelard’s problematic to demonstrate “an ‘epistemological break’ in the history of marx’s thought, a basic difference between the ideological ‘problematic’ of the early works and the scientific ‘problematic’ of capital”. chang (1996) applies both althusser’s and bachelard’s uses of problematic and epistemological break to communication. he asks, “if thought cannot proceed without a preunderstanding of the thought object, if scientific thinking is always directed by an implicit question, what is the preconception of communication that prompts inquiry, sustains theoretical reflection, and finally, leads to the construction of theories?” (chang 1996: 36). chang answers his question by way of a tour through modern philosophy in a manner that initially resembles christians’ view of communication as a field of interest, but then in the remainder of his second chapter subscribes to bachelard’s 6 marc caldwell understanding of the problematic. chang’s argument may by summarised this way: the problematic of communication is the challenge of the solitary subject closing the gap between itself and other subjects to form a community. communication, thus, becomes a problem of delivery solved through transmission (the ‘postal principle’, or the sending and receiving of messages). chang (1996: 56) contends that communication’s dialogical nature requires reciprocity; that solitariness is transcended through intersubjectivity, yet remains sympathetic to the “postal principle”. he thus articulates two pre-theoretical frameworks: one a transmission view, and the other a ritual or dialogical view. communication, chang contends, is a field constituted in the contradictory epistemologies of scientific rationality and expressive feeling that make up the modern condition. that is, using carey’s (2009) schema, communication is constituted in the two paradigms of transmission and ritual, or two competing views of communication that have been predominant since the field’s founding in the late 1930s. the transmission view defines communication as a linear process: of information or signals sent to passive receivers. the ritual view – communication as signification – sees communication as a two-way process whereby senders and receivers are mutually involved in “making meaning”. both paradigms presuppose particular questions about communication. from ricoeur (1976: 15), communication “appears as a way of transcending or overcoming the fundamental solitude of each human being”. solitude, in ricoeur, refers to the radical non-communicability of lived experience which cannot be passed on, except its meaning. “communication in this way is the overcoming of the radical non-communicability of lived experience as lived” (ricoeur 1976: 16). the delineation of communication theory into transmission and ritual paradigms is often translated into monological and dialogical idioms (baxter 2004; craig 1999: 138-140), and is put to good use by scholars in public relations (see grunig 1992). johannesen (1996: 377) states that “a person employing monologue seeks to command, coerce, manipulate, conquer, dazzle, deceive, or exploit … audience feedback is used only to further the communicator’s purpose”. dialogic communication, on the other hand, is “characterised by a relationship in which both parties have genuine concern for each other, rather than merely seeking to fulfil their own needs” (botan 1997: 192). the key difference between a monologic/transmission view of communication and a dialogic/ritualistic view of communication is that the former treats receivers as a means to an end, while the latter treats receivers as an end in themselves. the dialogic/ritualistic view of communication emphasises the interdependent relationship between organisations and stakeholders and is a more ethical perspective for communication behaviour (massey 2001: 156). 7 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication there are no prizes for guessing which of the two paradigms receives the “communication award” today. the shift toward dialogue and away from transmission models of (organisational) communication mirrors a paradigmatic swing from a positivist and functionalist problematic that was dominant in communication research until the 1960s, when it came under pressure from emergent interpretive, culturalist and critical perspectives that gained in importance thereafter (taylor et al. 2001: 102-104, 108-109). the dominant view in organisation studies is to see organisations as emerging dialogically in and through discourse rather than (in the transmission view) as “containers” within which members “send information” to each other. beyond the linear transmission of messages occurring primarily within the container of the organisation, organisational communication scholars problematise the very notion of organisation and organising by emphasising that communication behaviours serve to establish and affirm organisations continually via participants’ interactions. in this view, organisations are constituted in their enactment and exist as individuals strive to make sense of them (taylor et al. 2001: 114). the overwhelming popularity the dialogue concept enjoys in organisational communication research leaves a strong impression that these entities consist positively of members engaged in conversation, whereas information transmitted from faceless sources is now seen to be somehow pathological (banathy & jenlink 2005; grandori & kogut 2002). the conduit metaphor squared easily with classical views of organisations as top-down and managed entities in which communication is an activity that happens within an organisation imagined as a “container” or “machine”, rather than as an “organism”, as in current imaginaries of organisation (capra 2004: 89-92). research in the post-1950s period shifted, in line with the turn to culture, to emphasise the importance of participation in organisational settings. it would be untrue, however, to claim that all reference to transmission has been done away with. scholars continue to use transmission and tool models of communication, but they function as abstractions in which relational similarities are drawn between communication as transmission and media as channel. unlike early studies, current research treats senders and receivers as active agents who are engaged in two-way message flows (putnam & boys 2006: 545). 8 marc caldwell communication in the modern paradox the broad alliance of interpretism, constructionism and hermeneutics which gained strength in the communication field from the 1960s onward comes across as a correction of an earlier period in the discipline when the field’s reigning paradigm was an amalgam of positivism, behaviourism and empiricism, supported by a general belief that natural science was the preferred model for doing social science. in this alliance we may include, at least, humanism, phenomenology, deconstruction and cognitive constructivism; each contributing in its own way to the “realism/constructionism antinomy” (gergen 1998: 148) that as good as defines the human and social sciences, with communication weighing in on the constructionist side of that antagonistic schism. the term “correction” may be read here in at least two ways. in one sense, the constructionist turn can be seen as having put right the view typical of 1940s information theory that communication was principally a mechanistic and linear transmission of signals. what was being corrected on a broader epistemological terrain was the value-free knowledge claim of natural science. that this critique from the sociology of knowledge appealed “to many groups whose voices had been marginalized by science, and to all those whose pursuits of social equality and justice were otherwise thwarted by existing authorities” (gergen 1998: 147) should not necessarily be seen as opportunistic, but as an indication of a second sense of “correction”: as an epistemic or paradigmic shift endemic to the modern condition (foucault 1980). that is, the modern condition is a paradox of rationalist/ empiricist and romantic/expressivist epistemological fields where one historical epoch comes to be defined by “science”, and a successive epoch by “culture”. this calls into question a tendency to identify modernity with rationalism, empiricism and enlightenment conceptions of science; or the enlightenment’s epistemic conception of belief and knowledge. the communication discipline is not immune to this condition, but reflected the rationalist problematic of the pre-1960s period and, in the “turn to culture” thereafter, came to articulate the post-auschwitz or post-hiroshima humanistic reaffirmation that was not unlike the romantic recoil against the industrial revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century (see williams 1958/1983). e.p. thompson’s monumental making of the english working class (1963) traces part of that distant period. the emergence of british cultural studies and its diaspora of academic research programmes marked a return or re-awakening of that epoch in the 1960s. cultural studies was born in and of the new problematic, and was not possible in the long epochal turn to rationalist science that coincided with the modernist age before then. two concepts represent the communication discipline across this 1960s epistemic watershed: transmission and dialogue. nevertheless, for much of the post-1960s 9 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication period transmission was represented either as unwanted disciplinary baggage or as a theoretical heritage in need of rehabilitation. dialogue, by comparison, is almost always treated as a communicative benchmark; a veritable disciplinary “gold standard”. yet little more than a decade into the twenty-first century there are signs of a “return to science” concomitant with a postmodern fatigue that may well bring communication scholars to rediscover relevance in the “transmission epoch”. this possibility is not too far-fetched. think of the growing popularity of cognitive cultural studies (see zunshine 2010) and science communication. are these fields not symptomatic of an epistemic shift? this author’s intention is not to warn of these fields or to promote them. instead, their emergence says something interesting about the epistemic shift (see bachelard 2012) currently transforming the human and social sciences, which poses a challenge not least to communication scholarship. to illustrate the point, zunshine (2010: 5-6) reads raymond williams’ (1961: 18) reference to “the evolution of the human brain [and] the particular interpretation carried by particular cultures” (and its accompanying text) as alluding to a congruence between cognitive science and cultural studies. “writing in 1961,” she writes, williams expected that attempts to integrate the science of the ‘evolved human brain’ with cultural interpretation would meet with ‘resistance and confusion’. his expectations have been confirmed insofar as ignoring a difficult concept constitutes a form of resistance to it. during the last forty years, cultural studies has thrived and expanded, but its explicit cognitive-evolutionary component, as articulated by williams, has been ignored (zunshine 2010: 7). zunshine states a page later that “cognitive cultural studies is cultural studies as originally conceptualized by williams”, which she describes as “an interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between the ‘evolved human brain’ and ‘the particular interpretations varied by particular cultures’”. however, zunshine does seem to ignore the anti-behaviourist (and anti-positivist) context of the long revolution (williams 1961), and elsewhere seems to turn williams on his head (see williams 1976: 44-45). williams’ contemporary in the new left that coalesced at oxford in the 1950s, charles taylor (1989), is well-known for his sustained critique of the paradox of modern identity. but it is in an earlier book, the explanation of behaviour (1964), where he most pointedly repudiates behaviourist psychology and much of the cognitive science that zunshine appears to celebrate. there we find taylor writing squarely within the epistemology that marked a turn to culture and a rejection of enlightenment (and cartesian) scientific rationality in the classical empiricist tradition. but should zunshine’s (2010: 9) hope come true – to “hasten the day when the qualifier ‘cognitive’ can 10 marc caldwell be dropped … [when] the cultural will simply be understood as being in part constituted by the cognitive” – communication scholars may find themselves articulating a new empiricist-cartesian problematic that makes for repudiating the phenomenological tradition. far-fetched? it has happened before. the new left’s recognition that conditions in 1960s britain echoed english romanticism in the late 1700s provided a template not only for how culture was to be theorised in cultural studies (williams 1977: 13-15), but also inspired the field as a political practice. the motivation for extramural adult education classes, for instance, drew directly on the example of william morris, among others; and in this way williams and thompson sought to reactivate the romantic tradition for the working class left (lee 2003: 19). while the new left engaged specifically with the legacy of marxism in britain, its broader canvas was a rejection of rational or classical enlightenment. but cultural studies did not have the monopoly on the gist of its own movement; nor was its grasp of the modern paradox unique. the complex debates rejecting an enlightenment definition of modernity are well-documented. graham murdock’s (1993) paper covers some aspects from the interests of communication. taylor’s (1989) wider-ranging work places particular emphasis on the dual nature of modernity, composed broadly of empiricist and expressivist strands; or, alternatively, of contradictory rationalist-scientific and the romantic strains that make up the “unbecoming and the rebecoming” between the successive epistemological fields of modernity (grossberg 2010: 74). for instance, the movement of anglo-american analytic philosophy was born “in a principled recoil from what the british idealists made of hegel” (brandom 2014: 1). the change seen between the (young) humanist marx and the (old) scientific marx illustrates this shift most poignantly (althusser 1969). the marx of historical materialism represented an “unbecoming” of romanticism in the mid-1800s and a “rebecoming” of modernity coincidental with the emergence of analytic philosophy and a “return to science” (see rockmore 2002). modernism followed at the turn of the twentieth century, and by the late 1950s the pendulum had swung back from rationalism to expressivism. the rise of cultural studies in the 1960s was an instance of this movement, which constituted just one condensation funnel in a multi-vortex tornado that transformed the human sciences. across the disciplines, this period was marked by a resurgence in anti-positivism, in which earlier hermeneutic traditions were rediscovered, reasserted and extended…. in this new zeitgeist, positivist epistemology and methodology were not only identified as philosophically untenable but also as politically reactionary, complicit in the legitimisation of capitalist exploitation, racism and sexism (pickering 2008: 90-91). 11 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication the 1950s were the high-water mark of the hegemony of rationality in the twentieth century (toulmin 1990: 147), and declined as western democracies came under stress from internal contradictions from the late 1950s onward (stratton & ang 1996: 375). the history of the communication discipline straddles this period, with the positivist and transmissive researches attributed typically to lazarsfeld and his colleagues occurring in the earlier period, and cultural studies in concert with a resurgent anti-positivism emerging thereafter. while the definite formation of the discipline lies in the early 1940s, the debate between john dewey and walter lippmann in the 1920s may as well represent, respectively, the romantic and “rational scientific” components of modernity. here it is worth noting that lippmann was more plausible in his time – when the transmission view in communication emerged and subsisted easily within the empiricist problematic of modernity – whereas dewey’s pragmatist and expressivist outlook was only properly read much more recently. dewey’s (1916: 4) muchquoted line that “society exists not only by transmission, by communication, but it may be fairly said to exist in transmission, in communication” resonates in carey’s (2009: 12) comparison of the transmission and ritual views as two paradigms of communication that may be seen to correspond more or less to the empiricist and expressivist epistemological fields of modernity. the transmission view (rooted in modern political and scientific discourse) is the idea that “communication is a process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people” (carey 2009: 15). the ritual view (rooted in religious discourse), which can be identified with that broad constructionist alliance, sees the highest form of communication “not in the transmission of intelligent information but in the construction and maintenance of an ordered meaningful cultural world that can serve as a control and container for human action” (carey 2009: 18-19). carey (2009: 19) is unambiguous about american communication scholarship having been overly invested in the transmission paradigm at the expense of the ritual view; yet “[n]either of these counterpoised views of communication necessarily denies what the other affirms. a ritual view does not exclude the processes of information transmission or attitude change” (carey 2009: 21). that is, if a transmission view of communication centres on “the extension of messages across geography for purposes of control”, a ritual view centres on “the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and commonality” (carey 2009: 18). yet communication scholarship has been remarkably reticent to attempt to articulate these views in studies of actual practices. certainly, communication is a problematic, as christians (2010: 140) asserts; and it is possible he has bachelard’s (2012) definition of problematic in mind insofar as he uses the term in preface to his critique of enlightenment rationality (2010: 140-143) and the problem of normativity. 12 marc caldwell likewise, we can appreciate the transmission view of communication as being for the “control of people” as describing much of organisational research from the 1940s, extending in ameliorated form into the 1970s, as articulating a transmissive episteme. unlike cultural studies, born partly in reaction to the transmission view, organisational studies in communication were constituted in that view. the conduit (or transmission) metaphor of communication squared easily with classical views of organisations as “top-down” and managed entities in which communication is an activity that happens within an organisation imagined as a container. more recent research that depicts organisations as entities constituted in and of communication (weick 1995) was simply unavailable within the problematic of that period. dialogue and transmission the turn to dialogue in organisational communication research has opened up the field to innovative ways of understanding and explaining how different enterprises are constituted, how they prosper, and why many of these stagnate and go into decline. the turn to dialogue has also revitalised the literature on change management (see kellett 1999), a genre of organisational analysis (weick & quinn 1999), that had become mired in an inadequate information transmission paradigm (armenakis & bedeian 1999: 299, 301-302; redding & tompkins 1988). organisational learning and technology transfer are two other themes to have profitably turned to dialogue. concepts such as situated cognition (lave & wenger 1991), legitimate peripheral participation (lave 1988), and communities of practice (wenger 1998) each has at its root a rejection of conduit models of communication. while the concept of dialogue has produced valuable insights into the types of conversation that promote change (ford & ford 1995), transmission remains a common communicative phenomenon in almost all aspects of organising. “persuasive communication”, for instance, “includes the numerous tactics for communication, such as scripted live speeches to groups, informal discussions between the change agents and change recipients, written media like memos/letters, electronic mail, newsletters, etc. typically, these media inform change recipients about the change and often include dialogue about the change” (russ 2008: 309. italics added). even as dialogue has become metonymic of the communication field “after kuhn” (see jensen & neuman 2013), it is more often than not used as a label for interpersonal communication, and is hence made synonymous with talk, conversation and even “communication” itself. it is understandable, therefore, when stewart and zediker (2000: 224) say the dialogue concept “has suffered from the tendency to be defined so generally that it becomes a synonym for almost all human contact”, to suspect the problem lies not only in an inadequate conception of the term itself, but also in 13 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication an equally limited appreciation of communication process and practice. dialogue thus becomes communication “at its best”, and transmission or conduit models are cast as a superfluous hangover from a discredited positivist and instrumentalist paradigm from which communication scholarship has “moved on”. it takes an act of academic courage to argue in support of linear transmission models of communication, even if their purpose is to offset the singular role afforded to dialogue and other communicative acts that privilege individual agency. but there is one argument that can be made from the earliest influences on the emergence of british cultural studies; the idea of modernity being a constitutive contradiction between idealist (or expressivist, culturalist) and reductionist (or empiricist, rationalist) movements. williams accounts for these contradictory relations in the long revolution (1961) and culture and society (1958), and in both books brings to bear the view that modern democratic societies are more than rational political and economic orders, but also systems of generation and nurture. both the industrial revolution and the revolution in communication are only fully grasped in terms of the progress of democracy, which cannot be limited to simple political change, but insists, finally, on conceptions of an open society and of freely cooperating individuals which alone are capable of releasing the creative potentiality of the changes in working skills and communication (williams 1958: 141). behind williams’ work lies a rejection of “the selective way in which particular versions of modernity were foregrounded as if they were the whole of modernity” (eldridge & eldridge 1994: 34). modernity is constituted instead in tensions between elites and subalterns, science and art, and, in thompson’s (1963: 194) similar view, as in a “working class [that] made itself as much as it was made”. taylor, and to some extent weber, identify the contradictory forces of modernity as expressivism and instrumental rationality (see fareld 2007; reckling 2001). against this background we see any model of communication limited either to linear transmission or to dialogue to lack the theoretical capacity to account for (organisational) “contestation – both as a fact of reality … and as a strategic critical practice – [as] a basic category” (grossberg 1996: 142). the pre-eminence the concept of dialogue enjoys in communication studies can be attributed at least to the transmission concept’s tendency to conjure up a host of pejorative terms – positivism, behaviourism, instrumentalism, and more – which occupy the rogues’ gallery of contemporary social science. popular conceptions of dialogue invariably invoke meanings of “inclusion”, “openness” and “engagement”. hamelink’s (2006) heading, “from transmission to interaction” expresses this preference. this is underlined two headings later with “the dialogue” (2006: 282). yet hamelink’s is no rose-tinted view of 14 marc caldwell dialogue’s appeal in communication scholarship. conversation is quite impossible in modern (mediated) culture, where no one seems to be listening. “the mass media offer ‘talk shows’, not ‘listen shows’. the dialogue can only take place where silence is respected” (hamelink 2006: 283). hamelink may as well have used the term “monologue”, with which transmission is often associated, together with pejoratives “exclusion” and “domination”. transmissive communication is difficult to imagine without the inflection of the negatively-inflected “transmission view” (carey 2009: 12), or the historical period of communication studies from which conduit models emerged and continue to draw their sense. among the terms the ritual view connotes are culture, language and dialogue given “not [to] the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs” (carey 2009: 15). we believe in dialogue not least on the basis of the amalgam of normative, culturalist, critical, interpretative, deconstructionist, and postmodern positions that gained philosophical traction with the disillusionment of enlightenment that became particularly poignant from the late 1950s onward (see toulmin 1990: 167ff). but it is by the phenomenological problematic of communication, “[a]s a behind-the-scene decision maker over what can be problematized and what must remain unquestioned” (chang 1996: 38) that we take dialogue to be true. certainly a communicative episode in which conversation between parties prevails can be called dialogical, as much as a condition where one party has all the say can be considered monological. mere popularity aside, the current prominence of interactive “new media” against the declining transmissive “old media” exerts a formidable pull of the dialogical or interactive paradigm for its explanatory value. intellectual capital is ready-at-hand from bakhtin and buber. their work refers over two millennia earlier to the dialectic-dialogic articulation found in socrates, plato and aristotle. for all the novelty of “new media”, the thinking in communication that attends to it indexes those classical sources. the dialectic-dialogic articulation in the modern period is therefore more a resurgence than a discovery. conclusion most historical reflections about the communication field recognise its bifurcation into antagonistic and dichotomous paradigms that occur more or less on either side of a watershed of the late 1950s. on the earlier side we find the seminal effects research of lasswell, lazarsfeld, berelson and their colleagues. after about 1960 the humanities and social sciences turned to language, culture and questions of the popular; a critical rejection of the behaviourist and administrative research that exemplified naturalist hegemony in the social sciences. the rejection of this paradigmatic bloc coincided with the rise of cultural studies during the 1970s. 15 transmission and dialogue in the problematic of communication while the more recent generation of cultural studies scholars tend to identify the field with postmodern, poststructuralist and critical positions antagonistic to the way of that bloc, the primacy of contradiction which hall (1980) argued was the new field’s defining problematic is curiously limited to contestations in actual sites of struggle (e.g., in factories, gangland ethnographies, and adult education), with little interest in the overriding contradictions that constitute modernity itself. certainly cultural interventionist research requires attention to specific contexts. but this has had the effect of reducing some cultural studies to “culturalist” studies, with or without the broader guidance of important attention given to hegemony as a macro-level theory. in what comes close to a founding manifesto of cultural studies, hall (1980: 72) insists that “neither structuralism or culturalism will do, as self-sufficient paradigms of study” and pointed instead to the contradictions between these paradigms as “the core problem of cultural studies”. and with his sights both on the problematic base/superstructure metaphor of (scientific) marxism, and on the empiricist (and naturalist) modern sources of classical marxism, hall says of both paradigms: they are correct in insisting that this question – which resumes all the problems of non-reductive determinacy – is the heart of the matter: and that, on the solution of this problem will turn the capacity of cultural studies to supercede the endless oscillations between idealism and reductionism (1980: 72. italics added). 16 marc caldwell references althusser, l. 1969. for marx. london: verso. armenakis, a. & bedeian, a. 1999. organizational change: a review of theory and research in the 1990s. journal of management 25(3): 293-315. armenakis, a., brown, s. & mehta, a. 2011. organizational culture: assessment and transformation. journal of change management 11(3): 305-328. bachelard, g. 1984. the new scientific spirit. boston: beacon press. bachelard, g. 2012. corrationalism and the problematic. radical philosophy 173: 27-32. bakhtin, m.m. 1981. the dialogic imagination: four essays by m.m. bakhtin (holquist, m. 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press. 140 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu* abstract this article revolves around an analysis of the relationship between isolezwe newspaper, a south african mass-market tabloid, and its consumers who are mainly zulu-speaking black readers. in view of the decline in newspaper readership in general, the phenomenal growth of isolezwe in particular and the absence of scholarship that examines the relationship between isolezwe and its consumers, the authors set out to explore why the newspaper has become and continues to be highly popular. to answer the question about the reason for its popularity, focus group interviews with readers were conducted to identify why readers chose to read the newspaper. the authors conclude that the comparative preference of isolezwe over other newspapers in the market is influenced, in part, by mutually reinforcing factors such as social/cultural identity and cultural capital, semantic noise avoidance, language use, gratification of cognitive needs and the audiencecentred definition of news. keywords: isolezwe, tabloids, zulu, news, newspapers, social/cultural identity, cultural capital, semantic noise avoidance, gratification of cognitive needs * professor herman wasserman (herman.wasserman@uct.ac.za) and dr musawenkosi ndlovu (musawenkosi.ndlovu@uct.ac.za) lecture in the centre for film and media studies at the university of cape town. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 140-158 141 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe introduction and rationale south african press history, during colonialism and apartheid, focused largely on the commercial press aimed at and owned by white people (switzer 2012). histories written about the press aimed at the majority black population tended to focus on the “serious” press, e.g. the underground, so-called “alternative” press (cf. switzer & adhikari 2000) or newspapers with a political affiliation (e.g. limb’s 2012 study of abantu-batho or zug’s 2007 history of the guardian). some studies do pay passing attention to newspapers aimed at entertainment, for example switzer and switzer’s (1979) bibliographic guide to the black press in south africa and lesotho that included a section on general-interest publications, sport and entertainment. bourgault’s (1995: 160) seminal overview of the mass media in africa also includes some references to white-owned colonial press in south africa that was specifically aimed at channelling “native thoughts away from politics and into safer pursuits”. although it could be typified as using a non-political “sex-crime-sport formula” (switzer 2012: xiii), chapman’s (2001) account of the popular, white-owned magazine drum aimed at black urban readers in the 1950s is at pains to emphasise a reading of the magazine as a symbol of the opposition to apartheid. with the post-apartheid rise of mass-market tabloids aimed at a black readership in south africa, the popular press can no longer escape serious scholarly attention. the introduction of the tabloids daily sun, son and daily voice to the south african newspaper market has changed the media landscape irrevocably. soon after the launch of daily sun it became the biggest daily newspaper in the country. it was followed by two western cape-based papers, daily voice and son. the commercial success of these tabloids, as well as that of the zulu-language tabloid, isolezwe, is probably the reason behind the pedi-language tabloid planned by the independent news media group, which recently changed ownership (vecchiatto 2013: 1). while tabloids have also made inroads in newspaper markets elsewhere in africa, e.g. nigeria and zimbabwe (beckett & kyrkesmith 2007: 55; mabweazara & strelitz 2009), the rise of the local ones has to be seen against the specific post-apartheid south african social context within which these media are consumed. these tabloids have responded to a demand for information and entertainment among the majority black population in the country whose interests were arguably still being marginalised by the mainstream print media (wasserman 2010). the tabloids have created a mass readership out of the poor and working class (although upwardly mobile) black majority of the country. because of their brash sensationalism and perceived disregard for mainstream professional journalistic values, the tabloids initially met with controversy and strong resistance from the professional journalistic establishment, although attitudes seem to have softened to the extent that there is now a category 142 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu in the premier national newspaper awards, the standard bank sikuvile awards (previously the mondi awards) for “popular journalism” (pdmsa 2013). academic studies of south african tabloids (cf. strelitz & steenveld 2005; wasserman 2008; 2010) have however until now focused on those newspapers that are published in english and afrikaans with a national footprint. during the same period, a zulu-language tabloid, isolezwe, read mostly in the kwazulu-natal province, showed phenomenal growth. the newspaper was launched in 2002, and showed year-on-year growth of 21% over the first five years of its existence – this while english daily newspaper circulation was stagnating nationally (tolsi 2007). equally spectacular was the rise of a sunday edition of a much older zululanguage newspaper, the 104-year old ilanga, as ilanga langesonto, in 2005, which initially showed growth of around 61% per year (tolsi 2007), and outsold isolezwe’s sunday edition (media update 2009). isolezwe’s weekday edition however beat its older rival in the province (media update 2009). the most recent audit bureau of circulation (abc) figures show a sustained rise for isolezwe, while ilanga’s circulation showed a slight decline (moodie 2013). the national sunday paper, sunday times, which experimented with a zulu edition consisting mostly of selected translations from its english sister paper, closed down its zulu edition in 2013 as it could not compete in the tabloid market with their localised copy that relate to specific audience interests (moodie 2013). the continued strong rise in popularity of zulu-language newspapers, especially zulu-language tabloids, in the kwazulu-natal province of south africa suggests a stronger relationship between these publications and their audiences that would be important to research in order to complement the existing work on the audience reception of tabloid newspapers. such a study could furthermore contribute to the limited literature on indigenous language media in south africa, and begin providing answers to the question of why (at least some) zulu-language newspapers continue to be successful while newspapers in other indigenous languages like isixhosa and sesotho have died out (salawu 2013:74). although isizulu is the largest mother tongue in south africa (22.7 % of the population) according to the 2011 census (followed by isixhosa, 16%, and afrikaans 13.5%) (salawu 2013: 74), the margin between it and other indigenous language mother tongue speakers is not large enough to explain the success of newspapers in isizulu. nor can it merely be a case of appealing to readers who cannot access english-language publications, as isolezwe seems to have lured readers away from english-language media (salawu 2013: 89). the cultural assertiveness of isizulu readers and their position in relation to power and resource allocation, as well as income levels, are additional factors for consideration when attempting to assess the success of isizulu-language newspapers relative to other indigenous languages (ndlovu 2011: 278). 143 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe studies of tabloid newspapers in south africa and elsewhere in the world (cf. bird 1992; conboy 2006) have repeatedly emphasised the importance of the relationship between tabloids and their community of readers as a factor of their commercial success. this relationship is largely predicated on language in the broader sense. language actually constructs an ideal reader, as conboy (2006: 14) points out [l]anguage is employed across the tabloid paper in a systematic way to build a composite version of the vocabulary and style of their ideal average reader; a sort of vernacular ventriloquism. when examining the success of isolezwe in terms of its relationship with its audience, the fact that it is written in an indigenous language with unique purchase on its readers’ cultural identity, as well as the rhetorical strategies and news discourses it employs to construct its ideal reader in relation to newspapers in other languages, should therefore form a central point of focus in a reception study. theoretical framework this article aims to explore the reasons for the phenomenal rise of the zulu languagebased isolezwe in a slumping english and afrikaans-language newspaper market. while a comprehensive explanation of all these reasons would fall outside the scope of a single article, the assumption that language use may be seen as a key reason for isolezwe’s success, prompts an exploration of theories that integrate issues of media usage, reception and cultural identities. harwood’s (1997) integration of uses and gratifications (u&g) and social identity theory (sit) in the analysis of young adults’ television viewing choices was found to provide a good theoretical starting point in this regard. given that isolezwe readers are equally a social/ cultural category who select a particular (news) media type to gratify certain sets of needs or motivations, this theoretical framework is applicable in expounding their practice of isolezwe selectivity in the sea of many other newspaper options available to them, especially in kwazulu-natal. harwood’s conceptual postulation and empirical conclusions are that individuals unquestionably have many motivations for seeking out particular media messages. he argues that, though motivations for viewing particular media have been considered primarily at the individual level and the interpersonal level, they have rarely been considered at the collective level. to overcome this inadequacy, harwood (1997: 1) integrates u&g and sit to posit that “individuals seek out particular messages which support their social identities (i.e., provide positive social comparisons with out-groups) and avoid messages which do not support their identities”. harwood (1997) demonstrates how social identity mediates television-viewing choices. whereas harwood focuses on age as a demographic 144 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu mediator of social identity, this article draws on social identity, manifesting itself in the form of ethnicity/culture and social class, as primary driver for reader preference of isolezwe over other newspapers. building on harwood’s observations, the authors’ conceptual premise is that individuals’ conscious and voluntary associations with imagined in-groups – via choosing specific media (in this case a newspaper) – are socially and historically constructed. a preference for a particular newspaper, which distinguishes itself on the basis of language, can therefore be seen as a manifestation of a lived social/cultural identity. readers’ associations with in-groups and disassociations with out-groups could mirror ethnic, gender, racial and class identity struggles historically produced by a particular sociocultural environment. the sociocultural environment of post-apartheid south africa can condition newspaper readers to select and consume texts within a particular horizon of expectations. this argument does not ignore isolezwe readers’ individual agency regarding media choice, nor does it subdue choice and consumption to only the social structures of socialisation and identity construction. readers make choices actively, but do so within a limited range of options that are socially and historically constructed. the choice of a particular medium is made within readers’ frames of reference, which are socially-historically produced. in other words, isolezwe readers choose and consume newspapers not as empty vessels or culturally/socially isolated beings, but as culturally embedded social subjects. as such, they are beings with identity, who have over time acquired cognitions, attitudes and behaviours relating to their political and cultural environment (atkin & gantz 1978: 184). apart from the reception of isolezwe via lenses of cultural identity and gratification of personal cognitive needs, the choice of isolezwe is mediated by readers’ conceptions of class status or social position in a manner that is particular to south african history. this assumption then prompts us to ask: what is it about isolezwe that makes it the most preferred newspaper by a particular cultural group? conversely, what is it about this group of readers that it has its needs gratified by isolezwe? these questions are asked not only in terms of how isolezwe compares to other english and afrikaans-language tabloids, but also in comparison to other zululanguage newspapers that used to be or still are in the market: ilanga, sunday times zulu edition, and umafrika. to this extent, focus group participants (see below) were asked to talk about their choices not only in relation to isolezwe, but to the non-preference of other newspapers, english, afrikaans and zulu. the questions regarding the choice of isolezwe are not merely to do with consumer options exercised in a market environment. choosing and reading a newspaper is a social signifying act, and these acts have implications for the 145 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe circulation of meanings in society. as fiske (2001: 248) notes: “… distribution of power in society is paralleled by the distribution of meanings in texts (choice), and struggles for social power are paralleled by semiotic struggles for meanings”. this understanding underpins the methodology followed to answer the research questions. methodology for this exploratory study, 33 focus group participants were selected using snowball sampling. these participants were spread over five groups. given that one of the authors of this article is a first-language zulu speaker, a subscriber to isolezwe, familiar with the cultural and political dynamics of kwazulu-natal, and has research contacts in the province, three isolezwe readers were identified so as to recruit other readers of zulu newspapers, particularly those of isolezwe. because other recruiters would rely on local social networks to generate more respondents, snowball sampling became an appropriate choice for this aspect. two groups were recruited from the durban university of technology (dut), consisting of students and cleaners. recruiters went on to recruit participant educators at edgewood college, and other recruiters went from house to house in the village of kwanyuswa. in the conceptualisation of the study, the authors were conscious of the fact that certain forms of social identity (language and ethnicity) could hide other forms of social identity (class). recruiters were selected on the basis that they could bring in readers who not only spoke zulu, but also represented specific social classes. the authors used academic qualification, place of abode, and type of occupation loosely as proxy for measuring the location of participants in the south african socio-economic strata. snowball sampling is a subset of purposive sampling, and in the case of this study the purpose was to select focus group participants who were zulu-speaking; isolezwe-reading; lived in rural, township and suburban geographical spaces; male and female; and who were from diverse social classes and lsms best fitting the profile of an isolezwe reader. focus groups were conducted in may 2012. the first group was made up of nine young adult males, aged between 25 and 30. one worked as an assistant motor mechanic, two were taxi drivers, one was a taxi owner, one a spaza shop owner, one a security guard, two unemployed, and one was a manual labourer in a fencing firm. these participants lived in the rural/semi-rural area of kwanyuswa. attempts were made to balance the gender split in this group, but they failed on grounds of household responsibilities. the authors compensated for this in other groups. constituting the second group were eight professional educators based at the university of kwazulu-natal’s edgewood college. the five females and three males were aged between 30 and 45. two were doctoral candidates, three held 146 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu master’s degrees and three higher diplomas. constituting the third group were middle-aged members of the cleaning staff at the durban university of technology (dut). there were seven women and one man. none of the group members had a post-matric qualification. the fourth group consisted of eight dut students, four males and four females, aged 19 to 23. these students were pursuing different degrees across university faculties. as briefly noted in the theoretical section above, different newspapers distributed in the province of kwazulu-natal were brought to the discussions to prompt participants to answer the question why and how they read isolezwe, how this tabloid was viewed in relation to other newspapers, and why particular preferences existed. for data analysis, a process of coding and development of category names was followed (glaser & strauss 1967). this involved perusing line by line, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph already transcribed voice recordings of focus groups. once each set of data from the transcriptions had been segmented through marking it with a colour-coded highlighter, the segmented data was transformed into analytical units or category names. this process continued until saturation was reached and there was no need to continue (glaser & strauss 1967). the category names or themes that emerged out of this traditional way of coding are presented below. discussion as the authors set out to explore why the newspaper was and continued to be highly popular, participants needed to respond to the question why they thought isolezwe is popular among its readers and why they specifically choose it. the set of answers that participants provided pointed to the degree to which the newspaper resonates with and reinforces their internalised lived cultural identity in terms of ethnicity and language. one young male participant from kwanyuswa pointed this out when he reasoned that … 1if we look at ethnic groups in south africa, the group that is proud of its culture is zulus … the language cannot be separated from culture. if i want know about the affairs of the zulu monarch, i don’t think sunday times can feature the monarch on the front page. if it (sunday times) wants to write about monarch, it will write a small story on the back page. i want to know that since he is our king how does he think, what does he want to do. these are some of the things why isizulu (language) and zulu newspapers are so successful in kzn. not only has the reader quoted above constructed a sense of self via ethnicity in comparison to other out-groups (ethnic groups) (see harwood above), but ethnic identity is further manifested through conscious discrimination against sunday 147 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe times in preference of isolezwe on the following basis that also speak to, in this context, the link between cultural identity and u&g (see theory above). sunday times, from the above, is perceived to be capable of gratifying this reader’s quest for a particular kind of news story/content: affairs of the zulu monarch that he has a particular cultural affinity to (“since he is our king”). in this reader’s sense of cultural being, sunday times, however, cannot be selected for consumption as it may be produced in the zulu language, but its content is not an extension of zuluness in the manner isolezwe is. (we may be cautious of generalising from this single view as representative of the larger attitude towards the sunday times zulu edition, but it eventually closed down.) furthermore, the reader in the quotation conceives the popularity of the newspaper on the basis of zulu pride, not necessarily on the possibility, say, of the newspaper’s superior marketing strategies. the centrality and intensity of cultural identity in the popularity of isolezwe, noted above, is accentuated by one of the following participants who made reference to the fact that even those readers who are of relative high social status or middle class do not lose their sense of being zulu. this older male participant from edgewood college argued that … even that section of the population that is educated – doctors, professors, etc. they never lose that they are zulus by birth and are proud of their culture. the more educated you are, the more you become proud of your culture. isolezwe then becomes, among other things, the theatre in which being “proud of your culture” is acted out. the necessity to be “proud of your culture” is not only a historical imposition on a particular social subject, but also gratifies one’s desire to maintain particular kinds of cultural and social relations. it is a sense of wanting to be “seen as”, a politics of belonging that also marks identification with media in other african contexts (nyamnjoh 2005). the role isolezwe plays in this regard could not only be noted among the older generation (such as the respondent quoted above), but also among young adults who were interviewed at dut and who had gone to previously “white” model c schools. they displayed a yearning to (re)connect with and assert their cultural identity: i think that if you read in isizulu you learn words which you didn’t know, in a way it improves your isizulu vocabulary, rather than reading something which you already knew since you have been learning in english in school; it makes sense to know about your own language (young female, dut). the foregoing would not be necessary in a cultural, social and historical environment where a particular kind of identity, specifically zulu identity, has 148 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu no value (carton, laband & sithole 2009). zuluness is lived and given value in kwazulu-natal, not only by the intention of the university of kwazulu-natal to make isizulu one of its languages of instruction, but also by an annual zulu stand-up comedy festival. the zulu-language ukhozi fm is the largest radio station in the country, and another radio station, p4 (aimed at younger listeners) had to change its language policy from english-only to include zulu. zuluness of forms is a product of cultivation of ubuzulu or “zuluness” (sense, characteristics and positive consciousness of being zulu) over the years, for diverse cultural and political reasons (carton et al. 2009). the latter includes the political campaign for president jacob zuma in which he was branded as a “100% zulu boy”. from the responses from the focus groups the sense is created that zulu as a language and a sense of being is thriving in the cultural and political fields where it has high cultural capital value. speaking isizulu and identifying with being zulu enables one to become part of a social and political in-group. this contemporary “need to know zulu” and maintain cultural relations with zulus is manifested even among non-zulu readers who read isolezwe as the following reader, who is originally from swaziland, shows: i read isolezwe especially because i am swati and speak siswati whereas all the people around me speak isizulu. i use isolezwe, my family (kids) also reads it. sometimes they come to me asking for meaning of some terms. so i can say that even though isolezwe is in isizulu, it is readable (older female, edgewood). the respondent’s reference to the use of isolezwe to teach her children the language is an indication of the role of socialising agencies like families and schools in popularising zulu, and by extension, isolezwe: in this university we emphasise the issue of mother tongue in grade 1. from grade 1 to grade 3 they should be taught in mother tongue. those kids will be encouraged to read in isizulu. so, i think all of that will motivate people to use isizulu. my daughter is learning isizulu at school. so, sometimes she asks me to give her a part of a newspaper to read in class (older female, edgewood). isolezwe then, as other zulu media, derives its popularity partly from the cultural environment in which it is embedded and where the zulu language and sense of being zulu are valued. but the popularity of the newspaper cannot only be explained in terms of ethnicity. the social class of the readers also comes into play. 149 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe cultural solidarity and social fissures the choice of isolezwe, in the context of both cultural identity and social class, is produced by the comparative evaluation of zulu and english in terms of their empowering and redemptive capacity. it is here that one begins to see different motivations for consuming isolezwe. for the set of readers who conceive of themselves as not “educated enough” to “know english”, isolezwe is perceived as empowering and redemptive in relation to the gratification of cognitive needs: another thing brother is that not all of us got a chance to go to school2. there are people who don’t understand english. an old lady who likes reading a newspaper, she won’t buy an english newspaper because she won’t understand what is at all about but isizulu is easier so it helps even those who didn’t go to school (young male, kwanyuswa). not only is english, in the south african context, associated with being educated, but english newspapers are also associated with a particular group of people in terms of both class and race. the image of social mobility afforded by english is also one of the reasons offered by the (now late) publisher of daily sun, deon du plessis, for restricting the content of that tabloid to english (wasserman 2010). in the light of the dominance of english in the media, the choice of a zulu newspaper then becomes an association with an in-group (in a particular province where zuluness can still provide some advantage over and above english) against the out-group. it is an act of joining an imagined community (anderson 1991) of “us”, or what straubhaar (1991) referred to as “cultural proximity” as a factor in the preference for local media content in the context of media globalisation. in the quotation immediately above, the young black male’s perception of the accommodative nature of zulu newspapers and the articulation of it in solidarity with the other members of the “imagined community” who “can’t speak english” speaks volumes of the orientation to these newspapers and attitude towards indigenous language media. coincidentally, young black males in a previous study on television news (ndlovu 2011) consciously chose news on the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc), as opposed to e.tv news, on the grounds that sabc accommodated african languages. these responses illustrate how media perform cultural and communitarian functions that extend their use as mere conduits for current affairs. isizulu newspapers are seen in solidarity with “us”, the in-group versus the out-group. despite a shared cultural identification with the language, zulu readers should not be seen as a monolithic group. differences in this group are articulated not only in terms of social class, as shown above, but also in terms of “taste”, “sensibilities” and “(political) ideology”. for example, readers’ reaction were explored to a 150 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu section of ilanga that claims to promote authentic femininity or the purity of young zulu maidens. this section of bare-breasted young women, called “natural beauty”, was accepted by some readers as having educational value for young girls. older focus group members and young rural males tended to share this view: if you compare… you can see that a woman shown in ilanga, despite that she is ‘naked’ with breasts, you can see she is a pure zulu; you will see that she is not a prostitute rather she is a pure, pure zulu. i have seen that the entire daily sun is filled with prostitutes (young male, kwanyuswa). ilanga’s natural beauty section teaches and encourages our youth to keep their bodies clean/pure, be able to use them as source of pride and show them off to other people… some of the girls you can see they are still virgins, which encourage our youths not to let themselves to be touched by boys (older female, dut). the positive reaction by elders and some young males to the representation of some forms of zulu femininity was rejected by young females at dut. they argued that ilanga showed young women as backward: no one shows their bodies like that anymore; even when you have umemulo [loosely translated it means the zulu version of a 21st birthday party for a young female – authors] you cover you breast (young female, dut). young female participants asked why boys were not asked to show their purity. while young female readers accepted the appearance of these young women in traditional attire, they rejected the notion of not covering up. for them, tradition has to adjust to modern times. these young female readers found isolezwe ideologically progressive in comparison to ilanga. the differences among zulu readers can also be seen in the realm of language use by the zulu newspapers available to them. isolezwe’s success, in part, lies in its strategic appropriation and incorporation of those language styles and manner of speaking commonly used among urban (upwardly mobile) isizulu speakers. this variant of isizulu positions isolezwe as urban, modern, and upwardly mobile. this use of the zulu language has traction among zulus in particular spaces. for example, at some point, one of the biggest zulu media, ukhozi fm, showed signs of losing listeners (ndlovu 2011). welcome nzimande, ukhozi’s then station manager, blamed the decline on the radio station’s tendency to speak “pure” zulu in a high register. nzimande (see ndlovu 2011) said: the thing with youth is that they have their street lingo which they like being spoken to in. i have been criticized for letting some of our djs 151 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe slip it in from time to time but the bottom line is we can’t be purist at the expense of our listeners. the recent eventual collapse of both sunday times’ isizulu edition and umafrika (a friday newspaper) cannot only be blamed on their relatively formal and serious news content, but also on their use of formal language, which did not keep up with the more hybridised versions of zulu spoken by urban youth: even now, you can hear us mixing it with english. so, it is slowly changing bit by bit. it won’t be the isizulu known by old generation. there is this zulu child, he speaks only english, he can’t speak isizulu, he can’t even write in isizulu. those who learn it (isizulu) from mixed (black and white) schools the kind of isizulu they learn, is not like that from rural areas, that i think will influence the writing of isizulu papers (young female, dut). in this context, isolezwe is winning the battle of language registers. the success of isolezwe, in part, on the strength of language register represents broader social changes in the kwazulu-natal region as a result of urbanisation, “middleclassisation” and transformation of socialising agencies (cf. fourie 2013). the former editor of isolezwe, thulani mbatha, puts it as follows: “the modernising zulu is someone who may go back home to the rural areas to slaughter a cow to the amadlozi (ancestors), but is as equally comfortable taking his family out for dinner and a movie and in a shopping mall” (tolsi 2007: 2). these differences in how readers respond to different variants and registers of isizulu, linked to social position and generational groups, suggest that the task of zulu media to relate to cultural identity is not a simplistic one, as the linguistic group is not monolithic and the language itself is dynamic and will continue to undergo rhetorical strategies although readers’ responses, like the ones above, would probably make it seem as if social/cultural identity on its own is an overarching motivator for the selection of isolezwe over other newspapers, there are other motivating factors. to suggest that isizulu-speaking consumers choose zulu newspapers only because they are zulu, would be reductionist and essentialist. on the strength of evidence produced by focus groups interviews, isolezwe readers are also motivated by the gratification of other uses, e.g. surveillance of occurrences of the day; relaxation and diversion needs; and the need for social prestige – to appear well-informed in conversations with peers. but in the end, the effortlessness of reading isizulu papers, expressed largely by those participants of working class and rural backgrounds, suggest the extent to which “semantic noise avoidance” is a motivating factor. according 152 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu to steinberg (2002), “semantic noise is a form of psychological disruption that occurs when unfamiliar terms (language) are used in explanation or when cultural and social differences distort meaning between the sender and the recipient”. in the words of a participant: in a zulu newspaper everything is easy to read. you read something in a language you speak; in english newspapers, there are difficult terms which you need a dictionary for explanation of their meaning. even if you do understand the content but if there is one term which is hard to understand, the meaning is gone (young male, kwanyuswa). semantic noise avoidance is not only articulated by readers through choosing zulu newspapers over english or afrikaans ones, but also through selecting isolezwe over other competing zulu language newspapers on the basis of language register, as mentioned above. some readers further differentiate between those newspapers that are “easy”, as compared to those that are “difficult” to read in isizulu. apart from reiterating the need to view the isizulu readership as heterogeneous, these distinctions between linguistic registers also amount to a rhetorical strategy on behalf of the newspaper to resonate with particular readers. this becomes clear when respondents distinguish between isolezwe and other isizulu media: isolezwe’s writing is readable and clearer. if you page through ilanga, the writing is different. they both use isizulu. the difference is the way they use the language (young male, kwanyuswa). isolezwe’s writing… it is vivid and simple, they report on a story in a straightforward manner (young male, kwanyuswa). because a systematic content analysis was not included in the methodology of this article, a comparison between ilanga and isolezwe falls beyond the scope of the current study, save to say that the responses indicate a linguistic spectrum within the use of isizulu that has important implications for understanding the newspapers’ place in a social context. audience-centred definition of news the popularity of isizulu newspapers among their isizulu-speaking readers does not rest solely on the reduction of semantic noise and them being an extension of a particular social identity of an imagined isizulu community; their popularity is also enhanced by these newspapers’ clear editorial agenda of an audience-based definition of news and the resultant congruence between newspaper content and readers’ needs. in the words of a participant: another thing which i think makes isizulu newspapers popular is because every morning when people think of buying a newspaper they 153 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe think of ilanga and/or isolezwe because everything they read in them is local; they won’t hear that somebody from somewhere whom they have no knowledge of (young male, kwanyuswa). so, isizulu newspapers are succeeding where are other media are failing in terms of audience-centred news. newspaper organisations regularly undertake audience research to ascertain readers’ interests and needs in their news provision. however, scholarly research (harrington 1998; raeymaeckers 2004) argues that despite research projects aimed at determining audiences’ definitions of news, there are always incongruences between what news providers offer and what audiences demand (raeymaeckers 2004: 223). the reason why news providers pay little attention to audience research findings is, according to harrington (1998: 473), “... because it raises the question about their power to construct the news for the public”. gans already concluded in 1980 that journalists neither understand their audiences nor incorporate their feedback. what is news is a product of a journalist’s judgement. in the similar vein, hagen (1999: 131) pointed out that “journalists make their decisions based on, among other things, what they perceive to be appropriate for the public”. accentuating this point, branston and stafford (1999: 162) argue that “like most television professionals, journalists make programmes for other television professionals, partly because their sense of the rest of their audience is very flimsy” (cf. schlesinger 1987). serious vs human interest it may be counter-intuitive considering the frequent criticism against tabloid newspapers that they provide their readers with diversion from politics, but seriously politically-minded participants interviewed for this article – readers who have a strong interest in political news, particularly males – indicated a preference for isolezwe above ilanga. older educated females also generally prefer isolezwe, and special features in ilanga, such as features on the economy and a healthy lifestyle. this group (see below) is not only interested in these features for personal reasons; they use them for educational purposes, as the educated female participants in this study were teachers. this use of a tabloid newspaper to read about politics defies the usual criticism that tabloids divert readers from politics, but resonates with wasserman’s (2010) findings that readers of daily sun recognised themselves in stories that covered the “politics of the everyday” – events and happenings that resonate with their daily lived experience and that can be read to have a political dimension. the preference for politics among readers of isolezwe seemed to be directed at mainstream politics as well: i read isolezwe because its stories are about politics and i am into politics (young male, dut). 154 herman wasserman and musawenkosi ndlovu younger females expressed a preference for entertainment (club life, celebrities), which isolezwe ngesonto (isolezwe on sunday) provides: i like the sunday isolezwe because it contains saturday’s [cultural] events (dut, female student). participants who were into politics and who were looking for trustworthy political coverage tended to prefer isolezwe, and avoid ilanga. ilanga was perceived as writing disproportionately more about people’s private lives, rather than about serious political issues. the following quotations speak to these issues: the thing about these media people is that they publish news in a way that they appear to be true only to find those stories are not true… i think isolezwe establish the facts first before publishing. i trust isolezwe compared to other newspapers (older female, edgewood). in ilanga sunday focus much on people’s privates and lifestyles; they publish stories about people’s private lives (older female, edgewood). conclusion this article did not seek to provide comprehensive answers to isolezwe’s popularity upon which predictions for future sustainability can be based. the aim of the discussion was merely to explore the views of readers who expressed a preference for isolezwe in comparison to other zulu-language media and in comparison to english and afrikaans tabloids, with the aim of identifying certain broad categories of uses and gratification within a specific framework of social and cultural identity. focus group participants argued that for as long as there are consumers of isolezwe, and isizulu newspapers in general, who are not consuming news in isizulu on the internet and are not on social media, the physical copy will be around for a long time and the future of these newspapers is sustainable. as one respondent articulated it: papers won’t collapse because children as they grow up they see us, their parents, buying newspapers. they don’t learn this isizulu at their schools. people send their children to white schools, but they want them to know more about their language, hence they are compelled to buy newspapers, like my daughter she didn’t do isizulu at school but she can read it (older female, edgewood). participants further point to schools and parents as the custodians of the zulu language, and as socialising agencies. they argued that these socialising agencies will ensure the future of these newspapers. the authors of the article share the view, as pointed out above, that isolezwe and zulu media in general thrive in 155 reading tabloids in zulu: a case study of isolezwe the province of kwazulu-natal where isizulu provides a certain cultural and political currency that may not be equally valued in other parts of the country. the responses in this regard therefore have to be seen within a specific culturalgeographic context. focus group participants, however, also pointed out, and the authors fully agree, that the sustainability of isolezwe depends on keeping up with the audience’s news interests and technological use of media. isolezwe has to keep up with the young generation, particularly the post-1994 so-called born frees who have a different frame of reference to generations that grew up under apartheid: i don’t see isolezwe selling or growing fast if it does not change with the generation which is going to start reading newspapers now. the generation growing up now, is mixit generation. it does not read entirely; it likes shortcuts. it uses electronic media rather than print media. i see all these newspapers being affected by this. unless… take their content and put in online. another thing that is going to negatively affect newspapers… the generation growing up now is not interested in those things which we are interested in now (young male, kwanyuswa). lastly, zulu readers of isolezwe read it to gratify a specific set of uses. in this regard, the cultural identity underpinning the current preference for isolezwe should categorically not be understood in essentialist or reductionist terms, but in relation to a specific social context. as this context, and the determinants of a dynamic cultural identity shifts 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the historically mediated communication of two opposing but powerful paradigmatic views on the relation between human beings and human society. atomistic or individualistic approaches will be contrasted with holistic or universalistic views. the historical connection will be traced as persistent themes present in the paradigmatic stance of greek thinkers (such as callicles, protagoras, plato and aristotle), medieval intellectuals (augustine and thomas aquinas), transitional figures (william of ockham, jean of jandun and marsilius of padua), modern thinkers (hobbes, locke and kant), the switch from enlightenment rationalism and individualism to the irrationalistic individualism of early romanticism, and the full-blown romantic emphasis on an irrationalistic universalism (the transpersonal national spirit of each people, volk – von schlegel, herder, hegel and fichte). after considering the subsequent communication of some relevant turns during the 19th and 20th century, it will be briefly pointed out that human nature does not determine societal structures, just as little as one or another societal entity (the volk, state or church) embraces individuals or the other societal collectivities and communities fully as integral parts. when persistent paradigmatic themes are communicated to later scholars (holton) amidst changing historical contexts, the directing power of diverging basic motives and the inevitability of communicative historical continuity is amply demonstrated. keywords: communication, atomism/individualism, holism/universalism, nominalism, form-matter motive, nature-grace motive, nature-freedom motive, rationalism, irrationalism * professor danie strauss (dfms@cknet.co.za) is a research fellow in the school of philosophy at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university in south africa. communitas issn 1023-0556 2015 20: 26-44 27 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations orientation all humans have the capacity to live in organised societies and to communicate their basic patterns to forthcoming generations. if they are accompanied by an awareness of what is historically significant and what is historically insignificant, then this awareness of the historically significant materializes in various communicative forms. they are present in inscriptions, monuments, written historical accounts, and of course, intellectual traditions. all of these may serve as sources for the historian. the difference between what is historically significant and what is insignificant is made possible by the coherence between the cultural-historical aspect of formative control and the sign mode (the lingual aspect) of our human experiential world. these considerations are intimately connected to a widespread conviction, namely that communication involves a mastery of the relevant (verbal or a-verbal) signs used in the sharing of meanings. within prominent and dominant sociological orientations of the 20th century, meanings (alongside or embracing values and norms) are seen as constitutive for culture, whereas society is supposed to designate existing factual relationships and processes of human interaction. for example, when sorokin juxtaposes society and culture he considers culture to be the totality of the meanings (values and norms) possessed by the interacting persons and the totality of the vehicles [signs] which objectify, socialise, and convey [communicate] these meanings (sorokin 1962: 63). parsons (1961: 34, in calhoun 2007) also distinguishes the “social” system and the “cultural” system: the social-system focus is on the conditions involved in the interaction of actual human individuals who constitute concrete collectivities with determinate membership. the cultural-system focus, on the other hand, is on ‘patterns’ of meaning, e.g., of values, of norms, of organized knowledge and beliefs, of expressive ‘form’. while investigating the traces of communicating the ongoing struggle between individualism and universalism through generations of intellectual reflection, we will also highlight key elements of the effect it had on our understanding of the relation between individual human beings and human society. the history of this contest therefore embodies the way in which paradigms are communicated to later generations. but instead of searching for scientific revolutions (cf. kuhn 1970), this article will focus on the communication of persistent themes over generations (cf. holton 1974), in particular regarding what may be designated as individualistic and universalistic intellectual orientations. danie goosen (2015: 7), the chairperson of the fak (federasie van afrikaanse kultuurorganisasies – federation of afrikaans cultural organisations), recently 28 dfm strauss quoted n.p. van wyk louw who warned against the extremes of “liberaal” and “nasionaal” (liberal and national). implicit in these extremes is the split between individualism and universalism in the sense intended in this article. during the last decades of the apartheid era, the opposite poles of a universalistic and an individualistic orientation explored alternative strategies of persuasive political communication in asserting their respective political stances (cf. de wet 2010 for an analysis of “persuasion, the mass media and public opinion”). elements within the national party, and in particular the conservative party of andries treurnicht, advocated a universalistic “volkstaat” idea. the aim of their political communication to the electorate was to convince them not to become a victim of the liberal democratic emphasis on individual freedom; an idea according to them rooted in an individualistic overestimation of individual autonomy at the cost of communal life. that this dilemma even permeates different understandings of ubuntu is discussed keevy (2008). preliminary remarks from their inception in greek culture, theoretical attempts to understand the nature of human beings and their relation to human societies opted for two remarkable opposing perspectives which actually communicated a paradigmatic legacy continued in the millennia of reflection regarding meaningful human functioning within society. it stands to reason that all human societies are structured on the basis of multiple individuals, embracing them in diverse ways in their social interaction. the classical problem investigated in this article concerns the question how two particular (opposing) views of the relationship between individuals and societal structures were transmitted or communicated up to the present day of reflection on human society. within modern sociological literature we meet this legacy in the opposition of action and order. it is also designated as individualism (atomism) and universalism (holism), where we can describe the former as the attempt to explain society and societal institutions purely in terms of the interaction between communicating individuals, while the latter attempts to surrender all societal actions, entities and communicative processes to one all-encompassing societal totality or whole. the scope of our investigation will incorporate significant historical contours of the way in which this was communicated within the intellectual legacy of the west. we intend to show that the reception of the struggle between individualism and universalism represents a lasting paradigmatic clash which permeated the way in which theoretical contemplation was communicated to the entire history of western thought. 29 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations early greek views callicles, an early 5th century thinker who adhered to an atomistic view, admires the tyrant who from nature supposedly derives the right of the strongest. the tyrant alone is entitled to have rights – all the citizens are deprived of any rights and subject to the arbitrariness of the tyrant. in his view a switch is made from equality to the unrestrained rule by a single person. this transition does not lead to the temple of justice, but to the stronghold of the tyrant and an evil natural law through which a former slave may reveal itself as ruler – and suddenly the law of nature will shine in its splendour (von hippel 1955: 107-108). the atomism of callicles is nominalistic1 because it adheres to the arbitrariness of the powerful tyrant. essential elements of this view was communicated to the sophists, particularly protagoras, who further explored this nominalistic orientation in connection with an understanding of the nature of a human person and its place within society. his view of the human person is directed by the matter motive of greek culture, that is, by the motive of the ever-flowing formless stream of life. protagoras views human subjectivity as constantly changing, which entails that it cannot be grasped in any fixed form or measure – every individual is his or her own measure. this is known as his homo mensura rule: the human being is the measure of all things (πάντων εἶναι χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον) (a fragment 19: 34-35; diels & kranz 1960-ii: 259). aristotle refers to what protagoras said in his metaphysics: “the saying of protagoras is like the views we have mentioned; he said that man is the measure of all things” (metaph. 1062b12-13; aristotle 2001: 858). what protagoras holds in this regard should not be confused with the modern (post-renaissance) idea of human autonomy. this appears from the fact that only the polis, as bearer of the greek motive of form, measure and harmony, through education and obedience to positive laws, can furnish the human being with a cultural garb. this highlights the primacy of the form motive in the thought of protagoras. however, owing to his nominalistic-individualistic starting point, protagoras does not acknowledge any intrinsic boundaries for the competence of the state (even morality and religion are viewed as products of the existence of the state). as a result of disseminating his godless views, he was sentenced to death (von hippel 1955: 104). plato and aristotle these pre-platonic thinkers, through their writings (to us only accessible in fragments) communicated to plato the problem of individual and society who then responded in a universalistic way, for according to him the city-state (polis) is the all-encompassing whole of society. for socrates the “justness” of laws depends upon knowledge of an ontic world order2. 30 dfm strauss in his youth dialogues, plato was strongly influenced by socrates, evinced in an increasing quest to understand the place of humans within the cosmos. socrates deepened this greek quest for he wanted to know who he was: was he related to the many-headed animal tipon (the mythological symbol of the flowing stream of life without any set limit or form), or did he share in a more measured and simple divine nature (the prominence of the form motive in greek thought)? plato’s greatest dialogue, politeia (the republic), represents the apex of the first phase of his theory of ideas. the important issue for us is that he designed his ideal state in accordance with his universalistic view of the nature of human beings. in politeia he expands his anthropological conceptions by dividing the soul into three parts – the rational (logistikon), the spirited (thumoeides), and the appetitive (epithumètikon). this tripartite understanding of the soul is then transposed to the state (cf. politeia 436 ff.). it is accomplished by incorporating in his view the first three cardinal virtues distinguished by him. wisdom (sophia) is the virtue of the rational part of the soul, courage (andreia) is the virtue of the spirited part, while temperance as virtue represents (guided by the rule of the rational part) the union of the thumoeides and the epithumètikon. justice is a general virtue which embraces the former three and therefore holds for the ideal state as a whole (cf. politeia 433a-c). justice prohibits the transgression of the legal domain of the different parts of the soul, therefore it commands avoiding any legal excess – and this also applies to the three estates within the state (cf. politeia 443 ff.). for plato the nature of the human being therefore serves as the foundation for and basis of his ideal state – a view communicated to his brilliant pupil, aristotle. aristotle is famous for incorporating the platonic legacy within his view of the human being as a zoon politikon (ζῷον πολιτικόν). normally this expression is rendered as the view that the human being is a political animal. alternatively one can refer to a being within the communal life of the city-state, or to a socialpolitical being. the state as the perfection and goal of what is human essentially is also a rational-moral totality3. aristotle holds that the human being “is by nature a political animal” (politica 1253a2; aristotle 2001: 1129). aristotle’s view of reality embodies a dual teleological order. matter as principle of potentiality acquires its first form in living entities. natural entities through a form-giving activity are directed towards a goal or telos. the form of a lower level is matter for a higher level: a living entity becomes matter for animal life, while an animal becomes matter for human beings. becoming embodies a transition from potential being to actual being and this teleological order prompted aristotle to distinguish between a vegetative soul (anima vegetativa), an animal soul (anima sensitiva), and a human soul (anima rationalis)4. 31 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations the relationships between men and women, as well as those between master and slave, give rise to the household. a number of households constitute a village and when “several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence … for the sake of a good life” (aristotle 2001: 1128-1129). the power capable to take the individual from desire to the good is the state. the social drive of humans is therefore realised in a hierarchy stretching from the household, as the germcell of society, via the village community up to the polis as the highest whole preceding and encompassing all other communities as mere parts. within the polis the perfection of human life is given at once. communities aim at some good, but “the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good” (aristotle 2001: 1127). within his teleological understanding of reality aristotle concludes: “therefore the state, according to its nature, is prior to the family and the individual, since the whole must precede the part” (politica 1253a19-20; aristotle 2001: 1129). clearly, the development of greek political thought is co-constituted by transmitting and communicating the preceding and ongoing struggle with the extremes of an individualistic and a universalistic view. what was conveyed to medieval thinkers? while augustine developed his view of the city of god and the earthly city under the influence of platonism and neo-platonism, thomas aquinas continued aristotle’s view by accommodating it to the biblical perspective5. however, this attempt resulted in a double-layered view of human society. in following aristotle he first of all continues the view of the state as the perfect society (societas perfecta). but then he adds the qualification that it pertains to temporal life (nature) only, with its natural political community leading its citizens to their highest temporal perfection, namely moral goodness. finally he positions the church as a supra-natural institute of grace on top of the state, destined to ensure eternal bliss for its members (ad finem beatitudinis aeterna) (summa theologica i, ii, 91,4; cf. von hippel 1955: 313). the hierarchical structure of this new basic motive of nature and grace is strikingly captured in an often quoted statement of thomas aquinas, showing that nature was turned into the portal of grace: “grace does not abolish nature, but perfects it” (gratia naturam non tollit, sed perficit – cf. von hippel 1955: 309). the nature-grace split, resulting in this peculiar understanding of the relationship between state and church, finds its foundation in the view thomas aquinas has of human nature, of the human person as a rational-ethical being. he continued 32 dfm strauss the influential aristotelian view on matter and form communicated to him via arabic source and the roman catholic medieval church orders (where matter is potentiality and form actuality – de anima 412a10; aristotle 2001: 555). when human nature acquires its complete development within the highest natural community, the state, which is based upon the rational disposition of humans towards the good, it obtains moral perfection. thomas aquinas elaborates on this aristotelian conception by viewing the relationship between state and church analogous to that of matter and form: the state with its moral perfection serves as matter for the supranatural form of the church. dooyeweerd (2012: 131) writes: as the ‘perfect community’ of the supranatural realm, the church served as the higher ‘form’ with natural society as its ‘matter’. natural society, climaxed in the state, was related to the supranatural christian society of the church as the material body was related to the rational soul. unintentionally, then, the greco-roman conception of the totalitarian state was transferred to the roman catholic institutional church. roman catholicism heralded the church as the total, all-embracing community of christian life. in the views of thomas aquinas one finds a continuation of the aristotelian scheme of a whole and its parts because the state encompasses all the natural communities, but then it is subordinated to the overarching power (competence) of the church. the problem is that whenever a temporal issue displays a connection with the salvation of the soul, it does need interference by the church. the situation becomes truly problematic when it is realised that only the church has the divine mission to guide a person in matters pertaining to heaven. while having the competence to determine the scope of its own jurisdiction, the church actually has competence over its own competence, which is seen as typical of true sovereignty, but which in fact is an internal contradictory construction (similar to a history of history). in spite of the shift between ultimate basic motives (such as from the greek formmatter motive to the medieval nature-grace motive, or even the motive of nature (natural science ideal) and freedom (personality ideal) of modern post-renaissance thought the paradigmatic power of the opposition between individualism and universalism continued to communicate its hold on societal reflection. the shift from universalism to individualism the transition from the greek medieval era to the modern era was initiated with the rise and development of the nominalistic movement. it gave birth to the individualistic stance of william of ockham, jean of jandun, and marisilius of padua. the aristotelian-thomistic tradition did not give priority to the individual 33 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations because it proceeded, as noted above, from the nature of humans as “political animals” which could reach their moral fulfilment only within the state as the encompassing whole of society (and in the thought of thomas aquinas the church institute was superimposed upon the portal of the state, destined to assure eternal bliss for its members). it is remarkable that although the nominalistic movement of the late medieval period caused a shift from the dominant universalistic view of society to an individualistic conception, this change did not succeed in transcending the inherent totalitarian view of the aristotelian-thomistic understanding of society. when marsilius of padua and jean of jandun published their defensor pacis (in defense of peace) in 1326, they still located all legal competencies within the state. this caused von hippel to point out that when the worldly power in this way absorbs also the spiritual competencies in the modern sense, it becomes a total state, that is to say, the political sphere becomes the sole power over all areas of life6. yet it caused the disintegration of the medieval hierarchical universalistic scheme of a whole with its dependent parts, which is now replaced by the ideal of an autonomous (rational-ethical) individual. this transition culminates in the rise of theories of the (hypothetical) social contract and the idea of popular sovereignty, based upon the new motive of logical creation7. in the development of modern philosophy, human rationality understandably assumes a central position. the modern rationalistic orientation, commencing with descartes, reached its apex in the thought of immanuel kant who elevates human understanding to the level of the a priori formal law-giver of nature8. locke anticipates this view in his own way where he equates reason with the law of nature: “the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law …” (locke 1966: 119). moreover, kant’s elevation of human understanding is embedded in the ultimate tension between nature (causality) and freedom which resulted in his acceptance of two separate lawgivers, understanding and reason. he declares that it is impossible to bridge the large gap between the domains of nature and freedom, between appearances and what is supra-sensory in the subject9. but whereas kant still continues with the individualistic contract theory, the freedom idealism that was about to emerge also embodied two historically significant shifts in respect of the appreciation of the individual and society. in spite of an undeniable continuity present in the paradigmatic orientations of individualism and universalism communicated through subsequent intellectual legacies, the effect of the ultimate basic motives (form-matter – nature-grace and nature-freedom) furnished the struggle between these two opposing paradigms with different accents. 34 dfm strauss from rationalistic individualism to irrationalistic universalism the 18th century was dominated by conceptual rationalism and on this basis it was permeated by the ideal of progress. early romanticism transformed this epistemic ideal of enlightenment by exploring the idea of a genius, such as napoleon, whose uniqueness cannot be subjected to the same yardstick as the everyday person. this switch from universality to what is individual and unique transformed the previous rationalistic and individualistic orientation into an irrationalistic individualism which does not accept any universal norms. only what is rooted in the individual as a law unto itself is acceptable. law thus became a mere reflex of the unique subjectivity of the individual. this unbridled irrationalism entailed anarchistic consequences, such as are evident in friedrich von schlegel’s romance lucinde (1799), in which he praises spontaneous “free love” apart from the civil legal bond of marriage, merely reflecting the harmonious union of the sensuous nature and spiritual freedom of man and woman. these implications had to be curtailed. to escape from these unfortunate consequences yet another turn emerged – the individual is now embedded within the encompassing whole of a supra-individual folk community with its own “volksgeist” or “nationalgeist” (national spirit). already in 1776 jacob bülau saw the volksgeist as the totality of all the particular characteristics distinguishing one volk from another one. in the following year johann gottfried herder appreciated every volk as its own original image (urbild; archetype). in his fragments on recent german literature (1767-1768) he states that the peoples (volken) of germany did not allow themselves to lose their nobility through a fusion with other peoples, for it is a unique, unadulterated and original nation which is its own urbild. as an equivalent for volksgeist, herder frequently employs the term “nationalgeist” (national spirit) as well as the expression “seele des volks” (the soul of a people) (cf. kluckhohn 1934: 27). in the seventh of his famous “reden an die deutsche nation” (addresses to the german nation), johann gottlieb fichte emphatically writes: “in the earlier addresses it has been shown and in the history it demonstrated that the basic features of the germans as urvolk as such grant them the right to call themselves the people par excellence, in opposition to other fragmented tribes, as the word deutsch (german) in the authentic meaning of the word, also captures what has just been said”10. in his writing on “elemente der staatskunst” (elements on the art of politics) adam müller (1931; 1936) probes a definition of volk which practically embraces society in its totality, ultimately focused on the core of the state, namely the “regent-family” (ruling family) (kluckhohn 1934: 77-78). müller no longer accepts a natural condition preceding the civil legal order and he cannot imagine human existence outside the family and the state: “a human being cannot be 35 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations contemplated outside the state.”11 yet in a series of lectures presented in berlin in 1810, müller looks for the conditions underlying a truly prussian “nationalgeistes” (national spirit). he finds them in the conservation, purification and revival of the old nobility which forms the condition for the structuration of an estateconstitution (ständischen verfassung) within the prussian monarchy12. the fusion of the idea of the volk with that of the state soon explicitly manifested itself in its totalitarian character in the thought of georg wilhelm friedrich hegel. he identifies the volk with the state which is the geist (spirit) in its substantial rationality and immediate reality and therefore the absolute power on earth (“daher die absolute macht auf erden”); for this reason a state displays towards other states sovereign independence13. misplaced use of the term ‘organic’ during these developments the term “organic” acquired a particular emphasis within this new ideology of community. replacing the abstract individualism of enlightenment, this ideology now opts for the concrete communal connection of people deriving their individual character from the equally individual nature of the volk. what do exist are germans, frenchmen, englishmen, dutchmen, but not the indistinguishable individuals of humanistic natural law (contract theory) and that of the french revolution. the spirit of a people not only determines its individuality but also serves as the source of that which ensures its difference from other peoples – each transpersonal volk is still – in an irrationalistic fashion – a law unto itself. this autonomous freedom impregnates its own unique character upon law, art, economics, social practices, moral standards, and even on culture as such. the wholly individual character or spirit of a people is also the free and autonomous source of its culture, state, legal system, art, social customs, and moral standards. in other words, moral rules and positive laws valid for societal relationships are the autonomous products of the spirit of an individual people and therefore cannot serve as the normative standards for other peoples possessing a different individual character or disposition. dooyeweerd (2012: 179-180) provides an apt summary of this new (universalistic) ideology of community: a new ideology of community was the immediate result of this change. romanticism replaced the gospel of the autonomous and nondescript individual with the gospel of the autonomous and individual community. both romanticism and all of post-kantian ‘freedom idealism’ clung to the idea of a ‘community of humankind’ of which all other communities are individual parts. this idea constituted romanticism’s ‘idea of humanity’ or, in goethe’s words, respect for whatever ‘bears the human 36 dfm strauss countenance’ (was menschenantlitz trägt). but the community of humankind remained an eternal, supratemporal ideal which manifests itself in temporal society only in individual, national communities. in greek and medieval philosophy, society derived its characteristics from human nature, from the rational-moral nature of humans obtaining their (form-)perfection in the state or the church as societas perfecta (perfect society), that is, to which the individual belongs as part of a larger whole14. the radical shift to modernity, built upon the disintegrating effects of modern nominalism, theoretically eliminated these traditional hierarchical societal structures by dissolving them into the actions of supposedly autonomous individuals. eventually the idea of popular sovereignty assumed a universalistic twist, particularly in the thought of rousseau. in his thought, autonomous individuals enter into the social contract, but through the contract a collective moral body emerges, embracing every individual as an inseparable part of this new whole, the general will15. soon this idea of an encompassing whole took on an organological shape manifesting itself in an overemphasis of the underlying organic nature of a people as a cultural community – and we have noted that the idea of a national spirit led to an identification of volk and state. as the absolute power on earth (hegel) the state with its communal spirit determines the nature of individuals who are mere parts of this encompassing organic whole. it is still striking how effective the opposition between universalism and individualism is communicated in spite of the varying contexts within which it surfaced. this is also confirmed by the developments of the 19th century. the resurfacing of individualism and universalism during the 19th century yet, alongside these universalistic views, the late 18th and early 19th centuries continue to witness alternative individualistic theories of society. jeremy bentham, for example, explored an atomistic view of human nature by emphasizing the central position of pleasure and pain in human life: “nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. it is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. on the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. they govern us in all we do” (bentham 1988: 1). this approach led to his famous utilistic (utilitarian) maxim: the greatest happiness of the greatest number (cf. bentham 1776). a clear split between an individualistic and a universalistic approach is found in the opposing views of ferdinand lassalle and karl marx. lassalle’s thought is still embedded in post-kantian freedom idealism. in his two-volume work (1861), 37 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations das system der erworbenen rechte (system of acquired rights), he proceeds from the transpersonal mode of thinking of german philosophy to the historical school of law founded by von savigny. faithful to this historicistic orientation, lassalle views law as the communal consciousness of the entire nation (volk): “the ‘volksgeest’ and the general spirit control everything” (explained by quack 1922: 233; also see the entire work of schirokauer 1912). where lassalle pursued the national (volks-) ideal, marx totally rejected it because he turned away from the universalistic community ideology by making an appeal to the individual workers from all nationalities to unite. marx holds that humans, within the societal production process, are determined by specific, necessary production relationships that are independent of their will and which reflect a particular level of development of their material productive forces. the totality of the production relationships form the economic structure of society, which is the real basis upon which a juridical and political superstructure (überbau) is elevated. it conforms to specific societal forms of consciousness. the mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual process of life as such (marx 1859 – vorwort)16. it is therefore not surprising that marx writes the following in 1859 in the foreword of his critique of political economy: “it is not the consciousness of the human being which determines its being, but to the contrary it is its societal being that determines its consciousness” (marx 1859 – vorwort)17. while august comte maintained the idea of an organic whole in his new science of sociology, his follower, herbert spencer, defends an individualistic orientation, showing that an organicistic mode of thinking could be either universalistic or individualistic. the totalitarian implications of comte’s universalistic organicism understandably are rejected by spencer who opts for an atomistic emphasis. he explains his view as follows: “its aim is not the increase of authoritative control over citizens, but the decrease of it. a more pronounced individualism, instead of a more pronounced nationalism, is its ideal” (spencer 1968: 22). mediated by ferdinand tönnies’s work, gemeinschaft und gesellschaft (1887), 20th century sociology inherited the dividing forces of individualistic and universalistic views of society, transmitted to sociologists in terms of the opposition of action and order. in the action orientation the nature of being individual is decisive and in the order perspective the nature of one or another societal whole, embracing all individuals as mere parts, assumes the determining role (cf. o’neill 1973). within the field of political theory we merely mention that the political philosophy of john rawls exhibits the influence of conflicting views of society. on the one hand, he wants to maintain continuity with early modern atomistic (individualistic) theories of the social contract, evident in his construction of an a-historical, hypothetical “original position” covered by a “veil 38 dfm strauss of ignorance”. on the other hand, he emphasises the (presupposed) basic structure of society as well as society as a social system. here rawls opts for a holistic (or universalistic) view. the effect of this ambiguity is that his understanding of state and society often exchange roles, for frequently society itself is depicted as being democratic. this levelling of structural differences results in the portrayal of citizenship as participating in society and no longer merely within the state18. the widespread contemporary practice of referring to democratic societies is therefore also frequently found in rawls’s thought19. the underlying notion of the social system, understood in terms of the wholeparts relation, dictates an encompassing societal assignment of “rights and duties within the basic institutions of society”. it is also consistent with an embracing understanding of citizenship exceeding the boundaries of the political community as such, for without hesitation rawls speaks of citizenship within the basic structure of society: “this fundamental political relation of citizenship has two special features: first, it is a relation of citizens within the basic structure of society, a structure we enter only by birth and exit by death; and second, it is a relation of free and equal citizens who exercise ultimate political power as a collective body” (rawls 2001: 577). the conception of the basic structure of society increasingly turns out to be an encompassing whole embracing its (subordinate) parts, manifest in its “political and social institutions”. seen from this vantage point, it should not be surprising that subordinate roles are assigned to specific institutions by the basic structure of society. for example, rawls sets out to investigate “a particular political conception of justice” by “looking at the role that it assigns to the family in the basic structure of society” (rawls 2001: 595). what is of particular significance here is that a “political conception of justice” assigns a role to the family in the basic structure. rawls also (on the same page) straightforwardly asserts that the “family is part of the basic structure”. in our preceding analysis we consistently highlighted how the opposition of individualism and universalism was communicated to subsequent intellectual articulations of these two persistent paradigms. that these paradigms actually form an element of the quest for a basic denominator in terms of which reality could be understood was left out of the picture because it will require a different article to show how the tension present in these two theoretical orientations could be transcended20. such an article should benefit from the insight obtained in the current analysis, namely that human nature does not determine societal structures, just as little as one or another societal entity (the volk, state or church) embraces individuals or the other societal collectivities and communities as integral parts. the one important insight gained from the two persistent themes communicated to us from greek antiquity, namely individualism and universalism, is that no individual person is ever fully embraced by any societal entity. a human being may take on multiple social roles without ever being absorbed by any one of them. 39 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations endnotes 1 nominalism acknowledges universality within the human intellect but denies it outside the mind. 2 his life ended in a tragic way. he was accused of misleading the youth and as a result had to drink the poison goblet. when he was given the opportunity to escape, he did not want to take it in order to show that he was the best citizen of the athenian democracy. at the same time he also wanted to show how evil the athenian democracy had become – so bad that they did not even have a place for their best citizen. 3 ‘der staat als die erfüllung und das ziel des menschlichen ist seinem wesen nach auch ein vernünftig-moralisches gesamt’ (see von hippel 1955: 149). 4 through the observation of virtue, feelings of desire and aversion dominate the lower part of humans. the sum total of virtue is given in justice as directed towards other persons. in a more restricted sense, justice is directed as those goods that are destined to satisfy human needs (such as life, property and honour). 5 in passing it should be pointed out that jellinek remarks that after constantine both the roman empire and the byzantine empire did not acknowledge an independent domain for the individual. to this he adds something else, namely that there is no period in the history of the west where the individual suffered more severely from oppression than during this era: “niemals hat es in der geschichte der abendländischen völker eine epoche gegeben, in welcher das individuum mehr zerdrückt worden wäre als in dieser” (jellinek 1966: 316). 6 “wie aber so der weltliche gewalt auch die geistliche befugnisse zuwachsen, wird sie im modernen sinne zum totalen staat, d.h. der politische bereich erlangt die allzuständichkeit über alle lebensgebiete” (von hippel 1955: 363). 7 in his work de corpore thomas hobbes portrays a thought experiment in which reality is theoretically broken down into a heap of chaos before it is rationally reconstructed from its simplest elements, which for hobbes is found in the concept of a “moving body”. 8 compare the following two statements of kant: “categories are concepts which prescribe laws a priori to appearances, and therefore to nature, the sum of all appearances” (1787-b: 163); “understanding creates its laws (a priori) not out of nature, but prescribes them to nature” (1783, ii:320; §36). 9 “der verstand ist a priori gesetzgebend für die natur als objekt der sinne, zu einem theoretischen erkenntnis derselben in einer möglichen erfahrung. die vernunft ist a priori gesetzgebend für die freiheit und ihre eigene kausalität , als das übersinnliche in dem subjekte, zu einem unbedingt-praktischen erkenntnis. das gebiet des naturbegriffs, unter der einen, und das des freiheitsbegriffs, unter der anderen gesetzgebung, sind gegen allen wechselseitigen einfluß, den sie für sich (ein jedes nach seinen grungesetzen) auf einander haben könnten, durch die große kluft, welche 40 dfm strauss das übersinnliche von den erscheinungen trennt, gänzlich abgesondert” (kant 1790: liii-liv; 1968: 270-271). 10 “es sind in den vorigen reden angegeben und in der geschichte nachgewiesen die grundzüge der deutschen, als eines urvolks und als eines solchen, das das recht hat, sich das volk schlechtweg im gegensätze mit anderen von ihm abgerissenen stämmen zu nennen, wie den auch das wort deutsch in seiner eigentlichen wordbedeutung das soeben gesagte bezeichnet” (fichte 1908: 123). 11 “der mensch ist nicht zu denken auszerhalb des staats” (müller 1931: 48 – original spelling). he also states: “all citizens of a state ought to be, as i have shown, representatives of the idea of the whole or of the immortal communal being”; [‘alle bürger eines staates sollen, wie ich gezeigt habe, repräsentanten der idee des ganzen oder des unsterbliches gemeinwesen sein’ (müller 1936: 177). kosiek quotes ludwig von jahn saying that all the traditional hallmarks of a volk (such as state membership, descent, language) do not constitute a volk unless the spirit is added [‘wenn die seele dazu kommt’] (kosiek 1975: 52). 12 “also ist die konservation, reinigung und wiederbelebung des alten adels die bedingung zum errichten einer ständischen verfassung in der preußischen monarchie und die errichtung einer wahren ständischen verfassung wieder die bedingung eines wahren preußischen nationalgeistes” (quoted by strobel 2014). 13 “das volk als staat ist der geist in seiner substantiellen vernünftigkeit und unmittelbaren wirklichkeit, daher die absolute macht auf erden; ein staat ist folglich gegen den andern in souveräner selbstständigkeit” (hegel 1821, § 331; hegel 1970: 486). 14 karl marx aptly describes this situation: “the more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole” (marx 1973: 84). 15 in rousseau’s thought the transition from individualism to universalism took place as soon as the contractual agreement is reached, for now he commences with a new universalistic conception which only accepts a whole fully encompassing the former individuals as indivisible parts (‘partie indivisible du tout’) of this new totality (the volonté générale – the general will – rousseau 1975: 244). 16 in der gesellschaftlichen produktion ihres lebens gehen die menschen bestimmte, notwendige, von ihrem willen unabhängige verhältnisse ein, produktionsverhältnisse, die einer bestimmten entwicklungsstufe ihrer materiellen produktivkräfte entsprechen. die gesamtheit dieser produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische struktur der gesellschaft, die reale basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer überbau erhebt und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche bewußtseinsformen entsprechen. die produktionsweise des materiellen lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen lebensprozeß überhaupt. 17 “es ist nicht das bewußtsein der menschen, das ihr sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches sein, das ihr bewußtsein bestimmt” (marx 1859 – vorwort). 41 communicating paradigmatic intellectual orientations 18 rawls (1996: 30) refers to “a democratic society of free and equal citizens”. he remarks: “… we must distinguish between particular agreements made and associations formed within this structure, and the initial agreement and membership in society as a citizen” (rawls 1996: 275). in his work on the law of peoples, rawls also speaks of “citizens of liberal societies” (rawls 2002: 58). 19 in political liberalism, this expression is found on pages: 10, 13, 15, 24-25, 30, 33, 36, 38, 40-43, 61, 65, 70, 79, 90, 95, 134, 136, 154, 175, 177, 198, 205-206, 214, 221, 223, 243, 292, 303, 307, 320, 335, 344, 346, 369, 376, 387, 390, 414, 418, 424, 432 (see also rawls 1999: 249, 280, 320, 326, 335). 20 what were historically communicated are two one-sided views that are even characterised by jellinek as the expression of two opposing life and world views – “the individualistic-atomistic and the collectivistic-universalistic” (jellinek 1966: 17). 42 dfm strauss references aristotle. 2001. the basic works of aristotle. edited by richard mckeon with an introduction by c.d.c. reeve. 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(1809). leipzig: kröner. müller, a.h. 1936 (reprint). die elemente der staatskunst. sechsunddreißig vorlesungen, unabridged edition. leipzig: j.w. hendel verlag. o’neill, j. 1973. modes of individualism and collectivism. london: heinemann. quack, h.p.g. 1922. de socialisten, personen en stelsels. amsterdam: van kampen. rawls, j. 1996. political liberalism. (revised edition). cambridge, ma: harvard university press. rawls, j. 1999. a theory of justice. 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[online]. available at: <http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=11429> [accessed on 13 march 2014]. tönnies, f. 1887. gemeinschaft und gesellschaft. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buckgesellschaft (1972). an english translation of this work appeared as: tönnies, f. 1957. community and society, harper & row, translated and edited by c.p. loomis, new york (a translation of tönnies 1887/1972). von hippel, e. 1955. geschichte der staatsphilosophie. volume i. meisenheim am glan: verlag anton hein. von schlegel, fr., edited by peter firchow, 1971. friedrich von schlegel’s lucinde and the fragments. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. (the first edition of lucinde appeared in 1799). before 1814 he was known as karl wilhelm friedrich schlegel. 207 perception is the fairest of them all: online fan perception of once upon a time’s evil queen abstract in the brothers grimm 1812 folklore version of the snow white story, the evil queen is the main antagonist in the narrative. however, over time, as methods of storytelling have advanced, the evil queen has undergone numerous transformations in the manner in which she is portrayed and the medium through which her story is presented. several scholars have undertaken the study of these changing narrative portrayals, from folklore to fairy tale, of which zipes (1981; 2006) is arguably the most prominent. this article investigates how the evil queen’s character evolution and transformation has altered fan perception. jenkins’ theory of participatory culture serves as the theoretical basis for this analysis. several online sources, including the once upon a time fan blog, and the spoiler tv plus page on spoilertv.com, have been selected for analysis, as these provide a satisfactory sample of fans’ perception across a varied spectrum of opinion. at the hand of six themes ranging from “dislike” to “acceptance”, the article argues that the developing discourse and narrative of the character as depicted in the once upon a time television series (2011) played a role in the evolution of fans’ perception of the character of the evil queen. keywords: online fan perception; folklore; fairy tales; participatory culture; popular media; media texts; discourse; narrative; online communication introduction whether they are known as oral tradition, stories, folklore or fairy tales, creations or narrative expressions of fictional and sometimes fantastical creatures and characters have formed a distinctive part of adolescent impression in certain areas of the world for centuries. in 1812, the brothers jacob and wilhelm grimm published a recorded folklore narrative of a young princess named snow white and her evil stepmother, the queen. this folklore, presented by the brothers grimm, was first recorded in their collection of traditional german oral narratives kinderund hausmärchen, which translates to children’s and household tales (zipes 2014). natalie le clue postgraduate student, department of media and communication, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth natalie.leclue@ mandela.ac.za dr janelle vermaak department of media and communication, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth janelle.vermaak@mandela.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.14 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 207-219 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) spoilertv.com mailto:natalie.leclue@mandela.ac.za mailto:natalie.leclue@mandela.ac.za mailto:janelle.vermaak@mandela.ac.za mailto:janelle.vermaak@mandela.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.14 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.14 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.14 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 208 le clue & vermaak more than a century later, in 1937, the walt disney company adapted the narrative to depict a variation of the grimms’ version and released snow white and the seven dwarfs (cottrell et al. 1937). through the decades that followed this depiction, the character of the evil queen has been portrayed and presented in a plethora of narrative structures and through many different media. it may be argued that fairy tales in the modern context evoke images of damsels in distress being rescued from an evil villain by a dashing prince. more often than not, the villain is reviled and disliked for evil deeds while the damsel and her prince, arguably, become the favoured characters. it may be further argued that throughout much of the history of fairy tale literature, the villain, specifically the evil queen, has been presented as a one-dimensional character without substance. therefore, the audience lacks the capacity to identify with, and potentially understand, the character. consequently, most fans’ or viewers’ perception of the villain is negative. however, in 2011, the depiction of the evil queen was transformed with the premiere of the television series once upon a time on the american broadcasting company (abc) network. creators adam horowitz and edwards kitsis ushered in a new interpretation of fairy tale narratives, specifically with regard to the evil queen character. it is through this specific depiction of the character that this article investigates the ways in which fans perceive this character in this setting and whether the subjective fan/viewer opinion and perception of the character has been altered in an online setting. ultimately, the intention is to investigate whether the subjective fan opinion and perception of the evil queen character has been altered in an online setting. definition of fandom in order to investigate the changing perception of the character it is important to understand the phenomenon of fandom. in the 1992 publication the adoring audience, fan culture and popular media, a fan is defined as “the most visible and identifiable of audiences” and that “only a fan can appreciate the depth of feeling, the gratifications, the importance for coping with everyday life that fandom represents” (lewis 1992). jenson (1992) defines fans as those that “display interest, affection and attachment, especially for figures in, or aspects of, their chosen field”. despite the fact that this definition of a fan was contributed in 1992, it arguably remains an acceptable definition in the 21st century. a decade later, hills (2002) defined a fan as: somebody who is obsessed with a particular star, celebrity, film, tv programme, band; somebody who can produce reams of information on their object of fandom, and can quote their favoured lines or lyrics, chapter and verse. fans are often highly articulate. fans interpret media texts in a variety of interesting ways and perhaps unexpected ways. and fans participate in communal activities they are not ‘socially atomised’ or isolated viewers/readers. the communal activities that hills refers to have, arguably, expanded since 2002, with the advent of social media platforms such as facebook, twitter and youtube. through these platforms, fans are now able to engage with each other in real time and readily share their opinions and/or perceptions of their chosen object with like-minded online 209 perception is the fairest of them all users. in addition, fans/viewers identify and attach themselves to specific fandoms by creating or adopting the fandom names. in the case of once upon a time, fans/ viewers of this fandom are identified as “oncers” while fans of the evil queen are more specifically known as “evil regals”. it may be argued that social media platforms have given rise to, or expanded, what jenkins et al. (2016) define as participatory culture: a participatory culture is one which embraces the values of diversity and democracy through every aspect of our interactions with each other – one which assumes that we are capable of making decisions, collectively and individually, and that we should have the capacity to express ourselves through a broad range of different forms and practices. entry to online participatory culture-based communities is generally without barriers and often encourages participation and expression online. in addition, observation of online communities and comment threads further shows that these communities, set around social media platforms, often transcend racial, age and geographical boundaries. jenkins et al. (2016) hold that “the persistence of interactions, the spreadability of media, and the searchability of content – makes it easier to see participatory culture”. introduction of the evil queen in 1812 the brothers grimm presented the evil queen character in the story titled little snow white. however, ness (2015) suggests that while the grimms popularised the snow white story for english audiences, the original tale was already well-known in some european countries. ness (2015) further asserts that the brothers grimm’s recording of snow white’s story was based loosely on an interpretation told in germany and italy. she states that “[i]n some retellings [...] snow white is the youngest of three sisters; in another version, the mirror is a small magical dog. and in many versions, snow white is aided not by dwarves, but by robbers” (ibid.). despite the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to prove the oral origins of fairy tales, scholars such as zipes support the view that these stories were spread through oral means by maintaining that people began telling stories as soon as they developed the ability to speak (zipes 2012). nevertheless, it is the brothers grimm who are considered and recognised as the first popular folklore scribes. however, the grimms did not simply record stories as they originally heard or read them; instead the brothers attempted to adapt the language and register of the stories to something that all members of society could understand and relate to, not just those with extensive vocabularies. it may be argued that “[t]he grimms were among the first to try to set such stories down in their supposedly ‘pure’ form, given no false shine by literary varnish” (mondschein 2011). the grimms’ märchen, or stories, quickly gained recognition after their publication in 1812. several versions were released in english and were also presented in different forms. the grimms’ stories were some of the first to be adapted for the screen. in 1899, a french version of cinderella was filmed and in 1937 walt disney released snow white and the seven dwarfs (ibid.). while the brothers grimm popularised the snow white narrative for english audiences, it was disney who first adapted the narrative to film. gomery and pafort-overduin 210 le clue & vermaak (2011) write that the feature-length film was the first to contain full animation and was made in technicolor. however, despite this ground-breaking advancement in storytelling, some scholars are of the opinion that disney’s version of the snow white story is a great disservice to the grimms’ version. in this “diluted” and “disneyfied” rendition of the story, the audience experiences the snow white character as a delicate, brunette princess living in the woods where she converses with the animals of the forest (cottrell et al. 1937). stringham (2011) notes that disney “did not present a faithful representation of the grimms’ tale. rather he presented a story which he felt would be more successful as an animated movie [...] disney’s portrayal loses most of the key elements which make this such an enchanting story.” after the 1812 version, the grimms made several adaptations to the snow white story, which culminated in a final publication in 1857. along with several other stories in their collection, the narrative of snow white was never aimed at a younger audience. tatar (1987) states that “[f]olklorists are quick to point out that fairy tales were never really meant for children’s ears alone. [they were] originally told at fireside gatherings or in spinning circles by adults to adult audiences.” tatar’s statement is underlined by the violent discourse of the brothers grimm’s 1812 story sneewittchen, or snow white, as it is known in english. the main antagonist in the story, the queen, is unable to find peace once the mirror declares snow white “a thousand times fairer” than her. overcome by her need to be the fairest of all, she orders a huntsman to stab snow white to death and to return with her liver and lungs as proof that she is dead. the huntsman does not kill snow white and instead presents the queen with the lungs and liver of a boar. the next part of grimms’ version is one that paints a vivid and macabre picture for the reader as the queen proceeds to cook, salt, and eat what she believes to be snow white’s lungs and liver. the main antagonist in the story is simply referred to as “the queen”, with no indication or direct phrasing of her as evil. instead, in the initial part of the narrative, the queen is referred to as “beautiful”. as snow white grows up and reaches the age of seven she surpasses the queen’s beauty and, at this point, the queen is described as becoming envious and hateful of snow white. in this version, there is no reference to the use of magic or magical objects. magic is not mentioned when the queen disguises herself to gain snow white’s trust later in the narrative, nor when the queen makes a poisoned apple. one of the most striking details of this story is that there are two instances that provide specific indications that the queen is snow white’s biological mother. there is no mention of her mother dying after snow white is born or of her father marrying someone else who would become snow white’s stepmother. it may thus be argued that the queen, who becomes envious of her beauty and who tries to kill snow white, is her biological mother. the second instance where the queen is referred to as snow white’s mother is evident in the discourse towards the end of the narrative. as her wedding to the prince is planned, it is mentioned that snow white’s “godless mother” is also invited to the festivities. this is a clear reference to the queen being snow white’s mother. 211 perception is the fairest of them all the grimms’ 1812 children’s and household tales was not the only publication released by the brothers during their lifetime. zipes (2006) writes that between 1812 and 1857 the brothers published seven large editions, which contained 211 stories. it is the final edition, published in 1857, that is considered “the standard if not definitive edition” (zipes 2014). the 1857 version of little snow white, as translated by margaret hunt, has slight grammatical differences to the original. however, the central message of the narrative remains unchanged. it is in the second paragraph where the first major adaptation is noted: the paragraph starts with the queen giving birth to a daughter, who was as white as snow, and as red as blood, and her hair was as black as ebony; and she was therefore called little snow white. and when the child was born, the queen died (grimm & grimm 1857). the story continues to read that the king remarries in a year to a beautiful but proud woman who becomes snow white’s stepmother. in the original story, published in 1812, the queen does not die and attempts to murder her daughter. zipes (2014) notes that the brothers grimm likely made the alteration from mother to stepmother because they “held motherhood sacred”. in an interview with the guardian, zipes surmises that the changes made by the brothers grimm were a result of “reflecting sociologically a condition that existed during their lifetime” (flood 2014). zipes (2014) further details that during the brothers grimm’s lifetime, many women died as a result of childbirth and that it was not uncommon for the father to remarry a young woman who would be close in age to his oldest daughter. in the original story the brothers grimm did not attach any negative element to the queen’s beauty. the reader is told that the queen was the most beautiful woman in the land and that she was very proud of her beauty. further, she owns a mirror, in front of which she stands in the mornings to confirm her great beauty. however, in the adapted version of the story, the brothers grimm provide some traits of the queen that could be considered undesirable. she is described as “haughty” and that “she could not bear that anyone else should surpass her in beauty” which, it may be argued, made her superficial and conceited (grimm & grimm 1857). this could have served to form a specifically negative perception of the character. after the queen utters the famous line of “[m]irror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?”, she learns that snow white is the fairest in all the land. in the later adaptation the queen “turned yellow and green with envy [...] whenever she looked at snow white, her heart heaved in her breast, she hated the girl so much” (grimm & grimm 1857). in the 1812 version of the narrative “she became pale with envy, and from that hour on, she hated snow-white”. what is intriguing to note is that the queen’s hatred of snow white is instantaneously established in both narratives at the moment she learns that her beauty has been surpassed. however, in the later version of the narrative, as illustrated in the quote above, the queen’s hatred primarily comes to the fore, at least physically, only when she looks at snow white. this is in contrast to a more pervasive hatred in the earlier version. 212 le clue & vermaak the queen’s order for the huntsman to kill snow white remains unchanged, but in the later adaptation of the narrative she requests the girl’s heart as a token (grimm & grimm 1857) instead of her lungs and liver as proof that he had killed her. in this section of the discourse, the queen is also referred to as wicked, which suggests a darker aspect to her personality than mere jealously. in both versions, the huntsman allows snow white to escape before felling a boar that crosses his path. in the 1812 version he returns with the lungs and liver of the boar, which the queen cooks, salts and eats, believing them to be the lungs and liver of her daughter, snow white. however, in the final 1857 publication of the story, the huntsman cuts out the heart of a young boar and presents it to the queen as belonging to snow white. in this version, the cook prepares the heart with salt before the queen eats it (grimm & grimm 1857). these specific adaptations may appear to be minor differences and they do not necessarily have an impact on the overall narrative. however, the image created and the perception in the reader’s mind is altered. the picture that the brothers grimm paint in the 1857 version (of the queen eating snow white’s heart) remains a gruesome one, but it is less grisly than the image of a gleefully victorious queen standing over a boiling pot of lungs and liver, to which she adds a dash of salt to improve the flavour of her meal; of what she believes to be her daughter’s internal organs. in both versions, the queen learns that the huntsman has deceived her when the mirror informs her that snow white is the still fairest and therefore still alive. similarly, in both the 1812 and 1857 versions, the queen disguises herself as an old peddler and travels to where snow white is living with the seven dwarfs. she attempts to sell her a lace bodice and convinces snow white to let her lace up the bodice. the queen tightens it to the point where snow white loses her breath and falls down as if she were dead (grimm & grimm 1857). this is the queen’s second attempt at ending snow white’s life, but the first time that she takes matters into her own hands. again, the queen believes she has been successful and returns to the mirror with the expectation that it will declare her as the fairest of all but she is told that snow white is alive and well. at this point, the queen experiences the sensation of fear: “when she heard that, all her blood rushed to her heart with fear” (grimm & grimm 1857). it may be argued that the fact that the queen experiences fear suggests that she is experiencing some doubt as to whether she will be able to defeat snow white. although slight, it allows for the first glimpse into the queen’s psyche, in that it shows the reader a different side to a character that, up until this point, has been portrayed as categorically resolute in reaching her goal. disney’s evil queen in 1937 disney released snow white and the seven dwarfs (cottrell et al. 1937). although the brothers grimm made several adaptations to the story throughout their various publications, as evidenced above, by the time disney released its 1937 version of the snow white narrative, it had undergone additional changes, some of which were more fundamental than others. 213 perception is the fairest of them all before the release of snow white and the seven dwarfs (1937) disney had already established itself with a specific tradition of the type of entertainment it produced. inge (2004) maintains that the snow white and the seven dwarfs film needed to adhere to “disney studio’s tradition for safe, family entertainment that amused and edified and that demonstrated the creative knack for being at the forefront of new techniques and challenges in film animation”. one of the biggest changes disney made to the brothers grimm version is evident before the story begins. after the credits, the opening scene of the film reveals a book that encompasses the narrative of snow white and the seven dwarfs. the story starts by providing the context of the relationship between snow white and the queen. it reads: “once upon a time there lived a lovely little princess named snow white. her vain and wicked stepmother the queen feared that someday snow white’s beauty would surpass her own. so she dressed the little princess in rags and forced her to work as a scullery maid” (cottrell et al. 1937). by starting his adaptation of the story with the relationship between the queen and snow white, disney omitted the story of snow white’s biological mother, her birth, the king and his re-marriage to her stepmother. in doing so, disney’s film version of snow white lacks a proper start to the narrative, as it does not provide a contextual basis for snow white’s life, nor for how the queen came to be her stepmother. the book in the opening scene of the film turns to a second page, which directly introduces the element of magic into the story: “each day the vain queen consulted her magic mirror” (cottrell et al. 1937). this is a development of the brothers grimm 1857 version that introduced the element of witchcraft. as the film progresses to its first actual scene, the queen is shown addressing the magic mirror. the first line she says is, “slave in the magic mirror” (ibid.), which further establishes the notion that all are subservient to her; thereby informing the potential for a negative perception of the character. change in perception of the evil queen in contemporary storytelling, disney’s main motivation for invoking changes remains relevant, as target audiences are an important part of television and film today. with specific reference to television, bryant and oliver (2009) write that “[e]ven with the expansion of cable and satellite channels serving ever narrower niche audiences, most television programs are by commercial necessity designed to be watched by large and heterogeneous audiences”. in disney’s version of snow white, the evil queen is the main antagonist in the film. despite the integral role that the character plays in the story, she may be seen as a fairly one-dimensional villain due to her lack of a backstory. it may be argued that disney’s depiction of the evil queen received very little development, especially pertaining to her motivations; hence, she may be considered a character that is superficial and lacking depth. propp’s (1928, in the narratologist 2014) character theory suggests that a narrative is composed of a specific structure in which types of characters are developed throughout the narrative. the evil queen would be characterised, according 214 le clue & vermaak to propp’s theory, only as the villain, and therefore perceived only as evil. on the other hand, the adaptation of the character in the once upon a time (2011) narrative offers further treatment of the character, and this is portrayed and presented in such a manner that more than one of propp’s seven characters can be identified in her. the manner in which the narratives of contemporary television series and films are developed for contemporary audiences could be seen as further motivation for the adaptation and transformation of the character. mittel (2006) argues that “a new form of entertainment television has emerged over the past two decades […t]his model of television storytelling is distinct for its use of narrative complexity as an alternative to the conventional episodic and serial forms.” the use of narrative complexity is not confined to contemporary media and its audience, but has been a hallmark of fairy tales for some time. in direct reference to fairy tales, zipes (2006) explains that “with each retelling the tale touches on basic instincts and moral codes and also adapts itself to the environment in which it is produced”. as result of the more complex style of television storytelling, the character of the evil queen has been transformed to fit with the “new form of entertainment” (mittel 2006). in the 2011 series once upon a time’s version of the evil queen has lent itself to a change of insight that can be seen in fan perceptions of the character. throughout its time on air, once upon a time (2011) has garnered a considerable following and fan base, which has prompted the creation of several online fora and forum threads dedicated to the series and all topics related to it. while the popularity of online fora is not a new phenomenon in the 21st century, it provides insight into the fan/viewers’ perception, and the change of this perception, of the character of the evil queen. methodology and analysis in order to obtain as clear an understanding as possible about the above-mentioned change of perception, several online sources have been selected for analysis. specifically, the once upon a time fan blog, the once upon a time comments thread on the fan forum website, as well as comments from the spoiler tv plus page on spoilertv.com have been selected for analysis. the motivation for the selection of these specific sources stemmed from the fact that they may be said to adequately represent the fans/viewers’ perception across a varied spectrum, ranging from dislike, to neutrality, to acceptance of the character, and in so doing present the change in perception. for the purpose of identifying specific themes in the discourse and narrative of the character, as depicted in once upon a time, six key descriptive themes have been formulated. the first theme identified and utilised as a means of establishing the fans/viewers’ perception is “dislike”. by identifying the theme of “dislike” the negative perception towards the character’s actions and behaviour may be established. the second theme is that of “sympathy” as it pertains to the potential expression of compassion towards the character. the third theme is “understanding”. in this instance the theme of “understanding” refers to an expression of willingness to tolerate as well as justify the character’s behaviour spoilertv.com 215 perception is the fairest of them all and actions. the fourth formulated theme of “advocacy” endeavours to identify instances in the fans/viewers’ comments that specifically demonstrate support for the character. the fifth theme of “taking sides” is defined as the deliberate selection of siding with the character in opposition to the other characters. the sixth and final theme of “acceptance” pertains to acquiescence to the character, the character’s traits, and the character’s background. in order to successfully analyse the potential shift of the fans/viewer’s perception of the evil queen character (named regina in the once upon a time series), these six themes were highlighted and identified in the comments written by the fans/viewers on the once upon a time fan blog, the once upon a time thread on the fan forum website, and the comments section of spoilertv plus from spoilertv.com. in conjunction with the introduction of the evil queen in season one of the series, the perception expressed by several fans included a dislike of the character. with specific reference to the second episode of season one it may be argued that the users’ comments on the fan forum website denoted a distinctly negative perception of the character, which included the element of dislike. “they are trying to get sympathy for regina .. not having any of it. she does not love henry. i am curious to find out how she came about to adopt henry.. did she she wake up and decided i want a baby.. i think that was the ‘magic’ in the town egging her to do it [sic]” (renka21 2011). it may be argued that the theme of dislike is identifiable in this comment as the user clearly states an objection to sympathising with the character. further, another user clearly voices their dislike for the character by writing, “team anyone-but-regina! [sic]” (obthatvariable 2011). several other fans/viewers noted their dislike of the character by deeming her selfish and villainous: “both women were adviced [sic] by their parents to do the right thing but only emma did it while the evil queen let her selfishness get the best of her. that’s why one is our hero and the other is our villain” (vega 2011). “not a huge fan of regina/evil queen” (sarasidlestokes 2011) “at this point i don’t feel sorry for her and to be honest i don’t really want too [sic]” (oldhollywoodstarlet 2011) as the narrative and discourse of the character began to develop and unfold throughout the first season, the fans/viewers were provided with more insight that led to a change in perception. in episode eighteen of the first season, titled the stable boy, a part of the evil queen’s backstory is revealed, which started the perceptual transformation of the character in the mind of the fan/viewer. in the comments thread for this episode, fans/viewers began to express sympathy for the character. spoilertv.com 216 le clue & vermaak “but we’re talking about a young woman who grew up being a victim of physical and emotional abuse and who had to watch her own mother kill her true love right in front of her, reminding regina of her power and the hopelessness of her situation in the most painful way. the very same mother who then also made it very clear that she was going to stop at nothing to make sure regina married a man who could easily be her father and whom she’d met all but once. that’s trauma on multiple levels and i don’t blame regina for reacting emotionally instead of rationally to what had happened to her at this point” (koda 2012) this comment illustrates the change in perception from dislike to a feeling of compassion and sympathy. several other fans/viewers echoed the theme of sympathy towards the character in their comments. on the once upon a time fan blog a user wrote: “when regina kept kissing him several times to see if ‘true love’s’ kiss would work to bring him back and it obviously didn’t work, broke my heart (although this particular scene could have been so much more). no matter who she blames, could you imagine knowing that your true love is gone forever and there is nothing you could do, while everyone around you has there [sic] true love and happy endings. it’s beyond depressing. it makes me love her character even more” (chase 2012) in reference to the stable boy episode, one fan/viewer comment exhibited both the themes of sympathy and “taking sides” against other characters in the narrative: “this episode clears everything up! it makes me want to actually be sympathetic towards regina and hate snow for being such a naive girl” (sho 2012). another user directly attributed the theme of sympathy towards the character in reference to the revelation of how the feud between once upon a time’s snow white and the evil queen began: “we understand regina now and can feel for her” (october 2012) on the spoiler tv comment thread, which polled the fans/viewers’ response to the stable boy episode, the theme of sympathy towards the character extends further. one fan/viewer made a case in defence of the character by placing the blame for the character’s behaviour on her mother and not the character herself: “great episode. poor regina. her mother basically manipulated her into everything. fairytale world continues to be a really creepy place. how many women are being forced to marry people they don’t want to?” (sara 2012) as soon as regina’s mother is revealed as an integral part of her life, the perception and theme began to change from sympathy to acceptance in some fans/viewers’ comments: “dayum .. well i guess we know where regina learned how to be a coldhearted witch. there are some serious issues in that family, and they all go by the name of ‘cora’. i liked seeing a softer side of regina, though. it still doesn’t make me feel for her, but i understand how everything molded her into who she is now [sic]” (lissie_bee 2012) this comment illustrates a gradual change in perception as the user still has some reservations about the character; however, there is a willingness to understand and accept the behaviour of the character. this may be attributable to the revelation of the character’s background. 217 perception is the fairest of them all the theme of advocacy is identifiable in a fan/viewer’s comment that defends the character’s actions and justifies her behaviour: “regina, you poor awesome you... :[ i guess that explains why you hate everyone’s happy endings. you did not really get your own...i do not blame regina fro holding that grudge. its not about logic or reason. in regina’s eyes snow white was the catalyst of the end of her love. and she technically was. for regina, those reasons why do not matter. its the result that is there and she has lost what she loved the most [sic]” (borednow 2012). from these selected comments, a change of fan/viewers’ perception can be identified. further, the fans’ comments tending towards the same change in perception, from dislike of the character towards one of understanding and sympathy, enforces jenkins’ theory of participatory culture, which “requires us to move beyond a focus on individualized personal expression; it is about an ethos of ‘doing it together’ in addition to ‘doing it yourself’” (jenkins et al. 2016). conclusion given the analysis above, one could argue that the developing discourse and narrative of the character as depicted in once upon a time played a role in the evolution of fans’ perception of the character of the evil queen and that the motivation for the change in perception stems from the portrayal and presentation of the character in the narrative structure in once upon a time (2011). the most important element that aids the perceptual change towards the character is the ability of the television viewers and fans to relate to the character on a personal level. ultimately, if the fairy tale element, the magic, the costumes and the computer generated graphics were to be removed from the narrative of this series, what would remain is a character who has made significant mistakes in her life, but who shows that it is never too late to change by choosing to do what it is right. at its core, the principal theme of the character represents the possibility of hope, regardless of how dire the situation may appear. the creators of this television narrative, adam horowitz and edward kitsis, have echoed this exact sentiment by confirming that “at the end of the day, our show at its core is about hope” (abrams 2014). in the 1937 film snow white and the seven dwarfs, disney created an unrealistic and onedimensional evil queen character who is not relatable to fans. the writers and creators of once upon a time (2011) have transformed the character through its complexity into one that is relatable and have thus provided for a change in perception of the character. jenkins et al. (2016) argue that “participatory culture is by its very nature a work in progress, as are our ongoing agendas for research and social change”. a change in perception towards this character could be identified through fan studies, and with the application of participatory culture the study of fans’ online perceptions remains a developing and constantly evolutionary field of study. 218 le clue & vermaak references abrams, n. 2014. once upon a time season finale: will emma change her future? [online]. available at: http://www.tvguide.com/news/once-upon-time-season3-finalespoilers1081544/. [accessed on 20 october 2016]. borednow [pseud]. 2014. comment on ‘poll: ‘what did you think of once upon a time – the stable boy?’ on spoilertv plus. [online]. available at: http://stvplus.com/ show/121/once-upon-a-time#episodes. [accessed on 14 may 2016]. bryant, j. & oliver, m. 2009. media effects: advances in theory and research. 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[online]. available at: http://www.fanforum.com/f373/ thing-you-love-most-%7b1-02%7d-episodediscussion-63026613/. [accessed on 15 may 2016]. october [pseud]. 2012. comment on ‘episode 18 ‘the stable boy’ – recap, review, etc.’ on once upon a time fan blog. [online]. available at: http://www.ouatfan. com/2012/04/05/episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-review-etc/. [accessed on 15 may 2016]. oldhollywoodstarlet [pseud]. 2011. comment on ‘pilot {1.01} – episode discussion’ on fan forum. [online]. available at: http://www.fanforum.com/f373/pilot-%7b1-01%7depisode-discussion63025446/index12.html. [accessed on 15 may 2016]. renka21 [pseud]. 2011. comment on ‘the thing you love most {1.02} episode discussion’ on fanforum. [online]. available at: http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-lovemost-%7b1-02%7d-episodediscussion-63026613/. [accessed on 16 may 2016]. sara [pseud]. 2012. comment on ‘poll: ‘what did you think of once upon a time – the stable boy?’ on spoilertv plus. [online]. available at: http://stvplus.com/show/121/ once-upon-a-time#episodes. [accessed on 16 may 2016]. sarasidlestokes [pseud]. 2011. comment on ‘the thing you love most {1.02} -– episode discussion’ on fanforum. [online]. available at: http://www.fanforum.com/f373/ thing-you-love-most-%7b1-02%7d-episode-discussion-63026613/index4.html. [accessed on 14 may 2016]. sho [pseud]. 2012. comment on ‘episode 18 ‘the stable boy’ – recap, review, etc.’ on once upon a time fan blog. [online]. available at: http://www.ouatfan.com/2012/04/05/ episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-reviewetc/#comments. 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[accessed on 17 may 2016]. zipes, j. 1981. the dark side of beauty and the beast: the origins of the literary fairy tale for children. maryland: johns hopkins university press. zipes, j. 2006. why fairy tales stick: the evolution and relevance of a genre. new york: routledge. zipes, j. 2012. the irresistible fairy tale: the cultural and social history of a genre. new jersey: princeton university press. zipes, j. 2014. the original folk and fairy tales of the brothers grimm: the complete first edition. new jersey: princeton university press. http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/ http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/ http://www.ouatfan.com/2012/04/05/episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-review-etc/ http://www.ouatfan.com/2012/04/05/episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-review-etc/ http://www.fanforum.com/f373/pilot-%257b1-01%257d-episode-discussion-%2063025446/index12.html http://www.fanforum.com/f373/pilot-%257b1-01%257d-episode-discussion-%2063025446/index12.html http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/ http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/ http://stvplus.com/show/121/once-upon-a-time%23episodes http://stvplus.com/show/121/once-upon-a-time%23episodes http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-discussion-63026613/index4.html http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-discussion-63026613/index4.html http://www.ouatfan.com/2012/04/05/episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-review-%20etc/%23comments http://www.ouatfan.com/2012/04/05/episode-18-the-stable-boy-recap-review-%20etc/%23comments http://www.thenarratologist.com/literary-theory/literary-theory-morphology-of-the-folktale-1928-by-vladimir-propp/ http://www.thenarratologist.com/literary-theory/literary-theory-morphology-of-the-folktale-1928-by-vladimir-propp/ http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/index4.html http://www.fanforum.com/f373/thing-you-love-most-%257b1-02%257d-episode-%20discussion-63026613/index4.html 145pb corporate social responsibility communication: a consumer survey at the national zoological gardens of south africa abstract globalisation and increased stakeholder pressure have compelled companies to be more creative in their pursuit of legitimacy in contemporary society. against this background, companies are expected to establish a reputation associated with corporate social responsibility (csr) and good corporate citizenship. the purpose of this article is to determine whether there is a relationship between consumer perceptions of, and consumer attitudes toward, a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and its resultant impact on consumer behaviour. by means of replication, the research focuses on consumer perceptions, attitudes and behaviour by testing the generalisability of an american study’s research instrument in the south african context. survey data were collected from a target population of adult zoo visitors. significant findings reveal a correlation between consumer recall of a corporate sponsor’s involvement with a prominent south african zoo (the national zoological gardens of south africa, or nzg) and positive consumer perceptions toward a corporate sponsor’s csr activities; and regular consumer use of the corporate sponsor’s products and positive perceptions towards the corporate sponsor’s csr activities. the findings also suggest that managers should be aware of consumer scepticism associated with csr communication. a good corporate reputation is furthermore necessary to support successful csr activities. keywords: corporate social responsibility; consumer perceptions; consumer attitudes; consumer behaviour; survey; zoo visitors; south africa introduction increased stakeholder demands for companies to take responsibility for their actions has led to companies taking up corporate social responsibility (csr) as a formal business practice in order to obtain legitimacy and a licence to operate (scherer & palazzo 2011: 907). from this perspective, corporate legitimacy refers to a company’s attempts to justify its right to exist in a specific community or value chain (johansen & nielsen 2012: 435). nicolene van heerden postgraduate student division of communication management, department of business management, university of pretoria nicolenevanheerden0@ gmail.com dr estelle de beer division of communication management, department of business management, university of pretoria estelle.debeer@up.ac.za doi: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/ comm.v21.10 issn 1023-0556 (print) issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2016 21: 145-164 © uv/ufs mailto:nicolenevanheerden0%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:nicolenevanheerden0%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:estelle.debeer%40up.ac.za?subject= https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.10 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.10 https://dx.doi.org/ 10.18820/24150525/comm.v21.10 147146 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer central to this increased attention to csr, is the consumer and his/her perceptions, attitudes and behaviour. this increased focus on consumers can be ascribed to the fact that their purchasing and consumption behaviour define the state of the society within which they and future generations live (babin & harris 2011: 13). hutton, goodman, alexander and genest (in parguel, benoît-moreau & larceneux 2011: 15) also state that csr communication has become the third largest element of expenditure for communication divisions of companies. in south africa, three eras of the development of csr are distinguished, namely the pre-democratic era (1970s-1994), the first decade of democracy (1994-2004), and the economic transformation era (2004-2007) (trialogue 2007: 3). the sullivan principles (1977) furthermore enhanced goodwill from us companies dealing with south african companies (trialogue 2007: 6) over the last four decades. globalisation and the introduction of the king ii report on corporate governance gave rise to the increased emphasis on csr in south africa (kaelo worldwide media 2006: 10). the king iii report later laid down csr-specific principles associated with best practices (iodsa 2009: 20). findings of a study conducted by the university of south africa’s centre for corporate citizenship indicated that companies’ csr decisions have an impact on consumer investment, purchasing and brand loyalty behaviour (kaelo worldwide media 2006: 10). almost half of the respondents in the study (47.4%) indicated a preference to support good corporate citizenship regardless of higher prices; slightly more than half (55%) admitted their support of companies that are devoted to charitable activities; while the majority (69%) felt that irresponsible companies should be exposed in the media (kaelo worldwide media 2006: 10). from this it can be deducted that the south african consumer is becoming more aware of csr due to an increase in the availability of information related to these issues. companies can also choose from a wide range of csr reporting frameworks complementing their corporate reputations (kaelo worldwide media 2006: 7). against the above background and considering the importance of csr in contemporary organisations, this study replicated a case study originally conducted amongst the visitors of zoo atlanta in georgia in the united states (cole 2008: i-53). during that time ups, the corporate sponsor in the case study was actively involved with zoo atlanta with regard to campaigns and corporate sponsorship – specifically focusing on saving the giant panda species. the items used in cole’s (2008) questionnaire were mostly derived from the harris-fombrun corporate reputation quotient; grunig and hon’s guidelines for measuring relationships in public relations; and three other studies focusing on csr measures relevant to this study (cole 2008: 23). by means of factor analysis, 11 factors were extracted and only items with a cronbach’s alpha of α ≥ 0.60 were accepted and included in the questionnaire. the factors included regard and scepticism under csr perceptions; reputation, trust and satisfaction under attitudes regarding csr; purchasing intent, loyalty and investment under behaviours related to csr; and under csr reputation for ups, the following three factors were included: treats people well; supports good causes; and good company in general (cole 2008: 25). 147146 corporate social responsibility communication literature review the original study was conducted with the goal of determining the underlying relationships between the variables associated with perceived corporate reputation for social responsibility; and to determine attitudes and behaviours that would potentially affect the corporate entity in a positive way. cole (2008) concluded that the findings of the study contributed to corporate communication initiatives by setting out guidelines for the evaluation of csr programmes, ultimately improving the understanding of corporate reputation. secondly, the findings showed how important it is for companies to position themselves as responsible corporate citizens (cole 2008: i). in cole’s (2008) study, significant correlations were achieved between the following pairs of constructs: perceptions of csr (regard) and attitude factors for brand trust; regard for csr and consumer behaviour (purchasing intent, brand loyalty and investment); brand attitudes and csr reputation variables for ups (treats people well; supports good causes; and good company); brand behaviour and csr reputation variables (treats people well; supports good causes; and good company); personal use of ups products/services and the perceived csr reputation of ups (treats people well; supports good causes; and good company). significant negative correlations were observed between scepticism and csr attitudes (brand trust and brand reputation); as well as scepticism and the brand behaviour factor of investment. the following relationships were not supported: perceptions of ups’ csr reputation and the respondents’ “ability to recall company sponsorship of the pandas”; scepticism toward csr and perceived csr reputation of ups (treats people well; supports good causes; and good company) (cole 2008: 30-33). in essence, this adapted south african study made use of the measuring instrument developed by cole (2008: 51-53) to test the above-mentioned variables by means of a quantitative survey amongst a south african population and within a south african context. as csr is being embraced more vigorously by international and multinational corporate entities in south africa, it is important to determine the impact of these investments and how csr is perceived by the consumer who purchases products and services from these companies. consumers’ perceptions and attitudes are ultimately instrumental in ensuring desired consumer behaviour such as purchasing intent and brand loyalty. non-profit organisations (npos) can also help corporate entities to channel a company’s donations and investments toward a more constructive goal for societal upliftment. by conducting this study in a south african context, links between the concepts of csr, collaboration with npos and/or a cause, as well as the consumer could be determined and could inspire further research in this academic field. according to babin and harris (2011: 125-126), consumer attitudes have an effect on consumer behaviour. oliver (in van den brink, odekerken-schröder & pauwels 2006: 17) divided consumer brand attitudes into three components, including affective, cognitive and conative related to consumer emotions, knowledge and purchasing intent. if the content of a message relates to a consumer’s attitude toward a brand, persuasion to modify the consumer’s behaviour will be easier (arnould, price & zinkhan 2004: 632). 149148 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer based on the findings of a study conducted by carroll and buchholtz (2006: 490), 76% of american consumers prefer to buy a “socially responsible brand” if price and quality were similar to a competing non-socially responsible brand. a different study showed that 84% of consumers will have higher levels of tolerance for companies within their communities who are involved with csr. seventy seven percent of the same consumer sample felt that a company’s commitment to csr will influence their preference for an employer, while 66% indicated that they would invest in a company that has a reputation of being socially responsible (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 480). from this perspective, corporate citizenship has a positive impact on stakeholder attitudes and overall corporate performance (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 480). csr can also enhance corporate reputation in that it assists with brand differentiation and provides the company with a competitive advantage (park, lee & kim 2013: 1; hsu 2012: 189). willmott (in kang & hustvedt 2013: 2) furthermore proposed a model for brand citizenship in which the crucial elements necessary to create a trusted brand relationship with consumers are identified as transparency, communication and positive citizenship perceptions. the most relevant literature related to this study will be discussed next under the main headings of csr, corporate brand reputation and consumer behaviour. corporate social responsibility in south africa, the terms corporate social responsibility (csr), corporate citizenship (cc) and corporate social investment (csi) are sometimes used interchangeably (tustin & de jongh 2008: 30). hopkins (2007: 15-16) comprehensively define csr as follows: csr is concerned with treating the stakeholders of the firm ethically or in a responsible manner. ‘ethically or responsible’ means treating stakeholders in a manner deemed acceptable in civilized societies. ‘social’ includes economic and environmental responsibility. stakeholders exist both within a firm and outside. the wider aim of social responsibility is to create higher and higher standards of living, while preserving the profitability of the corporation, for peoples both within and outside the corporation. carroll and buchholtz (2006: 40) define csr in the form of a pyramid, demonstrating its crucial role in ensuring profit for the corporate entity whilst simultaneously adhering to the law, reacting ethically and striving to become a “good corporate citizen”. from this perspective, a us poll indicated that 72% of consumers believe that companies possess too much power and are more concerned with profits than with the safety, reliability and quality of the products they offer (walker & kent 2009: 743-744). this is where csr presents companies with various routes to enhance consumers’ perceptions and to secure legitimacy amongst the members of society (stanaland, lwin & murphy 2011: 53). the term corporate citizenship (cc), first referred to in the context of business and society in the 1980s, personifies the organisation as a citizen within a community (garriga & melé 2004: 57; carroll & buchholtz 2006: 54). cc encompasses a company’s 149148 corporate social responsibility communication commitment to sound ethical behaviour, ensuring there is a balance between stakeholder requests and environmental preservation by intentionally interacting with npos, communities and other stakeholders (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 54). tustin and de jongh (2008: 28) define organisational cc as “a business with comprehensive policies and practices that enable it to make decisions, be accountable for them, conduct operations ethically, meet legal requirements and show consideration for broad stakeholders, including society and the natural environment”. the king iii report also states that companies should focus on becoming corporate citizens (iodsa 2009: 52), which should lead to increased performance (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 480). the advantages associated with good cc include, but are not limited to, enhanced customer relations, increased sales, favourable brand image, brand loyalty and the support of the company’s image and reputation (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 55; crosby & johnson 2006: 13). cc should be implemented as the ultimate strategy for brand building, ensuring competitive advantage as well as reputational enhancement by satisfying customers and other stakeholders in a sustainable manner (tustin & de jongh 2008: 25). corporate brand reputation csr can also be regarded as a strategic approach to enhance the corporate reputation of an organisation, or to differentiate its brand from those of competitors’ (park et al. 2013: 1; hsu 2012: 189), and it has been associated with positive brand evaluations, purchase intentions and recommendation by consumers (marin, ruiz & rubio 2009: 67). from this perspective, a brief discussion on corporate identity; corporate brand personality; corporate image; corporate reputation; brand citizenship; and a reputation for being a good corporate citizen follows. corporate identity is defined as “the symbols and nomenclature an organisation uses to identify itself to people (such as the corporate name, logo, advertising slogan, etc.)” (dowling 2001: 19). a corporate identity serves the purpose of ensuring cohesion in stakeholder perceptions; establishment and maintenance of corporate reputation; protecting legitimacy; and promoting competitive differentiation (johansen & nielsen 2012: 437). as defined by aaker (in babin & harris 2011: 115), the personality of a brand includes the “human characteristics that can be associated with a brand”. consumers make use of brand personalities in support, and to the expression, of their “actual or idealised selfimage”. the corporate brand personality echoes the “values, actions, and words” of the company’s workforce (keller & richey 2006: 76). according to gwinner and eaton (in babin & harris 2011: 115), brand personality is an element of corporate image. corporate image is “the global evaluation (comprised of a set of beliefs and feelings) a person has about an organisation” (dowling 2001: 19). brand image includes characteristics related to the product, the brand, as well as the consumer (knowledge, perceptions and attitudes) which are activated in certain contexts or by relevant cues (arnould et al. 2004: 121). brown and dacin (in pérez, de los salmones & del bosque 2013: 219) argue that there is a relationship between corporate image and consumer perceptions and behaviour. 151150 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer if corporate image includes the perceptions and attitudes of external stakeholders and corporate identity includes the perceptions and attitudes of internal stakeholders, the congruency of these two constructs will determine the strength of the corporate reputation of a company (davies, chun, da silva & roper 2003: 61): a corporate reputation is a collective representation of a firm’s past actions and results that describes the firm’s ability to deliver valued outcomes to multiple stakeholders. it [corporate reputation] gauges a firm’s relative standing both internally with employees and externally with its [other] stakeholders, in both the competitive and institutional environments (gardberg & fombrun 2002: 304-305). advantages associated with a positive corporate reputation include the eagerness of qualified people to work for the company; improved supplier relationships; free media attention; extra symbolic value added to products and services such as trust; diminishing consumer risk perceptions; higher credibility; presence of a reputational “safety net” in crisis times; better financial performance; and bargaining power across trade channels, to mention a few (doorley & garcia 2007: 4, 12-13; park et al. 2013: 2; schwaiger 2004: 50). corporate philanthropy can also have favourable results on a company’s reputation. for example, results by a cone, inc. study illustrated that 84% of respondents regard a company’s commitment to social matters as a determinant in deciding on which companies they want in their community. in the same study, 77% felt that social commitment impacts the choice of who they want to be employed with; 66% looked at social commitment as determinant when deciding in which company they would rather invest (carroll & buchholtz 2006: 480). brand citizenship is displayed by companies that rely on “sound business practice and values, including good corporate governance, the commitment of staff to the brand, and the relevance and legitimacy of the brand as seen by the broader society”. if a company establishes good brand citizenship, the creation of an ethical brand identity would result throughout the entire value chain, ultimately ensuring a good corporate reputation to back csr initiatives (tustin & de jongh 2008: 32). consumer behaviour socially responsible consumer behaviour (srcb) is a concept defined as: “... a person basing his or her acquisition, usage, and disposal of products on a desire to minimise or eliminate any harmful effect and maximize the long-term beneficial impact on society” (mohr, webb & harris 2001: 47). from this perspective, the interconnectedness between consumer perceptions, attitudes and behaviour will be addressed here. a positive relationship exists between consumer awareness of csr, attitudes and behavioural intentions (öberseder, schlegelmilch & murphy 2013: 1840; lii & lee 2012: 72). consumer perceptions of csr activities also influence consumer purchase intentions (lee & shin 2010: 2). csr activities also have a positive effect on corporate reputation, corporate image, consumer trust and loyalty (stanaland et al. 2011: 48; perera & chaminda 2012: 3; hsu 2012: 189; park et al. 2013: 1; bae & cameron 2006: 145). consumer scepticism appears to be increasing towards companies that make unsupported csr claims (parguel et al. 2011: 17). by exploiting a cause (greenwashing), 151150 corporate social responsibility communication a company will most certainly experience that consumer perceptions towards the corporate brand will be less favourable and their csr communication regarded as non-credible (parguel et al. 2011: 17). according to a south african study conducted by kaelo worldwide media (2006: 10) consumers would rather buy from “good corporate citizen[s]” regardless of higher prices. consumer attitudes play a crucial role in persuasion and csr has also been shown to correlate positively with the consumer attitudes of a company (arnould et al. 2004: 632; park et al. 2013: 2-3; bae & cameron 2006: 145; marin et al. 2009: 65). ultimately, consumer attitudes (especially those attitudes related to trust) influence consumer purchase intent and behaviour favourably (kang & hustvedt 2013: 4; marin et al. 2009: 68). lichtenstein et al. (in lii & lee 2012: 72-73) found that the csr reputation of a company correlates with consumer attitudes and with consumer behaviour. with the use of sponsorships, customer relationship management (crm) and philanthropy, consumers will develop more favourable attitudes toward a brand if the company possesses a good reputation (lii & lee 2012: 71-72). it has been found that consumer perceptions of a brand impact consumer behaviour (tustin & de jongh 2008: 31; kim 2011: 219; marin et al. 2009: 65; kang & hustvedt 2013: 3). other studies indicated that there is a positive relationship between csr and consumer behaviour (kim 2011: 219). various academics have also identified a correlation between consumer perceptions of csr and consumer behaviour and other related constructs such as consumer trust, attitudes, purchase intent and word-ofmouth (cole 2008: 34, 36; öberseder, schlegelmilch, murphy & gruber 2013: 2; kang & hustvedt 2013: 1). csr and corporate reputation, corporate image, consumer trust and loyalty have furthermore been found to correlate (park et al. 2013: 2; stanaland et al. 2011: 48). according to marin et al. (2009: 65), csr has been found to increase consumer loyalty due to favourable company evaluation and stronger company identification. methodology the core research problem of the study is that there is a lack of clarity about the relationship between consumer perceptions of, and consumer attitudes towards, a corporate sponsor’s corporate social responsibility (csr) activities and the impact thereof on consumer behaviour. the sampling, data collection and measures to address this problem are discussed below. sampling the target population for this study consisted of adult zoo visitors aged 18 years and older who were physically present at the national zoological gardens (nzg) on the days that data were collected. as such, the respondents for this study consisted of adult (18 years and older), literate south african visitors to the nzg. a nonprobability sampling method and convenience sampling were applied. the sampling method was appropriate for the nature of the target population because the researcher could not determine which individuals would be present at the nzg for the study to be conducted 153152 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer with the use of a probability sampling method. the subjective judgement with which individual respondents were approached can be regarded as a major disadvantage of this sampling method. self-selection bias limits the generalisability of a study’s findings to the population (zikmund 2003: 297-299). from the sample of 200 zoo visitors, 63.5 % were female and 35.5% were male. the majority (86%) live in pretoria and 4.5% were from johannesburg. just over half of the sample (55.5%) indicated that they are white, 38% black and 5.5% coloured. data collection the first adapted version of the original questionnaire by cole (2008: i-53) was reviewed by a csr specialist and recommended changes were incorporated into a second draft which was tested amongst 20 respondents of the target population. a third and final draft, edited according to the respondents’ feedback, was derived (saunders, lewis & thornhill 2007: 386-387). data were collected in the form of a self-administered delivery and collection questionnaire (saunders et al. 2007: 356-357). this form of data collection is a relatively inexpensive means to collect data from a larger sample, but is also a labour-intensive method (saunders et al. 2007: 358). in this study, the zoo visitors were approached by a fieldworker on two saturdays. these individuals were informed of the nature of the study and were asked whether they wish to participate in the study by anonymously completing the questionnaire presented to them. they were also asked to sign an informed consent form in which they acknowledged their participation out of free will and without any incentives offered. a total of 200 respondents was required based on the recommendation by field and miles (2010: 197-198), as well as diamantopoulos and schlegelmilch (2000: 142). measures the ability of consumers to recall that coca-cola was a corporate sponsor of the nzg was operationalised with a multiple-choice single-response scale with the following options to choose from: “pick ‘n pay” (option “1”), “mr. pie” (“2”), “coca-cola (abi)” (option “3”), and “i don’t know” (option “4”). the constructs were all measured on four separate multiple rating scales in the form of a five-point likert scale. the response options ranged from a least favourable response of “1” (“strongly disagree”) to most favourable “5” (“strongly agree”). in all instances composite scale scores were averaged and a final score per construct was obtained. high scores indicate more positive perceptions, attitudes, and behavioural intent respectively, while lower scores indicate more negativity or a weaker presence of a specific construct. these interpretations are valid for all items except for reverse scored items. consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities were measured in question 2. the construct of zoo visitors’ perceptions of coca-cola csr activities consisted of nine items (2.1 – 2.9), where item 2.6 was reverse scored. consumer perceptions of csr were measured with nine items (3.1 3.9). item 3.3, 3.5 153152 corporate social responsibility communication and 3.7 have been reversed scored. consumer attitudes toward corporate citizenship were measured in question 4 (items 4.1 – 4.9), while consumer behaviour towards a corporate sponsor was operationalised in question 5. consumer behaviour towards coca-cola was measured by means of nine items (5.1 – 5.9). consumers’ business use and consumers’ personal use of coca-cola’s products were operationalised respectively in two multiple-choice single-response scales. question 12, measuring business use, presented the respondent with the following response options: “frequent business user”, “occasional business user”, and “i do not use coca-cola’s products for business purposes”. in question 13, on consumers’ personal use, respondents could select one of the following options: “frequent personal user”, “occasional personal user”, and “i do not use coca-cola’s products for personal purposes”. by calculating the frequency of each response option in both question 12 and 13 respectively, totals were obtained. for the purpose of this study, bryman and bell’s (2007: 164) recommended cronbach’s alpha value of 0.7 or higher was regarded as a healthy standard. question 2, measuring consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities, had the highest cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.90). the other constructs measured as follows from the highest to the lowest cronbach’s alpha value: consumer corporate citizenship attitudes (question 4) with α = 0.86; consumer behaviour toward the corporate sponsor (question 5) with α = 0.86; consumer regard for csr (question 3a) with α = 0.70; and consumer scepticism about csr (question 3b) with α = 0.67. the demographic variables measured in the survey (questions 6-11) included respondent living area, gender, ethnicity, education, income and age. table 1 comprises a summary of the relevant questionnaire items discussed above: table 1: itemised representation of the measurement instrument q1. which one of the following three companies do you think donates money to the zoo? pick ‘n pay / mr. pie / coca-cola (abi) / i don’t know section a 1 = strongly disagree / 2 = disagree / 3 = neutral / 4 = agree / 5 = strongly agree q2. amalgamated beverage industries (abi), or more commonly known as coca cola, is one of the zoo’s major sponsors. please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements on coca-cola. coca-cola… 2.1 is a good company 2.2 behaves socially responsible 2.3 cares about the environment 2.4 helps south african communities 2.5 treats people well 2.6 sponsors causes only to “look good” to the public table continues 155154 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer 2.7 does what it promises to do in the community 2.8 has a record of doing good deeds in society 2.9 is a company that cares about the communities where it does business q3. please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements: 3.1 companies should give back to society. 3.2 it should be standard that all companies should give back to society. 3.3 companies only do good deeds to “look good” to the public. 3.4 companies should support meaningful causes. 3.5 i am suspicious of companies that frequently support good causes. 3.6 i want to know if a company does good deeds for communities. 3.7 i am suspicious if companies talk about the good things they do for a community over the news. 3.8 i think companies mean well when they do good deeds for communities 3.9 i think companies should speak in public about the money they donate to good causes. q4. please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements: 4.1 i trust a company that does good deeds. 4.2 i believe that coca-cola will keep its promise to give back to society. 4.3 i trust companies that do their part to help society. 4.4 if i buy something, i want to know that the company behind it is doing good in society. 4.5 companies that give back to the community are better than companies that do not. 4.6 coca-cola’s support at the zoo makes me feel positive about the coca-cola brand. 4.7 companies that are known for doing good for society are more likely to have better products and services. 4.8 i think companies have giving programs to provide value only for themselves. 4.9 if i support a company that does good deeds, i also feel i am doing a good deed. q5. please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements: 5.1 i would continue to buy from a company that does good deeds. 5.2 i would rather buy from the company that does good to society if price and quality were the same between two companies. 5.3 i would rather buy from a company that has a history of helping communities, even if the product or service was a bit more expensive. 5.4 a company’s history of good deeds determines if i buy its products / services. 5.5 if a company i buy from does irresponsible/ bad deeds, i would buy from another company instead. 5.4 a company’s history of good deeds determines if i buy its products / services. 5.5 if a company i buy from does irresponsible/ bad deeds, i would buy from another company instead. 5.6 i will rather buy from coca-cola now that this company supports the zoo. 5.7 if coca-cola did not help organisations like the zoo, i would not buy their products. table continues 155154 corporate social responsibility communication 5.8 i would keep on buying from coca-cola because of its history of good deeds. 5.9 because coca-cola supports the zoo, i will be more likely to tell others about coca-cola. section b q6-q11: demographic information q12. do you buy coca-cola or other soft drinks of abi for use at work functions? indicate how you would describe your business use of coca cola’s products. frequent business user occasional business user i do not use coca-cola’s products for business purposes q13. do you buy coca-cola or other soft drinks of abi for personal use at home or with friends? indicate how you would describe your personal use of coca cola’s products. frequent business user occasional business user i do not use coca-cola’s products for business purposes discussion of findings the purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between consumer perceptions of, and consumer attitude toward a corporate sponsor’s activities. the impact thereof on consumer behaviour was also explored. the main findings of the study, and how it relates to the six objectives that guided the study, are explained below. consumers’ ability to recall a corporate sponsor of an npo according to wagner, lutz and weitz (in öberseder et al. 2013: 1840), consumer awareness of csr correlates positively with consumer attitudes and behavioural intent. the first objective of this study was to investigate consumers’ ability to recall (have a clear mental image of) a specific corporate sponsor involved with an npo. in answer to this objective, the majority of respondents correctly recalled coca-cola’s sponsorship at the nzg (60.5%). consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities the second objective was to investigate consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities. companies make use of socially directed activities in order to enhance their reputations (kang & hustvedt 2013: 3). research also found that there are positive correlations between csr activities, corporate reputation, corporate image, consumer trust and consumer loyalty (stanaland et al. 2011: 48). other studies supported the positive relationship between consumer perceptions of ethical corporate actions and corporate reputation (park et al. 2013: 2; hsu 2012: 194). recognised companies that engage in 157156 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer csr activities also stand a greater chance to achieve positive consumer perceptions related to product or service quality (kim 2011: 218). hypothesis 1 hypothesis 1 was formulated based on the above literature and reads as follows: h1(alt): there is a significant difference in consumer perceptions of coca-cola’s csr activities between consumers who correctly recalled coca-cola’s involvement and those who did not correctly recall coca-cola’s involvement at the nzg. h1 was rejected at a 10% level of significance. resultantly, awareness of the corporate entity’s involvement with csr will lead to more positive consumer perceptions toward the entity’s current and possible future csr activities. nature of consumer perceptions of csr in general the third research objective was to determine the nature of consumer perceptions of csr as a business practice in general. hypotheses 2 and 3 are relevant to this objective. how consumers perceive csr in general can affect how they experience a specific company’s marketing efforts (öberseder et al. 2013: 1846). depending on the perceived motives behind companies’ csr efforts, their perceptions toward csr will be either positive or negative (park et al. 2013: 3). if consumers are suspicious towards csr, corporate communication and the effectiveness of csr messages might vary. philanthropy on the other hand has been associated with less instances of consumer scepticism (bae & cameron 2006: 146). scepticism results if consumers believe that csr should not be advertised (öberseder et al. 2013: 1840; mohr et al. 2001: 67). consumer perceptions of csr influence consumer attitudes toward the corporate entity involved (webb & mohr 1998: 226). in the original study by cole (2008: i-53), support was obtained for the hypothesis that illustrated a positive correlation between consumer perceptions of csr in general and consumer perceptions towards a corporate sponsor, as well as consumers’ intent to demonstrate it in behaviour (cole 2008: 34, 36). related to this finding, a study by champniss and rodés vilà (2011: 37) found that 40% of respondents indicated that they associate sustainability with increased prices; 28% perceived an association with past inequalities; and 25% regarded sustainability as a form of placing blame. hypothesis 2 in this study, consumer responses to the (positive) “regard for csr” question items were mainly “4” (“agree”) or “5” (“strongly agree”), which shows that respondents’ perceptions toward the use of csr in business were favourable. on the other hand, consumers mostly selected the “neutral” option (“3”) with csr scepticism items. h2 included the constructs related to consumer csr scepticism (question 3b) and consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities (question 2), and reads as follows: 157156 corporate social responsibility communication h2(alt) : consumers who are sceptical of csr will have low perceptions of coca-cola’s csr activities. interval data were collected from both of the above-mentioned likert scales to test the correlation between the constructs. in terms of scale reliability, consumer scepticism about csr delivered a value of α = 0.67 and consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities yielded a α = 0.90. a weak correlation was achieved for hypothesis 2: -0.05 [r(198) = -0.05, p = 0.486]. no support could therefore be found for the relationship between consumer scepticism about csr and consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities. consumers did not appear to harbour firm beliefs related to the negative stated items on csr. hypothesis 3 hypothesis 3 tested whether there is a relationship between consumer regard for csr and consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward a corporate sponsor, and reads as follows: h3(alt) : consumers who have regard for csr are likely to report positive consumer corporate citizenship attitudes towards coca-cola. the questions that formed part of this hypothesis included questions 3a (consumer regard for csr) and 4 (consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward a corporate sponsor). the respective reliability values of these constructs are α = 0.70 and α = 0.86. the correlation between consumer regard for csr and positive consumer corporate citizenship attitudes was weak but positive [r(198) = 0.42, p < 0.001]. the null hypothesis was rejected at a 1% level of significance. respondents who are positive towards csr will be more likely to also respond with positive corporate citizenship attitudes related to csr. more significant but contrasting findings were expected between h2 and h3. one possible reason for variance across the scepticism scale could be due to confusion caused by the negatively scored items in comparison to the majority of the other question items being positively worded. the third research objective was reached in that the nature (positive/negative) of consumer attitudes toward csr was determined with the help of hypotheses 2 and 3. consumer attitudes toward corporate citizenship hypothesis 3 and 4 provide support for the fourth objective: to investigate the effect of perceived corporate philanthropy on consumer corporate citizenship attitudes towards a corporate sponsor of an npo. cole (2008: 25) tested three supporting factors for the construct of brand reputation, trust and satisfaction. however, a principle factor analysis of this construct in the current study showed that a single factor explains the total variance of the items in 159158 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer question 4. after careful consideration, and consideration of existing literature, the single factor was renamed to consumer corporate citizenship attitudes. the fourth research objective investigated consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward a corporate sponsor of an npo. after testing hypothesis 3, a weak but positive correlation was found between consumer regard for csr and consumer corporate citizenship attitudes towards a corporate sponsor [r(198) = 0.42, p < 0.0001]. consumers who have favourable perceptions of csr will have slightly more positive corporate citizenship attitudes toward coca-cola due to this corporate sponsor’s csr involvement. hypothesis 4 hypotheses 4 proposed a relationship between consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and consumer corporate citizenship attitudes towards the same corporate sponsor. h4(alt) : consumers who perceive coca-cola as being socially responsible are likely to report positive consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward coca-cola. question 2 on consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and question 4 on consumer corporate citizenship attitudes apply. these two scales rated very high on reliability: α = 0.90 for question 2 and α = 0.86 for question 4. the null hypothesis was rejected and a moderate positive relationship was achieved between consumer perceptions of coca-cola’s csr activities and consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward the corporate sponsor [r(198) = 0.55, p <0.0001]. consumers who hold positive perceptions regarding the csr activities of coca-cola are more likely to have positive attitudes toward the company’s corporate citizenship. consumer business and personal use of sponsor’s products the fifth research objective was to investigate consumers’ business and personal use of the corporate sponsor’s (coca-cola’s) products. h5a and h5b applied. hypothesis 5 these two hypotheses (h5a and h5b) revolved around consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and the business/personal use/non-use of the corporate sponsor’s products: h5a(alt): there is a significant difference between respondent perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and the business use and non-use of the corporate sponsor’s products. h5b(alt): there is a significant difference between respondent perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and the personal use and non-use of the corporate sponsor’s products. research shows support for a positive correlation between consumer perceptions and consumer behaviour (öberseder et al. 2013: 2). corporate reputation impacts directly 159158 corporate social responsibility communication on consumer attitudes and consumer behaviour (lii & lee 2012: 72-73). in a survey with a sample of 443 consumers, findings supported the relationships between csr and constructs of corporate reputation, consumer trust and loyalty (stanaland et al. 2011: 53). if consumers identify with a company’s values as expressed with the help of csr activities, consumer loyalty will result (marin et al. 2009: 65). the consumers who associate with a company will also be more likely to harbour positive consumer attitudes about the company if it engages in csr (walker & kent 2009: 749-750). a few benefits of csr activities are positive brand assessments, purchasing intent and willingness to recommend the brand (marin et al. 2009: 67). two measurement scales have been designed in order to confirm the correlation between csr and consumer behaviour. one of these scales focused on consumer perceptions of corporate social irresponsibility and the second one approached specific csr activities individually (öberseder et al. 2013: 2). in h5a, question 5 and question 12 applied, which were the scales measuring consumer behaviour and consumer business use of coca-cola’s products respectively. the reliability of question 5 was very good at α = 0.86. questions 5 (consumer) and 13 (consumer’s personal use of coca-cola’s products) supported the testing of h5b. both questions 12 and 13 collected data at an ordinal level in the form of multiplechoice single-response scales regarding the consumers’ business and personal use or non-use of coca-cola’s products. hypothesis 5a(null) was rejected at a 5% level of significance [f(2, 186) = 3.37, p = 0.037] and hypothesis 5b(null) at a 10% level of significance [f(2, 186) = 2.54, p = 0.082]. a significant relationship was observed between the consumer perceptions of cocacola’s csr activities and the business use of coca-cola’s products by consumers. duncan’s multiple range test revealed a significant difference between the mean score of respondents frequently using coca-cola products for business purposes (m = 4.15, sd = 0.66) and those who are either occasional (m = 3.78, sd = 0.60) or non-users (m = 3.78, sd = 0.64). these results reveal that consumers who regularly buy coca-cola products for business purposes also have more positive perceptions towards coca-cola’s csr activities than consumers who occasionally or never use coca-cola’s products for business purposes. a significant relationship was observed between consumer perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and consumers’ personal use of coca-cola products. this significance was not achieved at a 5% but rather at a 10% level of significance. no significant difference was found with regard to consumer perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and respondents who indicated they are occasional (m = 3.74, sd = 0.67) or non-users (m = 3.59, sd = 0.93) of the corporate sponsor’s products on a personal level. however, frequent personal users were significantly more positive (m = 4.08, sd = 0.59) towards the csr activities of coca-cola’s csr 161160 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer reputation than non-users (m = 3.59, sd = 0.93), according to the duncan multiple range test results. consumer perceptions of csr activities and consumer behaviour the last research objective was to investigate whether consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities relate to changes in consumer behaviour towards a corporate sponsor. as such, the objective is a core driver of this study. hypotheses 6 and 7 apply. the way consumers perceive the brand determines their behaviour (tustin & de jongh 2008: 31; kim 2011: 219; marin et al. 2009: 65; kang & hustvedt 2013: 3). according to kang and hustvedt (2013: 1), consumer csr perceptions correlate positively with consumer trust, consumer attitudes, their intent to purchase, and the sharing of positive word-of-mouth about the brand. similarly, another source confirms the link between consumer attitudes and consumer purchase intent and behaviour (marin et al. 2009: 68). the more loyal customers are, the higher the probability that they will pay higher prices for quality products associated with a good cause (van den brink et al. 2006: 16). consumers want to support good companies (lee & shin 2010: 2). in the same study, it was found that consumers will alter their behaviour positively if a company invests in corporate social and local community products, but these findings were not supported for environmental projects (lee & shin 2010: 2). corporate reputation will also enjoy a boost when companies invest in csr due to positive consumer perceptions (perera & chaminda 2012: 3). hypothesis 6 hypothesis 6 proposed a relationship between consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and consumer behaviour towards the same entity. h6(alt) : consumers who perceive coca-cola as being socially responsible are likely to report positive consumer behaviour towards coca-cola. the null hypothesis was rejected on a 5% level of significance [r(198) = 0.35, p < 0.0001] and a weak positive relationship was observed between the two constructs. these results reveal that consumers who perceive coca-cola’s csr activities favourably will demonstrate positive behaviour towards this company. hypothesis 7 h7(alt) : consumers with positive regard for csr are likely to report positive consumer behaviour towards coca-cola. the null hypothesis was rejected at a 5% level of significance. a weak positive relationship was observed between consumer regard for csr and consumer behaviour towards coca-cola [r(198) = 0.35, p < 0.0001]. thus, consumers who perceive csr in a positive light will also be more loyal in their behaviour towards coca-cola because it sponsors a good cause. 161160 corporate social responsibility communication table 2: summary of results of hypothesis tests hypothesis result h1(alt): there is a significant difference in consumer perceptions of coca-cola’s csr activities between consumers who correctly recalled coca-cola’s involvement and those who did not correctly recall coca-cola’s involvement at the nzg. h1(alt) was rejected at a 10% level of significance. h2(alt) : consumers who are sceptical of csr will have low perceptions of coca-cola’s csr activities. a weak negative correlation was achieved [r(198) = -0.05, p = 0.486]. h3(alt) : consumers who have regard for csr are likely to report positive consumer corporate citizenship attitudes towards coca-cola. a weak positive correlation was observed [r(198) = 0.42, p < 0.001]. the null hypothesis was rejected at a 1% level of significance. h4(alt) : consumers who perceive coca-cola as being socially responsible are likely to report positive consumer corporate citizenship attitudes toward cocacola. a moderate positive correlation was observed [r(198) = 0.55, p <0.0001]. h5a(alt): there is a significant difference between respondent perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and the business use and non-use of the corporate sponsor’s products. h5b(alt): there is a significant difference between respondent perceptions of the corporate sponsor’s csr activities and the personal use and non-use of the corporate sponsor’s products. hypothesis 5a(null) was rejected at a 5% level of significance [f(2, 186) = 3.37, p = 0.037]. hypothesis 5b(null) was rejected at a 10% level of significance [f(2, 186) = 2.54, p = 0.082]. h6(alt) : consumers who perceive coca-cola as being socially responsible are likely to report positive consumer behaviour towards coca-cola. the null hypothesis was rejected on a 5% level of significance [r(198) = 0.35, p < 0.0001] and a weak positive relationship was observed. h7(alt) : consumers with positive regard for csr are likely to report positive consumer behaviour towards coca-cola. the null hypothesis was rejected at a 5% level of significance. a weak positive relationship was observed [r(198) = 0.35, p < 0.0001]. conclusion the overall research objectives for the study were achieved in that more clarity was obtained regarding consumers’ ability to recall a corporate sponsor of an npo; consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities; the nature of consumer perceptions of csr in general; the effect of perceived corporate philanthropy on consumers’ attitudes towards a corporate sponsor; consumers’ business and personal 163162 nicolene van heerden & estelle de beer use of a corporate sponsor’s products; and consumer perceptions of a corporate sponsor’s csr activities and whether it relates to changes in consumer behaviour towards a corporate sponsor. south african companies play an important role in the protection of the integrity of csr as a 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(second edition). mason, ohio: thomson south-western. 1pb art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation in south african public relations practice abstract ethical failures are not just philosophical problems, but also economic problems that hold significant social and political consequences for the social and communal contexts in which these are enacted. recent ethical scandals such as bell pottinger and cambridge analytica have reawakened public debate on ethical standards in professional practice. while some research on pr roles has been conducted in the south african context since 2002, there are no formally documented studies regarding the moral philosophy and ethics of pr practice in south africa. this article seeks to determine how south african pr practitioners respond to their ethical obligations. research findings confirm that partisan values still dominate and that contexts of practice do not facilitate ethical practice by meeting ethical obligations through ethics of care and communality. the findings seem to indicate that the roots of ethical failures in the industry run deep. south african pr practice will continue to be regarded as a “dark art” unless it can free itself of moral constraints inherent to the reflexive modernist pr practices and assumptions that prevail. to facilitate a transition away from compliance to codes of conduct towards greater moral accountability, moral character in role enactment must be engaged with on a more profound level. keywords: public relations; ethics; moral framework; communality; ethical pr practice; ubuntu; communitarian ethics; moral accountability; bell pottinger; cambridge analytica introduction the world, and business in particular, seems to be in great need of ethical reconsideration and moral regeneration. as highlighted by fiordi (2012), “the erosion of moral standards appears to be deepening” and these ethical failures are not just philosophical problems, but also economic problems that spill over into the social realm where these decisions are enacted. consequently, ethical business failures are not prof. sonja verwey department of strategic communication, school of communication, university of johannesburg, south africa (sverwey@uj.ac.za) clarissa muir department of strategic communication, school of communication, university of johannesburg, south africa (cmuir@uj.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 1-17 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:sverwey@uj.ac.za mailto:cmuir@uj.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 verwey & muir simply enacted in financial and economic contexts, but also hold significant social and political consequences for social and communal contexts. most recently, the failure of british firm bell pottinger to uphold the highest ethical standards in the practice of public relations, and to uphold the standing of the profession as a whole, proved so damaging to its reputation that it culminated not only in the termination of its membership of the uk public relations and communications association (prca), but also in its business failure when it was forced to close doors within weeks of the scandal, and despite its best effort to repair its tarnished professional image. however, the moral and business failure of bell pottinger cannot simply be understood as a failure to adhere to industry codes of conduct, but should be understood at a much deeper level as a failure of moral philosophy that resulted from a lack of respect for communal values and the societal context in which bell pottinger plied its “dark arts”. similarly, facebook has had to apologise publicly for the emergent cambridge analytica privacy scandal that is embroiling the network in a legal and regulatory nightmare. it involves the collection of personally identifiable data of up to 87 million facebook users, which was allegedly used to covertly influence voter opinion on behalf of political clients (bbc 2018). both these scandals are significant for reintroducing public debate on ethical standards in professional practice, especially within the social media and online interaction spaces. both these failures also demonstrated that codes of conduct are not sufficient to protect business enterprises against moral failures. in this regard, rossouw (2013) argues that to facilitate a transition away from compliance to codes of conduct, moral character in role enactment must be engaged with on a more profound level than codes of conduct compel practitioners to do. however, in a world of global expansion and heightened public awareness of ethical issues, “moral intuition and ethical standards are neither intuitive nor standard” (robbertson & crittenden 2003: 391). ethical dilemmas can be regarded as systemic as well as specific, inherent in the way contemporary organisations operate, or choose to function, as much as in the particular nature of the professional practice (harrison & galloway 2005). in the wake of the bell pottinger scandal a growing number of calls have been made from within the industry to drive professional accountability and ethics by including it as a formal measure of effectiveness. however, while several studies on pr roles have been conducted in the south african context since 2002, there are no formally documented studies available that investigate the moral philosophy and ethics of public relations practice in the country. in an effort to address this knowledge gap, this article seeks to determine how south african public relations practitioners respond to ethical obligations in their practice. morality and ethicality over the last few decades, communication practitioners have increasingly found themselves subjected to what ryan and martinson (1984: 27) refer to as individual relativism. individual relativism requires that “each individual must establish his or her 32 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation own moral base lines” by constantly weighing and trying to balance their own position with the needs and expectations of the company, and with their responsibility or accountability to act in the interest of the greater good (ibid.). individual ethics depends on the extent to which an individual judges a certain issue or action to be morally important. individuals can adopt either relativism or absolutism as a moral perspective for ethical decision-making (han et al. 2013). relativists deny the existence of universal and absolute ethical principles, and tend to understand and apply their ethical standards based on their society, culture and system, whereas absolutists prefer to consistently apply ideal standards when making moral judgements (han et al. 2013: 557). these authors note that relativism may impede moral judgement, while absolutism may increase moral tension. sparks and pan (2010) suggest that ethical value judgements are neither absolute nor relative, but instead range along a continuum of ethicality where individual ethical values reflect a personal evaluation of the degree to which some behaviour or course of action is ethical or unethical. the existence of degrees of moral status best explains the forced trade-offs among “the urgent interests of different beings” (metz 2012: 389). as noted by green (1993: 221), efforts to construct morality “on the foundations of a rationally justifiable principle or sets of principles” no longer hold, because there is a tendency to favour the “situated and particular over the universal and general”. as such, scientific and moral knowledge is not based on an ahistorical framework or philosophy, but rather results from dialogue and inter-subjective agreement about which criteria have greater value and relevance. green (ibid.) suggests that the rejection of unitary narratives and justifications opens the way for acceptance of plurality and difference, and has assisted in establishing “otherness, difference and marginality” as valid modes of approach to experience. de george (2006: 381) argues that by embracing other modes of experience practitioners can expand their views on justice and raise their consciousness by considering various points of view using a variety of criteria. ethics of inter-subjectivity may assist in calibrating personal ideals of morality in relation to a concern for the wellbeing of others. becker (2013: 20) stresses the usefulness of viewing ethics as a relationship of the self to the other that does not reduce the fundamental being of others to something that is to be understood. becker (2013: 20-21) relates the responsibility for the adoption of the perspective of the “other” to levinas’ (1991) ethics of inter-subjectivity, which alternates between “duty-based norms about how to meet the needs of the other, and spontaneously responding to the face and the voice of the other and the expression the other’s needs in this encounter”. the complexity of accountability, from this perspective, is vested in not simply assuming ethical responsibility for the “other” but also in assuming broader responsibility that extends to the “other’s other”. levinas (1991) suggests such a stance requires a process of substitution where the self is put “in place of the other by taking responsibility for the other’s responsibilities” (in becker 2013: 20). becker (ibid.) notes that the responsibility for the other is not based on the notion of “transactional symmetry or reciprocity” that has consistently been advocated for in most of the body of knowledge about modernist pr theory and practice. instead, ethicality stems from the dialogical nature of the relationship in that symbolic interaction only becomes 54 verwey & muir possible through closeness or interaction with the other and cannot be accomplished through monologue communication of information. becker (ibid.) suggests that while the voice of the other must be heard, the ethics of responsibility will determine the judgement that prevails. it is therefore unavoidable that decision-makers in business settings experience ethical conflicts “between their given accountability and duty to various stakeholders in situations involving conflicts of interests, but also with regard to their organisation’s interests and their personal interests” (han et al. 2013: 553). holmström and kjaerbeck (2007) view contemporary ethical ideals such as social responsibility, dialogue and symmetrical communication as a response to the challenges of modernisation and globalisation. based on the work of luhman, holmström and kjaerbeck (2007: 7) see an “evolution in the perception of legitimacy and in the legitimising practice of organisations”, which is evident in the progression from reflexivity to reflection. reflection involves an attempt to see the world through the eyes of others in order to understand other perspectives and other perceptions of reality. this stands in stark contrast to the narrow and explicit view offered by reflexivity where the organisation is “characterised by blind self-presentation from within” (holmström & kjaerbeck 2007: 9). this also facilitates a degree of openness that is not possible for organisations with mono-contextual worldviews, and the shifts in perspective from a functionalist to a co-creational perspective, in which the co-creation of meaning and building of relationships is emphasised. approaching ethical practice exercising sound moral judgement in situations of self-imposed moral dilemmas require an “integrated moral/ethical stance based on experience, expertise, a highly developed awareness of social demands and an apparently over-arching comprehension of the balance between personal, company, social and client needs” (de araugo & beal 2013: 358). tran (2008: 161-162) suggests that ethics appeal to individuals with a strong sense of role morality and which entails three types of ethical considerations, namely moral awareness (recognition of moral problems), moral dilemmas (moral judgements) and moral laxity (moral failures). modernist approaches to public relations practice are based on the premise that most practitioners have assumptions about the social role of public relations. it is evident that traditional public relations takes a decidedly modernist perspective (holtzhausen 2000; 2011; 2012; holtzhausen & voto 2002; mumby 1997; toth 2002) in which control and certainty, clearly measurable objectives, and two-way communication culminate in clear ethical judgements (boyd & van slette 2009: 329). however, boyd and van slette (ibid.) suggest that a postmodern lens may be more suited to situated and cultural style public relations practices. although there is no single postmodern theory, holtzhausen (2012: 13) argues that as a philosophy it stands critical of modernist thinking that pursues a single dominant truth or ideology (westernism), and which marginalises those who do not prescribe to this ideology. from this perspective it is also clear that there are no neutral approaches to the practice of public relations, because it is deeply embedded in the 54 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation social and cultural values of the societies in which they originate. postmodern public relations practice forces acknowledgement of some of the deficiencies of traditional public relations, and questions some of the assumptions and exploitative practices on which these are based. berger (1999: 245) describes these practices in the following terms: “...ideological distortion must be enacted, and must be sustained on a terrain of struggle, consisting of multiple sites in which competing world views intersect to establish meaning, and gain consent for particular outcomes”. in this regard mumby (1997: 23) argues that “far from marginalising communication as a human activity postmodernism contributes to a more insightful understanding of the processes through which communication, identity and power intersect”. dutta-bergman (2005: 281) suggests that the (ethical) challenge particularly relates to share of voice because “understandings of civil society do not take into account the marginalisation of voices which is accomplished through the exclusionary practices of capitalism”. dutta-bergman (2005: 287) thus argues in favour of a public relations role in society where the practitioner acts against marginalisation and silencing, and facilitates the expression of marginalised voices. holtzhausen (2012: 102) notes that while the traditional role of public relations practitioners has been to uphold the status quo, “the modernist class struggle becomes a postmodern struggle for asserting one’s values in the face of dominant social values”, thereby creating possibilities for social change. holtzhausen (2012) thus suggests that the activist role has become the postmodern equivalent of traditional role-based agency. botan (1997: 151) regards ethicality as closely related to the nature of the professional role that is enacted by the public relations professional. botan (1997) argues that traditionally public relations has been practised at the technician level, which can be regarded as less ethical because of the contractual basis of the role, which reduces the professional to a “hired gun” (botan 1997). according to botan (1997: 195), this approach negates both the ethical role of the practitioner, and the dialogic approach to practice because the practitioner is required to cede “unquestioned authority to decide major ethical issues” to someone else. as a result, botan (1997: 196) argues that the notion of ethical public relations is equated to “being loyal to the client or employer’s strategic interests, or being good at the craft”. edgett (2002: 23) however suggests that the function itself is neither good or bad, but rather that it is in the manner in which the function is carried out in accordance with “some philosophical framework that goes beyond codes of practice (that) determine the rightness or wrongness of actions”. botan (1997: 196) contends that whereas traditional approaches to public relations instrumentalises and relegates publics to a secondary role, dialogue elevates publics to the status of communication equal with the organisation, thereby recognising a multiplicity of viewpoints and the right of informed choice. botan (1997: 197) distinguishes two broad classes of public relations roles, namely technical or strategic/ managerial roles: as monologue communicators, technicians see “communication partners as the means to an end”, while a dialogical view as enacted by strategists sees “communicative partners as ends in themselves”. in this regard hutton (1999: 209) suggests that “the central organizing theme of public relations theory and practice” is in fact relational. 76 verwey & muir ethics in practice hodges (2006: 85) contends that a culture of practice consists of systems of occupational practices that are legitimised within particular communities of practice. as such it represents the life worlds of practitioners (their own cognitive processes, thoughts, values, previous experiences and knowledge), which are then subjected to the effects of “occupational socialisation”. each of the body of knowledge, or moral philosophy, provides its own basis for rationalising and legitimising human motivation in decisionmaking and action. werder (2008: 122) suggests that the subjective norm results from the individual’s perception of the social pressures to perform in accordance with the expectations of particular referents. the practice of public relations and communication has a long history in which partisan values have dominated the practice. this approach stems from the well-established notion of pr agency that requires practitioners to symbolically (re)-present their clients (self)-interests. however, as public relations paradigms have evolved, the focus has shifted away from a strict preoccupation with organisational and managerial interests towards a more reflective and inclusive approach to pr practice (edwards 2012) that both questions and resists normative practices and existing power structures. accordingly, a postmodern perspective on morality places the burden of ethical decision-making solely on the individual professional that must question and resist existing power structures and decision-making practices (holtzhausen 2015). as such pr practitioners are called on to serve as the ethical conscience of their business organisation, and to increasingly provide management with ethical counsel (ibid.). ethics in this context should be viewed in reference “to questions about human flourishing, about what it means for life to be well lived”; while “morality designates something narrower, the constraints that govern how we should and should not treat other people” (appiah 2008: 37). from this perspective, ethical conscience resides in “a professional who raises concerns when his or her organisation’s actions might bring about potential ethical problems leading to troubling consequences for various parties, who may be individuals, groups, organisations ... both within and outside the organisation” (neill & drumwright 2012: 221). scholars such as hurn (2008) argue that ethical principles are devised mainly from the fundamental beliefs and value systems developed within a culture, and as such ethics attempts to tell us what is and what is not morally acceptable within a particular society or culture. organisations that are dominated by exchange relationships and are often unwilling to incur costs to build communal relationships, incur greater costs from negative publicity, unfavourable legislation, and other reputational costs that result from non-communal relationships (grünig 2000). edwards (2005: 269-288) suggests that rapid changes in the context of practice require reconsideration of the nature of exchange relations between social agents, and the social contexts that mediate their interaction. grünig (2000) first emphasised the importance of communality as a professional value when he suggested that collaboration, collectivism and communal relationships should be at the core of what is valued as a profession; and that it should guide professional pr practice. mourkogiannis (2014) sees morality as reflected in a deeply felt awareness of the self, the circumstances and the potential of the calling. thus any discussion of the value of ethical communication practice for society must 76 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation begin with a concern for the nature and integrity of community. based on the ethics of care, a communal moral framework is based on three principles, namely that any claim of truth is to be validated through co-operative enquiry; that communities of co-operative inquiry should validate common values that become the basis of mutual responsibilities of all community members; and that all citizens should have equal access and participation in the power structures of society (tam 1998). these premises “downplay the values of individuality, autonomy, and personal rights, so prevalent in other ethical theories, in favour of a focus on the virtues and actions that support the interests of society as a whole” (bennett-woods 2005: 32). ubuntu as moral framework for south african pr practice south african roles research conducted by tindall and holtzhausen (2011) support several previous studies that point to the importance of socio-cultural influences, such as the historical perspectives, worldviews, culture, and ethnicity unique to a particular context of practice. these findings suggest that roles should be considered in relation to the context in which they are performed. their 2011 study suggests that the enactment of the cultural interpreter role is influenced by the practitioners’ worldview. south african practitioners included in their study were able to perform this role more often because of their balanced euro-afrocentric worldview, which is more inclusive of multiple perspectives and is therefore more beneficial in diverse multi-cultural environments such as in south africa. the applicability of ubuntu as a moral philosophy for public relations practice in south africa may reside in “the emphasis all explanations of ubuntu place on its nature as a communitarian ethic, and (which) is often contrasted with ‘western individualism’” (west 2014: 48). previous research in this area has contributed by providing an introduction to the concept and several interpretations of how ubuntu could apply to business and business ethics. as a communitarian philosophy that stresses the importance of interpersonal relationships and values, such as harmony and care, ubuntu is clearly relevant to the south african business sphere. ubuntu is based on the maxim, which metz (2012: 391) notes is usually translated as either “a person is a person through other persons” or “i am because we are”. metz (2012: 348) argues that the more a “being is capable of being part of a certain communal relationship, the greater its moral status”. metz (ibid.) therefore grounds moral status in relational properties and proposes a modal-relational approach that reflects salient sub-saharan moral views of ubuntu. ubuntu as a philosophy is characterised by virtues such as tolerance, harmony and compassion towards the other, as well as inclusivity and the embracing of social justice (west 2014). all of these can be regarded as pertinent to postmodern communication management and practice. as a communitarian philosophy, ubuntu emphasises strong connections between people, encouragement of collaboration, diminished emphasis on self-serving individualism, and the valuing of the greater good in ethical decision-making (bennett-woods 2005). this approach to moral philosophy also resonates with levinas’ (1991) ethics of inter-subjectivity, which is based on the relationship of one to the other, and the third other, and the notion of 98 verwey & muir substitution, as discussed above. by following an ethic of caring, relationship-building and community, public relations practitioners who situate themselves in the complex social environment of their communities and stakeholders allow others direct access to their institutions (holtzhausen 2015). building social capital in any society begins with a commitment to support the collective interests of the community (heath 2000), therefore any discussion of the value of ethical communication practice for society must begin with a concern for the nature and integrity of community. ultimately, a communitarian philosophy like ubuntu can have the greatest value for the philosophy and practice of public relations if it strengthens the democratic process through values of collaboration and collectivism. however, mersham et al. (2011) argue that south african public relations has yet to realise its full responsibilities to the urban and rural classes of africa. these scholars point to the tremendous gap that separates public relations practice from the needs and aspirations of millions of people in africa, and which in their view can only be met through establishing communal relationships and approaches to public relations practice within the african social and political context. while there are no formally documented studies available regarding the moral philosophy and ethics of public relations practice in south africa, there is some personal and anecdotal evidence that south african practice seems to reflect some of the values that underlie ubuntu. because the trustworthiness of anecdotal evidence and personal experience cannot be verified, this is a limitation to the understanding of how ethical public relations practice is approached in the south african context. research methodology this study is exploratory in nature and utilised a qualitative research design. a qualitative research design allows for an in-depth investigation to determine how south african practitioners respond to their ethical obligations in their public relations practice. the sub-questions were as follows: ♦ how do ethical dilemmas affect south african public relations practice? ♦ how do south african public relations practitioners respond to the ethical dilemmas they face in their practice? ♦ how is the modal relational framework of ubuntu reflected in south african public relations practice? the population of this study was pr practitioners who are employed in both south african agency and corporate contexts. non-probability purposive sampling was utilised, and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with selected participants. the purposive non-probability sample included 12 female pr practitioners who are representative of all south african race group designations. the selected pr practitioners had between four and seven years’ experience in the field at the time of the interviews. seven of the interviews were conducted with practitioners who are employed in agency contexts, while the other five interviews were conducted with 98 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation practitioners who are employed in client systems. the use of open-ended questions allowed for follow-up questions that assisted in developing in-depth understanding of the participants’ responses. all participants consented to voice recording of the interviews. notes were also taken during each interview, and voice recordings were transcribed to assist with the process of data analysis. data analysis consisted of thematic content analysis of the transcribed material and this process assisted in the identification of similar themes, categories or relationships in the participants’ responses. reliability and trustworthiness were assured by adhering to all academic conventions to ensure qualitative measures of quality, namely transferability, credibility, dependability and confirmability (starman 2014: 6). findings and interpretation of results the research findings offer many valuable insights into the south african pr professional context and the nature of the ethical dilemmas that south african pr practitioners face. in general, practitioners demonstrate a sound understanding of what constitutes morality and how ethical considerations should inform their response to ethical dilemmas. however, despite this high level of awareness and knowledge of the concepts that underlie ethical pr practice, client systems still tend to dominate the process of ethical decision-making. as a result, the participants stress the importance of aligning individual and organisational values with societal values. the majority of the participants indicated that misalignment of these value sets constitute their main source of moral tension and role strain. as one participant states, it is a constant changing field and constant changing environment. i think people are becoming a lot more aware of how quickly communication can go wrong. it’s sharing information, looking at what works, not only in south africa also in other countries … and just trying to identify issues and how these issues were dealt with. an important part of communication is listening and having an understanding of ethics and the importance of being an ethical company and an ethical person. tendency towards moral relativism it is evident from the research findings that a number of participants are adopting moral relativism as a moral approach. this is evident from the importance that is attached to the constantly weighing and balancing of their own position with the needs and expectations of the company, and with that of society at large. however, reference was also made to the moral tension that arises as a result of organisational culture, policies, procedures and red tape. the research findings further indicate that practitioners grapple with establishing their own moral baselines, especially in contexts where there is preference for consistently applying ideal standards when making moral judgements. as one participant notes you do go into it knowing that you are going to be representing a brand which may or may not stand for the same things as you do. and although you said that you would like to be as transparent as possible … you can only be as transparent as the company wants you to be. 1110 verwey & muir in these instances, it is clear that the practitioner’s role is often negated to that of paid consultant, gatekeeper and advisor, whose role is limited to promoting other people’s interests. such an instrumental view of the role negates any notion of ethical practice. instead, subjective norms for acceptable behaviour is then established based on the individual’s perception of the social pressures to perform in accordance with the expectations of particular referents. as one respondent noted, “…i basically have to come up with solutions that work for agency as effectively as possible to meet client expectations”. another respondent who states that, “at the end of the day you don’t really represent yourself, you represent another stakeholder, who is your client”, also supports this perception. the duality and ambiguity of individual relativism is experienced because “…at the end of the day you are representing your own personal brand as well as the agency that has employed you. consequently, i do hold myself accountable for everything that goes out…”. these responses from the research participants suggest that practitioners are grappling with the ambiguity of relativism and are experiencing systemic challenges in establishing their own moral base line, especially in those contexts of practice that require practitioners to unquestioningly represent their client’s interests. the findings indicate that this is more often the case in agency contexts. alignment between practitioner, company and society’s values and needs a minority of the participants indicated concern for the alignment of their personal moral frameworks with others in their context of practice. in this regard a participant noted, “… so i think the most important things are that your practice aligns to both your legal and your value frameworks. i hope we are hired by x because we are honest and are people of integrity.” however, the majority of the practitioners still seem to rely on ideal standards or external frameworks to guide their ethical conduct and moral judgements, thereby relinquishing decision-making to others. this approach is typical of modernist practice where ethical practice is equated with being loyal to the employer or client by serving their strategic interests, or being good at the craft. it is evident that the majority of practitioners do not yet accept personal moral responsibility and that a level of subjugation to either management’s or client’s interests directs their ethical role performance. in some instances corporate culture and policies and procedures dictate their behaviour: “(we get)… a lot of guidance from global, this is how you say it, this is why you say it, and this is what not to say”. in some instances, blind obedience to authority is demanded from practitioners: “i am the client and you will do this because i am paying your salary… you will do exactly as i say”. practitioners do experience potential moral conflict but are hesitant to voice their moral concerns. the respondents indicated that they are expected to comply with a culture of practice that is legitimised in their contexts and that is reportedly communicated to them through extensive training, internal communication and induction programmes. there is, however, awareness amongst some of the practitioners that regardless of whether the ethical dilemmas are systemic or specific to the individual, practitioners do need to engage in deeper levels of self-reflection, and truly question themselves 1110 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation and what they believe in: “…communication practitioners need to try their best to find jobs whose value systems are closely linked to their own because it will make doing their jobs easier and they won’t have to question their own moral code”. as was noted by one respondent, it is quite challenging sometimes because you find that what you value isn’t necessarily what the organisation values. you would value people and they would only value the bottom line… so you have to ask yourself questions like, ‘do i really belong here or can i go somewhere else?’. while partisan values still seem to dominate south african practice, there are limited indications that some practitioners are starting to question and resist normative practices and existing power structures, in line with more postmodern pr practice. responding to ethical dilemmas this dominance of partisan values in south african practice is also reflected in the practitioners’ responses to ethical dilemmas and the justifications that they offer for apparent moral laxity in responding to such dilemmas: “…sometimes they are going to have to do things that they as human beings don’t necessarily like or agree with”. another respondent added, “…sometimes you are going to have to compromise some of your own principles because you might have a demanding client”. moreover, their moral compromise is also justified by comments such as, [s]o i think at the end of the day, your values are your values, but you can’t push your values onto your company or clients and so … sometimes you just have to bite your tongue … even if you don’t agree with them. i mean if it’s not harming anybody or it’s not illegal and is just your matter of opinion then you kind of have to go with the flow. it is evident that absence of moral fit between the practitioner and the context of practice results in moral tension for practitioners and that most practitioners are responding to this tension with moral relativism that may affect their moral judgement. by not voicing their concerns, they are subjugating their moral judgement to others. in considering the practitioners’ responses, most moral tension seems to be experienced in instances where personal values are not aligned with organisational values. most practitioners are aware what these moral tensions are, and also of the importance of understanding what has value for others, especially in the communal contexts of practice. they are, however, struggling with how to respond to this tension in contexts where they are constrained by modernist assumptions, assertions and accountabilities. one of the participants stressed the dilemma posed by the modernist notion of agency, pointing out that their role expectations are informed by the fact that they are paid to act on behalf of others and to further their interests, “but where i draw the line is lying and covering up the truth”. the existence of some personal moral baseline is also alluded to by a comment such as, sometimes you’ve just go to put your foot down and say ‘guys … this is not on and is not cool’ and if you have that relationship with client, they should never take offence. they should know where they have crossed the line. 1312 verwey & muir these findings point to the existence of moral tension in south african contexts of practice. this tension results in role strain for the practitioners because the contexts of practice are not conducive to ethical role performance. south african contexts of practice are still characterised by modernist assertions such as partisan values, subjugation to authority and power, and instrumental approaches to practice that regard the practitioner as a tool for achieving strategic objectives for clients, instead of a being regarded as a source of valued ethical counsel. most practitioners appear to be responding to these ethical dilemmas through silence and subjugation, and although some are speaking out, others are resolving moral tension by a propensity to leave contexts where they experience a lack of moral fit. as a result, some practitioners are becoming acutely aware of some of the limitations modernist assumptions have for ethical practice. the pr practitioner and accountability a significant number of the participants regarded themselves as accountable for serving the needs of others, but their accountability is mainly viewed as linked to their role as a brand custodian and the responsibilities that the role holds. their notion of accountability is therefore limited and does not extend beyond their immediate role responsibility. only two respondents mentioned the importance of personal accountability but this was in reference to the value they attach to their personal reputation. accountability to self most of the respondents perceived themselves as being accountable for the manner in which they serve their stakeholder interests. they regard themselves as the custodian of the brands that they work on and they value this as a trusted position that requires accountability to both the client and the employer: “i think that i do need to be accountable because at the end of the day you are representing your own personal brand as well as the agency which has employed you”. this sentiment is also shared by another participant who stated, “i don’t see myself as a ‘passing the buck’ person, and i think you grow by being accountable”. there are differing viewpoints about how accountability is facilitated by the industry. a few of the respondents made it clear that the industry is demanding, and that stepping into the industry meant that practitioners need to be clear on their own moral baselines, and the difference between what is right and what is wrong: “there shouldn’t be any blurred lines or grey … it’s either white or black”. however, there were other practitioners who emphasised the relativity of practice, “… there are great cross sections where we all know what is good and what is bad, but then we lose ourselves in the grey areas”. for some, personal judgements are those that prevail, “… i need to judge how the situation is for me to actually be responding in the right way”. accountability to others the findings indicate that while there is moral awareness of the needs of others, the conceptualisation of others is more indicative of a reflexive than a reflective approach to pr practice. only two participants indicated the importance of adopting a more reflective approach, with one of them stating, “i definitely think it is a strategic role 1312 art or dark art? moral failure and ethical obligation in moving away from the inside-out approach and use a more outside-in approach and actually listen to what it is our audiences are saying…”. while the participants demonstrate moral awareness and understanding of organisational and societal values, none of the respondents who were interviewed pointed to its importance, or seemed to reflect on the complexity of facilitating stakeholder relationships within a broader societal context. instead they tend to assume a narrow and reflexive view that limits their responsibility to representing and acting on behalf of the organisation, and its clients. this limits their complexity of accountability because they are only assuming ethical responsibility for the direct “other”. this is evident from the fact that the majority of the participants describe their own roles using traditional terminology such as brand custodian, gatekeeper, informer and relationship manager, and that their primary role focus is their relationship with their clients and employers. although one participant made mention of a 360-degree approach in serving stakeholder interests, the majority of the participants had specific traditional views of whose interests they serve, namely government, media, employees, consumers and their clients. a few participants acknowledged the importance of broader stakeholder interests, while marginalised stakeholders are not even considered. this suggests that south african practitioners do not appear to acknowledge the complexity of their accountability, and still see their accountability as narrowly defined by the institutions that they serve. given this limited view, the participants’ responses do not reflect a deeply felt awareness of the self, the circumstances and the potential of the calling, or a consideration of the nature and integrity of community. it would appear as if the practitioners have not yet embraced postmodern notions of ethicality, such as otherness, difference and marginality as modes of experience, despite their stated commitment to serving the needs of others. while the importance of dialogue is acknowledged, this dialogue is aimed at establishing transactional symmetry between the practitioner and the client, rather than a relationalmodal approach aimed at collaboration and collectivism. predominately, agency participants are concerned with building transactional relationships with their clients. preference is expressed for monologue engagement that is directed towards educating and informing the client, or providing trusted counsel. compared to agency participants, the participants from client contexts expressed more concern with serving the interests of a broader stakeholder base and advancing accountability in their stakeholder communities than the agency participants. the participants working in client systems also appear to adopt a more communal and socio-cultural style of practice in which relational capital is more valued than the agency participants who appear to adopt a more managerial and transactional approach in which client retention and the bottom line is valued. alignment of personal values is also more important to the participants from client contexts than the participants from agency contexts. the participants from agency contexts exhibit a greater likelihood of adopting subjective norms for acceptable behaviour as a result of organisational pressures to perform in accordance with the expectations of clients. 1514 verwey & muir conclusion research findings confirm that partisan values still dominate south african public relations practice and that contexts of practice do not facilitate ethical practice by meeting ethical obligations through ethics of care and communality. in addition, practitioners are increasingly subjected to moral tension that leads to role strain. in the absence of clear ethical judgements, practitioners are subjected to increasing moral relativism. this means that practitioners must constantly weigh and try to balance their own position with the needs and expectations of the company, and their ethical obligations with their complexity of accountability. the findings from this study seems to indicate that the roots of ethical failures in the industry run deep. serious concern must be raised in respect of individual practitioners’ lack of personal moral accountability and the deficient ethical cultures that prevail in their contexts of practice. south african pr practice will continue to be regarded as a “dark art” that lacks legitimacy and value for society unless it can free itself of moral constraints inherent to the reflexive modernist pr practices and assumptions that prevail. to facilitate a transition away from compliance to codes of conduct towards greater moral accountability, moral character in role enactment must be engaged with on a more profound level. what is required is a moral philosophy for public relations practice that can restore the tainted image of industry through values of collaboration and collectivism, and an ethics of care. as a communitarian philosophy that stresses the importance of interpersonal relationships and values such as harmony and care, the relevance of ubuntu to south african public relations practice should be considered. any discussion of the 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https://doi.org/10.1108/17471110810856929 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1669-3 _goback 1pb returning to our roots: looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens abstract viewers of reality dating shows on television have found a platform on twitter to change the manner in which they consume the content of the shows. audiences of the south african show date my family (dmf) use this social media platform to express their views and value judgements about the show and in particular about the performances of those seeking love on the show. the traditionally private act of courtship in an african context is reimagined in the manner in which audiences in these shows have brought the scrutiny of a private act into the public realm. through an analysis of what was arguably one of the most noteworthy episodes of dmf (featuring mdu nyoni), and subsequent value judgements by viewers on twitter, this article argues that there is nothing inherently surprising about the seeming shift of power to the audience in authenticating contestant performance on south african reality dating shows, and that is in essence an act of a traditional village digitally re-imagined. keywords: date my family; reality television; performativity; african communitarianism; black twitter; social media communication; media studies; ubuntu; digital village introduction with most members of society are now digital citizens, despite some lingering controversies (see grazian 2005; ginsburg 2008: 130), many commercial organisations have embraced digitisation, moving away gradually from analogue technology (walker et al. 2010: 174). it is also important to note that new media are not simply a consequence of technical inventions, but these new technologies derive from a two-stage process of inventing and “social institutionalizing” (ströber 2004: 484). furthermore, society “institutionalises” inventions by discovering new possibilities of communication; it formats new media functions and adapts new media; it develops new economic models; and last, but not least, society accepts new media by creating a new political framework and a new legal order for it (ströber 2004: 485). dr mthobeli ngcongo department of communication science, university of the free state, south africa email: ngcongom@ufs.ac. za (corresponding author) orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-93097483 linda fekisi postgraduate student, department of communication science, university of the free state, south africa email: fekisilnx@ufs.ac.za orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-30263384 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-13 date submitted: 31 july 2019 date accepted: 31 october 2019 date published: 26 november 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ngcongom@ufs.ac.za mailto:ngcongom@ufs.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9309-7483 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9309-7483 mailto:fekisilnx@ufs.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3026-3384 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3026-3384 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 ngcongo & fekisi apart from enabling a participatory culture, user-generated content, connected communities of interest, destruction of the media industry hegemony, as well as fluidity across platforms, new media have other benefits that it offers to the society (boyd 2008: 19). the implication is that a user culture is created, which in turn promulgates a new urban culture and new ways of life (mäenpää 2001: 108). new media, such as social media, can be used to extend the user experience of traditional forms of media, such as reality television. the result is an extension of audience reach and participation in unprecedented ways. the ways in which social media use, in particular twitter, collide with the commentary on reality television shows is a perfect example of how audiences become more empowered to engage with media content. of interest here is how viewers of the south african reality dating show, date my family (dmf), have found a platform to radically change the manner in which they consume the content of the show on and through twitter. audiences of dmf use this social media platform as an opportunity to express their views and judgements about the show and, in particular, about the performances of those seeking love on the show. the traditionally private act of courtship in an african context is reimagined in the manner in which dmf audiences have brought the scrutiny of the private act into the public realm. this scrutiny has been evidenced by various episodes in which the impressions that those seeking love on the show have attempted to make on the family and unwittingly on the audience. despite love and romance being pervasive and a universally shared pursuit (singer 2010), there has been little investigation of both of these phenomena in africa (thomas & cole 2009). the situation is even more complex in south africa given the diversity and cultural differences among its peoples. this article presents itself as an example of how rich african concepts can be fruitfully applied to help us understand and make sense of previously taken for granted public displays of romance and love in south africa. the epistemological blindness and empirical blindness hitherto given to the subject of romantic relationships in south africa is challenged through this work. the article presents analytical and conceptual arguments that black twitter is an extension and reification of the public power that the african village has always had in authenticating performativity in private issues of romance. this is done, firstly, by focusing on a previously under-researched area of romantic dating shows in south africa and, secondly, by doing so through the lens of african communitarianism. the traditional and new media juxtaposition traditional media (such as television) and social media (such as twitter) have more in common than is readily apparent. these commonalities make juxtaposing and investigating how audiences intersect with the two forms of media potentially fruitful and insightful. as a genre, reality tv hinges on the presupposition of the “ordinary”. this is because of the ordinariness of the people featured in the shows (bonner 2003). the people are ordinary because of their everydayness, instead of being professional actors. that is, the programmes claim to represent real people and situations, a claim that sets reality television apart from fictional stories on television. by participating in 32 ...looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens. reality shows ordinary people help to define what ordinary means. the content of the shows is also represented as ordinary and focuses on everyday topics, which function to shape the audience’s behaviour. an illustration of this ordinariness is offered by reality dating shows such as dmf. dmf is a south african reality dating show, which airs on mzansi magic (dstv channel 161). it helps single people in their quest for love by sending them on dates with the families of their potential partners. during the date, the singleton gets to know the potential partners through interaction with their family and friends over dinner. an episode is one hour long, and features a home visit to three families. at the end of the show, the singleton picks a preferred partner based on the interaction with the family, and goes on an actual date with this partner (mopedi 2015). viewers of the dmf then go on to twitter to engage with the content of the show. twitter, launched in 2006, is described by jansen et al. (2009) as a form of electronic word of mouth. it has recently become the focus of scholarly attention, looking at how this social media platform can be used for various applications, including facilitating communication, informing and mobilising social unrest, and informing political discourse and preceding revolutionary events on the ground. it is the third most popular social networking site in south africa and has approximately 6.6 million users. in an article on twitter activism, bosch (2017) suggests that twitter has a more intensive engagement than facebook. questioning performativity on dmf in an article on dmf, morapedi (2015) touches on how it is “a freshly brainstormed and culturally relevant concept that isn’t based on the success of an american version”. this praise of originality, however, is not without criticism. in the same article, he raises the argument that this show makes the audience wonder why so many young people are looking for love on television and questions what ever happened to finding love in “the traditional way”. morapedi is not the only one questioning the relevance of a public performance of love. viewers of the show, through the medium of twitter, have voiced many concerns on specific episodes. one of the most controversial of these episodes, as exemplified by the publicity it drew, was an episode that aired on 15 january 2017. this episode featured businessman mduduzi ‘mdu’ nyoni as the eligible bachelor. his quest to find love was called into question through what has been dubbed as black twitter. it did not take long for #datemyfamily to trend. shortly after the show nyoni had to deactivate his social media accounts because of the backlash. ‘black twitter’ refers to a group of twitter users who are vocal about their unconventional and conscious views on debates and current affairs. these debates are mostly topical, referred to as trending, at that moment in time. pilane (2014) defines black twitter as a cultural identity on twitter that is focused on issues of interest to the black community. in her article, pilane also focuses on the south african context of this section of twitter by providing definitions from prominent scholars. she writes that in south africa “it is predominantly made up of the young black middle-class so there is a lot of discussion 54 ngcongo & fekisi on pop culture on any given day”. while robust discussions on crucial societal matters take place on this platform, there is also a fair share of humour. while different forms and versions of black twitter exist in various countries, it is important to note that each is unique for various reasons. this article only focuses on factors prevalent in the south african context. like in any village, dynamics differ. villagers on black twitter can be identified by the use of certain hashtags, coined terms, and shared interests and topics. furthermore, within the south african context, black twitter is mostly active in the collective consumption of reality tv on what is dubbed “sunday twitter”. during this time, there is a spike in tweet activity and conversation. this is also when dmf is aired. in this manner a simulacrum of an african village is formed. surveillance power and african communitarianism the importance of privacy, although universal, differs in the extent to which it is valued across cultures. the value placed on privacy worldwide has intensified because of western individualistic culture, which tends to value individual privacy more than non-western nations and cultures (tavani 2007). subsequently, the rules that govern how this privacy is regulated rest on the critical factor of how much it is valued (metzger 2007). understanding the growth of this value system of individual privacy in an african context is important in the context of this article as it assists in understanding the dynamics of privacy and surveillance in dmf. there is an assumption that communal living in preindustrial societies somehow muted individualism (see henderson 2006). the link to communal living creates the illusion that individuals in preindustrial contexts had no room to carve out any sense of privacy because everything was known about them. this is misleading in that it reduces privacy to physical space. privacy does not necessarily need physical space in order to be exercised. an individual may still have private thoughts while in the company of significant others. individuals are both social and personal at once. humans are both private and public, moving along this continuum as each unique interaction presents itself. even within the african context, the precolonial value of communitarianism did not preclude individuality. this, despite the fact that communitarianism in africa has traditionally emphasised the centrality of the community in the governance of social life and individual identity. the community is conceived of more concretely as a communion of souls with shared beliefs, values, practices and histories. a community is seen as different from a collective, which is an aggregate of individuals. community members are seen as intertwined and woven into each other’s existence by a consistent cord of communal ontologies. the debate has been whether the commonly held notions by scholars in african thought about communal ontologies preceding individual histories is an extreme assertion or not (see gyekye 1992). the assertion that the community precedes the individual is based in part on the belief that the individual is born into the community and therefore finds his/her ontology through the communal experience (see menkiti 1984). the individual 54 ...looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens. is taught the norms, practices and beliefs, which they come to adopt, by the community; in turn, these find their expression through communal living. therefore, an individual is not born with personhood – the community gives this to him/her. menkiti (1986, in matolino 2009: 161) summarises this thought as follows: “the individual, according to this version of communitarianism cannot exist alone as he or she is wholly constituted by their relations with others in the community”. in this way, the viewers of dmf who regularly comment on the show on twitter can be seen as a community in the service of helping in the process of constituting the personhood of the singles on the show. the individual has a responsibility to advance the common good and values of the community in the execution of the daily duties accorded to them. by doing this, the individual is accorded personhood. this means that an individual can fail at achieving personhood if the community deems the individual to have failed in being communal. thus, communitarianism is opposed to individualism and not individuality. gyekye (1992) asserted that this version of communitarianism presents the danger of stifling individual autonomy and individual rights. he faults the assertion that an individual is wholly constituted by the community. for him, this assertion makes the community the all-domineering structure over individual autonomy. there are implications for privacy in his argument. if an individual is not completely autonomous, then it also means that he/she cannot exercise privacy according to the dictates of his/her needs and wants. the sense of individual privacy would become subsumed in what the community considers important information to be known about the individual. individual privacy, therefore, would be secondary if it clashes with the greater good of the community. the ability of an individual to challenge and reimagine the community values in different ways than how he/she was socialised is evidence that the individual does indeed have autonomy. by giving voice to the fact of the existence of this autonomy, gyekye (ibid.) suggests that he has offered an alternative way of conceptualising communitarianism. his version, he asserts, recognises that individuals have self-determination and human rights. therefore, through a challenge of consensus and uniformity, individual autonomy is said to exist. eze (2008: 391) also highlights the dangers of consensus in communitarian thought, calling consensus “overwhelmingly tyrannical and totalitarian”. consensus is seen as clashing with individual needs and interests, as common good is more highly prized. the ultimate result is conformity and uniformity. this article considers gyekye and eze’s concerns as serious, which speak to the need not to overlook the dangers of overemphasising consensus at the expense of the individual, and to give room for autonomy. in the exercise of privacy, a couple would need to either reveal the status of the relationship if this is deemed to be important for preserving harmony, peace and solidarity in the community, or to conceal the status of their relationship if this is deemed as deviating from a shared consensus in the community that such a relationship should be concealed. either way, the couple would be at the whim of consensus, it would appear. if the community has reached consensus that revealing or concealing is deviating from a shared value, then the individual (or couple) should follow suit. 76 ngcongo & fekisi individuality has always been accorded a place in african traditional thought. in africa, the act of giving names to children, and a totem, as well as clan names in preindustrial societies are some examples of the recognition of individuality (cf. gyekye 1992). an individual’s uniqueness and contribution to the collective was never meant to be overshadowed in any way by communal living. even with the constraints of physical space in the home, moments of solitude could still be found in routine individual tasks, which were assigned. a final example of communitarianism is the moral ethic of harmony espoused in most african and southern african societies, known as ubuntu (metz 2007; metz & gaie 2010; sesanti 2010; mboti 2015). the value of ubuntu is usually summed up in the phrase, “i am because you are”, and is usually associated with an emphasis on the communal taking precedence over the individual. however, a closer reading of this principle reveals that the emphasis is actually on the actions of the individual that affect another. the only way the other can become a good human being is if the individual plays his/her role in ensuring friendliness and prompting acts of humanity towards his/her fellow citizens. this does not negate that the actions of the individual, in turn, are affected by his/her actions toward his/her fellow human being. the point here is that the moral ethic of ubuntu recognises the power of the individual to affect another (diagne 2009: 15). if the african moral ethic recognises the individual, then by implication the privacy of the individual is recognised. within the african – and particularly the south african – context of this study, the consideration of the dynamics of culture in the role of pursuing love and romance is important. the cultural landscape of africa, particularly of south africa, has been shaped largely by colonialism’s attempts at subverting indigenous cultures (garuba & raditlhalo 2008). the eclectic nature of contemporary culture in south africa was also shaped by the processes of apartheid, which ensured a quest for unity in diversity in the new south africa (kriger & zegeye 2001; garuba & raditlhalo 2008). research methodology the methodology used for this study was an interpretive analysis of tweets shared by viewers. tweets were obtained through an online ethnographic design. this method, according to skågeby (2011), provides the researcher with multiple options on data collection and analysis online. for this study, a small-scale sample of 150 tweets were collected and analysed. these were obtained from organic searches on the twitter application programming interface (api) using hashtags such as #datemyfamily and #mdunyoni. these tweets were the ones mostly retweeted or quoted by news sources related to the mdu nyoni episode. the selected sample size is not uncommon in studies of this nature. in a similar smallscale study that used twitter to study audience engagement, barbour (2016) used a sample of 72 tweets. her main objective and focus was not on the number of tweets, but rather on the behaviour of audiences consuming media through twitter. thus, the purpose of this small-scale online ethnographic sample was not to study the entire 76 ...looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens. season of dmf, but rather to study the re-imagination of an african village within the digital context at the hand of one episode. the inductive analysis section of this study rested on the constant comparative technique, which saw themes from the tweets being identified and elaborated upon as the analysis progressed. the analytic process of content analysis, which is associated with charmaz (1995: 37-45), was adapted for the purpose of this study. this is because the researchers sought to go beyond simple categories and make theoretical contributions through the analysis. charmaz’s process is conversant with theory-building as it is founded on the principles of grounded theory. grounded theory itself relies on a bundle of “specific techniques in flexible and different ways, with the aim of generating theoretical insights from qualitative data […] moving from specific instances to general” (bloor & wood 2006: 95). the process involved coding the tweets as the first major analytic phase of the research process employing thematic analysis. second came focused coding, which entailed taking earlier codes that continually reappeared in the initial coding and using those codes to sift through large amounts of data. thus, the focused coding was less open-ended and more directed than the line-by-line coding. it was also considerably more selective and more conceptual. the focused coding allowed the researchers to create and to try out categories for capturing data. lastly, memos were written on common themes in the tweets, which assisted in looking at the coding as a process to explore, rather than as solely a way to sort data into topics. memo-writing consisted of taking the categories apart by breaking them into their components. findings the content analysis conducted on the tweets from the sampled episode of dmf indicated a thematic pattern based on the following themes: performativity, surveillance and communality. performativity the nature of dmf suggests that the bachelor not only learns more about his potential date through the family, but the family also get to know the bachelor. when mdu nyoni visited the first of the families to find out more about his potential date with their loved one, his presentation of himself raised suspicion with viewers. the viewers of the show, who are active on twitter, almost immediately pointed out the inconsistencies in mdu’s behaviour on screen. the first issue that was raised through black twitter was that mdu kept switching from a british accent to a south african accent. this “code switching” happened through the entire episode: #datemyfamily fake us we are your accent @mmathaha1 bra mdu’s accent flies from sa to england to the usa in 3 minutes #datemyfamily @trevorbzungu 98 ngcongo & fekisi the second inconsistency raised by viewers on black twitter, regarding how mdu was portraying his identity to the three families, was the incoherency in his life story. to one family, mdu said he was an orphan who fended for himself, yet to another family he said that his older brother took him in and he stayed with him in london. viewers were left uncertain as to what to make of this irreconcilable detail about mdu’s life story as it related to his upbringing. for viewers engaging with the show through twitter, it was too major an error not to comment on it. a third and final detail that did not add up in what mdu said in his interaction with the three families was about where he stays and what he does for a living. he mentioned three different places of residence in his conversations with the families. mdu further said that he is a businessman, but was not forthcoming about the details of his business. surveillance viewers of dmf watching this particular episode did not allow the confusing portrayal by mdu to leave them in suspense. these viewers showed how technological affordances allow for acts of symmetrical surveillance to take place. viewers took it upon themselves to find out the “facts” about mdu’s life in order to make sense of the inconsistent details he presented on screen. the surveillance function displayed through black twitter also came with its own linguistic norms to go with the entire “ritual”. terms such as “twitter detectives”, “files” and “dirt” were used by users to identify the actions that come with uncovering truths about an unreliable contestant on dmf. the prevalence of the jargon makes for clever word play, which is a symbolic tie of this community. figure 1 below shows what tweets of this nature look like: figure 1 in the case of mdu nyoni, the viewers found out that he is not an orphan and he does not own a business, as claimed, but works as a technician. the “detectives” 98 ...looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens. went on to share pictures and screen shots of private whatsapp conversations on their twitter handles using the dmf hashtag to make it easier to collate all the “files”. through this collaborative surveillance effort, it became apparent that viewers were justified in questioning mdu’s performativity on the show. the inconsistencies turned out to be untruths that mdu told about himself for reasons that remained unknown to the viewers. the technological affordances of social media made the process of surveillance, and the sharing of this information, an expedient one. black twitter had shown its potential to authenticate performances on dmf through acts of surveillance. communality the acts of surveillance that take place among users of black twitter in the quest to authenticate the performance on dmf are facilitated through interaction and dialogue amongst these users. users seem to be bound by not only a common quest to uncover what they consider to be the truth but a set of practices that comes with this mandate. they have found a communal space through black twitter in which to actively interrogate individual performance on screen, and enact remedial action where necessary. the practices that come with this community, as suggested in the previous theme, centre on the use of linguistic and semiotic practices from jargon to memes. hence, those outside this community would struggle to decipher some of the cultural practices on black twitter. figure 2 depicts one user’s post with the comment, “mdu sprinkling us with your british accent…” with an accompanying picture of “salt bae”. figure 2 1110 ngcongo & fekisi those who are strangers to black twitter would struggle to recognise that “salt bae” was trending on twitter just a few months before the mdu nyoni episode on dmf. thus, the continuity is enacted through the use of “salt bae” that only the “residents” of this village will understand. although the users of black twitter who watch dmf are strangers, in the sense that they might never have met face-to-face, their quest to uncover what they consider the truth seems to bring them together. geographic boundaries are broken down as these previously distant souls use a shared discourse and morality to communicate on issues of love and identity, as seen on dmf. the community takes its role seriously because dmf’s format is reality television. there is a sense that the issues tackled here have existential impact broader than the show itself. if the contestants are there to find love, surely this is something any african community should take seriously. this seriousness is evidenced by how mdu nyoni’s personal phone numbers and social media account details were shared by users on black twitter in order to confront the apparent lies. the legality of the actions of the members of this “twitter community” was not considered as part of this study, but could be an important consideration for further study. discussion making a good impression, by the bachelor on the families and the families on the bachelor, is one of the presuppositions of the dmf format. conversing and getting to know the potential date through the family is the reason why the date happens with the family over a meal. when a contestant does not seem to be forthcoming to the family in the information they he gives about himself, this potentially seems to undermine the whole aim of the show. presenting a coherent narrative of the self forms the backbone of any attempt to get to know another. performing otherwise, in this instance by contestant mdu nyoni, seems to be at the heart of why the suspicions of the users on black twitter were raised and subsequent questions about mdu’s performance were raised on this social media platform. because mdu did not seem to be true to himself, the community (through black twitter) took it upon itself to help him present what they considered to be the truest version of himself. akin to the value of ubuntu that undergirds african communitarianism, black twitter as a reification of the african community becomes the custodian of authenticating the individual experience. there is a moral duty to make the individual the best version of himself/herself that (s)he can be. the maxim “i am because you are” is seen in how users collaborate to bring about what they consider to be the truth, and thus they do not allow a contestant to be relegated to the shadows of falsehood. surveillance in this context makes sense because in order to authenticate truth, an investigation must occur. scrutinising the life of a contestant is not an act that is strange, given the norms of african communitarianism. private acts that find themselves in the public realm of reality television, such as in the case of finding love on dmf, call for the seriousness that they indicate. in other words, the private act of courtship, which now finds itself within the public confines, is an invitation for the community 1110 ...looking at date my family through an african conceptual lens. to become involved. in a traditional african setting, a couple would only involve the families and community in the final act of engagement. the subversion of this norm through dmf invites the digital village, in the form of black twitter, to partake in the act of negotiating love. communitarianism, although it places the community at the centre of the formations of personhood, leaves room for the individual to exercise moral excellence in reaching the full potential of personhood. in other words, provision is made in communitarian thought for autonomy because the individual still has to attain excellence in his/her discharge of the duties that rest upon him/her. however, this should not equate to an uncritical celebration of black twitter as a panacea, reminiscent of the traditional african village. african communitarianism in its monolithic abuse of power at times did call for the sacrificing of the individual to the gods. this is obviously inconsistent with the value of ubuntu. in the same vein, black twitter users sometimes make their comments too personal, doing that which is less than humane, and in some instances could be considered defamatory. despite this concern, this study fruitfully employed the lens of african communitarianism to study how social media can help us understand how culture both reinvents itself and shapes communication channels in ways never thought possible. conclusion a few limitations, which will be important in informing how future research in this area evolves, are worth noting. to begin with, the fact that it is a study in the social media landscape was a challenge. as pilane (2015) mentions, not the entire population is on twitter. thus, there are people who viewed this episode, but did not engage on twitter. their views remain unaccounted for. twitter is a space that excludes those affected by the digital divide. secondly, due to technical challenges, not all tweets directed at the episode were reviewed. this ultimately means that the study did not take into account the input of all the participants who were engaged in the conversation. in her study, barbour (2016) highlights that opinions expressed on social media platforms are made by only a fraction of active users. through an analysis of mdu nyoni’s performativity and the subsequent value judgement by viewers on twitter, this article argues that there is nothing inherently surprising about the apparent shift of power to the audience in authenticating contestant performance on dmf. this study thus argues that black twitter is simply an 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https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2010.518792 https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2010.518792 https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262513579.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262513579.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323104049461 https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323104049461 https://doi.org/10.1080/10447310903498742 https://doi.org/10.1080/10447310903498742 _goback 1pb readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe abstract this article reports on a study using the concept of accessibility and applicability of knowledge to analyse readers’ perspectives on the influence of political news in zimbabwe. a qualitative content analysis was applied to analyse political articles from two main newspapers, the sunday mail and the newsday. focus group discussions were conducted in harare to collect readers’ perspectives on the effect of political news and print media. the findings revealed that readers choose what to believe as true or false determined by affiliation, knowledge and experience. readers as individuals can block political messages dissonant to pre-conceived ideas and accept that which is consonant to preexisting beliefs depending on personal experience, knowledge and affiliation. keywords: journalism; zimbabwe; media studies; political news; accessibility; applicability; experience; knowledge; affiliation introduction the involvement of the media audience plays a vital role in journalism. online newspapers have advanced a culture of interaction with the audience which was previously limited through letters to the editor. with the development of new communication technologies, the gap between the media and the audience has been bridged, integrating the audience as the third integral part of journalism. the development of active media audiences proceeds from the rise of civil society, which the mass media intends to serve. fortner (2011) argues that the mass media serves the interest or orientation of the audience. responsible journalism has a mandate to produce “truthful” discourse, which should benefit the society it intends to serve. this means that the media has a crucial role in a democratic and diverse society to educate and inform, to construct legitimacy, and mobilise the trust of the audience (chari 2008). this study questions the influence of political news frames (media political discourse) on the audience in zimbabwe by studying readers’ perspectives or patterns of reference to political news stories. dr limukani mathe department of communication, university of fort hare, alice, south africa email: limukanimathe@ yahoo.com (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-67760683 prof. oluyinka o. osunkunle department of communication, university of fort hare, alice, south africa email: oosunkunle@ufh. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8110-6517 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-15 date submitted: 30 january 2019 date accepted: 13 november 2019 date published: 09 december 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:limukanimathe@yahoo.com mailto:limukanimathe@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6776-0683 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6776-0683 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6776-0683 mailto:oosunkunle@ufh.ac.za mailto:oosunkunle@ufh.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8110-6517 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8110-6517 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.10 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 mathe & osunkunle readers’ patterns of reference to political news can be associated with the issue of accessibility or applicability of knowledge. higgins (1996: 134) notes that “knowledge cannot be activated or brought to mind unless it is present in memory”. thus, the study uses the concept of accessibility and applicability of knowledge to analyse readers’ perspective with regard to media discourse in order to determine the influence of a political frame. framing as a concept is the “idea that people use sets of expectations to make sense of their social world and media contribute to those expectations” (baran & davis 2009: 282). entman (1993: 52) views framing as “selectively emphasising some certain aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation for the item described”. given the above, this study aimed to establish if political news frames influence perspective. previous studies in zimbabwe concentrated on media discourses between the state and private media (makumbe & compagnon 2000; moyo 2005), but little has been done to study media audience orientation. some scholars argue that the media in zimbabwe has been misrepresenting the facts, which interests group, decision-makers and the public look to for information, and these misrepresented facts leak into nonpolitical domains influencing opinion (graber & smith 2005). this study analysed political news frames and the influence of these frames by studying readers’ perspectives. the analysis of political news content and readers’ perspectives assists in aligning audience reaction with content. print media and political communication in zimbabwe unlike the monopolised broadcast media, there are a number of newspapers in zimbabwe, both state-owned and private. some scholars opine that the government of zimbabwe has monopolised the state-controlled media (zimpapers) for its political communication and influence (willems 2004; rønning & kupe 2000; mungwari & vhutuza 2016: 116; chibuwe 2016). since 1980, public media has been under the grip of the state. former president robert mugabe’s zimbabwe african national union patriotic front (zanu-pf) government maintained this grip on the state media for its political communication. although the zimbabwe mass media trust (zmmt) was set up as a buffer between the government and public print media (rønning & kupe 2000), zanu-pf dominated and used the herald and the chronicle as its apparatuses. it is said that zanu-pf exercised control over the political public sphere from 1980 to the 1990s, but in the 1990s, civil society opposed the government. this led to the bifurcation of the press, which became further polarised by taking an editorial stance of being progovernment and anti-government (chuma 2006: 54). chari (2008: 4) writes that the ruling party could “launch a virulent media campaign whenever they suspected the possibility that its hegemony can be eroded”. in 1999, the daily news entered the newspaper market and practised oppositional journalism by exposing corruption and criticising the government (moyo 2005). chuma (2006: 49) argues that “the private press assumed by default, the role normally played by the opposition”. the daily news criticised zanu-pf and attracted government 32 readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe indignation. it is also played an oppositional role in the 2000 constitutional referendum, when the government faced defeat to the movement for democratic change (mdc) (moyo 2005). thus, the herald’s coverage of political news promoted the ruling party, while the daily news denigrated the ruling party and gave a voice to the mdc. the newsday, owned by alpha media holdings, which has been operating since 2007, also opposed zanupf and gave more coverage to the opposition. it is notable that since 2000, statecontrolled media introduced “patriotic journalism” (ranger 2005: 14). this journalism defined who were traitors and who were patriots, implying that those who were labelled traitors were against mugabe’s zanu-pf (ibid.). according to waldahl (2005), the herald and other zimpapers presented monolithic history that emphasised the role played by zanu-pf in the liberation struggle and castigated opposition politics. opposition politicians were framed as agents of the west, used to reverse the gains of independence (ranger 2002). the state-controlled media claimed that they were practising patriotic journalism at a time when perhaps socialism, education and welfare was being undermined (ranger 2005: 8). the socalled “patriotism” was closely linked to zanu-pf and its land reform programme, which the state-controlled media gave ample coverage throughout the 2000 elections (mmpz 2000). according to raftopoulos (2006: 5), issues such as human rights and democratic values were downplayed and not emphasised in the state-controlled media by making salient the history of zanu-pf and its patriotism. chambwera (2014) argues that zimpapers discredited the opposition by framing news narratives that gave more salience to “patriotism” and stimulated “patriotism discourse”. the herald and the sunday mail, in the 2000 elections, published articles emphasising slavery, the liberation struggle, and the exploitation of blacks by the ian smith regime (ranger 2002). thus, the news was framed in such a way to remind zimbabweans of the values of the liberation struggle (ranger 2002: 160). raftopoulos (2006: 13) writes that “the ruling party has been able, through its media monopoly and the widespread use of force, to project a much narrower and selective vision of the past”. this shows how the ruling party framed the history of the liberation struggle to convince voters that it freed the country from white minority rule. in the sunday mail, on 9 january 2005, mdc party members were called “intellectually challenged brothers in the rhodie shadow” (ranger 2005: 13). generally, opposition politicians, especially former mdc leader morgan tsvangirai, were labelled as sellouts because of “bitter blair and bitter white settlers” (ranger 2005: 13). according to mutanda (2012), the state-controlled media labelled the opposition as “western puppets”. in other words, the ruling party saw itself as patriotic and castigated others as unpatriotic. chambwera (2014) argues that the herald, among the zimpapers, was at the forefront of vilifying the opposition. chuma (2006; 2008) states that in 2000 and 2002, the state-controlled media, particularly the herald and the sunday mail, used binary frames characterised by terms such as “patriot” or “traitor” and “friend or enemy”. the state-controlled media 54 mathe & osunkunle reported on regional leaders from the southern african development community (sadc) and the african union (au), who expressed support for and solidarity with zanu-pf, as friends of the state (chuma 2006), while the mdc and the west were framed by the state-controlled media as enemies of the state. in the 2002 elections, the state-controlled media labelled the mdc as the instigators of violence (ibid.). it is evident that the state-controlled media was used by the zanu-pf government to frame political messages and shape public opinion. “the media became both a crucial setting and a tool of power struggle, with the boundaries of freedom of expression coming under stress as vulnerable governments attempt to influence public opinion in their favour,” writes mazango (2005: 34). zanu-pf government officials used the state media to attack private journalists and the opposition, who were viewed as tools of neo-colonialism and imperialism. as a result, privately-owned media overemphasised the negative aspects of the zanu-pf government (ndlela 2005) and their coverage was characterised by an approach of “nothing-can-ever-come-out-of-this-wretched government” (mano 2005: 65). the private media acted as the adversaries of the government, while the government blamed foreign interference for causing media adversity (ndlela 2005). the government also accused private media and foreign media of tarnishing its image through anti-zanu-pf oppositional journalism (mano 2005). private media also reported on the zanu-pf election rigging allegations and violence during the elections (chuma 2008; waldahl 2005). waldahl (2005: 24) notes that while the private media’s reportage opposed zanu-pf, it did not “lead to competition on equal terms between zanu-pf and the mdc on the media scene” because the statecontrolled media maintained positive news coverage of zanu-pf, while the private media concentrated on exposing the shortcomings of zanu-pf (chambwera 2014). from 2014, the state-controlled media exhibited factionalism politics. a zanu-pf faction known as the “weevils” controlled the state media when joyce mujuru, the former vice president, was expelled from the party. the next few years, until 2017, when mugabe was removed from power, saw a battle between two factions, lacoste and generation 40. state-owned media became a battlefield for zanu-pf factionalism. for the first time since 2014, state media disparaged senior zanu-pf officials suspected of plotting to topple mugabe (chibuwe 2016). private media, on the other hand, buoyed those who were expelled from zanu-pf. given this background of media parallelism between the privately-owned and statecontrolled media, this study presents new contrasting frames at a time when zanupf was experiencing factional and succession disputes and an opposition coalition. it further examines the influence of these frames by analysing readers’ patterns of referring to the political news content. theoretical framework accessibility and applicability this study uses the concept of accessibility and applicability as a theory to analyse readers’ patterns of referring to political news. accessibility is a way in which an 54 readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe individual’s stored knowledge or information is activated in response to media frames (higgins 1996). accessibility also refers to the idea that information that is readily available will influence judgements (iyengar 1990). accessibility reflects on the extent to which an individual recalls or remembers memories that influence considerations towards an issue (hemphill et al. 2013). hemphill et al. (2013) add that individuals further “create cognitive bridges between what they already know and what media presents”. they view this process of creating cognitive bridges as applicability. according to some scholars, the strength and influence of media frames on the audience can also be analysed in terms of the cognitive accessibility (fiske & taylor 1991; price & tewksbury 1997). this study on accessibility and applicability assists in analysing audience perspectives on political matters, with media discourse as a source of information. an audience’s decisions are mostly influenced by what is already accessible – either through their own experiences or from the media (zaller 1992). this means the availability of knowledge is essential in determining cognitive accessibility. as audiences are active and not passive media consumers (oliver 2002), individuals will not base their judgements only on media frames, without other considerations (shen 2004: 125). thus, a media frame will influence an individual if the message “interacts with the individual’s own predispositions or knowledge structure” (ibid.). when the media frame corresponds with the existing beliefs of the audience, then the effect of the frame will cause more salience and cognitive accessibility to the issue framed (entman 1993). for example, during a political campaign, people tend to use the information provided by the media to know more about a candidate’s background and personal attributes. hence, they build their knowledge about the candidates from the information made accessible by the media (shen 2004: 125). accessibility and applicability involves knowledge activation; thus, an individual’s level of knowledge can influence the way a message is accepted (genç & kasnakoğlu 2015: 593). jin and han (2014) suggest that an individual with less knowledge about an issue portrayed by the media could respond in a dramatic manner because less knowledge could trigger an irrational or emotional response. these emotions determine how “citizens process political information and arrive at political judgments” (gross & d’ambrosio 2004: 169). some scholars view emotions as the “individuals’ occurrences shaped by the way individuals experience and interpret events” (clore & ortony 2008: 630). this means an individual’s cognitive state could determine the effectiveness of a media frame. moreover, garcia-retamero and galesic (2010) highlight that less educated individuals are more vulnerable to the effects of media frames. these authors (ibid.) provide an example of health education, where people without an understanding of health or with low numeracy are easily affected by the framing effects of complicated health messages. botan et al. (2016) state that less educated people are prone to distrusting politicians and political institutions. this means that knowledge about a particular issue would “decrease the framing effect” (genç & kasnakoğlu 2015: 593). however, huang (2009, in genç & kasnakoğlu 2015: 595) found that general education increases frame diversity, which further complicates the issue already framed. this indicates that 76 mathe & osunkunle more knowledge brings with it a variety of interpretations or perceptions about an issue. genç and kasnakoğlu (2015: 594) opine that perceptions are “highly dependent on the context”, besides knowledge and education. adding to the concept of accessibility, peter (2004: 145) found that consistent or repetitive news frames, which appeal to people’s pre-dispositions or considerations (consonant coverage), have more effect that news frames that are opposed to people’s preexisting knowledge (dissonant coverage). this means “consonant coverage generates a more significant effect than dissonant ones” (corbu & buturoiu 2015: 153). corbu and buturoiu (ibid.) emphasise that the effects of framing occur in contexts where the audiences are exposed to repetitive framing and competitive framing. they view the two types of media exposure as “exposure to different frames (competitive framing) and exposure to the same frame (repetitive framing)” (ibid.). in their study, sniderman and theriault (2004) found that exposure to competitive frames, unlike repetitive exposure, makes individuals rethink their decisions; hence, resulting in minimal frame effects. this means that when individuals are exposed to competitive messages they tend to reconsider or evaluate their perspectives towards an issue. chong and druckman (2007) postulate that competitive messages motivate reasoning, which renders other frames less effective. carrage and roefs (2004: 223) state that the way audiences interpret frames can bring forth a multiplicity of issues involved with such a frame, such as a dominant frame. thus, competitive messages can make an individual view an issue from a variety of perspectives and construe it as having implications for multiple values or considerations (chong & druckman 2007: 104). competing frames make individuals weigh decisions on alternative interpretations, meaning the strong or dominant frame influences decision making over the weak frame (chong & druckman 2007: 640). according to corbu and buturoiu (2015: 155), “[s]trong frames are built on the principles of accessibility and applicability – they can be easily activated, and they are in line with individuals’ pre-existing considerations; weak frames cannot be so easily brought back into memory, mainly because they are less applicable”. in such a scenario, weak frames are easily blocked out by the memories of strong frames, which make an issue salient and more easily accessible than others (hemphill et al. 2013: 8). this means dominant or strong frames that are repeated and are readily available in memory, often influence decision making and have the capacity to manipulate public opinion (iyengar 1990; aarøea 2011). some scholars have said that a “dominant frame” can shape what people perceive as true (druckman 2001; sniderman & theriault 2004). for instance, voters do not easily accept information at first (garrett 2009), but are inclined to accept the first interpretation of an issue (lau et al. 1991), which means that frames, which are quickly communicated and frequently accessed by many people, are likely to be effective in influencing public opinion (hemphill et al. 2013). gamson (1992) studied individual frames by examining public discourse, while examining the ideas and symbols people construct of issues. he discusses three types of formation of frames – cultural, personal and integrated approaches. regarding the cultural approach, gamson (ibid.) says that group discussion relies on “media discourse and popular wisdom” (public opinion) to develop individual frames. a personal 76 readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe approach depends on “experimental knowledge and popular wisdom” and does not consider media discourse to develop individual frames, while integrated discussions rely on “media discourse, popular knowledge and experimental knowledge” to come up with individual frames (gamson 1992). only a personal approach is independent of media discourse to form individual frames. in this study, “popular wisdom” is viewed as public opinion. methodology qualitative content analysis the sunday mail is a zimbabwean state-controlled newspaper, while the newsday is a private-owned newspaper. a qualitative content analysis, aided by frame analysis, was applied to 50 articles from the sunday mail and 60 from the newsday. all articles selected were analysed. the study focused on generic political news stories to capture inclusive political content. the selection of political news stories was purposively determined by political news headlines, metaphors, cluster of words, signals in language use, and catchphrases centred on zanu-pf’s succession and factional disputes, the prospects of the opposition alliance (mdc, npp and other), and electoral disputes. the political news stories were selected from the period january 2017 to april 2017. this period was characterised by heightened political activity in zimbabwe before mugabe’s ousting from the presidency. the researchers used an inductive approach to analyse the political content. focus group discussions a thematic content analysis was applied to readers’ perspectives. qualitative data collection was used to obtain readers’ perspectives on the sunday mail and the newsday’s political news coverage. the researcher conducted three focus groups discussions, each with ten participants, in the capital city of harare as readers in the capital have access to both state-controlled and privately-owned media. focus group discussions were conducted in three areas, harare city centre (central business district), avondale (medium density suburb), and mount pleasant (medium density suburb). the focus groups consisted of diverse readers; namely, three journalists, 11 students, eight teachers and eight unemployed participants. the focus group discussions were conducted during may 2017. the data collected from the focus group discussions was transcribed and coded. a thematic analysis was used to analyse the data from the focus groups discussions by categorising audience perspectives into themes. findings qualitative content analysis the sunday mail the political content of the sunday mail was pro-zanu-pf, pro-mugabe, prograce mugabe and anti-opposition. “zanu-pf factionalism”, “succession disputes”, 98 mathe & osunkunle “the opposition alliance” and “electoral campaigns and reforms” were the main topics extracted from the analysis of the political articles. the sunday mail commended robert mugabe for being the “centre of power” in the ruling party: in reaffirming the 2014 congress resolutions, which say there should be one centre of power in the party, the president, we are compelled as the youth league to have direct access to the president (the sunday mail 26/03/2017). although, mugabe was described as the centre of power, his party was haunted by factionalism and succession disputes. the sunday mail played a role in elucidating or reinforcing one faction over another. the state-controlled paper acted as a battlefield for factional and succession disputes. the zanu-pf faction, g-40 (consisting of antimugabe war veterans), was specifically targeted by the paper and were labelled “rogue”, while another faction, lacoste (supporters of emmerson mnangagwa), was less of a target. overall, the sunday mail remained pro-mugabe and pro-zanu-pf regardless of the factional disputes. some articles in the sunday mail downplayed factionalism and succession disputes within the ruling party. a headline on 19 march read, “mnangangwa opens up on succession disputes”, and emphasised that “there is no succession headache in zanu-pf” (the sunday mail 19/03/2017), while another headline on 23 april read, “zanu-pf fumigating itself, says vp” (the sunday mail 23/04/2017). on the other hand, the sunday mail gave mostly negative coverage to the opposition. the sunday mail denigrated the leader of the main opposition; for example, “don’t be fooled by tsvangirai” (the sunday mail 05/02/2017). the article went on to say that “mr tsvangirai ill-informed people about matters related to civil disturbances in post-independence era”. another article referred to tsvangirai as “[t]he cry baby who is afraid of elections”, stating, “mdc-t knows the reality that president mugabe and zanu-pf are roping to victory once again” (the sunday mail 12/03/2017). the newspaper also targeted other opposition leaders, including former vice-president joice mujuru and her party. an article headlined “mujuru learnt nothing from president mugabe” denigrated mujuru and emphasised that “she is too dull to learn anything”. the article labelled mujuru as an incompetent political leader who spent 24 years as cabinet minister and ten years as vice-president under mugabe “and learnt nothing”. mujuru was also accused of “plotting to remove president mugabe from office” (the sunday mail 12/02/2017). another article referred to mujuru as “academically challenged” (the sunday mail 19/02/2017). the newsday the political content of the newsday was pro-opposition politics, while being antizanu-pf and robert mugabe. the newsday, a newspaper privately owned by alpha media holdings, published articles critical of mugabe’s zanu-pf. the newspaper gave a voice to the opposition, a space they were deprived of in state-controlled media. the echoes of an opposition alliance against mugabe were reflected in headlines and comments such as the following: “coalition talks to continue despite zimpf fights” (the newsday 10/02/2017) “campaign to amplify calls for grand coalition” (the newsday 22/02/2017) 98 readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe “tsvangirai called on to stop mugabe” (the newsday 01/03/2017) “mdc-t leader morgan tsvangirai has been called on to lead a national effort by zimbabweans to stop president robert mugabe from contesting elections as a zanu-pf candidate next year. at the ripe of 94, it is impossible for the nonagenarian to come up with new ideas to rescue the country from the current abyss.” (the newsday 01/03/2017) “tsvangirai to lead coalition” (the newsday 23/03/2017) the newspaper anticipated protests, demonstrations and anti-mugabe movements. the protest movements found positive coverage in the newspaper, for instance the #thisflag and #tajamuka protests. however, before mugabe’s birthday celebrations, the newsday predicted a protest that did not occur, “mugabe bash faces massive protest” (the newsday 11/02/2017): social movement tajamuka/sesijikile is organising a massive demonstration to protest against the holding of president robert mugabe’s 93rd birthday bash in matobo district, an area that bore the brunt of the gukurahundi mass killings. the newsday portrayed mugabe and zanu-pf as dictatorial and undemocratic through headlines such as “zanu-pf won’t listen to opposition parties” (the newsday 10/02/2017). mugabe and zanu-pf were at the centre of criticism, including the following: “ncube blasts zanu pf’s egocentric patronage system” (the newsday 23/02/2017) “mugabe must go: opposition” (the newsday 03/03/2017) “reduce foreign ‘useless’ trips: mdc” (the newsday 13/03/2014) “no to ‘wheelchair’ president” (the newsday 06/04/2017) the newspaper also published gukurahundi issues attributed to mugabe’s alleged ruthless mass killings of the people in matabeleland, namely, “mugabe’s ‘zezuru gukurahundi crack unit’ exposed” (the newsday 13/03/2017). factionalism and succession disputes received extensive coverage in the newsday. the newspaper covered factionalism and succession disputes in zanu-pf in detail: “double-faced mugabe will be resisted: war vets” (the newsday 13/01/2017) “fear and trepidation has gripped warring zanu-pf factions (the newsday 17/02/2017) “violence rocks zanu-pf” (the newsday 07/03/2017) “war vets outwit mugabe” (the newsday 18/03/2017) “mugabe not on our agenda: war vets” (the newsday 23/03/2017) focus group discussions the findings of the focus group discussions reflect an active audience with political and socio-economic experience of the country. the political perspectives were distributed across zanu-pf and mdc discourses. although the readers’ perspectives could be defined as pro-zanu-pf or pro-mdc, this study notes that the readers as individuals exercised their own subjective political views and that these opinions did not always clearly side with one of the parties. 1110 mathe & osunkunle previous literature has shown that readers develop “pre-conceived reality created from shared knowledge and experiences in a society”, which determine their reaction towards an issue (wang 2009: 748). the readers had different perspectives towards the private and state media, zanu-pf and the mdc, and several political aspects. opinions on state-owned vs private media a discourse common in zanu-pf reflected by the sunday mail has shown that the party believes that private media is designed to support an opposition and western agenda. the participants affiliated to zanu-pf confirmed the same perspective: the newsday is a western sponsored paper bent on tarnishing the image of the country. they promote western sponsored political parties such as mdc and their editors are busy aligning their stories to please their foreign masters. the private editors peddle lies about zimbabwe. these comments show that there is amity between the participant as a supporter and zanupf as a political party. the readers’ political judgement is readily determined by affiliation: change media laws in zimbabwe and deregister all private papers who peddle lies about zimbabwe. private media sometimes ends up exaggerating issues or introducing some inert biases. on the other hand, the participants with a different perspective noted that the statecontrolled media is pro-zanu-pf and it is only the private media that “sheds light on what is happening in zimbabwe which cannot be shared by the state-controlled media”. other comments in this regard include: the private media is there to just oppose government policies and anyone in power at the moment. privately-owned media tends to reduce votes for the ruling party by exposing their tricks. some of the participants expressed an anti-zanu-pf attitude. they believed that the statecontrolled media was determined to keep zanu-pf in power. phrases extracted from the readers’ perspectives on the state media’s political news coverage include “zanu-pf propaganda”, “hero-worshipping”, “inclined to the ruling party”, “tarnish the image of the opposition”, “to gain mileage in elections”, and “to keep the ruling party in control”. although the readers showed an understanding of media polarisation between the statecontrolled and privately-owned media, many blamed zanu-pf for monopolising state media. this was apparent from a comment such as, “i think the solution to the zimbabwean puzzle is just removing zanu pf”, while others argued that “polarisation is rife in both media houses, they all write in an extreme that over-emphasise their agenda”. opinions on zanu-pf vs mdc some of the participants’ perspectives as individual frames corresponded with the private media’s political discourse. those who showed an affinity for the opposition supported the mdc, pointing out that opposition political parties should unite to remove zanu-pf from power. for instance, supporting the idea of a grand coalition, two participants had the following to say: 1110 readers’ perspectives: examining the influence of political news in zimbabwe based on the split vote of 2008, confronting zanu-pf as a united opposition is the only key to unseating it. the coalition, if properly managed, is the only hope for zimbabweans. it’s a good initiative, though individuals need to zero down themselves to avoid power struggles. others with an apparent anti-opposition stance dismissed the idea of an opposition coalition. some of their comments on the opposition politics include the following: the coalition is a non-starter. it will not topple the formidable zanu. they are wasting time and resources. the coalition is confused, lacking mission, vision and leadership. conclusion this study indicates that every political frame from media discourse does not necessarily influence media audiences. readers base their judgements on experience and affiliation, and less on media discourse. media discourse is only used as a point of reference if the frame is consonant to their pre-conceived ideas. this study argues that the participants harbour pre-conceived political ideas from experience. some of the political frames exert a certain influence on opinion, especially when the audience has knowledge or experience. the individual’s consonant or dissonant cognitive frames also determine whether the person will agree with the message or not. knowledge, experience and public opinion seem to play a greater part in shaping individual’s cognitive frames for consideration. researchers believe that individual cognitive frames, shaped from experience, knowledge and public opinion, determine political affiliations that influence behaviour, attitudes or beliefs towards some political issue. this leads to the conclusion that knowledge, experience and public opinion build up individual cognitive frames that determine perspective on political reality, which lessens or heightens the influence of a political message. although the participants could make their own judgements, this study confirmed that some of the participants read across political stories to build up their own individual frames, as stated in the literature that “individuals would not only base their judgements on media frames without other considerations” but they read across stories to gather facts (shen 2004: 125). thus, with a growing number of media outlets and less reliance on the state-controlled media in zimbabwe, the participants indicated that they read across several media outlets to deduce facts from the stories. this indicates that some of the participants do not wholly depend on media discourse for opinion, but they dissect and choose what they want to believe as true, determined by consonant frames or dissonant individual frames. 1312 mathe & osunkunle figure 1: audience orientation and frame effect model the audience orientation and frame effect model, as shown in figure 1, illustrates that media audiences are active audiences. this study demonstrates that an audience or individual can block any frames or media discourse dissonant to 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https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/54.1.123 https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691188386 https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.39 https://doi.org/10.3368/ajs.25 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511818691 _hlk507582623 _hlk507548902 _hlk507548965 _hlk513807454 _hlk513421707 1pb corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities in a social media landscape abstract this article contributes theoretically to corporate brand communication literature by identifying the realities of corporate brand communication practices in a beyond-modern and social media landscape. it is widely acknowledged that the advent of the internet has created distinct opportunities to connect and communicate with stakeholders. yet endeavours to explore the opportunities to employ corporate brand communication in a social media landscape to achieve differentiation and awareness of the corporate brand are limited. the proposed combination of two brand orientations as perceived by balmer (2013), namely corporate brand and total corporate communication, and the resultant broadening of these views to a corporate brand communication orientation in a social media context could address this gap. finally, a comparison is drawn between the total corporate communication outlook and the contemporary corporate brand communication orientation to illustrate the various points of contact available to the organisation in a social media landscape. keywords: corporate brand communication; social media; corporate brand; corporate communication; beyond-modern; stakeholder communication introduction it is contended that the social media landscape has altered the realities within which brand communication is practiced. this, therefore, merits an investigation of the expanded touch points through which organisations and stakeholders connect, as evident in literature. this article contributes theoretically to corporate brand communication literature by identifying the realities of corporate brand communication practices in a social media landscape. the article commences by delineating a beyond-modern perspective of corporate brand communication and, in this way, contextualises the dr christelle swart department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria email: cswart@unisa. ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-7119519x dr janette hanekom department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria email: hanekj@unisa. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-73551271 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-18 date submitted: 15 march 2019 date accepted: 26 august 2019 date published: 07 november 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:cswart@unisa.ac.za mailto:cswart@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x mailto:hanekj@unisa.ac.za mailto:hanekj@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-1271 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-1271 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-1271 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 swart & hanekom perspective adopted. following this, the corporate brand communication orientation that guided the investigation is conceptualised through identifying and motivating the brand orientations that jointly serve as points of departure. this is achieved by the combination of two orientations as perceived by balmer (2013), namely corporate brand and total corporate communication, and the resultant broadening of these views to a corporate brand communication orientation in a social media context. subsequently, the social media landscape in which a corporate brand communicates is delineated. finally, a comparison is drawn between the total corporate communication outlook and the contemporary corporate brand communication orientation to illustrate the various points of contact available to the organisation in a social media landscape. a beyond-modern perspective concepts such as postmodernism, post postmodernism, post-digital and late modern are used popularly to signify the changed ways in which organisations and stakeholders connect currently, and that are mainly attributed to the advances in technology (kitchen & proctor 2015; fourie 2017: 10). overton-de klerk and verwey (2013: 364) summarise the view of lyotard (1988) on post-modernism as “an awareness and tolerance of social differences, ambiguity and conflict”. despite many diverse opinions on exactly when it emerged, and who its supporters are, the legacies associated with this era seemingly cannot be refuted (matthewman & hoey 2006; fourie 2017a: 10). in fact, scholarly views do acknowledge the increased attention to context, cognisance and acceptance of aspects such as power, prestige, gender, multiple identities, and “dislocated subjectivities” (lyotard 1979; matthewman & hoey 2006). lyotard’s (1979) observation that conversation is flexible and unrestrained is of particular interest in the context of communication in a social media milieu, considering that the language of social media is largely conversational. due to the lack of consensus on a uniform term to delineate this era, the term beyond-modernism is adopted when referring to the onset and prominence of technology, the continuance thereof, and the subsequent opportunities for corporate brand communication. this perspective underlines multiple realities because of the varied ways in which individuals interpret the world (christensen et al. 2005: 163; mumby 2013: 23). thus, mainly due to diverse interpretations of the world, it is can be expected that organisations will be evidently challenged in the ways they connect and communicate with their stakeholders. in fourie’s (2017a: 15) view, the emergence of digital media in a post-modern society created a digital media landscape that is in line with the present focus on social media, and the worldview followed in this article. this landscape is largely characterised by a recognition that the users of technology, among other aspects, are active participants in, rather than passive receivers of, communication (fourie 2017a: 16). the concept of participation can be related positively to social media based on the active involvement of people on social media (fuchs 2014: 532; fourie 2017a: 11). in fact, these participants are able to increase their control of the brand communication process, including the production, dissemination and use of content. novel ways are available to combine media on different platforms, such as discussed in a following section on media convergence (cf. fourie 2017a: 16). 32 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... it further affords individuals opportunities to freely express their ideas and opinions, and thus to the possibilities to inform, observe, experience and explain (fourie 2017a: 16, 17). as emphasised in a following section, interactivity and connectivity are vital properties of social media that are offered in the beyond-modern landscape. many opposing views on post-modernism are raised in scholarly literature that deserve a brief mention at this point. critics of a postmodern view consider it to stand in direct contrast to the emphases of modernity, a focus on a single dominating ideology, and the value of an objective truth (holtzhausen 2002). a seminal opinion, by sokal and bricmont (1999: 173-174), concurs that it pays excessive attention to subjective beliefs that are detached from their truth or untruth. therefore, some scholars perceive it as idealistic. nonetheless, though this scepticism is respected, it does not fall within the scope of this article to investigate the impact thereof on brand touch points. corporate brand communication based on views in literature, it can be accepted that a corporate brand is mainly concerned with the holistic presentation of the organisation, its products and/or services. therefore, the organisation becomes the central, consistent and coherent brand message; thus, indicating a shift from marketing or product branding to corporate branding (hamzah et al. 2014: 2299; balmer et al. 2013: 44; roper & fill 2012). this can be loosely compared to the corporate brand orientation in which the brand per se is the focal point of the organisation (balmer 2013). balmer (2013: 725) identifies various brand orientations at corporate level. in accordance with this view, these orientations allow for multiple combinations, of which the corporate brand and the total corporate communication perspectives are jointly deemed apposite to the outlook and purposes of this article. the corporate brand orientation positions the brand as the basis and key touch point of the organisation, whereas the total corporate communication perspective centres on the organisation’s entire communication efforts. corporate brand communication therefore creates a consistent meaning of internal and external coherence and value, and thus builds relationships between an organisation and its multiple stakeholders. it is for this reason that corporate brand communication should be approached from a strategic lens as everything an organisation does (balmer 2013: 25). the exact notion that every action of the organisation distinctly constitutes communication for creating a desired corporate brand warrants consideration of both orientations (cf. ouwersloot & duncan 2008: 65; duncan 2005: 110). hence, for the purposes at hand, the term corporate brand communication denotes the prominence and incorporates viewpoints of the above orientations. the corporate brand is the core focus and coherent idea about the organisation; it is shared among internal and external stakeholders, and informs the operations of an organisation (balmer 2013: 724; fisher 2014: 33; hamzah et al. 2014: 2299). balmer (2012: 6) describes the corporate brand as an “identity type”, a “quasilegal character”, underlined by an “informal, powerful corporate contract” between organisations and stakeholders. of importance in the context of this discussion is 54 swart & hanekom the comprehension that social media presents special opportunities for organisations and stakeholders alike to explicitly share the brand idea and messages through communication via these platforms. stakeholders are therefore able to form certain perceptions about the organisation, which will affect their choice of products and services based on the organisation’s holistic brand, and including its qualities, identity, image and reputation (hulberg 2006). according to balmer (2013: 725), total corporate communication consists of primary, secondary and tertiary communication. hence, considering the context of a beyondmodern perspective on corporate brand communication, it can be asserted that primary, secondary and tertiary communication are similarly indicative of the different levels at which brand communication takes place, which arguably are unique in a social media environment. as per balmer’s (2013: 725) qualification, brand communication at the primary level refers to the “communication effects” of the organisation, employees, products and services. at the secondary level, brand communication encompasses the “controlled communication effects” of, for example, public relations and advertising efforts, and at the tertiary level, the “communication effects” of “third parties”. it can thus be reasoned that brands communicate on these respective tiers through all activities, behaviour and interaction; in instances where content is created and owned by the organisation; and likewise, by means of the interaction between the stakeholder and the organisation. the social media landscape charlesworth (2015) asserts that digital transformation is critical to any organisation and that the driving force behind this transformation can be attributed to social media. this view is underwritten by the perspective of fourie (2017b) and aligns with the focus on the prominence and continuation of technology as supported by the proposed perspective of corporate brand communication. the following sections will highlight particular aspects that are associated with the social media landscape. increased interactivity interactivity is generally used to set apart traditional media (e.g. newspapers) and digital developments, such as social media, although little consensus is evident in the literature on the aspects that qualify media as interactive. descriptions mainly relate to the flow of messages, the quality of two-way communication, and the interchangeable roles of participants in the communication process. even though the interactivity of social media is not easily defined, it suggests that organisations give up their control over the brand communication to some extent and substitute it with interaction (quigley 2013: 414). interactivity should include two prominent elements – the facilitation of two-way or multiway communication with feedback inherent thereto, and the opportunity for both senders and receivers to fulfil interchangeable roles. fourie (2017b: 117) supports the notion of a social media landscape, in which communication is decentralised, in that it points to the involvement of users in communication as part of a group and as equals; moreover, feedback plays a central role, and it could be a direct result of interactivity. traditional mass communication is said to mainly emphasise the message 54 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... but the opportunities offered by social media to “make contact” and communicate, both as communicator and recipient on social media platforms, centre around immediate feedback as opposed to message features (fourie 2017b: 117-118). it is apparent that in a beyond-modern perspective, the focus has shifted to interactivity and interconnectivity, in some instances also referred to as feedback. two-way or multiway conversations a main benefit of newer technology from a beyond-modern view is apparently the ability of all participants to actively communicate and respond to communication. this is popularly mentioned together with feedback in that everybody is allowed to respond to messages received on social media platforms. various ways exist to participate on social media, namely by means of creating, adapting and sharing content, and involvement in and the observing of conversations and interactions (swart 2018). the connection between two-way communication, dialogue and conversations is apparent in the literature and is used interchangeably for present purposes to denote the unrestricted communication that takes place between organisations and stakeholders (carim & warwick 2013; bonsón & flores 2011). this being said, consideration should be given to the fact that not all activities on social media qualify as two-way or dialogic, and that social media interaction should not all be considered to be conversational or two-way communication (swart 2018). in this vein, it must be accepted that some social media applications do not allow for two-way exchanges of messages or conversations per se but are, for example, more suitable for simply rating or tagging other stakeholders (ibid.). interchangeable roles an earlier point, and closely associated with two-way communication, states the increased capability of participants to act as both senders and receivers. the implication is that, apart from providing feedback and comments on posts, tweets or re-tweets, opportunities exist to freely create and adapt content on these platforms. likewise, participants can share content that consequently may create a wider awareness of a corporate brand. participants therefore have the freedom to adapt content, to determine the pace in which content is shared, and to re-share content on a variety of platforms; thus, fulfilling interchangeable roles. a stakeholder focus the perspective by which organisations consider the interests of stakeholders is not novel and has been acknowledged and presented in traditional corporate communication and marketing communication literature (steyn & de beer 2012; belch & belch 2009; martin & hetrick 2006; cornelissen 2000; cf. mulder 2010). as mentioned earlier, for a corporate brand to formulate appealing brand messages it is vital to understand the functional and emotional expectations their customers might have. a marketing communication, as well as a corporate communication context, specifically aims to centre information (hamzah et al. 2014) and thereby allows for a stakeholder-centric perspective that provides the stakeholder with more power. rajagopal (2013) argues 76 swart & hanekom for maintaining organisational communication control by managing the technological power of stakeholders, while johansson and carlson (2015: 70) maintain that stakeholders take “ownership” of brands and therefore it becomes difficult for organisations to retain control. this lack of organisational control is in line with a beyond-modern perspective, especially within a social media landscape. the fact that social media permits stakeholders to become active participants as conceptualised in a beyond-modern perspective forces organisations to acknowledge their unrestricted involvement in conversations about the corporate brand with or without involvement by the organisation (swart 2018). this is clear, especially in a social media environment where continuous engagement is evident, and stakeholders, in addition, have the power over their perceptions of the corporate brand (booth & matic 2011: 184). due to stakeholders’ continuous engagement and participation, the message becomes the starting point for a conversation (downes 2013: 219). moreover, this focus recognises the need to know which topics or issues are raised to allow for the tailoring of brand communication. it is probable that the expectations stakeholders have are just as compelling in that organisations should demonstrate their commitment to engage in conversations by being active on social media (cf. balmer 2012). the social media environment provides the opportunity for a shift in power and control for corporate brand communication, where stakeholders have the power to engage, interact and connect in a transparent environment (agresta & bough 2011: 2-3; quigley 2013: 414). agresta and bough (2011: 2-3) ascribe connectivity via social media as a main contributor to stakeholders’ ability to produce user-generated content. from a corporate brand perspective, connectivity between the brand, organisation and stakeholders allows for the organisation to draw closer to the stakeholder and for clearer and individualised corporate brand messaging. listening approach a stakeholder focus in a social media landscape inevitably compels organisations to adopt a listening approach that allows them to be informed of specific mentions of the corporate brand. key to the corporate brand is trust in the organisation, its products and services (fisher 2014: 33). the beyond-modern perspective implies that trust can be built if the organisation assumes a listening approach and if feedback from stakeholders is taken into account (ibid.). conversely, trust can easily evaporate, especially in the new social media landscape where stakeholders can participate in a negative or non-contributing manner to brand conversations. booth and matic (2011: 185) and quigley (2013: 416) maintain that this listening approach is introduced when corporate brand communication transforms from monologues to dialogues, which enhances participation. in the social media landscape and in line with a stakeholder-centric focus it is fair to conclude that much of the power has shifted to the stakeholder. thus, it is recommended that organisations adopt a listening approach in order to acknowledge feedback and to stay informed of the aspects that are being raised about the corporate brand. as stakeholders cannot be prevented from participating, the organisation should listen and react to stakeholders and mentions of the corporate brand and desist from formulating one76 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... way messages aimed at intentionally shaping stakeholders’ perceptions (parumasur & roberts-lombard 2014). a listening approach could further reveal certain expectations stakeholders have in terms of the corporate brand, which could allow the organisation to address them. in fact, a study by swart (2018: 96) reveals that stakeholders could be incorporated in the communication endeavours of the organisation through a listening approach. prominent measures that the organisation could consider in order to stay informed about conversations on social media inter alia include the continuous monitoring and tracking of discussions on social media, and the mobilisation of brand ambassadors and influencers (swart 2018: 111, 183). a presence on social media is perceived to be key to demonstrate that the organisation is present and willing to communicate on social media (swart 2018: 126). monitoring and tracking it is essential to monitor and investigate social media activities to determine the impact of discussions on the organisation, and to influence discussions to increase the engagement rate (swart 2018: 184). breakenridge (2012) maintains that knowledge of the places stakeholders congregate, their preferences regarding social media platforms, and the key topics that are of interest to them is essential for organisations. thus, organisations are required to be follow conversations on social media and be involved in conversations in these online spaces to stay informed (cf. swart 2018: 183; burcher 2012). many free or paid-for monitoring tools are at organisations’ disposal to observe social media conversations and provide statistics of mentions and stories that could affect the reputation of the corporate brand (swart 2018: 370). the range of tools is extensive and includes, but is not limited to, howsociable, klout, and social mention (moriarty et al. 2015; cf. du plessis 2017: 364; swart 2018: 370). searches using these tools reveal valuable information about current conversations, the probability that conversations about the brand will continue, the significance of stakeholders, and how conversations are grouped (cf. du plessis 2017: 364). in addition, the strategic benefits of monitoring and tracking conversational activity on social media are evident and organisations should acknowledge the importance thereof for evaluating brand guidelines, gaining insight into the various types of content that are shared, and assessing the types of engagement on these platforms (swart 2018). social media ambassadors and influencers considering that social media extends the reach and increases the volume of communication, organisations need to consider alternative ways to keep track of conversations and to optimise the sharing of brand messages. perhaps even more critical is the need to stay involved in the countless conversations that take place on social media. online brand ambassadors and influencers are often mentioned in scholarly literature and it could be useful to monitor and spread brand messages online (baer 2015; hoffman & novak 2009). these are individuals who hold long-term and short-term value for the organisation by passionately championing and increasing 98 swart & hanekom the awareness and conversation about the brand (moriarty et al. 2015; baer 2015; cf. swart 2018: 352). it is necessary that organisations mobilise ambassadors and influencers to optimise the sharing of corporate brand communication. changed stakeholder dispositions kitchen and proctor (2015: 37) state that as result of the increased availability of information stakeholders’ purchasing decisions have changed. the opinions of other stakeholders that are freely shared on a wide range of social media platforms are apparently regarded to be more objective than communication messages created and shared by the organisation or brand. this could be attributed to the fact that stakeholders share how the brand “has lived up to their expectations” (agresta & bough 2011: 32). they share brand experiences that are arguably more believable to other stakeholders than brand messages from the organisation. previously, the organisation communicated to stakeholders by presenting and pushing messages through various media. however, from a beyond-modern perspective and rooted in a social media environment, stakeholders now disseminate information, engage in brand storytelling, act as brand ambassadors, and take part in brand conversations (booth & matic 2011: 185). stakeholders, therefore, play a crucial role in shaping and protecting the corporate brand (ibid.). cheung and lee (2012) state that specific motives drive stakeholders to share their experiences and views on stakeholder-opinion sites, of which social networking sites, blogs, and discussion forums are examples. they term the sharing of opinions and experiences electronic word of mouth (ewom) and their research indicates that the intention to share ewom can be linked to aspects such as reputation and a sense of belonging (ibid.). considering that reputation and a sense of belonging are both associated with an emotional connection with and favourable impression of a corporate brand, it is sensible that organisations consider the value of achieving positive impressions of the brand (christensen et al. 2008; cf. swart 2018: 83). in this way, it could urge stakeholders to spread positive word of mouth about the brand online. however, positive word of mouth will only realise in an ideal situation where the truths of the organisation are shared in a social media environment (downes 2013: 218). the risks involved in stakeholders’ intentions to share instantaneously in this environment include the sharing of facts that could be deceptive and could cause irreparable damage to the organisation’s image and reputation (downes 2013). this emphasises the importance of an organisation’s commitment to fulfil its brand promise because, should the organisation not deliver on its promise, stakeholders’ trust and faith in the brand could easily diminish due to stakeholders’ connectivity with other stakeholders on social media platforms (agresta & bough 2011: 32). considering the above, it thus makes sense that the impressions of stakeholders about a corporate brand could be influenced on various platforms and by different users of social media. organisations should then realise that conversations impact the corporate brand that require an awareness to monitor and track what is being said about the brand online. similarly, the corporate brand should involve themselves in these discussions and participate in them (swart 2018: 1). content is used in an 98 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... interpretative manner, as it is reshaped and adapted to create meaning, experiences and relationships (christensen et al. 2005:159) content creation as stakeholders participate in and interact on social media, opportunities exist to create, share and adapt content, and in this sense become co-creators of content (swart 2018: 112). these activities include posts, tweets, re-tweets, and shares on different social media platforms. organisations must accept that stakeholders are empowered to originate and drive specific conversations through content creation on the platforms that could affect the impressions that are formed about the corporate brand (swart 2018: 110) in both positive and negative ways. social media content created by the organisation is popularly categorised as curated, co-created and created (rakić & rakić 2014; leroux miller 2013), which describes content that is repurposed, created in collaboration with the stakeholder, and solely created by the organisation, respectively. apart from stakeholders creating and sharing content on social media, the organisation is able to source content in the aforementioned ways. curated and co-created content allows the involvement of stakeholders in that their contributions can be solicited. this can also promote a connection with the organisation through participation (swart 2018: 119). as the disposition of stakeholders changes in the social media landscape, schroeder (2017) recognises a transformation from “corporate-generated” to “stakeholder-generated” content and messages. social media messages although this article does not explicitly aspire to explore the features of corporate brand messages or address their relevance in the adopted perspective, brief attention thereto is warranted. this is particularly relevant in instances where content is created purposely by the organisation as control over messages and discussions on social media are largely out of the organisation’s control (swart 2018: 111). as already mentioned, organisations have lost some of their authority pertaining to the brand message as it is now created and shared at will in a participatory stakeholder environment (fisher 2014: 103). kang and park (2018: 2-3) regard message content as vital to the formation of customers’ attitudes towards the organisation as the originator of the brand message and underline the importance of considering the brand message per se. text messages apparently comprise various structural features, such as abbreviations, font type, punctuation and size that likely affect the receivers and the way messages are processed on a cognitive and emotional level (lang 2000). although the study by kang and park (2018) confirms that these structural features do in fact affect brand attitude and corporate trust, research that either confirms or refutes the impact of these features in brand communication is largely lacking. a noteworthy investigation related to social media messages is a study by swani and milne (2017) in which facebook brand content is evaluated. particular aspects were explored that could ultimately impact perceptions of the corporate brand, such as the brand strategy approach, message appeals and vividness (swani & milne 2017: 126-127). the fact 1110 swart & hanekom that organisations create content to advance perceptions about the corporate brand underlines the relevance of these aspects when brand messages are generated. the importance of adopting an appropriate brand strategy is highlighted with attention paid to the use of the corporate brand name, which can effectively motivate users to share brand messages in service social media messages, for example (swani & milne 2017). it is evident that appropriate message strategies could deliberately be utilised to increase message likes on social media, which could stimulate others to act similarly. in so doing, when the likes for a social media message increase, it supposedly raises interest in the brand message, which increases the engagement of users through commenting, liking, and other actions. swani and milne (2017) assert that the message appeals in brand posts – functional and emotional – could motivate users to share and comment on the content created by organisations. abratt and kleyn (2012: 1054) write that stakeholder expectations in this context could be either functional or emotional. de chernatony (2010) stresses the importance of thorough knowledge of the stakeholder and his/her needs, as well as an understanding of the functional and emotional expectations they might hold that should be aligned with the type of message appeal. swani and milne (2017: 131) write that there is a positive link between the type of message appeal and the type of offering when formulating brand messages. considering the views that a corporate brand comprises of both functional and emotional values, or combinations thereof, both message appeals types need consideration when formulating corporate brand messages for social media, also depending on the expectations of the stakeholders. the last aspect under scrutiny is the use of vividness, such as the use of images and videos in brand messages on social media. the results confirm the value of using images and videos, depending on whether the focus is on functional or emotional values, or both. emotional values are considered intangible; thus, they cannot be portrayed with ease in this way, whereas words are more likely to be effective in these instances (swani & milne 2017: 127). despite the dearth of research into these aspects for corporate brand communication, and based on the information above, it can be assumed that the use of images (such as photographs or videos) are invaluable in creating clear impressions of a brand or certain brand activities. research by swart (2018) pertinently explored the integration of content across different social media platforms that allows for the combination of voice, image and the likes. although literature supports this notion, organisations seemingly overlook the potential it holds to portray a distinct impression of the corporate brand (swart 2018; jenkins 2006) media convergence and converged media the rapid development of technology has brought about the convergence of different types of media and content that in context specifically refer to media convergence and converged media. the former denotes the creating and sharing of content on multiple social media platforms, whereas the latter refers to the use of different types of social media content (paid, earned and owned) on one or two channels, online or offline (jenkins 2006). as already indicated, stakeholder focus is key when communicating in the social media landscape, which will greatly determine the types and combinations 1110 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... of media and content an organisation will consider. the combinations of different types of media and content on a variety of social media platforms are considerations that could create opportunities for effective corporate brand communication, if used to good advantage. cross-departmental involvement (employees) in line with the notion that all touch points are communication, consideration of employees’ involvement in the communication of corporate brand messages is required. the role of employees could be two-fold in nature, functioning on a personal and emotional level, and on a corporate level (russell n.d.). this could be achieved through the creation of social media content; for example, to create and share their own stories about their experiences with the brand, and to actively advocate for the corporate brand. the challenge organisations face to create social media content could partly be addressed by tasking employees to share their own brand stories online; that in turn could create credibility and emotional connections to the brand. holmes (n.d.) declares that the concept of employee social media advocacy, highlighting the possibility of encouraging employees to share updates about the organisation on their personal accounts, is widely underused. on a corporate level, the organisation should endeavour to provide employees with authentic and coherent brand messages that are embedded in the culture of the organisation and which enhance credibility and trust in social media and online environments (agresta & bough 2011: 100). in this way, employees can share approved brand messages and achieve a wider reach. internalised brand messages should furthermore enhance meaningful engagement by employees, which reflect the identity and values embedded in the corporate brand that in turn could motivate them to become valuable social media influencers (balmer 2013: 723-735; balmer et al. 2013: 101). corporate brand value and corporate brand promise are essential aspects when the corporate brand is centred at the heart of the organisation (balmer 2013: 725). brand messages could be shared, provided that employees are cognisant of “the single residence of vision” (agresta & bough 2011: 100). this supports an earlier point, namely that content shared by individuals and that offers real possibilities through involving employees is regarded to be more trustworthy than content shared by brand channels. furthermore, it is important that employees’ participation in sharing brand messages are voluntary and that they must be passionate advocates of the organisation (holmes n.d.). sharing news of the corporate brand should be part of a normal routine and be guided by a tailor-made social media policy and strategy that outlines best practices for sharing and commenting online (russell n.d.). a benefit of such a policy could be to limit the implied disruptiveness of shared corporate brand messages (agresta & bough 2011: 100). in this sense, disruptiveness could refer to the repetitive sharing of inaccurate corporate brand messages in an incorrect format, which do not contribute to a positive brand image and could cause the message to lose its intended meaning. therefore, messages that are created and shared by employees might disrupt the original intent of the corporate brand message and might further elicit negative discussions about the organisation’s corporate brand. the use 1312 swart & hanekom of online tools that enable organisations to create content should be pre-approved, accurate, and on-brand. brand culture in the organisation it is argued that brand culture might encourage employees’ sharing of approved brand messages as it refers to the manner in which employees illustrate the organisation’s brand identity and brings into line its brand values. this underlying manifestation of brand identity and values in terms of cross-departmental involvement and employees’ participation in sharing brand messages differentiates one organisation from the next and therefore creates a competitive advantage (hulberg 2006). roper and fill (2012) emphasise that corporate values are of critical importance to the corporate brand and the strongest indication of brand culture. brand communities an early definition of a brand community regards it as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structural set of social relationships among admirers of a brand” (muniz & o’quinn 2001). moreover, it can be regarded as a collective of people with specific interests in the corporate brand that provide stakeholders with possibilities to engage with one another, and the organisation to engage their stakeholders (cf. cova & pace 2006). as stakeholders share their experiences, and keeping track of others’ comments, the opportunity exists to ensure that the corporate brand is portrayed in a favourable manner. organisations could stimulate positive conversations about the corporate brand in these communities by means of identifying and mobilising prominent influencers and capitalising on their shared interests in the brand (swart 2018: 376). brand communities usually develop spontaneously (johansson & carlson 2015) among like-minded people with shared interests (agresta & bough 2011: 4) as a result of stakeholders’ interactions of sharing and recommending brand information. this stimulates active dialogues and conversations about the brand in which it is suggested that organisations can partake with the aim to create brand value and acquire followers (rajagopal 2013). agresta and bough (2011: 4) oppose this view by arguing that the organisation is not at the centre of the conversation and can therefore not influence the brand community from an external position. nonetheless, participation in brand community conversations provides the organisation with the opportunity to provide brand information in a format preferred by the stakeholder. however, organisations will possibly only be able to provide information in preferred formats once a listening approach is adopted and the organisation is informed of stakeholder’s preferences pertaining to the type of content and platforms. a corporate brand communication orientation the resultant distinctive communication environment that social media creates, as detailed in the sections above, prompts the expansion of balmer’s (2013) 1312 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... conceptualisation of total communication to achieve an evidently favourable corporate brand for the organisation. figure 1: corporate brand communication orientation in a social media context the proposed corporate brand communication orientation as illustrated above specifically emphasises the creation of distinctive connections with stakeholders and differentiation of the organisation that are afforded by using social media in order to communicate (abratt & klein 2012: 1050; arvidsson 2011; cf. mulder 2015: 60). organisations should therefore make the most of the opportunities these connections offer by precisely attending thereto. fundamental to the beyond-modern view is the notion to recognise the multiple realities of individuals connected to the organisation, which really compel organisations to communicate extensively to ensure all stakeholders are addressed. the changed ways available to communicate as proposed in this article are significant and, as highlighted by fourie (2017a: 16), offer a considerable variety and choice that enable organisations to extend the reach of their brand messages. besides, within this new orientation, the focus should fall on the involvement of employees and the chances to increase meaningful engagement. as communication is decentralised, individuals are allowed to participate as communicators and receivers, and to provide feedback. in this way, organisations allow conversations (or two-way communication) to take place and eventually create awareness of a corporate brand. linked to this idea are the opinions raised by fellow stakeholders on social media that directly affect others’ perceptions about the brand. the distinct connections put forward in the corporate brand communication orientation (figure 1) will, among other aspects, permit organisations to meet the stakeholders’ expectations of being engaged in and actively 1514 swart & hanekom being listened to on social media (capozzi & zipfel 2012: 201). in the same way, the organisation will be able to listen to conversations about the brand and to react when needed. listening provide opportunities to evaluate brand guidelines, and consider the topics raised on social media for integration into existing communication activities. organisations should mobilise ambassadors, influencers and brand communities to advance the corporate brand, and to optimise corporate brand communication. content drives conversations on social media, and allowing stakeholders to be cocreators could inspire them to share content on a broad front about the brand. within the new communication orientation, different forms exist to access and share content that should be used to benefit the organisation (cf. fourie 2017a: 16). an extensive overview of literature discloses ways in which social media could positively shape the corporate brand and how corporate brand communication is being affected. despite wide acknowledgement of the importance of communication in terms of the building of a corporate brand, indications are that it does not receive the necessary attention. a study by balmer and wang (2016) among senior managers of leading british business schools confirms communication as a key dimension in corporate brand building, proving that they do not yet adequately act as exemplars of ‘best practice’ with regard to the management of their corporate brands. future research as this article delineates key theoretical realities for a corporate brand communication orientation, possibilities exist for empirical research to advance and refine these insights in real-life settings. conclusion the main impetus for this article was to explicate the beyond-modern corporate brand communication realities in a social media landscape. it has shown the expanded and transformed realities in which corporate brand communication is practiced, and in doing so, argued for a beyond-modern perspective. this perspective broadens the assumptions associated with brand communication beyond the historical period, commonly referred to as modernism, and denotes the onset, prominence and continuance of technology, specifically referring and drawing attention to the social media landscape. a key argument is that, in the context of the proposed beyondmodern perspective, the organisation itself becomes the central brand message, not only its products and services. this view corroborates the notion that corporate brand communication should be approached from a strategic standpoint as everything an organisation does, communicates. the article has further confirmed the prominent role of social media in creating the altered realities within which corporate brand communication is practiced that warranted an investigation of the expanded touch points through which organisations and stakeholders connect. by doing so, an increased understanding of the changed disposition of the stakeholder is acquired, especially within the social media landscape, through emphasis on the adoption of a listening approach by the organisation, the monitoring and tracking of social media 1514 corporate brand communication: beyond-modern realities ... ambassadors and influencers, and content creation by stakeholders. the article further enhances an understanding of the social media landscape as extant in a beyond-modern perspective. balmer’s (2013) corporate brand and total corporate communication orientations are combined and expanded by proposing a corporate brand communication orientation in a social media context. 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https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2013.837626 https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2013.837626 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281920 https://doi.org/10.5937/megrev1401187r https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-policy-for-employees https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.06.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.06.003 _hlk518920611 _goback 21pb strategic communication, enhanced sustainability and embedded communities: assessing approaches by a platinum mine in zimbabwe abstract the article assesses strategic communication approaches used by unki mine to enhance sustainability with its embedded community from 2016 to date in shurugwi, zimbabwe. strategic communication scholars have concluded that mining communities are impoverished societies. the dominant scholarship in strategic communication is european based and there is a dearth of scholarship from africa to contribute to the debate, which prompted the researcher to study a mining company from a developing nation like zimbabwe. the study uses constructivism philosophy and interpretivist research theory, which are subjected to a qualitative case study of the unki mine and the rietfontein community. interviews, focus group discussions and documentaries were used, as well as strategic communication and stakeholder theory. the findings of the study indicate that unki mine has implemented social performance initiative (spi) programmes at rietfontein that address the global sustainability expectations contained in the millennium development goals (mdgs), as well as the sustainability development goals (sdgs). diverse strategic communication approaches, such as bottom-up, top-down, the issues approach, the public-private partnership model and the philanthropic approach, are used to engage the community for sustainability and stakeholder relationships. keywords: strategic communication, stakeholder theory, corporate social responsibility, corporate social sustainability, community engagement, embedded community, mining, zimbabwe introduction approaches to both theorisation about the sustainability of stakeholder relationships and strategic communication with embedded community are diverse. the 21st century has challenged the business community to take a broader social view of their responsibility beyond traditional considerations dr caven masuku department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email : masuku.caven@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-29402877 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 21-33 date submitted: 19 january 2021 date accepted: 06 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:masuku.caven@gmail.com mailto:masuku.caven@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2940-2877 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2940-2877 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 2322 masuku such as legal compliance and economics. this is because there is a stance in the 21st century that questions economic profit motives that assume that corporations should be equally concerned about improving their communities’ circumstances (hahn et al. 2014). this paradigm shift is reflected in a shift from a monolithic model (corporate social responsibility – csr1), where management determines community involvement programmes, towards a more decentralised model (corporate sustainability – cs), where corporations engage with communities to co-create solutions in response to their needs (ajith 2014; schwartz & carroll 2008; claudia & mihaela 2018). studies suggest that stakeholder relationships are key to a firm as these are strategic processes for sustainability (freeman et al. 2010; matos & silvestre 2013). this study addresses three objectives: ♦ to determine how a mining company in zimbabwe ensures sustainability and exceptional stakeholder relationships with its embedded community; ♦ to establish how a mining company in zimbabwe enhanced pragmatic community engagement for excellent stakeholder relationships with its embedded community from 2016 to date; and ♦ to examine the strategic communication approaches used by a zimbabwean mining company in engaging with its embedded community for sustainability. the context of strategic communication research enhances the standard essentials of a discipline, particular objectives and pertinent epistemology, theories and concepts that arrange the acquired knowledge, semantics, research techniques and institutional autopsies (nothhaft et al. 2018). the operation of an organisation is diverse as it spans non-profit organisations and profit-oriented organisations, as well as global northern and global southern organisations, urban and countryside organisations, in homogenous and heterogeneous societies, and so forth (zerfass et al. 2018). sustainability, often a controversial term, implies that society must use no more of a resource than can be regenerated (aras & crowther 2012). moreover, sustainability confronts managers with situations in which they need to address multiple desirables concurrently while meeting controversial economic, environmental, and social outcomes. this is expected to happen at organisational and societal levels operating within different time frames, as well as following different logics (hahn et al. 2014). vestrum (2014: 620) defines embedded communities as “communities located near a business set-up, whose livelihoods are intertwined with the business and inevitably affects the community welfare”. furthermore, in the face of corporate power, local communities seek distributional or procedural justice that can serve as a catalyst for development (ololade & annegarn 2013; muthuri et al. 2012). communities where mining is conducted tend to endure significant social disruptions and environmental devastation (prichard 2009). businesses such as mining establishments operating in such communities are naturally forced to respond to the needs of the communities surrounding them. in the case of zimbabwe, the fallout from this type of economic activity includes ghost towns and abject poverty due to 2322 strategic communication, enhanced sustainability and embedded communities job losses, as well as mining operations leaving a trail of environmental destruction in the wake of the cessation of mining activities (mabhena & moyo 2014). in view of these issues, it is important to consider how a mining company can adopt pragmatic approaches to improve the ecological, social and economic sustainability of stakeholder communities in developing nations like zimbabwe. this study, therefore, seeks to establish how unki mine in zimbabwe fairs in engaging with its embedded community for sustainable development. the study is guided by the constructivism and interpretivist research theories subjected to a qualitative case study of unki mine and rietfontein community. interviews, focus group discussions and documentaries were used to gather data from mine employees who deal with community issues. experienced community members with social performance initiatives (spi) expertise from their areas from as far back as 2016 to date were also involved in the study as participants. four non-probability sampling techniques, namely purposive, snowball, criterion and stratified random sampling, were used. the study was influenced by strategic communication and stakeholder theory in exploring engagement between the mine and its community for sustainability and development for excellent stakeholder relationships. appreciating the case study unki is a south african-owned zimplats platinum mine in shurugwi near gweru city, the third-largest city in zimbabwe. it is an example of a company that has unhindered access to foreign currency from offshore accounts. the selection of unki was on the basis that it is affluent and as such of significance to establish how it has managed to maintain stakeholder relations through sustainability with its embedded community. unki employs 1133 people with a capital investment of zar 227.8 million (anglo american platinum limited integrated report 2019: 71). the shurugwi district is in the southern part of zimbabwe and its town and administrative centre, shurugwi, was established in 1899. shurugwi is an important mining centre for gold, nickel, chrome and platinum. unki mine is surrounded by 22 rural wards in the shurugwi district and has three chiefs: nhema, banga and ndanga. rietfontein, the community selected for this study, is to the northeast of unki and is a direct dependent of the mine. mining in zimbabwe mining is a key strategic section of the zimbabwean economy contributing commodity export, as well as being a source of employment for about 40 000 workers. the late 1990s, however, significantly witnessed a decline in production and loss of investors’ confidence against the background of macroeconomics instability. platinum and diamond production from the year 2000 to date witnessed a spectacular rise, which led to the spearheading of platinum production. the mining industry in zimbabwe is the major foreign currency earner for the country. therefore, it is vital to assess how a foreign-owned mining corporation under a rubble economy context sustains its stakeholder relationships with surrounding communities. 2524 masuku often communities within mining establishments have no proper shelter or houses, lack good sources of water and proper health facilities, schools are distantly located, and roads are dilapidated. mines are usually expected to intervene in such cases to alleviate and better the living conditions of nearby communities as part of their sustainability through philanthropic volunteering, corporate sustainability responsibility (csr1) and corporate social responsiveness (csr2) programmes, corporate citizenship or corporate accountability programmes. zimbabwe has a rubble economy, which is a major structural dislocation that resulted from the global neoliberal policies of the 1980s (sachikonye et al. 2018). the government of zimbabwe at the turn of the 21st century resorted to printing surrogate currencies, such as the bond (coins and notes), which inevitably resulted in hyperinflation and monetary collapse (rotberg 2018). a lengthy hyperinflation environment caused untold underdevelopment, and remote mining communities were the hardest hit. against this background, it is of significance to establish how unki sustains stakeholder relationships with the embedded community to cultivate a spirit of sustainability. embedded communities the 21th century has challenged businesses to take a broader social view of their responsibility beyond traditional considerations such as legal compliance and economics. the call is for corporations to be equally concerned about improving their communities’ circumstances (hahn et al. 2014). the sustainable development of embedded communities regards both the community and the mining organisation as participants in the economy. this view assists researchers to establish how socio-political partnering benefits the mine, local communities, and the government in implementing community development initiatives. it is also important to understand how interconnected mine operations and its embedded community are. lessons are drawn on whether these relations enforce sustainable developmental approaches, thereby creating interdependedness between the mine and embedded communities. strategic communication the historical development of strategic communication and public relations balances and unifies the interests of an organisation and the public (kristensen 2010). according to steyn (2007: 143), “in the strategic management literature, communication is regarded as an enabling function, facilitating the successful implementation of strategic decision”. in practice, existing literature reflects that strategic management and strategic communication often are not fully integrated, and communication initiatives frequently become reactive routines (davis 2007). strategic communication theory explains how organisations in the 21st century use and employ a variety of methods to influence the behaviour of their constituencies. questions addressed include what people know, how people feel, and the way people act relatively to the organisation (hallahan et al. 2007). these authors suggest that 2524 strategic communication, enhanced sustainability and embedded communities through strategic communication, scholars recognise that purposeful influence is the fundamental goal to communication by organisations. some forms of communication are grounded merely in protecting information (technical communication). others are concerned with maintaining mutual satisfaction relationships (public relations). all these, however, are not enough to achieve strategically important goals. therefore, strategic communication focuses on communication that contributes to an organisation’s purpose for being. moreover, strategic communication concentrates on the core drivers of organisational success. it also expands the traditional sets of institutionalised communication measures to manage meaning in all kinds of interactions with internal and external stakeholders (zerfass & huck 2007). sustainability sustainability concepts are based on the notion that natural resources should not decrease further, but should rather be integrated and enhanced, and that poverty, viewed as the cause of environmental degradation, should be curbed through economic development vis-a-vis sustainability (asafu-adjaye 2005). the current study investigated how sustainable development programmes implemented by unki to the benefit of the rietfontein community advocate for human activities that satisfy the needs of the community members in co-dependence with other components such as the environment and social issues like poverty and hunger. a number of critical and interrelated areas demand thoughtful attention for communities to move towards a sustainable future, namely the long-term viability of natural systems and the service they provide for human existence; unacceptable social conditions at home and in communities worldwide; and local and global economies and the potential they maintain to initiate a modicum of affluent and prosperity for all inhabitants of the earth. judging from the above three items, one can argue that these are intertwined. two-thirds of ecosystem services on which human society depends are degraded and cannot be sustained (world watch institute 2013). it remains highly contested whether mining corporations are responsible for addressing ecosystem issues for the wellbeing of their communities. sustainability leadership emphasizes a commitment to advance environmental ideologies and principles in its business strategies and operation (elkington 1998). this study analysed whether sustainability for a healthy stakeholder relationship is possible in an environment with a rubble economy like zimbabwe. on the other hand, it was interesting to note how the so-called triple bottom line is being reinforced by unki as an attempt to uphold its social and environmental responsibility to its community. stakeholder theory the stakeholder concept was propounded by freeman (1984), who defined it as “any group or individuals who can affect or be affected by a company’s purpose”. freeman (1984: 63) posits that the stakeholder theory is based on the belief that organisations must respond to different groups who have or can have legitimate demands and 2726 masuku could affect their results. stakeholder theory also has a considerable impact on the interpretation of social responsibility (phillips et al. 2003). stakeholder theory forms part of debates on the role of businesses in society where corporations recognise its dependence on external factors in which the idea of csr and corporate philanthropy emerges (boucher & rendtorff 2016). overton-de klerk and verwey (2013) say the shift from corporate philanthropy towards co-empowerment and accountability to the most inclusive number of stakeholders has become an economic imperative. the stakeholder concept entails that societies expect that organisations within their areas are good citizens who can be held accountable in having to provide greater support and csr1 to society in general (carroll & buchholtz 2008). strategic communication theory in strategic communication theory, there is a shift of power and control from management to individual stakeholders, allowing them to make decisions based on value systems they can support (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013). in the context of mining corporations, assessment is thus done to establish how strategic communication is being employed within their community for sustainable development. it is important to note the importance of enhancing the bottom-up rather than top-down approach for sustainable stakeholder relationship in developing nations. one of the goals of strategic communication is to assist organisations to attain appropriate standards for csr1; thereby, mitigating crisis. it is also designed to communicate ethically how the organisation is able to meet developmental standards for the good of society (hallahan et al. 2007). there is a gap in research in zimbabwe on how mines through the strategic communication theory enable all voices to discuss issues that sustain their future, while maintaining healthy relationships with the surrounding communities. methodology this study relied on a qualitative research approach to collect data and it is based on the epistemology of constructivism. a qualitative case study approach allowed indepth data gathering, as well as assisted in developing a detailed historical account of the nature of the relationship between the embedded communities and the selected mining corporation. instead of uncovering fixed truths that exist in the world “out there” without interaction of other entities (such as social engagements between humans), constructivism assumes that individuals develop subjective meanings of their experiences, implying that meanings are varied and multiple (creswell 2009). the targeted population of the study was the human resources department and the spi of unki. the study also focused on 18 community members from rietfontein village, which is a direct dependent of unki. four traditional leaders from the rietfontein village were selected and interviewed to obtain detailed information in response to the study’s main objectives. four qualitative sampling techniques were employed. snowball sampling was used to select the embedded community, while purposive 2726 strategic communication, enhanced sustainability and embedded communities sampling was used to select newspaper articles. stratified sampling was employed to select two unki mine employees from the human resources department and the social performance initiative (spi). criterion sampling was used to select four traditional leaders from rietfontein. articles on csr1 were drawn from the sun, the times, newsday, the herald and the chronicle newspapers. results and findings strategic communication approaches the study found that the mine uses the bottom-up approach as a communication strategy when engaging with their embedded community. it emerged that the bottomup approach is used mainly for community or mine issues that have the potential to impact communities. the community leads the initiation of sustainable projects for development in their communities. however, the study also established that the community is of the opinion that unki does not negotiate in good faith as it failed to recall and fulfil all its agreements with rietfontein community members. the community presented its grievances through the shurugwi district administrator (da) office. participants in the second focus group discussion stated the following: the displacement was at the mine’s favour and due to our illiteracy and legal english used by the mine in its documents we were ‘way-laid’ and duped. the mine failed to pay us in full money for clearing our field, which was supposed to be $250 thousand dollars. they only gave us 100 thousand dollars. no displacement allowance was given to any of us as agreed. if we take it to our ancestors that may bring lots of problems to the mine participant 3 from second focus group discussion. negotiations were not done in good faith and as a community had our grievances launched through the district administrator (da) in shurugwi complaining about unfair treatment. the mine did not pay us our displacement allowance as per our agreement – participant 1 from first focus group discussion. we have good relationship with unki mine and as a community we write and directly submit our to unki mine. most of the times they respond positively to our request, except the displacement allowance, which we were not given and suspect that the old administration duped us – headman’s response, interview. in fact, the mine displaced us twice while we were in shungudzevu, our original place. the displacement was not to the community’s favour, as we wanted to remain in our red rich soils that were rich for farming. the community had elders who, although were literate, got confused by legal binding terminology, which the mine took advantage of and did not pay us $250 thousand per family to clear two hectares, but rather gave each family $100 thousand. the remaining balance of $150 thousand was not paid and we approached the mine several times and they are not willing to pay councillor’s response, interview. the above responses show that although unki follows a bottom-up approach with rietfontein, the community is aggrieved on certain issues, which they feel the mine should revisit and address to cement healthy stakeholder relationships. 2928 masuku interviews with two mine representatives, four traditional leaders and focus groups discussions with 18 community members revealed that various methods are used to engage with the community of rietfontein. these include the bottom-up and top-down approach, the public private partnership model, and meetings that are transactional. the following responses support the claim: not one approach is suitable for all situations. we use both. top-down for accurate reporting of mine developments of mutual interest. bottom-up for community issues or mine issues that have the potential to impact communities social performance manager, unki, interview. unki mine has been working with us as a direct dependent community that they displaced from shungudzevu where they are currently located. we engage with the mine representatives for sustainable development programmes through meetings; sometimes they request us as a community to accept the projects they think can develop our community or we as a community we sat down and write issues that we wish the mine to assist us headman’s response, interview. the results indicated that unki mine did well through its social performance project implemented at rietfontein to address the community’s needs, which led to sustainable development issues. it emerged that rietfontein was one of the communities that benefited from the spi programmes implemented by unki, which created good road networks and provided clean running water, a good clinic, and a primary and secondary school, among other projects implemented since 2016 to date. however, it was also noted that dependency syndrome is developing among some villagers. such villagers constantly look to the mine to address most of their problems without taking responsibility of their own. this is supported by the following responses: the economic downturn has had a direct impact on stakeholders’ high expectations for the mine to contribute to delivery of services that ordinarily are the responsibility of government/local authorities. unmet expectations are then seen as not being responsive unki social performance initiatives manager and human resources representative. as a community at times we expect much from the mine as if we are the only community yet there are more than 10 surrounding community that are assisted by unki mine. the more they address our challenges the higher the chances of dependency syndrome amongst the villagers, who now are becoming lazy and cry babies. the mine cannot address all our problems; as individuals we have to work for our families as well first elder, interview. some of the challenges we encounter is having high expectations from the mine to help us, which should be addressed by the government, and we should be content with that the mine has done for us second elder, interview. community members appreciate what the mine has done for us towards improving our community and our livelihoods. we should stop being crying babies and work for our families… not to expect the mine to do everything for us. most of the community members after getting unsatisfied with some of the houses built for them by the mine had to work hard to build their big nice houses participant 5 from first focus group discussion. 2928 strategic communication, enhanced sustainability and embedded communities the mine is trying their best to understand and improve our livelihood. there are individuals who are reluctant to work for their families, yet some are working extra hard to complement the mine’s social performance programmes. at rietfontein while some have to build more big beautiful houses, others are still complaining and expect the mine to come and build them nice houses. dependency syndrome is affecting some of the community members and i am sure you saw some of the homesteads with shabby huts and some with mansions participant 5 from the second focus group discussion. the above responses reflect positive and negative opinions from community members who depend on and expect the mine to do everything for them. it was established that while villagers at rietfontein are working hard to better their lives, despite the assistance provided by the mine, some villagers strongly feel the mine should meet all their demands. in an interview with the unki social performance initiative manager and a human resources representative, unki personnel had this to say: we listen to the community and respond to their requests using the bottom-up approach to get legitimacy and licence to continue our operations, which if not fulfilled may lead to protest actions and disruption of business. this may even lead to the loss of social licence to operate unki social performance initiative manager and human resources representative. unki mine is the best and as a community, we appreciate their programmes, which have gone a long way in addressing the most pressing concerns to our welfare. they may continue extracting minerals and hope they are here to stay and to provide employment to our children in future participant 6 from the second focus group discussion. from the above, it would appear that unki displays full commitment to the corporate social performance model, which made it gain legitimacy from the rietfontein community. the study also established that unki uses a top-down approach when dealing with their surrounding communities, depending on the nature of the social performance programme they intend to implement. it also emerged that the top-down approach is used by the mine for reporting on mine expansions of common interest: the mine uses meetings, top-down and bottom-up approaches with local authorities of tongogara rural district council, shurugwi town council, gweru city council, chiefs, host ward councillor, representatives of men, women and youths (1/ category) of the communities around the mine including rietfontein village. district level, service government departments that include the district administrators, environment management agent, education, health, agritex, veterinary, irrigation and mechanisation, social welfare. top-down is used for accurate reporting of mine developments of mutual interest unki social performance initiative manager, interview. we usually take our request to the mine after sitting together as a community. several meetings … all the requests since we were relocated to this place by unki mine were all received and responded to positively first elder, interview. judging from the above, the mine uses meetings, both top-down and bottom-up, for various reasons to maintain stakeholder relationships. the mine uses the topdown approach to communicate spis to the targeted community, notifying them, 3130 masuku and for announcements. the bottom-up approach comes into effect when the community initiates requests and presents these to the mine using their community representatives. both approaches are dialogical and achieve transactional communication that maintains health communications between the mine and the community for sustainable development: in september 2019, unki mine in zimbabwe was the first mine in the world to publicly commit to an independent audit against the initiative for responsible mining assurance (irma) standards for responsible mining … unki performed well against the 26 areas covered including working conditions, human rights, community and stakeholder engagement, environment impact, planning and financing reclamation and closure (anglo american platinum limited integrated report 2019: 118). it can therefore be argued that unki performed well with its spis. the same can be said of their community engagement activities, which have earned the mine respect and recognition. the international award won by unki in 2019 was a result of their spis, implemented in all the surrounding communities in shurugwi, including rietfontein. the study also established that the mine responds to the community’s needs using the issue approach as a strategy to address concerns. the issue approach suggests identifying an emerging issue that may affect organisational operations as well as embedded communities’ relationship with the mine. in this regard, the following was said: our approach to sustainability involves partnering with communities and participatory co-development of community social investment initiatives, and involving them throughout the projects cycle, that is from need identification, project scoping, mobilisation of material, contracting, monitoring and evaluation unki social performance initiative manager, interview. the mine has been engaging with our community on certain issues like requests for road network, mutevekwi bridge, water sources to water our gardens, schools and clinics for our family, and income generating projects. the mine responded positively to most of the issues except the issue of employing our children and energetic rietfontein community members, which they remain silent on despite our frantic efforts made with more than two letters forwarded to the mine management and human resources participant 6 from the first focus group discussion. unki have responded to most of our issues since 2008 except the issue to pay us the remaining displacement allowance, providing us with farming inputs, employment of our children. when we requested and pressured them on providing us with farming inputs for eight years they responded to us by introducing a bee-hiving project as a direct income-generating project, which is not what we wanted to our community participant 7 from the second focus group discussion. conclusion the study found that unki mine’s spi projects implemented at rietfontein are focused on education, agriculture and environment, the economy, water and sanitation, and social issues. 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tertiary students. it is against this background that this article explores the role of work-integrated learning (wil) in preparing tertiary journalism students for a work environment. over the years, internship programmes in academic journalism training have proved to be the most efficient way to prepare students for the workplace. at the tshwane university of technology in pretoria, south africa, a six month work-integrated learning module, in which the media and communication industry were directly involved, proved crucial for the success of the journalism training programmes and was widely accepted and welcomed by employers and industry mentors. this article investigates the importance of preparation for wil in the field of journalism. it further examines how undergraduate journalism students perceive the wil programme and how they work towards rendering themselves employable in the media industry. the findings indicate that a combination of theory and practical training is important in journalism education to produce graduates who are work ready. keywords: work-integrated learning; journalism; students; media; academic wil supervisors; industry wil mentors; experiential learning; internship; workplace readiness; employability introduction and rationale the work-integrated learning (wil) experience provides a bridge for students between the academic present and a professional future. students are given the opportunity to apply and merge the theoretical knowledge gained in their academic studies to “real world” workplace practical experiences. this article investigates how wil prepares students for a career by providing an opportunity to develop relevant professional skills. a three-way partnership between the student, the workplace organisation, and the training tshamano makhadi department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email : makhadit@ tut.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8566-4575 dr pedro diederichs department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email : diederichspd@ tut.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5246-9367 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 167-178 date submitted: 28 january 2021 date accepted: 03 august 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:makhadit@tut.ac.za mailto:makhadit@tut.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8566-4575 mailto:diederichspd@tut.ac.za mailto:diederichspd@tut.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5246-9367 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.10 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 169168 makhadi & diederichs provider (a tertiary institution) requires all parties in the relationship to assume definite responsibilities, perform specific functions, and achieve benefits as a result of their involvement (martin & hughes 2009: 8). although the programmes might be similar, wil is different from experiential learning, service learning, internships and other related programmes. wil is a structured form of experiential learning in a learning programme focused on the application of theory in an authentic work-based environment. on the other hand, experiential learning is seen as a process where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. simply put, it means learning by doing. service learning is applied learning directed at specific community needs and is integrated into the curriculum and learning programme (tut 2013). perhaps the most familiar form of experiential education is the internship (che 2011). this programme became popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s (katula & threnhauser 1999: 247). today it thrives in colleges and universities, renamed as wil. wil focuses primarily on enhancing students’ learning, and to this end several curricular, pedagogical and assessment forms have been developed in response to concerns about graduation, employability and civic responsibility (che 2011). examples of this include action learning, apprenticeships, cooperative education, experiential learning, practicums, problem-based learning, project-based learning, scenario learning, service learning, team-based learning, virtual learning, work-based learning, work placement and workplace learning. while there are relationships and connections between these theories of education, what is important is that these are separate terms with separate meanings. the term wil describes an approach to career-focused education that includes classroom-based and work-based forms of learning that are appropriate for the professional qualification. what separates wil from the broad concept of learningfor-work is the emphasis on the integrative aspects of such learning. it can further be described as an educational approach that aligns academic and workplace practices for the benefit of students and workplaces (che 2011). the concept is growing in stature in the tertiary education sector (billett 2009). it is not just work experience, although it can include such an element, but rather a much more structured consideration of the relational interdependence between the feature of the workplace and the engagement of workers (billett 2009: 232). it places radical emphasis on the process of learning in a workplace environment. students learn as much about themselves as they do about the media industry (forde & meadows 2010). as billett (2009) explains, wil offers an important opportunity to explore the kinds of knowledge and range of experiences required for students to apply effective practice in the work environment. according to northeastern university (in katula & threnhauser 1999: 240), wil is a process and accomplishment that takes place beyond the traditional classroom and that enhances the personal and intellectual growth of the student. such education can occur in a wide variety of settings, but usually takes on a “learning by doing” aspect that engages the student directly. it is not tied to a specific discipline but requires a student to integrate theory and real work experience. as martin and hughes (2009: 9) 169168 the role of work-integrated learning in preparing journalism students state, students are expected to exercise their professional, ethical and technical skills judgement to the best of their ability. although some organisations will not be able to offer an extended work experience or a suitable workspace in which to carry out the student project, they may still be able to offer the student valuable opportunities. in such cases it is important that the student honestly assess his/her ability to work independently (without constant supervision), often away from the organisation. the covid-19 pandemic offered ample examples of just such a situation in 2020. moreover, students must maintain high standards of professional behaviour during the placement. this includes meeting the ethical expectations of the employer. they must also be punctual regarding the daily routines of the workplace in which they are placed. they should not conduct themselves in a manner that prejudices the professional status or reputation of the employer, or disclose any confidential information or matter related to their work. these qualities result from good preparation by the training institution for wil. it is important for journalism educators to take students’ preparation seriously. the researchers are of the opinion that it can assist students to perform better during their wil programme and ultimately render them more employable. aim of the study this article explores the functionality of wil and how the programme can render students employable. it investigates the importance of preparation for wil in the field of journalism. the following objectives were identified: ♦ examine the extent to which undergraduate journalism students perceive the wil programme as important and how they work towards rendering themselves employable in the media industry; ♦ expose students to the real world of the workplace while still studying and drawing their attention to what can be expected from them as interns or junior journalists; ♦ raise awareness of some of the issues involved in the media industry; and ♦ address the importance of partnerships in the field of journalism education. background coll et al. (in martin & hughes 2009: 19) state that a key purpose of wil is the notion of providing graduates with the comprehensive skills desired by potential employers. wil experiences within the curriculum have shown to support the development of behavioural competencies (dresseler & keeling, in martin & hughes 2009: 19). this is crucial because it has been a challenge for tertiary institutions to provide students with behavioural skills. it is frequently reported that universities do not sufficiently emphasise the development of these skills to prepare graduates for professional life (coll et al., in martin & hughes 2009: 19). according to bell et al. (in martin & hughes 171170 makhadi & diederichs 2009: 9), a knowledge base alone does not guarantee a new graduate employment; in fact, the personal attributes and capabilities of a graduate are considered to have a greater influence on success in the workplace. martin and leberman (2005: 57-58) state that asking for help is a positive reaction, but becoming dependent on other people’s instructions is not. it is important to remain proactive, not reactive, because employers value people who use their initiative to overcome problems and who think creatively to add value to the company. students must learn to manage their time, plan, set goals and specific targets both personally and professionally, and take ownership of and responsibility for their wil programme (martin & leberman 2005: 57-58). in a world of constant change, career education cannot provide enough knowledge to suffice for a substantial portion of a lifelong career. as the largest university of technology (uot) in south africa, the tshwane university of technology (tut) constantly strives to become the specialist in just-in-time education, in other words providing a continuous upgrading of knowledge skills. this practical knowledge is provided in a variety of modules and variations in contact and distance learning programmes to undergraduate students when and where they need it. such just-intime education will in future become the trademark and strength of uots (tut 2013). theoretically, both students and employers will know and be able to judge accurately the value of such programmes (du pré 2009). working and living is becoming increasingly interwoven, and inseparable in character and content. in this new culture of learning, basic undergraduate degree training as it exists now will be replaced by instantaneous measures of knowledge and skills acquisition, and uots will have to provide leadership in this respect. re-skilling, up-skilling and multi-skilling activities will have to be distributed creatively over the careers and lifetimes of students. in this process, new and interactive relationships (partnerships) will have to be forged with local and international employers and knowledge providers (winchester-seeto et al. 2010: 69). uots should lead the revolution in the development and creation of a new generation of knowledge workers who are able to identify the needs and challenges of society, and the final solutions thereto. undergraduate journalism students will have to take their wil programme seriously if they are to make a difference in society and the media industry. against this background, the findings of this article will help university supervisors and workplace supervisors in the media industry to maximise the wil experience for journalism students. it is the policy of tut that cooperative education (wil) must be integral and credit bearing to all academic programmes as part of its teaching and learning strategy. cooperative education is considered the umbrella concept for the cooperation between the university, industry, commerce and the public sector to enhance experiential learning as part of wil (tut 2013). universities should clearly communicate to students what wil is about and how it relates to the curriculum of the qualification and the day-one competencies expected from graduates in the workplace (dhet 2012). meadows (1997: 93) states that journalism education has a key role to play in offering experiences and learning 171170 the role of work-integrated learning in preparing journalism students situations, which go beyond the narrow realm of the reporter in a reconstructed newsroom. in short, journalism’s educational links to the academy might be usefully reviewed and strengthened to ensure that students’ experiences are not confined to a long string of journalism-specific subjects, which ironically serve primarily to narrow their knowledge base and their employability. tertiary educators should ensure that graduates are prepared for the world in which they will live and work (che 2011: 1). kolb (in katula & threnhauser 1999: 242) indicates that learning is a process where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. wessels (2005: 3) agrees that students benefit most from this type of learning experience because it offers them the opportunity to relate theory to practice, to experience more relevance to their studies, and to become involved in a chosen career. it also enables students to earn while they learn. in return, the success of wil depends on the motivation and overall excellence of the students and their mentors. research methodology this article is based on the findings of a study that followed a qualitative and exploratory research approach. data was gathered through conducting interviews with participants, first-hand experience, and a literature study. as such, data was analysed through transcripts. data was collected using a smart phone to record interviews. after completion, data was analysed by means of transcription. flick (in pritchard 2010: 14) defines transcript as “the graphic representation of selected aspects of the behaviour of individuals engaged in a conversation”. provision was made to note anything of importance during the interviews, which may not have been recorded. seal (in pritchard 2010: 14) notes that transcripts allow for rich data collection inclusive of nonverbal aspects. a comprehensive literature study was made of documentary evidence from existing research in a variety of academic publications. this includes wessels’ 2005 textbook, experiential learning, and similar journals, including a problem-based learning approach to journalism education by meadows (1997) and utilising cooperative education in journalism studies by thomas and goc (2002). this information was used to understand the history of wil in south africa and in other parts of the world. odendaal’s (2018) paper “cooperative education and work-integrated learning” provided more clarity on the theme. this helped to understand challenges facing the media industry with the placement of students. own observations by one of the coauthors assisted in understanding the broader concept of wil. wil supervisors from the tut’s faculty of humanities were interviewed, as well as academics from other institutions and supervisors in the media industry (both electronic and print media). additionally, a group of students who were doing wil and those who completed the programme were used for data gathering. focusing on non-probability, purposive sampling, babbie (2007: 184) states that sometimes it is appropriate to select a sample based on the knowledge of a population, its elements, and the purpose of the study. as the people who receive the products, it was important to interview captains of industry to gain an understanding on how 173172 makhadi & diederichs they view the students who come from universities and enter the world of work. in this regard, 13 industry representatives were interviewed, as well as 14 wil coordinators and heads of department in the faculty of humanities from the tut. from the student population, 39 students were interviewed individually. this sample included students who are doing wil and those who have completed such a programme. the views of the students the student participants indicated that wil gives them an advantage. once they have gone through the academic programme, they are able to adapt easily to executing instructions in the workplace, which they did not necessarily come across in a classroom situation. they stated that the training taught them to adapt to the world of work and to work independently. ♦ seventy percent of students see wil as an opportunity to progress to the next level of their career. the success of the programme depends mainly on a student’s commitment. students said that the programme provides the opportunity for them to practice what they have learnt and to understand the media industry. ♦ eighty-four percent of students interviewed identified wil as practical work that one must fulfil to be awarded a qualification. ♦ wil teaches students to keep to deadlines and check on the accuracy of their reporting. in many cases, it leads to behavioural changes in the time management and professional conduct of students. ♦ students commented that the work environment differs from university. the workplace teaches them to deal with real life challenges and to make sound decisions quickly. ♦ students pointed out some aspects were not taught to them at university. the most prominent aspect is reporting from hostile environments. ♦ when applying for a job, the students say it makes a significant difference if they send their cvs accompanied by a portfolio of evidence (practical work). employers referred to these portfolios in their interviews. ♦ the experience of applying for an internship varies from one student to the other. some students wait until they complete their second year of study to find placement, whilst others start approaching potential employers in the months building up to their wil programme. ♦ on the one hand, some students apply at several media institutions; while others apply at just one or two media companies. ♦ there is no guarantee that a student will find placement. those who put in extra effort are most likely to find placement. finding placement without assistance is difficult for students. it is much easier for students to find placement when there is assistance from the respective departments at the tertiary institutions. 173172 the role of work-integrated learning in preparing journalism students ♦ the student participants acknowledged that it is important to accept work on a voluntary basis to hone their practical skills. ♦ in the group of 2017, students were interviewed to find out how many applied, searched and sent out their cvs to different media employers. eighty percent of them applied during their second year whilst the other 20 applied in their third year. of the 80 percent, only 25 percent applied in the first semester and the rest applied late in the second semester (student 1 39 2018). the views of academic wil supervisors academic wil supervisors shared the view that wil is an integral part of students’ training and is at the centre of students’ success. they say uots especially must pay special attention to preparing students for the world of work and developing their skills. tut’s journalism programme constitutes 30 credits for wil in the curriculum. the academics interviewed see this is a clear indication of how important wil is. they say it plays an important role in nurturing students’ skills. universities are expected to take responsibility for placing students in the industry and supervisors have to keep close contact with possible employers to facilitate this. academic wil supervisors pointed out that the success of wil is dependent on the commitment of the wil supervisors. the major task of the academic wil supervisor is to collaborate with the media industry and the mentors to monitor the progress of the interns. tut journalism has a dedicated wil supervisor who understands the needs of both the student and the employer. this approach goes a long way to assist students to find placement, and it impacts positively on throughput. academics suggest that for wil to be successful, it is important that preparation begins in class. this kind of preparation must include non-technical and life skills like communication, discipline and assertiveness (academic wil supervisor 1 14 2018). the views of industry wil mentors mentors in the media industry demand that higher education institutions should provide a strong knowledge base to students. they require the students to enter the workplace ready for work. they suggest that theoretical knowledge does not necessarily guarantee a good product. mentors say that most importantly wil improves students’ work readiness and the ability to convert theoretical knowledge into practical implementation. there is a view that journalism diplomas provide students with the theoretical knowledge, but without the environment that enables the student to practice what they have learnt in class, they may not succeed in their craft. some industry mentors stated that if the mentor does not take the programme seriously, the students might not succeed. mentors say that if students are in an environment where they can practice, regardless of the institution they come from, they will get a sense of how the newsroom operates. 175174 makhadi & diederichs in terms of wil, they expect interns to be multi-skilled in all media platforms. during training, there is trial and error that allows employers to guide students to be professionals, which gives students the opportunity to make mistakes without it damaging their confidence. mentors indicated that wil helps them to spot the talents interns may have. for example, some interns will excel in soft news, while others will prefer hard news. media industry mentors further state that academics need to reflect upon the direction the industry is going and shape the curriculum accordingly. it is also important for academic wil supervisors to visit students in the workplace (wil mentor 1 13 2018). findings analysing the data as gleaned from the three groups (students, supervisors and mentors) and the literature study, the role played by wil in preparing students for the work place included some fundamental questions: ♦ what is the role of wil as a preparatory method for journalism students? ♦ do students take wil seriously? ♦ are students from the university prepared adequately for the workplace? ♦ is there a positive relationship between theory and practicals for wil to be successful? ♦ to what extent does wil influence the journalism curriculum? ♦ how difficult or easy is it to find placement? ♦ what is the importance of partnerships between industry and universities? the findings collected from the responses include the following: ♦ wil is an integral part of journalism studies, especially for undergraduate students; ♦ learning by doing was found to be a cornerstone of students’ success; ♦ preparation for wil needs to begin in the lecture hall before students enter the workplace; ♦ a combination of theory and practical training is important in journalism education to produce graduates who are work ready; ♦ media industry mentors must work closely with universities for students to do well, as the industry stands to benefit, whilst universities increase their throughput; ♦ the industry and universities have to understand the importance of partnerships; 175174 the role of work-integrated learning in preparing journalism students ♦ academics need to visit students regularly in their workplace, while keeping abreast of changes in the media environment; ♦ students need to have a good understanding of what wil entails and how they can best render themselves employable. recommendations having identified some of the challenges facing students in their search for wil opportunities, the article makes recommendations that could support students, academic wil supervisors, and media industry mentors to make wil succeed. find your area of interest in media students should establish their area of interest, where they want to specialise in, as soon as possible and work towards achieving that goal. they need to know what the employer expects from them. they should pay special attention to practical work, which would enhance their cvs when it is time to apply for wil. students must always ask for assistance and support from their institutions. feedback on practical work students must request feedback from both lecturers and mentors without feeling intimidated about what kind of advice they might receive. they need to be open-minded in order to be successful. where there is reflection, there is growth. it is also important for students to monitor new trends in the media. the media industry is competitive and constantly requires new skills. it is important for students to be multi-skilled in the era of digital media. do voluntary work for campus-based media platforms students must be proactive and do volunteer work while on campus in order to gather as much hands-on experience as possible. in the case of tut journalism, students do practical work with local campus community radio stations tut fm and tshwane fm. they also cover stories in and around the community of soshanguve that are published in rekord noweto through a partnership with caxton newspapers. students do not necessarily have to wait for when they are ready to do their practical training to start doing some practical work. during university recess, they might also find placement with a media house in their hometown to do more practical work. visit mainstream media companies where possible, students must job shadow senior journalists even if it is just for a weekend. this forms part of students’ training. to a certain extent, students get a feel of how the workplace operates, and gradually learn. every experience is worthwhile. this could also give a student an advantage by the time they leave campus to start their wil programme. 177176 makhadi & diederichs keep up with what is happening in industry the success of every university and its departments is in its throughput rate. it is important for universities to produce students who are ready for work. wil supervisors must monitor new industry developments to keep students relevant and up to date. it is important for wil supervisors to keep good relations with the industry in which they operate. they further have to understand the students’ needs, and guide and assist them. media organisations operate differently. it is important for students to understand the existing differences between all forms of media before they apply for placement. understanding the different ways of operation can also be advantageous for the student. wil supervisors in the newsroom are busy and have limited time because of their deadline-driven work. it is better when a student “hits the ground running” without constantly relying on the guidance of the supervisor. keep students informed mentors must listen to students’ concerns and attempt to understand what is affecting their performance. special sessions on wil where the supervisor shares information or get industry experts to address students on various issues on the subject will be beneficial. colleagues from cooperative education at the university, media industry mentors, and former students of the department, who are able to speak at a wil seminar, is strongly recommended. alumni can share their experiences, whilst media industry mentors can share advice on what employers need or expect from trainees. collaborate with the university media industry mentors must work closely with universities. in the end, they are both looking for good products. if students do well, industry and universities stand to benefit. they must request guidance from the university wil supervisor on techniques to create a reflective environment for the student. they also need to provide feedback on a regular basis to both the student and wil supervisor. if there is a problem with a student he/she is mentoring, a wil supervisor can assist to avoid possible conflict. moreover, a formal memorandum of understanding (mou) and evaluation documents are crucial to the success of wil. conclusion wil is an integral part of journalism education and there could hardly be a better starting point for aspiring journalists. partnerships between universities and the industry, and the commitment of all parties in the training process remain the key to the success of wil. the history of wil shows that it has been around for many years, although it may have been called by different names in the past. as du plessis (2015) suggests, “… the impact of the changing nature of work and the capacity of educational institutions to prepare their students for this changing environment has been of concern to many 177176 the role of work-integrated learning in preparing journalism students governments. what is expected of students during these wil experiences is that they gain new knowledge, understanding and capabilities, and that they master skills considered essential to particular workplace practices”. the constant changes in the media landscape will force mentors and academics to plan the wil road ahead with care. students who participated in this study suggested that the practical work they do at the university is good. it helps them to prepare for the work they want to do in future; for example, how to compile stories for radio and television, and how to write for print and online publications. in this regard, wil proves to be an integral part of journalism training. references academic wil supervisors 1-14. 2018. pretoria. (interview transcripts available). babbie, e.r. 2007. the practice of social research. (eleventh edition). belmont: cengage learning. billett, s. 2009. integrating contributions of work place and college experiences in developing vocational knowledge. in: mcclean, r., wilson, d.n. & chinien, c. (eds). international handbook on education for the world of work. dordrecht: springer. che (council on higher education). 2011. work-integrated leaning: good practice guide. he monitor 12: 1-79. dhet (department of higher education and training). 2012. work-integrated learning. dhet learning programme regulations. pretoria: government printer. diederichs, p.d. 2020. pretoria. (interview transcript available). du plessis, j.g.e. 2015. a work-integrated learning education and training programme for radiography in south africa. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa. du pré, r. 2009. the place and role of universities of technology in south africa. kagisano 7. south african technology network. pretoria: council for higher education. forde, s. & meadows, m. 2010. the impact of co-operative peer reflection on the integration of work-integrated learning into journalism education curriculum and pedagogic bases for effecting integrating practice based experience with higher education. national teaching dialogue forum proceedings. brisbane, june 2010. brisbane: national teaching dialogue forum. katula, r.a. & threnhauser, e. 1999. experiential education in the undergraduate curriculum. communication education 48(3): 238-255. https://doi. org/10.1080/03634529909379172 martin, a. & hughes, h. 2009. how to make the most of work-integrated learning. palmerston north, new zealand: massey university. martin, a. & leberman, s. 2005. keeping up with the play: practicum, partnership and practice. asiapacific journal of cooperative education 6(2): 17-25. meadows, m. 1997. taking a problem-based learning approach to journalism education. asia pacific media educator 1(3): 89-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529909379172 https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529909379172 pb178 makhadi & diederichs mentors 1-13. 2018. johannesburg. (interview transcripts available). odendaal, l. 2007. cooperative education and work-integrated learning. paper presented at a workshop in grahamstown in january 2007. grahamstown: rhodes university. odendaal, l. 2018. pretoria. (interview transcript available). pritchard, m. 2010. citizen media coverage of gautrain on social media. unpublished master’s dissertation. tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. students 1-39. 2018. pretoria. (interview transcripts available). thomas, r. & goc, n. 2002. cooperative education in journalism studies. international handbook for cooperative education. boston. tut (tshwane university of technology). 2013. department of cooperative education. policy on work-integrated learning (wil). pretoria: tut. wessels, m.l. 2005. experiential learning. lansdowne: juta. winchester-seeto, t., mackaway, j., coulson, d. & harvey, m. 2010. an analysis of assessment strategies for learning through participation (ltp). asia-pacific journal of cooperative education 11(3): 67-91. 1pb africa and football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists abstract most analyses of african football have turned to neoliberalism and globalisation to explain developments, but these theories seem to lack analytical grip and predictive force. african teams have not improved their showing at fifa world cup tournaments over the past 30 years and in 2018 fared worse than in the past. south african comedian trevor noah’s claim that africa won the world cup because of the presence of many non-white players in the french team conceals the reality that african football has entered a phase of reverse migration, with many national teams are composed to a large extent of european born and based players. south africa’s premier soccer league offers another problematic example: it is at once an example of successful broadcasting neoliberalism but raises problems in that its local success may be at the expense of successful globalisation of the game in south africa. an examination of football viewership across sub-saharan africa may offer a better approach to understanding how sports partisanship and the ecology of leisure investment in sport works in a developing country, than theories from the global north have. keywords: football; soccer; fifa world cup; neoliberalism; globalisation; premier soccer league; english premier league; viewership; media studies; global south introduction in 1998, shortly before france won the fifa world cup (hereafter world cup) for the first time, french sociologist pierre bourdieu contrasted two notions of sport: a french notion of sport as local practice; and an american notion of sport as spectacle (bourdieu 1998; bourdieu et al. 2007). for bourdieu (1998), televised sport was the trojan horse of the american neo-liberal model, given a decisive push in europe by the 1995 bosman ruling, treating sportsmen as individual entrepreneurs rather than as team or club members. what should one make of bourdieu’s analysis over 20 years later, particularly as france won the world cup a second prof. ian glenn research fellow, department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email : glennie@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-08933118 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-11 date submitted: 2 october 2019 date accepted: 1 november 2019 date published: 12 december 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0893-3118 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0893-3118 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0893-3118 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.12 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 glenn time in 2018? and what of the role of africa in the most global of games and televised spectacles in an era of globalisation? in particular, how convincing are arguments about neo-liberalism and globalisation and the role of africa and african players in football globally given the developments since 1998 and, in particular, since the staging of the world cup in south africa in 2010 – an event that brought about a new spate of analysis and theorising about football in africa? (alegi & bolsmann 2009). has the trojan horse of televised sport penetrated africa completely and uniformly, or are there points of resistance and friction and national differences that suggest that other models may be more fruitful? this article focuses on several issues to argue that old theoretical models no longer have much grip or explanatory power: the composition of african national teams and their success at international tournaments; the importance of national african leagues compared to international leagues; the question of recruitment and player movements from or within africa; the viewership of national and international football across africa; and the value of explanatory economic or cultural models. note 1: who won the cup? while there is always some danger in drawing major conclusions from sporting events in which luck, chance or apparently arbitrary factors may play a major role, the world cup of 2018 certainly seemed to strengthen the argument, prominently made in soccernomics, that european teams and a european logic of football are now more dominant than ever (kuper 2014). no african team progressed beyond the group stages and the four semi-finalists (england, croatia, belgium and france) were all european countries. even south american powers, like brazil and argentina, could not make it into the last four or even eight. while pelé’s 1977 prediction that an african team would win the world cup before 2000 has now been proven to be off the mark, trevor noah, south african born host of the usa today show, came to a different conclusion about the 2018 winners, france. in his show on 16 july 2018, he claimed jubilantly that, “africa won the world cup”, pointing to the number of players of colour in the french team. his comments drew a swift rebuke from gérard araud, the french ambassador to the usa, who complained that france did not distinguish between french citizens but regarded them all as fully french (butler 2018). while this exchange and the identity politics involved drew some commentary, noah’s comments seemed to fit into older narratives about colonial or neo-liberal exploitation of african players by european powers (maguire & pearton 2000). in this narrative, european powers, particularly france, win by buying in exceptional talents from africa – in 1998, players such as patrick vieira, marcel desailly and lilian thuram had moved to france from africa or the caribbean to play football and drawn some resentment from right-wing french political figures (such as jean-marie le pen) who felt that the team was no longer a properly representative french team. by 2018, however, noah’s comments were misleading. while england, belgium and france all had significant representation of players who did not have a solely 32 africa and football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists european heritage, very few of their players were born outside the countries they played for. england and belgium had no players born in africa, while croatia had the most players born outside the country but qualifying on grounds of ancestry. france had, as the french ambassador remonstrated, only two of their 23-man squad born outside france and one of them had moved there as a young child. the real story, it could be argued, was that the french system of sport as practice (that bourdieu had praised) had helped form the successful french academies that were training a large number of inner-city children of migrants who ended up playing, not only for france, but for countries like morocco (17 of their 23-man squad at the 208 world cup were born in france), algeria and senegal from which their parents or grandparents had emigrated. this development was brought home even more dramatically in the 2019 african cup of nations (afcon) final between algeria and senegal. of the 23-man algerian squad, 14 were born in france, while nine of the senegalese squad were born there. fully half of the players in the squads in the final of africa’s premier football tournament were thus born and trained in france. trevor noah would have spoken more truly had he said, “france won the afcon cup!” when academic theorists look at what it takes to win the afcon cup, it would no doubt be too simple to say, “have a large diaspora living in france”, but this shift of team composition and power raises difficult questions for african football (acheampong & akwaa-sekyi 2019). what is wrong with training models and academies in africa that stops the success of youth teams from the continent from into translating into the bigger global stage? what are the french (and belgians and english) doing in developing young footballers that africa is not able or willing to do? while one has to have some reservations about the success of many african teams in under-age competitions given the extent of deception about ages (staff 2010), the bigger picture is undoubtedly one of poor or corrupt african management and foresight (abbot 2018). in the case of south africa, in particular, the premier soccer league (psl) benefits from generous corporate sponsorship and television rights, but sports development seems to receive minimal attention, at either the national or the club level. promising developments, such as the university of pretoria academy, are left haphazardly to private enterprise or non-football educational facilities and lack sustainability over time and the 2010 world cup’s promise to help development by developing academies across africa has left disillusionment nearly a decade later (manzo 2012). note 2: who in africa plays where? another indication of the influence of european football on the african game is the strong correlation between the number of players from a particular african country playing in the top leagues in europe and the success of their national teams in afcon and world cup competitions. for an observer like gary bailey, the unwillingness of south african players to move abroad and their preference to stay as big fish in a small pond limits the ability of the national team to compete on the continental or global stage (bailey 2019). other analysts have pointed to differing recruitment patterns and networks between countries like ghana and south africa (darby & solberg 2009), 54 glenn while dell’oca suggests that egypt and even the democratic republic of congo are able, for differing financial and cultural reasons, to keep many top players at home and to strengthen local clubs – but at the expense of success in national competitions (dell’oca 2019). these differing habits help shape loyalties and viewership (as will be explored further below) and also the success of club teams in continental competitions. the egyptian and to some extent tunisian and moroccan preference for staying at home means that their clubs are far more successful in african club competitions that ghanaian or nigerian clubs, though the latter usually outperform in national competitions. when nigeria is second only to brazil in providing players from outside europe for the european leagues, the wide presence of nigerian players in european leagues helps explain why nigerian audiences prefer watching european football to local leagues or even national teams (musa 2013; dell’oca 2019). but why should players playing abroad be better? is it that they are more driven, face tougher competition and need to be more resilient than local players, or are there other technical factors such as better tactical and strategic analysis, training regimes and psychological management? the comparison of south african soccer with rugby makes some differences clear. whatever the historical reasons for the different take up of soccer and rugby in south africa (hill 2009) or the reasons for the decline of white participation in soccer in south africa in the professional sporting era (venter 2016), clear differences emerge. in the case of rugby, some 200 south africans, largely white, play professionally abroad, coaches often move to and from south africa to other leading clubs or even national teams, teams draw on the expertise of other leading coaches in national tournaments, and local teams use cutting-edge computer software to help prepare and analyse games. the major regional rugby annual tournament in south africa involves competition against teams from new zealand, australia and argentina, not simply a national competition. at the 2019 rugby world cup, south african born players showed their mobility by representing nine countries (namibia, japan, canada, australia, italy, france, usa, scotland and ireland) other than south africa. south africa ended up winning the tournament. in the case of soccer, the move of coaches has very much been from europe or even south america to africa. where does that leave the south african premier soccer league? note 3: south africa and its premier soccer league in the heady early days of the new south africa, the national team, bafana bafana, were allowed back into african competition and won the 1996 african cup of nations and followed that up by being runners-up in 1998. the sabc, the national public broadcaster, broadcast the games and also games from the psl, the national soccer league. in 2004, south africa was awarded the rights to stage the 2010 world cup, giving soccer unprecedented attention in a country where the dominant culture had always favoured rugby and cricket. for supersport, the sporting arm of multichoice, the 54 africa and football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists satellite broadcaster, it was obvious that the way to expand their appeal beyond middle-class white households lay in the passionate following that local soccer teams enjoyed. in 2007, supersport signed a deal with the psl worth r1.6 billion, effectively ending not only the sabc’s monopoly but also their rights to stage the most attractive derby matches. this development worked well for multichoice, expanding their appeal and reach into a new black audience, and eventually cost the then head of the sabc his job for having lost these sports rights (duncan & glenn 2010). with the influx of pre-world cup sponsorship and television rights money, the psl became one of the most well-funded in the world – various sources rate it as 7th, 10th, or 15th best internationally at the time. given rupert murdoch’s dictum that “sport is the battering ram of pay tv”, this was a classic neoliberal capture of the public space by private interests. while there are ongoing rights arguments given the sabc’s parlous financial situation, the key development was that dstv succeeded across sub-saharan africa in using football rights to infiltrate and change local markets – particularly in nigeria and south africa, but also in kenya, the drc and many other countries. instead of being able to watch one game a week, african audiences now have, depending on which package they purchase from multichoice, a range of african and european soccer viewing options. the quality and sophistication of camerawork and advertising of games has developed strongly. as the increased funding for the psl led to better salaries and greater prominence for the local league, players felt less incentive to move abroad to further their careers, leaving south africa, perhaps like egypt, with a flourishing local league with passionate followers, but a decline in performance continentally and internationally. according to dstv’s analysis of audience preferences, in africa it is only south africans who prefer to watch the local league to watching international club football. the psl thus has, despite decreased attendance at actual matches (mathidza 2011), managed to hold onto a strong share of the viewing public, probably particularly through the national appeal of the leading clubs, kaizer chiefs, orlando pirates and mamelodi sundowns. one south african club, however, seems to have understood and embraced the need to adapt to european norms in order to develop local talent to world standards. mamelodi sundowns, sponsored by oligarch patrice motsepe, is coached by former bafana bafana coach pitso mosimane, highly regarded by most local football journalists as a serious student of the game and successful coach (gleeson 2019). in addition, they recently hired renowned spaniard josé ramón alexanko as director of academy and scouting, suggesting that they have accepted that longer term and more strategic investments may be necessary (strydom 2019). south africans have thus perhaps moved away from an english distrust of foreign managers and foreign methods, still prevalent a few decades ago, to trying to learn from the leading european clubs and training academies. within one country one thus sees two very different versions or inflections of neoliberalism and globalisation. for a fan of the psl, one has a robust local cultural phenomenon, close to its roots and audiences, run by local owners, able to adapt over time, and competitive continentally as when mamelodi sundowns won the african club 76 glenn competition in 2016. for critics, the league’s shortcomings are revealed whenever bafana bafana, the national men’s team, has to compete in larger tournaments. in september 2019, the team, composed of players from the best-funded league in africa, ranked a lowly 13th among african teams, behind much smaller countries with lower budgets. while the psl cannot be held responsible for all the faults of the south african football association, the organisation responsible for national teams, the financial muscle of the league does not translate into national competitiveness. some critics point to the excessive power of leading owners and allege, off the record, that referees are bribed to ensure favourable results in key games. when pitso mosimane claims that he may need a sangoma to help ensure success in the mtn 8 competition in which sundowns have been persistently unsuccessful, he may have been joking, but it also reinforces a stereotype of a league where superstition and magical thinking dominate over modern rationality (fakude 2019). for other observers, many other psl teams lag behind in up-to-date analysis and training methods (stuart 2019). inevitably, perhaps, bafana bafana, after their poor international performances after their creditable showing in the 2010 world cup, have drawn highly adverse comments from critics who expect the international success of the cricket or rugby teams, which have been and remained globally ranked among the best in the world. for these critics, many of them white, local soccer is of poor quality, “on a par with english first division or championship at best”, and the national team’s failure to qualify for successive world cups has led to disengagement. note 4: viewership, talk shows and how to involve people academic studies of football viewership and partisanship in africa generally depend on short-term impressionistic accounts or personal reminiscences (fletcher 2009; jacobs 2009; musa 2013). a more holistic account would probably emerge from the marketing and analysis departments of the supersport broadcaster who would be able to track trends over time. unfortunately, most of their data is understandably confidential. nonetheless, by going on some insights offered and the contributions of various expert commentators, the following issues emerge as critical. the first is the language of broadcasts. the psl in favouring african language commentators and keeping that distinctive offering in the dstv era as an option remained closer to south african audiences than the rival english premier league or foreign league broadcasts available only in english. as the use of english as a lingua franca in south africa grows, one should expect a younger generation to drift away from the psl – not only to other soccer leagues, but perhaps to other sports (dell’oca 2019). for the moment, however, the psl remains a national african league that enjoys massive local support (figures for egypt might show a similar trend but are not available). the second issue is the importance of the talk surrounding soccer – notably in the predictions and post-match commentary and weekly talks shows by pundits with contributions from players and coaches. bailey commented that african viewers generally prefer partisan passion and banter to more serious technical or strategic analysis. 76 africa and football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists on dstv, there is a crucial difference between talk about the english premier league on dstv with programmes such as the football league show hosted by leroy rosenior and local african shows. in the epl shows, callers skype in from around the world, with the majority of callers coming from africa, but the callers are remarkably analytical, commenting on players’ strengths and weaknesses, analysing tactical decisions by managers, and showing considerable knowledge of the premier league and likely developments. the response from the hosts and guests in the studio is notably non-partisan and sympathetic to all clubs and loyalties, though some gentle banter is expected. the effect of this programme and associated programmes, like the epl fantasy league, is to draw viewers into the total world of the epl, a network of narratives that amounts to a kind of ongoing soap opera with complex plots and sub-plots and a next season guaranteed for all but an unlucky few. to belong to this world is to have to care deeply and knowledgably about it. while there is considerable good commentary on the psl in local magazines like kick off or on local television, it seems a different kind of engagement from that with the epl. judging from those who appear on the show, it seems that most of the south african callers are white (often with strong audible english roots), indian, coloured or foreigners living in south africa, but with an increasing number of black south africans. musa’s work in nigeria highlighted the importance of television viewership in paid-for viewing venues, and reports from south africa suggest that more work is needed on viewership in pubs and shebeens (musa 2013). what matches are screened? how many games will a typical patron watch on a saturday afternoon? what kinds of exchanges occur in that public space? speculatively, it may be that while the psl offers many south africans a chance to affirm local loyalty and belonging, the epl offers many south africans a model of a world open to the best talents where national origin no longer matters and where allegiance transcends locality, provinciality, or even nationality. for coloured south africans, in particular, the success of players like quentin fortune, benni mccarthy and steven pienaar at leading english clubs at once showed up white claims to sporting superiority but also gave them a point of superiority over any local african league (glenn & knaggs 2008). while dstv is understandably secretive with its viewership figures, its own advertisements and publicity suggest some trends. in a recent development to explain adding la liga viewership to the dstv compact package, they suggest that the “purist psl fan” is expanding viewership to include other european leagues. moreover, the advertisement for this new development shows a black chef adding spicy spanish ingredients to a dish, suggesting the wish to transform partisan viewers into sophisticated consumers. anthropological fieldwork would help ascertain whether (some? many? most?) local club fans are now being turned into consumers with a repertoire of club loyalties (one for the psl, one for the epl, one for la liga, one for the champions league, and so on) and what kind of emotional and intellectual investment each of these attachments 98 glenn involves. understanding this allotment of sporting emotional and intellectual resources would go a long way to understanding the televisual ecology and reach and limitations of neoliberalism and globalisation. note 5: theoretical issues sports sociologists analysing soccer in general and african soccer in particular have tended to focus on broad theoretical concepts such as neoliberalism, globalisation and development (maguire 1994; maguire & pearton 2000; giulianotti & robertson 2004; dubal 2010; eick 2010; kennedy & kennedy 2012). their concerns have generally been with the effects of neoliberalism, recruitment of elite players from africa, or disputes about ownership and control and they have generally avoided questions of viewership and local allegiances. if one agrees with connell and dados that there are considerable advantages to studying globalisation and neoliberalism from the south rather than the north, one emerges with a different set of emphases, resistances and frictions (connell & dados 2014). africans have understood and suffered globalisation and neoliberalism and development more and longer than any europeans. africans with dstv probably have a wider set of viewing choices than any european audience who do not have access to african football and whose viewing may be limited by local restrictions. understanding developments in africa may be more helpful than analysis from the global north in predicting what will happen in china or asia, or even south america, over time. older models of colonial exploitation or neoliberalism seem outdated in an era where africa’s contribution to european national teams seems to be historical and genetic, while europe is providing the finished article for african use. even a term like “glocalisation” does not address the real contradictions and differences viewers in africa face. neoliberalism controls the viewership of the psl and the epl alike in south africa and across much of africa, but when it covers everything, it may explain nothing. to return to bourdieu, we have a world of viewership where the trojan horse of television has taken over, but that does not negate the importance of class distinctions, habitus, choices, changes in viewership habit and emotional attachments over time (bourdieu 2013). a crude version of neoliberalism says: it does not matter whether you watch channel 203 or 204 on dstv, the epl or psl, as you are a passive consumer paying dstv for rights. but it is surely more logical to argue that there is a big difference in what and how you consume. as musa points out in disagreeing with rowe, this affects things like national sporting allegiances (rowe 2003; musa 2013) moreover, in south africa this can be seen as a clash that runs through debates on higher education, entertainment and the kind of society the country is or wants to be. in south africa, particularly, it seems that white south africans (and many other minorities and some africans) welcome the “hard” neoliberalism of international comparisons, standards, competition, and global rankings. a cricket or rugby team, university or business matters by showing its global competitiveness and strength. it seems black south africans, perhaps like egyptians, may prefer the local, which has 98 africa and football: five notes for media students and cultural theorists meaning and history rather than the global product, which may be of a better standard but distant, alien. is it possible in the global neoliberal universe for a national soccer league to keep the kind of status aussie rules football enjoys in australia or american football does in the usa? can black south africa carry on its undivided attention to the psl or do the gods of neoliberalism inevitably drive all attention to the equivalent of a global colossus, a football facebook or whatsapp? do declining attendances at local games reveal disillusion or simply a logical adaptation to a new televisual universe? conclusion bourdieu’s 1998 argument on the tensions at the centre of modern sport needs revaluation. on the one hand, the american model of televised sport, the trojan horse, has diminished the appeal and power of sport as local practice. on the other hand, the ability of the french footballing authorities to harness that earlier tradition to create national training academies has, paradoxically perhaps, strengthened france’s place in the neoliberal sporting universe. old models of colonial or neoliberal exploitation may live on in trevor noah’s witty quip about africa winning the world cup, but the reality of superior european training has to complicate any serious attempt to account for how sporting success is determined now and what neoliberalism and globalisation now mean. the city the trojan horse captured has not been razed and all distinction eliminated. on the contrary, it has offered new spaces for kinds of difference and superiority, real or imagined, to emerge. from the global south, neoliberalism and globalisation may have created patriotic fervour in some quarters and contempt elsewhere; led to increasing sporting attachment to clubs in some quarters, but to new detachments and a broader spread of involvement elsewhere. local african cultures need respect and examination in ways that theories from the global north all too often ignore. does neoliberalism thrive on difference or push for uniformity, does it push for greater attachment or floating and shifting and tenuous partisanship in a kind of emotional hedging of bets? to understand this, media and cultural scholars need to look further at viewership trends, social media responses, and to do the kind of anthropological fieldwork on viewing that will help understand the complex effects of sporting allegiance in africa. references abbot, s. 2018. ‘why hasn’t an african nation won the world cup?’ africa is a country. 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the dynamics of professional white football in south africa: 1959–1990. unpublished doctoral thesis, university of stellenbosch, south africa. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.11.4.398 https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.11.4.398 https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410050120131 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902030383002 4544 4544 an exploratory study of online internal communication within an employee relationship management approach: a kenyan case study abstract the aim of this study was to explore the adoption of online communication tools (octs) by employees and managers of a public sector organisation in kenya in a bid to build relationships in the workplace. online internal communication (oic) is gaining more prominence in public sector organisations in kenya owing to the recognition of its positive effects on sound employee relationships. strong employee relationships are essential to enhance not only the competitive advantage, but also the productivity of organisations. it is for this reason that public sector organisations in kenya have increasingly adopted various octs and channels to enhance employees’ interactions and engagement. consequently, a qualitative research approach was adopted. primary data was collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews and analysed in accordance with a well-known qualitative data analysis approach. the key findings in this study identified the lack of training, open communication, involvement, motivation and trust as some of the factors affecting employee relationship management (erm) in an online setting. the findings provide deeper insight into the degree to which employees are using octs for relationship building in a public sector organisation, which could be used as a heuristic for similar organisations. keywords: employee relationship management, employee relationship building, internal communication, online communication tools, online internal communication, public sector organisation, social exchange theory introduction evidence shows that employees are a key component in running an organisation and enhancing its survival dr paul waititu department of communication science, college of human sciences, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : waititup@yahoo.com (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-7863-2719 prof. charmaine du plessis department of communication science, college of human sciences, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : dplestc@unisa.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-9977-8987 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 44-55 date submitted: 26 april 2021 date accepted: 06 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:waititup@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7863-2719 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7863-2719 mailto:dplestc@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9977-8987 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9977-8987 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 4544 an exploratory study of online internal communication 4544 (chmielecki 2015; rahman & taniya 2017). stevanović and gmitrović (2016) and mishra et al. (2019) echo this view, indicating that, internally, employees function as an engine that propels the organisation and as ambassadors when interacting with the external stakeholders. there has been renewed interest in the dynamic and interactive characteristics of internal communication, which provides a forum for employees and other stakeholders in an organisation to interact both vertically and horizontally (stevanović & gmitrović 2016; ali et al. 2018). scholars in the fields of organisational communication, corporate communication and public relations (see, for example, martinez & hurtado 2018; sibanyoni et al. 2018) underscore the significance of effective internal communication as a vital recipe in the success of any organisation, stressing the importance of maintaining functional internal communication processes to avoid misunderstandings among employees, or between them and management. hence, the need to support and promote their communication endeavours within the organisation constantly. recently, researchers have also shown an increased interest in the issue of building relationships with employees using online communication tools (octs) (waititu 2015; cascio & montealegre 2016; ganapathi 2016; mishra et al. 2019). currently, octs are used by employees primarily for customer relations management in public sector organisations in kenya (mang’unyi et al. 2017; githuku & kinyuru 2018). however, when it comes to employees’ relationship building, the use of octs is not prominent, which needs further exploration in the context of kenya. the goal of this study was to assess perceptions of octs within the context of relationship building from both a managerial and employee perspective in one public sector organisation in kenya. in this regard, the study sought to provide more insight into what extent the public sector employees, who are important for the implementation of online internal communication (oic), have embraced the use of existing octs in building relationships with other employees in the online environment. this study was exploratory and thus interpretative in nature and used qualitative methods to collect and analyse data to answer the following research question: to what degree are octs being used to enhance the building of relationships among employees in a public sector organisation in kenya? literature review theoretical point of departure this study is anchored on the insights drawn from the social exchange theory, which determines the establishment of social relationships and mutual gratification among employees (gouldner 1960; cooper-thomas & morrison 2018; fei & aun 2018). a recent study (see, for example, cropanzano et al. 2017) identifies reciprocity as a critical concept of the social exchange theory that allows employees to transact their social goods such as trust and support arising from social relationships. the theory focuses on analysing the costs and benefits ensuing from the relationships experienced during the social exchange interactions. as for this study, the emphasis 4746 waititu & du plessis is on workplace relationships, which are determined by employees’ perceived benefits and related costs of using octs. in this regard, the costs and benefits are to be looked at in respect of relations among individual employees when engaging each other through octs. the theory is adopted to provide new insights into the current use of oic and the extent to which octs could enhance the building of relationships among employees in a kenyan public sector organisation. online internal communication in the organisation over the years, the role of internal communication has experienced significant changes, which, according to saáry (2014), included entertaining employees in the 1940s, providing one-way information in the 1950s, persuasion in the 1960s, and open communication in the 1980s. more recently, ganapathi (2016), cascio and montealegre (2016) and mishra et al. (2019) discussed the current convergence of communication and technology, referred to as the “information or knowledgebased economy”; this situation and developments in the global market environment are causing rapid changes and greatly affecting organisational communication and business dynamics. both scholars and practitioners concur that there is a need to transform the way employees communicate in a bid to cope with contemporary changes. one example is the ability to create and maintain healthy and long-term employee relationships (chmielecki 2015; vora & patra 2017), specifically in an oic environment. these changes are also making internal communication more significant than ever before. one such change is that internal communication is now seen as part of the strategic communication function as organisations strive to enhance their competitive advantage (holá & pikhart 2014; saáry 2014; šárka 2014; chmielecki 2015; martinez & hurtado 2018). however, to prevent resistance to changes, scholars such as zondi et al. (2015), fei and aun (2018) and mishra et al. (2019) suggest that organisations need to earn employees’ confidence and trust in all their undertakings, as envisaged by the social exchange theory. several definitions of internal communication have been proposed by various scholars, including ali et al. (2018: 61), who define it as the “communication between an organisation’s strategic managers and its internal stakeholders, designated to promote commitment to the organisation, a sense of belonging to it, awareness of its changing environment and understanding of its evolving aims”. chmielecki (2015: 26) gives another definition, namely, “all formal and informal communications taking place internally at all levels of an organisation”. this is also the definition adopted for this study. as echoed by the social exchange theory, some scholars argue that employees tend to evaluate various communication channels to ascertain whether they meet their expectations and whether they are able to meet their communication needs and self-interest (see, for example, zondi et al. 2015; ali et al. 2018; rahman & taniya 2017). therefore, as maintained by ganapathi (2016), the scope of success of the organisation will depend mostly on how well it is able to embrace technology and leverage information and knowledge to its advantage in its operations and the entire 4746 an exploratory study of online internal communication organisational communication. however, such transformation is not easy to achieve without effective and robust oic. the status of online internal communication in public sector organisations in kenya a study by waititu (2015) refers to oic as online interactions between employees and their internal communication endeavours through the various internet resources to accomplish specific activities. research by ganapathi (2016), cascio and montealegre (2016), vora and patra (2017) and attaran and attaran (2019) show that the evolving communication technologies have changed how organisations operate; for example, in terms of speedy decision-making and inclusive interactions. consequently, in kenya, as in other parts of the world, public sector organisations have resorted to adopting electronic communication tools in their internal communication (waititu 2015; githuku & kinyuru 2018). some scholars (see, for example, waititu 2015; attaran & attaran 2019) have identified email, corporate websites, the intranet, mobile messaging and social media tools as some of the commonly used octs in public organisations. however, some scholars (mang’unyi et al. 2017; githuku & kinyuru 2018) posit that in kenya, most of those tools are envisioned for external communication and customers’ service provision with little regard for internal communication. effective oic depends on how best the organisation can engage and train its employees to adopt the various octs. subsequently, employees need to be made the focus of an organisation’s internal communication; hence, they should be fully engaged and well trained before the implementation of any innovation to prevent apathy later on (ganapathi 2016; osborne & hammoud 2017; vora & patra 2017; neto et al. 2018; samwel 2018). moreover, some studies have shown that the provision of oic systems might not have any meaningful impact if leadership and adequate training are lacking (chmielecki 2015; zondi et al. 2015; osborne & hammoud 2017). likewise, an organisation’s openness in terms of its vision and mission and the participation and inclusion of employees in the implementation of innovations allows them to make better decisions and to understand the organisation’s plans and objectives clearly. some recent studies have considered open communication as a key factor in promoting the use of internal online communication tools because of their ability to allow the free flow of information by eliminating communication barriers, such as organisational hierarchy and gatekeeping within the organisation (madhukar 2015; chaubey et al. 2017; samwel 2018; sibanyoni et al. 2018). these scholars also propose the use of open communication to facilitate the unrestricted interaction between members of the organisation at all levels. however, they caution that, if abused, online communication tools can pose a threat to the organisation, since it is a challenge to control negative information in an online environment. moreover, owing to the dynamic nature of using octs for relationship building, it is important to update employees on the implementation of innovative tools and platforms so that they can cope with the current technological trends. 4948 waititu & du plessis employee relationship management in public sector organisations the current changes in the business environment have necessitated the adoption of employee relationship management (erm) within public sector organisations (chaubey et al. 2017). this is aimed at managing the building of relationships online and enhancing public sector organisations’ niche and competitive advantage. there are diverse views on what erm entails. however, the view of rahman and taniya (2017: 91), who define erm as a “process that companies use to effectively manage all interactions with employees, ultimately to achieve the goals of the organisation”, is adopted for the purpose of this study. in their studies, dewydar (2015), chaubey et al. (2017) and samwel (2018) contended that erm entails the use of open communication that is conducive to inclusive interactions, allowing the organisation to maintain healthy relationships with all its internal and external stakeholders. beside the relationships between management and employees, madhukar (2015) also credited erm with promoting other relationships with employees, customers, suppliers and trade unions, among other stakeholders. in fact, these relationships can also be created between employees and managers or among employees at all levels. rahman and taniya (2017) and samwel (2018) pointed out that erm offers various advantages to organisations, including an accommodative culture, sound corporate communication and organisational learning. such an atmosphere provides employees with the positive energy that promotes loyalty, credibility and trust in the organisation’s undertakings. it is evident that because of changing technology, most organisations currently focus on octs to improve employees’ relationships by improving their online communication. rahman and taniya (2017) and chaubey et al. (2017) contend that the role of erm is to promote employees’ interactions – in this instance, using octs – to build relationships and involve them in various organisational activities. such activities may include training and development, conflict management, employee consultation, collective bargaining, negotiations and team building. hence, it is important for the management in public sector organisations to understand the relevance of octs in promoting training and involvement, and in using these tools for building employees’ relationships to enhance their competitive advantage (martinez & hurtado 2018; mohammad et al. 2018; mishra et al. 2019). octs are therefore a strong component in internal communication that can be used in erm to create and maintain healthy long-lasting relationships, which are necessary in binding together employees and other stakeholders of the organisation. methodology this study adopted a qualitative research design and an interpretivist worldview to allow for a deeper understanding of the topic at hand. interviews and focus groups were the research methods used for this study to answer the research question. 4948 an exploratory study of online internal communication sample first one public sector organisation in kenya, which requires anonymity, was purposively selected to study the phenomenon of oic within the context of erm. one regional office of a state-owned public enterprise with eight sub-regional offices was then purposively selected as the research site because all the offices were interconnected using fibre-optic cable and wireless online communication. a total of 40 non-managerial employees and managers were then purposively selected from an accessible population of 115 employees to participate in the study. of these, 30 employees were selected for three focus group discussions, while ten managers participated in the in-depth interviews. the sample size was appropriate as the intention of the study was not to replicate the findings across different cases, but rather to gain a deeper understanding of oic within the context of erm in a kenyan public sector organisation. data collection and analysis a moderator’s guide and an interview schedule were used to collect data while the interviews and focus groups were recorded with permission from the participants. all ethical considerations when involving humans in a study were adhered to, such as confidentiality, anonymity and causing no harm to the participants. the literature review and the study’s research question guided the questions to assess participants’ perceptions of the phenomenon. the main questions focused on the employees’ and managers’ perceptions and experiences of using octs in relationship building, the importance of using those tools for relationship building, and to what degree employees in their internal interactions within the organisation use the octs. the qualitative data was analysed by coding responses into various themes in accordance with braun and clarke’s (2006) qualitative data analysis framework. the trustworthiness of the results was advanced in accordance with guidelines as put forward by korstjens and moserby (2018). to enhance credibility prior to implementation, the questions for the interviews and focus groups were pre-tested in a pilot study. in addition, the study was concerned with discovering and representing lived human experiences. transferability (generalisation of the findings) was not the intention of the study but rather an in-depth and rich description of the case, which could be used in similar cases. dependability (consistency of the results) was addressed by documenting the entire research process (korstjens & moserby 2018). findings the findings indicate that the most commonly used octs in the public sector organisation are email, intranet, organisational instant messaging services, facebook and twitter. based on the coded responses, distinct themes were constructed based on the data. these themes are discussed below, first from managers’ perceptions, followed by employees’ perceptions. 5150 waititu & du plessis managers’ perceptions three prominent themes were constructed, namely open communication, motivation for using octs, and the challenges of oic. open communication this theme encompasses the idea that open communication is a key factor in promoting the use of the multimedia online platforms for erm. the majority of the managers interviewed observed that despite the availability of octs and the ensuing online communication, these tools were not utilised for building relationships among employees as expected, a factor that may be hindering erm: indeed, oic has opened communication and has now allowed the free flow of information in the organisation. however, there is a big number of employees who still shy away from engaging them for internal communication. despite using online tools for external transactions, their use for online interactions among employees is still low. most online tools in our organisation are intended for customer service; hence, they are not popular among employees for their internal online engagements earlier studies (chaubey et al. 2017; samwel 2018) identified open communication as crucial in facilitating and enhancing unlimited online interactions among employees. however, enhanced employees’ online relationships are not guaranteed unless the barriers of oic are identified and adequately addressed. motivation for using online communication tools this theme extends the idea that motivation is crucial in enhancing the use of octs for erm. the majority of the managers observed that they were unable to identify any form of motivation for enhancing the adoption of octs for employee relationship building in the organisation. comments supporting the above include: i am involved in online communications, but i have not considered it for relationship building for employees, as is commonly done in face-to-face interaction. … employees need to be motivated for them to appreciate the use of open and interactive tools, for online relationships … currently, there are no mechanisms to inspire employees to use the online system within the organisation to create relationships among themselves. likewise, six managers felt that since employees were cognisant on the benefits of adopting octs, what was needed was to motivate them to use those tools for relationships building in the organisation. generally, the managers supposed that employees need to be motivated and assured that octs are safe for relationship building. their views are consistent with earlier findings (mishra et al. 2019), namely that 5150 an exploratory study of online internal communication employees’ online communication behaviour can be motivated by the organisational culture that supports unrestricted online interactions. employees’ perceptions the most noticeable themes constructed from the data were the expected use of octs, trust in octs, and the main challenges of oic. use of octs this theme conveys that although the benefits of adopting octs for erm are well recognised, some participants had a negative perception of their use for erm. a noteworthy revelation was that the octs in the organisation were envisaged for external communication. in this regard, some of the participants stated: it is true that only a few employees are seriously using online communication tools for internal communication. the use of octs for employees to interact is not common here, as most of us do not use the available tools unless it is very necessary. i wish all employees would be willing and able to use the available online tools for interactions. phones and face-to-face interactions are still the most preferred methods… these findings are similar to those of earlier studies by mang’unyi et al. (2017) and githuku and kinyuru (2018), which recognised that octs are envisaged for customer relations in most organisations but are rarely used by employees for relationship building. trust in octs this theme embraces the idea that employees must have trust in the octs to adopt them for enhancing relationship building in the organisation. most of the participants mentioned that they trusted octs and could extend their use to erm. although not everyone agreed, some of the participants noted that while they appreciated and trusted octs, they were not using these currently to enhance relationships in the organisation. for example, three participants stated: …of course, yes, as for trust i do agree. i would say the system is good and trusted, but we hardly used it for relationship building. despite considering the online tools as being secure, i don’t use them in for online interactions with other employees. in fact, most employees do not have adequate information on how to use online tools for relationships. however, they still trust and use them for other purposes. generally, the findings show that most participants had trust in existing octs and felt that they could extend the same for erm. however, it seems that their opinions were based on how well octs were being used in external communication to build 5352 waititu & du plessis relationships with customers. these findings are in line with those of zondi et al. (2015) and ali et al. (2018) who suggested that employees who identify with the existing systems and technologies would not have a problem with trusting new ones if these are perceived to be able to meet their communication needs. challenges of oic this theme embodies the main challenges perceived by the participants to be causing employees’ low adoption of octs; thus, affecting the enhancement of relationship building. most of the participants attributed the low use of octs for building relationships to a lack of appropriate training and skills. one participant echoed these sentiments as follows: it is my take that training is important. we need some skills on how octs can enhance relationships among employees. other participants also mentioned the lack of employees’ involvement in oic implementation as another possible challenge in the use of octs for enhancing relationship building. two participants had the following to say: there is no employees’ involvement plan at the moment, and we are not consulted in promoting the online relations issues. personally, i feel this issue should be considered and addressed appropriately. employees who are not involved during the implementation of a new technology will have a problem embracing it fully… the findings show that the identified challenges were hindering the use of octs in enhancing relationship building among employees and that urgent intervention was needed for the initiative to succeed. the findings support those of ganapathi (2016) and neto et al. (2018), who posited that organisations need to identify and address the emerging issues in order to adjust their structures continually and build their employees’ capacity in line with technological advances. discussion the study provides several insights into how octs are used within the context of erm within a public sector organisation in kenya. the findings identify a lack of training, motivation, open communication, and trust as significant issues that affected the degree to which octs are used by employees for building relationships. in this regard, the findings support earlier studies by zondi et al. (2015) and stevanović and gmitrović (2016) who observed that when employees feel that their proficiency, opinions, contributions or involvement (as the end-users) are ignored during the implementation of innovations in an organisation, their perceptions may be negatively influenced; thus, hindering their willingness to embrace octs beyond the prescribed uses. the findings also support the social exchange theory’s role of reciprocity and its influence on the degree to which employees can readily adopt octs to enhance online relationships (cropanzano et al. 2017). in this regard, employees’ past experiences may affect 5352 an exploratory study of online internal communication their perceived benefits of using octs. on the other hand, managers advocate for employees to be motivated to use octs for relationships building in the organisation. to answer the research question, overall the findings indicate that octs constitute an important consideration when targeting external communication. however, octs have not been embraced for erm in this public sector organisation. thus, octs are used mostly to enhance relationships with customers while disregarding employees. the findings also confirm previous studies by zondi et al. (2015), ali et al. (2018) and rahman and taniya (2017), which revealed that employees mostly identify with and utilise systems as assigned by the organisation and would be hesitant to extend their use if they are not required to do so. the study has both theoretical and practical implications. theoretically, the study adds another perspective of octs within an african context as well as an understanding that oic is also important in public sector organisations, not only external communication. in addition, the idea that octs can be used to build relationships online was put forward, which could open more opportunities for scholarly debate. practically, public sector organisations could be guided by the study’s findings about how to deal with the planning and implementation of new technologies, not only to ensure greater acceptance among employees but also to be used as tools for relationship building with employees. conclusion and recommendations although the findings of this study cannot be generalised beyond the public sector organisation, owing to the small sample, they nevertheless provide insight into the need for enhancing the use of new technologies to enhance erm in public sector organisations. additionally, the study focused only on online internal communication, making this predisposition unique to kenya, where octs in organisations are used mainly to manage customer relationships and to offer other support services for external stakeholders. therefore, it is incumbent upon the management to address all aspects hindering online erm so that the organisation can reap the benefits of oic. however, more work is needed to determine the influence of building relationships with employees by using octs on an organisation’s success. for example, future studies could include a larger sample by selecting more organisations in different sectors and countries to compare the findings, and adopt a quantitative research approach. references ali, m.a., nyambuga, c. & adams, y. 2018. 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corporate social responsibility; spectacles; stakeholder engagement mechanisms; storytelling dr hilke steenkamp department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa steenkamph@tut.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-43453133 prof. ronél rensburg † communication management division, university of pretoria, south africa ronel.rensburg@up.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-14589920 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-19 date submitted: 07 may 2019 date accepted: 30 july 2019 date published: 10 october 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:steenkamph@tut.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4345-3133 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4345-3133 mailto:ronel.rensburg@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1458-9920 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1458-9920 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 steenkamp & rensburg introduction a number of seminal authors have shown that corporate social responsibility (csr), which constitutes one of the six dimensions of reputation, is used to signify, enforce and build the reputation of organisations (fombrun & gardberg 2000; rindova & fombrun 1999; van riel 1997). consequently, when organisations overtly base their reputation on principles directly related to csr, such as benevolence (berens & van riel 2004; djelic 2012), humanity (djelic 2012; gleason 2011), acting in the best interest of stakeholders (porter & kramer 2006; rossouw & van vuuren 2010), sound corporate governance, as well as corporate citizenship (hamann & kapelus 2004; king iv 2016), it is assumed that stakeholders anticipate organisations to fulfill these expectations (berens & van riel 2004). similarly, fombrun and shanley (1990: 239) note that stakeholders assess whether organisations meet their csr targets and “judge how well [organisations] respond to their noneconomic agendas”. while norms and values derived from moral philosophy are inherent to csr, it is explicitly manifested in the overarching csr strategy of organisations and its related outcomes such as the corporate social investment (csi), corporate philanthropy or csr initiatives that the organisation supports (matten & moon 2008). these initiatives serve a two-fold purpose, namely to signal the organisation’s receptiveness to stakeholders’ social needs and/or expectations (i.e. a means to exhibit or express its moral agency) and, secondly, to serve as a yardstick used by stakeholders to gauge if the organisation fulfilled its societal contract (andriof & waddock 2002; amaeshi et al. 2008; fombrun & shanley 1990). as a result of continued research efforts, csr as a dimension of corporate reputation has been solidified in the communication management and public relations disciplines (bermiss et al. 2013; dahlsrud 2008; fombrun & gardberg 2000). more recently the aforementioned fields have shifted their focus to investigate the correlation between stakeholder relationships and “reputational capital” (doorley & garcia 2011: 5); fostering trust on social networking sites (snss) through stakeholder engagement and csr messages (abitbol & lee 2017; hart 2011; lim & greenwood 2017); the facilitation of meaningful, interactive dialogue on communication platforms (benecke & oksiutycz 2015; kent & taylor 2016); the use of narrative techniques in communicative practices (kent 2015); and the participatory aspects inherent to communication on snss (moe et al. 2016; uzunoğlu et al. 2017). whereas the aforementioned literature concentrates on dialogic strategies that could be employed by organisations to enhance stakeholder engagement, the authors propose that the content of csr messages is rarely deconstructed. there is, therefore, limited research that investigates the visual and/or textual narratives inherent to csr communication, along with the underlying stakeholder engagement mechanisms that are utilised in these messages. the aim of this article is to address this gap in the literature by utilising theories from visual culture studies and film theory to briefly explore the visual and textual narratives inherent to csr initiatives that are communicated to stakeholders on a variety of online platforms. to achieve this, a south african financial institution, first national bank’s 32 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling (fnb) csr communication was surveyed for a period of six months. in particular, fnb’s sponsorships and its “you can help”/“stories of help” campaign, that was communicated on a dedicated blog, its website, facebook and twitter timelines and its youtube channel, formed part of the sample. secondly, the authors aim to identify the characteristics of the csr communication by drawing on theoretical categories pertaining to spectacles, storytelling and public displays of positive self-presentation that are used to facilitate audience/stakeholder engagement. the argument is developed as follows. firstly, the authors review the current literature on csr and its relation to reputation management as well as the use of stakeholder engagement mechanisms on snss. thereafter, the qualitative methods used in the research are discussed in brief. thirdly, the findings, which relate to the theoretical foundation of the article, are presented. finally, concluding remarks and suggestions with regard to future research directions are made. theoretical foundation csr and reputation management it is widely accepted that corporate reputation encompasses the historical representation of an organisation’s past actions along with its ability to deliver on its core brand promises made to stakeholders (fombrun et al. 2000: 87; gardberg & fombrun 2002: 305). moreover, an organisation’s corporate reputation is related to the manner in which stakeholders judge its actions, services and/or products, as well as its communicative messages. not only are these issues factored in when organisations’ reputations are measured, csr is regarded as a primary component of corporate reputation (bertels & peloza 2008: 56; aksak et al. 2016: 80). although one can argue that a simplistic definition of csr does not adequately encapsulate the multidimensionality thereof, the authors utilise the following definition for the purpose of this research: in short, csr activities are the result of an organisation’s overarching csr strategy in which focal areas for investment along with social issues it wishes to address have been clearly identified (du et al. 2010: 9). hence, csr initiatives are an organisation’s corporate social actions; that is, actions that exhibit humanistic values and a degree of social consciousness, aimed at addressing specific societal needs (brønn & vrioni 2001; derwall 2007; du et al. 2010: 8). in the context of reputation management, csr activities are utilised to build, sustain and preserve organisations’ reputation as good corporate citizens (bertels & peloza 2008: 57). relatedly in their review of literature on the relationship between reputation and csr, aksak et al. (2016: 79-80) argue that stakeholders take organisations’ csr activities into account when “purchasing decisions or reputation attributions” are made, and csr activities are often used to ascertain whether an organisation can be regarded as reputable. likewise du et al. (2010: 8) posit that stakeholders are more prone to “reward good corporate citizens”. organisations that engage in csr activities can also reap a number of benefits such as “consumer loyalty” and prompting stakeholders not only to engage in csr initiatives but also to exhibit “advocacy behaviours” (du et al. 2010: 9). additional benefits include the 54 steenkamp & rensburg reinforcement of social reputation and brand image (wei et al. 2014: 117). from the surveyed literature, it is clear that organisations continue to integrate csr as a pillar of reputation in their reputation management strategies, while being mindful of the impact csr activities and csr communication have on stakeholders. admittedly, csr communication can solicit stakeholder scepticism, distrust and suspicion (bertels & peloza 2008: 61; del mar garcía‐de los salmones & perez 2018: 205). the authors are cognisant of this, but seeing as the aforesaid issues do not form part of the article’s scope, it has been omitted intentionally. reputation management strategies: csr communication and communication platforms lee (2016: 444) comments that the role of csr communication is to bridge the gap between an organisation’s “csr activities and the public’s csr perception” of the organisation. as for the content of csr messages it has been argued that it usually draws attention to the organisation’s “involvement in various social causes, rather than on the social causes themselves” (du et al. 2010: 10). du et al. (2010: 11) note that instead of merely proclaiming its involvement in an array of csr activities, an organisation should rather convey the underlying reasons for its involvement, to which extent it is committed to the selected projects, and the actual impact of its initiatives. correspondingly porter and kramer (2006: 80) have argued that csr initiatives – and the associated communication – should include the impact of the projects and whether there are tangible commitments to future csr targets. likewise csr activities should be “genuine”, communicated in concrete ways and manifest as continuous efforts to empower communities (del mar garcía‐de los salmones & perez 2018: 205). in an attempt to improve their csr communication to stakeholders, organisations frequently seek new communication avenues that are better suited to their and their stakeholders’ needs. the resultant effect is the development of novel reputation management strategies and various assessments into which communication platforms should be exploited to more effectively communicate csr information to stakeholders. earlier research on csr communication and the platforms that should be utilised by organisations to communicate their csr activities have predicted that snss and other online media, such as blogs as well as video or image sharing sites, would become increasingly important to disseminate corporate communication (du et al. 2010; ind & riondino 2001; schneider 2002). this is echoed by kesavan et al. (2013) who established that snss were regarded by stakeholders (i.e. media audiences) as trustworthy and credible platforms to disseminate csr communication. as illustration of the advantages of snss as communication platforms the discussion now turns to a succinct summary of main theorists’ arguments. lim and greenwood (2017: 769) are of the opinion that the focus of corporate communication has shifted from merely “informing” stakeholders about csr initiatives to “engaging” them through various media channels. it can be deduced that snss facilitate engagement strategies such as the “co-constructing” of csr messages, “proactive dialogue with stakeholders” and incorporating the “voice” or opinions of stakeholders (lim & greenwood 2017: 773). notably snss are based on the principle of community. for example, users of facebook, 54 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling instagram, twitter, google+ and youtube are part of what clark (2001: 264) terms a “community of interest”. there are also visible responses by the audience as comments and posts are directly shared and visible to all users of the particular sns. in addition, the messages disseminated on snss follow open debate patterns and there is direct, visible input or responses from users regarding topics discussed on the sns. the functional aspects of snss such as the quantification of responses (i.e. the number of likes, comments, shares or retweets), the visibility of messages on newsfeeds or timelines, and real-time feedback offer organisations insight into stakeholder sentiment and enable the monitoring of online conversations (qualman 2013: 213). this culture of connection, in particular, offers sns users the ability to construct online identities and generate reciprocal relationships (steinfield et al. 2008: 436). kent and taylor (2016: 63), however, warn that information on snss should not always be equated to the creation of conversation, dialogue or engagement. this is due to the fact that merely communicating information on snss does not result in meaningful, purposeful dialogue, which is characterised by carefully listening to stakeholders, showing empathy and acknowledging the worth of individuals when engaging with stakeholders (ibid.). equally important is the type of communication content disseminated by organisations. abitbol and lee (2017: 802) posit that topical csr messages and messages that include “dialogic message strategies” were shown to improve stakeholders’ engagement with organisations on snss. for example, multimedia message content (links to other sites, infographics and/or photographs and videos) garners more stakeholder responses and feedback, whether it be in the form of comments, likes or shares when compared to socalled traditional messages with no visual content (abitbol & lee 2017: 803). uzunoğlu et al. (2017) argue along similar lines. they stress that message formulation aimed at “creating sincere, credible bonds” creates engaging relationships and that “openness” to actively converse with stakeholders could result in “positive” organisation-stakeholder interactions (uzunoğlu et al. 2017: 995996). based on this discussion, snss have been theorised as appropriate media for csr message dissemination. the argument now turns to storytelling as a reputation management strategy. the authors agree with kent (2015) that storytelling is a key mechanism used in corporate communication and that it enables stakeholder engagement. despite a growing number of studies that focus on certain narrative aspects of csr communication (benecke & oksiutycz 2015; hamann & kapelus 2004; hirsch 2016; schrempf-stirling et al. 2016) , the authors propose that theoretical constructs such as archetypal plots, social visibility, spectacles and spectatorship inherent to stories and storytelling have not been comprehensively explored within the context of csr communication. the next section provides a brief overview of these constructs – a theoretical basis for the analysis of csr messages – deemed as additional engagement mechanisms that communication professionals could utilise when formulating csr communication. storytelling and archetypal plots two decades ago vendelø (1998: 128) postulated building corporate reputation is based on the creation of narratives; that narratives are used to influence the perceptions 76 steenkamp & rensburg of stakeholders; and that corporate narratives are in flux. that is, when stakeholders interpret narratives, they either receive it positively, reject it, or participate in furthering the narrative (vendelø 1998: 129). this, in essence, hints at the “co-creation” of meaning and message content when narratives or stories are communicated to stakeholders (arnoldi-van der walt 2000: 121). the maxim that stories encapsulate the human condition and move “audiences to action” still holds true today (woodside 2010: 531). to this extent, the onus rests on story creators to formulate compelling and engaging narratives that are deemed believable (vendelø 1998: 131). in relation to the perceived believability of csr messages, hung-baesecke et al. (2016: 593) note that stakeholders prefer csr beneficiaries as communicators of csr messages instead of corporate spokespeople, ceos of organisations or media liaison officers. it is proposed that stakeholders deem messages that include beneficiary narratives authentic and plausible as “rich csr information” increases stakeholders’ “trust perception toward the organisation” (saat & selamat in hung-baesecke et al. 2016: 593). comparably, qualman (2013) and vaynerchuk (2013) explain that utilising snss to communicate corporate narratives to stakeholders enable both social agents to stay connected by means of effective relationship management characterised by causal observation, interactions and dialogue. it is noted that the authentic building of relationships starts with “one conversation, one engagement at a time” (vaynerchuk 2013: 9). this is usually associated with communicating in a “humanised voice” that enables organisations to signify an organisation’s inherent values and characteristics (cho & huh 2010: 33). again, dialogic interactions underscore this principle. instead of simply informing stakeholders of an organisation’s moral and/ or ethical position related to socioeconomic challenges, organisations are compelled to create interactive “symmetrical communication” through genuine “interpersonal” communication practices (cho & huh 2010: 45). storytelling is regarded as an effective method to establish a humanised voice, create familiarity with stakeholders, and bring about two-way communication. it has been proposed that “straightforward and true stories resonate well with consumers” (qualman 2013: 82). organisations and communication professionals should think in creative as well as strategic terms when it comes to the dialogue and narratives communicated to stakeholders on snss. north and enslin (2004: 160) agree with this proposition and argue that organisations should engage in “controlled creativity”. they state that controlled creativity is the ability to “deliver creative ideas that not only draw attention, but also communicate effectively with target audiences” (ibid.). authentic stories or brand narratives, “stunts, innovation and unusual treatments of traditional media types” are not only well-received by audiences, these techniques also solidify the organisation’s reputation, lead to greater visibility in the marketplace, and portray the organisation as sociable (north & enslin 2004: 161). woodside (2010) is a fundamental source often cited when the notion of storytelling is discussed. the five principles of storytelling as outlined by woodside (2010: 533) are: memory is based on stories; stories have the ability to invoke experiences within the memories of audiences; storytelling creates “proper pleasure” through “retrieving, reliving or repeat watching of stories”; stories enable audiences to enact archetypes; 76 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling and sense-making of events takes place when stories are told. it is posited by woodside (ibid.) that stories cause audiences to experience “one or more archetypal myths”. archetypes belong to the collective unconscious that “has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals” (jung 1959: 4). for jung (1959: 5), archetypes are deeply embedded in the universal, collective unconscious, but there are instances when archetypes come to the fore or into the consciousness of individuals. for instance, archetypes are expressed in myths, fairy tales and other forms of storytelling (ibid.). this is commonly expressed in socalled master narratives or archetypal plots. kent (2015: 485-486) explores 20 master narratives that form the basis of storytelling and are used in corporate communication. these include stories that, for example, focus on “great” adventures, heroes that overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges, quests for intangible or tangible objects that could change individuals’ lives, the transformation of protagonists, and the underdog who emerges victoriously after conquering a greater force. delgado-ballester and fernández-sabiote (2016: 120) contend that the inclusion of archetypal plots in storytelling makes organisations’ corporate communication more convincing, it appeals to stakeholders’ emotions, and leads to the formation of “meaningful affective bonds”. archetypal plots include the utilisation and invocation of archetypal characters. these include the hero, the antihero, the creator, the mother/caregiver, the child/innocent, the sage, the siren and the enigma (delgado-ballester & fernández-sabiote 2016: 119; mcpeek 2008: 53-55; pera et al. 2016: 46). within the context of csr messages that are communicated to stakeholders, the authors propose that three of jung’s archetypes are invoked. following the pearson-marr archetype indicator, the first archetype that is noticeable in csr messages is the child or the innocent who has a childlike belief or “trust in others”, hopes that other people will come to his/her aid, and has deeplyseated values (mcpeek 2008: 53). moreover, this archetype illustrates that “evil” or troublesome circumstances can be overcome by benevolent actions. it is argued that organisations that employ this archetype in csr messages would emphasise their corporate values, their belief in the goodness of humankind, and their own reputation for being a good corporate citizen. it should be noted that the innocent is a more passive archetype and communication and/or stories in which the innocent is used, would simply tell the story of the organisation as a moral agent (ibid.). in contrast, the second archetype is regarded as more active. the caregiver assumes that one should strive to help other individuals and exhibits qualities of kindness and compassion (mcpeek 2008: 54). in addition, the caregiver models “altruism” and aims to “make the world a safer and gentler place for everyone [through the creation of] nurturing environments where people can heal or grow” (pearson & marr in mcpeek 2008: 54). organisations that use this archetype would focus their csr communication on current csr initiatives and would portray the organisation as actively bettering the lives of its stakeholders. the third archetype, the hero, shows his/her “worth” by proactively improving the world (delgado-ballester & fernández-sabiote 2016: 119). it is noted that the hero is “compelled to act” (kent 2015: 486). he/she cannot react to challenges docilely, but has to decide intentionally how he/she can conquer obstacles. the hero archetype is 98 steenkamp & rensburg usually employed in quest or adventure plots and through the exposition of the story shows his/her virtue, strength, resilience, courage and worthiness (delgado-ballester & fernández-sabiote 2016: 130; kent 2015: 486). in the context of csr messages disseminated to stakeholders on snss the quest, adventure and transformation narratives are regarded as suitable story types (kent 2015: 485). organisations that present themselves or the beneficiaries of csr initiatives as heroes often emphasise traits such as the “rescuer” of individuals and the power of “human strength” or willpower; and signal that they should be regarded as “an inspiration” (pera et al. 2016: 46). it is argued that csr messages would typically show a before-and-after tale centred on the transformation of individuals or places, such as poverty-stricken communities, schools or healthcare clinics, after a successful csr activity had taken place. the positive outcome(s) of the csr project are then framed as inspirational and the narrative would not only exemplify the resolve of the organisation but also the tenacity of the csr beneficiaries who, with the help of the organisation, were able to overcome obstacles. an example of this narrative is found in ruttenberg’s (2018) online story about kingsley holgate and land rover’s quest to alleviate malaria, contaminated drinking water and poor access to healthcare facilities, which coincided with land rover’s 70th birthday. from the title “celebrating altruistic adventure with kingsley holgate” one is immediately made aware of holgate’s “noble” or philanthropic mission. the article outlines the land rover ambassador’s “humanitarian efforts”, “love for […] people”, and the “fact” that “over one million people have been impacted over the years through the distribution of life-saving mosquito nets, water purification life straws and rite to sight spectacles” [sic] (ruttenberg 2018). moreover, the article includes visuals that depict the “gathering” of land rover enthusiasts, employees and volunteers at stonehaven castle in shongweni where glasses were given to community members, while at another location life straws (a device that purifies water) were distributed (ruttenberg 2018). the textual narrative hints at the inclusion of the hero archetype and the quest narrative; for example, “the community cheered on with deep admiration and pride for this legendary man”, and “once she [one of the csr beneficiaries] was given the correct spectacles, her face transformed from shock to joy as she was able to read” (ibid.). as shown in the discussion on archetypes and archetypal plots, the inherent features of both constructs are predominantly positive. when employed in corporate communication, these features result in the positive self-presentation of organisations. according to van dijk (2006: 81), positive self-presentation forms part of “impression management” and deals with emphasising the “positive characteristics” of oneself. in the context of this research, one can argue that when archetypes and archetypal plots are used in csr communication, organisations are consciously executing a deliberate reputation management strategy that aims to enhance their reputation, improve stakeholder relationships, and facilitate stakeholder engagement through the creation of compelling storylines. the authors argue that when these archetypal plots are utilised in csr communication, which is disseminated on snss and other online platforms, csr initiatives are framed predominantly as spectacles. the following 98 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling section provides a brief definition of spectacles and associated constructs, such as social visibility and spectatorship. spectacles, social visibility and spectatorship spectacles, in the context of film theory, are conceptualised as visuals or visual sequences that exhibit “spectacular excess” and grandiosity, while aestheticising a narrative, and immersing viewers or spectators in a storyline or that which is being watched (bould 2014: 259; 266; 267). furthermore, spectacles are in essence dramatic, observable visual schemata on “display” that can be gazed upon (looked at) and evaluated by spectators (griffin 2006: 92). at times, spectacles might include elements of “fantasy and illusion” (kennedy 2007: 63). due to its compelling visual nature, spectacles create a sense of astonishment and “awe” in spectators (macaloon 1984: 246). related to this is spectatorship, which is associated with viewers’ “affective state” when watching, viewing or reading (i.e. interpreting) communicative messages (bould 2014: 258). kennedy (2007: 62) notes that spectatorship is an “experience” that entails watching performers whether they are entertainers (film or television stars, famous singers, etc.), ordinary citizens who take part in reality television shows, or organisations that communicate corporate messages. in addition, media platforms (snss or traditional media) offer creators of communication “arena[s] for appearing” (meyerhoff 1984: 156). that is, media platforms are utilised by content creators to “appear” when they wish to communicate information. these platforms also facilitate the process of social visibility and exhibiting moral agency. this construct is delineated as the process of moving from a state of “invisibility” to “visibility” in front of spectators (turner 1984: 21). these constructs can be appropriated for the purpose of studying csr communication. aksak et al. (2016: 80) note that organisations employ csr in defining their corporate identities and core values. as such, organisations utilise csr to signal their moral values to stakeholders. some of the uses of csr include “corporate visibility, trust and building strong relationships” (aksak et al. 2016: 81). to this extent, lee (2016: 435) argues that although csr is often used to attain a favourable reputation, involvement in csr is also used to frame the organisation as “ethical and socially responsible” and to enable its stakeholders to “see” their commitment to socioeconomic causes. congruently, kaul et al. (2015: 476) state that if organisations are “visibly associated with a csr story” on snss, this would have an impact on how stakeholders evaluate the organisation. within the context of snss the notion of visibility can be applied to both organisations and stakeholders. when stakeholders actively share corporate messages related to csr causes, the shared messages appear on the stakeholders’ friends or followers facebook or twitter newsfeeds. this not only increases the stakeholders’ “visibility” and make them “appear altruistic or conscientious”, it also enhances the visibility of the organisation that created the initial csr message (ibid.). the authors propose that when csr initiatives are visually or narratively framed as spectacles or events that require spectators’ (i.e. stakeholders’) attention, the framing of the initiative could ignite active involvement where spectators move from passively “watching” or “seeing” the initiative to actively and/or collectively 1110 steenkamp & rensburg participating in the initiative. to substantiate the possibility of kindling a sense of participation in stakeholders when organisations communicate csr activities, the following examples are cited. firstly, it has been established that csr is often used to develop and strengthen relationships with stakeholders (aksak et al. 2016: 79; du et al. 2010: 9). while these relationships might appear passive (i.e. stakeholders see and are aware of organisations’ csr activities), they could stimulate “spectacular agency” (griffin 2006: 91). this means when spectators gaze at objects or events, they become consciously aware that they can co-construct narratives and become involved in story plots or actual events (ibid.). secondly, csr communication results in “affective (e.g. pride, empathy) responses” (du et al. 2010: 17). when stakeholders’ “altruistic attributions” are roused by focused csr communication, it produces “positive feelings, related to interest, affection, sympathy, curiosity and liking” (del mar garcía‐de los salmones & perez 2018: 204). organisations should, in theory, take advantage of these attributions and find creative ways to turn piqued interest into active participation. thirdly, active participation can be accomplished by depicting csr activities as collective, participatory events that are fun to take part in. here “celebrity” figures or social media influencers could be used to attract engagement or participation in events (wei et al. 2014: 117). moreover, the “viral potential” and interactive features inherent to snss could be exploited more effectively by organisations (qualman 2013: 18). for instance, viral online phenomena such as trending videos, tweets or instagram posts by social media influencers could be co-opted by organisations to create new organisation-specific shareable content that resonates with sns users. the advantage of creating shareable content (i.e. messages that include interactive mechanisms such as links, photographs and video clips) is that the messages will be widely disseminated. by association, the sharing of interactive content on snss will result in building “relationships via ongoing dialogue” (lee 2016: 439). lastly, the shift from pure spectatorship to collective participation in csr activities could be initiated by emphasising the role internal and/or other external stakeholders play in the organisation’s csr activities. bertels and peloza (2008: 64) note that corporate philanthropy campaigns regularly highlight internal stakeholder involvement through “employee volunteer programmes” and the use of brand ambassadors. this shows that organisations are “becoming much more actively engaged with non-profit partners across a variety of contact points” and not simply through regular charitable giving (bertels & peloza 2008: 64). methodology although the premise of this article is largely theoretical, the authors use fnb’s csr communication as a case or “snapshot” of the phenomenon under discussion (clark 2001: 271). as such, a phenomenological paradigm was used to explore the functioning of three identified theoretical constructs, namely narratives (archetypal plots), spectacles and spectatorship in fnb’s csr communication. the authors used theoretical (purposive) sampling to develop categories that were analysed 1110 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling (burns 2000: 389). thematic coding was utilised to identify the main themes in the csr communication (i.e. proposed stakeholder engagement mechanisms that function as “skeletal constructs” on which csr narratives hinge) that were linked to the study’s theoretical foundation. in essence, the research employed a qualitative inquiry strategy and fnb’s csr communication was purposely selected for analysis based on the following reasons: 1. fnb positions itself as a good corporate citizen with “help” as one of its core values; 2. fnb frames itself as one of south africa’s foremost corporate “givers” with a reported csi spend of r115 million in 2013 and r218 million in 2017 (firstrand 2013: 54; firstrand 2017: 109); 3. fnb presents itself as an organisation with a historically-based csr track record noting that since the firstrand foundation was established in 1998 it has “granted over r1 billion for social investment projects” (firstrand 2017: 9); and, 4. fnb has a strong online presence. in august 2014 fnb’s facebook account had approximately 656 700 likes, which increased to 971 939 likes in may 2018. the data collection period commenced during the height of fnb’s “you can help”/“stories of help” and “ideas can help” campaigns, spanned from september 2013 to february 2014, and all csr-related messages were analysed. data were collected from fnb’s facebook account, the @fnbsa organisational twitter account, and the @rbjacobs online personal twitter account. the data comprised of 2642 messages, of which 208 were original csr messages, along with 2434 stakeholder comments. as phenomenology is mainly concerned with exploring phenomena as well as the description and interpretation of events, the authors performed a hermeneutical reading of fnb’s csr communication (groenewald 2004; glendinning 2008). the interpretation of the communication is, therefore, subjective. however, the authors’ interpretations are substantiated by selected verbatim quotations from the surveyed communication along with references to relevant literature related to the theoretical premise of the article. findings and discussion fnb utilised its snss to communicate cause-related marketing campaigns and its csr activities to stakeholders. this signalled its morality and image of a “helpful” corporate citizen. the “you can help” campaign, in particular, portrayed fnb as a philanthropic financial institution as the welfare stories of humans, animals and other social actors were narrated, instead of fnb’s “corporate story”. this is regarded as a strategy that not only promotes non-governmental organisations (ngos), but the positive responses to the messages indicated that positive stakeholder sentiment was transferred from the promoted cause to fnb (del mar garcía‐de los salmones & perez 2018). the functioning of the three theoretical stakeholder engagement mechanisms is discussed hereafter. 1312 steenkamp & rensburg narratives: the embodiment of archetypes and archetypal plots the “you can help” campaign featured a variety of sub-themes, such as wildlife conservation, animal shelters, community medical initiatives and cancer research, as well as ngos that provide education, food and support to impoverished communities. organisations featured on fnb’s blog and in fnb’s facebook messages were portrayed as archetypal caregivers who actively helped and assisted where social needs had to be met. the animals, children, hiv and cancer patients, abandoned children, battered women and poor communities were depicted as the innocent archetype. they were the passive recipients of assistance, good deeds and financial support. throughout the “you can help” campaign, fnb enacted the role of caregiver and encouraged its stakeholders to embody the caregiver role by becoming involved in the causes that were promoted (pera et al. 2016). both the “you can help” and “ideas can help” campaigns that aimed to promote social causes and innovations centred on the transformation narrative (kent 2015). the content of the “ideas can help” campaign focused on the notion that innovations could change the world, as well as the lives of “predominantly impoverished masses worldwide” (fnb facebook). it also proposed that inventions could have a positive impact on “south african lives”, “change the circumstances of south african families with limited resources”, and assist “poor communities” (ibid.). fnb also successfully created a sports narrative in communicating its varsity football and varsity cup rugby sponsorships. the messages contained words and phrases such as “battle”, “support”, “back your boys” and “back your boytjies”. one facebook message read: don’t miss nmmu and up tuks battle it out on the pitch in the varsity football final at the up tuks stadium […] plus get yourself to tonight’s game and you’ll be snapped by the fnb varsity football fan cam to later find you and your friends in action supporting your team! wozo bona [come watch]. varsity football! [sic]. it is argued that feelings of competitiveness, united support of sporting codes, honour, pride and the gratification derived from winning contributed to the creation of narratives related to the archetypal plots of adventure and the quest. here the csr beneficiaries were portrayed as the archetypal hero who conquered other sports teams, while fnb again fulfilled the caregiver role by financially sponsoring the events. sponsorships as spectacles fnb’s varsity football matches were communicated to stakeholders as spectacles that should be attended. stakeholders were invited to participate in the events as spectators and fnb assured fans that the matches would be “spectacular” events filled with drama and intrigue (fnb facebook). by showcasing young talent on television and by depicting sponsored matches as epic battles, fnb not only created an effective sports narrative but also valourised winning teams. 1312 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling additionally, fnb gave stakeholders and users of its snss the opportunity to obtain a heightened state of social visibility by attending sponsored events. the following facebook excerpt serves as substantiation: fnbjoburgartfair 2013 giant camera @ melrose arch […] join in the fun with the fnbjoburgartfair giant camera! […] if you were there, make sure to tag yourself! throughout the surveyed communication fnb invited stakeholders to attend sponsored events where their photographs would either be taken by fnb’s “fan cam” or “giant camera”. when the photographs were uploaded to fnb’s facebook profile, stakeholders could tag themselves. fnb used facebook as an “arena for appearing” – a platform where stakeholders could appear (meyerhoff 1984: 156). by tagging themselves in fnb’s johannesburg art fair and varsity football photographs on this platform, stakeholders communicated and signalled their social links to fnb to their facebook friends. therefore, the mechanism of employing social visibility not only benefitted fnb’s stakeholders, as they would have appeared “connected” with a reputable organisation, but fnb’s name, brand values and identity were disseminated to a wide network of sns users and the financial institution itself gained enhanced visibility on these platforms (north & enslin 2004). moving from spectatorship to collaborative participation fnb depicted its sponsorships as events where stakeholders could experience collective, participatory fun. this is corroborated by phrases such as “calling all varsity football fans!” and “join in the fun”, along with the following facebook message: we neknominate you to go out. we believe that helpfulness and kindness are contagious. you have been neknominated. in the various neknomination messages on fnb’s snss the emphasis shifted from instructing stakeholders to just “see” or “view” fnb’s snss to instructing stakeholders to perform other actions that are not passive, but rather agency-giving. it furthermore aimed to persuade stakeholders to engage with fnb’s sponsored csr activity. it is argued that through the repeated use of words such as “all”, “join” and “fun” in the csr messages, the gregarious component of fnb’s sponsorships were emphasised. by nominating all viewers of its neknomination challenge on youtube, fnb also aimed to involve its stakeholders in participating in deeds that are kind and helpful. although the neknomination challenge did not explicitly mention that giving back to society or ngos is fun, it did contain a call to action directed at the viewer (stakeholder) to actively participate in charitable causes. the youtube video depicted fnb workers (internal stakeholders) who donated goods to the dlala nje community centre in hillbrow, johannesburg. this relates to the call made that organisations should pay attention to viral trends on snss and, if possible, appropriate it as a means of creative csr engagement (qualman 2013). 1514 steenkamp & rensburg concluding remarks this article set out to theorise stakeholder engagement strategies that were regarded as “under researched” in the field of corporate communication. to achieve this purpose a literature review on the relationship between csr and corporate reputation, reputation management strategies, snss as platforms for engagement, as well as theorised methods of stakeholder engagement was presented. after delineating constructs such as spectacles, spectatorship and archetypal plots, the discussion turned to investigate whether these strategies for engagement could be “practically” applied to or identified in the csr communication of one south african financial institution. the authors illustrated that the three theoretical categories (i.e. engagement strategies) were observable in fnb’s csr communication by means of incorporating selected verbatim statements in the discussion. despite the limited number of examples, the presence of the engagement strategies served as evidence that fnb did incorporate narrative strategies (archetypes and archetypal plots) in its csr communication; it portrayed some of its csr activities as spectacular events; and it appropriated a viral trend and engaging language in an attempt to foster greater stakeholder participation in its csr initiatives. the authors acknowledge that the research has various limitations: only one financial institution’s csr communication was surveyed; it did not quantify the impact of the stakeholder engagement strategies; the sample size was relatively small; and the authors did not conduct interviews with stakeholders to ascertain whether the engagement strategies resulted in tangible action or greater involvement in fnb’s csr activities. therefore, the findings cannot be generalised across the entire south african financial services sector. it is, however, proposed that future studies could investigate the quantifiable effects of the identified stakeholder engagement strategies. future work could also explore the effectiveness of engagement strategies similar to the ones employed by fnb. acknowledgements this research was partially funded by the department of higher education and training (dhet) (south africa). references abitbol, a. & lee, s.y. 2017. messages on csr-dedicated facebook pages: what works and what doesn’t. public relations review 43: 796–808. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. pubrev.2017.05.002 aksak, e.o., ferguson, m.a. & duman, s.a. 2016. corporate social responsibility and csr fit as predictors of corporate reputation: a global perspective. public relations review 42: 79–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.11.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.11.004 1514 csr on display: using spectacles and storytelling amaeshi, k.m., osuji, o.k. & nnodim, p. 2008. corporate social responsibility in supply chains of global brands: a boundary-less responsibility? clarifications, exceptions and implications. journal of business ethics 81: 223–234. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10551-007-9490-5 andriof, j. & waddock, s. 2002. unfolding stakeholder engagement. unfolding stakeholder thinking: theory, responsibility and engagement 1(121): 19–42. https://doi. org/10.9774/gleaf.978-1-909493-28-5_3 arnoldi-van der walt, s.m. 2000. an evaluation of ubuntu as an afrocentric management (and) communication approach. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. benecke, d.r. & oksiutycz, a. 2015. changing conversation and dialogue through leadsa: an example of public relations activism in south africa. public relations review 41: 816–824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.06.003 berens, g. & van riel, c.b.m. 2004. corporate associations in the academic literature: three main streams of thought in the reputation measurement literature. corporate reputation review 7(2): 161–178. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.crr.1540218 bermiss, y.s., zajac, e.j. & king, b.g. 2013. under construction: how commensuration and management fashion affect corporate reputation rankings. 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however, the relationship between the attitude towards the advertisement and the attitude towards the brand tended to be stronger. keywords: spokes-character; brand communication; marketing communication; credibility; advertising; consumers introduction a fictional spokes-character is an animated being or animated object that is used to promote or communicate product benefits, service features, or a concept (phillips et al. 2019). spokes-characters have been a frequently used promotional and marketing communication tool over the vuyelwa constance mashwama school of business sciences, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa email: vmashwama@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-75549693 dr tinashe chuchu department of marketing management, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email: tinashe.chuchu@ up.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-73258932 dr eugine tafadzwa maziriri department of business management, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: maziririet@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-80474702 mailto:vmashwama@gmail.com mailto:vmashwama@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-9693 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-9693 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-9693 mailto:tinashe.chuchu@up.ac.za mailto:tinashe.chuchu@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 mailto:maziririet@ufs.ac.za mailto:maziririet@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4702 2 years (phillips et al. 2019). the use of spokes-characters grew in media consideration, with hour-long television programmes dedicated to addressing their potential benefits to brands (garretson & niedrich 2004). more recent research (kim et al. 2018) investigated the persuasive effects of fictional brand characters. when an advertisement is effective, the audience notices, recalls and thinks about the message in the advertisement and eventually considers purchasing the product. advertising is any paid form of non-personal communication in an attempt to build awareness, inform, persuade and remind the target market about the product/service offering by an identified sponsor (kotler & keller 2009). over the years, marketers have used many persuasive advertising techniques to increase consumer advertising interest in their advertisements; one of the techniques was the concept of brand endorsement through the use of celebrities (bekk & spörrle 2010; ndlela & chuchu 2016). endorsement is a channel of brand communication where the endorser, who has already developed benevolence in the market, endorses a product and acts as a connection between the product and the consumer (manjusha & segar 2013). four categories of endorsers have been identified, namely celebrities, employees, spokes-characters and customers (joghee & kabiraj 2013). according to patel (2009), marketers use mostly celebrity endorsement. advertisers believe that because of their popularity, celebrities do not only create and maintain attention, but also achieve high recall rates for marketing communication messages (erdogan 1999). however, a company using a celebrity always runs the risk of the brand being influenced by the celebrity’s professional and personal life, which cannot be controlled, and sometimes, the effect could be negative. in recent years there has an increase in the use of created animated spokes-characters as endorsers due to technological developments in animation (stafford et al. 2013). according to garretson and niedrich (2013), spokes-characters have been used by firms since the late 1800s to establish brand identity and favourable brand associations. these characters could be fictitious human spokes-characters or non-human spokes-characters, such as animals, mythical beings (e.g. fairies), or product personifications (callcott & lee 1995). doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 2-16 date submitted: 03 july 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mashwama, chuchu & maziriri https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication 3 this study examines non-celebrity spokes-characters solely created to promote a brand or product rather than those who were originally created for animated movies, cartoons and/or comic strips, and then licensed by brands to appear in promotions. fictional spokes-characters are an appealing and safe alternative to human endorsers because marketers have greater control over characteristics that are both effective with the target audience and congruent with the desirable characteristics of the endorsed product (stafford et al. 2013). animated spokes-characters do not fall prey to the many challenges inherent in human celebrities; they are not likely to humiliate sponsors with their off-stage behaviour; thus, negatively affecting endorsed brands (stafford et al. 2013). although much research has been done on celebrity endorsement, some studies indicate that there is still doubt whether endorsements are effective – either via created or celebrity endorsers (mcewen 2003). there is limited literature on created spokes-characters, who are not celebrities, which are used to endorse brands (van der waldt et al. 2009), especially in the south african context, that has mainly focused on how perceived spokes-character credibility (trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise) influences attitudes toward the advertisement and attitudes towards the brand. in addition, studies conducted in the past have mainly focused on these characters as endorsers for products targeted at children (boyland et al. 2012; mizerski 1995; kelly et al. 2008). this study focuses mainly on the use of created non-celebrity spokes-characters as brand endorsers for products targeted at consumers over the age of 18. when a celebrity has a good image and fit for the product and company, this will lead to greater believability, and thus effectiveness. by uniting these aspects, you create two advantages, working together for the product and the endorser. this is the kind of fit the company wants to achieve; hence, the endorsement (kim 2012). conversely, if the image of the celebrity changes and no longer matches the product and company, this could lead to financial loss and a major dilemma if the endorsement was a long-term contract (raluca 2012). also, celebrities come and go, and their fame fluctuates (prasad 2013). additionally, when a celebrity endorses multiple products, the endorsement effect loses its strength (kim 2012). moreover, celebrity endorsement can be costly. prasad (2013) states that in 2001, ieg endorsement insider, an advertising trade publication, estimated that celebrities directly received more than $800 million in endorsements in 2001. according to kotler and keller (2009), a celebrity might hold out for a large fee at contract renewal time, or withdraw, and celebrity campaigns can sometimes be expensive failures. on the other hand, created spokespersons can be controlled to a greater degree, and they are less costly than celebrities (van der waldt et al. 2009). in addition, consumers notice and watch advertisements featuring created spokes-characters more than other advertisements (jayswal & panchal 2012). if created spokescharacters’ endorsements have longevity, they will be effective as long as the method is successful for the organisation. however, human celebrity endorsers have limited longevity. for an endorsement to be successful, there must a celebrity-product fit supported by the match-up hypothesis model (amos et al. 2008). in reference to spokes-characters, marketers are able to create a better fit between the endorser and 54 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri product because these characters are self-created by companies and customised to fit the brand (jayswal & panchal 2012). in a nutshell, the risk inherent in utilising celebrity endorsements could be addressed by making use of created spokes-characters. celebrity endorsements have proven to be effective and organisations have used celebrities to pursue their target market to create positive purchase aspirations or change their behaviour (van der waldt et al. 2009). one of the concerns stated above is that sometimes consumers will focus on the celebrity and fail to notice the brand being promoted, called overshadowing, resulting in lack of clarity for the consumer and additionally diminishing the image and associations between the celebrity and the brand (temperley & tangen 2006). according to kim (2012), overshadowing is caused mainly by the heightened attention drawn to celebrities in many types of commercials; hence, a general lack of interest in assessing the merits of the product, which could result in reduction of brand recognition. this is likely to occur when an advertisement featuring celebrity endorsers focuses on the celebrity rather than on the products. amos et al. (2008) argue that there needs to be a strong association between the brand and the celebrity before negative information about the celebrity could have a major effect on the perceptions of the brand. research objectives the purpose of this study is to establish the extent to which the spokes-character’s expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness will influence consumers’ attitudes towards the brand, as well as consumers’ attitudes towards the spokes-character. the specific research objectives are as follows: ♦ to examine the plausible use of spokes-characters instead of celebrities as endorsers; ♦ to determine the influence of the spokes-character’s credibility on the consumer’s attitude towards the advertisement; ♦ to assess the influence of the spokes-character’s credibility on the consumer’s attitude towards the brand/product; ♦ to determine the relationship of the consumer’s attitude towards the advertisement and purchase intention; ♦ to examine the relationship of the consumer’s attitude towards the brand and purchase intention; and ♦ to assess the relationship between the consumer’s attitude towards the advertise ment and the attitude towards the brand and purchase intention. literature review consumer intention to purchase khan et al. (2012) define purchase intention as an individual’s aim to buy a specific brand, which they have chosen after a certain evaluation process. tariq et al. (2013) 54 fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication states that purchase intention relates to four behaviours of consumers, namely the definite plan to buy the product, thinking explicitly of purchasing the product, when someone contemplates to buy the product in the future, and to buy the specific product. chinomona and sandada (2013) explain that the intention by consumers to purchase reflects their interest in the product and hence their willingness to buy the product or service. khan et al. (2012) depict brand knowledge, brand relationship, behavioural intention, brand advertisement and past experience about the brand as factors in the purchase intention of consumers. chinomona and sandada (2013) provide the elements that can be used to measure purchase intent, namely the probability of a consumer considering buying the product, the consumer’s willingness to, and the likelihood of a consumer’s purchase behaviour. according to schiffman et al. (2010), purchase intention can be measured using factors such as, 1) the consumer will definitely buy the product/brand; 2) the probability that the consumer will purchase the product/brand; 3) the consumer’s uncertainty over whether they will buy the product/ brand; 4) the probability the consumer will not buy the product/brand; and 5) the consumer will definitely not buy the product/brand. attitude towards the brand attitude towards the brand refers to audiences’ emotional reaction to the advertised brand. that is, to what extent audiences feel purchasing the brand is good/bad, favorable/unfavourable, or wise/foolish. ghorban (2012) describes attitude as an achievable, relatively permanent, and at the same time purposeful, gradual, and motivated intention to react to a particular object; for example, a brand or advertisement. attitude can be positive or negative and can be changed if people gain new experiences. schiffman et al. (2010) state that according to the attitude-towardobject model, consumers will have a positive attitude towards a brand that they believe has an adequate level of attributes they view as positive, and have unfavourable attitudes toward a brand that they perceive as having too many undesired attributes. in measuring attitude, ghorban (2012) used two items: favourable to unfavourable, and like to dislike. in measuring attitude towards brands amongst children, schiffman et al. (2010) used two items, namely definitely agreeing to definitely disagreeing to describe the brand as fun, great, useful, practical or useless. attitude towards advertisement this can be defined as the set of thoughts and feelings consumers have about an advertisement. attitude towards advertising can also be seen as the way a targeted consumer responds in either a favourable or unfavourable manner towards a specific advertisement during the exposure. consumers will be involved with an advertisement based on the degree of attention and the processing strategy. it is widely accepted that ad cognitions or antecedents, also called ad perceptions, have a direct positive effect on attitude towards the advertisement (lutz et al. 1983; mackenzie et al. 1986). ad cognitions can be defined as the consumer’s belief in the advertising stimulus. the determining factors of ad cognitions are 1) the ad characteristics; 2) the consumer’s attitude toward the advertiser; and 3) conscious processing of executional elements (najmi et al. 2012). 76 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri conceptual model and hypotheses development in order to test empirically the relationships between the study variables, the conceptual model in figure 1 was developed premised on the reviewed literature. in this conceptual model the spokes-character’s expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness are the predictor variables, while the consumer’s attitude towards the brand is the mediator. the consumer’s attitude towards the spokes-character is the outcome variable. detailed accounts of the links between these variables are provided in the next section on hypotheses developed from the model. figure 1: conceptual model hypotheses development expertise pornpitakpan (2004a) defines expertise as the extent to which a speaker is perceived to be capable of making a correct assertion of the brand. garretson and niedrich (2004) define it as the perception that a source is able to make valid claims or has knowledge of the product. these authors (ibid.) state that spokes-characters have made numerous product claims and have done so repeatedly from campaign to campaign and as result consumers can perceive spokes-characters as experts. kim (2012) proposes that expert endorsers are more effective in increasing brand evaluations than celebrities in terms of technology gadgets and among consumers with more product knowledge. additionally, a source high in expertise appears to lead to positive attitudes toward the endorser and the advertisement; also, expert endorsers induce more positive product/ brand quality ratings than celebrities (pornpitakpan 2004b). a source/celebrity who is more of an expert has been found to be more persuasive and to generate more intentions to buy the brand (ohanian 1991). thus, it can be hypothesised that: h1: there is a relationship between expertise of the spokes-character and consumer attitude toward the brand. 76 fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication trustworthiness trustworthiness is the degree of confidence that the respondent has in the communicator’s intentions and ability to make valid assertion. garretson and niedrich (2004) refer to spokes-character trustworthiness as the expectation that the character will be honest, sincere and reliable in their communication and promotion of products. in a comparison study between celebrity endorsers and created endorsers, van der waldt et al. (2009) concluded that neither celebrities nor created endorsers were perceived to be more trustworthy or to possess more expertise than the other. according to amos et al. (2008), a highly opinionated message from a highly trustworthy communicator produces an effective attitude change, while non-trusted communicators’ impact proved immaterial. kim (2012) concludes that perceived endorser trustworthiness appears to produce a greater attitude change than perceived expertise. amos et al. (2008) suggest that trustworthiness is an important predictor of endorsement effectiveness. thus, it can be hypothesised that: h2: there is a relationship between the trustworthiness of the spokes-character and consumer attitude toward the brand. attractiveness physically appealing endorsers influence the effectiveness of the advertising message and intent to purchase (keel & nataraajan 2012). the inclusion of attractiveness was prompted by research, suggesting that a physically attractive communicator is liked more and has a positive impact on opinion change and product evaluations (goldsmith et al. 2000). according to till and busler (2000), attractive celebrities are more effective endorsers for products, which are used to enhance one’s attractiveness; thus, leading to higher brand attitude and purchase intentions. advertisers have associated attractive endorsers with their brands because they are imbued with not only physically attractiveness but also positive traits such as social competence, intellectual competence, concern for others, and integrity (till & busler 2000). thus, it can be hypothesised that: h3: there is a relationship between the trustworthiness of the spokes-character and consumer attitude toward the brand. attitude towards brand attitude towards brand is the recipients’ affective reactions toward the advertised brand or where there is a desirable attitude towards purchasing the brand (lutz et al. 1983). brand beliefs and feelings are formed through advertising and these beliefs affect attitudes towards advertisements and consequently attitudes towards the brands being advertised. previous research has shown that attitudes toward advertisements have direct effects on brand attitudes and subsequently on purchase intentions (suh & yi 2006; mackenzie et al. 1986). frequent exposure of a trade character would cause high recognition of the trade character and the product; it also leads to favourable attitudes towards the product/brand, and influences the consumer to use the product/ brand in future. additionally, animated spokes-characters reduce the distance 98 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri between companies and consumers; that is, they encourage consumers’ liking for the spokes-character, which is extended to the brand and its products (huang et al. 2013). what is more, commercials featuring animated characters were watched more often than other types of commercials and the attitude towards the brand is affected by a spokes-character’s likability. jayswal and panchal (2012) propose that cartoon spokes-characters are more creative and consumers display more positive responses for attitude towards advertisements, attitude towards brand, and purchase intention when compared to a human spokesperson. lutz et al. (1983) posit that the recipients of an advertising message develop an attitude towards the advertisement, which in turn exerts an influence on subsequent measures of advertising effectiveness, such as brand attitude and purchase intentions. ghorban (2012) asserts that after attitude towards advertisements is formed, it would affect different behaviour, such as brand attitude and purchasing intention. drawing from the preceding theoretical discussion and in line with the empirical evidence on consumer attitude towards an advertisement and consumer intention to purchase, this study hypothesises that: h4: there is a relationship between consumer attitude towards the brand and attitude towards the spokes-character. research methodology research design the research was quantitative in nature. it adopted the positivist philosophy, as it was imperative to obtain objective findings. due to the inability to obtain a sampling frame, the research therefore utilised convenience sampling, a form of nonprobability sampling, to select suitable participants. data collection was conducted in braamfontein, a business district in johannesburg, south africa over a two-month period. a total of 260 responses were received from willing participants regarding the impact of spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication. after the data was collected, it was processed for descriptive statistics through the statistical package for the social sciences software (spss) 26, while structural equation modeling (sem) was conducted through the analysis of moment structures software (amos) 26. descriptive statistics provided the sample’s profile, while sem was done in order to test the proposed hypothesised relationships. ethical considerations prior to the data collection, the researchers applied for ethical clearance at the university of the witwatersrand (cbuse/1026). participation in the research was voluntary and anonymous, and the participants were permitted to withdraw from the study at any time. 98 fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication results table 1: sample profile gender frequency percentage male 126 48.5% female 134 51.5% total 260 100% age frequency percentage 18-23 208 80% 24-29 34 13.1% 30+ 18 6.9% total 260 100% advertisement media consumption frequency percentage television 194 74.6% magazine 18 6.9% billboard 22 8.5% in-store 19 7.3% other 7 2.7% total 260 100% table 1 presents the sample profile. it can be observed that male and female participants were fairly distributed, while most of the participants were in the 18 to 23 age category. the participants, 30 or older, were the least represented. as for the participants’ advertisement media consumption, it is indicated that most of them were exposed to spokes-characters through television, as indicated by over 74%, while magazines, billboards, in-store advertisements and other media forms accounted for 6.9%, 8.5%, 7.3% and 2.7% respectively. table 2: reliability assessment factor cronbach’s alpha decision attitude toward brand 0.784 acceptable reliability attractiveness 0.889 acceptable to high reliability 1110 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri factor cronbach’s alpha decision trustworthiness 0.897 acceptable to high reliability expertise 0.921 high reliability attitude toward spokescharacter 0.769 acceptable to high reliability prior to any analysis concerning the conceptual model, all constructs were checked for reliability through the cronbach’s alpha. as indicated in table 2, all constructs were above the recommended 0.60 threshold necessary for reliability. thereafter, model fit was checked, as indicated in table 3, followed by the structural model in figure 2. in order to test the proposed hypotheses, structural equation modeling was conducted in a two-part procedure, which involved assessing for model fit through confirmatory factor analysis (see table 3 for results) and then the actual testing of hypotheses (see figure 2 and table 4 for results). table 3: model fit chi-square gfi nfi rfi ifi tli cfi rmsea 1,587 0.915 0.931 0.914 0.973 0.966 0.973 0.048 key: gfi: goodness of fit index, nfi: normed fit index, rfi: relative fit index, ifi: incremental fit index, tli: tucker lewis fit index, rmsea: root measure standard error approximation table 3 presents the model fit assessment for the study. it is observed that the model met the required threshold of 0.900 or higher. the results are as follows: goodness of fit (0.915), normed fit (0.931), relative fit (0.914), incremental fit (0.973), tucker lewis (0.966), and confirmatory fit (0.973). this means that the data and model were both suitable for hypotheses testing in order to establish whether proposed assumptions in relation to consumers’ perceptions of spokes-characters in advertising were either confirmed or rejected. 1110 fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication figure 2: structural model key: exp: expertise, tr: trustworthiness, atc: attractiveness, atb: attitude toward brand, asp: attitude toward spokes-character figure 2 presents the structural model for the study. it illustrates the influence that the three predictors (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness) have on attitude towards brand. in turn, attitude towards brand is depicted as both an antecedent of attitude toward spokes-character (outcome) and a mediator between the predictors and the outcome. it is observed that the strongest predictor was trustworthiness and the strongest of all relationships was that of attitude toward brand and attitude toward spokes-character. table 4: hypotheses results hypothesis estimate p value outcome expertise attitude toward brand h1 0.15 0.04 supported and significant 1312 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri hypothesis estimate p value outcome trustworthiness attitude toward brand h2 0.36 *** supported and significant attractiveness attitude toward brand h3 0.15 0.05 supported and not significant attitude toward brand attitude toward spokescharacter h4 0.66 *** supported and significant level of significance = p<0.05 the results of the hypotheses are presented in table 4. it is evident that all of the hypotheses were both supported and significant at p<0.05, apart from h3. the first hypothesis (expertise and attitude toward brand): this relationship was found to be both supported and significant at p<0.05, as it had a p value of 0.04 and an estimate of 0.15. this suggests that the more consumers perceive the brand’s spokes-person to be an expert, the more their attitude towards that spokes-person become positive. the second hypothesis (trustworthiness and attitude toward brand): this relationship is both supported and significant at p<0.05, as it had a p value of below 0.01, as indicated by the asterisks (***) and an estimate of 0.36. this means that if consumers trust the brand’s spokes-character they are more likely to develop a positive attitude toward the brand. the third hypothesis (attractiveness and attitude toward brand): this relationship is also supported by the proposed hypothesis; however, it was found not to be significant. this could therefore mean that the consumers could consider the attractiveness of brand’s spokes-person to be relevant but not necessarily significant to influence their attitude toward the brand. the fourth hypothesis (attitude toward brand and attitude toward spokes-person): it is observed that these two factors are related. they are both supported and significant at p<0.05 with an estimate of 0.66 making this hypothesis the strongest of all four relationships. this finding suggests that consumers closely associate a spokescharacter with the brand represented by that spokes-character. in other words, if the spokes-character is perceived negatively, the consumers will in turn also perceive that brand in a negative light and, conversely, if consumers perceive the spokes-character positively, they will also perceive the brand positively. implications a number of managerial and research implications emerged from the findings of the study. first, on the managerial front, it was established that trustworthiness had the 1312 fictional spokes-characters in brand advertisements and communication most influence on attitude towards a brand. this implies that marketers and managers should prioritise making a fictional spokes-character credible, as this is the most important factor that impacts attitude towards a brand. this suggests that the other factors, expertise and attractiveness, have a weaker influence on consumers’ attitude towards a brand. in other words, marketers can invest less on attractiveness and making the spoke-character appear to be an expert. this is because if consumers cannot trust a spokes-person, none of the other factors matter to them. in fact, with an estimate of 0.36, the relationship between trustworthiness and attitude towards brand was twice as important as that of expertise and attitude towards brand, and expertise and attitude towards brand, as they both had an estimate of 0.15. in terms of research implications, it is noteworthy that the relationship between attitude towards brand and attitude towards spokes-person was considered more important than all the other relationships, with an estimate of 0.66. this means that researchers should attempt to determine why consumers associated attitude towards a brand so much with attitude towards its spokes-character. this could also help explain the extent of the importance of a spokes-character in the eyes of a consumer. in addition, expertise and attractiveness having such a weak impact on attitude towards a brand calls for researchers to investigate why that is the case. overall, it is imperative for researchers and managers to investigate the best ways of making consumers believe a fictional spokes-character in the same way they would a natural one. conclusion it can be concluded that though profitable, the effectiveness of a celebrity endorser is moderated by several factors such as the fit between the celebrity and the endorsed product/brand, the perceived attractiveness of the celebrity, the number of endorsements the celebrity is involved with, the characteristics of the target audience and the type of message, and the level of involvement that consumers have with regards to the message. above and beyond these factors, the economic costs and potential risk inherent in using a celebrity should all be considered when companies decide to use celebrities as endorsers. as a solution to these challenges, this article investigated the plausibility of using a spokes-character. it can be concluded from the literature review that they are an effective tool because they are a safer and cheaper alternative, which marketers can self-develop and imbue with qualities that will be in line with the brand personality; thus, increasing the endorser product fit. from the analysis of the proposed conceptual model, the source credibility model provides an understanding of the factors that can influence the perceived credibility of a message source and thus the effectiveness of the source. furthermore, it gives an indication as to which traits of the source have an influence on attitude towards advertisement and attitude towards brand, which will ultimately have an effect on purchase behaviour. suggestions for further research this research contributed to understanding consumer perceptions of the influence of fictional spokes-characters in advertising communication. this was empirically tested through a conceptual model that made use of three antecedents of attitude towards 1514 mashwama, chuchu & maziriri brand (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness). furthermore, the conceptual model tested the impact that consumer attitudes towards a brand had on the brand’s spokes-character. in terms of limitations, the study did not take into consideration the participants’ socioeconomic status. it also did not consider the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the participants. analysing such issues could possibly have provided much richer results, as this could have revealed underlying stereotypes that people might hold toward the use of spokes-characters in advertisement messages. hence, this would be recommended for further research. in addition, further research could make conceptual contributions to this study. this could take the form of empirically potential hypotheses left out in this study – for example, the relationship between expertise and trustworthiness, or a direct relationship between attractiveness and attitudes toward fictional spokescharacters. this could help explain the extent to which advertising messages depend on the attractiveness and perceived expertise of the spokes-character. references amos, c., holmes, g. & strutton, d. 2008. exploring the relationship between celebrity endorser effects and advertising effectiveness: a 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dynamics of broadcast operations driven by a converged digital ecosystem abstract broadcast media africa’s 2021 conference in cape town, south africa, was dubbed the “broadcast media convention of southern africa” and was organised in partnership with the southern africa broadcasting association. the conference drew attention to several issues, including the technological developments affecting broadcasters and the effect of covid-19 on broadcasting operations. this article is based on the paper presented there. the article notes that the broadcast industry has evolved drastically over the past few years. however, with rapid technological developments and new trends in the increasingly digital and converged media markets, broadcast managers increasingly must look for new strategies to stay afloat in the competitive and mediarich environment in which broadcast institutions operate. the article posits that the new media ecosystem has essentially brought to the fore one aspect, which was always known but often took for granted – the importance of the audience. the article appraises the developments in the converging environment to improve our understanding of how african broadcasters could continue to innovate successfully. keywords: media convergence, broadcast media, digitality, digital media, broadcast media africa understanding convergence according to chakaveh and boge (2007: 811), media convergence is a phenomenon of communication “where every mass medium eventually merges to the point where they become one medium due to the advent of new communication technologies”. the media convergence theory illuminates the recent trends of media convergence widely defined as a form of cross-media cooperation, usually involving broadcast, print, photography, and internet sites (hurley 2016). this cross-media cooperation happens at the levels of production and distribution via digital tools and internet platforms. thus, media convergence integrates prof. gilbert motsaathebe indigenous language media in africa, northwest university, potchefstroom, south africa email : gilmot2000@ yahoo.co.uk orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-86816945 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 159-168 date submitted: 15 february 2022 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:gilmot2000@yahoo.co.uk mailto:gilmot2000@yahoo.co.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8681-6945 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8681-6945 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 161160 motsaathebe different media formats, content, and style for easy distribution via multiple media platforms, including legacy media such as radio and television as well as digital platforms and applications such as podcasts, websites, youtube, and popular social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, and whatsapp. convergence theory, therefore, makes assumptions about the fusion of various media forms and content with multiple distribution channels available to the public. it further explains how this fusion leads to an engaged audience that is becoming increasingly fragmented because audiences now have more control over the type of content they want to access at a particular time and place. importantly, convergence can be seen at the level of content digitisation where content is adapted for use on multiple media platforms and at the corporate concentration level where fewer large companies own more different types of media. from a convergence point of view, media organisations have had to adapt to the multimedia platforms provided by technological development to cater to an increasingly fragmented audience whose habits of obtaining information continue to be revolutionised by the technology at their disposal. it is precisely this fragmentation of audience that has wreaked havoc on the broadcast industry and left it in an adapt-or-perish mode. current context – tilting the scale media convergence has resulted in what could be referred to as “titling the scales”. this shift presents a challenge for media practitioners to meet today’s dynamic audiences’ demands. this is because broadcasters cannot afford to lose their audience. after all, they are in the business of content production with the audience as critical customers. in the past, broadcasters enjoyed the monopoly of content production and dissemination. this situation has changed because the audience can produce their own content and distribute it to reach a mass audience. in the past, media organisations were in control and they dispatched content in an asymmetrical way from the broadcasters to the audience who had little choice over the situation. audiences now have other means of accessing the content they need on the internet or through pay per view or streaming, which enables them to watch what they want when they want to. of course, such viewing habits complicate broadcast programming and scheduling, which used to be more structured and segmented because the broadcasters knew their market share and could easily measure their ratings. being able to measure their ratings enabled television broadcasters to attract advertisers strategically. now audiences participate more in the content produced by prominent broadcasters on twitter, whatsapp and facebook. for example, broadcasters have begun using whatsapp voice notes from the audience in their programmes to incorporate audience views. this makes the audience co-creators in content generation. information technology also allows users to interact actively with the content by commenting or sharing. these technologies are also more flexible compared to television, so users can produce their own content to share online to reach a mass audience, making them “produsers” (producer + user). they also allowed for the creation of online streaming platforms such as showmax and netflix. 161160 understanding the dynamics of broadcast operations the nature of new media content provides more flexibility in terms of how the audiences engage with it. as mathurine (2013) states, “media content can now be saved, copied, archived, searched, related to other content, and shared via social networks”. an audience could access content and be able to share it with friends and strangers at the press of a button, leading to a loss in potential revenue that could have been generated from that content. the audience is now more in control of what they can watch, when to watch it, and how/ where. furthermore, users can choose from various programmes on websites and apps. broadcasters themselves have taken full advantage of technology by making available multiple digital channels online and mobile applications. this participation of broadcasters in the online space has increased immensely during the lockdowns necessitated by the covid-19 pandemic. for the first time, news anchors could present news from home/their living rooms. however, nowadays it is no longer just about producing good content. it is also about ensuring that the content reaches a mass audience that is not easy to quantify. they are widely dispersed across an array of multimedia platforms. the media must produce content for those platforms, and as each platform requires tailor-made content, it is not just about one-glove-fit-all. every platform has its specific dimensions and requires tailor-made content. furthermore, direct broadcast satellite services such as dstv have developed a system where individuals who own a specific decoder can save programmes so that they can watch them later. this does away with the transitory aspect of traditional television. television stations have also developed subscription-based applications that individuals can download onto their smartphones or laptops, so that they view content whenever they want to. smart television is a traditional television set that is connected to the internet. an individual who owns a smart television can browse the internet and stream videos or music. smart televisions also allow viewers to access their online streaming services like netflix, amazon prime and youtube. implication for the key pillars for a successful broadcast organisation these developments have affected the broadcast business and shook the key pillars. a successful television station requires skilled personnel, good content, financial viability, and up-to-date technological infrastructure and equipment. these aspects are interrelated and mutually inclusive. for example, organisations cannot have great content if they do not have money, the right people to produce such content, and the equipment to produce it. however, the technological disruption has presented significant challenges to, among others, audience behaviour, content, business, production, and scheduling. as a result, media institutions now must look at innovative ways of running their enterprise in a market where audiences are in control of what they need from the media. these have implications for scheduling, programming, advertising revenue, digital skills, broadcasting business, and technological infrastructure. 163162 motsaathebe the critical factors in this arrangement include sustainability of the current funding models, management models and organisational structure for the digital age, digital savvy staff, and programming and scheduling. as indicated, the challenge is even more pressing for public service broadcasters that play a critical civic role. furthermore, the problem is far more acute for developing countries due to various factors that include a lack of clear funding strategies, management issues, overbearing political interference, and pitiable adaptation to the new media context. sustainability of funding of broadcasting broadcasters in africa tend to adopt a hybrid model that generates revenue from advertising and other sources such as television licences or government support. ratings and revenue are critical in this business model. in the case of public service broadcasters, the problem is that “hybrid funding can lead to tensions between public and purely commercial broadcasters when it leads the former to chase ratings and revenue at the latter’s expense” (thomas 2009: 34). the larger your audience, the more advertising you are likely to attract. audiences are drawn to the quality of the content. hence phillis’ (1997: 79) decades-old assertion that “we must work hard to ensure that our programmes are fresh and relevant, that they connect powerfully with the lives of all who pay for us” still rings true. advertising is often a challenge as advertisers may dictate where they want their products to be placed and can threaten to withdraw at any time if they feel that they do not like the content. television broadcasters may end up being beholden to advertisers as they do not want to lose them and lose money. collection of revenue from licence fees is often challenging, especially if people feel that the programming quality does not warrant any revenue collection. in such cases, one could experience a culture of non-payment and other evasive techniques. additionally, the subscription fee as a form of financing in africa has been problematic because only those with the financial means can afford those services. other forms of funding for public service television, such as donor funds, are scarce in africa and are often tied to stringent conditions. this is a big issue because financial pressures can easily constrain the media’s professional obligations (motsaathebe 2013). the problem with government funding when it comes to government funding, it could be difficult to differentiate between government-controlled television and genuine public service television. when a television station is controlled by the government, it becomes a government mouthpiece instead of the public watchdog that the public service broadcaster ought to be. according to price and marc (2011: 09), the ideal funding should have the following characteristics: “(a) it is guaranteed for many years so that politicians cannot interfere; (b) it is sufficient to achieve the multiple tasks the public service broadcaster must perform; and (c) it allows some opportunity for accountability”. 163162 understanding the dynamics of broadcast operations management models and organisational structures for the digital age typically, broadcasting institutions have been characterised by various management approaches and structures. these include organisational structures such as the hierarchical structure, matrix structure, horizontal structure, network structure, divisional structure, line organisational structure, and team-based organisational structure (ahmady & mehrpou 2016; bevacqua 2019). broadcasting institutions usually have a hierarchical, matrix or line organisational structure. authority follows from top to bottom, where various sections of the stations are organised according to their functions under managers who report to their superiors according to their organisational hierarchy. such a structure typically consists of three levels of management, namely top-level, middle-level, and low-level. the question that needs to be interrogated is which management model or models are suited for the current environment. this is even more important because management approaches derive from organisational science, mainly focusing on manufacturing and service industries – in which production processes differ from those of the media industry. this requires careful rethinking. this is because the media industry deals with a product of a different nature; for example, broadcasting content is more about creativity and the cautious application of knowledge, skills, and technology, than the automation seen in most industries. running a broadcast institution is different from running a massproduction factory (thomas 2009: 43). it is also clear that some countries do not have the advantage of a strong economy that characterises much of the developed world (price & marc 2011); therefore, broadcasters in countries such as those that are located in the global south have to double their efforts to find funding in a constricted economic environment. where government funding is used, it is essential for public service television broadcasters not to lose their independence, which enables them to serve their mandate of public good and hold the same government accountable to the public. in essence, the financial and management problems often experienced by broadcasters require them to rethink their management strategies. skilled staff the digital media environment requires more employees who are skilled in producing and disseminating television content via different online platforms. therefore, the development of digital technological skills in staff is a challenge that needs to be taken more seriously to give public service television in africa a competitive advantage. besides, the new technological environment meant that people at different levels of the organisation might have better knowledge and possess most of the skills required in the digital environment. therefore, broadcasters must be careful not to be bogged down in hierarchical structures. 165164 motsaathebe programming and scheduling, media convergence one of the main challenges is effectively reaching the widely dispersed audience with the quality content they require. in an environment characterised by multiculturalism, multilingualism and exclusion, the focus is more on personalised and interactive content and not the one-size-fits-all type that audiences have become accustomed to through scheduling and programming over many years. programming is moving towards multi-platform activity and increased focus on audience participation and engagement. however, some poorer communities who do not have the means to access online services may remain excluded. for example, in many countries the cost of data remains unaffordable to many poor communities. another factor is that audiences want relatable content that they can identify with. to alleviate the problem of losing the audience, public service broadcasters must ensure that they do not compromise on the quality of their programmes. thus, broadcasters must still ensure that their programmes are engaging, informative, developmental, educational and entertaining. specific challenges for public service broadcasting the new media ecosystem also puts public service broadcasting in a precarious situation. for example, at the core of public service broadcasting is the principle of universality, which means that public service broadcasting must be accessible to every citizen throughout a country. in addition, the principle of diversity means that the broadcaster must offer varied programming. commercial broadcasters do not have the same mandate and can easily target content that generates profit. the problem with public broadcasters is that they have a completely different mandate, which goes beyond commercial imperatives. their public service mandate restricts how they could operate profitably in the same way as commercial broadcasters do. the licencing conditions under which these broadcasters operate require them to serve the public first and have specific quotas of certain content, whereas commercial broadcasters have very few restrictions. in africa, for example, public service broadcasting plays a vital role in servicing the public. africa is a diverse continent, and individual countries have multiple languages and cultures that need to be addressed through public service television content. many countries, especially in asia and africa, are characterised by marginalisation and inequality, exacerbated by low living standards and insecurity for specific communities. national television services must provide for these varied communities, including marginalised communities (for example the san, khoi and nama people in south africa, namibia and botswana). these relatively small communities are often excluded from the national (social, civic, cultural and economic) life. this means that programming mainly motivated by profit motives may not accommodate specific communities. 165164 understanding the dynamics of broadcast operations limitation of funding/fundraising the mandate of public broadcasting limits how it can fundraise as it strives to remain independent from funders who are more likely to impose conditions that may conflict with its order. price and marc (2011: 8) are correct in observing that “while financing is always a critical issue, in many of the most developed societies, there is the luxury of choice: a strong economy, a group of supportive viewers, and a legislature with ample funds to allocate.” this is not the case in africa and other lesser developed countries, often characterised by a weak economy. furthermore, state-controlled and public service broadcasting differ minimally in many parts of africa. the governments in many countries wield considerable control over broadcasting. these institutions are often used for political mobilisation, stifling opposition and dictating programming, particularly in elections. these practices conflict with the mission and defining characteristics of public services broadcasting. public service broadcasting must play a civic role in reaching out to all citizens with varied programming that serves broader developmental agendas. it is characterised by a desire to serve the public, which means it must serve the more general interest of various communities within its sphere of influence. hence jakubowicz (2011: 79) describes it as the “voice of a nation”. it is characterised by the principles of universality/ access, diversity, independence, and, most importantly, a public good (independent television commission 2005). a highly commercialised environment public broadcasting must compete in an environment that is highly commercialised. there is minimal viable funding because the essential virtue of independence that is the cornerstone of public broadcasting may be compromised by funders who want to impose conditions that conflict with the public broadcast mandate. the interactive nature of multimedia platforms could enhance public deliberation and engagement, which is important as it gives the public more power to let their voice permeate the public sphere. it however debilitates the asymmetrical way in which content has always been transmitted. furthermore, media content can easily be copied, archived, and shared to an individual’s mass audience, making it very difficult to generate viable revenue from such content. much has been written about the role of public service broadcasting but the focus has recently changed to the sustainability of these broadcasting institutions due to the current media environment characterised by multimedia platforms (bardoel & d’haenens 2008; enli 2008; motsaathebe 2018). broadcast media and recent challenges at the height of the covid-19 lockdowns we saw broadcasters seizing the opportunity to fully utilise technology with many presenting news from their homes. they took full advantage of the technology available. the television industry also uses mobile apps and websites. their channels are also available on youtube. for example, the sabc streamed live on facebook. when referring to local content production, the audience wants content that they can relate to and where they are co-creators. for that reason, 167166 motsaathebe we have seen companies such as netflix investing heavily in local content in africa. dovey (2021) equally stresses the need for more local production in africa. what is problematic about a streaming platform such as netflix is that it is not regulated in the same way as other broadcasters. chamberwa (2021) has noted netflix’s growing popularity in africa, and south africa in particular. as chamberwa (2021) points out, netflix challenges the monopoly of a company such as multichoice in south africa, while at the same time gaining an unfair advantage by producing and profiting from the content without any policy intervention. this means that policy makers need to find a way to ensure the levelling of the playing field between online based content producers and traditional content producers who are often subjected to stringent regulations. the road ahead the new environment offers the opportunity to expand to and thrive on digital platforms. for example, there is a need for efficient and competent executives who are dexterous in digitality. poor management, resignations and continual talks of turnaround strategies characterised the public broadcast service environment in the past. training in new media related to this, television broadcasters need to train employees in new media platform services. young employees are usually more versatile with digital technology because they have been more accustomed to it. this means that managers may have to consider this reality and give those with the relevant skills space to contribute to managerial strategies or even bring them in as part of their management structures at different levels of the organisation. this also relates to team-based management, which is appropriate for managing television broadcasting in the current digital environment. content production, programming and scheduling previously programming has been a distinct aspect for public television broadcasters. still, the audience would be difficult to target with relevant programming like daytime programmes, children’s programmes, primetime news, adult viewing and sports, which have characterised television programming for a long time and attracted vast audiences. as mentioned before, good programmes attract audiences who, in turn, attract advertisers. for commercial broadcasters, these numbers translate into good advertising revenue. in terms of content, it is also evident that the content distributed online is driven by audiences creating their own content, which is relatable and depicts their realities. commercial broadcasters often opt for specialist channels such as sports, fashion, and so forth. such programmes are usually accessed by subscription. this may not be viable for public service television stations as they have a different mandate that requires inclusive content. nonetheless, public service television has maintained a strong presence in africa due to its critical civic role. 167166 understanding the dynamics of broadcast operations conclusion and recommendations broadcasters will have to continue following the market. this means that they need to intensify efforts to disseminate content according to audience preferences. they must also ensure that they supply more content that involves audiences as co-creators. furthermore, they may have to increasingly follow the trend of influencer marketing in which personalities who are followed the most online and command a large audience and influence their attitude can be utilized to help attract audiences for broadcasters. these influencers could help to promote shows on twitter, facebook, instagram, and other social media platforms to attract an audience. there is also a need for broadcasters to find a meaningful way to cater for the marginalised and the excluded communities who do not have the means to partake in the digital space. the other important area that requires attention is the upskilling and reskilling of broadcast media professionals to meet the skills requirements for multi-level online streaming. ultimately there is a need to find ways to address increasing stratification and inequalities in service provision and viewership. at present, the increased monetisation of content results in the exclusion of the poor members of the community who cannot afford certain services provided by broadcasters. convergence also makes it possible for companies to reduce labour and material costs, use the same media content across several media outlets, and increase brand presence. this aspect, however, needs to be handled with care to ensure that it does not result in job losses in an environment where there are already high unemployment rates. as indicated, there are many challenges and questions for those setting policy goals to ensure sufficient diversity, independence, and accessibility of electronic media in the digital environment. there is therefore a need for more research that looks at how the digital disruption interfaces with existing inequalities in society and the extent to which the convergence accommodates those who have been left at the margins of citizenship. references ahmady, g.a. & mehrpou, m. 2016. organizational structure. social and behavioral science 230: 455-462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.09.057 bardoel, j. & d’haenens, l. 2008. public service broadcasting in converging media modalities: practices and reflections from the netherlands. convergence: the international journal of research into new media technologies 14(3). doi: https:// doi.org/10.1177/1354856508091086 bevacqua, j. 2019a. the future of people management in the digital age. leadership insight. bevacqua, j. 2019b. the rise of team-based organizational structure. leadership insight. jakubowicz, k. 2011. media revolution ahead of the curve. paris: council of europe publishing. mathurine, j. 2013. understanding convergence for legacy media. in: muvhungu, j. & picard, r. (eds). media management in the new age: how managers lead media in southern and eastern africa. sol plaatje institute for media leadership. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.09.057 https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856508091086 https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856508091086 pb168 motsaathebe motsaathebe, g. 2018. quis custodiet ipsos custodes? reporting corruption in african media environments. african journal of rhetoric 41(4): 19-40. motsaathebe, g. 2013. managing ethics in african media environments. in: muvhungu, j. & picard, r. (eds). media management in the new age: how managers lead media in southern and eastern africa. sol plaatje institute for media leadership. phillis, r. 1997. public service broadcasting in a digital age. media asia 24(2): 79-80. doi: 10.1080/01296612.1997.11726525 price, m. & marc, r. 2011. public service broadcasting in transition: a documentary reader. centre for global communication studies. [online]. available at: http://repository. upenn.edu/cgcs_publications/1 [accessed on 21 january 2021]. thomas, j.p. 2009. media management manual: a handbook for television and radio practitioners in countries-in-transition. new delhi: unesco house. http://repository.upenn.edu/cgcs_publications/1 http://repository.upenn.edu/cgcs_publications/1 1pb exploring key areas of transformation in a south african media organisation abstract understanding the scope, progress and impact of transformation in the media industry in south africa is important to ensure the success of its implementation. the impact of the digital revolution, the development of new media spheres and the subsequent information explosion brought new angles and variables to the transformation mix and created new challenges for transformative media managers. this study investigated perceptions of media transformation, transformation initiatives, and the extent of transformation activities at the times media group for the period 1994 to 2016. using the main themes of modernday media transformation as background to determine perceptions both from management and employees, the research identified areas of best practice, as well as areas of competitive weakness impacting on media management, media audiences and media practitioners. qualitative data obtained from in-depth interviews and focus groups provided information on different types of media transformation, and the impact thereof on aspects such as ownership, management practices and media content. results indicated a dedication and commitment to ongoing change and transformation by both media managers and practitioners. it provided valuable insight on how journalists’ perceptions and media practices were impacted by transformation. specific transformation themes were identified, which could assist media managers with change management processes and to implement meaningful business transformation. keywords: transformation; media transformation; media management; print media; digital innovation; online journalism; social media; media audiences; media displacement; media niche introduction international trends such as liberalisation, socio-economic development, internationalisation and digitalisation con tinuously force change and transformation on democratic, societal and economic institutions. additional to these international trends, political transformation since democratisa tion in 1994 had become an important change factor in south africa. andile april postgraduate student, department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email: andile.april@sasol. com orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-1159-3628 phillipine m. maubane department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email: maubanepm@tut. ac.za orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-9861-0151 dr lizette odendaal department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email: odendaall@tut.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-7172-612x doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.8 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-17 date submitted: 5 august 2019 date accepted: 11 october 2019 date published: 03 december 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:andile.april@sasol.com mailto:andile.april@sasol.com http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1159-3628 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1159-3628 mailto:maubanepm@tut.ac.za mailto:maubanepm@tut.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9861-0151 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9861-0151 mailto:odendaall@tut.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7172-612x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7172-612x https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.8 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 april, maubane & odendaal transformation changed the way in which the south african society views itself, its interaction with democracy and its economic interaction as consumers and business markets (manganyi 2004). the implementation of transformation policies and strategies on a national level affects all economic and government sectors and forces organisations to implement revised and new business practices to ensure equality and equity in the workplace and in economic society (selby & sutherland 2006; schoeman 2010). all industries are affected by transformation, with the media industry being no exception. over the past two decades, transformation has completely transformed the economic and business landscape of the country (manganyi 2004). the main aim of transformation, as stated in the constitution of the republic of south africa in 1996, was to achieve equitable representation in the workforce across occupational levels, industries and entrepreneurial enterprises (alexander 2007). transformational ideals were meant to improve the life of all south africans, first by creating opportunities within organisations, and then by encouraging organisations to introduce corporate social responsibility initiatives that would empower and develop the historically disadvantaged south. in this way transformation in the workplace would filter through to improve the lives of citizens. the first step in the transformation process was the drafting of a constitution for south africa, followed by processes that would allow the new government to formulate clear and solid obtainable transformative projects (heller & ntlokonkulu 2001). the next phase was to create economic opportunities for historically disadvantaged people to take part in the mainstream economy through employment and ownership opportunities in the corporate environment. central to the successful introduction of new policies and programmes on a national level, for any country, stands the role of the media. leshin (2010) posits that the media have a unique role within the politics of transformation. media organisations operate in dual positions both as instruments of transformation and as sites of transformation. the media serves as change agents of transformation by providing essential platforms for communication and development between government, economic industries and society. governments rely on the media to facilitate communication, introduce change, and persuade citizens to accept new ways of living. but, as daniels (2013) indicates, in order for the media to be successful agents of change, the media industry itself must believe in transformation principles and implement them within media organisations. the media as an industry was expected to transform itself according to the nationally prescribed policies and strategies. this resulted in major organisational change for the south african media industry, not only with regard to content and distribution, but also with important and crucial changes to business models (casero-ripollés & izquierdo-castillo 2013). upon realising the importance of a transformed media industry to the general success of transformation in south africa, the government introduced several programmes, acts and bodies since the late 1990s to assist with expediting transformation within the media industry, with varying degrees of success. 32 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... the success of transformation within the south african media industry has often been questioned, and in 2010 the anc again called for an investigation into the challenges hampering the transformation of the print media industry. the government also mandated the development of a charter to deal with the concentration of ownership, language diversity and gender mainstreaming within the media industry (daniels 2013). at its mangaung policy conference in december 2012, the anc confirmed that transformation, especially in the print media, remains a contested terrain and that real transformation is hindered by power struggles within the industry, as well as by ideological differences based on race, class and gender in society (ibid.). in 2017, the forum of journalists for transformation (fjt) indicated that there was still a general lack of transformation in the media and opined that role-players in the industry failed to acknowledge this fact (mdluli 2017). de beer et al. (2016) indicate that the role of the media in the new south africa continues to cause intense debates. it is only when the industry itself is seen to have transformed that their messages and calls for transformation in the country will have credibility. de beer et al. (2016) explain that this dilemma for the media is similar in all other new african democracies, and must be addressed to ensure the credibility of transformation processes. the perception remains that transformation in the media has not been achieved in south africa. business report (2016) reported that the anc women’s league (ancwl) called on the anc-led government in 2016 to increase transformation efforts to support ownership, control and access to the media by historically disadvantaged communities. according to the ancwl, 22 years after democracy, diversity and equity challenges in media organisations still impact on the objective dissemination of media content and impair the workings of successful media (business report 2016). leshin (2010) points out that the widespread disagreement among scholars and media practitioners about the success of transformation, or lack thereof, is indicative of the absence of a generally accepted definition of media transformation. duncan (2016) agrees that different definitions exist, and posits that the one most widely used is by boloka and krabill (2000 in duncan 2016): “successful transformation is achieved when the elements of society, i.e. race, socio-economic status, gender, religion, language and culture is reflected in the media industry in terms of its ownership, staffing and the product”. with the advent of online technologies and internet journalism, transformation challenges increased and media managers had to implement even more change processes. duncan (2016) notes that modern transformation weaknesses lie in the disappearance of in-depth reporting due to time constraints caused by media inequalities, income dependencies and the fragmentation of audiences. the pressure on media organisations to transform is evident, but to add to these significant changechallenges is the context of technological innovations and the rise of the internet and social media (casero-ripollés & izquierdo-castillo 2013). the influence of online and social media causes strong competition for media income and leads to huge decreases in the revenue of print media products, thus decreasing the resources available for transformational and developmental programmes. 54 april, maubane & odendaal the need for descriptions of and information on media transformation in south africa is clear. different opinions, views and outlooks on the concept of media transformation exist. these opposing views from within the industry complicate the creation of yardsticks by which transformation progress can be measured. it also creates confusion about what a complete, pragmatic approach to transformation management should, and should not, include. any change management or transformation process relies heavily on resources and therefore needs to be accurate to create a competitive advantage for media managers and organisations. background modernisation theory the modernisation paradigm applies insights from communication models to address the shortcomings of development and modernisation in developing countries (mowlana & wilson 1990; mcconnell & servaes 1995). with the emergence of disruptive technologies during the second half of the 20th century, developing countries had to deal with new technological challenges, which compounded the existing political and economic issues (conradie & diederichs 2012). the aim of the modernisation approach is to assist developing countries to change according to the example of developed countries in terms of critical factors such as economic systems and production, political structures, the transfer of information and communication technologies, urbanisation, social and cultural life, ideology and communication systems (mowlana & wilson 1990). in south africa, after 1994, all of these key factors were influenced by transformation impacting on the development process of the country. this study indicates that it is because of the responsibility of communicating change and transformation to large parts of south africa that the pressure on the media to transform itself is so intense. according to the modernisation theory, the south african media should be responsible for developing and transforming the society, and for developing and transforming itself. displacement theory the media displacement theory focuses on the displacement effect of technological change and development on traditional media (de waal & schoenbach 2010). the displacement theory assumes that when a new medium enters the media industry it impacts negatively on existing media forms by providing new opportunities for news consumption for current users (newell et al. 2008). vyas et al. (2007) explain that in a post-modernist media world displacement effects influence all traditional media forms as the old media increasingly lose their audiences to the internet, and therefore lose valuable advertising revenue (napoli 2010). dimmick et al. (2004) concur that, with increased competitive displacement, all media forms are in competition with each other. 54 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... by using the media displacement theory as a second lens, this study investigates the print media industry in south africa, as displaced both by socio-political development and by new media technologies. this displacement leaves media organisations with no other option, but to transform and restructure their business processes and operations, to ensure economic growth and survival. theory of niche the theory of niche provides an understanding about how different media forms and organisations compete and co-exist in limited resource environments for economic survival (dimmick 2002; okazaki et al. 2009). from this perspective, the comparative ability of a news organisation to fulfil audiences’ needs and to provide them with gratification is imperative for its survival. one way of doing this, as part of business transformation, is by implementing new media content solutions in utilising internet access and creating online presence (vyas et al. 2007). the south african media industry is characterised by limited resources and ongoing political change, adding to the displacement of traditional media. leshin (2010) indicates that private and public media institutions need to transform by redefining their niche markets (traders, advertisers, staff and owners) in terms of transformational directives. the theory of niche indicates that traditional media need to transform and re-invent their niche areas in order to survive. indicative to this study, the drivers of this niche transformation in south africa include socio-political pressure, on the one side, and technological development, on the other side. using the theory of niche, this study determines the impact of transformation practices and change management processes on the creation of new niche areas. business transformation in order to create economic equity in a country, business transformation is the most important element of any transformation process. kaplan and norton (2004) describe business transformation as a strategy of change management that aims to successfully link people, processes and technology with the organisation’s strategy and vision. norris (2001) points out that any successful organisational transformation must be part of a wider strategic initiative, which intends to bring about significant modifications in institutional management and practices. norris (2001) explains that change in the business world is mostly unplanned, referring to the political, economic, socio-cultural or technological changes to which managers must respond with transformational change for their businesses to adapt. this process compels managers to intentionally re-engineer organisational structures, tasks and relationships to adjust to change and to enable the organisation to stay competitive. the importance of transforming organisations in order to transform the country has been pointed out since the early days of transformation in south africa. the original transformation policies and practices implemented by the government alone did not do much to transform the business world in south africa (jacobs 2002). economic 76 april, maubane & odendaal industries had to take this legal mandate further and implement transformation practices suited to each industry. media transformation on the one hand, the media are the protected providers of a public service and uphold democracy, while on the other hand, they are private businesses selling products. as private businesses, they have to adhere to the same transformational policies that they advocate to the public. according to the market model, the media should be treated like all other commercial businesses and be held to the same regulations. this concept is supported by media management scholars (compaine & gomery 2000; keeble 2006) who emphasise that newspapers are primarily businesses that exist to make money and, in doing so, they meet people’s informational needs. the media industry in south africa came under government scrutiny during the late 1990s, at the height of workforce transformation and affirmative action. pressure on the print media industry to appoint black media practitioners paid off. berger (2001) indicates that by 2000, nine of the large dailies in south africa had replaced white editors and deputy editors with black appointments. however, none of these appointments included women. according to bhorat and goga (2012), while in 1994 there was not a single black woman in a managerial position in any south african media company, in 1999, black women held at least held six percent of the managerial posts in the media. the south africa media industry has witnessed countless transformation approaches, practices and activities since 1994. but, in the early 2000s most first-line managers were still english-speaking, younger men, with good educational credentials (steyn & de beer 2004). duncan (2016) indicates a lack of female representation in media management structures in south africa, with males dominating at senior levels, such as section heads in investigative units. it is clear that there is the will to implement transformation practices, but intention alone does not automatically result in meaningful, substantial and continued change. research methodology this phenomenological study followed a qualitative inquiry strategy to explore the key areas of media transformation in south africa. by using a south african media organisation, times media group (tmg), the perceptions of both management and employees on the phenomenon of transformation were explored. purposive sampling was used in order to collect data for this study. because the aim of the study was to explore key areas of transformation in a large south african media organisation by determining the views of both management and employees, empirical data was collected through two qualitative data methods. in-depth interviews were conducted with managers and executives at tmg, as more insight was sought for a managerial perspective on the concept of transformation. secondly, the focus group method was used with working journalists at tmg to provide them with an opportunity to express their feelings and viewpoints on transformation 76 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... in the organisation. each focus group consisted of between six and ten professional journalists, stationed at various newspaper agencies of tmg. the participants had more than five years’ media experience and their ages ranged from 25 to 40. a thematic data analysis was used in this study to analyse the themes that emerged from the data results. these themes were further explored and analysed to form the proposed key variables of media transformation at a south african media organisation. findings in order to establish a conceptualisation of the variables that will be influenced by or impact on the construct of media transformation, it was important to determine how participants from within the industry viewed media transformation. in determining a mutual understanding of the concept, all the respondents agreed that transformation should bring about fundamental and effective change, not only in product, audiences and distribution, but also resulting in efficient organisational change processes that will cascade into societal and cultural change. concepts become measurable when theoretical definitions are measured against operational implications and pragmatic processes (papastefanou 2008). therefore, to bring order and structure to the data and to foster an understanding of the different variables affecting transformation activities, empirical data is presented according to identified themes. these themes were selected according to thematic analysis, used in exploratory studies, and served to explain existing perceptions and information with regard to transformation at tmg. theme 1: ownership and management one of the first transformational goals in south africa post-1994 was for organisations to include the representation of black people at executive board level. this goal was to ensure that blacks, as business owners, would fundamentally be involved in the implementation of operational and strategic decisions to ensure that transformation filtered through to all lower levels, as well as the community. results indicate that tmg was one of the first media organisations in south africa to introduce ownership changes through take-overs, mergers or joint ventures with the aim to diversify to black ownership. each of these ownership changes impacted on the organisational culture and media outputs of professional journalists. the respondents voiced criticism at the fact that ownership and management changes happened “too often” and without clear corporate communication to senior staff members about the implications. the respondents questioned the long-term effectiveness of these ownership changes as part of a transformation goal, and felt that it slowed down the organisation’s growth because of the disruptive nature of change. the general perception was that ownership changes merely benefitted a black elite, and did not provide black economic empowerment (bee) opportunities to general employees. the research findings indicated that the advantages of having new owners included the availability of corporate funds for equipment, and new business contacts, which 98 april, maubane & odendaal could be used for securing advertising. the main disadvantage of frequent ownership changes appeared to be the creation of a “distance” between owners and workers. both the managers and the journalists felt that the new owners only had their own financial interests at heart, rather than true transformational objectives. continued ownership changes in media groups are in line with global patterns where horizontal integration of media titles by media groups leads to the creation of monopolies in media markets (franklin 2008). criticism includes that changes in ownership patterns inhibit audience choice, dictate content and content patterns (meyer 2004), and inhibit diversity, quality and journalistic freedom (franklin 2008). theme 2: business transformation no single measure exists to measure transformation in the media industry, and as indicated by daniels (2013), bee scorecards have stopped indicating success in overall transformation. transformation success can only be achieved if business industries transform, resulting in opportunities for staff, customers and target groups. for the purpose of this study, the term business transformation was selected as a theme to clarify transformational changes that impact media business processes. these include advertising, as main income source; audiences, as consumers of media products; and operational technology, which indicates the changing nature of journalists’ jobs. advertising advertising and access to advertising is always one of the first agenda points at any media transformation meeting. for a declining print media industry (swanepoel 2012), in light of the internet and social media, advertising approaches needs to be re-invented. the staff members at tmg all realise the importance of advertising as a main income source, and understand the threat of digital media to print media advertising. the quick pace of development of multimedia platforms necessitate constant change in the way advertising at tmg is managed. senior managers re-strategise and transform their approach to advertising and new advertising business models are created with a focus on advertorials and other initiatives to augment advertising income. one of the advertising initiatives is the implementation of native or sponsorship advertising in order to generate revenue. this is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears, but produced by an advertiser, which will then promote a specific product. the difference is that it is not seen as an advertisement as such, but it is presented in a similar form and style, and it is generally seen as the work of the platform’s editorial staff. the term “native” refers to this coherence of the advertising content with that used by the online platform. this is a form of paid for media content. the latest income threat to news organisations, as indicated by the results, is the search engine google. corporate businesses are spending significant amounts of money trying to reach customers via advertising through google news searches. many news consumers search for breaking news stories directly on google, instead of using 98 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... regular news media. through advertising linked to these news reports, google makes money out of the searches and none of this money filters down to the media houses, such as tmg, which produce the original articles in the first place. with google being an international company, this advertising revenue is lost to south africa. de waal and schoenbach (2010) refer to the displacement effect that new technologies have on traditional media and recognise the dire implications for advertising income. the results also indicated that more innovative ways of creating advertising income were constantly explored by tmg. the managers and the journalists agreed that this was an important item of discussion in all meetings and forums. audiences napoli (2010) indicated that modern media audiences have unprecedented choice between different technologies, platforms and devices for their consumption of news content. the results confirmed that, in line with this, the readership profiles of news audiences at tmg had changed. from the interviews, the managers indicated that the socio-economic, political and consumption profiles of their traditional target groups had changed beyond recognition over the past years. tmg’s audience now represent the black middle class, younger mobile-oriented users, and traditional readers who prefer to read print titles online. digital innovation significantly influences the news consumption patterns of audiences. this new audience marketplace allows media users total choice, and it affords them the opportunity to become producers and distributors of content themselves on social media. the journalists indicated that this change required news “around the clock and on the move”, and for tmg to stay relevant it had to “merge news platforms and create a super newsroom”, operating 24 hours per day. this led to product innovation (inclusion of graphics, visuals, colour and movement), changed distribution channels and the inclusion of content generated by users. for the first time, tmg now breaks stories on online platforms and then follows up in print news titles with in-depth stories. social media has led to younger audiences preferring different types of news stories. rather than reading long, investigative articles, they want short, headlinetype newsflash stories, written in simple words and phrases. for the journalists to satisfy this new need, they had to learn how to adapt and write copy for social media platforms, such as facebook and twitter. the findings on the transformation of audiences at tmg and the fragmentation of the media market have definite implications for the handling of news audiences. napoli (2010) agrees that changed audiences will impact traditional news markets and predicts that media audiences will continue to evolve in response to this. at tmg, this reality became a strategic objective and the organisation, as far as audience change is concerned, has become a learning organisation that accepts continued change. operational technology the occupation of being a journalist has forever transformed with globalisation of the internet and the development of online technologies (saldaña et al. 2017). 1110 april, maubane & odendaal the respondents confirmed that modern journalists have to cope with very strict deadlines, must maintain social closeness with their readers and audiences, and must adapt to changed work processes to include multitasking and adaptability. the results in this study indicated that it was indeed technological change that served as the main driver for transformed journalism practices, as well as the rising financial cost of operations. the respondents indicated that the immediacy and 24-hour availability of news on online and mobile platforms had forced tmg’s management to adapt operations. the journalists had to be given access to social media and had to create official social media accounts on facebook and twitter. this implied that new talent had to be recruited to manage the social media platforms and the journalists had to learn how to report for, and on, social networking sites. tmg was forced to re-examine its online content distribution strategies and tmg journalists were no longer confined to their desks, but were able to file stories from anywhere using laptops provided by the company. news diary sessions are conducted electronically and journalists are able to record their interviews with news sources instead of “writing on notepads”. however, expensive technology has to be replaced constantly to keep up with developments and to ensure the relevance of news presentation in the way it is gathered, interpreted and consumed. tmg now also makes use of innovations, such as uber, for journalists in order to save money in terms of vehicles’ maintenance, insurance and petrol costs. however, as tmg is a large company, many of the respondents felt that not all journalists at all publications benefitted equally. the new operational technology also impacts on the expected productivity of journalists, as well as their ability to constantly improve their knowledge and technology skills. the journalists indicated that they had to be at the forefront of technology and that those who refused to adopt ict did so at their own peril, no matter their current profile or status. to complicate their daily work further, cost-cutting measures prevented reporters from building relationships with news sources, conduct investigations, or visit news scenes. therefore, the journalists saw themselves as desk journalists who were forced to source stories online and then still had to ensure objective quality in content presentation. theme 3: human resources transformation as the concept of transformation centres around human resources in the workplace, and how changes impact employees, this dynamic is central to any transformational change. sudden or constant change brings adaptive and disruptive working conditions with increased pressure on leaders to implement change and manage changed work environments (hannah et al. 2011). bee practices bee was an integral part of transformation in south africa. during the in-depth interviews, the managers attested to the fact that tmg was one of the first media companies to embrace bee as a practice. through these initiatives, black-white staff quotas had been achieved. the majority of the respondents indicated that blacks were increasingly being appointed into editorial positions at tmg’s different titles, but 1110 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... that the authority linked to these positions was limited. this was one of the reasons provided for the lack of sustainability in transformative positions at tmg because the power to make decisions, often editorial, remained with those who had moved up to the boardrooms. in principle, tmg embraced the concept of bee and focused on creating an equitable, fair employee profile – especially in the lower ranks, for example, the newsrooms. many affirmative action appointments have taken place and, according to the professional journalists, newsrooms now represent the south african community. as with any change management process, the implementation of bee at tmg led to a temporary transition period with a loss of skills, but according to the respondents, stability had returned. bee created space for younger journalists who replaced the older generation. the younger journalists did more work for lower salaries, and adopted faster to a multi-skilled environment with a higher production output. criticism from the respondents indicated a need that bee at tmg should also lead to the economic empowerment of both individual employees and the business community. in their choice of business partners and suppliers, it was indicated that tmg was not doing enough to ensure black economic empowerment for its business communities. moreover, the journalists pointed out that although bee appointments had been made at tmg, this led to no financial gain or economic empowerment of the employees in terms of shares ownership, profit sharing, or performance incentive bonuses. women empowerment women empowerment as part of transformation in south africa’s economic sector is still a contested and topical issue. this is similar elsewhere in the world where in a modernist, global media industry the role and impact of women is researched and debated (gouws 2008). the respondents in this study indicated that evidence of women empowerment at tmg in terms of female journalists being promoted to editors did exist. to date, a number of female journalists were promoted to news editors and editorship roles for different tmg newspaper titles, for example sunday world. women empowerment is regarded as a key transformational area in the organisation, but a lingering concern is the sustainability of these positions. a challenge for tmg was that promoted women did not seem to remain in the positions, and a lack of support and development initiatives by tmg to empower female appointees were indicated as possible reasons. there had been a definite increase in women appointed in more junior reporting positions, but very few women were represented in ownership and management structures. the findings indicated that tmg did not have a formal woman empowerment programme to assist with succession planning, career advancement, or management potential development. the female respondents voiced their concern that in the true sense of empowerment, women were not empowered at tmg. they mentioned as examples pay inequality, the allocation of soft reporting beats, and the lack of empowerment projects. 1312 april, maubane & odendaal skills development with media production as its core function, skills development is considered important at tmg. the respondents affirmed the management’s commitment towards constantly identifying skills gaps, providing plans and implementing actions to develop journalistic skills. tmg also has a journalism training programme, which was established in 1998 to help create a pool of predominantly black journalists with the knowledge and skills necessary to be appointed in available affirmative action positions. regular courses and training are provided by tmg to improve media skills in order to ensure a quality media product. the respondents also named the “job coaching” programme, where supervisors would provide mentorship both with regards to journalism tasks, and management/leadership skills, as one of tmg’s successful programmes. criticism, on the other hand, included the perception that tmg’s transformation activities were just done in order for the management to be able to report to the government, and to complete the “bee tick boxes”. the responses showed that tmg invested time and money in skills development and committed to lifelong learning. however, these initiatives were limited to journalistic skills and the perception existed among staff members that it was more for the product’s sake than for transformational staff development purposes. theme 4: digital transformation the concept of global digitalisation has transformed the media industry by presenting completely new ways of transmitting information. not only did it change the profile of audiences (de waal & schoenbach 2010), with implications for content production, but it also displaced traditional print media (newell et al. 2008) forcing newspaper organisations to adapt their product in numerous ways. all of these global tendencies were confirmed by the results in the study; also impacting on the change and transformation processes of tmg. content change tmg was forced to implement content change in line with changed audience requirements. the respondents indicated that tmg stayed relevant to its new audiences by making news simpler; thus, creating usable products. the product was used to uplift and educate readers, especially when journalists investigated the performance of the government. the editors of the different tmg publications have also made concerted efforts to cover stories that appeal to the average news consumer. newspaper titles, such as sunday world and sowetan, have introduced business reporting sections written in more simplified, plain and understandable language for a broader readership. competition from social media has forced tmg titles to be innovative and adopt social media as part of their content distribution strategy. a further implication of this new trend was that tmg had to adapt their content from a hard news approach to a 1312 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... softer news approach, similar to news feeds that digital audiences see daily on social networking sites. this new “celebrity-style” news content is what readers prefer. content packaging at tmg also changed completely; this was where the skills development of the journalists played a major role. the journalists had to re-package the same content (story) for different media platforms. content, in this sense, does not refer to only a news story, but to a packaged production, which includes text, audio, sound, pictures, web links and video. the journalists had to change their perception on news content, and how it should be produced. the impact of language the results also indicated that digital transformation influenced the use of language in two ways. firstly, the journalists now had to write for a wider, more diverse audience. secondly, they had to adapt the language usage of their online reporting to appeal to a new digital generation of media users. the language usage in the newspaper titles had to be simplified and the newspaper content became more accessible and reader-friendly. this meant that the different newspapers had to relax their style rules, and embrace the language preferences of their transformed audiences. this language transformation was, and is, reflective of the demographics of the country. both the managers and the journalists further acknowledged the huge influence that new media platforms and social media had on the use of language in news reports. to report on news that had already been seen on social media demanded a new phraseology, as well as fresh angles and approaches. the respondents indicated that the journalists were trained to use concise language, which was in line with social media posts. tmg is committed to adaptive language usage as part of transformation, and the journalists indicated that they regularly attended courses focusing on the difference between print and online platforms in terms of reporting, and on using language innovatively. they journalists further explained that not only was the shortened version of writing stories a skill to be learnt, but social media had its own terminology and acronyms. twitter journalism, for example, demands new language skills, and tmg newspaper titles, which are active on social media platforms, adapted to this style of writing to retain competitive niche advantage. digital and online platforms the influence of social media on newsrooms and journalists has been unprecedented in how news is gathered and distributed (govender-bateman 2018). the respondents agreed that the development of multiplatform journalism influenced every area of tmg’s daily management and functioning. at first, tmg only started with an internet website where news would be covered. this website, timeslive, was one of the first online news websites in south africa, and it still exists. after timeslive, tmg expanded to include different publications such as sowetanlive and sunday world. 1514 april, maubane & odendaal the introduction of social media led to the different publications establishing their own social media pages with handles advertised in the printed versions. all newsrooms in the group have been digitised and the new challenge is to keep up with software development and new interfaces. the last development in digital business transformation was the incorporation of facebook and twitter into the news delivery platforms. the respondents explained that tmg also had to adapt its management style to embrace social media. tmg management now made use of ict to improve communication in the newsrooms. mobile technology ensured that editors could get hold of reporters at any location, and get a story immediately. in addition, time is saved by digital transformation. tmg reporters file stories at any time via the internet or mobile technology, and record visuals with their cellular phones. moreover, organisational communication benefitted as management and editors are able to communicate instantly with groups of employees and reporters via platforms such as whatsapp. in terms of news distribution, tmg has become an online first media group where news is first covered online, and then in print media. as part of this digital strategy, and to counter declining print readership, tmg print news stories are promoted using social media platforms and twitter handles. other positive benefits of digital innovation include closer and faster interaction with readers, cheaper online distribution and new marketing channels. the journalists who were interviewed also confirmed that tmg was increasingly equipping them for the challenges of multi-platform journalism and therefore empowering them to become digital reporters. conclusion the study conceptualised the dual purpose of the print media within the broader transformation of south africa, and focused on both political and business transformation. by identifying areas of best practice and areas for improvement at tmg, the research aimed to determine the extent to which transformation had been achieved at the media organisation. qualitative data obtained from in-depth interviews and focus group interviews provided information on different types of media transformation, and the impact thereof on aspects such as ownership, management practices and media content. it further provided valuable insight on how journalists’ perceptions and media practices were affected by transformation. the findings indicated that media transformation was not prompted only by political change, but also by digital development, changed audience habits, media displacement and media competition. although the perceptions on specific aspects of successful transformation differed, there was agreement that transformation practices and policies should lead to development, both for the industry and for media practitioners. based on the findings, the study proposed important trends and key variables that could contribute to a new interpretation and possible definition of media transformation in the modern media. the results showed a symbiotic relationship between all of these transformation variables and indicated that transformation should be measured as an 1514 exploring key areas of transformation in a south african... integrated, systematic approach that addresses all four main transformation themes. the themes could be used to build an integrated transformation management model, by which 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public relations training; cultural diversity knowledge; cultural diversity; cape peninsula university of technology introduction public relations practitioners (prps) work with people from diverse cultures on a daily basis as they engage with various stakeholders on behalf of their organisation and clients. according to the public relations institute of southern africa (prisa 2017: 1), “public relations is the management of communication (being the representative of dissemination of information), of perception and strategic relationships (building and connecting with people) between an organization’s internal and external stakeholders.” in addition to south africa’s own multicultural environment, multicultural interactions are the norm on the global stage. jeffrey onganga1 email : jeffreyonganga@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-39060540 rifqah abrahams1 email : makwambenib@ cput.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-8426-1667 dr blessing makwambeni1 email : makwambenib@ cput.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-0188-260x 1public relations management department, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 152-166 date submitted: 15 june 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:jeffreyonganga@gmail.com mailto:jeffreyonganga@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3906-0540 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3906-0540 mailto:makwambenib@cput.ac.za mailto:makwambenib@cput.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8426-1667 mailto:makwambenib@cput.ac.za mailto:makwambenib@cput.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0188-260x https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 153152 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students 153152 unesco defines globalisation as “the ongoing process that is linking people, neighbourhoods, cities, regions and countries much more closely together than they have ever been before”. globalization has created new challenges and opportunities for the pr profession (sriramesh 2009: 9). prps are called upon to deliver more effective messages; promote deeper understanding between an organisation and its publics; improve corporate reputation; and expand the market share in diversity segments of stakeholder publics (ravazzani 2016: 4). companies that are regarded as culturally diverse have a better reputation and correspondingly favourable public relations. as such, cultural diversity knowledge has become central to success in the pr industry. however, pr professionals rarely receive diversity education in preparation for entering the pr field, even though such education is available. this competence has not been the focus of the pr learning process and there is no emphasis on its importance (toth 2009). in an effort to explore this matter, this article reports on an examination of the extent to which pr students of the cape peninsula university of technology (cput) receive cultural diversity training. literature review the new role of public relations the broad domain of pr includes the proper development of communication and positive interaction with multiple groups of internal and external stakeholders of an organisation (ferguson 2018: 178). moreover, prps operate either as advisors (for individual clients) or as technicians for higher managerial levels in organisations, with the responsibility of developing and disseminating messages and information efficiently through various channels. wilcox and cameron (2009: 5) point out that prps play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of bilateral communication channels; thereby, facilitating mutual understanding, cooperation and acceptance between organisations and stakeholders in different operational activities. the importance of leveraging relationships is central to the work of prps as this reaps benefits for organisations. heath (2006: 99) suggests that robust relationships are an attribute of high-performing companies, especially in the highly dynamic commercial environment. the pr teams of organisations have to adhere to a given strategic mandate to develop long-term and symbiotic relationships between different organisational participants. cultural diversity demographic changes over the last 20 years have created increased racial and ethnic diversity in the global labour force. global demographics (2019) indicates that about 60% of global inhabitants are asian; around 14% are african; while 11% are european; and only 5% are north american. 155154 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni the estimated population of south africa stands at 58.78 million, according to the 2019 mid-year population estimates (mype). the population mix shows various cultural traits, languages, as well as religious inclinations and practices. the black african population is in the majority (47.4 million) and constitutes approximately 81% of the total south african population. the white population is estimated at 4.7 million, the coloured population at 5.2 million, and the indian/asian population at 1.5 million. just over 51% (30 million) of the population is female (statssa 2019: 8). cultural diversity is noticeable at every company level. cultural differences appear in every country and part of the world, and this has the potential to affect the economy or political stability of a given nation. however, cultural diversity is also present in everyday situations. all the cultural differences should be incorporated and managed to take advantage of this configuration. in an attempt to contextualise cultural diversity, schachner et al. (2016: 1191) state that cultural definitions emphasise demographic traits (both primary and secondary). these authors (ibid.) also focus on the origins of the differences in the demographics, and the culmination from individual to group attributes. in addition to cultural definitions of diversity, there are some organisational approaches to defining the concept. many global organisations like mckinsey define cultural diversity as the process of ensuring the inclusion of a larger percentage of women and ethnic minorities. these definitions emphasise demographic traits and offer a more streamlined approach to ensuring a high degree of diversity. some definitions attempt to analyse cultural differences and their role in power distances, especially in the domains of functions and expectations in the workplace, perceptions, and the styles of individuals. these insights into cultural diversity are broad and do not provide a clear indication of how this diversity plays out in the workplace with a specific focus on the pr industry and its aspiring professionals. to ensure further clarity on cultural diversity, the university of michigan (2013) sought to delineate the concept of culture. the institution concluded that culture is how people relate to their physical and social environment, and how they express these relationships and stereotypes, as well judgements about an individual based on that “person’s membership of particular classifications”. while this definition provides more details on the key terms, it does not place cultural diversity in the context of the workplace. there is considerable debate on the benefits of a culturally diverse employee base for an organisation. the proponents in favour of maintaining culturally diverse workforces argue that it contributes to talent pools and the development of robust perspectives and insights. it enables the organisation to establish a culture of efficiency and problem solving. however, multicultural teams could experience increased conflict because of different belief and value systems. these issues could lead to a loss of productivity. prps should learn strategies to leverage the benefits of multiculturalism and address the drawbacks and cultural conflicts. it would help them to develop narratives that could effectively communicate the positive aspects of an organisation when it comes 155154 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students to managing cultural diversity. an awareness of these benefits and challenges would also aid them in determining the communication needs of a culturally diverse audience. cultural diversity knowledge the available literature at best offers loose indications of what cultural diversity knowledge entails. a 2009 unesco report titled investing in cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue states that creativity is a critical element of cultural diversity knowledge. according to the report, in cross-border communication, the presence of diversities of culture can be managed by strengthening the roots of the cultures, for which creative and adaptive responses to the dynamic environment are needed. people who have cultural diversity knowledge tend to work in synergy and value different viewpoints, as they understand that this increases the chance for positive opportunities. the more you interact with other employees, the more knowledge you gain, allowing for innovation and personal growth. the notion of cultural competence refers to the practical use of social and interpersonal skills and insights. an individual who appreciates cultural differences and uses it to his/her advantage or that of the group can be viewed as having cultural diversity competence. bennett (2014: 45) believes that the ability to adapt experiences and ideas to fit what each customer needs, as opposed to just trying the one-size-fits-all approach, is a sign of cultural diversity knowledge. he (ibid.) emphasises that the goal for companies is to tap into the knowledge and ideas generated by a diverse workplace. this provides the organisation with more ideas, which ultimately leads to better decisions. there are many ways to prepare pr students or employees for cultural diversity in the workplace. danso (2018: 410) suggests that the acknowledgement of differences is one of the best ways to promote cultural diversity successfully. however, according to lozano and escrich (2017: 679-696), offering training related to implicit bias is most useful to prepare students or employees for cultural diversity. mentoring individuals is also a great approach to establishing a helpful link with other groups, thereby contributing to a diverse workforce. mentoring also helps to overcome interaction barriers. according to danso (2018: 410), encouraging personal evaluation can also be as an effective way to minimise interaction constraints. this approach can help prepare students and employees for the challenges of a culturally diverse workplace. therefore, continuous learning can motivate employees to prepare for cultural diversity, as well as promote a culturally diverse workplace. table 1: indicators of cultural diversity knowledge indicators of cultural diversity knowledge creativity: coming up with original, innovative ideas teamwork: ability to collaborate with diverse individuals to achieve shared values and goals 157156 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni indicators of cultural diversity knowledge cultural self-awareness: ethnic identification ability flexibility: adaptive capacity to cope with global changes respect: respect for differences empathy: development of compassion with different perspectives and cultures critical thinking: ability to use deductive and inductive forms of reasoning language development: ability to write or read in different languages these indicators are crucial for the effective management of cultural diversity. pinto (2018) states that intercultural skills, like those mentioned above, should be part of training curricula. he (ibid.) also recommends training for instructors on how to integrate multicultural perspectives in classroom teaching. using elective courses for extra credits and introducing interactive learning activities with peers could also increase intercultural sensitivity, including in pr education. methodology given the fact that cultural diversity hinges on perceptions, experiences and opinions, the research followed a qualitative design. the researcher aimed to explore the opinions of the participants on cultural diversity in the programme to determine how future practitioners are being shaped. the research methods included face-to-face individual interviews with pr managers and pr lecturers, and focus group discussions with pr students. it included a review of documents related to the topic under study. all the interviews and focus group discussions took place on the cput’s cape town campus and were conducted before the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. the population for this study included pr students, pr lecturers and pr managers. third-year pr students were included because they already have a theoretical understanding of what is expected of them as future professionals. the sample for this study was selected from those third-year pr students at cput who had worked as interns. this experience was crucial as it gave the researcher the opportunity to gauge their sentiments on their level of preparedness on cultural diversity while in the industry. these students are at a crossroads between campus and the pr field. lecturers and managers were included for their opinion on the cultural diversity preparedness of the pr students. pr managers were included in the study, as they have to work with and supervise pr students who do internships as part of their training. these managers are in a unique position to judge the students’ ability to grasp issues of cultural diversity as they apply to pr work. finally, pr lecturers are responsible for providing the academic and theoretical knowledge necessary for students. their participation in this study 157156 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students offered a better understanding of the context in which the students learn before they enter the workplace. twenty-three participants were purposively selected for participation. this sampling technique ensured that participants, who had the relevant knowledge to provide insight into the topic under study, were selected (babbie & mouton 2001; de vos et al. 2002; sarantakos 1998; struwig et al. 2001). the study used qualitative thematic analysis to analyse the information collected through interviews (sarantakos 1998). central themes and inferences as well as conclusions were developed (karlsson 2016; krippendorff 1980; sarantakos 1998). results theme 1: the cultural diversity knowledge of pr students the data revealed that the pr students at cput have some theoretical knowledge of cultural diversity. however, they lack the practical expertise to apply this in the professional environment. the students struggle to relate their theoretical knowledge to real-life situations, and they are not confident when applying their knowledge. during the focus group discussions, one student mentioned that they had been taught how to work in a multi-cultural environment. however, there seems to be gaps in their cross-cultural knowledge, especially when it comes to application. many south african graduates are not able to apply the theory into practice. – pr student while we appreciate that theoretical knowledge is critical in our training process at the tertiary institution level, the fact that we cannot immediately apply this knowledge or see the correlation suggests that practical experience is complementary and key. perhaps we need to be assessed on our cultural diversity knowledge so that we know how ready we are before the industry. – pr student this confirms the findings of some studies that have suggested that pr professionals in africa are not equipped to enter the international field of operations, as they have inadequate access to diversity education (prisa 2019). similarly, toth (2009) argues that pr professionals rarely receive diversity education in preparation for entering the pr field. schachner et al. (2016: 1196) further affirm that there are considerable shortcomings in diversity education, despite this knowledge being available. i did not feel ready on this issue when i started my service training. there is huge variability in theory, which we were taught, and the reality we face when we are going to the industry. – pr student one respondent mentioned that the pr programme includes various field trips. the aim of these activities is to broaden students’ horizons and to provide them with perspectives on the real environment in which pr professionals operate. however, cultural diversity is not the focus of learning during the trips. the students acknowledged that the makeup of classrooms allow for diversity when students from different cultural backgrounds 159158 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni are put together. most of them made the point that they can navigate the differences for the sake of completing a project. however, they fail to retain these lessons as part of their learning and to carry this to the industry. creativity the data showed that students are encouraged to be creative when doing projects and assignments. this offers some opportunity to apply cultural diversity knowledge. generally, group assignments are an opportunity for us to share ideas and experiences with classmates from different cultures. it is true that lecturers try to form groups based on the differences of skills and cultures. – pr student the interviews with lecturers revealed that pr students are given exercises aimed at stimulating their creativity. bennett (2014: 45) holds that the ability to adapt experiences and ideas to each customer’s needs is a sign of cultural diversity knowledge. bennett (ibid.) stresses that the goal for companies is to tap into the knowledge and ideas generated by a diverse workplace, which provides the organisation with more ideas that can ultimately lead to better decision-making processes. however, while creativity is emphasised in the pr programme, there is no focus on using the culturally diverse environment in which the students learn to contribute to this trait. for example, students are allowed to choose the groups in which they want to work. most students, according to the participants, gather along the same racial lines most of the time. this does not allow for cross-cultural experience sharing. they are not clearly instructed to work across cultures to benefit the process of coming up with creative solutions. from an industry perspective, most students from the pr programme at cput are perceived to be capable and reliable. the industry participants explained that the high levels of creativity among these students make them valuable to companies. the industry participants, however, felt that students lack specific cultural diversity skills when they first take up positions as interns. it is also important to have a conversation with tertiary institutions on how students can be better equipped on cultural diversity knowledge and how to leverage it. – pr manager practice makes perfect and practical exercises need to be enhanced and increased for students before they enter the industry. this is to ensure that they are fully prepared. but practicals need to be adapted and aligned to the industry’s needs. students from cput demonstrate a level of competence but emphasis needs to be put on how the pr industry is evolving. the demand of a globalised world and challenges for pr professionals should be stressed. – pr manager teamwork the focus group sessions and interviews revealed that lecturers make an effort to enable students to work in teams. one lecturer indicated that working groups are formed across racial lines. 159158 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students this study found that working together with people from different cultural backgrounds is beneficial to the students as that enables sharing of skills, ideas and perspectives through interaction and socialisation. – pr lecturer this is only possible when the lecturers themselves play a role in forming groups. in such circumstances, the lecturers try to create culturally diverse groups to ensure greater inclusivity and higher exposure to varied viewpoints. some of the students failed to see the correlation between these group activities and the need to work across racial lines to be better quipped for the pr industry. the students indicated that they had not noticed any difference in their cultural sensitivity because of working in diverse groups. they did not feel that teamwork in this regard ensures a high degree of preparedness concerning cultural diversity. cultural self-awareness the focus group discussions showed that pr students are generally aware of the differences between themselves and the individuals around them. cultural selfawareness and a person’s ability to see how their culture has influenced them speak to consciousness. the focus group indicated that most students are aware of how their cultural background has shaped their personality. people from different backgrounds and with different values work in the same environment, and they view the world in different ways and unite to work in the same project. – pr student during the focus group discussion, students said that cultural diversity is discussed freely during classes without undue restrictions. they understand the influence of culture in a general manner. the study further revealed that the pr programme at cput makes provision for subjects, like communication science, that explore cultural diversity. the students confirmed that studying communication science gave them a better understanding of what to expect from culturally diverse workplaces. the course guide indicates that students are taught communication science in the first, second and fourth years of study. however, the research showed that there is a discrepancy between the awareness of cultural diversity instilled and transmitted to students, and their ability to put this into practice once they enter the industry. while the knowledge is conveyed to us, it is not made explicit that this is a critical skill for a pr student; we are ambivalent of its real-life application. – pr student flexibility the majority of students agreed that it takes a reasonable amount of time to adapt to the demands of the industry once they commence their internships. most students also indicated they are expected to develop pragmatism in the work of pr when they take up their internship positions. however, it is only when they are in the industry that they fully grasp cultural diversity and how it affects the profession of pr. 161160 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni the literature review established that practitioners face even greater diversity, operating “across time zones, within different political, economic, and social systems, and with varying media constraints” (wakefield 2008: 141). wakefield (ibid.) underlines that practitioners seek relationships with multinational populations who differ in national income, literacy, religion, environment, poverty, technology, governance, and language. therefore, the issue of adaptability is central to the work of a pr professional. respect and empathy respect and empathy include an appreciation for other people’s differences. it is crucial to respect the cultures and perspectives of different people. it can help to minimise conflict between different people and ensure that multiple people can work with one another with ease. respect and empathy also breed significant goodwill for specific professionals and the organisations that they represent. the data show that industry stakeholders assign importance to proper team development. industry stakeholders were adamant that the key to strong team development is the appreciation of differences in opinions. in this regard, pr managers remarked that cput pr students usually accept and appreciate the cultural diversity of their colleagues when they enter the workplace. one pr account director and supervisor of interns further affirmed that they have never experienced cases of racism, xenophobia, or any other element of rejection for the other from interns. the problem, however, remains that students still struggle to figure out how these differences can be an asset for them as pr professionals. the lecturers also stated that students understand that differences in others have the potential to broaden horizons, provide growth, and help to gain new insights. finally, the students revealed that cultural differences are palpable within the pr programme at cput, and they learn to work and accept each other, but students pointed out that there are many instances where classmates want to work with those of the same culture; thus, making it difficult to understand and learn about other cultures. critical thinking deductive reasoning refers to the process of moving from general premises to particular conclusions. the pr managers consider it important for students to develop critical thinking skills before starting their training in the industry. there was also an understanding that real-life exercises and the industry setting help to facilitate students’ ability to think critically and to connect the dots. the pr managers were unanimous that many cput pr students enter the field with encouraging signs in the area of critical thinking. nevertheless, their critical thinking skills need to be cultivated more in line with the requirements of the industry and the constantly changing environment. – pr manager students require more real-life experiences, while at universities, on how to use diversities of races and environments to their advantage. – pr manager 161160 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students the lecturers, on the other hand, indicated that cultivating students’ abilities to assess the soundness of knowledge claims and arguments is one of the most important objectives of the pr programme at cput. priority is given to how this skill can be transmitted to students, primarily through group and individual assignments. critical thinking is demanded, stimulated and rewarded in most instances. – pr lecturer the lecturers agreed that there is a need for more engagement and alignment with the industry with respect to critical thinking. although most students share the view that critical thinking skills are presented as very important in the learning process, they are unsure if they have what it takes to tackle the demands of the industry. language development pr recruiters regard the ability to speak more than one language as an asset, as evident from the interviews with industry representatives. a student who can speak different languages has a lot to bring to the firm. our challenge is also to be able to relate to diverse target audiences; language becomes a barrier at times. – pr manager students generally speak more than one language. south african students are usually able to speak and write in english/afrikaans/xhosa, for instance. for us, the more, the better. – pr manager multilingualism allows the pr professional to relate, communicate and engage with various audiences for the benefit of his/her clients. national understanding of different languages and cultures are needed to be able to address the cultural diversity question. – pr manager as far as the pr programme at cput is concerned, the students indicated that they would like to learn new languages, in addition to english and their various first languages. there was a call by the students for a language course. the students would like to learn to speak, read and write in specific languages, such as afrikaans and french, to ensure that they could reach out to a linguistically diverse audience. discussion the pr curriculum and teamwork the pr programme at cput has in place various activities that encourage students to work together across cultures, thereby helping to ensure that students learn about cultural diversity through proper interaction. it includes group assignments and other projects that require collaboration and understanding of one another. azman and erdil (2013: 27) indicate that people who have cultural diversity knowledge tend to work in synergy and to value different viewpoints, as they understand that this increases the chance for positive opportunities. 163162 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni however, the results show that students are unable to put the cultural diversity knowledge gained to use in real-life situations when they enter the industry. the industry respondents decried the fact that students are not always capable of connecting the dots on the issue of cultural diversity, and its importance for a pr professional. the current activities and projects contained in the curriculum should promote teamwork and do so implicitly. the pr curriculum and cultural self-awareness the data collected from the research also indicated that the pr curriculum was under review to adapt it to the pr environment. there was also recognition that the curriculum should evolve at the same pace as trends in the industry. the students asserted that the knowledge conveyed to them did not make it explicit that cultural diversity was a critical skill. they also argued that they were not taught hands-on approaches to apply cultural diversity knowledge in the workplace. most of the students also indicated that they were expected to develop an understanding of real fieldwork and cultural aspects when they started their internship programmes, and it was only then that they fully comprehended the notion of cultural diversity. on the specific issue of cultural diversity preparedness, the institution acknowledged the need to upgrade the current curriculum so that it catered to issues that were of practical interest to the students and industry. a different approach to how cultural diversity is taught to students before joining the industry should be considered. cultural diversity is an important learning component, but there is no particular emphasis on this issue in the curriculum and students are trusted to understand and adopt this concept as they progressed in the course. the role of field trips in cultural diversity education several field trips form part of the pr curriculum at cput. a field trip to the cape town holocaust & genocide centre serves to help them gain knowledge of different cultures to enrich their cultural experience. this allows the students to understand the ill effects of cultural discrimination and exclusion. a trip to south africa’s parliament helps students to understand that diverse people in the same country can be connected despite their differences. the trip to the parliament also serves to help students consider its impact on the political thoughts and viewpoints of the people. it further informs the students of the functioning of the different political bodies. the curriculum also includes a community engagement project with an ngo. this helps students understand how people from different cultures interact with their environment. the ngo project requires students to take part in a field trip to an ngo and interact with the volunteers and management involved in the project. as the project deals with community engagement, interacting and working with stakeholders of the organisation is imperative. to help students understand media relations, they are required to take part in the cape town international jazz festival. students are able to interact with people from 163162 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students diverse cultures, and they are exposed to how the festival brings people together and the role of the international media in facilitating interaction. students are encouraged to determine the impact of living conditions on people’s views and their culture by studying an integration project in the western cape province of south africa. students have to explore the differences between the different people who reside in the western cape province. the students learn that differences in living conditions, economic status and the cultural environment determine how people interact with their community, as well as with people of other districts and communities. the pr curriculum and language development during the interviews, the students expressed the desire to learn a new language as part of the curriculum so that their cultural understanding could be enhanced. making the curriculum multilingual would mean that students stood a better chance of being culturally prepared for the workplace. exposure to different languages also creates an understanding of the history of the language and the culture of the people. addon courses on linguistic diversity could be the key to cultural diversity. integrated learning and group work could help students to meet people from other cultures and to enhance their intercultural sensitivity. multicultural education also focuses on professional development and training through seminars, workshops and student exchange programmes. the pr curriculum, creativity and critical thinking the study indicates that creativity is a critical element of cultural diversity knowledge (unesco 2009). belanger (2015: 16) also states that creativity and problem-solving efficiency are among the benefits of focusing on cultural diversity in any company. pr managers consider it important for students to develop critical thinking skills before starting their training in the industry. although the majority of students from the pr programme at cput are viewed as capable and reliable, the industry players felt that students lacked creativity and critical thinking skills. conclusion the findings reveal that cultural diversity is one of the leading concerns of pr agencies across the world. due to the international expansion of business, companies now deploy culturally diverse employees so that they gain a better understanding of foreign markets; thus, enabling them to achieve a competitive advantage within the market sphere. anais et al. (2019) argue that internationalisation of the business process management system has inspired companies to serve hitherto unknown market spheres. it also implies that companies have to service an ethnically diverse range of consumers. given the above, pr professionals have to deal with all kinds of communities, each with their unique characteristics. according to azzopardi and mcneill (2016), effective pr comes from good experience. the findings of this study suggest that pr students 165164 onganga, abrahams & makwambeni at cput have significant theoretical knowledge, also about cultural diversity, but that they struggle to implement this in practice. recommendations considering the findings of the study, pr students should not only be encouraged to embrace cultural diversity as a critical skill, but the curriculum should be adapted so that students are given tools and are placed in an environment where they can succeed in this area. to reach this goal, tertiary institutions and the industry should have a more intimate relationship that enables constant feedback between the two parties during the internship process. in this way, the sector could regularly give information and feedback to the institution on the areas that need improvement. this collaboration should extend beyond the internship period. this would help tertiary institutions to design programmes that are in line with industry expectations on critical skills, such as cultural diversity knowledge. moreover, students should be evaluated on cultural diversity skills to ensure that they are able to relate easily with individuals from different cultural backgrounds. lecturers should also be intentional when constituting groups for assignments. they should ensure that they mix students in ways that allow for diversity. in addition, campus life should be flexible in ways that encourage discussions and interactions among people of diverse cultures. this could be supported by the participation of people from varied cultures coming together in an informal setting to discuss their culture, viewpoints, family setting, and the socio-economic setting. cput could also include new courses as part of academic learning to promote the cultural diversity preparedness of the students at the university, such as a course from the multi-cultural leadership foundation. such a course could be designed specifically for the students in their first year to encourage them to learn about other cultures. practical and interactive workshops could be arranged as part of the curriculum for the students in their second year. such workshops could include group work where intercultural groups could be formed to take part in workshops. current skills and industry trends should be taught so that students are ready to face workplace demands. lastly, the university could arrange fellowship schemes. educators from other universities could be invited to teach languages and courses that are specific to their universities. such a fellowship programme could be instrumental in exposing students to other cultures. this could enhance students’ cultural preparedness and limit their cross-cultural resistance. references azzopardi, c. & mcneill, t. 2016. from cultural competence to cultural consciousness: transitioning to a critical approach to working across differences in social work. journal of ethnic & cultural diversity in social work 25(4): 282-299. https:// doi.org/10.1080/15313204.2016.1206494 babbie, e. & mouton, j. 2001. the practise of social research. cape town: wadsworth. https://doi.org/10.1080/15313204.2016.1206494 https://doi.org/10.1080/15313204.2016.1206494 165164 the cultural diversity preparedness of public relations students danso, r. 2018. cultural competence and cultural humility: a critical reflection on key cultural diversity concepts. journal of social work 18(4): 410-430. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468017316654341 de vos, a.s. 2002. research at grassroots: for the social sciences and 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[ninth edition]. boston: pearson. http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/21091-violent-video-games-intensify-anti-arab-stereotypes http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/21091-violent-video-games-intensify-anti-arab-stereotypes http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a791492998~db=all http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a791492998~db=all https://doi.org/10.1080/10627260701727069 https://doi.org/10.1080/10627260701727069 _heading=h.1egqt2p _heading=h.3ygebqi _heading=h.2dlolyb _heading=h.3cqmetx _heading=h.4bvk7pj _hlk53456232 _hlk53367010 _heading=h.2r0uhxc _hlk53455745 _heading=h.3q5sasy _hlk53456743 untitled 37 plagiarism at tertiary institutions: perceptions of lecturers at the ufs campuses communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 37 51 mercia coetzee and h.j. breytenbach* abstract plagiarism has increased alarmingly on campuses world-wide. the internet has largely contributed to this problem. students are able to download complete art i c l e s , assignments and essays from the www and present it as their own original work. students also copy sections of articles and paste it into their assignments or dissertations without acknowledging sources. additional pressure is placed on lecturers to trace the sources from which the work was copied. world-wide research has indicated that plagiarism occurs on nearly all campuses and that students are increasingly guilty of committing plagiarism. electronic programmes for the detection of plagiarism are already in use on many european and american campuses, while only few south african universities utilise this facility. this study was undertaken to investigate the opinions of lecturers regarding the extent of plagiarism on the campuses of the university of the free state. the prevalence of plagiarism, sources from which were plagiarised, and resultant steps that should be taken according to lecturers, were investigated. * mercia coetzee and dr manie breytenbach lecture in the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction and purpose plagiarism is a world-wide problem that is increasingly being experienced at tertiary institutions. although plagiarism is no new problem in the academic world, the internet has given rise to a new generation of trespassers. students who have internet access are able to copy information on almost any subject directly from a web page and present it as their own. whilst access to much more information could lead to studies of a better quality, it also has the consequence that students increasingly submit copied work. as it is not always possible for lecturers to trace the original source, many cases of plagiarism pass without being detected. lecturers cannot lay a charge of plagiarism without sound evidence and condemnatory proof. finding the original sources is a time consuming task and places much pressure on already overworked lecturers. a survey was conducted amongst the academic staff of the university of the free state in order to determine the extent of plagiarism at this university. the aim of this survey was: • to determine the extent of plagiarism in the various departments of the ufs; and • to investigate what measures are being taken, and should be taken against students committing plagiarism. additionally, a literature study was undertaken to determine the extent of plagiarism at other tertiary institutions in south africa and methods they use to combat plagiarism. brief literature review plagiarism is generally considered to be the presentation of somebody else’s intellectual work or ideas as your own, without giving recognition to the creator or writer thereof. this includes the following: • the direct copying from a source; • the “cut and paste” from www sources, presenting it as one’s own original work; and • the use of other students’ or people’s assignments as one’s own. brits and ackermann (2006: 83) define plagiarism as “...the fraudulent presentation of artistic and other creative material as your own. it is an attempt to mislead readers, viewers, a publisher, a newspaper editor or university authorities.” guy berger (department of journalism at rhodes university) describes plagiarism as theft and people committing plagiarism as thieves (citizen 2003: 13). according to die burger, plagiarism happens “...if you take somebody else’s intellectual property and you use a substantial portion of it under your own name” (citizen 2003: 13). plagiarism is not only the word-for-word copying of information. according to die burger (2003: 16), even the prevalence of intrinsic similarities in a story or argument also constitutes plagiarism. 38 the internet plays a definite role in the rise of plagiarism at universities. the internet not only has simplified finding applicable information, but in the era of “copy and paste”, students can submit an assignment in which the greatest input was to type the appropriate keywords into the search engine. it seems that students consider the internet as the only source of information and only use the www for research. even if proven to students that the information available online is not always of a high quality, they still prefer to search online rather than to visit the library. mclafferty and foust (2004: 186) are of the opinion that the presence of the billions of web pages serves as “an unprecedented resource and tool for the cut-and-paste con artist to use in creating unoriginal works”. these authors consider plagiarism a threat to the essence of academic life to such an extent that the credibility of professions in total is being frowned upon. the saturday star (2005: 16) refers to the young people of our day as “the generation cut and paste” and calls the prevalence of plagiarism at universities “a shocking state of affairs”. according to the saturday star, up to 80% of students have admitted to having used material without referencing it. the saturday star considers plagiarism to be theft and proposes that plagiarism should be handled in the same way as theft of property: “… when a country’s educational institutions lose their integrity, when the value of the qualifications they issue is nearly worthless, then your country itself is little more that a banana republic” (saturday star 2005: 16). according to the turnitin web page (plagiarism and turnitin.com 2005: 5), between 50% and 90% of students commit plagiarism and only a few are caught out. not all of them commit plagiarism deliberately, many students do not know what plagiarism is or did not receive adequate information on the seriousness of the transgression. in a study on dishonesty among students, mccabe (as cited by iliff and ziao, 2004: 2) found that 68% of students and scholars had been dishonest at least once. iliff and xiao (2004: 2) also refer to a study by davis in which it was found that between 75% and 80% of students out of a group of 8000 indicated that they had been dishonest before. iliff and ziao are of the opinion that students that are dishonest in one way are also prone to be dishonest in other ways, for example to plagiarise or to copy in tests. the sunday tribune (2004: 9) makes reference to research conducted in britain which had indicated that one out of three students holding a degree had copied work from friends or from the www. during 2003 an extensive study conducted among 18 000 students and 2600 faculty members of the rutgers university in the united states showed that 38% of all undergraduate students participating in the study had copied information from the www without referencing it (beasley 2004: 2). davis (as quoted by scanlon 2003: 162) already found in 1992 that 76% of students were dishonest at university or at school, or both. of the 89% of students that have indicated that they consider plagiarism to be wrong, 25% indicated that they also commit plagiarism themselves (scanlon 2003: 163). students are more computer and internet literate than most lecturers are; even primary school pupils know how to find 39 information on the www. mccabe, as quoted by scanlon (2003: 162) found that pupils consider themselves having proprietary rights over information on the www, hence the high occurrence of plagiarism among high school pupils. various online services are available where complete essays, assignments and articles can be downloaded. by typing the words “free term paper” into google, a result of 227 million records was obtained. some of these services are free of charge, others vary from fairly cheap to very expensive. amongst the first 20 web pages found in the search, the following services, amongst others, were available to students and pupils: • cyber essays (http://www.cyberessays.com) – free assignments, essays and reports on all subjects in a database consisting of 300 000 sources. • thepaperexperts (http://www.thepaperexperts.com) – assignments on any subject, written by professional writers and editors. • 1millionpapers.com (http://www.1millionpapers.com) – documents, reports and essays on any subject. • oppapers.com (http://www.oppapers.com) – assignments, reports, essays or research reports written by other students and pupils. • cheathouse (http://www.cheathouse.com) – free essays, assignments and research reports from a choice among 130 categories. • academic term papers (http://www.academictermpapers.com) – yields research reports at the minimal cost of $7.00 per page. • a! termpaper (http://www.a1-termpaper.com) – has 20 000 prepared essays on any subject imaginable. • school sucks (http://www.schoolsucks.com) – supplies free assignments on any subject imaginable. these and similar services present students with the opportunity to commit plagiarism. students do not consider it a transgression or plagiarism if they buy an article, or if they obtain an assignment written by somebody else. the disadvantage is that no learning has taken place. not only do they not learn how to collect and assimilate information and to write an assignment, but also the subject of the assignment which forms part of the learning outcomes – is not studied by the students. this reflects further in the fact that students no longer read and do not make use of the library sources. massification at universities makes it easier for students to get away with plagiarism and overworked lecturers do not relish the prospect of the added workload effected by plagiarism. many lecturers simply ignore the problem because they do not have the time to test the assignments against the search engines. sentences are sometimes copied from various sources and sequentially pasted into a paragraph. the variety of writing styles are easily detectable, but the lecturer first has to find the source from which it was copied in order to prove plagiarism. lecturers are pressurised to have students 40 pass, and flow-through rates are negatively affected by students found guilty of, and penalised for, plagiarism. not to punish students for plagiarism leads to them entering the workforce without the necessary knowledge and skills. additionally, the credibility of qualifications and of lecturers are thereby frowned upon. tertiary institutions world-wide realise that stricter measures should be instituted. electronic aids in the form of programmes that recognise similarities between documents are already in use, or are being investigated. although several institutions are of the opinion that these programmes treat students as guilty before proven guilty and that it endangers students’ right to privacy, these programmes are increasingly being used. some of the programmes available are: • ithenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com) – an online service with the promise to combat plagiarism and thereby ensuring that only original work is being delivered. • turnitin (http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/turnitin/) – developed by professors at the university of california (berkeley) with the aim to terminate the occurrence of plagiarism amongst their students. the software takes a digital fingerprint from the text information and searches corresponding patterns from the turnitin database containing billions of web pages, pdf-files, articles and books. • powerresearcher (http://www.powerresearcher.com) – is a software programme used by students to write research reports, theses and dissertations. the programme simplifies the writing by students and the marking by lecturers, while it tests the information submitted for plagiarism. • eve2 (http://www.canexus.com/eve) – an online programme by which lecturers and teachers can trace cases of plagiarism. a report with web addresses of possible corresponding web pages is supplied, as well as possible copied sections indicated in red. • mydropbox (http://www.mydropbox.com) – indicate sections that have been copied verbatim as well as sections that might have been copied partially or that have been minimally altered. • the glatt plagiarism screening programme (http://www.plagiarism.com) – uses writing styles to detect cases of plagiarism. every fifth word is omitted from the text and replaced by a blank space. students then have to supply the missing words. the number of correct responses and the time taken to supply the information, amongst others, is measured to obtain a “plagiarism probability score”. these programmes should be viewed as a last measure to combat plagiarism, and not the only remedy. the advantages and disadvantages of some programmes should be profoundly investigated before it can be utilised for the detection of cases of plagiarism. students should be trained to be aware of the dangers of plagiarism. students who are informed of the criminality of plagiarism, who know how to cite information and who 41 know how to use in-text referencing will be less prone to commit plagiarism. “before you whack a student on the head for what you think is flagrant copying, check first that the student knows how to reference and source properly, which in academic texts, is a complex thing to master” (natal witness 2003: 9). de voss and rosati (2002: 195) are of the opinion that lecturers are mistaken by assuming that students know what plagiarism comprises. even if they are made aware of the fact that plagiarism is a crime, students are not subject to the same academic values as lecturers. according to students in certain classes, they are given an assignment and should submit material on the subject – and that is what they do. because the internet simplifies plagiarism and because it is difficult to detect plagiarism, the best method a university can follow is prevention (mclafferty and foust 2004: 186). according to peter underwood (sunday independent 2004: 9), many students do not know how to avoid plagiarism. he is of the opinion that students should be taught to look for information, to evaluate information and to cite their sources. this point of view is also expressed by the director of education of the university of stellenbosch, jan botha: “at universities, students employ a higher level of cognitive analysis, synthesis and knowledge interpretation skills, causing a lot of grey areas in the philosophical debate around plagiarism” (cape times 2003: 5). most of the tertiary institutions in south africa have already taken a stand against plagiarism. since the beginning of 2004, the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state enters into an agreement with students whereby they are requested to declare that the submitted work is their own. as a result of students’ negative reactions to these measures, the media representative of the ufs issued a press release on 23 july 2004 in which it was stated that the ufs considers plagiarism in a very serious light. this declaration further stated that plagiarism was being considered to be intellectual theft and that strict measures would be taken against guilty students (loader 2004). students of the border technikon found guilty of plagiarism can, for example, be suspended permanently or for several years. the names of guilty students are also being given to other universities (daily dispatch 2003: 7). according to the spokesperson of the border technikon, it is especially first year students that commit plagiarism, and therefore an awareness campaign was launched to inform students by means of support programmes, pamphlets and special lectures on plagiarism (daily dispatch 2004: 5). the university of cape town recorded more than 50 cases of plagiarism during 2004. according to andrea weiss of the university of cape town, all cases of plagiarism are published in order to emphasise the seriousness of plagiarism (independent on saturday 2005: 3). the university of cape town has suspended a doctorate candidate found guilty of plagiarism (daily dispatch 2003: 7). a final year student’s degree was not conferred due to her being guilty of plagiarism, and a master’s degree student was failed after it was found that sections of her dissertation were copied (saturday star 42 2005: 1). it is expected of uct students to hand in a signed declaration with every assignment, stating that it is their own work and that all sources have been referenced (sunday times 2004: 4). at the university of kwazulu-natal, students committing plagiarism are being put on trial. if found guilty, penalties are enforced varying from a warning, a reprimand, and the forfeit of marks to suspension from the university (independent on saturday 2005: 3). since 2004 the names of students found guilty of plagiarism are being pinned to notice boards on the campus (sunday times 2004: 4). in an additional attempt to curb plagiarism, students were warned that such a transgression (plagiarism) would be entered on their academic records (natal witness 2004: 3). during an investigation into plagiarism at pretoria university, 80% of students indicated that they copy information from the www (independent on saturday 2005: 3). in 2004 a postgraduate student of this university was suspended after handing in an assignment which was copied from the www (pretoria news 2004: 3). the “turnitin” programme is also being utilised by the university in order to trace plagiarism (pretoria news 2004: 3). the rhodes university has a committee that investigates cases of plagiarism (daily d i s p a t c h 2003: 7). the university distinguishes between incorrect methods of referencing and blatant plagiarism, and students found guilty of plagiarism can forfeit their marks or can be suspended (daily dispatch 2004: 5). jan botha of the university of stellenbosch suggests that it is the lecturer’s duty to determine whether plagiarism was committed (cape times 2003: 5). this university acts sternly against cases of plagiarism and lecturers are requested to report cases of plagiarism, especially at postgraduate level (independent on saturday 2005: 3). unisa has reported that they have found a few cases of plagiarism (sunday tribune 2004: 9) and lecturers are requested to subtract marks for traces of plagiarism. students found guilty are also subjected to a disciplinary hearing and can be suspended (sunday argus 2004: 15). laura dison, an advisor at wits, considers plagiarism to be a serious problem at tertiary level. each department at wits has its own policy regarding plagiarism, about which students are beforehand informed (this day 2003: 2). she said that students at wits were being trained to use various sources and to acknowledge these sources. the registrar at wits considers it to be especially first year students who commit plagiarism, due to the fact that plagiarism is not being addressed at school level (sunday times 2004: 4). wits is prepared to reveal the identity of someone who has committed plagiarism in order to protect academic standards (saturday weekend argus 2005: 1). a d d i t i o n a l l y, guilty students at wits can be fined or suspended (sunday tr i b u n e 2004: 9). 43 the technikon witwatersrand appointed a copyright official in 2004 to inform students about plagiarism and to deal with copyright infringements. it is also expected of students to sign an agreement regarding plagiarism (sunday times 2004: 4). students of the university of zululand can be suspended for two years if they are found guilty of plagiarism. the names of these students are also being distributed to other universities (sunday times 2004: 4). seen against the background of the extent of plagiarism at tertiary institutions, both in south africa and in other countries, it was decided to conduct a pilot study among the academic staff of the ufs. methodology this study was undertaken by the university of the free state who wanted to determine the extent of plagiarism on the campus, and to determine the perceptions of lecturers on the steps that should be taken against students guilty of plagiarism. a questionnaire consisting of 20 questions was used to collect data. two of the questions were openended, one was ordered choice and the rest were closed-ended questions. question tables were also used. the response categories used in the closed-ended questions were likert-type scales. nominal and ordinal levels of measurement were used. data collection was done by means of web-based questionnaires that were completed by participants online and were then submitted to a server where data was collected. all 1060 academic staff were notified via e-mail about the objectives of the research and were invited to visit the website and complete the questionnaire. no sample was therefore selected. questionnaires were posted in afrikaans and english. a total of 161 questionnaires were completed during may 2006. that is a response rate of 15.18%. a popularity analysis was calculated for ranked answers – that is questions requiring an ordered choice answer, while a frequency analysis shows the number of occurrences of each possible ranking value for each of the available choices. a popularity analysis shows the relative popularity of each choice, i.e. how many times the choice was ranked first, second, third, etc. the mathematical calculation is based on the points scored for each choice, which are accumulated across all the sheets being analysed. the more the choice is placed first rather than second, second rather than third, etc. the higher its relative popularity. inversion of the rankings to give points is done to make a more popular choice show a higher value on the final graph. the findings of this research are presented in the form of tabular (frequency tables) and/or graphical (bar and/or pie charts) representations of all the values in the set of data and their corresponding frequencies. where percentages do not add up to 100%, respondents could have chosen more than one response. cross tabulations were calculated on specific variables, which contribute towards realising the research objectives. 44 percentages, when shown, are given to the nearest integer. as a result they may not add up to 100% instead it may be 99% or 101%. the statistical chi-square test was used in the cross tabulations in order to test whether or not two categorical variables are independent. the data for the chi-square test are usually arranged in a table including sums for each row and/or column. large chi-square values indicate that on the whole, the observed frequencies are far from the expected ones, while small chi-square values indicate the opposite. chi-square gives an indication of the distance between the observed and the expected frequencies. since this is a nonparametric statistical procedure, the variables were measured at the nominal or ordinal level. the categories were mutually exclusive, and each observation in each category should be independent of all others. results the main findings of the study at the ufs campus are highlighted below and will briefly be discussed. demographic profile in the first part of the questionnaire, respondents were asked to indicate their position, the faculty they belong to, and the number of years of experience they have in higher education. the highest response came from lecturers (31.1%), the faculty with the highest response rate was natural and agricultural sciences (35.4%), while 55.9% respondents indicated that they have experience of ten years and more in higher education. of the lecturers who responded, 69% were women, of which 65% were younger than 35 years of age and 59% of the women have less than 10 years of experience. of the male respondents 63% were older than 36, and 66% have more than 10 years experience in higher education. most of the respondents, 32.3%, are between 46 and 55 years old. the chi-square analyses show that there are no significant statistical differences in the responses from the respondents in the different positions (junior lecturers and lecturers form one group, the other group refers to senior lecturers and higher), or from the different age groups (18 to 35, and 36-55+), or from respondents with either less than ten years, or more than 10 years experience. seriousness of plagiarism table 1 reflects the response to the question: “how serious do you think plagiarism is on the ufs campus?” most respondents indicated that plagiarism is serious, while 19.9% thought that it is very serious. only a small percentage of the responses indicated that there is no such problem as plagiarism. results from the cross tabulation evaluation show that all the faculties consider plagiarism a serious problem, but that the law faculty sees plagiarism as a very serious problem while 33% of the respondents from the faculty of health indicated that they do not know if plagiarism is serious. 45 table 1: level of seriousness of plagiarism on the ufs campuses level of seriousness of plagiarism on ufs campuses (n = 161) graph: seriousness of plagiarism (q8) extent of plagiarism on the question “how regularly do you think undergraduate students commit plagiarism?” 58.4 % of respondents thought that undergraduates commit plagiarism regularly, while an uncomfortably high 14.9% indicated that they did not know. on the same question regarding plagiarism at postgraduate level, 44.7% of respondents thought postgraduate students commit plagiarism sometimes, 30.4% thought they do so regularly and 24.2% indicated that they do not know. plagiarism resources in question 12 respondents were asked to indicate the three resources they believe students use most when committing plagiarism, with a ranking from one to three next to the sources listed in the questionnaire. table 2 shows the results of this question. the internet scored the highest, followed by books, and fellow students’ work third. these results are similar to the views expressed by sources in the literature review. 46 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 19.9 43.5 15.5 3.7 17.4 baie ernstig/ very serious ernstig/ serious nie te ernstig not too serious glad nie ernstig nie/ not serious at all daar is nie so ’n probleem nie/ there is no such problem weet nie/ don’t know table 2: most popular sources for plagiarism most popular sources for plagiarism (n=161) graph: sources for plagiarism (q12) formal policy most of the respondents (59%) do not know if the faculty they belong to has a formal policy on plagiarism, while 16.1% think there is a formal policy for the faculty. on departmental level 22.4% of respondents do not know if the department they work for has a formal policy, while 21.7% are of the opinion that the department has a formal policy. the responses to these questions do not show a significant statistical difference regarding age, gender, years of experience or position. training regarding plagiarism question 17 asked respondents if students were adequately informed or trained about correct reference methods, the completion of assignments and what plagiarism entailed. 60.2% of respondents indicated that students do receive adequate training about correct reference methods, while 33.5% answered “no” to this question. in response to the question if students know what plagiarism entails, 57.1% of respondents feel that students are not adequately informed, while 34.85% feel they are so informed. the statistics about the completion of assignments gave a nearly equal response; 49.1% said “yes”, while 45.3% said students are not adequately trained about the completion of assignments. 47 6 4 2 0 5.0 3.9 3.1 1.3 0.3 internet boeke/books medestudente/ fellow students tydskrifte/ magazines ander/other koerantberigte/ newspaper articles 0.6 this question was a popularity related type of question. how the values are calculated is explained in the introduction. steps against guilty students question 15 listed 8 steps that can be taken against students, and asked respondents to mark the step or steps their department takes against students guilty of plagiarism. in response it was found that lecturers decided what steps were to be taken, and that it entailed either to hand in another assignment, or to receive no marks for the assignment. question 18 asked respondents if the ufs should take further steps against a student who had already been disciplined by the department or faculty, and if so (question 19), what steps should be taken. the results show that 49.1% of respondents feel that steps should be taken, while 42.9% feel that no further steps should be taken. 8.1% indicated that they do not know. question 19 posed eight different steps that could be taken by the ufs against a student who was found guilty of plagiarism by a department. respondents could mark more than one option. the results were as follows: appear before a disciplinary panel: 71.8% repeat the module or subject: 50.0% should be “blacklisted”: 30.8% should be fined: 26.9% expelled for the semester/year: 17.9% expelled from the ufs: 9.0% in response to question 20, where respondents were asked to name other steps not mentioned in question 19, 27.5% of respondents indicated that the university of the free state needs a formal policy on plagiarism. respondents also indicated that students should receive formal training about both plagiarism and the correct way to acknowledge sources. the answers to question 20 further indicated that if students did commit plagiarism, steps should be taken against them. these steps could be a written warning, or could be as serious as being expelled from the university. summary although only 15.18% of academic staff completed the questionnaire, we came to the conclusion that plagiarism is a problem at the ufs campuses. the study shows that 63.4% of respondents think that plagiarism is a serious to very serious problem on the campus, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. it was found that the internet is mostly used as source for plagiarism, but that students also plagiarise from books and articles. from the study it is clear that plagiarism is not a priority in all the departments and faculties at the ufs campuses; 59% of respondents do not know if a formal policy about plagiarism is available. lecturers mostly decide which steps to take when they are confronted with a case of plagiarism, and the steps can be anything from a written 48 warning, handing in another assignment, not receiving any marks for the assignment, or disciplinary steps against the student. respondents indicated however that steps should be taken against guilty students. although students do receive training about plagiarism, as shown by the response to question 17, respondents still feel that students are not adequately informed about what plagiarism entails. respondents indicated in response to both questions 16 and 20 that students must receive training on plagiarism, on reference techniques and on the correct way to do assignments. it is also clear from the responses that respondents feel that a formal policy should be available with guidelines on the steps that can be taken against students guilty of plagiarism. the brief literature study showed however that a distinction must be made between different levels of plagiarism, and that the situation of the student must also be taken into consideration. for example, first year students and first time offenders must not be dealt with in the same way as second year students, or students with a record of plagiarism. more research on the way the university should handle plagiarism is needed. for example, research must be done to establish the level of plagiarism among high school learners, as well as establishing their use of the internet and other sources in doing school assignments. the level of training that high school learners receive with regard to plagiarism and referencing must also be established. the way plagiarism is handled at school level, can seriously influence plagiarism at tertiary level. a study among ufs students is also imperative in order to determine how much plagiarism actually occurs and to establish what the training of students in this regard should entail. an investigation should be launched into the training on plagiarism and reference techniques students presently receive, as well as on the training necessary to prevent students from committing plagiarism in future. this training should also include the dangers of transgressing copyright, as well as clear guidelines regarding the policy of the ufs and any disciplinary steps that could be taken against students guilty of plagiarism. a comprehensive policy that gives clear guidelines to lecturers and students is necessary. together with these measures, online programmes for the detection of plagiarism should be investigated. the use of these programmes has advantages and disadvantages that should be investigated profoundly before implementing any. students cannot be considered guilty before proven guilty. plagiarism should also not be allowed simply due to ignorance on the side of the students or due to the fact that lecturers do not have the time to trace it or to deal with it. plagiarism is a problem at all tertiary institutions, which is intensified by increased access to the internet. in order to protect the university of the free state, the problem should be addressed at the soonest. 49 references beasley, j.d. 2004. the impact of technology on plagiarism prevention and detection: research process automation, a new approach for prevention. 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[online]. retrieved from: http://www.wesleyan. edu/libr/turnitin/ [2005, nov. 11]. pretoria news. 2004. time is up for varsity cheats. 7 july: 3. saturday star. 2005. cheats! varsity scandal. 26 february: 1. saturday star. 2005. danger not academic. 26 february: 16. saturday weekend argus. 2005. cheats netted in hi-tech trap. 26 february: 1. scanlon, p.m. 2003. student online plagiarism. college teaching 51(4): 161-165. 50 [electronic]. available: academic search premier: 12185925 [2004, sept. 14]. sunday argus. 2004. war on plagiarism fought in cyberspace. 27 june: 15. sunday independent. 2004. pitfalls of plagiarism must be spelled out. 4 july: 9. sunday times. 2004. book thrown at cheating students. 7 march: 4. sunday tribune. 2004. varsities go hi-tech in bid to outwit internet. 4 july: 9. this day. 2003. the scourge of stolen ideas. 11 october: 12. 51 1pb volunteer-based online information services to invisible users in underserved contexts abstract this article proposes a conceptual model where the consumer of an information service is invisible to the service provider when using an online platform. the volume of information is increasing at an alarming rate and with the trend towards self-management of one’s own health it is possible for people to seek information relevant to their needs. without understanding the situation that causes the information need and how the information user as a cognitive actor makes sense of this need, the process of seeking information and how value is created towards an information goal, the provision of relevant quality information remains complex. an added complexity is the use of online platforms to facilitate the information service where users now interact with technology, information and humans through the platform. an existing online service provider, typical of a volunteer-based organisation in an underserved context, is used as the case. the article presents how the service provider uses the data generated by the system to understand the invisible user. the proposed conceptual model is derived from related literature and is used to present the empirical case. keywords: health communication; community communication; knowledge management; information service; invisible information; user; underserved contexts; volunteer-based information service introduction in the digital world, information is continuously being produced, used and shared. however, there is a gap between data and value creation (lim et al. 2018). the large volume of data available provides opportunities for value creation through data use. currently, there is insufficient research describing the mechanisms to manage and utilise available data enabled by technology to create value in a service. it is prof. retha de la harpe graduate centre of management, faculty of business and management sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa email: delaharper@cput. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-2615-6519 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-21 date submitted: 27 april 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:delaharper@cput.ac.za mailto:delaharper@cput.ac.za https://orcid.org/%200000-0002-2615-6519 https://orcid.org/%200000-0002-2615-6519 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 de la harpe difficult to match the cost of providing the information with its value and therefore to recover the cost of its production, organisation and management (kraaijenbrink 2008). although young people generally are healthy, many are concerned about their mental health, substance abuse and well-being (tao et al. 2017). agosto (2019) indicates that more research is needed to understand the information behaviour and health communication practices of young people from their own perspective. tao et al. (2017) state that not enough is known about how young people perceive the quality of health information on health-related platforms. the aim of this article is to unpack the challenges experienced by a volunteer-based online information service provider to respond to its consumers’ health information needs based on their experiences of adverse situations. these services typically operate in an underserved community context, which can be regarded as complex social ecosystems where the services available are inadequate for the needs of the people in such contexts (joly et al. 2014). the following research question guides this article: what are the elements of a volunteer-based online information service provider to respond to the information needs of people facing adverse situations based on data describing their information seeking behaviour? the article proposes a conceptual theoretical model to make sense of the alignment between the information needs of the invisible user (iu), where the users are invisible to the service provider, and the information available on the digital platform of the service provider. although an empirical component is included to illustrate the practices of an existing volunteer-based service provider, this article is conceptual to represent the different concepts of information needs and the services of the information consumer as cognitive actor. related literature was reviewed to determine the current state of information behaviour to ground the proposed model. the focus was on health information as many people prefer to manage their own health information (tsekleves & cooper 2017). related research the identified literature, based on relevant keywords, was coded using atlas ti to determine the concepts considered in this article. it is not a systematic review, but rather to consider findings that could inform this article. saturation was also considered to decide whether more literature should be consulted. the following categories were identified to be discussed, namely information service as an example of a service enabled by technology; information service roles (consumer, producer, designer and custodian); content as information; human information interaction (hii); information context; and enabling technologies to facilitate the information service platform. information services a service creates value and provides benefits to customers at specific times and places with customers often involved in the process. there seems be a paucity of research about the mechanisms that could create value for organisations from data using the service available to them (lim et al. 2018). an information service is a type of service 32 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users where information, as an intangible product, is provided with or without transforming it (lim et al. 2018). a digital information service is where information is provided by the service provider to consumers to satisfy a need where the interactions are enabled by technology. mathiassen and sorensen (2008) view information services from a socio-technical point to consider how the configurations of people and information technology artefacts interact to support information needs for a specific purpose in information environments. according to hovorka and germonprez (2010), these represent mutable, loosely coupled and emergent interactions. information processing is often associated with uncertainty and with different meanings and interpretations attached by the user of the information. it is not always possible to know the moment of use in advance and the situations that spark the need for information may be diverse (kraaijenbrink 2008). the diffusion of technologies, and with more attention given to interface design, the ubiquitous use of processors, and the use of commercially applications have resulted in increased digital services (mathiassen & sorensen 2008). however, the value that the user gains from the information remain unclear. lim et al. (2018) refer to information-intensive service as where value is created through the interactions between the customers and the provided information, rather than physical and personal interactions with the provider. customers use specific processes to find suitable information from different sources. knowing the consumer’s needs and processing preferences assist service providers in providing useful information. it is once the customers use the information acquired for a specific purpose that value is created. service providers should also consider feedback mechanisms for them to know how the information was used and to what extent the customer’s information need was satisfied (hovorka & germonprez 2010). it is difficult to establish the use value of online information because the users are invisible to the service provider if no feedback mechanism is included in the service to identify the user, for example, when paying for the service. there are several quality concerns that could affect the value of the information, such as its level of completeness, representation, accuracy and timeliness. the findings of zarraga-rodrigues and alvarez (2015) relating to the quality dimensions that affect the feeling of ius of being well informed are accuracy, completeness and timeliness. information quality is subjective because it depends on the specific situation and to what extent it helps the person to make sense of the information to satisfy a need (diaz-andrade & urquhart 2010). in an online environment, it is more problematic if the service is provided by a volunteer-type organisation that faces challenges to generate sufficient revenue to sustain its services. the cost of producing information may not be sustainable. access to a diverse set of digital objects depends on economic and technological affordability and accessibility of individual ius within a particular context as an integration between environmental, economic and social sustainability (gobinda 2013). the following components of information services are relevant to this article: service provider, customer as the iu, the information as the service that includes content, and the medium or channel of communication. in the information field the focus is 54 de la harpe on where the entities such as information, people and technology intersect, interact and/or integrate and what the relations between the entities are (madsen 2014). the following design challenges are considerations for the design of digitised information services, namely the content, use features, and revenue (kraaijenbrink 2008). the provision of an information service requires the sourcing or producing of suitable information, the flow of information, content use features such as content-creation options, and data analysis tools to facilitate use (kraaijenbrink 2008). information service roles the roles of human actors involved in information services provision are the authors of information content, the information seeker as the iu, the designers of database systems, the human indexers, and the selectors of information relevant to the service (lim et al. 2018). in this article, the focus is on the roles mentioned that focuses on the individual – communities or any other groupings are excluded. the following roles are considered, as proposed by strong et al. (1997): ♦ iu the “invisible” person who uses the information provided by the service, ♦ information custodian – the person who considers the quality and organisational aspects of the information provided by the service, and ♦ the information designer – the person who designs the information architecture, interfaces and applications. with the increase of consumers also becoming producers of information there is a need to consider the role of the information “prosumer” (producer and consumer). in the case presented in this article, only the roles of the information producer, consumer, custodian and designer were considered. information consumer (customer of the service) health consumers are taking a more active role in managing their health (tao et al. 2017). the iu of information is regarded as a cognitive actor with specific interests, a cognitive and emotional state, and perceptions (robson & robinson 2013). all of these are influenced by the context within which the person is situated. these authors propose different levels for using the information. on the first level the information satisfies their need and thus the information was relevant in the situation; on the second level the acquired information is understood and new knowledge is created, that is, the information has a cognitive impact; on the third level the information is applied to result in a lifestyle change and therefore the information was useful. it is therefore important to consider the cognitive, emotional and behavioural information outcomes to gain a better understanding of the ius’ information needs and behaviour as they interact with the information service. important aspects in understanding ius are demographic details; their experience in the area of their information interest; the significance, relevance and applicability of the information to them; and their belief systems and how these aspects manifest in their lived context (robson & robinson 2013). the sense-making process required by 54 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users the ius is when they seek for information based on a perceived gap in their existing knowledge and the need to seek further (diaz-andrade & urquhart 2010). in the case presented in this article, the iu is a person perceived to be confronted by an adverse situation and their information needs are often about sensitive health topics or issues with associated stigma. their preference to use this service is because they can do this anonymously. however, the problem is that being anonymous means that they are invisible to the service provider. this cognitive actor is therefore referred to as the invisible information user. this has an important impact on the service as there is no way that the service provider can determine to what extent the information obtained satisfies the information need. information producer, designer and custodian it is important for the service provider to provide useful information to customers but in the healthcare space it comes with a risk. information that is not moderated and quality assessed, or information presented in a manner that does not facilitate ease-of-use and understandability has the potential to make the situation worse for the information seeker. the information should therefore include additional information to provide alternative options, including links to other sources, emphasising the importance of seeking help from professionals, or guiding the iu in assessing the value of the information (liu 2013). the service provider can use data produced by the system to determine user preferences, patterns of use, and trends, but most importantly to gain insights in the information seeking behaviour (lim et al. 2015). in the case of a service for the invisible iu it is prudent that the information producer assumes the responsibility of making sense of the information needs through other means, as with feedback mechanisms. in that sense the information producer as cognitive actor also makes sense of the suitability of information as perceived on behalf of the iu. the information producer is acting intentionally by continuously making sense through actions within the context of the service to not regard information as a passive object (jones 2013). this is why we refer to this actor as the human sense-maker. it is important to “know” the target group, their perplexities, fears, perceptions, and in the case of underserved contexts also the literacy levels, socio-economic status, lack of access to information, cost and technology and infrastructural constraints, and to display cultural sensitivity. the challenges that the human sense-maker face that influence the quality and correctness of interpretation include previous knowledge, biases, and the ability to organise and present the information (albers 2012). the sense-maker has to produce information in practice without the ability to consider the complexity of understanding the users (cognitive psychology); usability (human information interaction principles); and information architecture (visual communication, information design and technology applications) (albers 2012). information producers, who take the responsibility of creating quality information, appraise information differently from the iu, especially when they have different levels of expertise (tao et al. 2017); for example, health professionals versus patients. in a volunteer-based service organisation that is resource-constrained, the sensemaker may be the same person dealing with the technological aspects of preparing 76 de la harpe and posting the information on the digital platform. it is possible that the same person is the author, creator, moderator, quality assurer and custodian of the information captured in the service provider’s information repository. content as information in most cases, information is regarded as processed data or data with meaning attached to it. we consider data as the information that is presented in some format available to the iu as the only thing that exists. information then is the outcome of the ius’ sense-making process with mental models as part of a cognition process to internalise the data based on previous knowledge and experiences. information is therefore the subjective outcome and is different for each iu. this resonates with lim et al.’s (2018) consideration of data as raw materials, the ingredients of information and information, and then the outcome of a data analysis process. the emphasis should not be on the information per se but on the iu being informed (jones 2013). it is possible to deliver information by guiding the iu to the potential value in the manner in which the information (data on the system) is presented and by the processing options. data on the customers’ information behaviour contributes towards a better understanding of the customers’ information needs. for the purpose of this article, the information object represents an instance of a real-world object that contains multiple data elements with the encoded values and attributes of that object (gorichanaz 2016). information objects appear in a variety of forms and formats accessed through different digital devices and interfaces, as they are stored on different platforms (gobinda 2013). examples of information objects relevant to this article are web pages; list of information categories; information in the form of articles about specific topics; quizzes; and chat logs. the use of the concept of an information object is not to objectify the concept of information as a “thing” but rather to distinguish between its static occurrences, as it exists independently from the iu, and as something with human involvement that requires agency to have meaning, that is, a social construct (diaz-andrade & urquhart 2010). in the latter case, the information object that is sent to the iu still requires this person to make sense of it in terms of his/her information needs for specific situations. different people perceive the quality of information differently; this influences their perceptions of the usefulness of the information (tao et al. 2017). information has to be contextually relevant using language and terminology best understood by the persons using the information. the information and sources need to have a utility value (be useful, relevant, available, accessible and easy to use) and be credible (be trustworthy, have authority, be reliable and without bias) (robson & robinson 2013). because quality is subjective, it needs the actual users’ involvement to measure it and it is difficult when the users are invisible to the service provider. the information object is acquired or delivered (for example, a webpage or an article) in a particular situation, which causes an information need as a perceived knowledge gap. the sense-making of the information is based on the information need to determine its value and is regarded as the “imbrication” between information objects, technology and users (leonardi 2011). 76 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users online human information interaction human information interaction (hii) aims to understand the complex social interactions of people’s use of and reaction to information to respond to what meaningful and appropriate information means in specific situations (albers 2012). it is important to understand how the ius act and think while interacting with the information service and factors influencing the interactions (ibid.). the needs may not always be explicit as information is an abstract concept for most people and their needs may be ambiguous with shifting focuses as they engage with the information acquired from their seeking processes (liu 2013). this engagement process deals with both the generating effect of the communication aspect of the interaction with the information, as well as with interpreting and using information (albers 2012). in digital services, the customer interacts simultaneously with the information on a technical platform and with social actors (hultgren & goldkuhl 2013). information is acquired through a series of encounters with the information service towards achieving a goal that is linked to the initial information need, as information is fluid because it conforms to biases (jones 2013). the information outcome of the sense-making process is the result of a number of negotiations between the iu, information needs, contexts, and experience in a specific situation. it could be useful to consider the experiences of the ius with the situations, gaps in knowledge and assistance needed in understanding their information behaviour. information seekers need information from their perspective of a need that stemmed from their own situations and the seeking process can be regarded as “constructing cognitive bridges” across these perceived information gaps (diaz-andrade & urquhart 2010). the information seeking process is motivated from a purpose that aims to address the information need. this happens when the iu recognises that his/her existing knowledge is inadequate to satisfy a specific goal when facing problems influenced by a range of social factors (ormandy 2010). information context agerwal et al. (2009) argue that it is important to unpack the circumstances, as the context, that led to the information need in order to understand the context as a socially defined setting rather than just the setting of use. the difference between a context and a situation is that contexts can be regarded as frameworks of meaning, whereas situations are the dynamic environments within which humans operate that influence the manner in which they make sense of their circumstances for which information is needed (agarwal et al. 2009). a context can have several settings and includes location, social influences (robson & robinson 2013), and factors associated with underserved contexts. the information delivered by the service provider needs to be contextually relevant to the iu. it must be in a language understood by the iu, culturally and gender sensitive, and in underserved contexts, consider aspects specific to such contexts. in the role of sense-maker, the creators and publishers of the information need to understand the information behaviour of the information seekers who will be influenced by the context. 98 de la harpe context, as a socially defined setting, is subjective; in a person-centric view of information seeking it can be regarded as the outcome of a natural process of human cognition (agarwal et al. 2009). the authors refer to the three views of context as the personal, shared and contextual stereotypes and, in terms of this article, it means that the human sense-maker producing the information is outside the context of the ius. human sense-makers operate within their own personal contexts but have to make sense of the contexts of the iu’s own personal context without being part of it (robson & robinson 2013). in the underserved contexts, which often are resource-constrained, information providers have to use resources available to them without the option of using resources that improve the quality of information (french & williamson 2016). the authors use the term “bricolage” to refer to the practices of creating something new, only with materials and resources already available to the person. this means that the human sense-maker gradually accumulates knowledge about the nature of the information, tools and materials to produce and organise the information in a series of unplanned information practices or a recombination of the available resources. this allows the human sense-maker to respond to a specific information need immediately, as part of the provided service. often in underserved contexts the value-driven services available are provided by volunteer organisations who continuously struggle to survive (warwick et al. 2014). people in underserved communities struggle with connectivity, in some cases a lack of electricity, and with limited digital literacy. these resonate with access, literacy, decreasing disparity, health, happiness and well-being outcomes considered in underserved contexts. cultural issues associated with specific contexts contribute to challenges experienced in service provision, especially in low and middle-income countries. the design of such services should provide for sense-making of the aspects important for the service provided in such contexts (cipolla & reynoso 2017). manzini (2015: 35) states that designers can be regarded as “producers of sense, or sensemakers”, where such people integrate their own experiences and knowledge into their understanding of situations that could influence the service. one can refer to an iu as a person-in-context, as his/her information needs are motivated by a range of situations that influence what happens to him/her, his/ her circumstances, and his/her responses at a specific point in time. this in turn is influenced by the wider context of the environment (ormandy 2010). enabling technology digital services are defined as “services that that are obtained and/or arranged through a digital transaction (information, software modules, or consumer goods) over internet protocol (ip)” (williams et al. 2008: 506). the service experience is influenced by the social interaction between users over an it platform (hofemann et al. 2014). technology, such as the internet, computers and smart devices, can be seen as service enablers and can provide services in new ways. the introduction of digital technologies in service provision creates new innovation opportunities, but a holistic 98 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users understanding is needed across the dimensions of the service provider’s services, the digital environment, and the organisational properties (nylén & holmström 2015). information technology digitises the information and interactions between the iu and information within a service to facilitate value creation (lim et al. 2018). an information service requires a set of informational, human and technical components to facilitate the creation and organisation of information and the touch points for the iu to interact with the information service. the enabling technology does not replace human-tohuman interactions because the iu will interact with the platform and with the social actors of the sp at the same time (hultgren & goldkuhl 2013). a proposed online information service conceptual model for volunteer-based organisations in an underserved context there is a lack of information theories that can assist to understand, design and implement information services in organisational contexts (mathiassen & sorensen 2008). the proposed conceptual model is based on the information-seeking, retrieval and behavioural processes model of robson and robinson (2013), which they conceptualised based on other information behaviour models. figure 1: proposed conceptual online information model for information service provision in an underserved context source: adapted from robson and robinson (2013) in the proposed conceptual information model (figure 1), three cognitive actor roles are indicated for a volunteer-based online service. the red line separates what is 1110 de la harpe visible to the different actors who can only see what appears on their side. the iu has an information need based on a specific situation. part of him/her making sense of the situation is to recognise the information gap, and, influenced by his/ her interests, emotional state, perceptions and experiences, begin the informationseeking process. he/she can do this in different ways, but in the case of the volunteerbased service provider, he/she can consider the different information options, such as articles, quizzes or chats, as he/she browses the web pages guided by the online platform. once he/she decides on specific information, he/she can read the relevant articles, complete quizzes, or chat with a facilitator. his/her information behaviour will be influenced by his/her personal contexts that are influenced by factors of the wider contextual environment. this context is invisible to the service provider. the context of the service provider may also be invisible to the iu, but can be made known through the “about” information published on the web page. the value of the acquired information, to what extent it is useful, and whether it changed behaviour are important for understanding ius, but as long as they are invisible to the service provider this cannot be done without their actual personal involvement. the service provider provides an online service, which includes an information service with the involvement of volunteers. the cognitive actor needs to make sense of the perceived information needs, information behaviour and perplexities of their customers, in this case an iu. this sense-making process will be influenced by the human sensemaker’s context, the operational context of the organisation providing the service, and the socio-economic realities of the people in an underserved context. the information available to the human sense-maker is what is obtained from the system, such as searches, google stats, geographic distribution of locations, demographics, devices used, articles viewed, quizzes completed, average time on a page, repeat visits, bounce rate, and exit percentage. the qualitative data available are the chats that provide a dialogue between the iu and human facilitator. this conceptual model can be used to consider the human information interaction between invisible users of online information services and the response of the service provider to provide relevant information. it is important to understand the sensemaking process of all the cognitive actors in bridging the gap between the perceived information need and the desired information outcome. methodology this article only considers the information provision aspect of the online counselling service provision and not the actual online counselling. the following data sources were used: page view statistics obtained from google stats; and the information published on the online platform, such as the web pages, information categories and information objects (such as articles and quizzes). a chat log was obtained from the service provider of a number of actual chats. unstructured interviews were conducted with the two people volunteering their time and expertise for the service. ironically, although the importance of knowing the information seeker and understanding their circumstances and information behaviours is confirmed by the literature, it was not possible to engage with actual ius as they use the service anonymously (therefore the 1110 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users decision to refer to them as ius). in that sense we had to base our understanding of the iu on the information that the sp uses to produce relevant information based on their understanding of the need. the following are presented: page views of the use of the service; the focus was on health information and the health page views were coded to organise them into health themes relevant to the service. the actual articles published on the online platform were read to determine how the information responds to the identified needs based on the page views. the articles read by the iu, and whether the information need was met, fall outside the scope of this article. a specific chat was selected to illustrate how the personal contextual information could be obtained. an extract of a related journal article is also included to illustrate a possible response to the need identified in the chat. then, the specific case is discussed using the conceptual framework. the volunteer-based information service provider case the service provider is an ngo in south africa that has been in operation since 2010. they base their service on the following service differentiators: anonymity; free service; real-time action with permanent access to information and scheduled chats; easy access; text-based (to save costs and to cope with limited connectivity); life skills facilitation (when needed and referrals to professionals); and no discrimination. they have counselled more than 186 000 people and currently receive approximately 8000 visitors per month on their current platforms. the service is provided by an ngo that takes care of the recruitment of volunteer facilitators and professional experts. the ngo also provides training to the volunteer facilitators as lay counsellors. furthermore, relevant information articles and quizzes are designed as a response to the typical issues identified through the service and are always available on the internet, mobile web sites and application. a software developer volunteers his time to develop new information technology components for the it platform and maintains the current system to enable the services. information use data table 1 presents the page views for the period of 1 january 2016 to 10 september 2018 to provide an overview of the services provided and the people seeking advice. table 1: page views summary service accessed page views % total 1,294,650 100.00 articles 661,610 51.10 quizzes 233,719 18.05 chat 98,593 7.62 other (help, services, groups, etc.) 300,724 23.23 1312 de la harpe figure 2 provides a breakdown of the most viewed topics.   0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 160000 180000 200000 page views figure 2: the distribution of seeking for information of the issues on the website the information categories were decided by the human sense-maker and developer for the service provider and the creation of new categories, or re-categorising, happens in response to the information issues encountered during the service. this is a good example of information bricolage. figure 3 presents an example of the categories that appear on their landing page; each has a hyperlink that will list the articles for that category when selected. 1312 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users figure 3: information categories figure 4: example of web page with related information 1514 de la harpe the information architecture has a relatively flat structure. all the articles for a category appear on the web pages, introduced with a photograph, and an introduction of three lines of the content. the articles were updated from july to september 2018, and new articles or article updates were uploaded as recent as september 2019. figure 5 is an example of the responsiveness of the service provider.   0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 160000 180000 pages views figure 5: page views of articles dealing with healthrelated information issues the three major categories based on the page views are presented next. the topics are associated with sensitive issues, or are associated with stigma, and could be a reason why anonymous services are preferred. addiction is the health category mostly viewed and the specific topics are typical of a context affected by social ills, such as alcohol, inhalants, mandrax, marijuana, methamphetamine, methcathinone, nyaope, sizzurp-lean and the-root-of-addiction. the next health category mostly viewed deals with reproductive health, with the following topics: abortion, chancroid, chlamydia, contraception, circumcision (male and female), genital-herpes, gonorrhoea, human papilloma virus, male-circumcision, pubic-crab-lice, stds, syphilis and trichomonia. 1514 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users next, the topics of mental health are: borderline personality disorder, depression, eating disorder, hyperactive disorder, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress, selfharm and suicide. the articles that appear on the website that deal with addiction also use the “street name”, e.g. marijuana/dagga, methamphetamine/tik, methcathinone/khat, and nyaope/whoonga. most topics have only one related article on the website with the exception of addiction, namely the science of addiction, its roots, about it, to recover (online services) and steps to recover; depression with three articles; one about depression in women and depression when unemployed; post-traumatic stress with three articles; one about trauma; one about trauma associated with the past and post-traumatic stress; circumcision; one about female circumcision and one about male circumcision. the content of the articles is analysed in terms of their quality, relevancy and completeness. at this stage, it should be noted that the language used is easy to understand by non-health professionals and the terms used are everyday language as derived from the chats. a more in-depth analysis is still required to analyse the quality of the information on the online platform and to determine the actual value created for the iu affected by a specific situation. articles are examples of information objects with content produced by the information service provider and are one-directional (one-way communication), responding to an information request. quizzes are information objects that allow a dialogue (two-way communication) between the system with pre-set questions and answers provided by the iu, concluding with an outcome and directives for the iu to consider. again, there is no feedback mechanism to establish whether the follow-up did in fact happen. the page views for the quizzes confirm the trend towards self-management of one’s own situation. the high page views of mental health are evident of this.   0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 addiction mental reproductive page views figure 6: page views of accessing quizzes to be informed about a topic 1716 de la harpe figure 7: example of a chat dialogue between an invisible user and the sp even though the chats are anonymous, with both people using assumed names, the names used in the actual chat were changed to “iu”, for the person seeking for information, and “sp” for the person providing the information service. when analysing the text of the chat it is possible to gather some information about the person’s personal context. the person is concerned about drinking too much and described the situation that caused the need. the facilitator is able to provide answers or prompts to obtain more information about the perceived need. although social drinking is accepted in some contexts, the person is indicating concern about it becoming a problem. although this is an example of a short chat, more details can be 1716 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users obtained from longer and recurring chats. the person feels free to discuss the problem knowing that it is anonymous. figure 8 is an example of the first part of an article that provides information about consuming too much alcohol. this can be regarded as a response to the information need expressed in the chat example above. the value add is that additional information about the topic is added to provide more complete information to a wider group than just addressing the issues mentioned in the chat. the human sense-maker uses information highlighted as needs from chats as triggers to create articles and quizzes, but then adding sufficient information to cover all aspects of the topic. figure 8: an extract of the first part of an article with information on alcohol abuse 1918 de la harpe discussion and conclusion considering the nature of an online iu there are many challenges in understanding the information behaviour of the consumers of the service. the fact that the users are invisible to the service provider is a major challenge, as the service is built on providing the consumers with anonymous access. the type of issues for which information is needed is typical of an underserved context where the ius are negatively affected by the social ills of their context. there is a need for such a service, especially because the people in underserved contexts are also not able to access or afford professional services, which are situated in more resourced settings. the sensitivity of the issues and the associated stigma of the issues mostly interacted with means that there is a need for an anonymous service, which allows people access to information and assistance that they are hesitant to discuss face-to-face. the number of people using it confirms the need for an online information service and the service appears to meet the needs of the people using it. however, the current service model is not sustainable and an appropriate business model needs to be created. the most important cognitive actor in this service is the human sense-maker, who is continuously making sense of the needs of the people to respond with information that could be used by their customers. in a volunteer-based service, there is not the luxury of resources to assist with the production, dissemination and organisation of the information. this service has published at least 106 articles for the three main categories, which are continuously created and updated. the human sense-maker is not only the producer of the information but assumes the role of information designer, quality assurer, moderator and custodian. the human sense-maker does this without any assistance or training. this is a good example of the continuous actions of bricolage to respond to the perceived information needs and behaviour of the ius. the information provided on the online platform is unique in the sense that it responds to real issues, as experienced by ius. however, it is necessary to assess the quality of the information to ensure that optimal value is achieved from the information. the quality assessment needs to be done by someone with expertise to measure it, and with an understanding of how it can be used differently by different persons and in different situations. the current information repository could be a useful source for organisations providing support services, for training institutions for real-life cases, and for researchers to gain more insight in the information provided to online ius. the use patterns are an indication that most of the invisible users are situated in underserved contexts and they are the ones who can benefit most from such a service. however, the current understanding of the information behaviour gained from the available data is insufficient to understand the information needs of the ius and it is difficult to establish whether any benefit was gained from the information on any of the three proposed levels. without this ability to gain insights in the ius’ information behaviour, any assessment of impact is impossible. this is the biggest concern, and it is necessary to find mechanisms to address this aspect. more studies in human information interaction are needed to utilise online platforms optimally and ultimately to assist those in need. it is important to make the iu more 1918 volunteer-based online information services to invisible users visible to the service provider and technology. although powerful analytics and machine learning 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(hei) in lesotho on the communication strategies they use to engage with internal and external stakeholders to implement their institutional strategies. a mixed-method research approach was followed, and a sample of three heis and their internal and external stakeholders was identified through a multidimensional sampling strategy. triangulation included a survey among stakeholders, interviews with senior managers, and a content analysis of strategic plans. statistical analysis was conducted on quantitative data, thematic analysis on qualitative data from interviews and open-ended survey items, and content analysis on strategic plans. leximancer software was used for the qualitative data analysis. results indicate the importance for the institutions to develop communication strategies; align institutional strategies with organisational culture; identify legitimate and strategic stakeholders; and use fitting communication platforms to disseminate information to all stakeholders. keywords: communication strategy, stakeholder engagement, strategy implementation, higher education institutions introduction higher education institutions (heis) in sub-saharan africa seem to experience similar challenges with regard to stakeholders, which include a lack of stakeholder participation in developing and implementing strategic plans (bender 2008: 84). through goals and objectives, the institutions integrate stakeholders into institutional structures and funding to enhance accessibility, relevance and quality assurance (council on higher education 2013). the heis further face communication challenges characterised by poor communication and collaboration levels across dr relebohile letlatsa department of english, national university of lesotho, maseru, lesotho email : rmletlatsa@nul.ls orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-43621731 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 169-184 date submitted: 10 september 2022 date accepted: 07 november 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:rmletlatsa@nul.ls https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4362-1731 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4362-1731 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.12 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 171170 letlatsa academic disciplines (national university of lesotho n.d.: 5). there is generally a lack of teamwork, which consequently manifests in an organisational culture that affects the implementation of strategic plans. despite all these common challenges, heis do have effective strategic plans in operation (national university of lesotho n.d.: 5). the purpose of the study was to assess the extent to which heis use a communication strategy to implement their strategic plans. emphasis is placed on communicating the goals and objectives to stakeholders (internal and external) to enhance the implementation of the strategic plans. the stakeholders of heis in lesotho include managers, employees and students of the heis, the government, the media, parents, parastatals, alumni, donors and the community. the research attempts to determine if in order for stakeholders to process information effectively they have to understand the organisation’s decision-making rationale and strategy implementation imperatives (sutcliffe 2001: 203). a need exists for a clear articulation of how managers should manage the implementation of strategic plans. a well-developed communication strategy aimed at improving all communication platforms is needed to address this problem. columbine (2007: 17) emphasises that communicators have an important role to play in guiding businesses to maintain healthy relationships with stakeholders and manage corporate reputation and brand positioning in their respective markets. this implies that organisations must involve stakeholders in activities that concern the implementation of strategic plans. the link between strategy and the actual implementation process has always been tenuous (argenti et al. 2005: 83). top consulting companies have employed countless people with mbas to develop strategies for their clients. academics at top universities have developed frameworks to guide improved strategy development for top companies. a handful of academics and communication consultants at public relations companies have struggled primarily with the implementation of strategic plans where it matters most: stakeholder communication (argenti et al. 2005: 83). additionally, research has shown that “lack of implementation has been one of the major failings in strategic planning” and most organisations’ strategic plans “gather dust rather than results” (kenny 2005: 191). the author has observed that while stakeholders at the heis in lesotho are aware of the importance of strategic plans, the concern rests with ineffective implementation. the research employed a mixed-method research approach to address the research question and used available literature to collect data to inform the analysis. internal and external stakeholders of three heis in lesotho participated through face-toface interviews and questionnaires. in addition, content analyses were done on the strategic plans of the different institutions to determine how strategy implementation is communicated to stakeholders. in addition, the research aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge about the implementation of strategic plans by proposing a communication strategy implementation framework for the heis to implement strategy more effectively in the higher education environment. 171170 towards a communication strategy implementation framework overview of literature organisations formulate strategic plans to establish and develop their operational actions. argenti et al. (2005: 83) attest that greater effort is expended in formulating rather than implementing strategic plans, whereas strategic planning is an institutionalised concept of a common process across organisations. as opposed to implementation process, strategic planning employs common formats and purposes as well as strategy tools and techniques. research also indicates that the lack of implementation becomes more noticeable when it has to be communicated (argenti et al. 2005: 83). it is, therefore, imperative for a hei to have a communication strategy in place that engages stakeholders for effective implementation of its strategic plan, while at the same time positioning and promoting the institution. communication strategy communication strategy mainly focuses on an organisation’s way of managing its strategy. steyn and puth (2000: 52) posit that communication strategy (referred to as institutional communication strategy) determines a guideline (framework) against which to test the prevailing communication decisions. “the corporate communication strategy is the framework for the strategic communication plan and the operational communication plans or programmes” (steyn & puth 2000: 52). it establishes the communication function to be communicated to support the organisation and its strategies. strategic formulation and planning are key to the formulation of a communication strategy; hence, the two should mirror each other since the communication strategy paves the way to a communication plan and generates a collaboration between an organisation and the communication strategy. organisational effectiveness is therefore enhanced by the support the organisation gets from organisational communication as it responds to the organisational needs (steyn & puth 2000: 53). stakeholder engagement as has been mentioned, a communication strategy focuses on frameworks that are used by institutions for the strategic and operational plans of institutions. one cannot discuss this concept without a mention of stakeholder engagement strategy. institutions use stakeholder engagement strategies to engage their stakeholders to enhance the implementation of institutional strategic plans. morsing and schultz (2006: 325) argue that 50% of companies practice one-way communication to inform the stakeholders, and 35% practice two-way communication that builds on the processes of sense-giving and sense-making. organisations make use of three strategies to involve stakeholders, namely stakeholder information strategy; stakeholder response strategy; and stakeholder engagement strategy (morsing & schultz 2006: 325). stakeholder engagement strategy involves organisations and their stakeholders in persuading each other for a change. the two parties are involved in a symmetric communication model, a process of sense-making and sense-giving. this strategy allows for concurrent negotiation with the stakeholders. the organisation ensures that 173172 letlatsa it keeps abreast with the stakeholders’ expectations, as well as its possible influence on those expectations and of the influence the expectations will have on the organisation (morsing & schultz 2006: 327); hence, the need to engage stakeholders. organisations use various strategies to engage their stakeholders for effective implementation of their communication strategies. as a result, organisations should be mindful of principles that underpin stakeholder engagement strategies. friedman and miles (2006: 151) propose that there is a need for the organisations to be aware that stakeholders have diverse interests, as organisations should monitor the concerns that emanate from all legitimate stakeholders. secondly, managers should allow a two-way dialogue between the organisation and stakeholders; this will give room for stakeholders to air their concerns and views, and any risks foreseen because of their engagement with the organisation. thirdly, managers should note that the extent to which stakeholders are involved in the organisation differs. in some cases, stakeholders formally get involved through annual general meetings or are represented by unions or through informal contacts, such as direct contact, advertising and media releases. fourth, friedman and miles (2006: 151) emphasise that the two forms of contact should be treated with caution by the organisation, more especially the stakeholders who have limited capacity to interpret complex circumstances. a balance in risk and rewards should be considered between the different stakeholders, as well as to ensure a balance in the distribution of benefits. the fifth principle encourages cooperation between the stakeholders and the organisation to minimise unwanted externalities to the organisational premises, while the sixth principle discourages activities that might jeopardise human rights. lastly, managers should recognise the potential of their own conflicts, conflicts that may exist between the organisation and legitimate stakeholders; and the need to resolve such conflicts through open communication (friedman & miles 2006: 151). consequent to the principles, organisations must clearly distinct between internal and external stakeholders, which requires a thorough study of the organisational environment. environmental analysis enables the organisation to determine who to engage with in the decision-making and to know what factors can affect the organisation’s freedom of action (van riel & fombrun 2007: 49). van riel and fombrun (2007: 49) suggest that institutional managers should inform the stakeholders about the intent of the new strategy and its implications for the stakeholders’ daily jobs and careers, as well as on the future of the organisation. organisations should motivate stakeholders through emphasising the availability of opportunities that a new strategy provides and should provide a clear indication of the administration of the expected implications that it will have on their work whilst the strategy is implemented. puth (2002: 202) and kaplan and norton (2001: 2-8) put forth a consistent pattern to follow in achieving strategic alignment and focus in order to enhance the planning, implementation, review and monitoring of institutional strategic plans. this pattern 173172 towards a communication strategy implementation framework is formed according to the following five common principles: translate strategy into operational terms; align the organisation to the strategy; make strategy everyone’s everyday job; make strategy a continual process; and mobilise change through strategic leadership. additionally, stakeholder engagement strategy is effected through an alignment of communication strategy development with a two-way communication measure between the internal and external environments, for it is an efficient method towards the excellent implementation of the strategy (chanda & shen 2009: 7). two-way symmetrical communication comes as a go-between between the organisation and its environment as it balances the interests of the two (grunig et al. 2002:15). according to the excellence theory, through communication management, excellent institutions activate a two-way symmetrical communication process into practice to benefit both the stakeholders’ and institution’s interests and manages conflict between the two. this is how symmetrical practitioners maintain loyalty between their institutions and stakeholders. communication departments should have a strategic origin rather than a historic origin. excellent communication departments have the following qualities (grunig et al. 2006: 53): ♦ participative rather than authoritarian institutional cultures ♦ a symmetrical system of internal communication ♦ organic rather than mechanical structures ♦ programmes to equalise opportunities for men and women and minorities ♦ high job satisfaction among employees. excellent institutions should therefore adopt the following drivers for strategy implementation to enhance effective implementation of their strategic plans. drivers for strategy implementation institutional management must make sure that they take note of the social and environmental aspects in the organisation for the effective implementation of the institutional strategy. consensus within both internal and external environments should be reached to secure the successful implementation of the strategy. cronjé (2005: 178) emphasises that to fail in taking the external stakeholders on board in the implementation of strategy will result in jeopardising the strategy implementation because the stakeholders may have the potential to hinder or delay key elements of the strategy. firstly, cronjé (2005: 178) maintains that in any organisation there has to be a leader with a vision for the organisation and who is willing to assist the organisation in realising the vision in contributing to the successful implementation of the strategy. for the purpose of this research, the leader will be addressed as the manager since 175174 letlatsa they both refer to deciding what needs to be done, and forming networks of people in whose relationships agenda can be accomplished (kotter 2008: 5). cronjé (2005: 178) further attests that “a critical element of strategic success is the ability of top management, through superior leadership and management skills, to respond swiftly to changes in the global business environment”. additionally, cronjé (2005: 178) argues that top management should ensure proper implementation of organisational strategy by influencing the behaviour of their stakeholders. cronjé (2005:178) stipulates the following major responsibilities of managers in implementing the strategy: ♦ managers should develop an open strategic direction ♦ the vision and strategic direction should be communicated to all stakeholders ♦ they should inspire and motivate stakeholders ♦ they should develop and maintain organisational culture that will be effective to the organisation ♦ managers should ensure proper incorporation of good corporate governance principles into the strategies and operations. the above drivers for strategy implementation are worth taking note of for heis to enhance engagement with their stakeholders for effective implementation of their strategic plans. the institutions are encouraged to practice an open communication system to allow for effective stakeholder participation. again, institutional visions need to be well communicated to all stakeholders and good corporate governance principles should be incorporated into the institutional strategies. some organisations integrate communication functions under one executive (grunig et al. 2006: 35), as is the case with heis in lesotho, except the national university of lesotho, where communication is managed by the registrar’s office. they overlook the integral role that can be played by communication executives at the strategymaking tables (falkheimer et al. 2017: 97). if the institution can develop a suitable motivation system to persuade the stakeholders’ participation, this may assist in developing an organisational culture that is conducive for effective implementation of institutional strategic plans. institutional culture institutional culture is referred to as a group of important, though not written down, assumptions, beliefs, behavioural norms and values shared by members in the organisation (cronjé 2005: 184). it is a system that determines how things are done in a specific organisation, which is evident through the organisation’s stories, legends and traditions, as well as its techniques to approach problems and make decisions, its policies and its relationships with stakeholders. organisational culture is believed to tie together members of the organisation and guides the actions of the members. culture is one aspect that needs attention as 175174 towards a communication strategy implementation framework it is believed to be much easier to create and maintain in smaller than in bigger organisations. moreover, organisational culture can be considered valuable or an obstacle towards the successful implementation of the strategy. this can be apparent if the beliefs, visions and objectives of an organisation seem to be on par with the organisational culture; then culture becomes valuable to the organisation and simplifies the implementation of the strategy (cronjé 2005: 184). therefore, managers are responsible for creating institutional culture and should consider the values, believes and attitudes of the stakeholders. managers are normally vested in the culture that is instilled by the founders of the organisation, and as the organisation recruits more stakeholders, they join in the sharing of the existing culture. cronjé (2005: 185) introduces four categories of organisational culture, namely strong, weak, unhealthy, and adaptive. it is worth noting that organisations do not have a homogeneous culture (cronjé 2005: 185). they are divided into different subdivisions which operate according to their individual culture, beliefs, values and attitudes. it is important to match the existing culture with a strategy in order to promote internal stakeholder identification with the organisation’s vision and mission (cronjé 2005: 186). research methodology in order to assess the extent to which heis in lesotho use communication strategy to engage stakeholders for the effective implementation of a strategic plan, the author used a mixed-method research approach. creswell and plano clark (2011: 256) define this as a mix of qualitative means of collecting words and a quantitative way of collecting numbers in conducting research. the use of multiple techniques enables validity of the results more than if it was only one technique (myers & powers 2014: 300). as a result, this study utilised exploratory and descriptive designs as it attempted to explore and describe the implementation of communication strategy to engage the stakeholders for the effective implementation of the strategic plans of the heis. mixed-method research approach data was concurrently collected and analysed, and later merged and interpreted. the research conclusions were based on both qualitative and quantitative methods, and treated as a whole (creswell 2014: 4). a convergent design was used to collect and analyse the data. the data analysis per strand was done independent of each other, while the interpretation of the data results was merged. the key reason behind the choice of the convergent design was to enable triangulation of the results by comparing and contrasting the qualitative and quantitative results (bergman 2008: 4). since the author was interested in synthesising the information obtained, different individuals from different levels of the sample were used. in this case, the questionnaires were disseminated to the internal and external stakeholders, while the interviews were carried out with senior management. it was of interest to the author to corroborate the 177176 letlatsa findings; hence, the questionnaire was designed as a combination of the qualitative and quantitative strands, and as a result was disseminated to the same internal and external stakeholders. both the qualitative and quantitative samples were conducted on different sample sizes of participants and respondents. the number of members of the senior management (interviewees) were fewer than the number of stakeholders (questionnaires). the aim was to qualitatively apply an in-depth exploration and to enable a severe quantitative study of the research topic to allow for generalisation of the findings to the rest of the heis in lesotho. the items in the questionnaires and the interviews were designed to collect data concurrently. the items addressed the same concepts as those mentioned in the research question and subsequently enabled the merging of the questionnaire and interview databases. to add, since the open-ended and closed-ended questions from the questionnaires were administered concurrently, the results from the open-ended questions were used to validate those from the closed-ended questions. leedy and ormrod (2014:269) write that the mixed-method research approach enables researchers to generalise the results of the sample to the overall population and as a result assists in establishing the credibility of the research. there is an allowance of greater diversity of ideas to inform the research. moreover, the mixed-method research approach enables researchers to maintain focus, as the qualitative method can be used for one aspect and the quantitative for another aspect of the research. heyvaert et al. (2013: 303) argue that when using this approach, researchers get an opportunity to give a clear justification for mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches; this makes an explicit rationale for having a thoughtful decision-making process concerning the design and implementation of the study. the three heis in lesotho and their stakeholders were studied to encourage understanding of a communication strategy to assist the implementation of the strategic plan. the study explored and described areas within the institutions where it was not clear if there was information with regard to attitudes, trends, and needs that were applicable to the units of analysis. therefore, the national university of lesotho (nul), lesotho agricultural college (lac) and lerotholi polytechnic’s (lp) strategic plans, interviews and questionnaires were analysed to assess the degree to which the stakeholders were engaged in the communication strategy for effective implementation of the strategic plans. the author was mindful of the disadvantages the mixed-method research design may have on studies that use this approach. myers and powers (2014: 313) write that despite the common characteristic that makes it time consuming, studies conducted using this method may not be published in the state of a mixed-method design. the data collection and analysis of such articles may appear in two phases in separate manuscripts of qualitative and qualitative studies. 177176 towards a communication strategy implementation framework target population the target population included in this research is senior management, middle management, other employees of the institutions and students’ representation as the internal stakeholders; alumni, industry, parents, the media, funders and the ministry of education (the government) were sampled as external stakeholders. therefore, the research generalised the results to the population of research. sampling strategy of the eight public heis in lesotho, data was collected from nul, lac, and lp (and the centre for accounting studies as the pilot study) based on the knowledge of the population, its elements and purpose of research. the focus was based on both the internal and external stakeholders of the three institutions. as one of the crucial groups of internal stakeholders, students had to be excluded from the research because the survey was conducted at the beginning of the academic year, when students had not yet elected their student representation. nonetheless, the author targeted the outgoing student representative council (src) members. however, a few of the remaining outgoing src members were not available. probability and purposive sampling were used to achieve the representativeness of the internal and external stakeholders of the public heis on a broader scope of the heis. the selection was based on the author’s knowledge of the variety of the institutions’ stakeholders, together with their location. probability sampling was applied on quantitative strands of the research study and the heis were clustered into private and public. since the focus was on the public institutions, this cluster was stratified into four heis based on their size. two heis were categorised as the biggest in lesotho while the other two represented the smallest. the three heis were stratified into internal and external stakeholders. the internal stakeholders were purposively sampled into members of senior management, employees, and students’ representation (src) of the heis. employees, senior management and students’ representation of the heis formed the target population. while the external stakeholders’ selection was based on the heterogeneous sampling as the media, parents, the government, alumni, industry and funders were surveyed in order to provide the utmost variation of data (saunders et al. 2012: 287). most elements of the sample for external stakeholders were easily identifiable, though the numeration was almost impossible (babbie 2007). pilot study to refine the data collecting instrument, namely the questionnaire, so that respondents could attempt the questions without problems, and no problems would be incurred in recording data, the author pilot-tested the questionnaire with the cas prior to using it (saunders et al. 2012: 451). another reason a pilot test was run was to enable the assessment of the validity and possible reliability of the data that would be collected through both the questionnaire and interviews since the semi-structured interview questions were derived from the questionnaire. the author then followed bryman and 179178 letlatsa bell’s (2010) proposition as adapted by saunders et al. (2012: 452) to pilot test the questionnaire, whereby time was taken to complete a questionnaire and its clarity was taken into consideration. in order to create replicable and valid interpretations of the research findings, content analysis of strategic plans and responses to open-ended questions for heis in lesotho was applied. themes were deductively generated from the content of those documents. during this process, the capture of the qualitative richness of the phenomenon was ensured, as this was of assistance to the interpretation and presentation of the research. the level of approach for content analysis was on words, key phrases and strings of words, at the same time deciding on the number of concepts to code. coding was done to illustrate occurrence, frequency and contextual similarity. all meaningful data was coded to allow for generalisation of the content (babbie 2007); thus, the use of leximancer to analyse the strategic plans enhanced the exploration of instances that related to the coded concepts. furthermore, content analysis was used at the sentence level. sentences within which the themes appeared were captured to complement the co-occurrence of the themes and phrases that were captured in the conceptual maps. table 1 illustrates the number of questionnaires, interviews and strategic plans realised. table 1: realisation number and data analysis techniques sampling frame number of responses data analysis techniques senior management (interviews) 18 qualitative internal stakeholders (questionnaires) 237 qualitative and quantitative external stakeholders (questionnaires) 34 qualitative and quantitative strategic plans 4 qualitative quantitative data analysis the author categorised data into meaningful and relevant categories in spreadsheets. categories first took the form of descriptive data as there were no numerical values attached to them. though they could not add any numerical value, they were still counted as they were listed in the spreadsheet; in this case the author was able to determine which category had the highest numbers. in cases where data variables allowed for two categories, then dichotomous data was formulated. rating and scaling questions called for ranked data. besides categorical data, the author made use of 179178 towards a communication strategy implementation framework numerical data to determine positions of data value. numerical data was further divided into interval data where the difference between two data values was detected in one variable. to determine the numerical values of the data, spss was used. spss was further used to determine the relationships between the variables. a chisquare (x2) test was used to determine whether the relationship exists between two nominal variables (saunders et al. 2012: 514) based on the cross-tabulation of the two variables. where there was a relationship, the chi-square test further established whether the relationship was dependent or independent. in addition, the chi-square value obtained determined its statistical significance. qualitative data analysis the data was analysed qualitatively to maintain consistency between the qualitative data collection and its analysis. the author employed caqdas: leximancer to analyse the qualitative data and spss for quantitative data. the qualitative data collected from the face-to-face interviews and the open-ended questions from the questionnaires were analysed in the following ways. first, the author prepared all data that was captured as a result of open-ended questions and interviews, and converted it from its oral (audio-recorded) or written form as a word-processed text. for the qualitative data gathered from the open-ended questions, the author read the sets of answers from both the internal and external stakeholders. the in-depth reading enabled the identification of codes in order to generate an index of terms that helped the author to interpret and theorise with regard to the collected data (bryman & bell 2014: 337). the author went on to draw connections between the concepts and categories developed. the development of the categories was made from the collected data and literature, and was underpinned by the research question (saunders et al. 2012: 557). the content analysis was manually applied (without the help of software) to the openended questions of the questionnaires. for this data set, the author developed a categorisation matrix and coded the data according to the structured categories (elo & kyngäs 2008: 111). all data aspects that fitted into the categories were categorised accordingly and those that did not fit were categorised under the concept other. leximancer thematic analysis the researcher used leximancer to improve the validity by feeding transcribed text into the programme for coding. themes were formulated through automated coding. in this case, content analysis was used to analyse the concepts derived from the interview transcriptions. the programme also analysed the relationships between the identified concepts in order to measure co-occurrence of such concepts (leximancer 2011: 9). discussion of research findings the primary research question was, “to what extent do the heis in lesotho use a communication strategy to engage stakeholders in the implementation of their institutional strategic plans?”. 181180 letlatsa firstly, it was found that heis’ stakeholders receive information that is rarely specific to institutional strategic plans. the office of the registrar is responsible for communication activities, except for nul, which has a public affairs and industrial relations office. secondly, heis engage their stakeholders to a certain extend for the planning, implementation, monitoring and review of their strategic plans. information is also disseminated similarly to all types of stakeholders; however, academic staff participate more in strategic planning activities than non-academic staff. there is no statistically significant association between the length of affiliation of the external stakeholders and their knowledge about their engagement in the strategic planning activities. despite efforts by heis towards information dissemination and stakeholder engagement, the research revealed that institutional culture negatively influences the implementation of the communication strategy. in most cases heis management practice a top-down and non-engaging form of communication. they disregard stakeholders’ views, withhold information from them, and use inappropriate platforms of communication. moreover, long-term serving employees are resistant to the ideas of newly employed personnel. to address the problem statement formulated at the start of the research, a communication strategy implementation framework (figure 1) was developed to help heis engage their stakeholders to enhance the successful implementation of institutional strategic plans. communication strategy implementation framework as indicated in the proposed communication strategy implementation framework (figure 1), the heis are encouraged to practice this stakeholder engagement strategy to engage their stakeholders in the formulation, implementation, reviewing and monitoring of institutional strategic plans. stakeholder engagement should not only be applied in these activities but should also be considered in the development of institutional communication strategy. as the heis are large organisations, two-way symmetrical communication will not be possible for all institutions. the research suggests that the institutions develop institutional communication strategies accordingly. the institutions should ensure that they keep abreast of the stakeholders’ expectations, along with the possible influence of the stakeholders’ and institutions’ expectations. the research does not discard the stakeholder information strategy but proposes that heis apply both stakeholder information and stakeholder engagement strategies. stakeholders can support or oppose the institutions’ decisions, and consequently enhance mutual benefit through frequent dialogues. the latter, taking place between the heis and their stakeholders, encourages stakeholder engagement, which discourages autocracy wherein managerial decisions are made unilaterally. it also encourages open discussions and joint decisions. 181180 towards a communication strategy implementation framework it is further proposed that stakeholders be granted direct participation to contribute their views and provide inputs during facilitating, and before decisions are made. stakeholders should be empowered during institutional decision-making. the following steps are proposed for effective implementation of the communication strategy implementation framework: 1. the influence of institutional culture is inevitable in stakeholder engagement and the implementation of strategic plans. thus, the heis should consider aligning the formulation and implementation of strategic plans with the institutional culture. in an institution, culture can enforce certain types of institutional growths or oppose some institutional values. 2. heis should know who their stakeholders are. it is proposed that they identify strategic and legitimate stakeholders, and that they maintain longterm relationships with them. stakeholder identification is important because it is possible to have stakeholder values, needs, goals and objectives that differ from the institution’s. implications of strategic issues on institutions and stakeholders can be identified. 3. heis should review their communication platforms. they should establish functional and clear communication platforms to engage stakeholders. in addition to the existing platforms, the heis should incorporate more platforms into their communication system. the use of these platforms should be inclusive, regardless of the type of stakeholder or the length of affiliation with the institutions. also, the heis should use the right communication platforms for the right type of message. from the research findings, it was concluded that the institutions practice one-way/topbottom communication to inform and engage the stakeholders in the implementation of their strategic plans. heis predominantly use memoranda, meetings and media platforms to convey information to the stakeholders. two of these communication platforms, memoranda and the media, do not allow for immediate feedback, whereas meetings, which are convened at the most once in a month, allow heis’ stakeholders to provide feedback to the management. this means that heis engage their stakeholders through a stakeholder information strategy instead of stakeholder engagement strategy. in addition, institutional culture was found to be the most common factor to adversely influence institutional communication. it is a common practice for management to use top-bottom communication. some of the information is not communicated to the stakeholders and management keeps it to themselves. the stakeholders, in return, develop a negative attitude towards the management because they feel they are not engaged in the decision-making. this trait is mostly prevalent amongst the alumni, and long-service and long-affiliated stakeholders. it is concluded that there is no alignment between institutional culture and strategic plans. it is generally concluded that heis in lesotho are closed to external ideas; hence, they favour worldviews that practice asymmetrical communication. they place less 183182 letlatsa value on excellent public relations and communication management. all the heis, except nul, do not have public relations or communication units to manage internal and external communication. offices of the registrar directly deal with this function. it was further found that the heis do not consider participative institutional cultures and do not realise their potential to produce a conducive environment for excellent communication (dozier et al. 2013: 17). therefore, the research proposes a communication strategy implementation framework (figure 1) for heis in lesotho to engage their stakeholders for effective implementation of their strategic plans. the heis are also encouraged to consider aligning their institutional strategy with their institutional culture; to identify legitimate stakeholders; and to use functional communication platforms. figure 1: communication strategy implementation framework conclusion the study was designed to assess how the heis use communication to engage their stakeholders in order to enhance the implementation of their strategic plans. the research inquiry, therefore, identified that the institutions engage the stakeholders using the stakeholder information strategy. the communication is still dominated by one-way communication. internal and external stakeholders strategy planning and implementation two-way communication strategy review and monitor institutional management institutional communication strategy stakeholder engagem ent strategy stakeholder engagem ent strategy align strategy with organisational culture identify stakeholders use of functional communication platforms institutional culture institutional culture figure 1: communication strategy implementation framework 183182 towards a communication strategy implementation framework conclusion the study was designed to assess how the heis use communication to engage their stakeholders in order to enhance the implementation of their strategic plans. the research inquiry, therefore, identified that the institutions engage the stakeholders using the stakeholder information strategy. the communication is still dominated by one-way communication. findings of this research contribute towards developing the body of knowledge of communication management and public relations in sub-saharan africa, lesotho in particular, by arguing that instead of using a stakeholder information strategy, the institutions should choose a stakeholder engagement strategy to achieve their goals and objectives. the institutions may also consider developing communication strategy. the research also contributes to the discipline of communication management by complementing existing theory that a communication strategy is vital for stakeholder engagement towards the successful implementation of a strategic plan. the research further contributes to the field of academic institutions in sub-saharan africa by proposing a communication strategy implementation framework (figure 1) to prompt the management in the heis in sub-saharan africa to adopt for implementation of their strategic plans. in conclusion, blending communication strategy into the formulation and implementation of strategic plans remains under-researched. future research should address how best communication strategy practitioners and strategic managers in heis could appreciate the value of communication strategy by explicitly 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(eds). the new handbook of organizational communication: advances in theory, research, and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. van riel, c.b. & fombrun, c.j. 2007. essentials of corporate communication: implementing practices for effective reputation management. london: routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203390931 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203811818 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203811818 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04569.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2016.10.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2016.10.011 https://www.leximancer.com/site-media/lm/science/leximancer_manual_version_4_0.pdf https://www.leximancer.com/site-media/lm/science/leximancer_manual_version_4_0.pdf https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203390931 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203390931 _enref_5 _enref_8 _enref_19 _enref_33 _enref_45 _enref_105 _enref_115 _enref_141 1pb the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages at public health care services abstract diabetes awareness amongst indigenous language groups needs to be presented in a culturally sensitive manner. this study presents the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes messages to adults attending public health care services in a sub-district in the free state province of south africa. a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design was employed and random sampling of public health care services (n=26) was done in order to sample three services for control/experimental sites respectively. conveniently selected participants (n=183) underwent pre and 4-week post-testing using questionnaires. experimental group participants received six key diabetes messages conveyed via storytelling (n=2), poetry (n=2), and song/ dance (n=2). the profile of participants in both groups was similar. responses to messages from pre-test to 4-week post within the experimental group for storytelling, poetry, song and dance were statistically significant. comparing the experimental and control group change from pre-test to 4-week post, statistically significant differences were found for one message using storytelling and another using poetry. the authors conclude that traditional folk media can be used to raise diabetes awareness among indigenous language groups. keywords: health communication; indigenous knowledge systems; folk media; diabetes mellitus; storytelling; poetry; song and dance; traditional media introduction in recent years, a number of scholars have recognised the role that communication plays in enhancing health intervention efforts (ebina et al. 2010; freimuth & quinn 2004; pienaar 2016; suresh 2011). studies linking the domains of health and communication have shown that the use of purposeful and eminent communication can increase the probability of achieving desired outcomes from lesego radebe department of communication science, faculty of the humanities, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: radebedlt@ ufs.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-73314762 dr daleen krige department of communication science, faculty of the humanities, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: daleen.krige@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/000-0002-42249213 dr marianne reid school of nursing, faculty of health sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: reidm@ufs.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-10741465 mailto:radebedlt@ufs.ac.za mailto:radebedlt@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-207331-4762 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-207331-4762 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-207331-4762 mailto:daleen.krige@gmail.com mailto:daleen.krige@gmail.com https://orcid.org/000-0002-4224-9213 https://orcid.org/000-0002-4224-9213 https://orcid.org/000-0002-4224-9213 mailto:reidm@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1074-1465 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1074-1465 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1074-1465 32 mariette nel department of biostatistics, faculty of health sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: gnbsmn@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-38890438 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 2-16 date submitted: 21 august 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) intervention programmes (panford et al. 2001; rensburg & krige 2011; schiavo 2016). through health communication, extensive interventions that convey health related messages may be developed and used for disease prevention, social development and nation building (nag 2013; schiavo 2016; sharma 2015). according to the latest international diabetes federation atlas report (idf 2019), approximately four and a half million adults in south africa (12, 8%) are living with diabetes mellitus (dm), indicating a rapid increase from the 2017 figure of three and a half million (6%) diabetes cases (idf 2017; idf 2019; statistics sa 2017). the world health organisation (who) (2015; 2016) cautions that one in two people worldwide are living with undiagnosed dm, suggesting that an estimated two million people in south africa are living with undiagnosed diabetes. this means that south africa has the highest ratio of adult diabetics on the african continent (who 2018). furthermore, several studies indicate that this global phenomenon seems to be widely prevalent in low and middle-income countries where low levels of dm awareness have been identified (whiting et al. 2003; who 2015). dm has been among the top ten causes of death globally for over a decade and it maintains its position in the top three causes of death in south africa (statistics sa 2017). research predicts that diabetes will be the leading cause of death in south africa by 2040 (kahn 2018; statistics sa 2017). south africa is a middle-income country, and because the prevalence of diabetes is rapidly increasing in low and middle-income countries (statistics sa 2017; who 2015; who 2018), the need for effective health communication strategies to address the pandemic in these regions is obvious. ideally, the latter should lead to desired intervention outcomes that appeal to people’s culture and way of life. the role of a health communication practitioner in these circumstances is to generate intervention programmes that will educate, inform, support and attempt to change the misperceptions that individuals, who belong to particular communities, may have due to poor knowledge on health issues (abdoli et al. 2012). in south africa and other low and middle-income countries, dm’s management relies heavily on public health care services (green 2017). this service is habitually characterised by low patient attendance, poor organisation of services, poor management of complications, radebe et al. mailto:gnbsmn@ufs.ac.za mailto:gnbsmn@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3889-0438 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3889-0438 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3889-0438 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages inadequate staff and limited consultation periods, which leaves little or no time for patient education (whiting et al. 2003). although south africa’s public health care systems have improved over the last couple of years (visagie & schneider 2014), inadequate resources, insufficient staff and little to non-existent patient education remain factors that challenge public health care systems. due to the unstable economic status of many low and middle-income countries, the aforementioned challenges are likely to prevail for a number of years. this necessitates the consideration of innovative and cost-effective communication strategies for raising diabetes awareness in south africa and other low and middle-income countries (chen & feely 2014, rimal & lapinski 2009; visagie & schneider 2014). countries where traditional folk media was used with success to convey communication and awareness of health issues in low and middle-income countries include india, ghana, mexico and the philippines (gupta et al. 2003; kumar 2006; mohanty & parhi 2011; panford et al. 2001; rimal & lapinski 2009; yoshida et al. 2012). ravindran (1999: 32) describes traditional folk media as “conventional mass communication that embodies the beliefs, cultures, norms and values of a variety of indigenous groups and communities”. this medium of communication is symbolic in nature, and it embodies cultural values that are consistent with the belief systems of individuals who reside in communities where folk media are embraced (mishra & newme 2015). traditional media are trusted among locals because it incorporates signs and symbols that are familiar to them; additionally, traditional folk media hold promise for promoting new ideas while reviving cultural and social norms (chapke & bhagat 2015; prasad 2013). using traditional folk media as a medium for health education and promotion affords health communication practitioners with credible, lowcost and culturally sensitive means of employing health communication interventions in low and middle-income countries and communities (mohanty & parhi 2011). other benefits include the fact that traditional folk media are flexible and can be adapted to suit/satisfy the communication needs of audiences; it does not require any specific literacy levels; it appeals to people’s emotions; and it can be enjoyed by people of all ages. moreover, traditional folk media can be presented in the local language of the people and allow for close proximity to audiences (kahssay 2017; ritu 2010; sharma 2015). this aspect allows for immediate feedback from audiences; thus, enabling practitioners to modify performances to match an audience’s needs where necessary (kumar 2006). traditional folk media exist in various forms, with each form having variations of different types. for example, we may distinguish between the oral tradition and material culture as forms of traditional folk media. the oral tradition includes a number of folk media types such as poetry, music and theatre. material culture includes aspects of folk behaviour such as the skills needed to create crafts, cultural clothing, or architectural designs (kumar 2006; nag 2013; prasad 2013). for the purpose of this study, folk forms from the oral tradition, namely storytelling, poetry and song and dance, were explored. storytelling, which provides a complete emotional experience for audiences, is one of the popular forms of traditional folk media because it speaks to their hearts and minds 54 radebe et al. (mishra & newme 2015). this folk art form is highly persuasive in nature and often replicates the realities of audiences, which helps in stimulating environments where health messages can be disseminated in communities and be adopted by the locals (kumar 2006). similar to storytelling, poetry capitalises on a strong emotional appeal, and it is better suited for conveying new ideas because of its potency to connect with audiences’ cognitive senses. traditional folk poetry allows both performers and audiences to explore their creativity and imagination, as this folk form visualises the invisible (gwyndaf 2006; kumar 2006). traditional folk song and dance have been used historically across several communities in the form of raw expressions for communicating messages about socio-political or religious issues (kumar 2006; mishra & newme 2015). this medium is persuasive and can unite masses; it is also highly flexible and can be composed in the spur of the moment. the messages transmitted through the lyrical contents reflect current realities and can be adapted as and when necessary. traditional folk song and dance are entertaining, intriguing, informative and interactive. this folk form involves the use of informal choreography and an intense melodic exchange between performers and audiences; thus, promoting participation and creating a sense of unity (kumar 2006; mathiyazhagan et al. 2015). health communication practitioners should however note that every community has a unique set of traditional folk media and that not all forms of this indigenous communication will be appropriate for conveying health information (kumar 2006; mishra & newme 2015). nonetheless, traditional folk media mirror the past, present and future of indigenous groups; if adopted from a participatory approach it can be used to denounce misconceptions about a number of health conditions, including dm. methods this study used a quantitative quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design. random sampling of public health care services (n=26) was done in order to sample three services from thaba ’nchu (control) and three services from botshabelo (experimental). the participants (n=183) consisted of conveniently selected adults who attend the sampled health care services. the control group (n=63) undertook pre-test and 4-week posttests, with the experimental group participants (n=120) undertaking pre-test, post-test and 4-week post-tests using structured questionnaires. the compiled questionnaire focused on the six key diabetes messages identified by reid et al. (2018) in a study conducted in the free state province’s public health care service. the questionnaire was administered in a private section of the sampled public health care services and the participants were requested to indicate whether they agreed (red) or disagreed (blue) with the statements put to them by means of touching one of two coloured balls placed in front of them. the lead author and a trained assistant delivered diabetes messages (n=6) to experimental group participants. all of the traditional folk media interventions were used, namely storytelling, poetry and song and dance to deliver two messages per medium. the interventions were in the participants’ mother tongue, sesotho, and lasted between three to five minutes per 54 the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages intervention. the traditional folk media presentations took place in the waiting area of sampled public health care services. frequencies and percentages for categorical data and medians and percentiles for numerical data were calculated per group. the groups were compared by means of the chi-square test or fisher’s exact test for categorical data, and the change within a group was compared by means of mcnemar’s test for categorical data. findings there were more female participants in both the control group (63.5%) and experimental group (69.2%) compared to males (36.5%; 30.8%). the age distribution among the participants in both the control and experimental groups was similar, with the median ages at 48 and 52 respectively. table 1 depicts participants’ responses to the various traditional folk media interventions used to convey key diabetes messages. storytelling as might be expected, the retention of messages conveyed via storytelling, poetry and song/dance improved drastically from pre to post-testing, most probably also influenced by the short interval between testing. the difference between the participants’ responses to both messages conveyed via storytelling at the pre-testing phases of the study (control group = 78%; 73%, experimental group = 56%; 75%) and 4-week post-testing (control group = 81%; 81%, experimental group = 89%; 92%) seemingly suggests that the storytelling intervention was successful in conveying diabetes information to the participants. poetry the participants’ reactions to messages presented via poetry indicated differences between the responses provided at the pre-testing (control group = 90%; 44%, experimental group = 89%; 79%) and 4-week post-testing (control group = 86%; 64%, experimental group = 95%; 79%) phases of the study. responses to the messages presented via poetry show that the experimental group participants were able to retain and recall only one of the messages conveyed through poetry (message 3), while no differences were found in the participants’ responses between the pre-testing (79%) and 4-week post-testing (79%) phases for message 4. statistically significant differences were found because of the changes that occurred within the control group, as seen in table 2. despite only observing a difference in responses for one message conveyed via poetry, it could still be deducted that poetry as a traditional folk media intervention possibly holds some degree of promise for conveying diabetes information successfully. 76 radebe et al. ta b l e 1 : p a r t ic ip a n t s ’ r e s p o n s e s t o in t e r v e n t io n s u s e d t o c o n v e y k e y d ia b e t e s m e s s a g e s c on tr ol g ro up : n =6 3 e xp er im en ta l g ro up : n =1 20 k ey d ia be te s m es sa ge (in te rv en tio n us ed ) p re -t es t p ha se fr eq ue nc y (% ) 4w ee k po st -t es t ph as e fr eq ue nc y (% ) p re -t es t p ha se fr eq ue nc y (% ) p os tte st p ha se fr eq ue nc y (% ) 4w ee k po st -t es t ph as e fr eq ue nc y (% ) c or re ct re sp on se in co rr ec t re sp on se c or re ct re sp on se in co rr ec t re sp on se c or re ct re sp on se in co rr ec t re sp on se c or re ct re sp on se in co rr ec t re sp on se c or re ct re sp on se in co rr ec t re sp on se d ia be tic p eo pl e sh ou ld av oi d so ci al g at he rin gs (s to ry te lli ng ) 49 (7 7. 8% ) fa ls e 14 (2 2. 2% ) tr ue 51 (8 1. 0% ) fa ls e 12 (1 9. 0% tr ue ) 67 (5 5. 9% ) fa ls e 53 (4 4. 1% ) tr ue 11 2 (9 3. 3% ) fa ls e 8 (6 .7 % ) tr ue 10 7 (8 9. 2% ) fa ls e 13 (1 0. 8% ) tr ue n ot a ll di ab et ic p eo pl e go bl in d or lo se a le g or a rm (s to ry te lli ng ) 46 (7 3. 0% ) tr ue 17 (2 7. 0% ) fa ls e 51 (8 1. 0% ) tr ue 12 (1 9. 0% ) fa ls e 90 (7 5. 0% ) tr ue 30 (2 5. 0% ) fa ls e 11 4 (9 5. 0% ) tr ue 6 (5 .0 % ) fa ls e 11 0 (9 1. 7% ) tr ue 10 (8 .3 % ) fa ls e d ia be tic p eo pl e do n ot ha ve to e xe rc is e re gu la rly (p oe try ) 57 (9 0. 4% ) fa ls e 6 (9 .6 % ) tr ue 54 (8 6. 0% ) fa ls e 9 (1 4. 0% ) tr ue 10 7 (8 9. 2% ) fa ls e 13 (1 0. 8% ) tr ue 11 7 (9 7. 5% ) fa ls e 3 (2 .5 % ) tr ue 11 4 (9 5. 0% ) fa ls e 6 (5 .0 % ) tr ue d ia be tic p eo pl e do n ot h av e to w or ry a bo ut lo si ng w ei gh t (p oe try ) 28 (4 4. 4% ) fa ls e 35 (5 5. 6% ) tr ue 40 (6 3. 5% ) fa ls e 23 (3 6. 5% ) tr ue 95 (7 9. 2% ) fa ls e 25 (2 0. 8% ) tr ue 11 2 (9 3. 3% ) fa ls e 8 (6 .7 % ) tr ue 95 (7 9. 2% ) fa ls e 25 (2 0. 8% ) tr ue d ia be tic p eo pl e sh ou ld ta ke di ab et es m ed ic at io n ev en w he n th ey d o no t f ee l s ic k (s on g/ d an ce ) 60 (9 5. 2% ) tr ue 3 (4 .8 % ) fa ls e 53 (8 4. 1% ) tr ue 10 (1 5. 9% ) fa ls e 11 4 (9 5. 0% ) tr ue 6 (5 .0 % ) fa ls e 11 8 (9 8. 3% ) tr ue 2 (1 .7 % ) fa ls e 11 3 (9 4. 2% ) tr ue 7 (5 .8 % ) fa ls e d ia be tic p eo pl e sh ou ld n ot ea t o ne b ig m ea l a d ay (s on g/ d an ce ) 26 (4 1. 3% ) tr ue 37 (5 8. 7% ) fa ls e 37 (5 8. 7% ) tr ue 26 (4 1. 3% ) fa ls e 85 (7 0. 8% ) tr ue 35 (2 9. 2% ) fa ls e 11 2 (9 3. 3% ) tr ue 8 (6 .7 % ) fa ls e 94 (7 8. 3% ) tr ue 26 (2 1. 7% ) fa ls e 76 the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages song and dance the study observed incongruent responses between the pre-testing (control group = 95%; 41%, experimental group = 95%; 71%) and post-testing (control group = 84%; 59%, experimental group = 94%; 78%) responses to messages conveyed via song and dance interventions. the participants’ responses demonstrate two things. firstly, that a decrease (1%) occurred in the percentage of correct responses for one of the messages (message 5), four weeks post-intervention. secondly, that an increase (6%) occurred in the percentage of correct responses for the other message (message 6), four weeks post-intervention. these changes did not demonstrate any statistically significant differences (see table 2). even with the inconsistent findings, it is important to note that the participants’ responses to song and dance interventions are indicative that on the surface it appears as if song and dance interventions have some potential to convey diabetes messages successfully. the observed differences in the control group participants’ responses between pretesting and post-testing were unexpected, as they did not receive any interventions. the reason for this occurrence remains unclear. however, the responses are indicative of an oversight stemming from the fact that the control group participants were not requested to declare whether they had been exposed to any other diabetes information/intervention since the pre-test, before undergoing the 4-week post-test. the p-values reflected in table 2 are presented in this manner as a result of the participants’ non-homogeneous responses for the pre-test in both the control and experimental groups (see table 1). table 2 reflects the p-values within and between the control and experimental groups depicting changes between the messages conveyed in the preand 4-week post-test phases; therefore, the traditional folk media intervention shows more promise in use. looking at group comparisons from the pre to 4-week post-test phases, messages one to three in the control group were not statistically significant (p-value 0.6; 0.19; 0.43). however, messages four to six in this group were found to be statistically significant (p-values 0.03; 0.04; 0.03). on the contrary, in the experimental group, both messages presented via storytelling and one using poetry (messages one to three) were of statistical significance, while one other message presented via poetry and two using song and dance (messages four to six) were not (see table 2). when looking at the comparison of the control and experimental group differences (between group comparisons from the pre to 4-week post-test phases), statistical significant differences were found for messages 1 and 4. this, despite the seemingly inconsistent results depicted in table 1, demonstrates that for this study storytelling and poetry were the most successful traditional folk media in conveying diabetes messages to the participants. 98 radebe et al. table 2: p-values within and between groups at pre and 4-week post-test phases key diabetes message (intervention used) changes from pre to 4-week post-test phases comparing change within each group (mcnemar test for paired data) comparing change between groups p-values within control group p-values within experimental group statistical test used p-values between control and experimental groups diabetic people should avoid social gatherings (story) 0.64 <0.01* chi-square <0.01* not all diabetic people go blind or lose a leg or arm (story) 0.19 <0.02* fisher’s exact 0.49 diabetic people do not have to exercise regularly (poetry) 0.43 0.05* chi-square 0.79 diabetic people do not have to worry about losing weight (poetry) 0.03* 1.0 chi-square <0.01* diabetic people should take diabetes medication even when they do not feel sick (song \ dance) 0.04* 0.79 chi-square 0.72 diabetic people should not eat one big meal a day (song\dance) 0.03* 0.16 chi-square 0.16 discussion storytelling in this study, the first intervention conveyed messages through storytelling that focused on two major themes. firstly, the messages addressed the misconception that diabetic people cannot integrate into society nor continue to live a normal life. secondly, the story was used to discredit the popular myth that all diabetic people 98 the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages undergo amputations. the characters in the story resembled the average participant; thus, making it easier for them to relate to the story being told. the findings of this study demonstrate that the participants had higher acceptance of messages conveyed through storytelling and that these messages were best retained and recalled four weeks post-intervention. as noted in the literature, several authors are in agreement that when people tend to relate to the characters in a storyline, they are likely to be swept into the world of the story, where cognitive and emotional processes take place resulting in improved interest, understanding and engagement (neely 2016; newkirk & solomon 2014; van krieken et al. 2017). this was consistent with the findings of goddu et al. (2015) who investigated whether the use of narratives could be an effective strategy for diabetes awareness among african american females. the latter found that the participants reacted positively to interventions conveyed through storytelling. goddu et al. (2015) also found that the participants’ attitudes, behaviours and knowledge about diabetes had been positively influenced. the participants also stated that the stories made it easier for them to take in large amounts of new information; thus, making the messages more memorable. similar to the present study, several other studies have documented successes in using storytelling as a culturally sensitive tool for health promotion and education interventions in indigenous communities where community members often have insufficient health information, poor access to public health care systems, and low literacy levels. for example, a study conducted in the indigenous community of bougainville, papua new guinea, evaluated the efficiency of a culturally relevant health education programme on type 2 diabetes through interactive storytelling interventions (rowse et al. 2013). the interventions made use of stories to encourage discussions related to the causes, symptoms and risk factors associated with type 2 diabetes. rowse et al. (2013) found that participants responded positively to the storytelling interventions and demonstrated improved understanding of the topics addressed through the storytelling interventions, especially as the community had very little knowledge about diabetes. this compares favourably to what was found in the present study. these findings echo the views of neely (2016), who asserts that traditional folk storytelling has been used for centuries across cultures as a sensemaking tool that encourages people to confront their realities. similarly, bertera (2014) found that storytelling could be used to convey diabetes information and reduce health disparities in populations with low literacy levels. the author conducted a study that merged the oral tradition of storytelling with the hispanic medium of fotonovelas to create a storytelling slideshow in order to improve diabetes and hypertension knowledge and self-efficiency among older african american community members. despite the fact that bertera (2014) employed storytelling in a different context, the results still demonstrate that the use of storytelling slideshows were of benefit in increasing self-efficacy, especially in older participants with the lowest health literacy levels. authors (gucciardi et al. 2019) also explored ways in which storytelling could promote disease self-management among people with type 2 diabetes in toronto, ontario. the study results suggest that storytelling facilitates knowledge exchange and collaborative learning; thus, it can be used to support several 1110 radebe et al. core aspects of diabetes management. a considerable amount of literature has been published on the power and influence that lies in storytelling as a communication tool for health promotion and education (houston et al. 2011; larkey et al. 2009; lebron et al. 2011; manglona et al. 2010). data from several studies have pointed to the importance for health communication practitioners to note that the use of storytelling is most effective when applied to cultures and communities who have existing oral traditions (kumar 2006; mishra & newme 2015). additionally, some studies (bertera 2014; nguyen et al. 2018) have demonstrated that folk storytelling can be employed through modern forms of technology and still maintain elements of cultural sensitivity because of its inherent ability to connect to people’s roots and emotions. storytelling signals great potential as a tool for raising health awareness and mobilising social change in low and middle-income communities globally. poetry the second intervention used traditional folk poetry to convey messages containing two other themes. firstly, the poem addressed the fact that exercise is an important component of diabetes management/prevention and that a 30-minute walk per day could improve one’s well-being drastically. secondly, the poem stressed the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight. the findings demonstrated that participants were only able to recall information related to message three (about exercise) and unexpectedly regressed to their initial responses prior to the intervention for message four (about weight loss). the findings may be indicative that the participants were possibly not entirely accepting of the information conveyed to them about the importance of weight loss but were rather responding to the premise of what was being conveyed to them through the song and dance intervention. the findings seemingly suggest that the participants understood what was being conveyed to them; however, the intervention was not adequate to change their current stance on the importance of losing weight. issues concerning unwavering convictions resulting in resistance towards the need for weight loss among black communities, akin to the present study, have been discussed by a number of authors. for example, research has provided evidence on the existence of a prominent widespread cultural perception that being overweight is associated with wealth and high social status in predominantly black communities in south africa (akinrinlola 2012: 3; franklin et al. 2015; kruger et al. 2005: 40; phajane 2016: 5; puoane et al. 2010: 32). other studies have also explored the possible effects that these perceptions may have on health interventions focused on raising awareness against the rise in non-communicable diseases (ncds), as most of these ncds have obesity as a shared symptomatic factor (kruger et al. 2005; puoane et al. 2010). the present study did not investigate whether cultural perceptions on weight loss had a possible impact on the participants’ responses. therefore, additional studies investigating this viewpoint are required. these findings suggest that poetry has the potential to convey health messages successfully; however, further research regarding this technique is required. contrary to one of the findings in the present study, other investigations have reported being 1110 the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes mellitus messages successful in exploring the use of traditional folk poetry as a communication tool for conveying information about type 2 diabetes and other ncds. a study conducted in north carolina used oral poetry performances among african americans to pilot a study aimed at improving hiv/aids related attitudes and selfefficiency, and mitigating the stigma in the communities (isler et al. 2018). although the work of isler et al. (2018) investigated a different ncd to that of the present study, the findings suggest that the use of poetry holds promise in promoting dialogue around hiv/aids, as it can help reduce the effects of stigma as well as raise hiv/ aids awareness. studies looking to raise diabetes awareness through folk poetry can borrow from and build on the findings of isler et al. (2018). despite the rich literature documented on the use of traditional folk poetry and the benefits it holds for health promotion and education, it appears that only a limited number of studies have documented using this communication tool for raising diabetes awareness. this could imply that previous studies could only be considered a first step towards a more holistic understanding of the application of traditional folk poetry for diabetes awareness and that more work is necessary to understand more completely what this communication tool can offer. nevertheless, the above-mentioned studies, including the present study, reveal the potency of folk poetry as a communication tool that can effectively engage individuals (isler et al. 2018). it can also evoke the cognitive senses; thus, making it a suitable folk media technique for conveying new ideas in culturally appropriate ways (ritu 2010). song and dance the final intervention was presented using song and dance. the two key themes were about highlighting the importance of taking diabetes medication even when one starts to feel better and encouraging the practice of eating small portions of food throughout the day as opposed to eating one large meal a day. the intervention used the popular tune of a sesotho wedding song “sana marena” in combination with a traditional knee and shoulder dance, which is performed by sesotho women, called “mokhibo”. the latter were chosen in order to grab the participants’ attention, interest and engagement using a familiar tune and dance routine. similar to the participant’s reactions to messages conveyed through poetry, in this study the participants’ reactions to messages conveyed through song and dance were inconsistent and statistical differences were found. the responses to message five (about medication adherence) demonstrated a lack thereof on the participants’ ability to recall the information conveyed via song and dance interventions four weeks postintervention. conversely, the participants’ responses to message 6 (about eating small meals) were indicative that some of the participants retained the information conveyed to them, and were able to recall the information four weeks post-intervention. these results again suggest that song and dance interventions have the potential to convey messages, which contain health information, effectively but further research is required regarding the use of this technique. 1312 radebe et al. a preliminary study aimed at testing a dance intervention to explore the role of peer support in improving a1c, weight and body fat in african americans with type 2 diabetes found that dancing in a supportive community-based environment might be an effective strategy for diabetes management. the findings suggest that diabetes educators could use community-based dancing to assist those with diabetes to engage in more physical activity, and improve diabetes outcomes and overall health (murrock et al. 2009). similarly, the american diabetes federation (adf) through the feria de salud festival (festival of health for your family) makes use of latin music and dancing, among other activities, to draw in people from in and around the hispanic community in order to teach them how to dance and how dancing can be done at home as a form of exercise. the programme led to increased awareness about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle among the members of a hispanic community where diabetes statistics were very high (adf 2008). traditional folk media clearly holds the potential to convey health communication messages across a wide spectrum of low and middle-income communities, as is reflected in the discussion above. folk arts are trusted, respected and relatable to members of these communities; thus, making them credible sources for conveying new ideas and information to stimulate progressive health and social development in these communities. conclusion traditional folk media have the potential to be used as effective modes of communication. based on the results of this study and previous studies, it can be said that traditional folk media seem to embody great advances for health communication intervention efforts. its ability to bridge socio-economic gaps, connect people and cultures, and break down barriers in the most simplistic forms while maintaining strong cultural significance is an indication that traditional folk media is useful and should be preserved across cultures. references abdoli, s., mardanian, l. & mirzaei, m. 2012. how public perceive diabetes: a qualitative study. iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research 17(5): 370-374. 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https://doi.org/10.1177/174182670301000205 http://www.who.int/diabetes/facts/index5 https://www.who.int/hrh/professionals/en https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dar086 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dar086 _goback j untitled 107 a critical perspective on the reception of three lovelife billboards in rural transkei communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 107 124 danie jordaan* abstract one of south africa's biggest ngos, lovelife, has attracted its share of controversy since its inception in 1999. recently, the global fund to fight aids, tuberculosis and malaria which contributed 30% of lovelife's annual budget, announced that it was withdrawing its funding of the ngo. although the global fund did not provide reasons for the withdrawal of its funding, some local studies have questioned the efficacy of, in particular, the lovelife media campaigns. this article provides an analysis of the reception of the three 2004 lovelife billboards in rural transkei. this is done in order to test the hypothesis that the 2004 lovelife billboard campaign aimed at establishing a contemporary, trendy lifestyle characterised by an open, free and gender-equal sexuality, is bound to be ineffective amongst some social / ethnic groupings, because it does not: • engage with perceptions regarding sexual intercourse and condom use at localised, culture-specific levels; • provide accurate and accessible knowledge in a culture-sensitive format; and • acknowledge culture-specific barriers to communication. * professor danie jordaan is director of the school of language, media and communication at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. introduction media campaigns are inevitably based on the assumption that some kind of change can be effected in the target audience, whether it is to buy a certain product, change attitudes towards lifestyle, political preference, etc. this belief in the power of the media to bring about change is borne out by an analysis of the evolution of theories relating to the communication process, media and its effect on society, and social theory from the 1930s to the present. it is interesting to note that, in the wake of the second world war, during which the concept of propaganda became broadly established as a means of “changing the hearts and minds of people” through the use of mass media, notably by radio broadcast, film and print, intellectuals became increasingly concerned about the “pernicious” influence of the mass media on societal values, indeed about the very fabric of society. for intellectuals like the literary critic f.r. leavis (1895-1978) and social critic and philosopher theodor adorno (1903-1969), to name but two, mass media had a clearly debilitating effect on the critical and intellectual capacity of individual members of society. adorno and horkheimer (1979) saw the mass media, particularly in the guise of film, as transforming individuals into an unthinking mass, mindlessly marching to a tune. more recently naomi klein (2000) has continued this critique of the media, specifically in terms of international branding, within a neo-marxist / cultural studies framework. it is not the purpose of this article to give a history of the evolution of media effects theory: what i am trying to do is to show that throughout its evolution the assumption has always been that the media can, and does effect changes in social attitudes and, ultimately, behaviour. this holds true for a range of theories and models, from the “hypodermic needle” model, to the reinforcement models (katz and lazarsfeld 1955), the pluralistic view of society (williams 1961), the “re-discovery” of marxism and the rise in popularity of new marxism amongst scholars of literature and sociology (1970s to present), the integration of political economy and habermas’ (1991) concept of the “public sphere”, expanded upon by mckee (2005). it lies at the bottom of attempts to explain the interrelationship between media and society and the way that this interrelationship is / has been manipulated and exploited by various power bases. the latest evolution in this “spiral of theories” (boyd-barret, newbold & van den bulck 2002: 29) uses insights from cultural studies and social anthropology, and the socalled “new audience research” have gained wide acceptance. new audience research, as with most things, is hardly new, since in essence it builds on a well-established theory originating in the study of literature, namely reception aesthetics, also known as reception theory. boyd-barrett (2002: 25) describes new audience research as follows: new audience research, drawing on ethnographic methodology, regards the processes whereby both authors and readers make sense of texts – their encodings and decodings – to be complex, culturally derived competencies, and that extend to the factors that bring individuals to texts in the first place. the process of “reading” 108 is influenced by many different factors: these include the structure of the text itself, the social context within which the text is read, the cultural affinities of the readers, and the way in which cultural factors influence their reading competencies, predispositions, opportunities, likes and dislikes. this clearly echoes the basic tenets of reception theory, originating from the work of hans-robert jauss in the late 1960s. during the 1970s and 1980s the world renowned italian author and scholar umberto eco expanded on jauss’s theory and largely contributed towards making reception theory the dominant literary theory through the publication of a theory of semiotics (1976) and the role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts (1979). in essence, reception theory holds that the meaning of a text – be it a book, film, painting or graphic image – is not passively “received” by the reader; rather a meaning or interpretation is “negotiated” by the reader. the reader interprets the text based on his/her individual cultural background and life experience, knowledge of other texts and the conventions that govern them. in essence the meaning(s) of a text is not stable or fixed, but exists within the relationship between the text and the reader. a basic acceptance of “the” meaning of a text occurs when several readers agree on a shared meaning. from this it is clear that, should the audience consist of readers from diverse educational, cultural, political or religious backgrounds, different “meanings” will be generated, and some of these meanings might be in direct conflict with the intended meaning of the author of the text. this partly explains the move by advertisers to target niche audiences: the niche audience shares an economic / cultural background and is therefore more likely to read the advertisement “correctly”, that is, there is a correlation between the intended and perceived meaning of the text. the ideal of a shared meaning (also a nostalgic yearning for life-meaning) finds its expression in the current advertising trend that moves away from a direct focus on the product, instead propagating an aspirational “lifestyle” in which the product provides “access” to what amounts to be a pseudo class whose “members” share the upmarket “lifestyle” signified by the product, whether it be a bmw car or chivas regal whisky. those who use media campaigns to advertise products or establish and maintain brands do so on the assumption that the beliefs, values and attitudes of members of the target audience can be changed, or at least reinforced. this belief in the power of the media to effect change in people is not limited to the world of commerce, but is also subscribed to by those agencies whose goals are not informed by a profit motive, but in terms of social responsibility. as already briefly shown, media effects theory is a vast and ever changing field of critical enquiry. it is also controversial, and the only certain conclusions one can draw from it is that there are no categorical answers to the questions it poses regarding the power of the media to influence society and effect change in human behaviour. in spite of this, multinational corporations, governments, non-government agencies, etc. 109 continue to spend considerable portions of their budgets on media exposure in terms of ad-spend or campaigns that are to some extent dependant on media coverage for their “success”. one places success in quotation marks, for in most instances the effectiveness of a particular campaign cannot be measured, except in terms of some fairly subjective criteria (often developed internally as part of the project proposal), gauging “success” in terms of attendance of events or rallies, range and extent of media coverage, or feedback by survey or some other means. this belief in the power of the media is also subscribed to by those who do not have the financial power base from which to launch media campaigns, and who rely on sensation or acts of terror to arouse media interest and so gain media coverage. in this article i would like to focus on the well-funded media campaigns of lovelife, a south african ngo active in the field of sexuality education, with a particular focus on combating the spread of hiv/aids through programmes and campaigns aimed at changing high-risk sexual behaviour amongst young people.this article builds on my previous research (jordaan 2003) into lovelife’s 2003 media campaigns where i critiqued, in particular, the ngo’s attempts to establish itself as a brand that used the aspirational model to create a lifestyle that young people would try to emulate. this approach was articulated in the following way on the lovelife website (2003, http://www.lovelife.org.za/corporate/index.html): lovelife uses a broad based motivational youth development approach designed to shift young people out of the existing high risk patterns of adolescent sexual behaviour. the 2003 campaign was critiqued in the context of current branding, and media effects theory, and the major criticisms against that campaign can be briefly summarised as follows: in positing its aspirational lifestyle for young people, it tended to construct an unrealistic society that was ideal as well as virtual in that it exists only in terms of the following essentialist campaign posits about its ideal nature (while ignoring south african realities): • south african society is free of racism (focus on harmonious “mixed” sexual relationships in its poster campaign of 2003). • gender equality exists within sexual relations (the “no pressure” posters that ignored the reality of unequal power relations between the sexes and failed to differentiate between cultural differences in this regard). • poverty does not influence behaviour (it ignores the fact that, if the gap between the existing mode of existence and the presented lifestyle (aspiration) is too great, it cannot engage the audience except in a way that eventually frustrates them). • individuals inherently possess the skills to negate peer pressure (the “no pressure” posters. interestingly, it seems oblivious to the fact that an aspirational 110 campaign is exactly intended to create a “lifestyle” with sufficient mass to attract its “membership” through peer pressure). one should make it clear, at this point, that one fully supports all initiatives to curb the hiv/aids pandemic. the purpose of this article is therefore not a gratuitous critique of lovelife per se, but an attempt to critically evaluate its poster campaigns in terms of contemporary media theory, coupled with a small scale investigation into the effectiveness of its poster campaigns based on its reception by a convenience sample in the transkei. in order to change behaviour, the intended message(s) of a media campaign has/have to be understood by the intended audience; they have to be able to make meaning of it, and this meaning must at least correspond with the intended message. this is no new insight, and has been a feature of the very earliest communication models. bechan (2003:63-65) criticises the 2003 lovelife billboard campaign for “carrying not only contradictory but vague messages”, messages of which the intended and perceived meanings are sometimes in total contradiction. for the message to be understood correctly, the mode in which it is transmitted (visual, in billboard format in this instance), must take into account the variance of contexts of culture and identity of the target audience, specifically in terms of possible barriers to communication. “getting the meaning” of a campaign is but the first crucial step, since access to the message (becoming aware of the information) does not automatically lead to acceptance of that information, and if it is not accepted, there is no chance of a change in behaviour engendered by it. individuals change their behaviour only if: • they have the knowledge that enables them to see the change as necessary or beneficial and • they possess the appropriate interpersonal skills to effect such change, or • the required change is already socially manifested to such an extent that individual change merely requires conformity (being “in”). in this regard i have already mentioned that for example, in persuasive messages based on the aspirational lifestyle model, once a significant number of the audience “converts”, the campaign attains a “critical mass” and exerts its own kind of “peer pressure” to attract new “members” to the propagated “lifestyle”. in recent years there has been a massive shift to “lifestyle” marketing, where the product (plus huge numbers of accessories) becomes but the gateway to a superior lifestyle. the conclusion regarding the lovelife 2003 poster campaign was that it was bound to be ineffective, since it used branding as instrument to change behaviour without taking account significant variances in culture, religion, belief systems and socio-economic contexts in south africa. these would present insurmountable communication barriers for a generic campaign that used a single language and undifferentiated posters and billboards irrespective of community / geographical location. (see also tomaselli 1997; mohale & de wet 2003.) 111 as already stated, change in attitude and behaviour cannot be guaranteed by media campaigns; however, if such change is to be at all possible, the audience must be able to make meaning of the campaign message(s), and these messages must be readily accessible and acceptable in terms of the audience members’ belief and value system(s). hypothesis the 2004 lovelife billboard campaign aimed at establishing a contemporary, trendy lifestyle characterised by an open, free and gender-equal sexuality is bound to be ineffective amongst some social / ethnic groupings because it does not: • engage with perceptions regarding sexual intercourse and condom use at localised, culture-specific levels; • provide accurate and accessible knowledge in a culture-sensitive format; • acknowledge culture-specific barriers to communication. scope of the article this article focuses on an analysis of the reception of the three lovelife billboards displayed in rural transkei during 2004 in order to test the hypothesis presented above. for the analysis, insights from reception theory and semiotics will be utilised. the 2004 pay-off line “love to be there 2010” and three slides (see addendum) were shown to the research sample which consisted of 28 qualified teachers who had been nominated by their schools to study towards the advanced certificate in education (nqf level 6) in life orientation. the certificate is presented by the faculty of education of the nelson mandela metropolitan university, and funded by the national department of education. permission was obtained to present the slides to the group of teachers who attended training at flagstaff in the transkei from 14 to 15 july 2004. they were required to answer the following questions, regarding the pay-off line and the three slides, using a single sentence in each case. the questionnaires were anonymous, and care was taken to explain to the participants that there were no “correct” or “incorrect” answers. during the period 12 to 13 january 2005, five focus group sessions were held in order to analyse the results of the july study in flagstaff, and to gain an understanding of why the posters were interpreted in that particular manner. this part of the research took place on the summerstrand campus of the nelson mandela metropolitan university. the focus groups included 24 members of the original flagstaff group, plus four other groups with an average size of 34 members each, drawn from the cohort of 218 teachers who attended a week long block release session of the advanced certificate in life orientation presented by the education faculty of the nelson mandela metropolitan university. 112 delimitations this study interprets a limited number of media artifacts within the context of the stated priority of locally contextualised strategies to combat the hiv/aids pandemic. the study sample comprised 218 teachers who are spread across the eastern cape. the lovelife campaigns are predominantly aimed at adolescent and young adults, and it could be argued that the sample should have comprised learners from the 200 plus schools in the eastern cape who have teachers enrolled in the ace life orientation. logistically, however, this was not possible. conclusions arrived at are based on triangulating data gained through quantitative and qualitative methods, and the results speak clearly. this research can be further enhanced by expanding the sample to include learners from rural schools in the province. further research into rural value and belief systems, as well as perceptions regarding hiv/aids and current strategies to combat it, will complement this study. r e s u lts of the questionnaire administered to t h e flagstaff group on 14 july 2004 question 1: the 2004 pay-off line what does the words on the poster “love to be there 2010” mean to you? verbatim responses: to be alive for a long time let us love each other you are welcome in that society would like to be aware of what love life promotes to be interested to be in a particular place no answer like to be in that place / know more about love to be part of the group loving of nature and also the people around you showing students who is love life games slogan for 2010 world cup (sport improvement) she would love to reach or be there when 2010 the writing invites people to participate in the world cup welcoming 2010 i would love to live longer till 2010 and escape aid they care, respect for people live responsibly, protective sex to avoid aids 113 take care of yourself believe in yourself believe in yourself, environment what you are want to go to that place the place is lovable, interesting and comfortable, light lovely place, attractive to be in that world which is good i want to live for a long time it means longing to live a long life the person would love to be alive and wants to explore and know the world or a certain place nice to be in the place the above responses were interpreted against the intended message of the billboard, which is set out below: denotative: want to be alive in 2010 (and experience the world cup) connotative: love responsibly in order to be alive in 2010 and experience the world cup key denotative lexical items: be there = be alive key connotative links: love to = want to, but also: love to = love responsibly in order to this reading of the billboard is confirmed by the rationale for the execution provided by lovelife (corporate website 2004): “combines the concepts of responsible personal relationships and future aspirations” & “also deliberately implies personal responsibility for one’s behaviour and the need for individual initiative in accomplishing life goals.” out of the 28 responses, the following approximate at least some part of the denotative and/or connotative intended meanings: to be alive for a long time she would love to reach or be there when 2010 i would love to live longer till 2010 and escape aid live responsibly, protective sex to avoid aids i want to live for a long time it means longing to live a long life the person would love to be alive and wants to explore and know the world or a certain place 114 score: 2 responses (7.14%) approximate the connotative meaning (responsible love to avoid death as a consequence of aids) 3 responses (10.7%) approximate the denotative meaning (be there = alive) combined score: only 17.86% of the respondents negotiated a meaning that approximates a “valid” decoding of the intended message question 2 (poster depicting child’s drawing and black female pilot) what does the picture say to you? verbatim responses: means development in technology the sky is the limit if you are enlightened you can be everywhere want to be a youth who would like to be somebody with a bright future to devise means of reaching that particular place children must be sent to school young ones are interested to know more about love it tell us about life, people drawing integration of living organisms and non living organisms vodacom a good way of communication south africa is improving (going higher) shows the young girl who would like to have a future or would like to be a pilot the picture motivates people about education know and accept hiv/aids and try to overcome it (deal with it) youth should be taught about aid so that they can escape aid it show me that there is light after education a young girl hoping to be a pilot some day let us unite to fight aids seen light the picture shows that life is the most valuable thing go and explore nature and places tells me that there are nice, beautiful things to be found the sky is the limit aware of hiv / aids 115 importance of education aids awareness to learners warns me against hiv/aids score: although 5 responses (17,8%) indicated that the billboard somehow had to do with education and/ or hiv/aids, the majority interpreted the message in ways that did not at all correspond to the stated rationale, as per the lovelife corporate website (2004): “the visual concept for the three creative executions juxtaposes a child’s drawing of an idealized future goal with a picture of a real person having attained that goal.” significantly, not a single response showed any evidence of an awareness of the significance of the child’s drawing which feature prominently in each of the 2004 creative executions. this aspect of selective perception was later investigated during the january 2005 focus group sessions. question 3 (poster depicting pregnant woman & children) what does the picture say to you? verbatim responses: the child still to be born wants to also enjoy life pregnancy disturbs education of our children if one is hiv positive one should prevent the young one a child is choosing to be in the tummy than be outside the cruel world a kid sympasysing with her expecting mother pregnant woman delivering like to be pregnant woman it tells us about the pregnant (…) tells us about pregnant woman no answer protect yourself against hiv pregnant hiv mothers should be given nevirapene the picture shows pregnancy. love life has something to do with teenage pregnancy no answer safe sex and prevention aid in pregnant women a pregnant woman a young girl looking forward to becoming a mother when she gets old careful and responsible citizens can save our future leaders 116 shows pregnant woman it shows that life has its own hassles tells me of pregnancy and warns me of hiv/aids somebody likes to be somebody living in that period pregnant woman and sad means we are (incomplete answer) means that people practise sex love for children, caring mother a poster of a person who is pregnant and who would love to live longer. but according to the picture i see i am not quite sure whether she will live longer or not, because i do not know her hiv status means lack of morals score: of the three posters, this one created the most misconceptions and even negative responses. not a single response approached the stated lovelife rationale: “happy, stable relationships – a small child looking up at her pregnant thirty-something mother depicts the desire of teenagers for the idealized “two-parent and a home” stable family life depicted in the accompanying childlike drawing” (lovelife corporate website 2004). question 4 (poster depicting young graduate) what does the picture say to you? verbatim responses: to care about life can lead to bright life or future education opens way of love life for our learners no answer given love to be successful and an educated person in a progressive country attempt to reach a goal further your education love to be a graduate shows us a graduate, very happy graduated person, very happy graduated person because of obe our kids are getting quality education if you aim high you will achieve as long as you play safe in life 117 the picture shows the fruits of education the government would like everyone to be well educated in the next coming years youth can’t reach higher education if are not taught to be careful of aids success wishes of a young boy studying and obtaining a degree sometime in life the future of our land lies on our preventative measures against hiv/aids shows academic progress the picture shows that with education there is always a future achieve my goals through hard work the person reached the place he has been wishing for graduating and happy means after all problems there is a success we have to be educated attainment of goals through education no answer would love to achieve success/ have academic qualification score: this poster elicited the most responses that could be linked with the stated rationale of attaining education and success in life through responsible sexuality (avoiding hiv/aids) but, even so, only two responses directly linked success/education and responsible sexuality. most respondents (18) linked the poster with the importance of education. this result highlights one of the most important tenets of reception theory, namely that the interpretation of any given text is powerfully influenced by the meaning expectation of the interpreter (jauss 1982) which determines what becomes “visible” to them and what remains “invisible”. since the respondents are all teachers, the depiction of a graduate is far more “visible” to them than, for example, the female pilot of the first poster. another significant aspect is the extent to which the “love to” catchphrase has become imbedded in three of the responses, perhaps signifying how mediated repetition does lead to assimilation. provisional conclusions an analysis of the interpretation of the three posters by the 28 participants reveals the following: • there is a general awareness among the respondents that hiv/aids impacts negatively on life expectancy and quality of life. 118 • this awareness is associated or linked with the lovelife posters, but it cannot necessarily be attributed to knowledge generated by the campaign, since sexuality education and hiv/aids forms an important part of the syllabus of the advanced certificate of education the respondents are enrolled for. • a significant number of respondents were able to identify elements of the poster (a graduate, a pilot, a pregnant woman), but none were able to integrate the verbal, iconic, indexical and symbolic signs in order to reconstruct a meaning or interpretation that approximates the stated rationale for the creative executions. in particular not a single respondent was able to link the children’s drawings with the other elements of the posters, rendering a key aspect of lovelife’s stated rationale for the artistic execution of the poster campaign meaningless. results of the focus group sessions as already indicated, focus group discussions were conducted to discuss aspects of the flagstaff group’s responses, as well as to pursue the respondents’ evident inability to integrate the verbal, iconic, indexical and symbolic signs comprising the posters. clarification of unusual /unexplained responses during the initial analyses of responses, the following were identified for discussion and clarification during focus group sessions: poster 2: black female pilot • integration of living organisms and non living organisms • vodacom a good way of communication • it tell us about life, people drawing • it show me that there is light after education poster 3: pregnant woman & children • a child is choosing to be in the tummy than be outside the cruel world • a kid sympasysing with her expecting mother • it shows that life has its own hassles • means lack of morals twenty four of the original 28 flagstaff respondents took part in the focus group discussion. it was explained to the group that, as before, there were no “correct” or “incorrect” responses, and that the purpose of the discussion was to try to understand how the different meanings were generated, and also to clarify some responses. the response “integration of living organisms and non living organisms” left the group baffled for quite a while and no clear answer/rationale was provided. one member did suggest that the pilot and aircraft signified the way in which humans have become “integrated” with technology. 119 “vodacom a good way of communication” initially created some laughter, until a member pointed out that, when the photo of the billboard was taken, a small vodacom poster was inadvertently framed in the bottom centre of the lovelife poster. the group was asked what the possible reason(s) was/were for focusing on this very insignificant part of the slide, and several members ventured that the respondent had probably recently obtained a vodacom phone and was therefore more likely to see the vodacom poster. this interpretation is in line with one of the central tenets of reception theory, namely the close correlation between personal circumstance, meaning expectation and meaning production. “it tell us about life, people drawing” also baffled the group to some extent. the only explanation ventured was that the child’s drawing was being referred to. at this point the facilitator did not pursue the matter, as the whole question regarding the purpose of the children’s drawing in the creative execution of the posters was a topic that would be engaged with on its own. “it show me that there is light after education” this response was included for discussion primarily for the (unintended) humour it contained. the group initially did not see the irony (education=darkness) and read the response as education provides light / enlightenment. the inability of the group to interpret the irony imbedded in the response confirms the tenet that the exclusive use of english in the poster campaign presents a barrier to understanding, as it is clear that even the english of a group of trained xhosa teachers does not allow the nuances of expression and interpretation of their mother language. the responses to poster 3 (pregnant mother and children) elicited the most controversy amongst the group. the first 3 responses clearly put pregnancy in a very negative light. debate was initially guarded, since the depiction of the naked (white!) pregnant woman was considered a very sensitive issue. several members of the group agreed that the poster was “immoral”. the group largely agreed that open discussion of sexuality was considered taboo in rural xhosa society, and that when any reference to sexuality was necessary, it should be done in a veiled and metaphorical way. this response clearly shows that this particular lovelife poster is not only confusing, but contradictory in its message to rural xhosa people. regarding the negative responses to pregnancy per se (as expressed in responses 1-3), group discussion revealed that wide-spread poverty and extremely difficult living conditions accounted for this viewing of pregnancy as a burden, instead of a joy as the (intended) message of the poster suggests. finally, the group was asked to debate the significance and meaning of the children’s drawings that form part of the creative execution of the posters. although this issue had been touched on during the discussion of the response “it tell us about life, people drawing”, several members admitted to only becoming aware of the children’s drawings once specific reference to it was made. the ensuing discussion failed to provide an interpretation in line with the lovelife rationale between the drawing and the rest of the poster, that is “the visual concept for the three creative executions 120 juxtaposes a child’s drawing of an idealized future goal with a picture of a real person having attained that goal” (lovelife corporate website 2004). the subsequent group discussions with the rest of the teacher cohort correlated to a great extent with the discussions of the flagstaff group. whereas the flagstaff group consisted of 24 rural, xhosa-speaking teachers, the other groups included teachers from different races, languages and cultures, and comprised people from rural as well as urban areas. the only major differences in response between the flagstaff group and the rest of the cohort pertained to accepted norms in the “discussability” of sexual issues and the ability to integrate the various components of the poster into a meaningful message. no attempt was made to analyse the group discussions in terms of responses according to geographical location, culture, race or language, as this would go beyond the stated purpose of the research. conclusion this study supports previous findings that the lovelife poster campaign carries “not only contradictory but vague messages” and that “the visual messages also make no clear connection with the services the campaign provides” (bechan 2003:63). although the lovelife logo is recognised by the majority of the 218 participants in this study, the 2004 poster campaign generates different and conflicting messages due to the fact that it does not cater for language and culture-specific differences in the south african population. the whole concept of lovelife as a brand is problematic. while branding in recent years have moved to promoting certain “lifestyles” rather than a product, the product remains a key part of the promotion, in that it promises access to the particular lifestyle, however far-fetched the claim may be. lovelife, on the other hand, has no readily identifiable concrete “product” or service, except condoms, as expressed by a member of the flagstaff group. in order to become more effective, the lovelife poster campaigns will have to become differentiated in terms of addressing specific cultural groupings, using appropriate language and visual media that eliminates conflicting interpretation of the message. the poster campaigns should also form a definite link with lovelife’s “product”, namely the services it provides through its clinics and youth centres. fortunately initial research conducted on the 2005 poster campaign in the transkei indicates some positive moves towards this. 121 references adorno, t. w. & horkheimer, m. 1979. the dialectic of enlightenment. new york: herder & herder. bechan, n. 2003. addressing national issues through communication campaigns: reflections on lovelife and proudly south african. communitas 8: 59-70. boyd-barret, o., newbold, c. & van den bulck, h. 2002. the media book. london: arnold. eco, u. 1976. a theory of semiotics. bloomington: indiana university press. eco, u. 1979. the role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. bloomington: indiana university press. habermas, j. 1991. the structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. translated by thomas burger. massachusetts: mit press. jauss, h.r.1982. toward an aesthetic of reception. translated by timothy bahti. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. jordaan, d.j. 2003. a critical perspective on media campaigns to combat hiv/aids within the nepad context. unpublished paper read at the african renaissance conference, port elizabeth, 22-23 october. katz, e. & lazarsfeld, f. 1955. personal influence: the part played by people in the flow of mass communication. new york: free press. klein, n. 2000. no logo: taking aim at the brand bullies. new york: picador. lovelife website. 2003,2004,2005. http://www.lovelife.org.za/corporate/index.html). mckee, a. 2005. the public sphere. cambridge: cambridge university press. mohale, m. & de wet, j. c. 2003. hiv/aids information needs of grade 12 learners in lesotho. communitas 8: 59-70. tomaselli, k.g. 1997. action research, participatory communication: w h y governments don’t listen. africa media review 9: 1-10. williams, r. 1961. the long revolution. london: chatto & windus 122 addendum the following photographs of the posters in question were taken by the author in bizana and flagstaff. 123 124 8786 8786 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities: the case of the deaf and limited english proficiency communities in zimbabwe abstract worldwide public health authorities are taking action to contain covid-19. while the bulk of research on the pandemic focuses on understanding the spread and seeking a cure for the virus from a virology perspective, research of the same magnitude should also focus on the risks of the pandemic for society, particularly among disadvantaged groups. this study adopted a community-centred approach to information and health rights and utilised the case study approach to investigate the quality and access to covid-19 information, care and treatment by the limited english proficiency (lep) and the deaf communities in zimbabwe. more than 60% of covid-19 messages communicated in zimbabwe’s mainstream media do not cater for the needs of these disadvantaged groups. brochures, videos and infographics, for instance, appear in english, yet there is a significant lep population in zimbabwe. as regards the deaf community, videos, conversations and interviews with health specialists, which rarely appear in mainstream public media, include zimbabwean sign language interpretation. in this case, the choice of language and medium used to communicate vital covid-19 messages in mainstream public media may pose language barriers to effective and equitable health information for these vulnerable groups. what this reality hints at is that public communication that does not discriminate is a necessity to allow all members of the community to fight the spread of covid-19 and hence, reduce its potential risks. keywords: health communication; science communication; development communication; covid-19 information; risk communication; disadvantaged communities; deaf community; limited english proficiency dr paul svongoro faculty of arts and humanities, university of the western cape, cape town, south africa email : 4080786@ myuwc.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-3186-339x tawanda matende department of linguistics, faculty of arts, university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe email : matendet@arts. uz.ac.zw orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-2214-0760 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 86-102 date submitted: 20 july 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:4080786@myuwc.ac.za mailto:4080786@myuwc.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3186-339x mailto:matendet@arts.uz.ac.zw mailto:matendet@arts.uz.ac.zw https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2214-0760 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 8786 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities 8786 introduction worldwide public health authorities are taking action to contain the spread of covid-19. while the outbreak has prompted clinical trials of antibodies, vaccines and treatments to combat the spread of the virus, researchers from the social sciences note the paucity of research that adopts a community perspective about the virus. this study adopts a community-centred approach to information and health rights and utilises the case study approach to investigate the quality of and access to covid-19 information, care and treatment by persons with limited english proficiency (lep) and the deaf communities in zimbabwe. while efforts have been made to share information with all people, there is limited and in some cases, no information being produced in accessible formats for persons with disabilities and the disadvantaged such as the deaf and those with lep. this is in contradiction of, for instance, article 11 of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd) that calls on all states to take “all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk”. in the case of zimbabwe, brochures, videos and infographics, for instance, appear in english yet there is a significant lep population in the country. even for citizens with good english proficiency, the technicality of medical language pertaining to covid-19 may pose challenges to communication and hence, access to information critical for surviving the pandemic. as regards the deaf community, videos, conversations and interviews with health specialists, which appear in mainstream public media, rarely include zimbabwean sign language (zsl) interpretation. in this case, the choice of language and medium used to communicate vital covid-19 messages in mainstream public media may pose language barriers to effective and equitable health information for these vulnerable groups. in view of this, the researchers realised the urgent need for research that delves into the nature of the problem with a view to finding possible ways of enhancing the provision of accessible health information. in so doing, the researchers hope for an opportunity to contribute to policy regarding access and equity in health care, while at the same time, strengthening zimbabwe’s response to this and other public health crises. kusters et al. (2017: 123) note that many authors use “deaf” for individuals and “deaf” for sociocultural entities like “the deaf community” as well as established theoretical concepts, such as “deaf culture” (cf. haualand 2012: 19). they argue that the convention “deaf” does not mean “oral/medical” but rather biologically corporally deaf. the d/deaf distinction creates or perpetuates a dichotomy between deaf and deaf people (even when trying to be inclusive by writing “d/deaf”) and has caused practices and experiences of exclusion (kusters et al. 2017: 98). in this study the term “deaf” is used as a term to describe deaf people as well as those who are hard of hearing, while “deaf” is use for sociocultural entities and theoretical concepts. the deaf community in zimbabwe remained relegated to the periphery in as far as access to covid-19 information is concerned. efforts to make sure information reaches this community are still minimal across the nation. deaf people are exposed to serious risk because information on covid-19 is not being presented to them in accessible 8988 svongoro & matende formats. covid-19 poses unique challenges to the deaf community in zimbabwe, many of whom rely on visual cues such as lip-reading and sign language (zsl), which leans heavily on facial cues and expressions for communication. research problem significant gaps and challenges still exist about covid-19; these gaps are especially evident in resource-limited settings and the challenges impact heavily on disadvantaged groups in society such as the deaf and those with lep. evidence suggests that the likelihood of pandemics has increased over the past century because of increased global travel and integration, urbanisation, changes in land use, and greater exploitation of the natural environment. this implies that communicative efforts, especially those aimed at disadvantaged groups, should also be improved. most data regarding the risks, impacts, benefits and cost of mitigation measures against pandemics that are generally reported in the literature come from highincome countries, leading to biases and potential blind spots regarding the risks, consequences and optimal interventions specific to low-income countries such as zimbabwe. against this background, this study seeks to explore how access to information by disadvantaged groups in a low-income country like zimbabwe impacts on the deaf and the lep community. since the outbreak of covid-19 towards the end of 2019 in wuhan, china, the world health organisation (who) has been adding the latest international multilingual scientific findings and knowledge on covid-19 to its covid-19 database. the global literature cited on this database is updated daily (monday through friday) from searches of bibliographic databases, hand searching, and the addition of other expert-referred scientific articles. this database represents a comprehensive multilingual source of current literature on the topic. while it may not be exhaustive, new research is added regularly. however, most of this global literature in the who covid-19 database is drawn from medical schools and laboratories at universities, medical journals and research institutes around the developed world. the literature is generally based on clinical trials and is useful for understanding the spread and prevention of covid-19. however, to understand the disease holistically, there is need to complement this effort by embarking on research that takes a community-centred approach to the understanding of the impact of covid-19 on communities, particularly the marginalised in society. significance of the study access to information at the right time, in the right language, and of the right quality is critical in the fight against the social and economic impact of covid-19. however, when disadvantaged groups are deprived of essential covid-19 information, they are left at an increased risk of contracting the disease and exponentially spreading the disease; thereby, increasing the burden on already underfunded health facilities. persons with lep and the deaf remain susceptible to contracting the disease because vital information about covid-19 shared in mainstream media is often inaccessible to 8988 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities them. this presents a challenge in preventing the spread of the disease and further complicates governments’ efforts at re-opening economies. the study seeks to contribute to the understanding of social protection for disadvantaged groups, as this ultimately reduces financial burdens on the entire economy and enhances the quality of healthcare for all citizens. the study also contributes to the debate around issues regarding access and barriers to equitable information and healthcare. the researchers hope that these issues could be addressed by further interrogating policy and training for media and healthcare personnel to enable governments to effectively and systemically respond to members of the deaf and lep community. research objectives the study seeks to: ♦ explore the perceptions of the led and the deaf community on the quality and access to covid-19 information, care and treatment; ♦ explore the factors that limit or increase access to covid-19 information by the lep and deaf community in zimbabwe; ♦ explain how these factors limit or increase access to general covid-19 information, care and treatment by the lep and deaf community, and their ability to understand and comply with covid-19 prevention and treatment options; and ♦ propose policy interventions to address information challenges faced by members of the lep and deaf community. access to covid-19 information and risks among disadvantaged groups according to unesco, persons with disabilities remain an invisible population group, and this accentuates their vulnerability and marginalisation in times of emergency. literature on the spanish flu pandemic of 1918 reveals that people with poor literacy were much more likely to transmit the disease, and to die. during the h1n1 swine flu outbreak, chinese people with limited english proficiency living in king county, washington were reportedly unlikely to obtain information from the public health system. similarly, spanish speakers were found to be at the greatest risk of exposure to h1n1 during this outbreak. what these few examples suggest is that people with limited english proficiency do not receive adequate health information, which ultimately exacerbates health disparities. for deaf communities around the world, communication barriers present a profound challenge to accessing critical health and safety information regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic. according to the world federation of the deaf, about 70 million people with auditory disabilities worldwide use more than 300 different sign https://www.wmpllc.org/ojs/index.php/ajdm/article/view/1963/0 https://www.wmpllc.org/ojs/index.php/ajdm/article/view/1963/0 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21164098 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21164098 9190 svongoro & matende languages. deaf communities are further marginalised from public life because they do not have access to educational opportunities, which results in low literacy. in the covid-19 context, information on the pandemic is often not available in sign language. the increased use of protective face masks because of covid-19 compounds these communication barriers because masks block visual cues, including facial expressions, lip reading and emotions, all of which are critical for deaf and hard-ofhearing people to communicate. in view of the above examples about how pandemics impact disadvantaged groups in society, it is imperative that people around the world learn from past mistakes. while the researchers do not make an absolute claim that people with lep and the deaf are more likely to contract the virus, it is imperative to ensure that this group is not disproportionately affected because of lack of access to covid-19 information that is communicated to them in languages that exclude and hence, continue to marginalise them. methodology the project adopted a community-centred approach to information and health rights and it was conducted during a period of approximately four months during the pandemic. the project applied a qualitative methodology to collect data from multiple sources. first, data was collected from both print and electronic media covering a broad spectrum of public and private media. such data included news bulletins, government and ministerial covid-19 addresses and updates, coronavirus infographics, leaflets, notices and brochures. second, data was collected through semi-structured and indepth interviews with deaf participants on their experiences and perceptions regarding access to covid-19 information, which appeared in both print and electronic media, and how access to information affected their health-seeking behaviour. the data was analysed using the socio-pragmatic model, which is located in the broad field of pragmatics. while no concise definition of pragmatics can be agreed upon, agbara and omole (2014) view pragmatics as a field of linguistic study, which deals with how a speaker conveys meaning from his/her utterances and how listeners are able to interpret speaker meaning from those utterances. although this definition is clear about the focus of pragmatics, for the purposes of this study the researchers adopted the view shared by crystal (2003) and mey (2001) about pragmatics. for both crystal (2003) and mey (2001), pragmatics deals with the language options of interlocutors and the consequences they have on respective listeners. one of the implications is that the way speakers use language amidst a number of constraints (context, topic, speech acts, appropriateness of the language and medium used) in any communicative situation may result in misinterpretation, and hence, lack of understanding of the speaker’s intended message. the second implication is that a lack of understanding of the speaker’s message may have dire consequences, particularly when dealing with health matters. socio-pragmatics describes the ways in which pragmatic meanings are influenced by the “specific local conditions of language use” (leech 1983: 10). this aspect makes the model relevant to the analysis of data used in this study. in the context of this study, the specific local conditions of language use, which are vital parts of any discourse, 9190 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities can be viewed in terms of the gender, age, social class/status (e.g. the deaf and lep communities), and race of the interlocutors. in this regard, leech’s (1983) view is extended by locastro (2012: 185), who argues, “meaning, structure and the use of language are socially and culturally relative”. thus, the socio-pragmatic model concerns itself with the “social rules of speaking, those expectations about interactional discourse held by members of a speech community as appropriate and normal behaviour” (locastro 2012: 187). the socio-pragmatic model views communication as social action (e.g. warning or informing about coronavirus), and interaction, and borrows from a variety of schools of thought listed by ralarala and rodrigues (2019). synopsis of data during the period of four months, 22 electronic and print messages about covid-19 appeared in mainstream government-owned and private media. these messages comprised the following: ♦ sixteen were covid-19 brochures, infographics, leaflets, notices, covid-19 updates and media statements collected from the herald, kwayedza and the sunday mail newspapers, which are government-owned news outlets owned by zimpapers. these messages were meant for members of the public in zimbabwe as part of the government’s covid-19 information dissemination efforts; ♦ twelve were news bulletins, national addresses and updates on covid-19, videos and infomercials collected from zimbabwe television (ztv), a television station owned by the state entity, the zimbabwe broadcasting corporation (zbc); and ♦ eighteen were covid-19 messages in the form of brochures, infographics, leaflets, notices, covid-19 updates and media statements collected from two privately-owned newspapers namely daily news, owned by associated newspapers zimbabwe (anz), and newsday, owned by alpha media holdings (amh). data was collected from 12 deaf participants about their experiences and perceptions regarding access to covid-19 information that appeared in both print and electronic media. these interviews also assisted the researchers to elicit information from the participants about how access to information affected their healthcare-seeking behaviour. the views obtained from these interviews were then analysed according to recurring themes. the deaf and access to covid-19 information access is a broad topic that is regularly discussed within the deaf community. it involves access to communication, information, education and culture, as well as access to services, including health services. understanding of ill health as well as language and communication barriers have been linked to challenging health care 9392 svongoro & matende access in culturally and linguistically diverse populations (komaric et al. 2012). access to health care affects the health of deaf people and a call for action to provide better access to health services has been highlighted (emond et al. 2015). there are no reliable estimates on the number of deaf people in zimbabwe. according to ndlovu (2016), there are over 200 000 persons who are deaf in zimbabwe with most of them migrating to harare in search of work opportunities. many deaf people use sign language as their main form of communication. fromkin et al. (2003: 3) state, “sign language is established in linguistics and it is a fully and completely human language that meets every criterion that one can apply to describe language”. the researchers were spurred to conduct this research because of the common perception that deaf people are deprived of their right to access information about covid-19 through exclusion of zimbabwean sign language (zsl) on various media platforms. in 2020, persons with disabilities sued the zimbabwean government for failing to use accessible formats in disseminating information concerning covid-19 (zimeye 2020). the executive director and trustee at the centre for disability and development noted that the zimbabwean president’s covid-19 lockdown national addresses on ztv (and also broadcast on national radio stations), and covid-19 updates by both the ministry of information, publicity and broadcasting services and that of health and child care broadcast on ztv related to covid-19 failed to accommodate the needs of the deaf community. the data analysis included a focus on the format in which the messages were presented, namely the language(s) the messages were broadcast in – whether they were oral messages, written messages, pictorial messages or messages in zimbabwean sign language. the focus was further on whether the messages provided inclusive or exclusive covid-19 messages. finally, the focus was on whether the message sources made an effort to reduce barriers in communication by ensuring the messages were broadcast in formats accessible to the generality of the zimbabwean population regardless of age, gender, social status and disability. from the analysis of the covid-19 messages shown on ztv, it is clear that the challenges faced by the deaf community in zimbabwe raised more questions than answers. the platforms used to communicate covid-19 information are not accessible to persons with disability, especially the deaf community. table 1 summarises the various types of covid-19 messages, the messages communicated, the format in which the messages occurred, and how these issues affected access to covid-19 information by the deaf community. 9392 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities table 1: summary of covid-19 messages analysed in relation to the deaf community type of covid-19 messages messages communicated format in which messages occurred 1 covid-19 videos, jingles and infomercials causes of covid-19 written messages, video and pictorial messages (some animated) and oral messages preventative measures 2 president’s covid-19 national lockdown addresses state of the nation in terms of covid-19 oral messages lockdown measures to minimise the spread of covid-19 what citizens were expected to do and how the measures would be enforced 3 ministerial covid-19 updates update the nation on local and national covid-19 statistics oral messages what citizens were expected to do to minimise the spread of the pandemic what the government was doing to fight the pandemic 4 ztv news bulletins general news from zimbabwe and other parts of the world oral messages and sign language interpretation *nb: note that interviews with guest speakers in the studio and by reporters outside the studio did not include sign language interpretation news about covid-19, for example, the country’s state of preparedness, news from quarantine centres, and testing statistics. from the tabulated information, it is clear that efforts to ensure information reaches the deaf community are still minimal in zimbabwe. in terms of the covid-19 pandemic, people who are deaf and hearing impaired have not been given enough information and education on how the disease is spread, how it is prevented, and on related issues. an inclusive means of communicating with people who have disabilities and other minority groups is therefore vital, as they are part of an already marginalised and vulnerable group of people. 9594 svongoro & matende access to health care without barriers is a clearly defined right of people with disabilities, as stated by the un convention on the rights of people with disabilities (kuenberg et al. 2016). examples of approaches to improve access to health care, such as providing powerful and visually accessible communication using sign language, the implementation of important communication technologies, and cultural awareness training for health professionals, are discussed this document. according to the united nations, enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being. the convention is a powerful tool for working toward achieving human rights for deaf people (the world federation of the deaf 2019). the convention is generally acknowledged as marking a paradigm shift concerning attitudes and approaches toward persons with disabilities, including deaf persons. it shifts from viewing them as “objects of charity, medical treatment, and social protection toward viewing persons with disabilities as subjects with rights, who are capable of claiming those rights and making decisions for their lives based on their free and informed consent, as well as being active members of society” (un-scrpd 2006: 178). information needs to be disseminated in accessible formats, such as zimbabwean sign language, and consideration of these persons in resource allocation as well as priority setting. in zimbabwe, the national news broadcasting platforms often do not reach the deaf community because the majority cannot afford to own a television set and have limited access to the internet and electricity. in response to the covid-19 pandemic, not all zimbabwean government briefings were accompanied by zsl interpreters and this provoked appreciable concern among people who are deaf and who rely solely on zsl for information. there was an outcry by the deaf community after the zimbabwean president made a public national address concerning the state of the covid-19 national lockdown on 16 may 2020 on zbc tv. the absence of a zsl interpreter during the president’s address raised many questions as far as inclusivity in the context of covid-19 is concerned. a deaf person on twitter lamented, “where is my sign language interpreter, every time the president addresses the nation about corona-virus we need an interpreter please zbc do something”. the researchers observed that in terms of access to covid-19 information there is a significant gap between hearing people and those who are deaf. section 62 of the zimbabwean constitution (government of zimbabwe 2013 states that “every citizen or permanent resident… has the right of access to information held by the state or by any institution or agency of government at every level, in so far as the information is required in the interest of the public accountability”. however, despite these constitutional provisions, zsl is not prioritised and its use in the media is minimal. during the interviews as part of this study, it was revealed that despite zsl video clips about covid-19 awareness on zbc tv, access to information remains a challenge for the deaf community. the observed language practices on zbc tv largely serve and maintain the interests of the dominant group, in this case hearing people. 9594 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities according to the zimbabwe human rights bulletin (2015), most state and non-state institutions are not obliged to package services and information that has universal acceptance. education attainment for deaf children remains much lower than for their hearing peers although the gap appears to be narrowing (wilson & sin 2015). data on reading ability is dated, with the most recent research being from the 1990s. wildon and sin (2014) found the average reading age for a deaf school-leaver to be under nine years old. they further established that basic levels of literacy within the deaf community are relatively low. research confirms that the majority of deaf people are illiterate and only the partially deaf are able to lip read and write in english. this means that those who are profoundly deaf cannot communicate and express themselves in any other way than through sign language or a sign language interpreter. studies also confirm that deaf patients encounter severe communication barriers when accessing health services (c.f. harmer 1999; chaveiro et al. 2009; pereira & fortes 2010). practitioners often believe that lip-reading/speech-reading and note writing provide effective health communication. in reality, these are ineffective communication modalities for health care conversations. deaf people who have practiced lip-reading/ speech-reading for many years and who are familiar with the specific spoken language are able to understand at best 30 to 45 percent of spoken english (lieu et al. 2007). note writing is often constrained by deficits in health literacy and information deficits (pollard & barnett 2009). smeijers and pfau (2009) argue that treating a native use of sign language, who might not necessarily be fluent in the local written language, as if it was his/her first language, could cause serious communication problems. while zimbabwe continues to lag behind in terms of making vital covid-19 information available for the deaf community, in neighbouring south africa efforts by the government and other stakeholders aimed at ensuring information availability for the deaf are a top priority. the centre for deaf studies (cfds) at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) is contributing to society by keeping the deaf community informed about the coronavirus pandemic through a number of initiatives that filtered information to the deaf and hard of hearing communities in south africa. when the president of south africa addressed the nation to announce a national lockdown, the cfds ensured there was a full live-stream interpreting by a deaf person through the use of relay interpreting – a practise of translating messages from one language to another through a third language for a targeted audience. the cfds has also increased efforts at raising awareness around covid-19 among the deaf by producing a video called corona info for kids. the aim of the video was to make information accessible for deaf children in a deaf-appropriate way that would make an impact, which also included a fun hand-washing alphabet clip. since the onset of the pandemic in south africa, the cfds has been offering and sharing information through these videos in south african sign language (sasl) to ensure the deaf community could access information in their first language. similar to the south african example above, to mitigate against the compounded barriers the deaf community face in accessing information, tunisia, through the international foundation for electoral systems (ifes), developed a video in tunisian sign language to share information about the pandemic. the video, which features 9796 svongoro & matende deaf tunisians as actors, describes the risks of the virus and provides critical information on how deaf people can protect themselves against covid-19. however, in zimbabwe deaf people continue to face difficulties in accessing health information. deaf sign language users do not have access to incidentally occurring information about health issues in public transport, or on the radio or television, and there is a general lack of health information and education materials provided in sign language. limited english literacy and a lack of available information in sign language reduce access to preventative health care information for deaf people in zimbabwe. what is paradoxical about the situation in zimbabwe is that the constitution of the country provides for the promotion and advancement of the use of zsl. thus, the constitution embraces language as a basic human right and multilingualism as a national resource. many barriers that restrict deaf people from accessing covid-19 information and health services are unfortunately a result of a lack of deaf awareness. according to watkins (2010: 16), deaf awareness refers to a knowledge and awareness of the terms and characteristics of deafness, what it means to be deaf, how deaf people communicate and what is the best practice when communicating and working with deaf people. from a service provider’s perspective, to be highly deaf aware would be to understand how a deaf person would access their service and what provisions they would need so that they were able to access the service fully. to not be deaf aware is to not consider or care how a deaf person would access a service, to be unaware of their needs and to not take any special measures to account for their needs. from the discussion above regarding access to covid-19 information by the deaf community, it is clear that in zimbabwe and other parts of the world a high lack of deaf awareness compounded by a general lack of language resources for deaf people are creating barriers for deaf people’s access to covid-19 information and health services. access to covid-19 information among the lep according to unesco, zimbabwe has an adult literacy rate of 88.69%. while zimbabwe’s literacy rate is among the highest in africa, there are questions about the number of people who are proficient in english because for most zimbabweans english is spoken as a second or even third language. the majority of zimbabweans who speak english learn it as an additional language. those who are not proficient in english are disadvantaged because the language is the main medium of instruction throughout the education system, a measure of educational achievement, and an important qualification for higher education and employment. one area in which people who are not proficient in english are disadvantaged pertains to access to health information. marginalised people, including those with lep, have a right to clear, accurate and accessible information about covid-19 and response efforts. such persons need information in a language and format they understand. it must also be presented in a way that is relevant to them, and available in a channel they can access and https://countryeconomy.com/countries/zimbabwe 9796 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities trust. however, this is rarely the case with people with lep, especially in zimbabwe’s mainstream media, as shown in table 2. table 2: summary of covid-19 messages analysed in relation to the lep community type of covid-19 messages messages communicated language(s) in which messages were presented 1 covid-19 brochures, infographics, leaflets, notices, media statements and infomercials causes of covid-19 85% in english and 15% in shona *nb: note that only 15% of covid-19 messages appeared in the government-owned kwayedza newspaper, which publishes in shona. preventative measures notify the public about tests conducted, escapees from quarantine centres, etc. refute false social media rumours and misinformation about covid-19 2 president’s covid-19 national lockdown addresses state of the nation in terms of covid-19 98% in english (with no provision of an interpreter) lockdown measures to minimise the spread of covid-19 what citizens were expected to do and how the measures would be enforced 3 ministerial covid-19 updates update the nation on local and national covid-19 statistics 98% in english (with no provision of an interpreter) what citizens were expected to do to minimise the spread of the pandemic what the government was doing to fight the pandemic 4 ztv news bulletins general news from zimbabwe and other parts of the world 90% in english (with no provision of an interpreter) *nb: note that only about 10% of the interviews by reporters outside the studio were conducted in either shona or ndebele news about covid-19, including the country’s state of preparedness, news from quarantine centres, and testing statistics 9998 svongoro & matende from table 2 it is clear that zimbabwe still faces information gaps regarding the covid-19 pandemic. most vital information about the pandemic is presented to citizens in english without due consideration for those with lep. this means that people with lep experience covid-19 information gaps and hence are exposed to greater risk than those who are fluent in english. in some parts of the world, the covid-19 pandemic has seen changes in expectations for translation and interpreting services. in the usa, the government and various language bodies now provide information in various languages to help communicate during the pandemic. an example is a publication by the centres for disease control and prevention titled cdc communication toolkit for migrants, refugees, and other limited-english-proficient populations. translators without borders (twd) also released another publication, titled twb’s global response to covid-19 (velasquez et al. 2020). these bodies do not only provide interpretation services in healthcare for those with lep but also provide the same service in other areas of need, including the provision of information about lockdowns and stay-at-home rules; instructions for wearing face coverings on public transport; restricted hours at supermarkets; guidance for home schooling; access to emergency financial aid programmes or mortgage “holidays”; and help lines for mental health. all these services would be rendered unavailable when someone with lep does not understand the language in which the content is offered. thus, the cdc and twb provide language services for those who need these in order to curb the possible long-term effect of the pandemic in those parts of the community not fluent in the local language. in zimbabwe no similar efforts have been made regarding meeting the language needs of the lep community. the current state of affairs regarding language access among the lep in zimbabwe could be attributed to a lack of resources to fund language research and language services provision. apart from this, lack of commitment on the part of the government aimed at ensuring that a citizen’s right to information is respected at all times could be another cause for the continued disregard of the lep community’s needs. implications and recommendations global covid-19 responses identify risk communication and community engagement as a priority. this means that all responses should communicate effectively with communities, counter misinformation and make sure that all people, regardless of age, gender, status and class can take the necessary steps to protect themselves and their communities. to achieve the above, the researchers propose that all covid-19 messages be presented in an appropriate language and format and be relevant in content and medium depending on the purpose of the message and the target audience. from a socio-pragmatic point of view (agbara & omole 2014), when a speaker conveys meaning from their utterances, he/she should do so in a way that allows listeners to interpret meaning from those utterances and take the necessary actions. in the context of this study, the necessary actions may include taking preventative measures https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/communication-toolkit.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/communication-toolkit.html https://translatorswithoutborders.org/covid-19 9998 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities against covid-19, getting tested or receiving treatment, or even self-isolating when one suspects he/she has covid-19. communicating in international lingua francas or national (official) languages like english, in the case of zimbabwe, makes marginalised people more vulnerable. while english is the official language of government business in zimbabwe, it is spoken by the majority of zimbabweans as a second or even third language. for the deaf and other disadvantaged groups, most of whom often have fewer educational opportunities and are less likely to speak or read english as a second language, marginalisation in the face of covid-19 is exacerbated. the format in which information is presented affects how well it is understood. while even those who cannot read value written text, many people find pictorial, audio and video content easier to understand. accessibility for older and semi-literate people depends on design considerations, such as larger fonts and good contrast. to convey the correct information, pictorial messaging should also reflect local culture and practices. misinformation and mistrust flourish when communication does not clearly answer people’s questions. to be useful, the information must be tailored to the intended audience. it must respond to people’s questions and concerns. covid-19 messages must be clearly expressed using concepts, sentence structures and terminology that audiences are familiar with. experience from previous disease outbreaks shows this is a key factor for communities’ trust in and uptake of health guidance, including healthseeking behaviour. for communication to be successful, the researchers propose locally preferred and trusted communication channels to ensure the two-way flow of information. since covid-19 infection control limits face-to-face communication, social media, sms services, call centres, television and radio are essential. however, these channels carry the risk of exacerbating inequalities and feelings of exclusion for some marginalised groups (the deaf and lep, for instance). in view of the above, the researchers suggest a few practical actions. first, all risk communication regarding covid-19 and community engagement that arise from it, should be based on language data. this means stakeholders should always prioritise the identification of the most effective languages, formats and channels for communicating about covid-19. this also means that stakeholders need to value the critical role language and literacy maps can play in information dissemination and access. while language and literacy maps are vital tools in some parts of the world, such as malawi, mozambique, nigeria and zambia, such tools are rarely used in zimbabwe. secondly, stakeholders should provide coordinated, timely two-way communication in the right languages, formats, and channels. the government and relevant organisations in the fight against covid-19 should develop content in the widest possible range of relevant languages and include formats suitable and accessible for the most vulnerable individuals. all communication, whether in written, pictorial or audio format, should follow accepted plain-language principles designed to minimise reading effort. in addition, efforts should also be taken to ensure that there is agreement and a common 101100 svongoro & matende understanding on the use of words and phrases that best describe difficult concepts. in a rapidly evolving situation like the covid-19 pandemic, this means going beyond a static message bank and engaging in active quality control of communication efforts. finally, the government of zimbabwe should also improve resourcing for language support across the response. in this regard, the researchers propose that universities and language institutes should be allocated resources to meet the information and communication needs of marginalised people. it could ensure that the right tools to communicate accurate information in local languages and with the appropriate terminology are accessible to all. language technology could also support multilingual communication at speed. conclusion this study adopted a socio-pragmatic approach to interrogate how language choices by various forms of print and electronic media affect access to covid-19 information by the deaf and lep communities in zimbabwe. the article has shown that the way mass media messages are packaged in relation to context, topic, language and medium in any communicative situation may result in misinterpretation and hence, a lack of understanding of the speaker’s intended message. in the context of this study, a lack of understanding of the speaker’s message may have dire consequences, particularly when dealing with a pandemic like covid-19. it is clear that continuing to marginalise people by failing to address their information and communication needs will prevent the global response from being as effective as it could and should be. state actors, local agencies and health systems should adapt in the midst of this crisis and develop collaborations with social service organisations, media outlets and other stakeholders that allow for the prompt development and distribution of covid-19 health information to the deaf and people with lep. only then can we bridge the gap in health information access, which continues to drive longstanding health disparities. references agbara, c.u.b. & omole, k. 2014. a pragmatic analysis of speech acts strata in nigeria’s legislative discourse. international journal of research in arts and social sciences 7(2): 172-180. chaveiro, n., porto, c.c. & barbosa, m.a. 2009. the relation between deaf patients and the doctor. brazilian journal of otorhinolaryngology 75: 147-150. https://doi. org/10.1016/s1808-8694(15)30846-6 crystal, d. 2003. a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. (fifth edition). oxford: blackwell. emond, a., ridd, m., sutherland, h., allsop, l., alexander, a. & kyle, j. 2015. access to primary care affects the health of deaf people. british journal of general practice 65: 95-96. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp15x683629 fromkin, v., rodman, r. & hyams, n. 2003. an introduction to language. (seventh edition). boston: wadsworth. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1808-8694(15)30846-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1808-8694(15)30846-6 https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp15x683629 101100 covid-19 information gaps among disadvantaged communities government of zimbabwe. 2013. constitution of zimbabwe. amendment no. 20 act. harare: government printers. harmer, l. 1999. health care delivery and deaf people: practice, problems, and recommendations for change. journal of deaf studies and deaf education 4: 73110. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/4.2.73 haualand, h. 2012. interpreting ideas and relaying rights. a comparative study of video interpreting services in norway, sweden and the united states. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of oslo. komaric, n., bedford, s. & van driel, m.l. 2012. two sides of the coin: patient and provider perceptions of health care delivery to patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. bmc health services research 12: 322. https://doi. org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-322 kuenberg, a., fellinger, p. & fellinger, j. 2016. health care access among deaf people. journal of deaf studies and deaf education 2016: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1093/ deafed/env042 kusters, a., de-meulder, m. & brien, d.o. 2017. innovations in deaf studies. the role of deaf scholars. oxford: oxford university press. leech, g.n. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. lieu, c.c., sadler, g.r., fullerton, j.t. & stohlmann, p.d. 2007. communication strategies for nurses interacting with patients who are deaf. dermatology nursing/dermatology nurses’ association 19: 541-551. locastro, v. 2012. pragmatics for language educators: a sociolinguistic perspective. abingdon: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203850947 mey, j.l. 2001. pragmatics: an introduction. oxford: wiley-blackwell. ndlovu, s.b. 2016. the deaf and education in zimbabwe. harare: deaf trust zimbabwe. pereira, p.c. & fortes, p.a. 2010. communication and information barriers to health assistance for deaf patients. american annals of the deaf 155: 31-37. https://doi. org/10.1353/aad.0.0128 pollard, r.q. & barnett, s. 2009. health-related vocabulary knowledge among deaf adults. rehabilitation psychology 54: 182-185. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015771 ralarala, m.k. & rodrigues, t. 2019. incarcerated, incriminated or vindicated? an investigation into socio-pragmatic elements of police interviewing. in: ralarala, m.k., kaschula, r.h. & heydon, g. (eds). new frontiers in forensic linguistics: themes and perspectives in language and law in africa and beyond. cape town: african sun media. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928480174 smeijers, a.s. & pfau, r. 2009. towards a treatment for treatment: on communication between general practitioners and their deaf patients. the sign language translator and interpreter 3: 1–14. un-scrpd. 2006. convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. 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[online]. available at: https://www.zimeye.net/people with disabilities-dragmnangagwa-government-to-court-over-selective-dissemination-of-information/ [accessed on 18 april 2020]. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200331.77927/full http://www.bslzone.co.uk/files/4914/5320/1727/opm%20report%20research%20into%20the%20de http://www.bslzone.co.uk/files/4914/5320/1727/opm%20report%20research%20into%20the%20de https://www.zimeye.net/people%20with%20disabilities-drag-mnangagwa-government-to-court-over-selective-dissemination-of-information/ https://www.zimeye.net/people%20with%20disabilities-drag-mnangagwa-government-to-court-over-selective-dissemination-of-information/ 220 ‘silent hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary abstract silent hunter, a 1986 south africa wildlife documentary directed by duncan mclachlan and featuring john varty and elmon mhlongo, caused controversy because of ways in which it broke the rules of blue-chip wildlife documentaries. the new possibilities it explored appealed to producers looking for new formats for wildlife television, in particular to discovery channel that had started in 1985 in the united states of america. this film was thus a major influence in the move from blue-chip to presenterdriven wildlife documentary. the film also rebelled against many of the restrictions of blue-chip documentaries. with reference to actor-network-theory, this article presents some thoughts on why silent hunter is worth considering not only as aesthetic but also as moral critique of wildlife film production. keywords: media studies; documentary; wildlife documentary; actor-network-theory; film analysis; wildlife communication; conservation communication introduction most academic analyses of the shifts in wildlife documentary over the past half century are based on north american and british trends and consumers and note major shifts: from high production value “blue-chip” documentaries to producer-driven digitally produced content and computer-generated graphics; from wildlife documentaries as part of general television offerings to the growth of specialists channels (chris 2006; bousé 2000; mitman 1999; cottle 2004; scott 2003). in the only monograph on african wildlife documentary makers, on the other hand, hartley (2010) does not really examine the interplay between international and african markets and trends. this article argues that a maverick south african production, silent hunter, was influential in changing the rules of wildlife engagement. this article, through interviews with major protagonists involved in the production, argues that entertainment media such as the discovery channel took this as one model for productions for the (then) new channel and that their success encouraged other traditional channels to follow. prof. ian glenn research fellow, department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (glennie@ufs.ac.za) doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v23.15 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2018 23: 220-228 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.15 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.15 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v23.15 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 221 ‘silent hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary background: the making of ‘silent hunter’ john varty did not come to wildlife film-making through any of the conventional routes. (the information that follows was recorded in an interview at tiger canyons in april 2017.) as co-owner of londolozi game lodge, he was trying, particularly with the help of elmon mhlongo, his poacher-turned-tracker helper, to habituate leopards to the presence of vehicles to make it easier for guests to see the sought-after leopard, the most elusive of the africa big five. in doing this, varty and mhlongo recorded leopard behaviour and interactions over a period of years. varty had become involved in wildlife film-making as a result of helping to write scripts and in arguing for cause-driven documentaries, for example, on the adverse effects of building a wildlife fence in botswana. after a lengthy period working for a film production company that could not pay him, he was given a film camera as some kind of recompense and so ended up with the means to record behaviour. in the early 1980s, by which time he and mhlongo had recorded a lot of footage, including previously unseen leopard behaviour, varty went to the wildscreen film festival in bristol, england. as he tells it, he was bored by the conventional blue-chip offerings after one day and left early. on his return to south africa, he decided he needed to make a markedly different kind of wildlife documentary, using londolozi money to finance it. so he looked for somebody who had shown himself capable of making a dramatic film about an unconventional subject, and settled on duncan mclachlan, who had made one of the first ever films about adventure sports, a film about cape town rock climber chris lomax called solo ascent. mclachlan came to the film project to discover what one might have expected from years of careful following of a wild animal without a set script or full time attention: ample fascinating footage but certainly not anything close to a finished product. what the creative team came up with next changed the rules of wildlife engagement and the communication about wildlife issues: they made the process of making the film and the emotions set off by it part of the story. the film opens by breaking several of the rules of blue-chip documentary: the viewer sees varty in profile with movie camera and binoculars, scanning. he opens, “my name is john varty. there were three of us involved there in the wilds of africa. first there was the leopard. then there was elmon mhlongo, tracker and friend.” varty and mhlongo are leading men in the classical sense. mhlongo is usually bare-chested and presented as the “last of a dying breed” who knows the bush. the male intimacy involved in the “five long years” of getting up early to track the leopard becomes part of the theme and the role of mhlongo’s tracking skills and indigenous knowledge is acknowledged. the film also presents other indigenous knowledge respectfully. when the female leopard they are following disappears, varty and mhlongo go to a traditional healer to see what his bones tell about what has happened. they emerge reassured – the leopard is looking for a mate, and is not dead or lost. this turns out to be correct. for dramatic effect, the film re-stages events that had happened but not been filmed: an elephant charge; being lowered into the leopard den and escaping up a rope; a fire 222 glenn on the vehicle at the critical moment when they are about to capture footage of mating leopards for the very first time. the film also shows varty filming the leopard up a tree by lying on his back. probably like most artistic productions breaking rules for the first time, the documentary returns to conventions at points: after the varty introduction, a conventional wildlife documentary narrated by voiceover artist brian o’shaugnessy begins and gives conventional scientific details about leopard grooming, for example. but this switch to omniscient narrator leads to further switches back to varty, who at some points lectures the audience on the dangers of encroaching civilisation or poaching, or turns lyrical and plays his guitar. interspersed with typical wildlife documentary, other elements emerge such as adolescent humour when varty yells to a pilot delivering supplies to ask whether he has forgotten toilet paper, only to have a roll thrown out of the window as the pilot leaves, unfolding across the runway. unsurprisingly for a film breaking so many rules, no neat ending was possible and the film has three endings: a conventional wildlife ending in which the older cubs leave and the mother leopard looks for a male to start a new cycle; an ending to the quest of the filmmakers to capture mating leopards on film in the wild, which they achieve successfully; a lecture from varty when they find a dead poached leopard cub on the dangers man poses to the environment. the wildscreen film festival entry the film was entered for the 1986 wildscreen festival in bristol. clearly the film had some claim to an award given that it had recorded never before seen sequences of leopard behaviour. the general reactions seem to have been typical of any committee when its central tenets are challenged. varty had some supporters on the committee, including an executive from french television company canal plus, who told him what transpired. he recounts a central exchange with some amusement. one of the irate british judges is reported to have said, “varty has broken all the rules of wildlife documentary”, to which the french supporter retorted, “i don’t think he knows the rules”. the committee awarded the prize to another leopard film by a major film maker and producer: hugh miles’s death in the long grass. varty finds a telling analogy: he had made the error of turning up to play tennis at wimbledon in coloured tennis clothes when the rule was all-whites. a photograph of the prizewinners shows a very british assembly of tweeded and tied figures. but the revolution of the film went beyond mere external forms. there must have been some second thoughts from the committee as they invented a new category to try to cope with films like varty’s – a theatrical award – shortly afterwards. breaking the rules this film upended conventions of traditional blue-chip wildlife documentaries and the hostile or uneasy reaction to the film was based on the sense that varty was dangerously mixing dramatic recreation of events with reality, advocacy with recording. blue-chip wildlife documentary conventions have been analysed in the books and 223 ‘silent hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary articles mentioned, but it is useful to summarise – even to the point of parody – the oppositions of style and viewpoint so as to see how thoroughly silent hunter moved from the industry norm (see table 1). table 1: oppositions of style and viewpoint bbc blue-chip silent hunter without emotions in cameraman or viewer. don’t affect the animals with sentiments. “stiff upper lip”. emotions in cameraman and viewer varty fears the cub is dead or the mother lost. without viewpoint or viewpoint obscured. preaches to viewers. shows viewers the process. nature speaks. why question it? cycle of life. cycle of seasons. varty speaks. problematises his relationship with the leopard through song. nature eternal? not shot through with changes, problems. no humans. cats in danger. back to game fence problem. poaching. western, scientific knowledge, not indigenous. animals are anonymous. indigenous knowledge and belief brought in. animals are protagonists. seamless product. total view. messy process, dramatic, subject of the film. funding by broadcaster for defined project. set time. equipment high barrier to entry. largely self-funded and equipped. invisible creator of film. all events real. immodest presenter. some events staged. in the larger history of wildlife documentary, silent hunter could be seen, because of the re-staged dramatic sequences, as part of a tradition of wildlife filmmaking that sacrificed authenticity for audience appeal – a dichotomy going back to the early history of the genre and figures like colonel selig (mitman, 1999). but mitman (1999: 206) concludes his study with some telling criticisms of the blue-chip genre: in nature as spectacle, the animal kingdom exists solely to be observed, objectified and enjoyed. this voyeurism precludes any meaningful exchange because we remain at a physically and emotionally safe distance, far removed from the shared labor of animals and humans, whose interactions have made such vicarious experiences possible. mitman’s (1999: 208) conclusion is that wildlife films mislead in denying the human impact on nature and our presence in the natural world, as “the artifice of civilization must be hidden, for any sign of artificiality would destroy the illusion of this recreated nature as god’s place of grace”. silent hunter was released at a time when critics had become aware that some artifice and harm to animals might be involved in blue-chip films through the revelations of the 1984 canadian broadcasting company’s broadcast of cruel camera, which showed deception and staged scenes in disney and other blue-chip productions. other analysts point out how blue-chip documentaries may omit comments on scientific controversies such as creationism and avoid issues of conservation seen as too gloomy or political (dingwall & aldridge 2006; cottle 2004; jeffries 2003). 224 glenn other analysts point out that the tensions shown here are common in debates about documentary more generally. as bagust (2008: 16) notes about the griersonian claims for the superiority of documentary to fictional film: we can see that, right from the outset, the theoretical superiority and veracity claimed for the documentary film was a vulnerable one, one that was further destabilized by later technological and generic developments in screen production. silent hunter could thus claim to be honest about its artifice and the dangers of abusing wild animals through filming. it also complicates mitman’s account because the artifices of civilization in the film (the vehicle, the camera equipment, the earoplane flying in) are highlighted, but serve to vindicate londolozi as a place where the “shared labor of animals and humans” is the business of providing tourists with great viewing experiences. in this, varty’s opening tribute to the leopard as what latour (2005) would call full agent or actor in the drama is important. in the song addressed to the leopard, performed in silent hunter by roger lucey, varty considers whether the filmmakers have exploited and in some way harmed the leopard. in their concern about poaching and their fear that a dead leopard they find may turn out to be one of their subjects, the protagonists also show an ethical concern that traditional wildlife documentary obscures – something later programmes like big cat diary would make central to their appeal (richards 2014). several commentators have noted that traditional blue-chip documentaries have done very little to arrest alarming losses in wildlife and may even have helped obscure the problems wildlife faces. in the recreation of the consultation with the local sangoma to have his prediction on what has happened to the leopard, and in the value given to mhlongo’s role, this film also pays tribute to local indigenous knowledge and fieldwork rather than to the neutrality of western science – something that has become far more central to debates about ecological debates in the decades since most of the studies of wildlife documentary have been published and can also be seen as challenging a damaging hegemony in blue-chip documentaries (glenn 2013). and varty avoids the kind of contempt for indigenous values and knowledge shown by a figure such as steve irwin in his response to crocodiles kept in east timor (brockington 2008). the changes in this film were thus not simply a question of busking, or of varty’s vanity, but an attempt to upend traditional documentary values. what effects did the film have? londolozi as the comment on mitman suggests, the film at once admits civilisation and artifice in, but in the service of a new kind of nature experience: viewing leopards from a vehicle at londolozi. from this point of view, the artifice in the film serves as tourist attraction – one can fly in in a small earoplane, one will be guided by expert trackers and guides, one is sure to see leopards. varty says that the film led to a considerable boost in publicity for the lodge and an increase in international bookings. in drawing attention to the work done to understand and habituate the leopard, the film may take the risk of alienating critical viewers (“the londolozi leopards are very habituated”), but in practice 225 ‘silent hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary the adjoining sabi sand lodges (londolozi, mala mala, singita) where these leopards were habituated became the most sought-after and valuable wildlife lodges in africa with the presence of habituated but fully wild leopards a major part of the appeal. londolozi’s highly successful ongoing social media presence builds on the notion of guests having a rapport with specific animals on which the lodge keeps reporting. discovery channel the effect of silent hunter was not simply on londolozi business. david varty, the business head of londolozi productions, (in a skype interview in 2017 with the author) said that the outrage of some members of the british wildlife committee was matched by a very different reaction from american television executive, clark bunting, charged with finding content for a new cable television network – discovery. for him, newly installed as head of the channel that only started broadcasting in 1985, it was evident that silent hunter could be the future of the genre: passionate, personal, committed, more dramatic than conventional blue-chip documentary. in contrast to the decorum and scientific detachment of the bbc genre, the discovery channel wanted to highlight action, danger, the romance of making wildlife films. in his summary of major events in wildlife documentary, bousé (2006) omits any mention of varty, while accounts of the rise of the discovery channel, similar to that chris (2006), tend to focus on longer terms trends and audience demographics, rather than individual creative productions and their effect. chris’ (2006) omission of varty’s impact is particularly glaring as she gives lengthy treatment to van lawick’s much later the leopard son, which in many ways repeats varty’s themes and was much less influential. silent hunter is in some ways a one of a kind film because of mclachlan’s role. varty and mhlongo are not celebrity presenters; the film is not part of a weekly series of presenter-driven scripts as later shows featuring steve irwin or austin stevens would be; the film was not made on commission, as varty’s later films would be. yet it seems evident that the human role in this film helped break the hold of blue-chip on the industry and to open it up to new forms. in helping discovery move in new directions, this film shaped much of what followed. clark bunting and discovery commissioned varty, on the basis of silent hunter, to make films for the best part of a decade, working in kenya and londolozi, but also in south america where mhlongo’s skills as tracker were tested on the south american jaguar. whatever the later importance of digital technologies or cheaper production methods, or a quicker production cycle, the new sensibility and view of nature and the importance of on-screen presenters as shown by varty opened new avenues for discovery. the legacy the team assembled to make silent hunter stayed largely in place for the 1992 feature film running wild starring varty, mhlongo, brooke shields and martin sheen and directed by mclachlan. the plot deals with a young american filmmaker (shields) who visits londolozi to make a documentary about two young abandoned leopards that 226 glenn varty is raising. many of the devices from silent hunter recur here – the filmmakers lose clips to a fire; poaching threatens the leopards, as do corrupt officials; varty and mhlongo live in a kind of blood brotherhood. but after this fairly successful attempt at fictional feature film, varty returned to wildlife documentaries and filming his attempts to return tigers to the wild in south africa. varty’s original sense at the bristol festival that blue-chip documentaries were too staid, too slow, too dispassionate and that the genre needed a strong dose of dramatic interest has surely prevailed. when david attenborough has to fake looking for spitting cobras in the wild, or hang out of a helicopter to show himself dramatically on the spot, or austin stevens is presented being the first person to descend into the cave, we confront the evidence that the blue-chip ethos by and large has given way to audience demands for more drama and more emotion. when dvds of blue-chip documentaries include sections showing “outtakes” or “the making of” or show us the technologies used to film a sequence, they are accepting that the process of making the film is of legitimate interest to the audience. (varty was not the only figure or only influence as many others such as the roots in 2 in the bush had also showed some of this interest in process and techniques, but his role mattered.) for varty himself, the dangers of a move to a presenter-based series with figures like steve irwin became evident – presenters could work with captive animals or cut production values dramatically. in filming and blogging about his work to re-introduce tigers into the wild in south africa, he in several ways has returned to the legacy of silent hunter. a theoretical addendum one way of analysing varty’s film and industry changes would be to invoke bourdieu’s work on production ecologies as cottle (2004) does, or look at bourdieu’s description of what happens in struggles for cultural domination (bourdieu 1992; bourdieu & johnson 1993) in this view, varty’s film marks a moment when non-british values shake british restraint and decorum. as in other cultural battles, the challenging powers meet resistance and are greeted with outrage. varty was not the only wildlife documentary maker to move away from the bbc template but silent hunter was probably the most marked deviation. bourdieu helps understand how, in wildlife film more generally, michael rosenberg of partridge films emerged as a key figure able to play british broadcasters off against american ones. in this analysis, south african filmmakers became more sophisticated than british or american ones because they produced material for both audiences, knowing how to appeal to different tastes or styles. but if bourdieu is the theorist appropriate for understanding some of the cultural clashes involved, actor-network-theory may also help explain some of the revolutionary effect of silent hunter. it suggests that the blue-chip genre refuses to legitimise or acknowledge “actors” – whether cameras, vehicles, cameramen or women, the animals, the infrastructure, the locals who find or track animals. it represents science, but the science of what has already been recorded. (alan root (2012) tells of being the first to record, for example, hornbill nesting behaviour, but the bbc refusing to let him include it in film 227 ‘silent hunter’ and its influence on wildlife documentary until there were two scientific papers describing this silent hunter insists on all sorts of actors and networks that blue-chip nature documentary passes over. looking at silent hunter helps adjudicate the usefulness of bourdieu (1992) and latour (2005) as theorists of wildlife documentary. bourdieu helps understand the process of cultural struggle and how new forms emerge with new channels and how to analyse the national, commercial and cultural aspects involved. latour helps us see that the film insists on revealing actors and networks that other films ignore. silent hunter deserves recognition for that and not only for its role in changing industry practice and tastes. references bagust, p. 2008. ‘screen natures’: special effects and edutainment in ‘new’ hybrid wildlife documentary. continuum: journal of media & cultural studies 22: 213-226. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10304310701861564 bourdieu, p. 1992. les règles de l’art : genèse et structure du champ littéraire. paris: seuil. bourdieu, p. & johnson, r. 1993. the field of cultural production: essays on art and literature. cambridge: polity press. bousé, d. 2000. wildlife films. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. https:// doi.org/10.9783/9780812205848 brockington, d. 2008. celebrity conservation: interpreting the irwins. media international australia 127: 96-108. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0812700113 chris, c. 2006. watching wildlife. minneapolis, mi: university of minnesota press. cottle, s. 2004. producing nature(s): on the changing production ecology of natural history tv. media, culture & society 26: 81-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443704039494 dingwall, r. & aldridge, m. 2006. television wildlife programming as a source of popular scientific information: a case study of evolution. public understanding of science 15: 131-152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662506060588 glenn, i. 2013. spotting the leopard: fieldwork, science and leopard behaviour. in: green, l. (ed.). contested ecologies: dialogues in the south on nature and knowledge. cape town: hsrc press. hartley, j. 2010. africa’s big five and other wildlife filmmakers. nairobi: african books collective. jeffries, m. 2003. bbc natural history versus science paradigms. science as culture 12: 527-545. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950543032000150346 latour, b. 2005. reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. oxford: oxford university press. mitman, g. 1999. reel nature: america’s romance with wildlife on films. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 228 glenn richards, m. 2014. the wildlife docusoap: a new ethical practice for wildlife documentary? television & new media 15: 321-335. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476412465656 root, a. 2012. ivory, apes and peacocks: animals, adventure and discovery in the wild places of africa. london: chatto & windus. scott, k.d. 2003. popularizing science and nature programming: the role of ‘spectacle’ in contemporary wildlife documentary. journal of popular film and television 31: 29-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/01956050309602866 https://doi.org/10.1080/01956050309602866 _goback 125pb the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill: an exploration of precedent and place brand identity as social construct abstract the case study plays out in a tiny coastal enclave when a landowner invites an acquaintance with a wagon home to temporarily locate the structure to their empty plot. residents and landowners raise questions about the appropriateness and legal validity of such living arrangements and ultimately, for the authors, raises the question of community identity. the article explores the phenomenon of the flâneur as a persona, freedom camping, and of marginalisation in space and place through the lens of place brand identity. considering the notion of place brand, the article explores the situation in the context of habitus and the historical sense of villagers about their enclosed or secluded environment, home, and sense of social belonging. the qualitative thematic analysis revealed three dominant themes namely the disturbance, or threat to habitus, place brand identity as delineated in the interactions of a messaging community group, and inclusion or exclusion of the precedent from the community. the theoretic argument that culminates in the positioning of the ideal social construct suggests that habitus positions the place brand beyond commonalities or variances in its physical features and social demography. the authors conclude that the unique blend of place brand identity and habitus can evolve and confirm itself continuously, with the potential to either facilitate the intersectionality, diversity, and inclusiveness of the place brand identity as the sum of its habitus, or risk is demise. place brand identity is inextricably defined by its habitus, and direct challenges to social exclusion and the control of common narratives by actively promoting inclusive practices might then also point to a healthy place brand habitus. keywords: place branding, habitus, place brand identity, inclusivity, social exclusion, healthy place brand, flaneur dr carla enslin the independent institute of education: vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : censlin@vegaschool. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-6874-2690 dr franci cronjé the independent institute of education, vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : franci.cronje@gmail. com (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-1366-6317 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 125-138 date submitted: 18 august 2022 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6874-2690 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6874-2690 mailto:franci.cronje@gmail.com mailto:franci.cronje@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1366-6317 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1366-6317 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 127126 enslin & cronjé introduction a tiny coastal enclave with an avowed focus on environmental issues and the interests of the immediate community provides the scenario within which the authors describe a particular event in the context of place branding. a landowner and full-time resident invites an acquaintance with a wagon home to locate the structure – self-made of recycled wood on a disused truck with wheels but no engine – on their adjacent property. the arrangement is supposed to be temporary until the guest finds a more permanent solution. upon noticing this structure for alternative and unusual living arrangement, parked and levelled under trees on the otherwise vacant property, a small number of residents and landowners become active on the local community social media group and raise questions about the appropriateness and legal validity of such living arrangements. they voice their opinions and concerns regarding aesthetics, lifestyle choices, safety issues, municipal and other bylaws. critically, they also raise the question of community identity. the authors account for this scenario through the relatively new phenomenon of the flâneur as a persona, freedom camping, and finally, of marginalisation in space and place through the lens of place brand identity. the issue is clearly complex and multifaceted. about the dynamics of a place, the comments of social scientist and geographer doreen massey (1991: 8) come to mind, “clearly places do not have single, unique ‘identities’; they are full of internal conflicts.” a flâneur wanders onto the scene the philosopher and cultural critic walter benjamin’s seminal work “der flâneur”, published in 1967 in the intellectual journal neue rundschau claimed the original concept of a flâneur as that of an author exploring physical spaces or philosophical theories. while subsequent literature also widened the concept to include artists such as visual artists, other subcategories also emerged over time. theorists have since attached labels such as the eco-flâneur (hawkins 2009) and, even more recently, the cyborg-flâneur (bayes 2018). for the art historian and writer tom mcdonough (2002: 101), the flâneur as “solitary urban stroller” disturbs the social status quo, “which registers so effectively the tenuous nature of urban order; the way that our daily routines are always subtended by other possibilities — the outlawed, the prohibited, the unauthorized uses of the public realm.” in this scenario under discussion, a new inhabitant enters the village with a home built from recycled material — visually offensive to some; an eco-flâneur with the professional calling of an eco-artist. even twenty years later, that “moment” pinpointed by mcdonough is still a valid amplification of the conjunction between critical theory in sociology, aesthetic practice, architecture, and brand identity of the place. this current “urban stranger” under discussion instantly becomes “the object of anxiety” (ibid.). in the context of massey’s (1991) description of time-space compression, the new inhabitant may be defined as a modern-day street-smart flâneur who simply decided to live in their own locally produced tiny home erected from reused material in the 127126 the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill process of producing landscape art with a global contemporary appeal. it indeed presents, as massey (1991: 4) claims, a “highly complex social differentiation”. høyer leivestad (2020: 3) also reminds us that “[w]e often tend to forget that the types of houses in which we live are critical to the reproduction of class relationships and inequality” and that many people do not consider mobile homes legitimate dwellings. such a disregard piles another layer of social differentiation onto an owner of a home on (although static) wheels. what does “home” mean, if even a flâneur has a place as such? freedom camping, the notion of a home, and allemannsretten duval (2004: 87) refers to the concept of “home” as “a socially-constructed marker or signpost that is more or less designed to help align and ultimately represent an individual’s allegiances and cultural comfort with a specific, although some might argue static, space”. philosophically, he claims, “[h]ome is therefore cognitive, but relationally spatial and temporal within that cognition” (duval 2004: 88). therefore, home is where you believe and experience it. the lifestyle and home of the flâneur as related here is a reference to freedom camping, a form of “nomadic urbanism” (caldicott et al. 2018) that is still common practice in some areas of europe, canada and new zealand (espiner 1994; aston 2019; høyer leivestad 2020; lonergan 2020; seeler & lueck 2021). consider also their european roots, wherein allemannsretten, the right of every man to roam is an incontrovertible right (buckley et al. 2008; øian & skogen 2016; seeler & lueck 2021). although the principle is applied with slight differences in the various european regions, the main point of departure is that every person has an inarguable right to travel and set up camp next to roads, or on uninhabited land, and where owners of plots have granted permission to do so. local council permission is never sought or required, and contravening bylaws are seldom invoked. in south africa, though, rules and regulations are inconsistent and sometimes, covert. “wild camping in south africa may sound exotic but is almost always illegal. it’s risky and potentially dangerous to figure out if you’re trespassing on private land or a public area under the control of a legal municipality” (stephan & eric 2020). the temporary home in question was stationed on a privately owned plot, but the by-laws of the city still apply. the flâneur and family might be mobile at heart, with every intention to keep moving as free spirits, but many members of the community were not convinced. although the structure is built on wheels, it is inherently immobile, and needs some assistance from a larger truck to move it to another location. it can be safely said that this structure, since it was built on a non-automotive truck which is in itself not mobile, can be deemed a “temporary building” as indicated by the national building regulations of south africa (swift 2013). according to swift (2013), “if you want to erect a temporary building, first of all you need permission to do so, and secondly, you will have to demolish or dismantle it within the time frame that is deemed to be ‘temporary’ for that particular structure.” although by-laws vary slightly 129128 enslin & cronjé among various municipalities, the general rule persists: if an owner wants to erect a structure, even if it is temporary, prior permission must be granted by the municipality in question (swift 2013). it is exactly this nature of the temporary home that grated some community members the most. place brand, habitus, marginalisation, and participation: what binds, and what divides us? theorists note that the place brand, like other brand formations such as the product, service, corporate, and the person brand, exists as a social construct with a particular identity that involves a constellation of associations over and above its physical attributes (berrada 2018; ahmad & tuan zaki 2021; pereira et al. 2021). therefore, place brand thus signifies a sense of place as exhibited by its everyday “truth” — a particular essence that emerges from the ideas and sentiments associated with being or experiencing part of that space (swanson et al. 2017; nogué & de san eugenio vela 2018; baker 2019). it is the full experience of the place brand that confirms its unique and compelling identity and thus its authentic nature (spence & rushing, in hsu 2017). by association and reputation, it then contains a distinctive promise and a normative and moral core, as posited by bhargava and bedi (2021). as the standard saying goes, a brand is a promise kept, rather than a promise made. compared to other brand formations, it can be argued that the somewhat tenuous nature of the existing social order extends in particular to the place brand. the everyday lived realities, allegiances, and cultural comforts of the individual scale up in complexity, for the place brand represents a multidimensional ecosystem of constituents, possible linkages, perceptions, and networks of association (duval 2004; schucksmith 2012; kapferer 2013; bellini & pasquinelli 2016). the airbnb brandbusiness model evidences the social influences of its place brand hosts to seamlessly support the company brand purpose: “we believe people belong, anywhere”. the brand-business model enjoys a wide compass as it empowers hosts to accommodate travellers in their exploration of place on the one hand yet leaves room in certain territories to assist displaced refugees and frontline workers during times of crisis. the airbnb premise and promise is to share and sustain that unique sense of belonging that can and should be experienced in a particular place, or as aitken and campelo (2011) define it, the heart of the place brand as created and shared by its people and its culture. the initial and seemingly basic public responses to the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill – specifically and repeatedly expressed as “a precedent”, a disturbance, if not actually a threat to habitus, caught the attention of the authors. such descriptions become important when one gauges the heart of the place brand and its communal sense of belonging (aitken & campelo 2011). the seminal work of the french sociologist and philosopher pierre bourdieu, “outline of the theory of practice, structure and the habitus”, introduces us to the concept of habitus and describes it as “the universalizing mediation which causes an individual agent’s practices, without either explicit reason or signifying intent, to be none the less ‘sensible’ and ‘reasonable’” (bourdieu 1977: 79). 129128 the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill the set of meanings of each construct is based on a communal understanding of howbeing-in-the-world (heidegger [1924] 1992). the how leads to particular ways of doing things in that place, which is linked to the reasons they are done in that particular way, and moreover, why they have cultural significance. to understand what the constructs are, how they work, and why they are experienced and performed in that way is to understand the habitus of the place (bourdieu 1986; campelo et al. 2014: 161). it seems that habitus or the physical embodiment of social awareness and relatedness, situate a place brand above and beyond commonalities or variances in physical characteristics and social demography to preserve its unique essence in lived experience, its embodiment of connectedness. thus considered, the place brand and its community’s unique perceptions and attitudes shape a perceived relatedness or social connectedness in experiencing or being part of the place brand – a sense of belonging and civic consciousness (mehta 2014; probst 2019; yeoman 2019; ahmad & tuan zaki 2021). it then appears that it is the composition of the unique characteristics of the healthy place brand, the daily lived experience and the genuine embodiment of social connectedness that enables it to remain intact when its well-being is affected by changes in its conditions (ahmad & tuan zaki 2021). any guidance or principled approach to place and destination branding would therefore always have to be mindful that, if common core constructs exist—as we suggest in this article, the analysis of these constructs must recognize unique sets of permutations that reveal particular expressions of a place. these expressions are understood, experienced, and represented as habitus (campelo et al. 2014: 156). habitus as a personal or collective history turned into a social nature (nowicka 2015) forms the theoretical foundational explanation why a small community’s place brand identity would subconsciously be exclusionist. in other words, the unspoken way it has always been. considering the notion of place brand (mehta 2014; probst 2019; yeoman 2019; ahmad & tuan zaki 2021), the authors ascribe it to habitus and the historical sense that villagers might have about their enclosed or secluded environment, home, and sense of social belonging. where choices may be exercised, the place brand contains and attracts a certain social nature, a type of social connectedness or civic consciousness, and by the same token as bergvall-kareborn et al. (2015) suggest, the place also shapes its deep relatedness. the longer they remain, the more residents internalise and subscribe to the habitus of the place brand. an outsider disrupting an established social nature is thus excluded until a community actively embraces them with established shared knowledge and assistance. madanipour et al. (2012: 193) define social exclusion as combining “the lack of access to resources, to decision making, and to common narratives”. although the flâneur in this case scenario has been economically included (being part of the lively local trading market, for example), the place brand seems to have marginalised them in a civic sense (by exercising disapproval by way of complaints within the community, to the police, fire prevention services, and social services). the danger, madanipour et al. (2012: 189) say, is that such a divide creates an unbalanced environment in which the social exclusion of groups or individuals from the larger society may not 131130 enslin & cronjé only be harmful to the individual but also to the wider community, since the talents and/or meaningful contributions of the individual concerned are nullified. activism to exclude “the other” is thus a waste of valuable resources that could have benefited the community on many levels. although the objections and even in some instances the outright condemnation of allowing the wagon home on the vacant plot of land did not reveal serious or widespread malicious intent among the online messaging community group that was studied, the disturbance of place brand habitus, as the event reveals, opened the door to distrust and animosity by the members of the community. research ethics the researchers and authors are members of the place brand and are also exposed to the open online messaging community group. thus, selfand collaborativecorrecting mechanisms of high order were practiced while conducting this research. the motivation to explore perceptions about the place brand and the embodiment of social connectedness or habitus while confronted by a change in its conditions (ahmad & tuan zaki 2021) provided the impetus for the research and remains the central principle of fidelity (scanlon & habib, in bhargava & bedi 2021). above all, the unit of analysis was strictly limited to a thematic analysis of responses in the open online community group within the defined period. the social system under study, in other words the place brand habitus as expressed through its open online messaging community group, exists as a voluntary association of purposeful members who exercise personal choices, express their views, and partake in deliberative discussions (colom 2021). nevertheless, and with due care, the place brand, all anecdotes, and verbatim statements were anonymously reported, and serve simply to represent descriptions of the place brand and provide the context for the online messaging community. such statements support the thematic analysis to enhance interpretation and understanding of the phenomenon and to guide readers and researchers in interpreting and applying findings and insights. thematic analysis the place brand under scrutiny enjoys a long-established and active open online messaging community group for all interested parties. this platform served as the data source for the defined period (30 october to 8 december 2021) and the described social event or trigger. the open online community is in many ways a disparate group — some members are permanent residents and single homeowners, while others reside in various parts of the world, moving back to the community for shorter or longer periods during the year. frequent weekenders, general visitors, local trade, and outdoor enthusiasts represent all walks of life, cultural and religious denominations. as constituents of this place brand community, they also join in and participate in the messaging group. as a matter of record, and at the time of writing, the place brand, like its global counterparts, is still caught up in the aftermath of a global pandemic, yet analysis of the messaging has borne no evidence of covid-19 as a variable of 131130 the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill influence. however, the impact of a global pandemic in the form of covid-19 on place brand has to be noted. medway et al. (2021) argue that place brand focus has turned inward during this period, amplifying the appreciation of place, the embeddedness, and sense of care, safety, and security, or conversely, the lack thereof. the cycles of repeated reading and subsequent thematic analyses of responses were supported with a text reading and analysis tool (voyant) to serve as a second gauge or correcting mechanism (sinclair & rockwell 2016). the findings of the thematic analysis are furthermore shared only in published format, following professional, academic and place brand practice. due reflection showed that collaborating as a research team while undertaking a particular research purpose throughout all parts of the project essentially presented the central omnipresent self-correcting mechanism. the researchers implemented a systematic approach to the data analysis: data logging, data coding, and thematic analysis (akinyode & khan 2018). three dominant themes were constructed through the qualitative thematic analysis. mainly, the disturbance, if not actual threat to habitus, contributed to an existential state or even a crisis in place brand identity. the community questioned its purpose and ethos from various angles. secondly, place brand identity was clearly and firmly delineated in the interactions of the open online messaging community group. the language used resulted in unintentional division and labelling. the third theme dealt with the question and consequences of inclusion or exclusion of the “precedent” from the community. while some members tried to suggest solutions, the issues remained invariably, unresolved. who are we as a community? shock and horror the dominant theme emerged as an existential state or even a crisis, where the responses on the open online messaging group confronted or interrogated the social trigger as well as the other views of community members in the context of their perceived place brand identity or habitus. it was notable that the social trigger was continuously referred to as a “precedent”, often with reference as to how it could evolve into a threat to the future of the place brand community. various statements to the effect were made that if the issue of the wagon home was not addressed, the “precedent” could indicate future developments to follow — crime is increasing and the community may encounter people who reside in our gardens en masse. the current or future threat of “the precedent” was presented mostly in the context of its possible impact on property values, or in terms of a call for the enforcement of laws and regulations. if we allow this, we open ourselves to other squatters … and you start setting a precedent; unfortunately, this will set a precedent and hoards will jump on the proverbial bandwagon; and my heart goes out to …, but to protect all properties against squatters i reported the matter to law enforcement. 133132 enslin & cronjé in contrast, but equally evident of an existential crisis, there were immediate countervailing responses and views from other members on the community platform to those who had initially flagged the social trigger as a “precedent”. these posts present a collective appeal to what is regarded as the established and communal place brand identity or habitus, to how the place brand has always been experienced in the past and how it could now be perceived by others. the generosity shown to x is exactly the kind of generosity that makes y such a special place; this so-called conscious living and kind-hearted community; we are and always have been a caring village; this is certainly not the friendly village vibe that once attracted people; in the past this kind of thing slipped by and yet somehow we all survived?; i want to carry on being proud of where i live; and can we sleep at night knowing that, and is that the kind of “community” we want to live in? labels: objects, agents, and behaviours ‘language feels a little nasty and aggro’ in this case scenario, place brand identity stood out clearly and firmly in the symbolic interaction in the open online messaging community group. responses are richly detailed with social labelling to either qualify or classify the so-called “other” and to posit a different self and place brand identity. the social object and trigger were variously given labels as “precedent”, a “monstrosity”, “that thing”, a “wreck” and a “spectacle”, inviting counter-responses labelling the inhabitants as … sweet, kind, lovely, a fantastic (parent), a hard worker and a special person. one participant extended the following qualified view: … perhaps the first step would be to invite x to join this xx group. i’m sure x has a voice, and we would like to hear it. three dominant respondent profiles emerged from the thematic analysis, and in each case offered a qualified self, and then the others by label. proponents of the social trigger as a “precedent” and potential threat to the place brand predominantly qualified their views by referring to property and bylaws couched in factual terms. where these views were not so qualified, more emotional responses were proffered, such as … when some folks here take emotional shortcuts and invent and promote their own ‘laws’ as they go along. those community members who positioned themselves as constructive participants in this social debate mostly resisted to rely on their own perceptions of the place brand image. … let’s approach things in a friendly and constructive manner and get results that way and the balance between bylaws and compassionate community living can be achieved. the third response group profile may be delineated by the personal mantras of some community members. 133132 the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill peace out; calma. please. this is not healthy. not necessary. sit down, take a moment, breathe. it is noteworthy that this group often labelled or reinforced their own or others’ views by using emoticons, symbols of peace, prayer, and love. that’s what community is about. to help each other [emoticon-heart]. it is also noteworthy that this group was equally adept at employing divisive labels, sometimes referring to others as “keyboard warriors” or suggesting socioeconomic or sociocultural differences. your precious assets are not in danger over one visitor. who’s next, those of us economically challenged? those who dress funny? unvaccinated? and the village will always be divided by those who genuinely care and those who follow rules/laws and their own ideals. have a lovely day further [emoticon-peace] [emoticon-balance]. capital swirls, truths, and tipping points one for all in the case scenario, the three persona groupings and the collective existential challenge arose in constant engagement around the place brand identity of the community and how the community was supposed to act, react, or refrain from any action. three tipping points or critical moments of qualitative shifts in assessing self and others occurred in the case scenario within a period of 40 days. all were characterised by conflicting views on “facts” or “truths”, emotional language, calls for public apologies, and threats of legal action. nobody, absolutely nobody in x is above the law!; your rant sounds like a lot of exaggerated bullshit to me…; prove it with real facts please!; there are many people around the world who..; just for the record…; you are a 100% correct…; are we not all missing the point..; surely x means y, the only difference is…; and a rule for one should apply for all. participants made regular references to the interests of the collective place brand as the yardstick for addressing conflicting views, relative “truths” and ultimately, an attempt to uphold habitus. … after all it is the community that will have your back when you are in need … something to think about. however, despite the distinct and heated differences of opinion, the group members did not visibly leave the group or attempt to banish other members from the group. a handful of differing views emerged on two additional occasions but were met with little or no response from the wider online group. the place brand and its community had moved on, final responses mostly proposing codes of conduct. i’m just wondering if there is an official x group that matters like this could be fairly and rationally considered and discussed with inclusive, representative inputs from all stakeholders? 135134 enslin & cronjé the eco-flâneur freedom camper had also moved on as the new year got underway and the pre-established timeframe with the owners of the property had lapsed. discussion and insights the authors believe that the existential state or crisis in this case scenario, whether through a perceived threat to the future of the place brand community or through the collective appeal on an established and communal place brand identity or habitus, firmly positions the place brand as a social construct. the place brand under scrutiny exists within and beyond its unique physical features as an experience, mindful of its particular identity, its reputation, and by extension, its moral obligation. allowing a stationary wagon home on a vacant plot of land did indeed also disturb the place brand habitus, the experience of this reality, and raised the social allegiances and complexities of responses in the various networks of association (duval 2004; schucksmith 2012; kapferer 2013; bellini & pasquinelli 2016). in evidencing the state of unbalance, responses on the online community platform called on habitus, as perceived social connectedness and civic consciousness. those responses in which a sense of established history was displayed also demonstrated the deep relatedness of an internalised and ascribed habitus that bergvall-kareborn et al. (2015) speak of. the theoretic perspective of this article, admittedly developed as an argument that culminates in the positioning of the ideal social construct (a “healthy” place brand), suggests that habitus or the embodiment of social awareness and relatedness positions the place brand beyond commonalities or variances in its physical features and social demography. in this case the place brand’s composition of unique features, daily lived experience and genuine embodiment of social connectedness seemingly enabled it to remain intact when the wellbeing of habitus was confronted by changes in conditions. however, it is noteworthy that the place brand, in its state of disturbance symbolically expressed as its lived experience, habitus, and moral obligation on the open online messaging community group, gave rise to much labelling from all three profile groups. the tipping points or critical moments of qualitative shifts in assessing self and others were also characterised by conflicting views about “facts” or “truths”, emotional language, calls for public apologies, and even threats of legal action. the three persona groupings also engaged equally and constantly as to how the community was supposed to act, react, or refrain from any action. however, given the thematic analysis, the prevailing references and calls to the interests of the collective place brand habitus as the yardstick for addressing conflicting views, relative “truths”, and attempts to uphold its sense of social connectedness remained in this case scenario. consequently, the authors note the discussion of perspectives on current social media research by dwivedi et al. (2021), flagging the inherent human nature to seek informational, intellectual, social, or cultural capital; to exist and function as empowered individuals, with agency, under conditions of change; and to be able to move forward and to create capital. the authors of this article conclude that the unique blend of place brand identity or habitus as normative and moral code can evolve and confirm itself continuously in a community social media group. critically, the potential is there to either facilitate the intersectionality, diversity, and inclusiveness of the place 135134 the flâneur in the wagon home on the hill brand identity as the sum of its habitus, or risk is demise – in other words, a sense of togetherness and belonging may be able to emerge, or alienation may occur by stark contrast. direct challenges to social exclusion and the control of common narratives by actively promoting inclusive practices might then also point to a healthy place brand habitus. as stated, the eco-flâneur freedom camper has moved on. issues such as a lapsed timeframe for habitation, pressure from officialdom and inhabitants, the social nature of the solitary urban stroller, the experience of the place brand habitus, or all the above are outside of the scope of this research. that the home is where experience and belief locate it, considering the nature of the flâneur and shifts in place brand identity or habitus, merits further exploration. conclusions for the human geographer doreen massey (1991: 7), the specificity of place is “not some long internalised history” but a “particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus” and therefore, not only connected by a physicality but continuously interconnected “as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings”. this article posits an aligned perspective with a focus on place brand identity. although limited to exploratory thematic analysis of the responses of a single place brand online to a particular experience in time, this article concludes that a sense of belonging in the lived world forms the social tissue of place brand identity. it is this place brand’s unique features, daily experiences, genuine social connectedness, and civic consciousness that positions it purposefully. thus, place brand identity is inextricably defined by its habitus. and it is place brand habitus that is alerted when conditions change. when place brand habitus acts on change, it introduces the social triggers and shapes the tipping points. the habitus of the healthy place brand — its unique characteristics, essence in the lived experience and embodiment of connectedness would then also define, by extension, its civic obligation and the practice of social inclusion. references ahmad, m.f. & tuan zaki, t.s.a. 2021. strategic communication for place brand management. malaysian journal of social sciences and humanities 6(2): 282-292. https://doi.org/10.47405/mjssh.v6i2.669 aitken, r. & campelo, a. 2011. the four rs of place branding. journal of marketing management 27(9–10): 913-933. doi: 10.1080/0267257x.2011.560718. akinyode, b.f. & khan, t.h. 2018. step by step approach for qualitative data analysis. international journal of built environment and sustainability. doi: 10.11113/ijbes. v5.n3.267 aston, s. 2019. the contradictions of freedom: freedom camping tensions, tourism governance and changing social relationships in the christchurch and selwyn districts of new zealand. unpublished master’s dissertation. massey university. albany, new zealand. https://doi.org/10.47405/mjssh.v6i2.669 137136 enslin & cronjé baker, b. 2019. place branding for small cities, regions & downtowns: the essentials for successful destinations. independent publication. bayes, c. 2018. the cyborg flâneur: reimagining urban nature through the act of walking. m/c journal 21(4). doi: 10.5204/mcj.1444. bellini, n. & pasquinelli, c. 2016. urban brandscape as value ecosystem: the cultural destination strategy of fashion brands. place branding and public diplomacy 12(1): 5-16. doi: 10.1057/pb.2015.21. bergvall-kåreborn, b., ihlström eriksson, c. & ståhlbröst, a. 2015. places and spaces within living labs. technology innovation management review 5(12): 37-47. doi: 10.22215/timreview/951. berrada, m. 2018. towards a holistic place branding model: a conceptual model proposal. chinese business review 17(5): 223-237. https://doi.org/10.17265/15371506/2018.05.002 bhargava, v.r. & bedi, s. 2021. brand as promise. journal of business ethics 179(3): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04834-z bourdieu, p. 1977. outline of a theory of practice. 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[online]. available at: https://voyant-tools.org/ https://doi.org/10.26686/wgtn.14033225.v2 https://doi.org/10.26686/wgtn.14033225.v2 https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839102851 https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2013.854698 https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2013.854698 https://doi.org/10.15581/003.31.4.27-42 https://doi.org/10.15581/003.31.4.27-42 https://brandingstrategyinsider.com/3-ways-to-establish-a-meaningful-brand/ https://brandingstrategyinsider.com/3-ways-to-establish-a-meaningful-brand/ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2012.00570.x https://voyant-tools.org/ pb138 enslin & cronjé stephan & eric. 2020. happy campers south africa. [online]. available at: https:// happycampers.co.za/blog/southafrica/south-africa-camping-before-you-go [accessed on 05 may 2022]. swanson, k., medway, d. & warnaby, g. 2017. i love this place: tourists’ destination brand love. in: campelo, a. (ed.). handbook on place branding and marketing. cheltenham: edward elgar. swift, p. 2013. temporary buildings must be authorized by the local authority. [online]. available at: https://www.sans10400.co.za/temporary-buildings/ [accessed on 05 may 2022]. yeoman, r. 2019. the meaningful city. in: yeoman, r., bailey, c., madden, a. & thompson, m. (eds). the oxford handbook of meaningful work. london: oxford. https://doi. org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198788232.001.0001 https://happycampers.co.za/blog/southafrica/south-africa-camping-before-you-go https://happycampers.co.za/blog/southafrica/south-africa-camping-before-you-go https://www.sans10400.co.za/temporary-buildings/ https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198788232.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198788232.001.0001 untitled 137 a model of community development and gender equity through access to information technology communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 137 152 pretty lilly majola* abstract marginalised people, in their everyday life, do not know where and how to access information for their own survival and development. this information would, if correctly applied, enable them to participate in social, political and economic processes associated with development. the three key aspects that articulate a model of community development through information are gender, participation, and information communication technologies (icts). from the literature review, practical experience and case studies, it has been clear that most community projects do not explicitly address the gender, participation and ict aspects. the model of community development presented in this article is a tool for making local and external information available and accessible to marginalised members of a community so that they can use it for their own development. * pretty lilly majola is a supervisor in the department of information technology and networks at the mangosuthu technikon in durban. background, aim and methodology between the 1970s and 1980s there was a clear division between mainstream and alternative forms of development locally and globally. recently the gap has been minimised because mainstream development thinking has incorporated various aspects of alternative development such as equity, gender, sustainability and participation (haines 2000). castells (2001) suggests that the greatest current need is for swift and widespread information. modern mass communication should be available to multiply informational resources. he further argues that national economic and social development is impossible without some modern information multiplier together with mass communication to fast-forward communication. the main focus is to bring the benefits of the information age to poor, illiterate or semiliterate women, socially defined as subordinate in their homes and communities (mitter 2000). the dangers affecting the success of any project should be identified in advance to avoid the impact of power struggles. communities are not homogenous but are structured. various hierarchies limit the extent to which the voices of the marginalised are heard. limiting factors include power relations, gender relations, urban-rural divide, social classes, educational levels, political differences, cultural differences such as religion, language and ethnicity e.g. racial differences, physical or psychological disabilities, economic differences and displaced communities as a result of political or social issues, and natural disasters (legaobe et al. 2000). for three months, from 15 july to 15 october 2000, at germany’s university of hamburg, nine female researchers from across the world worked together on a project with the aim of addressing the question of how communities can use information for their own development. the group was composed of researchers from seven different countries. the main theme of the project was “information as a social resource” with a further 13 sub-projects, namely: community development through information, cultural modes of self-expression and new media, curiosity, intuition and information technology, future education, health care information, identities and globalisation, information kiosk, knowledge architectures, media industries and democracy, reconstruction gender on the internet and virtual communities and visions of citizenship. some 200 female researchers participated in the project. each sub-project had about 20 group members. all projects were related to each other and the link was the exchange of timeous and accurate information. each group reported on their subject and the focus group reported on community development. the community development researchers that worked closely with the supervisor and the director were grouped into units composed of nine qualified researchers. the researchers had experience in the field of community development work. they grouped 138 themselves according to their field of specialisation. the first three members specialised in gender, the second three in participation and the last three in community development and icts. this article uses primary and secondary data. primary data was collected by taking minutes of daily meetings, community visits and excursions, interviews and focus group discussions were held every two weeks with information kiosk group members, a community development coordinator and the director. secondary data was collected from a literature (book) survey and other library information, personal experiences, and documented case studies. the model developed was based on experiences, case studies and reports but not on the results of an actual project. there was no raw data to be processed, therefore there are no tables and graphs in this article. community and development are the terms used mostly in this article, it is therefore necessary to define both terms. for the purpose of this article a community refers to a number of people who live together, and who may share some traditions, norms, values or interests. a community is, however, not homogeneous, being made up of different groups (communities) of people positioned in various power relations that might be enabling or constraining, and so create conflict. development is defined as an ongoing process of betterment and the improvement of quality and equality of life, as defined by the person or people concerned. this involves problem solving, and life long learning, and includes social, cultural, political and economic factors. the aim of the study was to understand and refine gender, participation and icts as well as the links between these concepts. it further explores the factors on how communities can use icts for their development and sustainability. it was hypothesised that the proposed model may identify issues of resources that can be used as guidelines for community development through information projects. gender and development the subject of gender and development is indeed a topical issue world-wide. south africa is not alone in this issue. gender and development has been received with varying degrees of acceptance in the various cultural groups as it touches on historical, established cultural values and accepted common practices. information available within society has improved the situation, as some people have received and perceived it as a means to adjust the structure of society while others avoid discussing the subject. gender therefore became a conflicting factor affecting the sustainability of community projects in mostly marginalised communities. gender is being female or male and is linked to socially-given attributes, roles, reproductive roles, productivity, decision-making, responsibilities and experiences. gender relations are therefore the relations between men and women, and include a consideration of how power is distributed between the sexes. gender relations vary according to time and place, between different groups of people and other social relations e.g. class, race and ethnicity (chambers 1999). gender and development 139 (gad) theory recognises that women’s lives are strongly shaped by men, therefore it attempts to promote women’s empowerment and initiate change in gender relations which must involve men and women alike (march et al. 1999). gender equity is only possible by addressing gender relations and re-thinking developmental practices in rapidly changing social environments. gender shapes the opportunities and constraints that women and men face in securing viable livelihoods, as well as building strong communities across cultural, political, economic and ecological settings. the use of gender relations as an analytical category shifts the focus away from viewing women in isolation from men. the concept and struggle of gender relations examines the relative position of women and men when the division of resources, benefits, rights and responsibilities, power and privileges, are concerned (kabeer 1999). gendered traditional responsibilities a breakdown of the traditional gender role according to eade and williams (2000:208) identify traditional roles for males and females. the gendered traditional responsibilities, according to the women in development (wid) approach, are as follows: reproductive role women: child bearing and rearing. child bearing is biological and forces women to stay home, thereby limiting their power to directly contribute towards the country’s economy. in south africa the labour law allows women to work and take maternity leave when needed, but the impact of the law does not appear to be applicable in the marginalised areas (rural areas). men: no continuous responsibility, but may have occasional domestic tasks. productive role women: engage in formal economy or informal economy. in many households women may be sole income earners. they are responsible for improving the family’s welfare and by doing so they also contribute to the country’s economy e.g. running crèches and pre-school centres. men: men represent the majority of labour force in formal economy and usually are primary income earner in the household. community managing and community politics role women: an extension of reproductive role in community action takes place. because of the scarcity of goods and services needed in reproductive role; e.g. unpaid community work (collecting firewood, water); they also engage in social activities in the 140 community (various types of festivals). most of their time is taken up by doing the unpaid work in marginalised areas. challenging these positions is impossible due to the social environment and matriarchal role of stereotyped elders. men: unpaid community work as an extension of reproductive role also takes place, for example collecting water, firewood. in addition they are involved in the governance of their society. as traditional leaders of the village, they are involved in decision-making, organising and managing of political issues and political parties. as the gap between female and male gender responsibilities is immense, bridging the gap remains a challenge. little emphasis is placed on the similarities between gender responsibilities and how the similarities can be exploited to enhance community development. wid and gad are sometimes used interchangeably, but there are some basic differences. the wid approach was developed in the 1970s, with the objective of designing actions and policies to integrate women fully into the development processes. the gad approach was developed in the 1980s with the objective of removing disparities in social, economic and political equality between women and men as a precondition for achieving people-centered development. both approaches are still in use and are applicable in different situations. the model reported on in this article assumes the gad approach. a greater understanding of the gender equality concept and clarification of misconceptions still remains a priority and a challenge. men’s and women’s attitudes and behaviour are strongly influenced by stereotypical definitions of masculinity. this is especially important in the area of icts and development, as technology projects usually exclude women, either explicitly or implicitly. therefore, all new development initiatives should include a gender analysis to demonstrate the potential for involvement of women in technology-based activities. there are numerous tools available for gender analysis. this article explores gender analysis and women empowerment which can be applied in ict projects and in any other community development projects. a brief description of gender analysis approaches according to march et al. (1999: 106-108) is therefore essential. five common aspects of gender analysis the social relations approach states that all institutions have five distinct, but interrelated dimensions of social relations e.g. rules, resources, people, activities and power. the relations are presented in the form of questions (march et al. 1999: 106-108). the five questions tend to challenge the traditional gender roles when used in conjunction with the strategic gender interventions. • who does what, when and where? (it is useful to also ask who does not, and cannot do specific tasks.) 141 • who has access to resources of production, knowledge, technology, time and decision-making? • who has control over resources of production, knowledge, technology, time and decision-making? • who benefits from the existing organisation of productive community and household resources? • how and to what extent do cultural systems, poverty alleviation policies, development planning and technology projects address the different needs and interests of the community in general and of the women in particular? the outcome of the gender analysis would show how the respective genders perform within a traditional society. the analysis does not address the “why” issues in the five major analysis questions. answers to the why-questions should highlight the opportunities for women to participate in ict community projects. because whyquestions are not asked, the opportunity to introduce the gender sensitivity in any community projects with a strategic objective can be lost. according to march et al. (1999: 112-113) gender strategic interventions include the following: • introduction of gender sensitisation of both men and women in community. • encouragement and increasing recruitment of women at professional levels and in decision-making positions. • women’s ownership of productive assets allowed by the law. • women and girls’ education encouraged. • the institutions and developmental projects adoption of gendera w a r e participatory planning and evaluation methods. • encouragement of women’s vocational skills training, political and legal awareness. • development of clear aims and objectives of gender policy. • developing clear gender impact indicators suitable to each organisation. women empowerment gender analysis is not the only method to explore gender equality. wo m e n empowerment is equally important. it is therefore important to introduce the women’s empowerment framework to help understand community development through information from a gender perspective (march et al. 1999). the framework is based on an understanding that poverty arises from oppression and exploitation rather than lack of productivity. within this framework, development means, “enabling people to take charge of their own lives, and escape from poverty” (march et al. 1999: 92). the 142 framework is based on two different tools, namely: levels of equality and levels of recognition of women’s issues. the levels of equality and levels of recognition of women’s issues have been used as a basis for strategic planning and human resource gender development. from a strategic planning perspective the levels of equality and woman specific issues have been used for transformatory planning, monitoring and evaluation of performance over time. the focus of the gender development is on training, both technical training and awareness raising and management training. in addition, it is strongly ideological, emphasising the importance of challenging aspects of gender relations and as such is useful to identify the gap between rhetoric and reality in development interventions. levels of equality can be measured by using the hierarchical scale ranging from control, participation, conscientisation, access and welfare. levels of equality according to longwe (2000: 151-152) the level of equality is one of the criteria for recognition of women’s issues. there are five levels of equality and they are hierarchical. the higher the level that the intervention focuses on, the more likely that women’s empowerment will increase. an ideal intervention does not have to show activities on every level. the five levels are arranged from the highest to the lowest level of empowerment and equality: 1. control: this is the highest and most important level of women’s empowerment. this means more than just participation. it includes equality of control in all areas, including factors of production and the distribution of the benefits. this level is rare and need to be reinforced and applied in ict community projects. 2. participation: participation is concerned with women’s equal participation in the decision-making process. participation should be a central part of needs assessment, project formulation, implementation and evaluation. equality of participation implies involving women in the same ratio in decision-making as men:women ratio in the community at large. 3. conscientisation: this refers to the promotion of an understanding of the difference between sex and gender roles, and those gender norms, which are socially and culturally constructed, can and should be changed. therefore, division of labour should be fair and agreeable to both sides and not involve economic or political domination. 4. access: this involves women’s access to the factors of production on an equal basis to men, for example to own the property and be able to start a business. 5. welfare: this refers to addressing women’s basic needs such as food supply and medical care. women who personally generate income can easily afford their welfare because they are in the budget. 143 the measurement of the level of equality during the development programme is the means to describe the stage of upliftment of the women concerned and is a symbol of improvement. the level of the women’s recognition in the community project demonstration allows the community developer to evaluate and rank the level of empowerment of any women participating in the project. the measurement of the degree of involvement can be further simplified by using the scale ranging from negative, neutral and positive levels. level of recognition of “women’s issues” it is important to assess whether project objectives are in support of the women’s development goals and to establish the extent to which women’s issues are addressed. women’s issues are defined as “all issues concerned with women’s equality in any social or economic role, and involving any levels of equality” (march et al. 1999: 95). the question: “are women recognized for their input towards the organization or project?” may be asked. by rewarding output the standard of performance is likely to be repeated. three levels of recognition of women’s issues scoring method are shown (march ibid.): 1. negative level – no or too little mention of women’s issues. 2. neutral level – conservative level. women’s issues are recognized but only up to the point where women are not worse off after the intervention. however, impact of group dynamics in all sectors is omnipresent and as a consequence all projects that involve women will affect men’s position and vice versa to some extent. therefore no project can claim gender neutrality. 3. positive level – concern with women’s issues and improving women’s positions in the community, unlike in the situation in case study one where a successful project was hijacked by powerful people. there are some potential limitations. the focus on a hierarchy of levels of empowerment can make empowerment appear as a linear process when in reality it is far more complex than that. the hierarchies of levels neither allow focus on marginal impacts of interventions, nor the relative importance of different resources. in this context one school of thought views the hierarchical approach as being too ideological and thus confrontational for those not committed to women’s empowerment. ideally sharing ict tools equally in the community will result in better production of information and thus resource utilisation, particularly if both women and men participate in community development. participatory approach participation enforces community responsibility and accountability. communities should own and protect their projects and as a result the project will benefit the community. developers of community projects should take cognisance of these facts and it is their input and the manner in which the intervention is being done that will 144 ensure the success of the ict community projects participatory approach. the literature often reports on the absence of the participatory component in ict community projects simply because the statements on what should be done are theoretical. there is not much evidence on how it can be done in practice. case study one is an example of the importance of participatory planning and the impact of gender on power relations. participation is the processes whereby people share and exchange their knowledge, experience, ideas, opinions, skills and information in order to make decisions and to take clear and useful action towards development. participation involves the community or group taking and sharing equal responsibility from the start, the process and the outcome of any initiatives. participation means that people have the right to say no (cousin 1999). communities are dynamic with unique characteristics such as traditional beliefs and a specific way of life. participants need to be sensitised to their fears, experiences, perceptions, background, culture and social conditions of the communities which can affect any facet of the participation procedure. social dynamics must be respected. the acknowledgement of the skills, experience, creativity and indigenous knowledge of the community members is imperative, and a display of trust that the community can do something for itself is crucial (cousin 1999). participation promotes ownership and ownership carries responsibilities which enforces the sustainability of a project. the process of establishing a participatory project implies that facilitators need to identify research and planning methods that are culturally appropriate and go beyond gender neutrality. the focus should be on: • methods that could explore and change the ideological basis of gender relations. • sensitizing men in a non-threatening way. • expressing gender issues on a meaningful manner. the process includes role-play, videos, plays, reversed gender roles; men could play the role of women, and vice versa (humble 1999; murthy 1999). it is important to keep in mind that these methods should be used not only to describe gender differentiated needs, but also to analyse and change the causes of those needs. men are asked to analyse females in terms of the realities of gender relationships and are invited to make recommendations with regard to the quality of life within the hierarchical structure in the community and vice versa. the developers of ict projects need to address and deal with men’s concerns and fears surrounding women’s empowerment and how this is critical and important for gender equality (guijt & shah 1999). such approaches in deep rural areas are impossible but successful if it is done with local people, their context, and is culturally sensitive. the setting where discussions take place is also important. if women find it difficult or uncomfortable to discuss gender related issues amongst men, women-only groups need to be initiated. success in such groups are dependent on: 145 • the ability to encourage all women to participate and voice their opinions. • sensitising dominant females to their domination and unobtrusive members need to be encouraged to participate in the debates. • establishing feedback mechanisms between community and other stakeholders. parties involved should be flexible, open and accept criticism, suggestions, changes and recommendations (murthy 1999). the author is aware that the power struggle and conflicts will always surface. community participation is essential in upgrading the communication systems in the community. “…learning to work with conflict and to model it in the training sessions means preparing participants to deal better with the inevitable community based conflicts. this allows differences, attitudes and emotional expression within the group, and conflict becomes part of the development process” (cousin 1999: 68). therefore facilitators and the community need to identify available icts in the community, and analyse, evaluate and improve them to ensure maximum benefit (snowdon 1999). participation is only possible if the environment allows it. according to cousin (1999: 68) the approach that promotes participation includes processes such as: • creating an enabling environment: facilitators need to create policies that are conducive to equal participatory development. • participatory approach guidelines for facilitators: through research and planning methods that are culturally appropriate and go beyond gender neutrality. • dealing with conflicts: conflict may take any form, for instance urban vs. rural divide, gender imbalances, racial, economic, political, traditional vs. modern way of life. • bridging the gap between communities and icts: identifying common and traditional icts, integrate them with modern icts and provide training where necessary. • mechanism for awareness raising on icts: various media must be used to broadcast development programmes e.g. radio, television, pamphlets, books, plays, songs, folklore. community participation in community development projects helps to provide resources relevant to community needs. this article explores the participatory approaches to development. it is envisaged that the outcome could be used to facilitate and ensure that there is genuine involvement of the community and to manage the people participating, especially those voices of women and rural people that might be suppressed. the model that is proposed emphasises the important questions that can be used to introduce and enforce participation for the success of the ict projects. in recent years there has been an increasing focus on the importance of icts for community development. whilst accepting the value of icts, the publicity surrounding 146 new icts should be avoided and the wide variety of telecommunication tools that is available to network rural with developed regions should be embraced. technologies alone cannot turn information into useful knowledge (mitter 2000). i n f o r m ation communication technologies and development each community can use many of the technologies that are available in a way that suits their specific circumstances and needs. the importance of the spoken word and oral traditions used in many cultures as a means of exchanging information should never be underestimated. sharing knowledge and providing entertainment are examples of the powerful role that these technologies can play. the food and agriculture organisation (fao) report called “voices for change” reported that information exchange for illiterate rural women occurs mainly during local festivities, when they fetch water, and at the marketplace (snowdon 1999). the awareness of the importance of such social information exchange processes and the impact the process can have on the introduction of new icts, will assist in understanding the overall impact on the social fabric. as service provision changes, e.g. tap water is provided in the home, alternative forms of communication might be needed. information and communication technologies are digital technologies, facilitating the acquisition, processing, presentation, management and transmission of information. they include, for example, the micro-electronic, photonics, computer and telecommunications industries (national research and technology foresight 1999). to date, there are 54 multi purpose community centres (mpcc) including seven satellite sites – that have been established in south africa. the definition of icts is in recognition of the fact that computer technology is not the only communication tool for community development. thus, included in the general understanding of icts, are also indigenous folklore, proverbs, radio, printed media, books, newspapers, telephone, telegram, fax, television, recorded audio visual material, and computerised forms i.e. internet, automatic teller machines and compact disk read only memory (cd-rom) (etter 1999). there is no preference given to any of these tools. depending on the community context, different tools will be appropriate at different times. icts have been used in a variety of ways within a development context, including telemedicine, distance education, for agricultural production and marketing, in times of disaster, for political empowerment and democratisation, as a basis for small business and income generation, and to improve quality of life through communication with distant relatives (balit 1999; bayes, von braun & akhter 1999; benjamin 2000; hudson 1984; richardson & ramirez 2000; rose 1999). it is important to emphasise that icts alone do not ensure community development or empowerment, nor can they overcome cultural hierarchies and power differentials in a community. the identification of a balance between old established practices and the introduction of new technologies are very critical. 147 a model of community development through icts based on the inputs of hamburg university in germany, a model was developed. projects that may benefit from the model include telecentres, also known as multipurpose community centers or information kiosks, commonly known as information communication technology centres and internet cafés. this model assists the facilitator to think through, question and design a community development project. it will assist with the identification of the extent to which the ict approach taken is participatory at a general level, gender issues and the specifics of the project in a marginalised setting. the model is sensitive to gender, participatory objectives and involvement of ict tools was developed in a marginalised setting. vision the vision of those initiating the project should be made clear and be open to change according to the priorities of the community. goal and objectives (to be specified for each project, these questions are intended to provide a guide in the formulation of project objectives): • what are the participatory goals? • what are the gender-related goals? • what are the ict related goals? once these have been decided on with the community, then the specific objectives can be formulated accordingly. context (in each case the constraints and possibilities should be considered at state, market, community and household levels) • participation who is participating, and who is not and why? who controls policy at governmental, organisational and local level? what are the existing and possible areas of conflict and why? what participatory methods/approaches are being used and how suitable are these methods? • gender issues what is the gender context? (this should be analysed at five levels: control, participation, conscientisation, access and welfare.) what are the current practical and strategic gender needs? • icts what icts are currently available? who has access to and control of these? what information is currently available? 148 for whom is this information available/accessible/applicable? who owns and controls this information? what information is needed? what expertise is available to sustain is operations? impacy indicators (collect at beginning and at regular intervals) the specific impact indicators depend on the problem being addressed, the aims and objectives, and intervention, and thus should be defined by the community concerned. as a guide, indicators should be developed for each of the following three categories (two examples of each are included): • participation % of women and men taking part in meetings number of steering committee meetings held • gender % of women in training programmes % of women in management positions • ict information available before and after implementation % of marginalised group now accessing icts intervention (the specifics would be defined for each project, each of these issues should be considered) • participation set or lobby for policies that encourage equal participation, control and access provide conflict resolution/mediation skills ensure that the marginalised in the community (as defined) are genuine participants ensure that all stakeholders/participants are actively involved in all parts of the project cycle, including in decision-making • gender issues the intervention should address all five levels: control, participation, conscientisation, access and welfare practical and strategic gender needs (as identified) should be addressed women should be actively involved in all aspects of the project cycle 149 • icts the intervention should address the information needs of the target group the indigenous information, knowledge, skills, experience, creativity, etc should be valued and acknowledged appropriate training should be provided utilise existing icts together with new icts ensure the resources needed (financial, technical, users skills, etc) are available the model encompasses the four pillars of management, namely: planning, organising, controlling and directing. the control and evaluation is important for the projects to be sustainable. the recommended management style is one of facilitating and coaching rather than supervisory or a dictatorial management style. the process of development is likely to have conflicts and uncertainty. with respect to the impact indicators and interventions suitable for the situation are recommended as sampled in the model to control and prevent the situation. community development is aimed at empowering communities and strengthening their capacity for self-sustaining development. it therefore requires proper structure of community development with trained facilitators. facilitators take care of community felt needs of gender in a participatory approach utilising icts and the project becomes a community based organisation (cbo). conclusion this basic model of community development can work. on-going evaluation of progress is important and must be done to reflect and receive feedback. the model presents an integrated and flexible framework for gender sensitive and participatory development through access to information technology. the model includes aims and guidelines to expose community inequalities and distribute information timeously to enhance community empowerment. through the discussions that took place in hamburg, and by reflecting on the traditional role of gender in participatory settings, the unavoidable impact that ict will have on any community, irrespective of its locality in the rural environment, the model presents a basis for introducing new technologies to support community development projects. 150 references balit, s. 1999. voices for change. rural women and communication approaches. fao report. rome. bayes, a., von braun, j., & akhter, r. 1999. village pay phones and poverty reduction (paper no.8). insights from a grameen bank initiative in bangladesh. zef. discussion papers of development policy. bonn. benjamin, p. 2000. african telecentre experience. report on telecentres in africa as part of the telecentres 2000 research project. castells, m. 2001. the internet galaxy. reflections on the internet, business and society. new york: oxford university press. chambers, r. 1999. who’s reality counts? putting the first last. london: intermediate technologies publications. cousin, t. 1999. giving space to conflict in training. in guijt, i. & shaw, m.k. (eds.) the myth of community. gender issues in part i c i p a t o ry development. l o n d o n : intermediate technology publications. eade, d. and williams, s. 2000. the oxfam handbook of development and relief, vol. i. cape town, south africa: david philip publishers. etter, d.m. 1999. introduction to c++ for engineers and scientists. new jersey: prentice hall. guijt, i. & shah, m.k. (eds.) the myth of community. gender issues in participatory development. london: intermediate technology publications. haines, r. 2000. introduction to development studies. cape town: oxford university press. hudson, h. 1984. when telephones reach the village. the role of telecommunications in rural development. new jersey: ablex publishing corporation. humble, m. 1999. assessing participatory rural appraisal (pra) for implementing gender and development (gad). in guijt, i. & m.k. shaw (eds.) the myth of c o m m u n i t y. gender issues in part i c i p a t o ry development. london: intermediate technology publications. kabeer, n. 1999. development with women – targeting women or transforming institutions? policy from ngo anti-poverty efforts. oxford: oxfam information press. legaobe, n., charles, f., ekanayeke, r., bashir, s., majola, p., matiaba, b., moloti, a., satti ali, h. & wilson, m. 2000. information age summer school report. hamburg, germany: hamburg university press. longwe, s. h. 2000. gender awareness: the missing element in the 3rd world. in wallace, t. & march, c. 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[date accessed: 12 august 1999]. richardson, d. and ramirez, r. 2000. grameen telecom’s village phone programme in rural bangladesh: a multi-media case study. canada: cida. rose, j.b. 1999. multipurpose community telecentres in support of people-centred development. paris: unesco. snowdon, d. 1999. eyes see, ears hear. in richardson, d. & praisley, l. (eds.). the first mile of connectivity: advancing telecommunications for rural development through participatory communication. rome: fao. 152 179pb from alienation to placemaking: overcoming creation anxiety in journalism students through blended learning abstract in this article, journalism students’ interaction with layout and page design software (specifically adobe indesign) is explored. it is an explorative inquiry into a practical research problem encountered by the author at a university of technology in south africa. initial observations revealed that students encountered significant challenges in performing basic layout tasks using layout software. to address this issue, a qualitative research approach was used to investigate how page layout could be taught to facilitate better comprehension of subject material. the theoretical basis of the study rests on two main postulations. firstly, when students are confronted with new computer technologies, they find themselves in a liminal space characterised by uncertainty. secondly, it is in this space that their uncertainty to perform basic newspaper layout techniques is manifested as creation anxiety. a questionnaire was distributed to students that informed the action research phase. blended learning was implemented through two primary interventions namely e-learning content and video tutorials. the impact of these interventions was measured through the assessment of student work and interviews. it was found that blended learning improved students’ understanding and practical application of subject material and facilitated in mediating their creation anxiety. keywords: blended learning; creation anxiety; digital immigrants; journalism education; liminal space; newspaper layout introduction “we are as forlorn as children lost in the woods,” writes kafka. not so long ago, hansel and gretel were able to find their way home by following breadcrumbs. today, our “travels in hyperreality”, to quote umberto eco (1986: 3), take university lecturers and their students to the remotest parts of cyberspace and other digital platforms made dr hilke steenkamp department of journalism, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa email : hilke. steenkamp@zu.ac.ae orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-4345-3133 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 179-197 date submitted: 20 may 2021 date accepted: 25 august 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:hilke.steenkamp@zu.ac.ae mailto:hilke.steenkamp@zu.ac.ae https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4345-3133 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 181180 steenkamp accessible through cloud-based computer applications. while the implementation of new technologies and other digital tools are required to make classroom experiences interactive, the pertinent question is, what kind of digital morsels should be used to guide students back ‘home’ in an increasingly digitalised world? depending on the field of study, it is posited that lecturers working at institutions of higher learning in south africa have three primary technological touchpoints with students. firstly, “home base” is the university’s online learning management system (lms), such as brightspace or blackboard. these platforms have made it relatively easy to deliver educational courses, establish online subject repositories and interact with students synchronously and asynchronously (raza et al. 2021). secondly, in various classroom contexts lecturers are compelled to employ technology to engage students who demand to be “edutained”. to grab binge-watching students’ attention, different forms of digital and non-digital gamification are introduced in classrooms (bowman 2020). platforms such as kahoot! and quizlet have gained popularity, especially during the covid-19 pandemic as learning activities had to be performed remotely. thirdly, depending on the subject area, students have to master software, ranging from microsoft office and adobe photoshop to autocad and solidworks. this often entails lecturers teaching software as standalone subjects or as integrated components in subjects with practical sections (celen 2020). in this article, the author explores how the aforementioned technological touchpoints could be used to address a specific barrier to student learning. in essence, the focus is on a practical research problem and the research takes the form of a self-reflexive, qualitative enquiry. the author observed how undergraduate journalism students at a university of technology in south africa grappled to comprehend and execute tasks associated with desktop publishing software used in the layout of newspapers and magazines. drawing from disciplines such as journalism studies, visual culture studies and education studies, the author aims to illustrate that tangible solutions to learning barriers could be found through the implementation of blended learning. the original contribution of the study is two-fold: it theorises the student-computer interactional space as fluid and liminal; and it introduces the phenomenon of creation anxiety in the field of journalism. the article is structured as follows: in the first instance, background to the research problem is provided by briefly discussing the aspects of newspaper layout that students find challenging. alongside the practical research problem, the author delineates liminal spaces and the newly theorised phenomenon of creation anxiety. as this research is focused on finding tangible solutions to a practical research problem, ways to aid student-centred classes are explored. this is achieved by detailing how the author conceptualised a new pedagogical subject framework for her subject. here the blended learning approach, as well as the inclusion of video tutorials to augment teaching and learning activities, is discussed. the second part of the article focuses on how action research was implemented, along with the evaluation of the action plan. lastly, verbatim statements from students are incorporated to illustrate the effectiveness of the blended learning approach to facilitate newspaper layout classes and to overcome creation anxiety. 181180 from alienation to place-making liminal spaces and the phenomenon of creation anxiety the study is primarily concerned with the manner in which journalism students at institutions of higher learning interact with desktop publishing applications used in the creation of newspaper and magazine layout. to contextualise the research issue broadly, the content of qualifications (such as a diploma in journalism and media studies registered with the south african qualifications authority (saqa)) shows that various exit-level outcomes relate to visual and design capabilities. these include the ability to apply knowledge of print reporting practices and document design aesthetics; the ability to communicate effectively using visual skills; and the ability to edit and produce print media products by applying the knowledge of visual values and news genres (saqa 2019a; saqa 2019b; saqa 2019c). to achieve the aforementioned exit-level outcomes, subjects related to media production are offered. a cursory overview of the registered journalism qualifications at saqa, along with prospectuses of various south african universities, reveals that media production in its various forms (print, broadcast, and digital media) is a core module that all journalism students must complete (cape peninsula university of technology 2021; durban university of technology 2021; tshwane university of technology 2021). the practical components of media production subjects generally entail gaining proficiency in media production software such as indesign, photoshop, dreamweaver and premiere pro that are part of the adobe creative suite. in some instances, print media production specifically entails mastering newspaper and/or magazine layout. these practical media production components increasingly demand high visual literacy rates in students (avgerinou & pettersson 2020). broadly defined, visual literacy is understood to be a set of abilities that enables one to effectively evaluate, use, interpret and create various forms of visual media and images (acrl 2011; kędra 2018). when limited visual literacy is present in individuals, they are unable to successfully complete tasks that demand their comprehension of visual media along with other activities in which aesthetic evaluation is required (matusiak et al. 2019). in the context of journalism students performing hands-on newspaper layout tasks in a computer laboratory, limited exposure to computer software along with limited visual literacy result in a barrier to learning. students find it difficult to comprehend design concepts and perform practical layout tasks (bleed 2005). when the author lectured newspaper layout and design to novice second-year journalism students, it was observed that a large section of the class was unable to perform basic layout tasks in indesign and basic navigation to file locations on the computer laboratory’s server was a cumbersome undertaking. newspaper layout and design require students to be computer and visually literate and when either of these literacies is not present, students experience barriers to learning (kaeophanuek et al. 2018). instead of investigating students’ hesitance to use computers and their limited visual literacy skills purely through the lens of educational technology, the author opted to employ constructs used in visual culture studies. van gennep (in czarniawska & mazza 2003: 269) first used the term “liminal” in 1909 to denote rituals of transition. 183182 steenkamp the concept of liminality was further investigated by turner (1984) to describe liminal rites that are performed in front of spectators to mark the passage from social invisibility to social visibility. liminal or transitional spaces are characterised by the blurring and merging of boundaries, temporary feelings of pain or frustration, and unstableness (cousin 2006; czarniawska & mazza 2003). van gennep’s delineation of the three stages inherent to rites of passage are “separation (divestiture), transition (liminality) and incorporation (investiture)” (czarniawska & mazza 2003: 270). the first stage involves separation during which the social agent is separated from his/her previous social world. during the second stage, the social agent undergoes transition and experiences a liminal condition. the third and final stage involves incorporation that enables the social agent to enter a new social group and/or a new life. the author proposes that liminality, liminal space, and rites of passage can be evoked in this particular educational context where students with limited visual literacy skills exhibit hesitancy in adopting technologies. as such, these constructs are used to describe the developmental process in a classroom where students with limited exposure to advanced computer software have to engage in certain tasks to meet learning outcomes inherent to computer-based subject matter such as newspaper layout. drawing on ellapen (2007: 116), the space between computers and students aiming to perform a layout task is theorised as a “threshold space of liminality and in-betweeness”. this threshold space positions the student between adaptation (represented by the computer software) and pre-adaptation (the student’s lack of exposure to technology). although the space is described through the use of binary oppositions and with reference to a certain divide, so-called liminal spaces, or the “third space of hybridity”, are “conceptualised as key sites of intervention” (mitchell 1997: 255). van gennep and turner (in czarniawska & mazza 2003: 272) argue along similar lines and state that liminal spaces offer “a sense of freedom [and] a possibility of creation”. it is argued that students enter a liminal space when they sit in front of a computer to learn practical skills pertaining to newspaper layout and design. the space is regarded as a developmental site as it offers students the opportunity to acquire new skills. this liminal space is entered and exited by means of the three stages inherent to rites of passages, as depicted in table 1 (adapted from czarniawska & mazza, 2003: 270). table 1: stages of rites of passage stage 1: separation stage 2: transition stage 3: incorporation subject is separated from their previous social world subject experiences a liminal condition subject enters a new group and/or a new life the three distinct stages and their application to the research context is theorised as follows: stage 1 is termed “separation”. the student, a digital immigrant in this particular 183182 from alienation to place-making research context, is separated from “familiar” software (microsoft office programmes such as word/excel) and they have a vague understanding of new software such as adobe indesign and photoshop. stage 2 is “transition”. the student experiences a liminal condition and creation anxiety is manifested. due to the unfamiliar space and design constructs they encounter while working in indesign and photoshop, an “uncomfortable emotional repositioning” takes place (cousin 2006: 4). the student is on a learning journey and might feel unsafe, uncertain or simply out of place. in order to feel or experience “safety”, students perform “mimicry” (cousin 2006: 5). this means students would mimic the actions of their lecturer as they perform and explain layout tasks. copycat behaviour is exhibited and the work produced by students is not particularly creative as they simply imitate supplied examples and dummy layout packages. stage 3 is called “incorporation”. the student enters a new skills grouping, namely the realm of digital natives. this stage is reached when the student has fully grasped new layout techniques. during this stage, the student’s initial mimicry becomes mastery. the student’s behaviour exhibits traits such as independence, confidence, and originality. while in stage 2 the student produced work with limited creative elements, layout produced in stage 3 is regarded as more imaginative. the time it takes to transition from stage 2 to stage 3 differs from student to student and the exact timeframe was not measured in this research. thus, the rite of passage is completed, as it entailed moving from a state of minimal technological adaptation to becoming more confident because of newly acquired technological and visual literacy skills. in addition to the identified state of liminality, the author proposes that students who encounter adobe creative suite software such as indesign and photoshop for the first time, experience creation anxiety. the concept of creation anxiety has not been extensively theorised or described in literature. it has only been investigated by rovira (2008: 16) with reference to the english romantic period myth “of a creature” that turns “against its creator” as manifested in william blake’s and søren kierkegaard’s writings. similarly, truffin (2014) refers to creation anxiety in gothic metafiction where protagonists fear their creations and/or miscreations. in truffin’s research, reference is made to writer’s block and writers who are trapped within the writing process. writers not only fear that they will cease to exist upon finishing their literary works, but they also fear that their creations will haunt them (truffin 2014). apart from the aforementioned academic texts, no formal definition of creation anxiety exists within the journalism context. the author proposes that creation anxiety can be re-theorised as angst associated with the process of creating a visual artefact. similar to the original myth of a creation that turns against its creator, it is proposed that students experience a certain type of fear that impedes them from crossing the threshold of liminality to become competent creators of visual products. for example, they might fear that their visual product (the newspaper layout) could be interpreted as chaotic, aesthetically unpleasing, or simply against good design principles. in addition, the blank, white page and the myriad of buttons and design tools positioned along the margins of the indesign workspace might be overwhelming for first-time users. they 185184 steenkamp fear that their creation could be “wrong” and they will be awarded poor marks for their visual layout packages. whereas writer’s block is associated with the “inability” to produce literary works, it is suggested that creation anxiety occurs in the domain of design and visual production (rose 2009: 13). it is a temporary condition that occurs when, for example, inexperienced students are confronted with new design software or design techniques. as creation anxiety is regarded as a temporary condition, it is apt to attribute it to the liminal space in which inexperienced students find themselves when performing layout and design tasks. while in the liminal space, students “oscillate between old and emergent understandings” of computer software and design (cousin 2006: 4). students further give “child-like responses to their transitional status” (cousin 2006: 4). statements such as “i am feeling lost”, “i cannot do layout”, or “i do not understand design” are common when students have to perform basic layout tasks. the author also observed that students, who are at first unable to cross the threshold, would stare at their computer screens without attempting to actively engage in the layout and design process. cousin (2006: 5) argues the liminal state is a learning journey and students construct safety nets by practicing mimicry – they mimic what their lecturer is doing. although mimicry is a point of departure, deep learning cannot be achieved. it is here that technological pedagogical content knowledge could assist lecturers to help students cross the threshold, overcome creation anxiety, and achieve mastery of learning outcomes. self-reflection and the conceptualisation of a new pedagogical subject framework from a practical perspective, one needs to find a realistic way to teach students who lack visual and computer literacy skills to be competent creators of visual media. the author opted to perform explorative research to investigate the issue. firstly, the author reflected on her own pedagogical approaches to teaching newspaper layout to conceptualise a new subject framework that would not only include learning material to enhance students’ visual literacy and design skills, but also to aid in the facilitation of interactive student-centred classes. hattwig et al. (2012: 64) state, “students’ visual competencies are not always aligned with [lecturer] expectations or academic demands”. this is also the case with basic newspaper layout and design students. the author observed during practical classes that the majority of students could not digitally modify photographs appropriately. for example, when photographs were given to students to crop and resize proportionally, students would distort the photographs, and when asked why the photograph was rendered unusable, students were unable to pinpoint their mistakes. moreover, they did not have the ability to evaluate their visual products critically. students’ inability to use software competently to manipulate and modify images could be ascribed to low levels of computer literacy (bates 2019; brumberger 2011). 185184 from alienation to place-making to address these issues, a new pedagogical framework was established to “promote sustained improvement in student achievement” (department of education, training and employment 2012: 1). the four core principles encapsulated in the framework were derived from the queensland education framework and include student-centred learning, the alignment of the curriculum to assessment opportunities, innovative instruction methods, and the establishment of “connected and inclusive learning environments” (department of education, training and employment 2012: 2). according to otrel-cass et al. (2012: 370), the process of fusing one’s teaching practices with knowledge regarding the benefits and advances of technology is called “technological pedagogical content knowledge”. during this process, educators reflect on the information and communication technology (ict) available to them and on how they could incorporate or infuse ict in their teaching practice to create studentcentred learning environments. during the establishment of a new pedagogical framework, the blended learning approach was researched. this teaching approach, according to dzakiria et al. (2006), advocates for the infusion of traditional teaching with technology and media tools. since the newly formulated technological pedagogical content knowledge framework for newspaper layout and design aimed to incorporate technology to create an interactive learning environment, the blended learning approach offered the ideal structure on which the framework could be based. brief overview of the blended learning approach blended learning is a teaching strategy that “combines the use of multiple delivery media that are designed to […] promote learning” (dzakiria et al. 2006: 11). garrison and kanuka (2004: 96) elaborate on this definition by stating that blended learning is the “integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences”. blended learning fuses synchronous learning activities, such as faceto-face classroom instruction and asynchronous learning activities, such as online educational content, to create enhanced classrooms where students are able to interact more fluidly with learning content (garrison & kanuka 2004; levin 2012; parry 2012). authors such as baker (2000) along with lage et al. (2000, in strayer 2007: 2) refer to this teaching approach as the “classroom flip” or the “inverted classroom”. in essence, it entails removing lecture material from the classroom and placing it on digital platforms where learning content is delivered (alonso et al. 2005: 232). another important characteristic of the blended learning approach is engagement and conversation with students. in this approach, conversation is extended through “threaded discussion” (strayer 2007: 2). for instance, lecturers could create blogs and wikis on blackboard, a learning management platform, where learning modules could be discussed or they could post video tutorials on youtube where students could leave comments (alonso et al. 2005; hughes 2007; koller 2011). when discussion boards are created, these enable students to pose and answer pertinent questions as well as discuss problem areas. 187186 steenkamp interactive learning content is also at the heart of the blended learning approach (alonso et al. 2005; garrison & kanuka 2004; holley & oliver 2010). it is proposed that the establishment of a learning community is an effective method to open communication channels and foster dialogue between lecturers and students (garrison & kanuka 2004). one method to create a learning community is to create an online subject page or an online learning environment via a content management platform. liu et al. (2003) emphasise that meaningful learning environments with enhanced e-classrooms, online content, and methods of online interaction should be created to support learning outcomes. moreover, not only do meaningful, interactive learning environments foster dialogue between lecturers and students, engagement also leads to better understanding of subject matter (alonso et al. 2005). another engagement tool at lecturers’ disposal is audio-visual material. prensky (2012: 2) argues, “short video has already replaced text as the preferred method for learning”. it is clear that videos have become an integral part of courses facilitated according to the blended learning approach. video tutorials: watch and learn the use of video material in classrooms is not a novel concept and educators have used videos as “representational and communicative resources[s]” for long (otrel-cass et al. 2012: 370). the inclusion of television and video content in educational settings occurred since the 1960s (bates 2019). otrel-cass et al. (2012: 371), however, point out that in previously recorded studies, students only passively watched the videos shown in class without any form of engagement. yet the introduction of interactive video or digital video technology, which is available on electronic platforms and/or websites, has changed the manner in which lecturers and students interact (bates 2019). likewise, guimarães et al. (2000) state that the products of digital technology, such as videos, are “new learning artefacts” that provide novel opportunities for lecturers to augment teaching and learning. rosaen et al. (2008 in otrel-cass et al. 2012: 371) suggest, “videos provide unique opportunities to capture, process, research, and present information and can even promote critical teacher-student reflection of their classroom experiences”. the process of watching a video tutorial could help students reflect on the importance of the content presented in the video; moreover, educators are afforded the opportunity to present learning content in an interactive way (prensky 2001a). additionally, guimarães et al. (2000: para. 27) state that videos enhance students’ “natural experiential cognitive attitudes[s]” that enable them to “stop, think, and correlate different types of information”. this is in line with other studies that indicate that videos assist students in drawing parallels to information (alonso et al. 2005; bates 2019). see you in my e-class: learning management systems although videos and online learning content can aid students, there has to be a platform on which students can access video tutorials and digitalised learning content. 187186 from alienation to place-making part of the blended learning approach is facilitating classes electronically. blackboard is an online learning management system that serves this purpose. sanserm (2010: 28) defines a learning management system as “a system that is used to create, store, assemble, and deliver personalised e-learning content in the form of learning objects”. blackboard provides lecturers with the opportunity to structure their e-classrooms in such a manner that optimal, interactive learning environments are created. one model that can be used to construct an effective online learning environment (e-classroom) in which students can navigate and create digital learning paths is the “hyperscapes model” (guimarães et al. 2000). the hyperscapes model allows lecturers and course designers to structure online content in such a manner that it facilitates interactivity and provides students with cognitive mapping support (alonso et al. 2005; sanserm 2010). methodology qualitative action research was conducted as it focused on a single educational problem. the action research process encapsulated the identification of the problem area, the collection of data to support the identified problem, the implementation of an action plan to address the problem, and the evaluation of the action plan’s effects. it is important to note that the data collection and evaluation of the action plan took place prior to the covid-19 pandemic. action research is usually conducted within an educational context and one of its main aims is to uncover how an educator’s teaching practices can impact students (ferrance 2000; hattie, 2012). it is a reflective process and a collaborative activity that provides a method for an educator to analyse his/her “educational practice” with the intent to change and improve his/her teaching practice (ferrance 2000: 1). based on initial classroom observations, it was presumed that newspaper layout and design students found the layout and design software indesign difficult to master as they struggled to perform basic page layout tasks. it was also presumed that the method of instruction might not be adequate for the optimal understanding of indesign and basic layout techniques. based on these presumptions, the following research question was formulated: how can indesign and page layout be taught to students in order to facilitate better comprehension and retention of subject material? while the research followed the general action research process, questionnaires, two layout assessments, and interviews were used to collect data. the data collection entailed approaching 79 second-year journalism students who were enrolled for newspaper layout and design classes. a questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions was distributed to obtain data regarding the students’ demographics, their opinions about the software, aspects of indesign that they had difficulty with, and aspects of the software they enjoyed. in total, 54 students completed the questionnaire. to investigate design competency further, the same 54 participants completed a practical layout exercise after attending a class that was facilitated using the existing method of instruction. this mode entailed students watching the lecturer perform newspaper layout techniques. the students followed the class by watching the lecture 189188 steenkamp on a data projector screen and following step-by-step instructions printed in hard copy format. this exercise was assessed according to a rubric. based on the preliminary data from the questionnaire and layout exercise, the author opted to implement the blended learning approach as an intervention tool. it involved the following work schedule: firstly, all learning material was digitised: that is, all notes, powerpoint slides, and hard copy hand-outs were digitalised into soft copy documents. secondly, as the participants consisted of digital natives and digital immigrants, combining videos of learning content with class notes would cater for both segments of the group. prensky (2001b: 2) argues that digital natives prefer “receiving information fast”, multi-tasking, and accessing information through “random access […] hypertext”. digital immigrants, on the other hand, prefer learning by performing individual tasks “step-by-step [and] one thing at a time” (prensky 2001b: 2). blended learning provided a good balance as it incorporates face-to-face classroom instruction with hard copy notes, as well as e-learning through video tutorials. as part of the action plan’s second phase, the digitised learning material was presented through video recordings. short video tutorials of learning units, such as design basics, indesign tools and workspaces, methods to modify photographs, and the page layout of news packages, were produced. camtasia, which is video recording software, was used to produce the videos. additional video graphics, such as text explaining indesign shortcut keys along with instructional objects such as “appearing” arrows and circles, were incorporated in the videos to supplement the author’s voiceover narrative. the third phase entailed creating an e-classroom based on the hyperscapes model. an e-content site was built that students could visit to access information through hyperlinks and various content folders, without following a specific linear or sequential order. this is in line with the blended learning notion, which recommends that information should be co-constructed by lecturers and students (bates 2019; kukulska-hulme & traxler 2005; liu et al. 2003; park 2011). after the e-classroom was created on blackboard, the video tutorials were uploaded and the participants in the research could remotely access the video content. then, the participants were sent links to the videos and were instructed to watch the videos on blackboard prior to the next practical layout class. subsequent to the implementation of the blended learning approach, the effects of the intervention were assessed to determine if an improvement in the participants’ comprehension and competency of indesign and basic layout techniques had occurred. the assessment took the form of another practical exercise. the two video tutorials that were uploaded to blackboard were re-watched by the 54 participants. after watching the videos, the students were given the same instructions as in the first practical exercise to complete the layout of one news package (headline, text, photograph, and caption). however, a different newspaper story and photograph were used in the second exercise. the author then assessed the practical layout work of the participants with the same rubric used in the first practical exercise. finally, the 54 participants who answered the questionnaire were approached to participate in interviews after the blended learning approach was implemented. in total, 189188 from alienation to place-making 18 interviews took place. the interview schedule focused on how the space between students and a technological interface could be interpreted and students’ affective responses to working in indesign. questions centred on how students felt when they first interacted with indesign, how they felt after watching the video tutorials, and whether the video tutorials had an impact on how they perceived newspaper layout and design. the interviews were transcribed and the responses were coded through thematic analysis. findings and discussion questionnaire and practical exercise data from the questionnaire showed that the 54 participants were a heterogeneous mixture of digital natives and digital immigrants. the terms digital native and digital immigrant were coined by prensky in 2001. the former refers to individuals who are “native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet” and the latter refers to individuals who have not fully mastered the use of computers, the internet, and computer software packages (prensky 2001b: 1). the following also supports this stratification between digital natives and digital immigrants: the average age of the respondents was 21. in total, 35% came from rural areas in south africa; 38% did not have access to computers at the high schools they attended; 25% did not have personal laptops or computer facilities at home; and 73% did not have access to the internet at home. the following areas of concern pertaining to indesign newspaper layout were identified in the questionnaire: 48% stated that locating and working on master pages were difficult; 52% stated that they had difficulty with creating ruler guides and measurements; 56% did not know how to balance text; 22% found following textual instructions problematic; 59% stated that they had trouble positioning the elements of a news package (headline, text, photograph, and caption) on a page; and 54% indicated that they were not able to crop and resize photographs proportionally. the comparative data in table 2 reflect a similar situation. the low percentage of students who were able to meet the criteria in the first practical exercise echoes the questionnaire responses. areas flagged as problematic in the questionnaire responses correlate with the criteria where students performed poorly. 191190 steenkamp table 2: comparative analysis of two practical page layout exercises criteria exercise one percentage of students who met the criteria (n=54) exercise two percentage of students who met the criteria (n=54) placement of text according to instructions 37 87 placement of headline according to instructions 70 85 placement of caption according to instructions 43 83 use of paragraph styles according to instructions 22 59 placement of photograph according to instructions 74 85 cropping of photograph according to instructions 35 50 resizing of photograph according to instructions 17 72 adherence to spacing requirements (ruler guides and measurements) 0.5 44 balancing text 0.7 24 the situation is, however, radically different when the percentage of students who met the criteria in the second exercise is studied. the assessment of the two practical exercises shows a clear improvement in the participants’ practical application skills pertaining to basic layout techniques. based on the data, it can be deduced that video tutorials facilitated through the blended learning approach resulted in a measurable improvement in the participants’ ability to follow instructions and their ability to create and complete the layout of one news package. drawing on the comparative analysis of the practical exercises and data from the questionnaire, it is suggested that the implementation of the blended learning approach and the introduction of video tutorials improved the “multidimensional visual-spatial skills” of the participants (prensky 2001a: 4). 191190 from alienation to place-making interviews the digital natives and digital immigrants interviewed had distinctly different responses to using indesign. both student groupings were asked: how do you feel when you have to complete the layout of a news package in indesign? the following verbatim statements (table 3) indicate that certain digital immigrants associated the software and newspaper layout with being anxious, being disorientated, or going astray. these feelings are symbolic of students’ state of alienation when confronted with new technology and signal the first stage of the rite of passage. it also points to the creation anxiety the students experienced when they had to create a news package and master new subject content. table 3: digital immigrants’ interview responses theme verbatim quotations anxiety it made me feel nervous. it was kind of scary. you cannot grasp those shortcuts (participant 1). at first, i was scared because i did not know how to use a computer (participant 2). maybe a bit of panicking because it is something new. you are worried if it [the layout] will be okay (participant 4). it depends, sometimes i feel nervous and sometimes i feel relaxed. sometimes i feel very, very nervous when doing layout (participant 8). i feel a little bit anxious when sitting in front of a computer (participant 16). alienation […] because i do not have a computer background i am scared of making mistakes (participant 16). disorientation when i need to do layout i sometimes feel lost because there are so many pictures [tool icons in indesign] there. i do not know which one to pick (participant 2). conversely, digital natives used metaphors that referred to place-making in answering the question: how do you feel when you have to complete the layout of a news package in indesign? (table 4). they feel they “belong”; the software affords them the opportunity to enter their “own world”; and there is no separation, alienation or isolation between them and the software. the students expressed feeling “free” and likened layout to a performance on a stage. interestingly, the digital natives used placemaking metaphors to describe their interactions. this points to them feeling at ease with the layout software and to their adaptation to performing tasks in a digital space. 193192 steenkamp table 4: digital natives’ interview responses theme verbatim quotations familiarity i cannot wait to do layout. i feel very excited […] layout never makes me feel nervous. i do not get scared (participant 13). when i sit in front of a computer, i am not nervous. it is something i have been using for a while (participant 5). belonging layout makes me feel like i belong because i am a creative person (participant 13). i feel okay when i sit in front of a computer. i understand what i am about to do. i am not scared of a computer. i also feel okay when i do layout. although you can make mistakes, i do not feel like i am going to be isolated when i have to use the program (participant 7). place-making (spatial metaphors/ references) you get into your own world (participant 13). it [working on a computer] is like singers getting on a stage and doing what [they] love (participant 13). doing layout is liberating. i am more free – you can play around in the program (participant 5) the impact of the teaching intervention was explored by asking the participants: how would you describe your overall experience of indesign or your emotive response to it and layout after watching the video tutorials? the students’ verbatim statements in table 5 point to familiarity and belonging. students expressed feeling “free”, “normal”, “familiar”, “in control”, and “comfortable” when completing basic newspaper layout after having watched the video tutorials repeatedly. table 5: combined responses to indesign after intervention theme verbatim quotations familiarity […] but when you get used to it [indesign shortcuts], it is easy to remember (participant 1). at first layout was a bit tricky but as time progressed, the videos illustrated how indesign works and it became easier (participant 3). i am familiar with the program. i feel free. i was following whatever you said [in the video] (participant 6). now it is just normal for me because i am familiar with the computer program. i do not feel anxious or uncomfortable, i now feel free (participant 15). i felt nervous before i knew what a computer was. as time went on, i started becoming more familiar with it. at first i was nervous, but after having classes and watching some videos, i was okay (participant 18). 193192 from alienation to place-making theme verbatim quotations belonging it feels normal. when i first started indesign i was not comfortable and design was difficult. but having the videos you made for us, i feel like i have a second lecture when i watch them (participant 9). after watching the videos, i felt in control, knowing that i [was] doing the right thing (participant 2). placemaking (spatial metaphors/ references) i feel free. i was following whatever you said [in the video] (participant 6). the responses indicate that the students have progressed from a state of estrangement to the third state in the rite of passage, namely assuming, internalising and adapting to their new role. in short, this new role has to do with being more visually literate and at ease with indesign. it is therefore assumed that the liminal state and creation anxiety experienced by the participants were bridged, to some extent, by exposing them to new technologies that aimed to guide them to successfully master the subject content. it is accepted that whenever there are student-technology interactions, educators are given the opportunity to implement learning interventions (bates 2019; hattie 2012; ferrance 2000; matusiak et al. 2019). therefore, if the actual space in front of a computer is not only regarded as a site for a learning intervention, but also as a liminal space, it could help explain students’ emotive responses to technology. this theoretical position is substantiated by the results of the comparative analysis that showed a dramatic improvement towards the mastery of basic layout techniques after watching the video tutorials. this points to the transition that took place, namely moving from a place of alienation and creation anxiety to a familiar, digital world characterised by the understanding of layout and design principles. concluding remarks this research focused on an educational problem the author encountered while presenting practical newspaper layout classes to second-year journalism students. after surveying different types of educational intervention strategies, it was decided to conduct action research and a new pedagogical subject framework was conceptualised. during the intervention stage, a “mediated learning” method was implemented (winters 2006: 9). this was done to investigate whether subject material – newspaper layout and design techniques – presented through technology and video tutorials could improve the participants’ comprehension thereof. following the blended learning approach, a complete online subject platform was created. this platform presented both text-based learning content and video tutorials of the subject material. otrel-cass et al. (2012: 370) emphasise that integrating digital technologies into curricula help to focus the curriculum and complement teaching and learning activities. 195194 steenkamp the secondary aims of the research were to theorise the physical space between students and computer screens as liminal; and to show that creation anxiety exists when students are confronted by new technologies that have to be adopted. these aims were achieved through interviews with students that showed the existence of anxiety, hesitance, alienation, and disorientation in their interactions with technology. moreover, the interviews showed the transitional nature of the liminal space in which students find themselves. while creation anxiety is a barrier to learning, the implementation of the blended learning approach assisted in ushering students over the liminal threshold. instead of being in a perpetual state of uncertainty and anxiety (stage 1 separation), using training videos and other digital delivery methods assisted in shifting/improving their skills (stage 2 transition) until the skills were integrated into their ability to perform basic layout tasks in indesign (stage 3 incorporation). the author acknowledges that the research has various limitations: only one student cohort’s interactions with indesign were studied; the sample size was small; the data collection instruments were not piloted; and the visual literacy skills level of the research participants were not determined prior to the study’s onset. as a result, the findings cannot be generalised across all journalism student populations in south africa. it is further recognised that the effects of test anxiety in educational contexts were not investigated, although the layout exercises were not formal tests. the research aimed to illustrate that action-based applied research could assist lecturers in enhancing their teaching practices. with regard to future research directions, further studies on using the blended learning approach for other journalism subjects, such as news reporting, multimedia journalism and data journalism, could be explored. finally, the field of journalism education could benefit from further systematic investigations into heuristic approaches to solving design and visual literacy problems. references acrl (association of college and research libraries). 2011. visual literacy competency standards for higher education. available at: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ visualliteracy [accessed on 18 may 2021]. alonso, f., lópez, g., manrique, d. & viñes, j.m. 2005. an instructional model for webbased e-learning education with a blended learning process approach. british journal of educational technology 36(2): 217-235. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14678535.2005.00454.x avgerinou, m.d. & pettersson, r. 2020. visual literacy theory. in: josephson, s., kelly, j.d. & smith, k. 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(ed.) big issues in mobile learning: report of a workshop by the kaleidoscope network of excellence mobile learning initiative. nottingham: university of nottingham. https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part2.pdf https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part2.pdf https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 https://marcprensky.com/writing/prensky-therightstuff-edtech-may-jun2012.pdf https://marcprensky.com/writing/prensky-therightstuff-edtech-may-jun2012.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633120960421 https://regqs.saqa.org.za/viewqualification.php?id=111495 https://allqs.saqa.org.za/showqualification.php?id=64989 https://allqs.saqa.org.za/showqualification.php?id=64989 https://regqs.saqa.org.za/viewqualification.php?id=97044 https://regqs.saqa.org.za/viewqualification.php?id=97044 https://www.tut.ac.za/prospectusdocuments/2021/dip_journalism_2021.pdf https://www.tut.ac.za/prospectusdocuments/2021/dip_journalism_2021.pdf 53pb tricky two-some: the interplay between radio personalities’ personal online identities and online personal brands abstract radio stations encourage their presenters to utilise social media such as facebook, twitter and instagram to create awareness of the station’s brand, promote their shows, interact with listeners, and build their professional brands. the question is: how does this affect their engagement with social media when they are not on air? this study explored the interplay of radio personalities’ personal online identity and online personal brand. a qualitative strategy was chosen to help navigate the investigatory efforts to explore the ways in which radio presenters exist online. semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten radio presenters at a south african commercial radio station. a number of challenges were identified that radio presenters encounter when they attempt to manage their online personas. a lack of training in social media communication and a lack of knowledge about the basic principles of personal branding are some of the challenges. recommendations are made to radio presenters as well as their employers to simplify this complex issue of managing the interplay between personal identity and personal branding in creating a branded identity (as opposed to a brand identity). keywords: branded identity; personal branding; personal identity; social media marketing; radio personalities; qualitative research introduction over the past decade, we have witnessed a sharp increase in the use and popularity of social media. the number of social media users globally is ranked at an estimated 3.6 billion, and is projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025 (tankovska, in statista 2021). social networking sites have also become a popular tool for self-branding (van dijck 2016) and personal presentation (horky et al. 2021). however, as the world turns into a social networking village, dr mardi delport department of communication sciences, central university of technology, free state, bloemfontein, south africa email : mdelport@cut. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-4749-6184 dr dalmé mulder department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email : mulderd@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-8491-3792 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.4 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 53-69 date submitted: 13 september 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:mdelport@cut.ac.za mailto:mdelport@cut.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x mailto:mulderd@ufs.ac.za mailto:mulderd@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8491-3792 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.4 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 5554 delport & mulder there are rising concerns about identity theft, fraud, misleading information, fake news, as well as crimen injuria, hate speech and racism (marx 2021) – all impacting on professional and personal identities in the social media domain. from a marketing perspective, this could have far-reaching implications. kapoor et al. (2018) studied the findings of 132 articles on social media and social networking published between 1997 and 2017, and found that organisations either prohibit employees from posting controversial content online, or employees themselves refrain from doing so, fearing negative repercussions. however, one should not disregard the opportunities that social media poses in the marketplace. social media enables individuals to share their personal identities online, but also allows them to create an online personal brand. ordway (2017: 1) states that in many instances, media workers have a “love-hate relationship with social media – they appreciate its value, but also know misuse and mistakes can sideline a career”. media workers are storytellers by profession, and are regarded as trustworthy sources of information (li 2021). they should therefore take great care of the way they present themselves or their organisations online. a few scholars have studied the role of company branding and personal branding in media contexts, with specific reference to journalism (bossio & sacco 2016; brems et al. 2017; molyneux & holton 2014). however, some questions about the use of social media by radio personalities to support their on-air presence are left unanswered. radio personalities face twin pressures: building their personal online brand, while simultaneously posting content on social networking sites to share their personal identities. the aim of this study is to provide guidelines for managing a personal online identity and online personal brand in respect of the shortage of such guidelines, as highlighted in previous research (bossio & sacco 2017; brems et al. 2017; holton & molyneux 2017; horky et al. 2021). these authors suggest that more research is needed on how media experts manage their own social media profiles. this study explores radio presenters’ experiences when engaging with social media, to assist them to navigate the management of personal identities and personal brands on social media. an exploration of existing literature on personal identity and personal branding served as a point of departure. semi-structured interviews with ten radio presenters at a commercial radio station in south africa provided data to suggest a number of guidelines to radio presenters and their employers for the integration of personal online identities and online personal brands on social media. background identity, according to social scholars erikson (1968), goffman (1959) and cooley (1902), is created within a context of sharing and is therefore a product of social interactions. radio broadcasting has always been a social practice. it requires personal and social interaction, both on air and online. whereas previously radio personalities were seen as social performers, social media has brought a virtual and interaction dimension to the act; thus, increasing their “market value” by offering a 5554 tricky two-some platform to promote themselves (as well as their organisations) in an online space through personal and professional branding. scholars have different views regarding the separation and blending of online identities. decamp et al. (2013: 581) postulate that the separation of identities online is “operationally impossible […] with minimal information, searching the web can quickly connect professional and personal content”. baer is also of the view that there is no dichotomy between professional and personal lives (in douglas 2017). there seems to be a constant and complex interplay of internal factors (personal values) and external factors (social contexts, roles and expectations) on professional identity (decamp et al. 2013). added to this is zuckerberg’s (in kirkpatrick 2010: 199) notion: “you have one identity. the days of you having a different image for your work, friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” in contrast is van dijck’s (2016) notion that, since public communication moved to an online space, the need for a multiple, composite self has increased. according to van dijck (2016), people put on staged performances during their everyday behaviour where they purposefully employ the differentiation between public and private discursive acts to shape their identity. some authors believe that the secret to blending professional and personal identities in an online space is to share information that reveals a dimension of one’s character, belief system and life, and in so doing, an individual connects with other human beings and make them count (baer, in douglas 2017). there is a host of literature on social media as a source of identity formation (allen 2015; baldauf et al. 2017; code 2013; ganda 2014; gündüz 2017; li 2021; ogidi 2015; orsatti & riemer 2015). however, only a few studies report on the role of organisational and personal branding in media contexts (bossio & sacco 2017; brems et al. 2017; holton & molyneux 2017). in a study involving 41 reporters and editors from us newspapers on the impact of branding practices on journalists’ personal identities, holton and molyneux (2017) reported a potential loss of personal identity in light of branding. the majority of the respondents in this study expressed concerns about balancing their personal and professional identities, especially through social media, and that media outlets fail in providing clear guidelines in managing a professional and personal brand. this study further indicated that, while reporters do promote themselves as well as their organisations on social media, both types of promotion are professionally, rather than personally, focused (holton & molyneux 2017). the journalists and editors expressed uncertainty about what is considered acceptable practice when branding oneself or one’s organisation. it is therefore important for media organisations and their employees to re-evaluate how social media is used to integrate personal identities and professional brands. in another study, bossio and sacco (2017) explored ways journalists represent and negotiate their personal and professional identities in social media environments, and how these representations are impacted by professional, organisational and institutional influences. they conducted 25 in-depth interviews with journalists from major australian media companies. three different forms of “social media identity” that journalists represent online, namely the “transitional” identity (creating separate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ugur-guenduez 5756 delport & mulder personal and professional social media accounts), the “branded” identity (having a public account that is only associated with a particular media organisation and displays only professional activities), and the “social” identity (blending professional and personal online identities) were identified (bossio & sacco 2017: 529). this study revealed that representing a personal and professional identity online might be especially difficult for journalists, where representation of a particular character is an important part of professional practice (bossio & sacco 2017). brems et al. (2017) investigated the twitter activities of 20 employed and 20 freelance journalists in the netherlands and flanders, and conducted in-depth interviews with 12 of these journalists to explore the manner in which they use social media to present themselves, and to determine the types of dilemmas they face. the results created a clear image of the three different elements that mark a personal brand: the stage (twitter); the audience (other twitter users); and the performer (journalists). the findings indicated that journalists struggled with being factual or opinionated; being personal or professional; how to balance broadcasting their message with engagement; and how to promote themselves strategically. from the literature reviewed it became clear that most of the articles published on social media in media-related contexts are aimed at addressing issues pertaining to twitter as a social media platform. although these studies have documented journalists’ use of and coping mechanisms with twitter, only a few have explored the usage of other social media platforms. furthermore, the studies were focused on journalists as media professionals. the current study (i) explores the challenges, issues and concerns radio presenters encounter when integrating their personal online identities and online personal brands on social media; and (ii) proposes guidelines for managing a branded identity. in the context of this study, “branded” identity refers to the integration of personal identity in a personal brand. the research was informed by two factors: the risks accompanying self-presentation acts online; and, the shortage of literature proposing guidelines for media professionals in managing online personas. tricky two-some: personal identity and online personal brand as this study is focused on the interplay of an individual’s different online personas, it is important to first clarify two concepts. personal identity, in social media contexts, is regarded as the activities, events, opinions and relationships that might represent an individual’s life outside their professional activities (bossio & sacco 2017). personal branding, on the other hand, is viewed according to the collective description provided by montoya and vandehey (2002) and klopper and north (2011: 411, in schawbel 2010): “personal branding is a personal identity that stimulates precise, meaningful perceptions in its audience about the values and qualities that a person stands for; it reveals your strengths and goals, and tells people why you are unique”. a core aspect of personal branding is thus an individual’s unique promise of value. according to klopper and north (2011), a personal brand is an individual’s unique mental mark, the sum of all his/her characteristics or core associations accompanying 5756 tricky two-some the brand. a personal brand should be a recognisable and trustworthy badge of origin, and a promise of performance. personal branding is a strategic process (gorbatov et al. 2018) that entails the purposive construction of positive impressions (hillgren & o’connor 2011). an individual’s personal brand encapsulates skills, abilities, values (montoya & vandehey 2002), promise and passion (klopper & north 2011). these are expressed through verbal and non-verbal cues in order to differentiate the individual and emphasise his/her uniqueness in an authentic manner (arruda & dixson 2010). a personal brand is always linked to the individual’s professional goal (klopper & north 2011). a study conducted by gorbatov et al. (2018) identified two reasons why an individual actively engages in personal branding. they are driven either by individual reasons or by industry or professional-related reasons. zinko and rubin (2015) link aspects such as the need for self-esteem, the need to belong, and the desire for rewards to individual reasons. personal branding is linked with the requirements and expectations of specific roles and industries (gorbatov et al. 2018). several industries require employees to promote themselves (and inter alia the company) through personal branding (harris & rae 2011). shaker and hafiz (2014) also describe personal branding on two levels, namely as a combination of core and extended identity. the core identity of a brand features the brand’s vision, values and attributes, while the extended identity provides the brand with a sense of completeness, and supplements the brand’s core by linking it to the organisation’s strategy whilst differentiating the brand. from this discussion, one can conclude that personal branding is a strategic process. antonios (2010) links this process to maslow’s hierarchy of needs and states that within the social media paradigm one also has to complete “basic needs” before moving up to “social needs” and ultimately reaching social optimisation. the levels that an individual moves through are first an individual’s need to exist and have a voice in the online environment. the second level entails the need to establish structure or a digital footprint by choosing social media platforms where the individual feels comfortable in sharing a voice. the third level comprises constructing and positioning the desired self. according to antonios (2010), this step involves connecting, sharing and engaging with people through social media platforms. the fourth level represents an individual’s desire to build a solid image and engage in conversation by voicing expertise and sharing competencies; thus, linking to personal branding. the highest level in maslow’s hierarchy of needs relates to personal fulfilment. to reach this level, the individual needs to make sense of their circumstances and the circumstances in which they finds themselves. it is at this stage that an effective online personal brand is optimised and sustained, and where the individual finds themselves in the position to reap monetary rewards. the outcomes of personal branding is multifaceted and non-linear (gorbatov et al. 2018). rangarajan et al. (in gorbatov et al. 2018) suggest a list of tangible and intangible measures of the effectiveness of a personal brand in a professional setting. these measures are categorised as individual intrinsic, individual extrinsic, 5958 delport & mulder and organisational outcomes. one of the most important outcomes of the personal branding process is a higher level of self-awareness (individual intrinsic), created through reflexivity (khedher 2015). the most common outcomes linked to personal branding are individual extrinsic outcomes, and they usually relate to the furthering of a professional career or creating social capital. in order to reach these outcomes, enhanced visibility of the personal brand should first be realised. another outcome that is considered an individual extrinsic outcome is the fact that the personal brand should be portrayed as authentic, and, at the same time, it should differentiate itself from other personal brands in the same industry. authenticity is an aspect that runs like a golden thread through an effective personal brand. personal branding is often considered within the context of organisational performance and the benefits that employees with strong personal brands can bring to the table. personal branding is thus not only considered to be of value to an individual, but also has an impact on the way in which an organisation is perceived. kucharska and d’abrowski (2016) found that employees with strong personal brands who share tacit knowledge of a company contribute to providing a company with a competitive edge. a key outcome of personal branding is thus reaching professional goals and promoting the ideology of the organisation (sturdy & wright 2008, in gorbatov et al. 2018). this feeds into the monetary outcomes of the brand. against the background of the previous discussion, the primary difference between these two concepts is that personal online identity is linked with self-expression, while online personal branding has professional outcomes. furthermore, a personal identity develops spontaneously, while a personal brand is a strategic, planned and managed process. however, a personal brand cannot exclude personal identity, as identity is the nucleus from which a personal brand develops. the challenge is therefore to manage the interplay between a personal and professional online profile on social media in an effective manner. research design and methodology this study was embedded within an interpretivist (patton 2002) and constructivist paradigm (lincoln & guba 1985) to create meaning of the interplay between radio personalities’ personal online identities and online personal brands. semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with radio presenters at a south african commercial radio station. during the interviews, the presenters had to reflect on their interaction on social media in their personal and professional capacity. in line with groenewald’s (2004) guidelines, the questions to the participants focused on their experiences, feelings, beliefs and convictions regarding the topic. each participant was allowed the opportunity to speak freely according to his or her own knowledge structures and perceptions. the interviews, which lasted between 30 and 60 minutes each, were conducted individually with each presenter in the boardroom of the radio station during october 2020. in keeping with covid-19 regulations, all safety protocols were observed. a purposeful-criterion sampling strategy was employed to access information-rich sources. the inclusion criteria entailed that the radio presenters had to be active on 5958 tricky two-some social media platforms, and they had to post at least once a week on one or more of these profiles. participation was voluntary. the sample group consisted of ten radio presenters, five male and five female (n = 10). the sample size was determined by theoretical saturation. permission to conduct the research was obtained from the management team of the radio station, and informed consent was obtained from all the participants. ethical clearance was provided by the humanities research ethics and innovation committee [hreic 15/10/20]. the participants were assured of the anonymity and confidentiality of their responses. all the interviews were recorded with the participants’ consent, and transcriptions were analysed by means of inductive content analysis. findings and discussion theme 1: type of sm presence the first step in the process to establish an online personal identity is to recognise the need to exist in the online environment. antonios (2010) opines that an individual establishing self-awareness focuses on this need; thus, creating an online presence and finding a voice. the participants approached the communication about their identity in different manners. seven of the participants have a personal profile, as well as a professional (public figure) page on facebook. as mentioned previously, bossio and sacco (2017) describe this as a “transitional” identity. one participant described the process as follows, “i try not to mix my personal and professional identities”. only one of the participants followed what was previously described by bossio and sacco (2017) as a “social” identity, blending a professional and personal online identity. still, this participant said, “i mostly post professional stuff on my personal profiles”. this notion mirrors the findings of holton and molyneux (2017) where journalists indicated that their posts are more professionally than personally staged. two participants have only one account where professional communication is shared to enhance their brands. their choice was motivated as follows, “you are a brand therefore your corporate identity is important”. the other stated, “as a media personality, i don’t think you can separate your personal and professional identities. if you really want to use social media in the correct way, you must be able to integrate your brands.” this approach is coined the “branded” identity by these authors. it became clear from the data that the participants found it challenging to separate their individual and professional presence online completely. according to brems et al. (2016) and holton and molyneux (2017), industries with a higher degree of transparency are more conducive to personal branding. green (2016) describes these as typically industries, such as sport or journalism (including radio presenting). this supports the notion that radio presenters cannot operate without a social media presence nowadays. 6160 delport & mulder theme 2: purpose of the sm presence although all the participants have an online presence, not all of them use it to create a personal brand. six of the participants indicated that they like to connect with their audiences, engage in conversations, and share their passions and beliefs through their social media presence; thus, claiming a more personal inclination. supporting this notion, one of these participants wants people to relate to her posts and likes to share hope. another participant mentioned that his goal is to let his positive energy rub off on others. “my goal is to reach out and motivate people. i want to make someone’s life better.” these participants do not intentionally focus on their personal brands, but more on their personal identities. given the industry within which the participants are employed it was interesting that less than half of them mentioned personal brands. one of these participants is a storyteller by nature. she stated that she wants to push her writing on social media platforms. this demonstrates that she wanted to display a personal skill (related to the industry) on her social media platforms. another participant clearly stated that his goal with social media is to boost his profile, increase his followers, and generate an extra income. three other participants, who also want to gain monetary benefit from their social media platforms echoed this sentiment; thus, edging towards professional communication and personal branding. one of these four participants explained that he uses facebook to share what they are doing on air. “the show doesn’t stop at 09:00. i use social media as a platform to get what we do on air out there.” this notion mirrors that of bonini (2012), that when the radio show ends the programme continues on the web. another of these participants mentioned that it is important to share knowledge and the value of his services. his goal is to interact with the audience, whilst he would also like to get more followers “to get his brand out there. i regard myself more of an influencer than a celebrity.” another participant who also engages in professional communication mentioned that her goal is to entertain her followers and connect with people. “i am not a chaser of followers. i want to build a strong brand. i regard it as a business tool.” one of the participants who follow the professional communication route mentioned that her goal is to attract the attention of other radio stations through her posts. this clearly indicates the career advancement this participant sees by means of personal branding. only one participant mentioned posts that focused on the employer radio station’s brand. according to gorbatov et al. (2018), there are two broad groups of drivers pertaining to a social media presence, namely individual drivers and industry or professional drivers. these authors found that these drivers explain why, how and for what reason individuals engage in personal branding activities. a positive personal reputation is identified as the key driver of an individual (zinko & rubin 2015). these authors link aspects, such as the need for self-esteem and the need to belong to the individual drivers, while industry drivers are linked to the desire for rewards. 6160 tricky two-some theme 3: sm structure on social media, people connect with people through destinations. individuals join groups, engage in conversation, and find people who share their passions and beliefs. according to antonios (2010), it is important to establish structure for social media use. this entails establishing a digital footprint by choosing social media platforms where one feels comfortable sharing your voice. the participants all reported that they use different social media platforms. one participant explains that facebook is used to portray a part of her life. “i don’t engage with my online audience. they must go to my public figure page and like it.” the majority of participants use twitter for information gathering purposes, and facebook and instagram to connect with their audiences, while one individual uses twitter, instagram and facebook mainly for information gathering purposes. according to two participants, instagram is their main social media platform, whilst another two participants’ post on their instagram feed to facebook. one participant used both facebook and linkedin as main social media platforms, but would also post on instagram every now and again. “i try not to mix my personal and professional identities. i am afraid that people will not take me seriously. i have two facebook pages – one being my personal profile and the other my professional page.” only one of the participants indicated the use of instagram, facebook, youtube, twitter, linkedin and tiktok. it is clear that the participants use the social media platforms for different reasons, varying from information gathering, to promoting their online shows, and engaging with followers. the fact that there are numerous social media platforms available contribute to the challenge being addressed in this study. not only do radio presenters find it difficult to manage a personal and professional identity, but they also do not know how to do this across different platforms. it is evident from the data that the combination of different platforms in a transitional manner was most popular amongst the participants. one of the main concerns raised by the participants was the fact that they find it difficult to separate their personal profile from their professional profile. this confirms the findings of holton and molyneux’s (2017) study among journalists. theme 4: current status of sm presence from the data, it became clear that the participants desire to build a solid image and engage in conversation by voicing expertise and sharing competencies. however, not all participants were satisfied with their current social media presence. one participant indicated that she needs to update her personal brand. “it’s not reflecting me, who i am.” this sentiment was supported by another participant who felt that he also still needs to figure out his brand. “as a media personality, i don’t think you can separate your personal and professional identities. if you really want to use social media in the correct way, you must be able to integrate your brands.” another participant felt confident in his personal brand, and described it as inspirational and genuine. a participant who considered her brand as being more business-oriented at this stage mentioned, “i want to get to a point where i have a strategy. branding with other companies is my end goal.” as mentioned in the literature review, strategy is a 6362 delport & mulder key element in informing self-expression and self-branding in online spaces (brems et al. 2017). theme 5: outcomes of sm presence social media presence is created through personal and/or professional communication. personal communication is seen as information regarding the personal life of the individual, for example, family, hobbies and emotions. this type of communication is considered non-professional and provides the recipients with a glimpse of the individual’s private activities. according to brems et al. (2017), personal content can make online content attractive to read for the recipients, as is also the case with adding visuals to posts. most of the participants made use of personal communication to make their presence more attractive. “my messages are uplifting and motivating and i want people to relate with me.” this participant mentioned that the posts on her personal profile on facebook reflect the fact that she is married, a christian, and loves her family and dogs. she posts work-related information on her public figure page. another participant said, “instagram is more the real me; it includes the human factor. you would find me, just me.” another participant stated that he steers away from posting content that is related to politics, racism or sport, but rather posts content about his own mood. one participant, who believes that a personal and professional brand cannot be merged, stated that his posts focus on family matters and his love for jogging. “i am the family guy – a dad with a child. i want that to identify with my audience.” this notion underscores the elements of compassion, connectivity and care that make radio such as intimate medium (zunckel 2021). professional communication entails sharing content that is based on the professional knowledge on which the personal brand is built. a participant who does not merge his personal and professional identities mentioned that he is afraid that people will not take him seriously. his posts are mostly professional, “i share my services and what i can offer people”. a participant who makes use of an integrated approach stated, “i post personal stuff such as exercise and meal plans. it is directly linked to my radio programme and i believe that the audience can relate with it.” one of the participants describes being online as “a popularity contest, always looking who has the most followers”, but another participant felt that “a strong brand is not about the number of followers a person has, but about engagement”. the element of engagement underscores the interactive mode of identity construction (goffman 1959). although three of the participants post professional work-related items, only one of them mentioned the use of the employer’s corporate brand to the advantage of his personal brand. this was surprising, as one should think that a mutually beneficial relationship between the employer’s brand and the individual brands would be possible. most of the participants tried to make use of what they called a “balanced approach” in combining personal and professional communication. theme 6: managing the sm presence process personal branding is all about the strategic constructing and positioning of the desired self. given the responses of the participants, it became clear that not all 6362 tricky two-some of them are familiar with what a personal brand entails. as discussed previously, a personal brand should be focused on one specific attribute or unique feature, and is a strategic process. one participant commented, “i however believe that my brands can complement one another”. another describes his personal brand as “charismatic, influencer, real, relatable, inspirational, educational and genuine”. these comments illustrate the lack of knowledge regarding personal branding, as the literature focuses on the fact that an effective brand should have one differentiating factor that sets it apart from other brands. with an effective personal brand, one should not ascribe more than one proposition to the brand. all dimensions of an individual’s life should also resonate under one brand, not multiple brands. it became clear that there was a lack of knowledge among some of the participants regarding what personal branding entails. a participant who demonstrated knowledge of the core of branding stated the following, “my brand is one person. even though i am a professional, i still have a funside. i love people. it’s all about having a good time.” this notion is consistent with the findings of bullingham and casconcelos (2013), who suggest that people re-create their offline selves online, rather than adopting a different persona or constructing a different identity. they still have one identity reflecting different versions of the self. others demonstrated knowledge of important aspects of personal branding, such as the fact that it is a strategic process. one participant mentioned that she schedules her posts on facebook and instagram; thereby, acknowledging the strategic nature of the process. another participant mentioned that he posts a minimum of eight times per week, mainly between 16:00 and 18:00. “my posts are carefully planned.” this insight also reflects on the strategic process that one needs to follow in personal branding. another stated that she always thinks about her brand. “i like to create a certain theme. i like to keep it relevant to what’s happening in the world.” yet another participant, who demonstrated knowledge of the personal branding process, stated that she knows most of her followers personally. this demonstrated that she knows how important it is to know your recipients in order to formulate effective communication. theme 7: practical guidelines for sm presence success the participants mentioned a number of aspects that they use in an attempt to make their social media presence more effective. one participant mentioned that it is important to her to have a corporate identity and professional image for her personal brand. another felt that consistency is key. she is relatively successful with her online activities and has brand endorsements from a number of well-known brands. “with brand awareness i am always looking for new ways to develop my brand. i am authentic, genuine, the girl next door, approachable, real, aspiring. i try my best to follow people who are positive. i engage by asking questions. i always try to be real. it’s about influence, authenticity.” this underscores the previous notion that a personal brand should be portrayed as being authentic. a participant who also supports consistency in posts makes use of certain themes when she posts. a third participant, who emphasised the importance of consistency, stated that all his photos have “a certain look and feel”. he also makes use of filters to edit his photos. “you are a brand; therefore your corporate identity is important.” 6564 delport & mulder the strategic timing of posts was also mentioned. one participant felt she gains most interaction when posting between 18:00 and 21:00. another important aspect mentioned by the participants was to stay on top of what is happening in the social media environment. information on current topics should be gathered, but information that is more personal was also mentioned. as stated, “i constantly compare myself with other women in the industry.” for another participant success lies in perseverance. he indicated that, in order to build a successful brand online, “you must invest time and money in it”. he also felt that work experience and exposure to different positions contribute to an individual’s ability to create a more effective social media presence. this participant believes that one should use everything to your advantage. “i believe that my brands can complement one another. more people discover you through radio.” theme 8: challenges almost all the participants mentioned time constraints as a major challenge. time constraints seem to be a problem experienced by many radio professionals across the african continent (radio days africa 2021). another aspect that makes the managing of social media presence difficult is the lack of specific guidelines. several participants felt that practical guidelines, such as the right time to post, would be useful. five participants mentioned the creation of content as a challenge. “content is important; it should add value to my follower’s day,” one participant elaborated. two participants opined that the right type of content is important, but difficult to create. as one stated, “you owe your followers content”. for another participant it is a challenge to use the correct hashtags and to use insights to post at the right time. another participant mentioned that it is a challenge to post real-time content without compromising on quality. several participants echoed this opinion, with one mentioning that it would be helpful if a professional person could assist them. the need for good quality posts was mentioned by almost all the participants. “i need a graphic designer to create my brand/identity.” this participant also felt it would be of great value if such a professional person could edit posts. an aspect that goes hand in hand with content creation is knowing the recipient of the message. one of the participants recognised the importance of knowing whom the interactive audience is in order to create effective content. thus, identity is seen as being dependent on an audience and the recognition it receives from an audience, as mentioned by goffman (1959). a participant mentioned that he wants his posts to get traction. “i want reaction.” it seems as if engagement with followers was regarded as a general challenge. another participant mentioned that she is of the opinion that people do not interact sufficiently. “people should collaborate more with other brands or influencers.” as mentioned before, engagement and interaction with the audience is a key construct in identity formation (goffman 1959). several participants felt that a short course in social media or photography could be helpful. the general consent was that “social media training could be helpful”. 6564 tricky two-some conclusion and recommendations although there is no such thing as “the perfect online profile” (green 2016: 275), radio presenters, as most other professions nowadays, cannot operate without a presence on social media. however, the way in which radio presenters should manage this presence is still uncertain. although some of the participants felt that separate profiles are more viable, expert knowledge indicates that it is not the most effective route to follow. since the more authentic personal brands are seen as more believable and therefore also more effective, personal identity should be engrained in the branded identity and not separated from it. the research data reflected that most of the participants in the study focused on building a positive personal reputation, but few explored the rewards that a radio presenter could reap from a branded identity on social media. the participants also did not take full advantage of the total spectrum of options that the social media structure provides. one of the reasons for this could be that the participants found it difficult to manage their personal and professional profiles, and therefore did not want to complicate the process further by adding more social media sites. most of the participants combined personal and professional communication in their social media interactions, but none of them had a social media strategy in place. a branded identity requires a strategic process with a clearly defined brand and purpose to the social media presence at the core of the process. an important starting point for radio presenters is to know the differences and similarities of personal identity and personal branding (illustrated in table 1 below). table 1: core elements of personal identity and personal branding core elements personal identity personal branding process spontaneous strategic expression verbal and non-verbal verbal and non-verbal promise/outcome authenticity authentic uniqueness impressions positive/negative positive qualities skills, abilities, values, experience, knowledge skills, abilities, values, experience, knowledge purpose personal professional the difference between these two concepts is that personal online identity is linked to self-expression, while online personal branding always has professional outcomes. furthermore, a personal identity develops spontaneously, while a personal brand is a strategic, planned and managed process. the challenge for radio presenters is to interplay these two concepts effectively on social media platforms to create the branded identity. when looking at the definition of personal branding, it is clear that personal 6766 delport & mulder identity forms the core of the personal brand and therefore also the branded identity. it is therefore not possible to develop an effective personal brand separate from the essence of the personal identity. when different versions of an individual’s identity are displayed on different platforms, it leads to perceptions of unauthenticity. the following guidelines are suggested to direct the process of creating a branded identity. suggestions for radio presenters: ♦ explore your personal identity and build a personal brand around this core. ♦ follow a branded identity presence on social media, and integrate this identity across many platforms. ♦ the visual branded identity should be developed professionally and should be consistent across all platforms. ♦ explore practical guidelines to enhance the effectiveness of your online interactions (for example, the timing of posts, content, etc.). ♦ make sure that content always links to the core of your branded identity and is relevant to your audience. ♦ develop a long-term strategy for your branded identity with room for short-term adjustments to incorporate environmental changes and relevant information. ♦ align the purpose of your branded identity with potential rewards. ♦ create engaging activities on your social media profiles. ♦ establish a mutually beneficial relationship between your branded identity and the brand of your employer. ♦ stay within the social media policy framework of the employer. suggestions to radio stations: ♦ provide employees with precise guidelines and policies with regard to their social media presence. ♦ make branded identity development part of the company’s induction protocol. ♦ make social media marketing training available to employees. a limitation of this study was that it was focused on radio personalities of only one commercial radio station in south africa. future research could focus on a comparative analysis of the online personas of radio presenters working at community stations, commercial stations, and the public broadcaster. in addition, more research is needed regarding the interplay between radio presenters’ on-air personalities and online identities. identity is seen as being dependent on an audience – in this regard, research could be conducted into the role audience members play in identity formation. social media has extended radio’s mandate beyond its original role and functions by offering radio personalities a platform to promote themselves and their stations online. 6766 tricky two-some the findings of this study confirm existing scholarship that 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[online]. available at: https://themediaonline.co.za/2021/05/radio-isnt-on-mute-mamela-we-can-hearyou/ [accessed on 2 june 2021]. https://epublikasies.netwerk24.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=b46d8568-218d-4230-bdde-52a3a691d7a4 https://epublikasies.netwerk24.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=b46d8568-218d-4230-bdde-52a3a691d7a4 https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.906927 https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/brand-journalism-impact-reporter-personal-identity https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/brand-journalism-impact-reporter-personal-identity https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2015_cr/140 https://radiodaysafrica.co.za/podcasts/ https://radiodaysafrica.co.za/podcasts/ https://doi.org/10.18034/gdeb.v3i2.154 https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443712468605 https://themediaonline.co.za/2021/05/radio-isnt-on-mute-mamela-we-can-hear-you/ https://themediaonline.co.za/2021/05/radio-isnt-on-mute-mamela-we-can-hear-you/ _hlk79752049 1pb predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches abstract electronic marketing has transformed marketing practices. however, the acceptance of e-marketing applications and principles in churches has been moderate. this study examined the predictors of e-marketing adoption among zimbabwean churches. the study was quantitative in nature, and a positivist orientation was adopted. two hundred and fifty self-administered questionnaires were distributed to clergymen from various churches in zimbabwe. structural equation modelling using smart pls software was employed during the data analysis phase. both descriptive and inferential statistics were manipulated in this study. the results indicate that marketing orientation, marketing innovation, church youth marketing, competitive intensity, and dynamic marketing capabilities have a significant influence on e-marketing orientation among zimbabwean churches. lastly, e-marketing orientation spurs an increase in religiosity and spirituality of church members. keywords: e-marketing; advertising; marketing communication; churches; faith-based organisations introduction e-marketing is an emerging concept to many organisations, more so for charitable organisations such as churches operating in africa, where internet accessibility is falling behind the western world (brodie et al. 2007; brady et al. 2002). although the use of e-marketing practices by religious organisations has been accelerating since 2000 (barna group 2009), many churches remain hesitant in adopting e-marketing (angheluţă et al. 2009). a large corpus of academic literature on the adoption and the resultant impact of e-marketing in commercial businesses, both product and service-oriented, exists (brady et al. 2002; trainor et al. 2011; tiago & tiago 2012; ivanov 2012). however, little research exists on religious e-marketing in an african context in general (togarasei 2012). this study therefore sought to examine the predictors of e-marketing adoption amongst zimbabwean churches. dr patrick mupambwa marketing division, commerce, law and management faculty, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa email: pmupambwa@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-4135-162x prof. norman chiliya department of business management, faculty of management sciences, university of venda, thohoyandou, south africa email: norman.chiliya@ univen.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-1900-7248 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-21 date submitted: 08 january 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:pmupambwa@gmail.com mailto:pmupambwa@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4135-162x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4135-162x mailto:norman.chiliya@univen.ac.za mailto:norman.chiliya@univen.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-7248%0d https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-7248%0d https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 mupambwa & chiliya literature review while the purpose of a commercial organisation is to maximise wealth creation for shareholders, non-profit organisations focus on influencing and encouraging target audiences to give or donate for their cause or their philanthropic work (sandilands 2014; surbhi 2016). more than 50 years ago, kotler and levy (1969) emancipated the marketing concept from its restriction to the domain of physical goods, contending that marketing principles should not be restricted to offerings such as soap. it could be utilised to promote an assortment of causes, extending from political professions to philanthropies (wright 2010). this led to the birth of health marketing, social marketing and church marketing, among others (kotler 2005). churches normally depend on member contributions for their survival and do not get any funding from government or the private sector; they can be considered nonprofit organisations (mulyanegara 2009; kotler & keller, 2016), as well as service organisations (russell-bennett et al. 2013; lovelock & wirtz 2016). churches are therefore an interesting research context for investigating the determinants of electronic marketing orientation in a non-commercial and services industry. the governmental, economic and social difficulties, destitution and social ills bedevilling zimbabwe have been conducive for the bourgeoning of the zimbabwean religious market (biri 2013; dodo et al. 2014). as suggested by krause (2003), stroope et al. (2013) and king et al. (2016), religion spurs individuals to seek meaning in life. in zimbabwe, the multiplicity of churches has been growing in recent years, thereby creating a highly competitive church market. theological reasons and quests for personal kingdoms are among the reasons that have been provided to explain the surge in the growth of churches. christianity in zimbabwe has become a “spiritual supermarket”, with adherents now fast-tracking church shopping and switching (moyo 2016), with e-marketing playing a pivotal role. it is, therefore, imperative to investigate the predictors of e-marketing orientation amongst the churches and the resultant impact. as the competitive intensity grew in the religious market, religions and churches were turned into “brands” (einstein 2008); this triggered the marketisation of religion and churches (usunier & stolz 2014). like any commercial business operation, religious and church leaders face overwhelming challenges in their quest to attract and retain religious consumers (appah & george 2018). each religious brand is fighting for visibility, and the recognition and acquisition of its religious services (nardella 2014). einstein (2008) writes that the explosion of religious options, media fragmentation and immersion, and the omnipresence of marketing techniques has made it vital for religion to market its programmes and services as brands. consequently, the application of marketing tools and practices has taken centre stage in church markets (usunier & stolz 2014). marketing tactics from commercial businesses are the building blocks from which an agenda for church marketing is found, subject to the non-desacralisation, dechristianising and secularisation of religion, and the damage or pollution of the core concepts of spirituality and religiosity (abreu 2006; butler 2014). the lackadaisical 32 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches attitude of some churches towards e-marketing practices is no longer sustainable (arthur & rensleigh 2015). spiritual consumers are using electronic marketing platforms for information searching and sharing, to search for spiritual guidance, for entertainment, as a source of moral support, and for social interaction and relaxation (fogenay 2013; arthur & rensleigh 2015). as a result of an increasingly digitalised world, information sharing is largely restricted to an online environment; hence, the adoption of new practices by churches to fit this trend has become a necessity (wielstra 2012; han 2016). a such, the vatican views the internet as a “gift from god” designed for evangelism; thus, the church must give the internet a “soul” (garland 2014) and use it to spread the message of the gospel (foley 2002). not much has been written about church e-marketing orientation in zimbabwe. consequently, church leaders and marketing practitioners are ill equipped and possess little, if any, knowledge to help them execute effective e-marketing strategies. strategic church decisions are made based on individual intuition, or trial and error. this study addresses this gap in literature and contributes to the understanding of the predictors of e-marketing usage and adoption, and how religions organisations can leverage e-marketing investments to achieve better results. the conceptual model and hypothesis in figure 1 were developed. figure 1: conceptual model 54 mupambwa & chiliya the hypotheses are: h1: there is a positive relationship between marketing orientation and e-marketing orientation. h2: there is a positive relationship between marketing innovation orientation and e-marketing orientation. h3: there is a positive relationship between a church’s emphasis on attracting the youth to the church and e-marketing orientation. h4: there is a positive relationship between competitive intensity and e-marketing orientation. h5: there is a positive relationship between dynamic marketing capabilities and e-marketing orientation. h6 there is a positive relationship between e-marketing orientation and religiosity. h7: there is a positive relationship between e-marketing orientation and spirituality. research methodology a descriptive research design was adopted for this study, observing and describing the characteristics of a phenomenon, which can include situations, objects, people, groups, organisations or environments (malhotra 2018; zikmund et al. 2012). the premise of the study was to reveal “what” influences religious e-marketing orientation in religious organisations, and the “what” question can be fully and successfully addressed by descriptive research (wisker 2008). surveys were conducted in order to collect primary data and self-administered questionnaires were administered in zimbabwe, targeting christian churches. research population and sample the target population was made up of clergymen (pastors, priests, bishops, evangelists and church ministers) from christian churches in zimbabwe. the research was conducted countrywide, focusing on all eight provinces: bulawayo, harare, manicaland province, mashonaland central province, mashonaland east province, mashonaland west province, masvingo province and matabeleland north province. the focus was mainly on major towns and cities as “technology use is significantly higher in urban areas than in rural areas” (magezi 2015: 82). the sample size for this study was 250 clergymen drawn from different christian churches in zimbabwe’s major cities and towns. the study employed a proportional stratified sampling technique (aaker et al. 2015). in this study, the different church organisations were used as strata. using a simple random sampling technique, sample elements were selected from each stratum. data collection to collect the primary data, a questionnaire was designed. the questionnaire focused on addressing the research objectives. to this end, the questionnaire was structured 54 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches based on the research variables. the research instrument was operationalised by adapting previous questionnaires measuring the same variables, namely e-marketing orientation (prasad et al. 2001; asikhia 2009), dynamic marketing capabilities (weerawardena 2003), youth marketing (van der merwe et al. 2013), marketing innovation (naidoo 2010), competitive intensity (asikhia 2009), marketing orientation (naidoo 2010; narver & slater 1990), spirituality (proeschold-bell et al. 2014) and religiosity (leondari & gialamas 2009). most of the previous work was conducted in the commercial sector, so the measurements were adjusted and modified to suit the current church context and purpose. a five-item likert scale measured all the variables, with anchors ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. the previous instruments from which these scales were adapted were based on the five-item likert scale. the questionnaire consisted of nine sections. the first section dealt with the demographic information of the respondents, whereas the rest of the sections contained questions specific to each research variable. the questionnaire contained mainly multiple-choice and scale questions. all questions in section a contained multiple-choice questions, where research participants were required to answer by choosing from a specific set of possible responses provided. the rest of the questionnaire contained scaling questions. data analysis data analysis was a two-stage process. in the first stage, the measurement instrument was assessed for accuracy with confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). thus, the accuracy of the construct measures was established. in the second stage, the research model fit to data assessment and testing of the proposed hypothesis was conducted. to achieve the above, structural equation modelling (sem) was employed to test the measurement properties of the research model and the linear effects hypothesised in this study. smart pls was employed as the computation sem software. model fitness was assessed and established through global goodness-of-fit statistic, and chi-square (x2/df) and the normed fit index (nfi). hypothesis testing was executed through path analysis, a multivariate analytical methodology for empirically examining sets of relationships in the form of linear causal models (el-gohary 2012). path analysis allowed the examination of direct and indirect effects of the seven linear hypotheses based on knowledge and theoretical constructs as reflected in the conceptual model. the reliability of the findings was guaranteed by cronbach’s alpha (α) and composite reliability index (cr), whereas validity was measured by examining convergent and discriminant validity. research findings in this study, a 100% response rate was not achieved. the actual sample size that was achieved was 250 respondents, which represents a 62.5% response rate. the findings from this study depict a 74/26 split ratio between female and male pastors. thus, 26% of the respondents were female, with 74% male. the research participants were distributed across various churches in zimbabwe. most of the respondents (12.1%) 76 mupambwa & chiliya indicated that they were from the apostolic faith mission, while 10.5% were from the roman catholic church. a further 10.5% of the respondents were from zaoga, while 9.3% were from the united methodist church, and a further 8.9% from the anglican church. churches such as the seventh day adventist, methodist in zimbabwe, church of christ and celebration church had the least representation, with a representation of 6.5%, 4.8%, 4.8% and 3.2%, respectively. other churches contributed 28.6%, and consisted of individual churches that had fewer than three respondents each. regarding the age of the respondents, the results indicate that most of the respondents were between 31 and 60 years. specifically, 30.0% of the respondents were between 31 and 40 years, while 33.6% were between 41 and 50 years, while another 24.3% were between 51 and 60 years. only a small fraction (4.0%) of the respondents was between 18 and 30 years, and another fraction of 8.1% was older than 60 years. even though the participants were distributed across all five age groups, the views were dominated by participants aged between 41 and 50, followed by participants aged between 31 and 40 years. the results of the study indicated that most of the respondents had served as church ministers for more than five years. only 1.2% of the respondents said they had been in church ministry for less than one year, while 19.2% said between one and five years, and another 29.4% said between six and ten years. a further 23.7% had been in the service between 11 and 15 years, while 16.7% had served between 16 and 20 years, and 9.8% were in the pastorate for more than 20 years. the educational qualifications of the respondents were diverse. the majority of the respondents (60.2%) indicated that they held at least a bachelor’s degree as their highest qualification. most of the respondents (34.0%) held a bachelor’s degree, followed by 29.9% who held diplomas, and another 14.3% with master’s degrees. of the remaining 39.8%, 29.9% held diplomas, while 9.8% of the respondents held ordinary and/or advanced level certificates from secondary and high schools, respectively. measurement model assessment the reliability of the research instrument was checked using the composite reliability (cr), average variance extracted (ave), and cronbach’s alpha (α) values, as suggested by hair et al. (2012). reliability tests are performed to gauge the consistence, precision, repeatability and trustworthiness of measurement in a study (chakrabartty 2013). 76 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches table 1: measures of reliability construct number of items cronbach’s alpha composite reliability (cr) average variance extracted (ave) marketing innovation 8 0.630 0.718 0.463 marketing orientation 15 0.700 0.802 0.448 e-marketing orientation 15 0.707 0.809 0.459 competitive intensity 5 0.797 0.868 0.624 dynamic marketing capabilities 9 0.679 0.778 0.471 religiosity 4 0.651 0.792 0.564 spirituality 6 0.641 0.785 0.479 church youth marketing 6 0.668 0.730 0.576 the internal consistency based on the cronbach alpha was acceptable. the majority of the items showed levels of internal consistency above 0.6, as reflected by cronbach alpha values in table 1, and closer to 0.70; hence, the scores were marginally acceptable. the results presented in table 1 reveal that all the composite reliabilities for each construct were above the recommended value of 0.70, thus being indicative of satisfactory and acceptable internal consistency and reliability of the measures. a cross examination of the results presented in table 1 shows that the lowest ave computed for this study was on the marketing orientation construct, which had a value of 0.448, while the highest ave was on competitive intensity construct, with a value of 0.624. chinomona and cheng (2013) advise that an ave that is above 0.4 should be considered marginally acceptable. validity chinomona (2011) states that discriminant validity is assessed by using correlation matrix. table 2: inter-construct correlation matrix dmc eci emo mi mo rg sp ym dmc 1.00 eci 0.427 1.00 emo 0.650 0.548 1.00 98 mupambwa & chiliya dmc eci emo mi mo rg sp ym mi 0.408 0.726 0.581 1.00 mo 0.499 0.287 0.542 0.305 1.00 rg 0.409 0.342 0.373 0.345 0.255 1.00 sp 0.387 0.483 0.451 0.465 0.237 0.411 1.00 ym 0.349 0.219 0.363 0.276 0.312 0.289 0.316 1.00 table 2 shows the inter-correction values for all the constructs. these are all less than 1.0, hence confirming discriminant validity. additionally, the discriminant validity was further evaluated by comparing the ave value to their highest shared variance (hsv), as suggested by hox et al. (2017). table 2 assesses discriminant validity by comparing ave and hsv. the results indicate that all the aves are greater than the hsvs of the research constructs, thereby confirming the existence of discriminant validity. table 3 provides a summary of the descriptive statistics that were generated using spss statistical software, as well as reliability and validity indicators generated by smart pls software. table 3: scale accuracy analysis research constructs scale items cronbach’s alpha test composite reliability values average variance extracted (ave) factor loadings mean sd a value dmc dmc1 4.10 0.753 0.659 0.778 0.471 0.530 dmc2 4.02 0.883 0.692 dmc3 4.04 1.045 0.677 dmc4 4.13 0.994 0.564 dmc5 4.01 0.981 0.538 dmc7 4.23 0.873 0.635 eci eci1 3.95 0.963 0.797 0.868 0.624 0.700 eci2 3.49 1.319 0.879 eci3 3.98 0.838 0.703 eci5 3.08 0.887 0.859 98 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches research constructs scale items cronbach’s alpha test composite reliability values average variance extracted (ave) factor loadings mean sd a value emo emo15 3.53 1.209 0.707 0.809 0.459 0.695 emo6 3.94 0.904 0.612 emo7 3.96 0.938 0.719 emo8 4.06 0.975 0.643 emo9 3.68 1.175 0.713 mi mi2 3.28 1.420 0.630 0.718 0.463 0.785 mi3 4.17 0.783 0.655 mi7 3.93 1.016 0.585 mo mo13 4.15 1.126 0.700 0.802 0.448 0.682 mo14 4.21 0.840 0.685 mo15 4.06 1.071 0.624 mo6 3.90 0.910 0.673 mo7 3.90 0.914 0.681 rg rg2 4.04 0.859 0.651 0.792 0.564 0.780 rg3 4.15 0.749 0.597 rg4 3.88 1.043 0.853 sp sp1 4.32 1.236 0.641 0.785 0.479 0.679 sp2 4.17 0.671 0.758 sp3 4.29 0.756 0.741 sp4 4.32 0.604 0.577 ym ym4 4.34 0.830 0.668 0.730 0.576 0.694 ym6 3.57 0.951 0.819 note: mo = market orientation; mi = marketing innovation; eci = e-competitive intensity; ym = youth marketing; sp = spiritual; rg = religious; dmc = dynamic marketing capabilities; sd = standard deviation; cr = composite reliability; ave = average variance extracted * scores: 1 – strongly disagree; 3 – moderately agree; 5 – strongly agree 1110 mupambwa & chiliya overall model fit assessment the data fit to the conceptual model was mainly assessed using two indicators, which are the global goodness-of-fit (gfi) and the normed fit index (nfi). the calculated gof was 0.369, which exceeds the threshold of gof > 0.36, as suggested by khojasteh and lo (2015). thus, this study concludes that the research model had a good overall fit. the model fit was further assessed using the chi-square (x2/df) and the nfi. while the chi-square (x2/df) and nfi did not meet the acceptable threshold, the results in table 4 can be regarded as marginally acceptable. for instance, nfi should be above 0.8, while 0.9 is regarded as excellent. table 4: smart pls model fit indices saturated model estimated model chi-square 1 055.150 1 109.968 nfi 0.770 0.752 by and large, the gof of 0.369 and the nfi of 0.770 indicate a marginal fit of the data to the proposed conceptual model. on this basis of marginal fit, the authors proceeded to test the proposed hypotheses. hypotheses testing the seven hypotheses were tested, and the path coefficients provided. the significant levels were assessed using p-values and t-statistics. hypotheses are viewed as significant at a 95% or higher level of significance (≥ 95%); that is to say, that p-value is ≤ 0.05 (hair et al. 2012). the path coefficients demonstrate the strength of the relationships between the dependent and the independent variables (hsu 2008). upon assessing the probability value, also referred to as the p-value, it was demonstrated that six out of the seven hypotheses postulated were significant at p<0.05, except h3 (p=1.33), which is insignificant. although positive, h3 was found to be insignificant, as the p-value is greater than 0.05 (0.133). table 5: path analysis results hypothesised relationship hypotheses path coefficient t-statistics p-value outcome mo emo h1 0.230 5.062 0.000 significant & supported mi emo h2 0.250 3.907 0.000 significant & supported ym emo h3 0.070 1.506 0.133 insignificant but supported 1110 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches hypothesised relationship hypotheses path coefficient t-statistics p-value outcome eci emo h4 0.136 2.005 0.045 significant & supported dmc emo h5 0.350 7.286 0.000 significant & supported emo rg h6 0.373 6.556 0.000 significant & supported emo sp h7 0.451 9.332 0.000 significant & supported note: mo = market orientation; dmc = dynamic marketing capabilities; mi = marketing innovation; emo = e-marketing orientation; eci = e-competitive intensity; ym = youth marketing; rg = religious; sp = spirituality the results in table 5 show that all seven the hypotheses were significant. the weak relationship was between church youth marketing and e-marketing orientation (p=0.133; β=0.070). this was followed by the relationship between competitive intensity and e-marketing orientation (p=0.045; β=0.136). the strongest was between e-marketing orientation and spirituality (p=0.00; β=0.451); the second strongest was between e-marketing orientation and religiosity (p=0.000; β=0.373). discussion of findings the results indicate that marketing orientation and e-marketing orientation are positively related in a significant way (t=5.907). it was therefore concluded that churches that are marketing-oriented easily adopt electronic marketing practices to advance their mission. these findings were consistent with prior studies. appah and george (2018) argue that modern marketing-oriented churches place the “unchurched”, dechurched and current congregants at the centre stage, and identify new technological innovations that facilitate the spreading of their message. thus, the implementation of the marketing concept by churches positions them to respond effectively to these challenges through relevant programmes, ministries, services and doctrines (white & simas 2008). the findings further reveal that marketing innovation has a strong effect on e-marketing orientation. furthermore, the results indicate that the relationship between marketing innovation and e-marketing orientation is positive and significant (t=3.907). it can therefore be concluded that the higher the degree of church marketing innovativeness, the higher the levels of adoption of e-marketing practices within the church’s programmes and activities. the findings on the relationship between the marketing innovation orientation and e-marketing orientation are supported by available empirical evidence. organisations such as churches that regularly embark on organisational transformation and organisational development after sensing changes in the market 1312 mupambwa & chiliya are most likely to adopt new technologies to enhance their competitive position (golgeci & ponomarov 2013). marketing innovation orientation ignites the churches’ capabilities, which are necessary for the adoption of technological innovations (aksoy 2017). there is therefore a direct relationship between marketing innovation orientation and e-marketing orientation. flory (2014) suggests that highly innovative religious organisations react to increasing competition and changing market conditions through adopting or appropriating new worshipping styles, methods and techniques, including technological advances, in order to survive, to fulfil their mandate and the mission of the church, and to act as a basis for religious differentiation. the findings further indicated that church youth marketing is not a (or is a weak) salient determinant of a church’s adoption of e-marketing practices and programmes. in fact, the church’s focus on youth ministry does not influence it to be e-marketing oriented. this finding raises concern, as it is inconsistent with prior studies. paul (2001) and peterson (2004) argue that worldwide organisations, churches included, are struggling and jockeying to better understand, and effectively target the youth. young people are more sceptical and often mistrust traditional media (cone inc 2006; paul 2001), and are resistant and less likely to be influenced by it (ciminillo 2005). instead, they have a preference for reality television, cellular phones, video games and social networks (valentine & powers 2013). bolu (2012) observes that increasingly the majority of youths are turning to the internet in search of personal, social and religious information, thereby compelling religious organisations to jump on the digital bandwagon. evidence from this primary research supported and established a positive and significant relationship between competitive intensity and e-marketing orientation. this finding concurs with prior research on technological innovation adoption that suggests that new ideas, processes, practices and concepts are easily and quickly adopted in highly competitive markets, based on the assumption that the innovation might drive the organisation, including churches, to be more agile and in a better position to react to emerging competitive threats (gu et al. 2012; gangwar et al. 2014). competitive intensity is therefore an effective motivator for technology adoption, and positively influences the adoption of technological innovation, especially when the technology is seen as an important catalyst to alter the competitive dynamics in the industry (lynn et al. 2018; agrawal 2015). faced with increasing competitive pressures, churches find the appropriation of digital technologies a prudent strategic move to minimise church membership losses. the results reveal and confirm that there is an association between dynamic marketing capabilities and e-marketing orientation. hence, dynamic marketing capabilities directly influence adoption of an e-marketing orientation in churches. previous research focusing on the association between dynamic marketing capabilities and e-marketing orientation yielded similar findings. according to morgan et al. (2009), ramaswami et al. (2008) and vorhies and morgan (2005), dynamic marketing capabilities steer superior church performance, and superior dynamic marketing capabilities inspire organisational agility to cope with the volatile religious 1312 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches marketing environment. uncertainty and dynamism from the religious environment dictate the mastery of dynamic marketing capabilities (barrales-molina et al. 2014) in order to create and sustain the competitive advantage for churches (al-zyadaat et al. 2012). in the marketing of faith, e-marketing is renowned for accelerating and enabling the development of innovative e-marketing capabilities, including marketing research capacity, church member relationship management ability, religious market intelligence gathering and customisation and personalisation of marketing offerings, and marketing communication (bauer et al. 2002; morgan 2012). the results indicate that the relationship of e-marketing orientation and religiosity is positively related in a significant way, thus implying that as the churches increase their adoption of e-marketing practices, levels of religiosity among congregants increase. this finding is in line with previous research findings, which indicate that e-marketing ultimately influences the growth in church membership and attendance, and its ability to generate adequate resources from the congregants (white & simas 2008). thus, e-marketing positively influences both the subjective and objective measures of church performance (shoham et al. 2006). scholars, such as ho et al. (2008), argue that interactions online and religious information search online strengthen an individual’s religious beliefs, thereby reinforcing religiosity. the findings from the study indicate that the influence of e-marketing orientation on spirituality is positive and statistically significant. mckenna and west (2007: 943) assert, the “internet has become a staple of spiritual life” with many individuals turning to the internet for spiritual comfort. campbell (2003) argues that other than information search, christians visit the web for fellowship purposes and seek “to realise the body of christ” and enrich their spiritual life. larsen (2001) suggests that most congregants who engage with digital technologies regard the internet as an ecclesiastical library, and therefore search and consume spiritual information online. bedell (2000) states that e-marketing enhances and reinforces the spiritual life of congregants – an outcome of the accessibility of information and counsel from the internet. the internet has made the availability, variability and accessibility of prayer resources easy, compared to offline resources (larsen 2001; narasimhan 2012), thereby enhancing and boosting congregants’ commitment to their faith (dean 2017). conclusions and recommendations the study established that one major consequence of an e-marketing orientation is an increase in church member religiosity and spirituality. churches have traditionally relied on radio and television broadcasts, and newsletters and emails as the key channels for communicating with church members (fogenay 2013; dhliwayo 2013). based on the study findings, it is recommended that churches include digital marketing channels as part of their marketing communication mix. it is important to note that the use of electronic marketing channels will not replace the traditional channels that the churches currently use, but rather complement the existing channels, thereby facilitating a 360-degree approach to church communication efforts. 1514 mupambwa & chiliya as is the case with for-profit-making organisations, for churches to be successful in implementing e-marketing practices that are valuable to church members, the adoption and implementation of the marketing concept is a prerequisite. the claim by slater and narver (2000), that marketing orientation “is relevant in every market environment” holds true, even in religious markets. the study established that there is a positive and significant relationship between marketing orientation and e-marketing orientation. it is recommended that churches become marketing-oriented, and the mantra that should guide each church is that its existence is hinged on serving the needs and interest of the congregants at large. the study established that there are significant relationships between marketing innovation orientation, marketing orientation, dynamic marketing capabilities, competitive intensity, and e-marketing orientation. these variables, therefore, influence the adoption of technological innovations by churches. it is thus recommended that technology vendors, manufacturers and innovators targeting the church market effectively segment the churches based on church behaviour towards e-marketing practices. the identified predictors highlight the churches that are more likely to respond positively to the acquisition of technological innovations, and thus, that would enhance value for the vendors or manufacturers. linked to the above, it is further recommended that technology vendors and manufacturers should develop a knowledge management system, which would provide them with insights and an understanding of the current technology stacks/infrastructure of different churches. the current technology stack of the churches is valuable to technology vendors or manufacturers; that will assist them in promoting technologies that are compatible with churches’ current technologies, or such knowledge will enable the technology vendors to identify opportunities for promoting those technologies with the functionalities that will provide solutions to the challenges faced by churches. the study established that dynamic marketing capabilities are a salient determinant of e-marketing orientation. the dynamism in the religious market is prompting churches to evolve and keep pace with the current environmental changes. the survival of churches hinges on their ability and capability to adjust, to match or keep up with regular environmental changes (kachouie et al. 2018). consequently, it is recommended that churches develop, extend or renew their dynamic marketing capabilities and processes. such a strategic move would act as a catalyst for the attainment and sustainability of competitive advantage for the churches in these highly competitive and ambiguous environments. churches with sound dynamic marketing capabilities would generate knowledge about church members’ needs and wants, and become effective in crafting programmes and services aligned to the taste and preferences of their congregants. furthermore, building dynamic marketing capabilities by churches will make them stand out and facilitate the assimilation of marketing practices in their programmes and activities as they seek to improve their performance. dynamic marketing capabilities are instrumental in matching or creating market change. it is concluded that competitive intensity and marketing innovation orientation significantly influence the adoption of e-marketing practices by churches. in line with this, 1514 predictors of e-marketing adoption by zimbabwean churches it is recommended that technology vendors and manufacturers segment the church market into innovators, early adopters, early majority and late majority, and laggards. promotional efforts should be based on adopter categories. moreover, when targeting the innovative and early adopter churches, the technology vendors should focus more on the utility of the innovation, and how it would differentiate the church from other churches. on the other hand, when targeting the early majority, late majority and laggards, the marketing efforts should challenge the churches and exhibit how the innovators and early adopter churches have been successful because of harnessing the technological innovations in their programmes and activities. it is further recommended that churches offer e-marketing training or short courses to clergy. as shown in the study, clergy have a minimum of secondary education, and the majority with further education focused on church dogma and theological education, which is not business-related (payne 2014). pastors with only theological education are ill equipped to effectively deal with marketing related challenges, let alone to implement new concepts such as e-marketing, which integrate marketing and technologies. the e-marketing field is dynamic and expanding. hence, basic training for clergy will provide them with the prerequisite skills, and internal expertise and understanding, which will help them to design their digital marketing plans and drive e-marketing practices adoption within the church to advance church growth. extant literature also argues that top management support is critical for the effective adoption of technological innovation (lai et al. 2014). references aaker, d.a., kumar, v. & day, g.s. 2015. marketing research. 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(ninth edition). australia: cengage learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2012.675740 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.05.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.05.001 https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm-07-2013-0650 https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.69.1.80.55505 https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.69.1.80.55505 https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254032000096766 https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254032000096766 https://doi.org/10.1002/nvsm.314 _hlk533044045 untitled 65 local aids councils in north-west: the construction and communication of meaning within the context of ownership and accountability communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 65 83 paul j. schutte and jan boessenkool* abstract many groups and individuals are working hard to come to grips with the phenomenon of hiv and aids in all its complicated aspects, whether it is bio-medical, socio-cultural, gender related and/or socio-economic. one outcome is that governments try to structure and organise a counter-attack on a national, regional, district and local level. this organisational structuring is meant to facilitate and co-ordinate the action against h i v and aids. together with this organisational structuring go the hope and expectation for a resulting effective organisational culture. it is hoped that with the implementation of an organisational structure an organisational “culture of ownership and accountability” would develop. however, this does not seem to be the case. in this article the authors present this particular case and argue that the (implicitly) presupposed causality between an organisational structure and a culture of ownership did not realise, as there was and still is too much differentiation in the construction, interpretation and communication of crucial concepts and aspects concerning hiv and aids. the empiric results confirmed this assertion. * paul schutte is professor and director of the school of communication studies, north-west university in potchefstroom. jan boessenkool is associate professor in organisational anthropology at the utrecht school of governance, university of utrecht, the netherlands. the presented data have been derived from research on the provincial and local aids council system in the north-west province (2002-2005), financed by sanpad (south africa netherlands research programme on alternatives in development). background the north-west government established a working document in october 2000, which included several programmes to deal with the ever-increasing problem of hiv/aids. there was no comprehensive national policy or guidelines with regard to the aids council system and the north-west province took the initiative to develop its own policies. the two main documents which deal with the aids council system are the hiv/aids and stds working document for the north-west province – in this article referred to as the pca working document (north west pca 2000), and the provincial council on aids act – in this article referred to as the pca act (north west pca act, 2001). the pca working document was published with the launch of the pca in october 2000. it is a two-fold document consisting of a general hiv/aids strategic plan for the north-west province, and a section which addresses the aids council system. according to the north-west aids-strategy document, aids councils should be established at three levels: the provincial council on aids (pca), four district aids councils (dacs) and eighteen local aids councils (lacs). in september 2003, during the process of revitalisation, the pca added four additional lacs. the four regional aids councils (dacs) and the provincial council on aids were supposed to facilitate the formation of the lacs, give the necessary technical support, monitor the lacs, build capacity and mobilise funds (north west pca 2000:8-10). since the beginning of 2000, the first initiatives were taken to set up councils in the north-west province. the establishment of the councils took place at different times during the course of 2000, since some regions or municipalities implemented the process faster than others. the first provincial council on aids (pca) was launched in october 2000. the last level of the aids council system to be formed were the district aids councils (dacs), which were established between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. the extent to which the different councils have been functioning as well as the number of their activities differ considerably in the province. since the inauguration of the first pca, a second pca, with new members, was formed in 2003 and a third was inaugurated in september 2005. ninety percent of the third group were new members. although the co-operation and interaction between the three levels have been researched, the main focus was on the lacs and member organisations that were supposed to co-ordinate and implement the strategies within their respective communities. non-governmental organisations (ngos), community-based organisations (cbos), businesses, churches and other organisations that were members of the lacs were also included in the research. although the research focused on the north-west province, the national government’s strategic documents on hiv/aids prevention served as important sources of reference or benchmarks because these strategies are crucial as “vehicles” for the implementation of the strategies at local level. these strategic documents or policies for the organisational structure seem clear, but their implementation is a different matter. at local level relations within and 66 communication between the implementing organisations who come together in lacs prove to be extremely complex and dynamic, withholding the development of a culture of ownership. such an organisational culture is necessary for lacs to become efficient and effective. studying aids councils from an organisational communication perspective – lacs as social constructs – gives much insight in the efficiency and effectiveness of combating hiv and aids at local level and therefore in the aids council system as such. therefore, the research had two comprehensive questions: * what are the strategic and organisational strengths and weaknesses of two selected lacs, their member organisations and non-member organisations (not represented in the lacs) in the implementing of hiv/aids programmes in the north-west province? * how can the identified strengths be enhanced and the identified problems be rectified for optimal functioning of the lacs, in order to prevent the spread of hiv/aids in a sustainable manner? this article, though, focuses specifically on the creation of meaning as a result of the interactive communication between members at the same level, as well as members at different levels of the councils system to address hiv and aids. thus, the data has been analysed and interpreted within a particular framework. theoretical framework hiv and aids and development local aids councils involve governmental departments, businesses and civil society organisations of all types. this strategy leaves room for including several perspectives on hiv/aids itself, for possible approaches and for interventions which might work very fruitfully and stimulate discussions and reflection. the interpretation of different issues, however, determines whose meaning finally proves to be dominant and whether and how meanings are communicated and accepted. what is most relevant, effective and sustainable in which context? this question can only be answered when a clear picture is available of what the hiv/aids phenomenon is all about. any intervention that fails to address the broader issues of african social and economic life, are bound to fail. worse, most prevention programmes have largely failed because the research behind them has focused primarily on “risk groups”, behavioural change models, and flawed understandings of cultural practices (kalipeni et al. 2004). the predominant understandings of hiv/aids are generated by biomedical and epidemiological research, without recognising that hiv transmission in sub-saharan africa is a complex and regionally specific phenomenon rooted in local economies, deepening poverty, migration, gender, conflict and cultural politics (kalipeni et al. 2004). many share the underlying message that aids is not going to diminish in africa until social, gender, and economic inequities are addressed in meaningful ways. 67 of course, hiv/aids can be caused by behavioural factors like unprotected sexual intercourse and biological factors such as the high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. focus on sexual practices devoid of socioeconomic contexts and the emphasis on rational action models of behaviour change have led to implications that africans only need to be more aware of aids in order to change their behaviour (craddock 2004:4). surprisingly, a number of interviewees in a recent evaluation study in south africa indicated that many adolescents are aware of the risks of unprotected sex and possible consequences. most of them have relatives or know friends who are hivinfected or have aids, or worse, who have already died from the disease. nevertheless they take the risk (boessenkool et al. 2006). therefore one must understand underlying causes that relate to cultural, socialeconomic, political and religious factors such as poverty, migrant labour, commercial sex workers, political instability, the low status of women, illiteracy and the lack of formal education: “the real culprit is a context that condemns some people to risky behaviours that make them victims of a disease” (oppong & agyei-mensah 2004: 81). it should be accepted that the pandemic is a very complex and dynamic phenomenon in which the interrelationship between health, disease and the social environment is crucial: “people living with the pandemic see and explain it in a wider perspective that reflects reality on the ground. they see it as a cross-sectoral issue rather than a narrow medical problem” (rugalema 2004: 203). policies, strategies and activities must be embedded in local contexts in which the perceptions of the target groups should be leading for interventions. thus, lacs could play a major role when they have the power to combine local politics and initiatives with financial policies and national priorities. explicitly, we contain the opinion that activities should have a sound local base, using community development needs as a starting point. therefore, communication on aids should in general be conceptualised within the context of development communication, by using the participative approach. this is an interactive approach, from monological to dialogical communication, where mutual deliberations should take place at all levels, so that communities may participate in decision making. instead of an unbalanced monological one-way communication from the state or other institutions (top-down) which only focuses on the distribution of information, it should much rather take place in a dialogical way and in a broader health and development context. the aids councils must in effect perform the role of a public liaison practitioner to actively involve the passive community. according to grunig and grunig (1991:267) this would mean that communities have to recognise aids as a problem, believe that they are personally involved in it and believe that they are empowered and able to do something about it. the communication strategy in the participative approach should be equal interactive participation or dialogical communication. mutual understanding, discussion and the exchange of ideas are the primary focus, rather than mere persuasion. 68 organisational perspective in this research organisations and organisational processes have been the central focus of data gathering and analysis. it was, therefore, of paramount importance to identify the activities of the relevant organisations as well as the motivation behind these activities: the goals, the means, successes, failures, communication and co-operation with other role players. all organisations, and thus their members, dealing with the hiv/aids problem are involved in processes of creating meaning: issues relating to the what and how of the problem and probably the way to counteract it. if one wants to understand the actions and the functioning of these organisations one has to explore the organisational context, both internally and in relation to the environment. organisations are more than just a number of dimensions. it implies not only unity, but also diversity and is much more dynamic than is generally assumed. it should, therefore, involve the utilisation of a holistic approach to organisational life, which implies questions about social relations between organisational members and their (power) positions within the organisation as a whole. in and around organisations there are manifestations of all types of conflicts of interest. conflicts of interest are battles between individuals, groups and sub-groups at different levels and from different origins. more powerful groups can by means of various implements impose their will on less powerful groups in terms of behavioural (cultural) regulations, selection mechanisms, merit, correctional systems and the issue of language. it is assumed that these kinds of conflicts of interest may exist in and between all organisations involved in the battle against hiv/aids and therefore have an impact on their effectiveness. the research approach from a social constructive organisational perspective has been inspired by the work of authors such as robert chia (1996), barbara czarniawskajoerges (1992), joanne martin (1992, 2002), mats alvesson (1993, 1996, 2002) and martin parker (2000). although these authors differ on certain issues, a common point of departure can be identified: they all perceive organisations as being “constantly changing (human) constructs”, emerging from the interplay between the so-called formal and informal organisational aspects, not to be isolated from their environment (the contextual aspect). it is therefore necessary to approach organisations not only as rationalistic goaloriented constructs. in order to understand the actions of people in and between organisations one needs to view social relations and interactions between various organisational levels more closely. this reality, then, is inter-subjective because it occurs in communicative interactions between people. an individual acts and reacts on the basis of his or her social constructive meaning process, which is at the same time always a process of negotiation: “an organisation is a political system in that it constantly negotiates pluralistic meanings and forms coalitions” (czarniawska-joerges 1992:30). 69 emphasis was placed on the permanent dynamic processes of constructing and negotiating meanings within and between the involved organisations in general and the lacs in particular. however, the question remains what the similarities and differences in meaning are regarding the objectives and functioning of lacs. these similarities and differences can be analysed in terms of integration, differentiation and fragmentation (martin 1992, 2002). these concepts will be discussed later in more detail. within this framework organisations are studied as being the background of people’s actions. this means that people are not involved in their organisations only to perform a function, as executors of rules, procedures and instructions. rather, organisations consist of members who continuously construct meaning through their interactions as a base for their actions. as such, organisations are sense-making phenomena for their members. members are not only working together but also living together; every day they communicate and act with each other and with members of other organisations. in total, all these interactions form organisational processes, and these processes imply processes of domination and power, of conflict and interest, of co-operation and coordination, and of the constructing and negotiation of meaning during communication and decision-making. according to czarniawska-joerges (1992:33): “organisations, and their environment therefore, are enacted daily and socially constructed, due to the fact that any collective action requires a shared element of meaning. meanings are thus created (both in social interactions and in interactions with artefacts and nature), deconstructed, negotiated and elaborated.” the problem is that enacting and constructing processes differ from individual to individual and meanings are never shared fully – not between different organisations, and not even within organisations. this causes different opinions on how lacs should function and how various activities could be co-ordinated in the best way, so that target groups are approached in a clear and efficient way. because policy is part of the social construction process and because its enactment makes organisation possible, it is necessary to briefly consider some aspects of policy regarding hiv and aids. policy: the quest for participation the call for an inter-sectored and multi-sectored approach to address hiv/aids, through which an important role is assigned to the local level, is also in line with broader governmental and policy developments since 1994. south africa’s transition to democracy was marked by clearly recognisable shifts towards more open and inclusive (governmental) structures. participation, development, co-operation and community involvement have become buzzwords. it is important to realise that the health policy landscape in south africa is very broad and complex. this context is characterised by flux as government has sought to decentralise. since 1994, the health system has experienced extensive restructuring of departments and units at national, provincial and local level, to decentralise government. pillay (2001) observes that decentralisation may be defined as the shifting 70 of power from the centre to the periphery and that this can occur in manners which encompass de-concentration, devolution, delegation and privatisation. decentralisation is in line with the goals and intentions of the south african constitution, which promotes participation based on the ideals of democracy. the constitutional imperative is for national government to act as the originator of general policy, but the provinces have authority to determine how policy is implemented: the constitution spells out the powers and functions of the three spheres of government that form the bedrock for the division of functions within the national health system. the provinces are charged with planning, regulating and providing health services with the exception of municipal health services. local government or municipalities are responsible for the rendering of municipal health services (pillay 2001: 276). shifts in policy formulation towards more participatory approaches demand shifts in all spheres of interrelationship. such changes have been discerned in the entire health system in south africa. changes in policy can be discerned from the beginning of the nineties up to the present, in particular from narrow bio-medical, epidemiological approaches to more holistic, participatory approaches. hiv/aids has increasingly been perceived as a disease with socio-economic dimensions and the epidemic has been fuelled by factors such as poverty, unemployment and the views and rights of the individual, which increasingly are becoming of more importance. one could argue that instituting a democratic, participatory ethos takes time. most hiv/aids programmes and activities remain located in or strongly linked to the national, provincial and local departments of health (hickey 2001; schneider & stein 2001). here it becomes important to realise that as much as devolution implies the apparent empowerment of those at grassroots, it is – also with much contradictions – justified as a means of achieving the goals of those who occupy dominant positions in the contemporary configuration of knowledge power (see foucault in alvesson & sköldberg 2000:225-8). while in the instance of hiv/aids all government departments, sectors and society at large are expected to be involved in actions and decisions, this does not necessarily make for a fully participatory approach. there are those who have observed that the current system has a tendency to encourage upwards dependency and vertical intergovernmental relations (booysen & erasmus 2001). this research project has sought to understand the meanings given within the organising behaviour of the lac. policy, as part of the social construction process, is often justified with reference to rational decision-making processes. weick (1979:9) has suggested that references to rationality within the process of organising serve to make control possible. this can easily be understood as an important functional need given, for instance, the financial discipline that is required of bodies that serve the general public. 71 lacs as social constructions one of the most fundamental problems of the social sciences, and consequently of social scientific methodology, is the issue of “knowledge and reality”. the idea of reality and knowledge as a social construct is a relatively old one in epistemology, traceable to kant and to his philosophical heirs (steinberger 1980). according to this view the social world – including its institutions, roles and ideas – is essentially a series of socially constructed meanings. the publication of the social construction of reality by berger and luckmann (1991) shifted the attention away from the philosophical and intellectual level to the social construction of meaning in everyday life. among the multiple realities in this world (including states of consciousness, unconsciousness, and madness), there is one reality that represents itself as the reality par excellence: the reality of everyday life. it appears as objectified (taken for granted) and represents itself as an inter-subjective world as it is shared with others. it is this “sharedness” that differentiates everyday life reality from other realities. thus, according to berger and luckmann (1991), the interest in questions of “reality” and “knowledge” is initially justified by the fact of their relativity and locality. the social construction of ideas may be referred to as “meaning construction”. meaning construction refers to conceptions, ideas, classifications, beliefs, attitudes and the like. meanings are expressed by means of speech and action. various meanings are attached to hiv/aids, policy and the methods by means of which hiv/aids should be addressed. the meanings are sometimes in line with each other, sometimes contested and sometimes conflicting. meaning and its construction it may be argued that meanings are often more contested and conflicting in ambiguous or uncertain situations, where common knowledge is insufficient. in such a situation meaning construction is often a dynamic process. a certain degree of shared understanding of each other’s meanings is required if one wants to get things done at all, particularly in ambiguous and uncertain situations (smircich 1983). smircich (in parker 2000:211) defines it as follows: organizations exist as systems of meaning that are shared to varying degrees. a sense of commonality, or taken-for-grantedness is necessary for continuing organized activity so that interaction can take place without constant interpretation and re-interpretation of meanings. the idea of shared understanding calls to mind the inter-subjective understanding of each other’s meanings related to policy, the objective of the lac or the contents of the concept co-ordination. for instance, when people talk about co-ordination they should have, at least partially, the same understanding of co-ordination (whether they agree with co-ordination or not). the moment they do not have, at least partially, the same understanding of this concept, the process of deliberation and implementation becomes quite difficult. 72 shared understanding of meanings does not imply that people fully agree or have reached consensus. agreeing with each other is not the most important requirement for things to be accomplished. full consensus is rarely possible and even undesirable: “[c]ollective action is possible in the face of many meanings that are only partly shared” (czarniawska-joerges 1992: 33; see also weick 1979). this perspective is critical towards organisation theorists who argue that agreement or consensus is necessary for organising action. for example, mintzberg (1994) has distinguished between seven types of organisations, according to which the last type of organisations, the “adhocracy”, can be applied (with some caution) to the lac. mintzberg’s adhocracy is a type of organisation that exists of different parties, committees and the like, which undertakes project-based activities. according to mintzberg, the adhocracy can only function in an effective way by means of constant, mutual agreement between the different parties (mintzberg 1994: 202-224). a shared understanding of meanings applies to the shared understanding of orientations, symbols, actions, structures, regulations and expectations. it applies to the shared understanding of what the role of government and other institutions, administrative structures and services should be. additionally, it applies to policies, objectives of organisations as well as behaviours and ideas of colleagues. people achieve shared understanding by means of many factors, inside and outside the context of organising. shared understanding of the objectives of policy, for example, does not necessarily originate from clear and comprehensive policy documents or guidelines. clear policy might be of some help, but it is just one of the factors that contribute to a shared understanding of what action should be taken. thus, whereas consensus and agreement are not per definition necessary for collective action, a certain degree of shared understanding which resulted from interactive communication between all parties involved, is a requirement if one wants to get things done and create a sense of ownership. the organisation psychologist weick (2001) also uses the concept of shared understanding in what he calls “committed interpretations”. according to weick (2001:16) committed interpretations are required for any kind of collective action: when people act on behalf of these committed interpretations and their verified content, their actions become more orderly, more predictable, and more organized. a classical answer to the question of how organisations can be of assistance in the achievement of particular goals (in this case, acting to prevent or ameliorate the impact of hiv/aids), could relate to the leadership role that must be taken, often by government. the new democratic, participatory constitutional requirements of south africa suggest that the government can no longer simply seek to dictate to the people. indeed, due to the requirements of the new constitution, even the organisation of the health services in the country has been forced to change (pillay 2001). it is an evident challenge for the capacity of managers to engage in new democratic practices in a situation of severe crisis where the organisational structures are changing at the same time. furthermore, the leadership role of governments is now in an area of contention 73 that involves both local and international civil society movements and scientists (see schneider 2002). in this context of contestation there is a perception that some medical researchers and key ngo groupings (napwa, tac, and aids consortiums) were not included in the south african national aids council (schneider 2002). the need for partnership is always attached to the need for care: “partnership and care are joint arrivals in our popular discourse around hiv/aids” (jones 2001:12). in the context of the hiv/aids crisis and ongoing power struggles, it is relatively easy to recognise the difficulty of determining the role of the lac structures. what is the lac supposed to do? whose membership support can be counted on? what can members contribute to the function of the lac? which demands can be made of the executive committee and general members of the lac? is the body simply a government manoeuvre within the ongoing power struggles that characterise hiv/aids issues in south africa? how should written documents have the clarity to express what positions should be taken, within a rapidly changing crisis environment? what should the characteristics of the internal and external communication be? how can trust be built between individuals who have different interests and capabilities? how should development issues be integrated and addressed? local aids councils as organisational processes in this research the team has focused on the dynamic processes of the constructing and negotiating of meanings within and between the involved organisations in general and the lacs in particular. interesting similarities and differences in meaning concerning the objectives and functioning of lacs were found. these similarities and differences can be analysed in terms of the above-mentioned integration, differentiation and fragmentation (martin 1992, 2002). the focus, from an integration point of view, was primarily on similarities concerning the hiv/aids problem and the actions that have been undertaken. in the differentiation approach, more attention was placed on differences and possible conflicts of interest between organisations or sub-groups within organisations. decision making depends much more on power positions of organisations or sub-groups. the fragmentation approach, finally, has emerged as it was clear that the concept of hiv/aids and how it should be dealt with, was interpreted very differently by organisational members. unexpected similarities and differences existed right across all groups and departments, and even different organisations. although empirically one of these approaches may have been dominant for a while, it should be assumed that elements of all perspectives were present at the same time. since meanings are constructed in various kinds and levels of relations and interactions between individuals, groups and organisations, this research orientation compelled the team to go into these relations and interactions (communication) at the following levels: 74 • lacs in relation to government (local, regional, provincial, national); • within lacs themselves; and • lacs in relation to member organisations and non-member organisations. the relevant perspectives (integration, differentiation and fragmentation) helped to analyse similarities and differences in meanings concerning: • communication processes (top down, bottom up, participation, dissemination of information); • cultural issues (values and norms, rituals, gender relations, religion); and • power relations (conflicting interests, decision making, available facilities). the way in which the meanings of these aspects are interpreted would be an indication of the strengths and weaknesses of the functioning of the lacs, and thus of their effectiveness. methodological orientation and strategy the design of the research was aimed at a description of the similarities and differences in meaning that exist within the functioning of the lacs. to this end, qualitative methods were used. a combination of methods was used to achieve the different objectives of the research project. personal, semi-structured interviews were used as the main method of data gathering. the interviewer posed questions without providing alternative answers. the respondents were given the opportunity to express the requested meaning in their own way. the developments regarding the functioning of the lacs were collected by means of participant observation, by attending meetings of the lacs as local members over a four year period. as mentioned earlier, the policies of government were also investigated and analysed as part of the context. the researchers used these methods in order to obtain the depth and flexibility necessary to explore one set of research questions. the logic of triangulation is that one can use different methods and data sources to investigate the same phenomenon, so as to enhance the validity of the research findings (mason 1996:148). by measuring the same phenomenon from different angles and/or methods, the researcher will get a more reliable and valid measurement of it (miller & dingwall 1997:38). throughout all the research activities attention was given to the criteria of validity and reliability. two rounds of data gathering took place: the first during 2002/2003 and the second during 2004/2005 with members of the lac in potchefstroom and mafikeng. subsequent to the first phase of data collection, analysis and reporting to the pca, an intervention took place. it was conducted by the pca in the form of a “revitalisation process”. after the revitalisation, the second round of data was collected to determine whether the situation changed as a result of the intervention. in the first round, twenty-two interviews were conducted with members of the lac in potchefstroom. the twenty-two respondents were made up of fourteen general 75 members and eight executive committee members. in addition, seven interviews were held with people who were not members of the lac, but who could provide relevant information with regard to the aids council system and hiv/aids policy. the seven “contextual” respondents were made up of four pca members, one dac member and two scientists. during the second round, twenty members of the potchefstroom lac were interviewed. at the time of the research, the lac in mafikeng was not well functioning; in fact, it was virtually dysfunctional. a problem has been experienced to identify “members” with whom to conduct interviews. consequently, it was possible to meet with and interview only eleven members. as a result it was decided to interview non-members as representatives of different organisations involved in the combating of hiv/aids as well. five more interviews were conducted. since this lac was also barely functioning during the second round, only eight respondents could be identified and were willing to participate in interviews. the observed and transcribed data from all interviews as well as the content of relevant literature and documents were analysed according to the research questions and the relevant concepts in the theoretical framework. findings general analysing lacs as organisational social constructs means focussing on meaning construction, power relations and cultural and communicative aspects in the interactions of lacs with government at all levels, interactions within lacs, interactions of lacs with member and non-member organisations and interactions of lacs with people who implement programmes and target groups. the research results show a very differentiated and fragmentary overall picture of meanings, activities, miscommunication, interests and power relations. t h i s fragmentary picture indicates a rather dysfunctional lac organisational system, while the flow of communication was in one direction most of the time: top-down. dialogical communication was not evident. lacs are co-ordinating bodies without any executive powers. members were not proud of their membership and would talk in terms of them rather than us when referring to the lac. lacs apparently have a contradictory mandate: as a governmental instrument they are trying to co-ordinate mainly community based initiatives, but they are also bound to top-down instructions and guidelines. above all, there is not enough mutual agreement between role players on crucial concepts to function effectively. specific findings • with regard to policy the respondents indicated that governmental policies play an important role in the functioning of the lac. however, conflicting interpretations emerged, as some respondents think that the policy is a relevant guideline for the lac but not for their own organisation and programmes. it thus 76 appears that there is some consensus between the priorities mentioned by the respondents and the priorities set out in the 2000 plan of the national government (department of health 2000). these are prevention, education, awareness, monitoring, research, and human and legal rights. the priorities are nearly the only aspect where integration and shared understanding exist. it appears, however, that communication between different levels and institutional contexts is highly fragmented as a result of the different ways to interpret policy documents and guidelines. there is no appropriate co-ordination and most member organisations do not follow policy guidelines, or simply do what they think is appropriate. • in terms of the provincial council on aids act no. 5 of 2001 (north west 2001), the main objective of the pca was to provide a mechanism to mobilise the community and ensure community participation. for this to happen the community must experience acknowledgement and be allowed to buy in on the process and decision making. what started as relatively average support declined over the past four years: the participation of the civil society decreased and the perception exists that the civil society is only used to legitimise the pca processes. no dialogical communication and real “committed interpretations” were created and negotiated to acquire effective collective action in the northwest. • another concern is the high level of confusion about the role of lac members. after four years, members still ask at meetings: what are we supposed to do? according to the encompassing objective of the pca the lac is supposed to coordinate all the hiv/aids programmes and activities at local level. what this entails, however is still vague and not at all spelled out. members are still not sure whether this should be the responsibility of the chairperson and/or the district co-ordinator or the members’ collective responsibility. neither can they distinguish between their roles and functions as lac members and their role within their own organisations, be it an ngo, business, government department or faith-based organisation. most of them perceive themselves only as a “messenger” who must give quarterly reports of activities that happened within their own organisations. this unclear mandate and differences in the interpretation of their designated role have resulted in a lack of commitment at all levels. in the words of mintzburg (1994), no mutual agreement or shared understanding has been reached with regard to what co-ordination means. some members indicated that they would not adhere to requests by the lac for certain changes in their programmes. according to the respondents, there is also confusion on whether the lac should initiate and implement programmes or simply co-ordinate existing programmes. so-called non-members did not mention any benefits they would acquire from being a member. nothing has really changed after the revitalisation process. 77 • the executive mayors are supposed to be the patrons of the lacs, and the pca assumes that the councils are enjoying the benefits of the executive mayors’ political mandates, which would give them political power on grassroots level. however, in nearly all the districts this was not the case at the time of the research, as constructive communication between the pca/lac and local government was lacking. most mayors were not involved with the lacs in any way. this lack of involvement and lack of commitment cascaded down to the members who were left in the lac. declining commitment and a lack of ownership are the consequences, which in turn harm sustainability. • the way in which meetings were conducted and in many cases the lack of meetings created a lack of commitment and ownership. for example, in potchefstroom the lac met only once instead of the planned four times in 2004. of the executive committee, who is supposed to be the core and heart of the lac, only two members were left at the beginning of 2005. normally, 50-70% of members would attend the first meeting of each year, and it would decline during the year. the lac in mafikeng was nearly non-existent for more than two years. only in 2005 meetings were held. it is obvious that under these circumstances, commitment, ownership and sustainability are not possible. in these instances full participation did not realise and there was no chance to create shared meaning. • according to the provincial act referred to above, members of the lac should only represent different sectors, but this is also counter-productive with regard to ownership because in nearly all districts no community, businesses, ngos, etc. are organised in that way. most of these organisations work on their own and do not operate within a cohesive business, ngo, industry or academic sector. there is even competition, especially for funds, among certain organisations like ngos and cbos. it is therefore unrealistic to expect them to agree to form a cohesive sector with one representative on the lac. the consequence is often that o rganisations within one sector are divided amongst themselves (power relations), do not communicate with each other, in which case they ignore the lac and work on their own because they feel their voice will not be heard due to the difference in their interpretation of representation on the lac. this puts a question mark behind the very existence of and need for an lac. it is also a clear indication of the existing power struggle between the different levels. differentiation is evident with regard to this aspect. • another problem is the fact that the members of the decision making body, the pca, are nominated and affirmed by the patron of the council, and not elected. neither are they representative of all the districts in the province, all the communities or all the civil structures involved in hiv and aids which the pca is supposed to serve. the patron ultimately decides who will be on the council (top-down) instead of all the lac members who work at local level where the programmes are implemented and who know what is going on and who are 78 committed to the combating of the epidemic (bottom-up). the differences in the understanding (meaning) and implementation of participation and representation are to a great extent the cause of a lack of commitment and accountability. • another irony is the fact that one of the mandates of the pca is to advise government on policy regarding hivand aids-related matters, but when recommendations were made by researchers and the chairpersons of the lacs, the reactions of members of the pca were negative and reluctant. when the chairperson’s forum recommended at their meeting in november 2004 that they should attend all pca meetings where decisions are made, it was noted that the existing act no. 5 of 2001 prohibited it or does not make provision for this recommendation – as if the act is cast in iron and cannot be amended. the resolution should have been to amend the act and this could have been achieved if the pca recommended it to the provincial government; but they are reluctant to do so because their own positions are at stake. the interpretation of the act and the willingness to change it according to well-proposed recommendations, are totally different at provincial level than at grassroots level. this is yet another proof that the pca imposes its will on the less powerful lac members. it is also an example of one-directional and non-symmetrical communication, to use grunig & grunig’s (1991) terminology. • at the same meeting of chairpersons of the lacs it was minuted that certain members of the pca were not committed because they did not visit the districts offices or attend local meetings or were not present at events organised by the pca. above all, provincial staff members and pca members were absent when important commissioned reports were presented. according to the minutes, some of the members of designated committees did not even attend the summit of the pca. the irony is that the ordinary lac members do not get a seating allowance for attending meetings, while the pca members do get such an allowance – this is also an aspect that causes a lack of ownership and commitment at grassroots level. according to lac members’ interpretation, they – who do the work within the community – should be paid an allowance rather than the pca members who attended only a few meetings. if there were ownership and accountability, these evidences of a lack of commitment would not be present. • all the decisions are made at pca level and the stakeholders and organisations represented at district and local level are without a mandate to make decisions. this creates a feeling of powerlessness and ultimately eroded commitment. thus, a fully participatory approach and symmetrical communication are lacking. recommendations to create accountability, a culture of ownership, improved communication and sustainability, the following recommendations are suggested: • the lac as an organisation should be incorporated at the local authority level. it should be an integral part of the reconstruction and development programme 79 (rdp), which is in line with the national constitution and the local authority act. the whole focus should be shifted from the provincial level to the local level. national and provincial frameworks could still serve as guidelines only, but not as hard and fast rules. policy developments and directives should be informed by the unique development needs of the local people. therefore, the lacs should become a part of the executive mayoral committee structure, where the mayor should play an important leadership role. accountability and decision making should be closer to grassroots level. the funding which is currently managed at pca level should be allocated through the idp process, with the support from the province through the premier’s office. • with regard to the rule that only sectors should be represented within lacs, we would recommend instead that all committed and involved organisations should be part of the lac structure. the decision about members should be made at local level, among stakeholders themselves, and not at provincial level, because every local situation is unique. only if sectors are already organised in such a way, they can be represented by one or two persons. • membership of the lac should be a prerequisite to become a member of the pca. pca members should be elected from all the members of the twenty two lacs in the province and not nominated by the patron. this would be a bottomup approach and enhance accountability and ownership. • capacity building at grassroots level is crucial for the sustainability of lacs. this aspect should be addressed as a priority. capacity building and training need to be provided to all the members of lacs and not only to the executive members of the pca or lac and chairpersons. the pca must invest in every single member. this would create a feeling of acknowledgment and, subsequently, ownership. the restructuring of the aids council system is not an easy process, involving legislation and participation processes, but it has to be done, as the current organisational structure and processes are not working and while time is being wasted, our people are dying every day. participation by the community at all levels and civil society in large are imperative, as the credibility of such a process should not be jeopardised. this would not solve every possible miscommunication or difference in meaning creation, but the proposed bottom-up approach and the placement of the decision power within the local community would create an environment for better consensus in the interpretations of the unique local problems. conclusion the present position of lacs causes much frustration about dysfunctional meetings and repeated discussions about goals, roles and functions. a general feeling of a culture of ownership is lacking badly, with the risk that more organisations and individuals will leave the lac. the differentiation and the lack of a shared element of meaning during communication are so potent that a comprehensive collective action has not been possible until now. 80 lacs are powerless bodies, fully dependent on the provincial infrastructure and under control of the pca. such an organisational structure of power relations and top-down communication eliminates the possibility of developing a culture of ownership by local acting organisations. fortunately, many ngos and other organisations keep on implementing hiv/aids programmes on their own, irrespective of the dysfunctional lac. however, a collective and co-ordinated action to combat hiv/aids within all communities is imperative. acknowledgements the authors want to acknowledge the contribution of colleagues who were part of this research project: prof. g de wet, university of johannesburg; dr h goede, free university of amsterdam; mr k odhav, north-west university, mafikeng campus; ms e kloppers north-west university, potchefstroom campus; miss p zwane, north-west university, mafikeng campus; and mr m lobelo, north-west university, mafikeng campus. 81 references alvesson, m. 1993. cultural perspectives on organisations. cambridge: cambridge university press. alvesson, m. 1996. communication, power and communication. berlin: de gruyter. alvesson, m. 2002. understanding organizational culture. london: sage. alvesson, m. & sköldberg, k. 2000. reflexive methodology. new vistas for qualitative research. 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(ed.) public policy: theories, models and concepts: an anthology. englewood cliffs: prentice hall. weick, k. e. 1979. the social psychology of organizing. london: addison-wesley. weick, k. e. 2001. making sense of the organization. oxford: blackwell business. 83 untitled 169 the wedge that cracked the rock a pioneering woman journalist communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 169 184 lizette rabe* abstract this article explores some aspects of the pioneering nature of the career of journalist rykie van reenen, professed to be “undoubtedly the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of the [twentieth] century” (giliomee 2003:564). after her death she was described as the “wedge” that cracked open the “brute rock of male domination” from which a new generation of women could enter the profession (“rykie van reenen” 2003). the focus is on her contribution to south african journalism in terms of her pioneering work and on the unique personality that played no small part in her becoming a legend in south african afrikaans media history. the premise of this article is that van reenen was a pioneer for women journalists in a language community and a country in which women were ignored for a long time as professional contributors to the profession of journalism. van reenen left a repertoire of an impressive journalistic legacy that not even her male peers could equal, as described in a previous article (rabe 2006). this article, which is part of an ongoing exploration of her work, serves as an initial study of her contribution to establish women in south african newsrooms, especially afrikaans newsrooms, as equals. to some extent, it also contributes to a more comprehensive south african media history, which, in general, lacks significant scholarly attention, especially in terms of the media historiographical legacy of women journalists and their contribution. * professor lizette rabe is chairperson of the department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch. this article forms part of an ongoing research project on rykie van reenen. introduction rykie van reenen (1923-2003) is widely regarded in the afrikaans journalistic community as representing a standard in journalism that can merely be aspired to, but probably never attained. this article attempts to establish the extent of van reenen’s contribution as pioneer to establish south african women journalists as professionals. van reenen was not only a pioneering afrikaans woman journalist in the previous century, but was also widely regarded as the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of the twentieth century. her oeuvre ranged from an outstanding essayist and columnist to a specialist beat reporter and political and social commentator a journalist extraordinaire, according to her peers (see rabe 2006). her “flaws” could be described as of a personal nature – for example, that she might have been too modest to the detriment of herself and that of women journalists desperately trying to establish themselves in a male-dominated environment (van biljon 2006). she nevertheless established herself as an extraordinary professional during a career that began when women were not regarded as serious newsroom workers to the time when she could have become editor of one of south africa’s biggest newspapers. method of research various sources available in the public domain, as well as private sources were accessed (e-mail, personal interviews, telephonic interviews). from these sources certain attributes of the van reenen character could be established. these characteristics are listed and discussed according to the information gained from a variety of both primary and secondary sources, as is the nature of historiographical research. in terms of any attempt to record the past, it should also be remembered that history “is understood to be an interpretation of the past made by historians” (berger 1998: 111). berkhofer, as cited in berger (ibid.) points out that history is not a record of the past, but a selection of data and other information made by historians. muller (1990: vii) quotes the belgian historian vermeersch who compared “press history” to an iceberg. it is the visible tip, the ‘out’-ing of a mighty mass of history. no branch of the historiography has so little of its own substance and is at the same time a function of the social, political, economical and cultural events. muller also acknowledges the “amorphous” state of press history (1990: vii). this study attempts to lessen this “amorphousness” by describing the contribution to the south african media landscape of one individual, rykie van reenen. biographical works on two of her peers, piet cillié (steyn 2002) and schalk pienaar (mouton 2002), published within the same year, have indirectly emphasised the fact that contributions by male south african journalists are recorded, yet not the contribution of a woman journalist who was (in fact) described as “undoubtedly the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of the [twentieth] century” (giliomee 2003: 564). 170 it is a fact that the media, as a male-dominated profession, has recorded its history as his-story. a typical illustration of this his-story, coincidentally, can be found in muller (1990: ix) where, in an attempt to explain neglected areas of south african history in general, he refers to the neglected histories of the black and coloured populations as that of “the black man and the coloured man” (author’s italics). this reference to history as being the story of “men” is yet another manifestation of the hegemonic male mindset according to which history has been researched and recorded – also that of the media. it is a fact that “history” is a reflection of personal background and social factors, therefore “history” in general can be regarded as the “fragile expressions of white, male historians’ limited perspectives” (van der vyver 1987: 35). this neglected part of our media history can be ascribed to the fact that it is not only a male-dominated society, but that the media industry is also still a male-dominated environment. the neglect to record the contribution women have made to the development of journalism should be seen against this background. it is important to state that, although the author of this article regards van reenen as her role model of journalistic excellence, her neutrality in this analysis should not be questioned. value statements about the subject will be substantiated by and attributed to sources. they are not those of the author. many of the quotations were originally in afrikaans. they have been translated for the purposes of this article. firstly, very briefly as background, the development of journalism, and specifically, the development of women journalists, in south africa will be recorded. an outline of van reenen’s pioneering contribution in terms of establishing women journalists as rightful professionals within the still male-dominated media world will be given. secondly, her contribution to related fields such as the documentation of certain aspects of our history, also media history, will be discussed. thirdly, the recognition that flowed from this work, and honours that were awarded to this journalist, will be recorded. a brief background journalism has popularly been described as the first rough draft of history. another popular description is “history in a hurry”. the recording of this “history”, however, has been male-dominated throughout the ages. a call for herstory instead of history, as some feminist scholars contend especially in the historiographical recording of the development of media is therefore to be expected. where, indeed, are women to be found in the existing history of the media? an american historian wrote about the struggle of women journalists (as cited in van der vyver 1987: 54): among all the professions, that of journalism offers perhaps the most impressive example of women’s intrepid persistence in the face of professional hostility. 171 the contribution of women to the media, specifically journalism, is a field of study that has been explored over the last two decades (mills 1990; lafky 1993; steiner 1993; van zoonen 1994; goga 2000; spears, seudegart & gallagher 2002; lowe morna 2001; lowe morna 2003; chambers, steiner & fleming 2004; lowe morna 2004; ross & byerly 2004; rama & lowe morna 2005), with lowe morna as the pre-eminent researcher in terms of media and gender in the southern african context. it is a fact that women in media, since the earliest recording of their involvement, have also been activists for their recognition as equals in society (van der vyver 1987). how far behind south african society was, not only in terms of giving women journalists opportunities, but also in terms of their suppression by societal/cultural prescriptions, became evident in the early 1950s when a national debate that had raged in 1842 in the usa, on whether women should be allowed to wear trousers (van der vyver 1987:28), was debated only a century later in an afrikaans women’s magazine (rabe 1985: 158). another comparison to illustrate how far south africa lags behind in media development, is the fact that the first woman war correspondent operated in 1848 in the usa (van der vyver 1987: 30). in south africa, this researcher established that the first woman war reporter probably was the aunt of british statesman churchill, who himself was a war correspondent. she was lady sarah wilson (crwys-williams 1989: 179) who worked for the british newspaper the daily mail, sending “dispatches from ladysmith during its long siege, and [who] was briefly captured by the boers” during the south african war (morgan 2002: 2). this researcher has a hypothesis that van reenen was, if not the first south african woman to work officially as a war correspondent, then the first afrikaans woman journalist to work as one (rabe 2006). this however needs further verification. another brief comparison to indicate the difference in development for women in journalism elsewhere as opposed to the south african situation, is borne out by america’s first lady eleanor roosevelt who promoted women journalists through her strategy of allowing only women at her press conferences, in order to create more positions for women in news rooms. by means of this strategy she “brought women into government and brought their ideas to bear on government” (mills 1990: 36). in comparison, south african journalists would crack the glass ceiling of the male dominated political journalism only decades later. because of the stigma attached to working women, women entered journalism on a “part-time” basis. after the second world war, however, working women, who had previously been regarded as socially inferior, were now accepted as part of the work environment (van der vyver 1987: 125). owing to the so-called “women’s lib” movement in the 1960s1 more women graduated, married later and could control their fertility due to the contraceptive pill. 172 so-called “new families” got used to two incomes, which meant women did not stop working outside their homes once they had started with a family (mills 1990: 84). focusing on the south african situation, it can be said that women were a rarity in the world of the “newspapermen” in the early years of dutch/afrikaans and english journalism. either the majority of media historians up to the 1980s ignored them, or they did not exist, except for one or two. at least one book published in 1983 on south african media history ignored women journalists completely. biographies of important dutch-afrikaans journalists, published in 1930, also have no references to women in the press (van der vyver 1987: 16). the netherlands and britain, both pioneer nations in terms of establishing newspapers, and both south africa’s colonial rulers, deprived their colony of a free press. the media accordingly developed slowly, which probably also led to south african women entering the profession at a late stage (van der vyver 1987: 6). other factors that inhibited the growth of the media and the development of women in this sector can be related to the history of the country. the absence of women in media correlates with the absence of women in the history of the country. the women who did contribute to early south african journalism can be regarded, up to now, as a forgotten group in our media history. they deserve recognition, as they helped, together with their male counterparts, to mould the media. as was the case in britain, a woman from the upper class those who had some opportunities, although still limited is one of the first woman names in our media history. she was anna, countess of bremont, who, with the establishment of the star in 1889 in johannesburg, sang a number, after which it was announced that she would also be a member of the editorial staff (van der vyver 1987: 38). however, while in johannesburg she described the “charming dresses” and “enchanting hats” of socialites, in mexico an american woman journalist spent six months in mexico investigating corruption. in south africa many years would pass before women journalists graduated to more than reporting the social scene (van der vyver ibid.). an important explanation for the slow development of the afrikaans media is the fact that the language had to develop with the media. in contrast with other countries where the press evolved out of a language that had matured over centuries, the afrikaans language developed with the press (rabe 2004). as was the case in the usa, a male family member involved in the press was a prerequisite for early south african media women to gain access to journalism. the use of pseudonyms, to escape the stigma of a working woman, was also characteristic of the time (van der vyver 1987: 19). language and media having to develop under difficult circumstances were factors. another was the effect of the south african war on the development and psyche of the afrikaner. 173 it can be said that afrikaans women in the past were manipulated in a way that suited the patriarchs of their time (rabe 2002; rabe 2004). repercussions of this attitude reverberated through our society even today. feminism is frowned upon by afrikaans women in fact, the very first sentence in an investigative article in 1994 reads: “[afrikaans] [w]omen find feminism suspicious” (du toit & krog 1994: 22). as one of the consequences of the south african war the term “volksmoeder” was created: women should not tire themselves with dirty issues such as politics, but should keep themselves busy with the noble task of being a mother for the nation, was said (du toit & krog 1994: 24). at a literary-cultural level patriarchal power was an accepted fact (van niekerk 1994: 10). one can then assume that it also applied at a media-cultural level. yet, the first “professional” afrikaans woman journalist with a full-time position at a newspaper, miemie rothmann, better-known as mer, never shied away from the “fword”. she in fact expressed herself in a way that was ahead of her time (van niekerk 1994: 13; rabe 2002; rabe 2004). as a subsequent and important research question regarding this topic, one should also ask: what about the role of the black woman in our media history? if that of the white woman has drawn so little attention, given our history, that of the black woman has certainly not even received any significant attention at all. the commemoration of the march to the union buildings 50 years ago emphasises the fact that not enough research on certain aspects of our history, specifically media history, has been done. in fact, there are gaping holes in our media historiography. van reenen as pioneer against a background of a culture caught up in a western patriarchal, chauvinist, colonialist context, both in society and the profession she entered into, van reenen was unwittingly a pioneer for women journalists. in the mid-forties of the previous century there were only a handful of women journalists in the south african media. furthermore, they were confined to the “women’s pages”. however, van reenen would not be confined. she challenged the whole gamut of professional journalism. she was the second “professional” afrikaans woman journalist, making her a pioneer and role model for several generations of women journalists (rabe 2004: 42). the first, mer, did not remain in journalism, although she still wrote right into her ripe old age of 100 years (rabe 2004). van reenen remained a journalist, and as such made an incomparable impact on the profession. 174 appointed in 1922 at the age of 47 to the editorial staff of die burger, mer was the first “official” afrikaans woman journalist. but she was to be responsible for the women’s pages only (rabe 2004). mer left die burger in 1928 to become a full-time organiser for the afrikaanse christelike vrouevereniging (acvv – afrikaans christian women’s association). a number of other afrikaans women journalists who became pioneers in their own right, regarded mer as their role-model. van reenen was one of them. together with alba bouwer and audrey blignault, they were regarded as mer’s “kaapse kinders” (cape children) (steyn 2002: 419). after obtaining a ba and a master’s degree from stellenbosch university, van reenen started her career in journalism in 1945 shortly after the second world war, when women in south african journalism in general were a “fairly rare phenomenon” (“rykie van reenen” 2003). when van reenen was appointed as journalist to work solely on the women’s pages at die burger, women were not regarded as serious contributors to the daily news. the late markus viljoen in whose honour a medal for journalism is named, wrote in his memoirs in 1953 about the role of women in journalism as follows: her position is wholly inferior … in the ordinary journalism she is charged with specific female matters like tea parties, weddings and such (viljoen 1953: 25). even after 1945 women were solely appointed to the “women’s editorial team”. should they marry, they had to resign. it was a formal policy that married women do not belong at the newspaper, not even on the women’s pages, even though some wanted to continue their careers (van der vyver 1987: 95). van reenen, not interested in marriage, was the first woman after 1945 also to work on the general news pages. however, to be taken serious as a journalist, you had to have editing skills and for that you needed to work in the night office. women were not allowed to work in the night office, although, like van reenen, she was willing to do so. it is not surprisingly that, being thwarted like that, van reenen did not also almost follow in her predecessor’s footsteps. the acvv-“line” apparently ran through die burger’s office: other women journalists also worked for the acvv after stints at this newspaper (van der vyver 1987: 59). regarding the possibility of van reenen following mer’s career, one source says it was “touch and go” or she would have worked for the acvv (louw 2005). it was to the benefit of journalism that she remained in the profession, contributing to transform it from the inside. the current chairperson of naspers remembers in a tribute that, although it was a male dominated workplace, van reenen could stand her ground: blow by blow she could retort in that male dominated world (vosloo 2004: 46). van reenen herself wrote (1979: n.p.): when i, in the year dot, landed in the male domain of the afrikaans newspaper world, it was for you, woman, a privilege to be allowed to write under the heading 175 ‘in a sociable mood’2 about “social matters”. with that, please note, was meant weddings, engagements and parties, in that order, but the grandest of these were weddings. the day she was “plucked” from this position to the general newsroom – a “bold step” by the news editor – was something of a remarkable happening. even if only for the groundbreaking story of reporting the seasonal occurrences of fish moths and their damage to the country’s economy (van reenen ibid.). this action, however, led to van reenen being used not only in the general newsroom, but transcending this to become a legendary beat and specialist reporter as well as a columnist (rabe 2006). this pioneering work undoubtedly made it easier for women following her to be accepted as equals in every respect. van reenen (1979) reflects on the progress of women in the profession in 1979: today my little glass partition looks out on beeld’s general newsroom filled with young women, and they type away that it drones, on anything that a male reporter would think of applying his hand to: politics, the economy, crime, sport, art… yes, if they feel like it, recipes, fashion and parties too, alternated with women’s rights, rape and abortion laws. she writes that the day when women would be “allowed” to report on rugby, women’s lib in the afrikaans newspaper world would probably reach its peak. […] a woman can become head sub, she can become news editor. success may be few and far between, but there is no, as the reformed [church] would say, fundamental objection to that. the day an afrikaans woman is appointed as editor, there might be a couple of cameras flashing, but as soon as a newspaperwoman with the necessary format comes, even this bastion will fall (ibid.). the fact that she was regarded as exactly that woman with those characteristics, seemed to have passed her by. from various sources it can be extrapolated that she could have been that first woman editor of a mainstream newspaper in south africa. yet, it is not clear from sources at this stage whether she was ever officially offered this position and declined, or whether this was merely speculation, and that she was recommended but never appointed – “perhaps it was just the male chauvinism of the time” (vosloo 2004: 48). a contemporary concluded (le may 2004: 11): rykie van der byl van reenen should have been the first woman editor of a major south african newspaper but she was let down by her peers. van biljon, as quoted in an sabc tribute to van reenen, also commented on the fact that she should have been the first editor of a mainstream newspaper: 176 she would have been the first woman editor of a big national newspaper if men did not have such a patriarchal approach to women journalists (acclaimed afrikaans writer 2003). from what another peer, piet cillié, said, it seems as if an editorship was offered her, but that she declined: it is an open secret that rykie could have been the first woman to have become editor of an afrikaans newspaper – if she just wanted to. but she is a born virtuoso, a genial individual, not an orchestra leader (malan 2003: 2). boshoff, in the introduction to the anthology of van reenen’s columns, which he edited, writes that it became known at her retirement as columnist (to concentrate on church politics) that she had been nominated twice as editor, but that she was unacceptable, because rykie believes politics is all about people, while it is supposed to be about politicians and parties! (1980: n.p.). in a tribute to another pioneering woman journalist of naspers in 2003, vosloo admits that women were disregarded too long as editors of publications (qualifying it: “directed at women”). this situation has been rectified, but naspers, with the wisdom of hindsight, lost much because of its male chauvinism, which now belongs to the past (2003: 4). van reenen would regard her contribution to women’s rights, like all her other work, as insignificant. in an editorial after her death (“rykie van reenen” 2003) writes: … [she] would become one of the most important wedges, which in the afrikaans newspaper world would crack the brute rock of male domination through which a generation of new and young dynamic women could enter the profession. in the article on the development of women in afrikaans journalism, van reenen herself concludes (1979: n.p.): the challenge for women in journalism is not to do every kind of newspaper work just as well as men. she should now, with that extra chromosome, also add an extra dimension to our journalism with which our profession can be broadened. she ends this article with the clarion call to her “sisters” – which, for the sake of van reenen’s typical afrikaans style, needs to be recorded in this article in its original afrikaans version (ibid.): komaan, my sustertjies, julle beurt.3 in the arena of breaking new ground in terms of what were “acceptable” journalistic standards, she also shattered existing rules (meiring 2003: 2) and can be regarded as a pioneer in this respect too. had she been appointed as editor of a mainstream n e w s p a p e r, one wonders how she would have challenged restrictive media measurements. as acting editor, she once published, despite the restrictions on freedom of the press, a photograph of bodies lying in a street to show what is really happening in south africa. 177 as acting editor [for rapport] she did pioneering work when she allowed the word ‘sies’ in a main story. also the photographs of bodies in a street after a shooting incident caused controversy and criticism from faultfinding readers, moral custodians and language purists, but in the industry itself this intrepidness was lauded (meiring ibid.). as the first woman career journalist, van reenen fulfilled a pioneering role in afrikaans journalism. eventually she would become the first woman journalist, in both the afrikaans and english press, who was appointed at the most senior level then as acting editor of a mainstream newspaper. this was a milestone for her time. as pioneer on related terrain, and recognition apart from her numerous journalistic reports, articles, essays and columns, van reenen also contributed to south african historiography at significant levels, and this aspect of her oeuvre can also be regarded as pioneering work. not many studies were done on the role of women in south african historiography. van reenen contributed greatly in rectifying this imbalance with a seminal work on emily hobhouse, an english woman who did pioneering humanitarian work on the boer side during the south african war of 1899-1902. her first book on hobhouse, published in 1971, was aimed at the youth market. the biography, heldin uit die vreemde – die verhaal van emily hobhouse (tafelberg), was awarded the scheepers prize for youth literature. in 1984 emily hobhouse: boer war letters (human & rousseau), was published. this has been described as van reenen’s “biggest work”, “masterfully annotated”, “much more than a compilation […] of gripping historical matter” (grosskopf 1986: 2). furthermore: the thoroughness of the research, the inspiration and imagery in the compilation of this publication make it comparable with the best of its kind. the way historical, biographical and sociological dimensions were integrated is at the level of international standards. with this work ms van reenen has enriched the south african historiography, literature and our experience of our own society. this work was honoured with the recht malan prize for non-fiction. in 1960 she was, together with alba bouwer, the co-editor of die dammetjie, a n anthology of essays by afrikaans women essayists. van reenen also contributed to anthologies on two pioneering afrikaans women journalists. she was co-editor of an anthology on the letters of mer to her daughter (familiegesprek, 1975, tafelberg), as well as an anthology on letters of mer to various personalities (’n kosbare erfenis, 1977, tafelberg) and editor of an anthology on alba bouwer (die lang reis van hart tot hart, 1995, tafelberg). 178 she also wrote a long biographical essay as the introduction to a book on a photographer who had an iconic status in the afrikaans community, jansje wissema (die wêreld van jansje wissema, 1976, tafelberg). her own anthology of columns from rapport, op die randakker (tafelberg), compiled by colleague tobie boshoff, was published in 1980. except for the two literary prizes for the two books on hobhouse, van reenen was also awarded the markus viljoen medal for journalism in 1982 by the suid-afrikaanse akademie vir wetenskap en kuns (south african academy for science and art). this medal was named after the first south african journalist who received an academic training in journalism. viljoen was as a pioneering south african journalist the first to qualify in the 1920s from the graduate school of journalism at the university of columbia in new york (viljoen 1953: 48). however, he is also the journalist who did not think much of women’s role in journalism. in 1986 van reenen was awarded an honorary doctorate from her alma mater. grosskopf, who at the time was head of the post-graduate department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch, was responsible for the commendation. this had to be signed by ten members of the university’s senate. amongst them were the first head of the stellenbosch journalism school (where students are educated and trained according to the same philosophy as that of the journalism school of columbia university), piet cillié, as well as willie esterhuyse, renowned afrikaner philosopher, and sampie terreblanche, another well-known academic (su archives 1986). it was cillié who said that, had she submitted her research on hobhouse to the university for degree-purposes, she would in any case have been presented with a doctorate (boshoff 2004: 11). how she received the news of this honour, is one of numerous manifestations of her modesty. grosskopf remembers writing the commendation, and what followed, as follows (2004: 49): it was easy, there were many eager helpers. it also went smoothly through the senate. on a day i received an enquiry: the [university’s] board will be sitting this weekend, can you find out where rykie will be on saturday tea-time so that the rector can phone her after the decision was approved? also easy: phone her and ask if we can come by for tea. good conversation, but later i became somewhat cautious: when will the rector phone? just then the phone rings. rykie’s friend jude goes to answer it, comes back and says it is for rykie. rykie returns, and quite unfriendly, looks at me and accuses me: “it’s your work! you did this!” […] rykie was not to be appeased easily, but at least we parted good friends. 179 grosskopf concluded this memory, which was published shortly before van reenen’s death: if i may address rykie directly: one rarely gets the opportunity to bring unfeigned praise, without any tacit reservation, to a good person and a magnificent craftsman – grant us this pleasure! after the graduation ceremony, van reenen wrote to the registrar (su archives 1986): just to say once again thank you to stellenbosch. what i envisaged would be pure horror, became one of the most wonderful days in my life. it cannot be often that one person experiences so much heartiness and thoughtfulness and generosity and friendship in one day. i felt cared for. […] this letter should really be on parchment, but the wordmill is actually the only thing which allows crocked hands still to write on. ’scuse the inelegant communication. from the heart rykie she concludes her letter of thanks with a post script: must say: those ten minutes alone on the stage of the full df malan memorial centre in a red gown immunised me against whatever horror life might bring me in future. conclusion declared “undoubtedly the most outstanding afrikaans journalist” of the twentieth century (giliomee 2003: 564), as well as the “pre-eminent afrikaans newspaper-writer of the twentieth century” (grosskopf 2004: 49), van reenen should be recognised for her contribution (see rabe 2006) to the transformation of south africa from an oppressed country to a democracy. but her contribution should not be measured only in what she achieved as an outstanding personality during the almost five decades she worked as a journalist. her influence as an agent of change goes far beyond those years. together with a gradual change in the social and political environment of the last half of the previous century, this one person’s contribution also changed the south african media landscape. her talent, combined with discipline, helped to ensure that women were taken seriously in the afrikaans media. in the eighties, according to one survey, a third of all editorial teams, afrikaans and english, were women. no newspaper had a woman in its senior editorial team (van der vyver 1987: 212). 180 the newspaper where she began her career in the mid-nineteen-forties, die burger, in 2001 had 40 % women journalists, with about a third of the senior editorial team female (rabe 2001: 9). in 2006 one out of three deputy editors at die burger was a woman (jongbloed 2006). thanks to south african labour law, discriminatory practices that were applied by media companies right up to the eighties of the previous century, are now unlawful. of course, van reenen was not directly responsible for these changes, but one can argue that through her contribution as a career professional, by showing that women can be as good – if not better – as any male journalist – and by writing as a socially aware journalist about social change (rabe 2006), she paved the way for women journalists who followed her. van reenen and other women pioneers deserve to be honoured through thorough research on various aspects of their work as true – and equal – citizens of the “fourth estate” in south africa under apartheid. van reenen is today remembered for her singular spirit, professionalism and personality. an afrikaans woman, who, in a time when women journalists were not recognised as professionals, not only contributed to the establishment of a profession, but also to the forging of a new land for all the people of south africa. it is essential that research on pioneers such as van reenen and on their contribution to journalism is recorded. it is also hoped that this article will inspire more media historiographical research, which eventually should lead to a media history reflecting a diversity of contributors to the development of journalism in south africa, especially that of the neglected voices in our journalism – those who were marginalised, not only because of gender, but also of colour. endnotes: 1 which since has proved to be yet another manifestation of women’s secondary position in society and through which women themselves have added to their imprisonment of certain societal and cultural constructs. 2 a column titled “in gesellige luim” translated directly, “in a sociable mood.” 3 translated directly: “come on, my little sisters, your turn.” 181 references berger, a.a. 1998. media research techniques. thousand oaks: sage. boshoff. t. 1980. op die randakker. cape town: tafelberg. boshoff. t. 2004. personal e-mail to author. notes available from author. chambers, d., steiner, l. & fleming, c. 2004. women and journalism. london & new york: routledge. crwys-williams, j. 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(ed.). women in mass communication. london: sage publications. steyn, j.c. 2002. penvegter. cape town: tafelberg. su archives. 1986. correspondence between rykie van reenen and the su registrar. 183 permission granted by registrar to access, february 2005. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. van biljon, m. 2006. personal interview. cape town, 10 april. van der vyver, m. 1987. die groeiende rol van die vrou in die afrikaanse pers met spesifieke verwysing na die burger en die nasionale pers. unpublished master’s thesis. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. van niekerk, a. 1994. vrouevertellers 1843-1993. cape town: tafelberg. van reenen, r. 1979. deurbrake vir vroue… nou vir sustertjies! beeld 19 october: 9. van zoonen, l. 1994. feminist media studies. london: sage publications. viljoen. j.m.h. 1953. ’n joernalis vertel. cape town: nasionale boekhandel beperk. vosloo, t. 2003. altyd iets van die verhoog in rieta burger. die burger 26 july: 4. vosloo. t. 2004. onblusbaar ryk [sic] van der byl van reenen. i n s i g jan/feb 2004: 4 6 4 8 . 184 1pb gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape: online discourses abstract male rape remains largely obscure in communication discourses; on rare occasions it suffers juxtaposition against its much-publicised counterpart, female rape. yet victims of male rape too suffer various physical, sexual, emotional and mental health risks, as well as lack of much-needed support systems. in general, social networking sites (snss) have provided a democratic space to facilitate discourses about risky problems, enabling polarised discussions and perspectives towards matters, such as male rape, where few such platforms previously existed. this article explores online discourses about male rape. a netnography approach was used to analyse over 122 tweets. the results indicate that male rape is trivialised through the oversimplification of its definition and the downplaying of victims’ experiences. in discourses, prevailing gendered online conversations centred on and amplified female rape, barely acknowledging the trauma and suffering of male rape victims. of note were some voices calling for more awareness about male rape and calls to stop gendered norms from deterring survivors from sharing experiences. the findings underscore the argument that although conversations highlighting male rape continue to be suppressed in societies, snss have the potential to be used as instruments of awareness and support for victims. keywords: male rape; gendered myths; online discourses; social amplification; male rape awareness; twitter; online communication; health communication introduction failure to acknowledge the reality of occurrences of male rape results in numerous risks to the individual, family, community and society. for instance, victims’ failure to disclose experiences timeously reduces the possibility of receiving the support and assistance they require. many societies still fuel the male rape myth and related nondisclosure by failing to treat victims with dignity, acknowledge and put necessary systems in place to assist male victims of sexual assault (javaid 2015; vaglanos 2017). dr karabo sitto department of strategic communication, faculty of the humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email: ksitto@uj.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-51469189 prof. elizabeth lubinga department of strategic communication, faculty of the humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email: elizabethl@uj.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-18117421 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-24 date submitted: 12 february 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ksitto@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5146-9189 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5146-9189 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5146-9189 mailto:elizabethl@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7421 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7421 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7421 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 sitto & lubinga online spaces have opened up platforms for the amplification of health issues previously considered too risky for discussion in the public sphere. for instance, individuals have disclosed their hiv status online, while organisations have conducted hiv stigma reduction campaigns on social media (young et al. 2019). from online disclosure, individuals have enjoyed benefits such as receiving information and sharing experiences, where they were previously unable to inform partners about their seropositivity through face-to-face conversations (taggart et al. 2015). specifically, an app popular for gay dating, grindr, encourages users to disclose their hiv status and has introduced opt-ins to provide testing reminders for the user (the lancet hiv 2018). risky health issues have gained traction, from snss filtering into traditional media, enabling the necessary debates and reducing stigma. conversely, the anonymous nature of snss also allows polarised views about risky issues, such as male rape, to run rampant, which could promote and sustain the dominance of hegemonic perspectives leading to stigmatisation. this article examines how twitter has enabled diverse societal conversations about male rape. it contextualises the risks that male rape victims face through examining the gendered norms, myths and perceptions prevalent in society. the purpose was to explore the content of online discourses about male rape, which is hardly discussed by victims and at different levels in society, with most of the focus placed on female rape. multi-layered risks of male rape the risks of male rape occur at multiple levels. at an individual level, male rape victims who disclose victimisation face the risk of reprisal manifesting through stigma and stereotypes in society; thus, they have trouble in reporting their experiences (young et al. 2016). both child and adult male victims are less likely to report their victimisation because of shame and guilt, the anticipation of rejection, as well as having their sexuality questioned (cummings et al. 2018; samsosa 2019a; tewksbury 2007). at family level, victims run the risk of ridicule and rejection. the perceived social risk of disclosure can be a deterrent (to disclosure) where the social risk is a lack of support from the personal networks of the victim (hodges et al. 1997). health experts have reported on the multitudinous consequences of untreated male rape victims and the risks they face. victims bear psychological, emotional, sexual and physical health risks if they are not helped. in many countries, male rape victims are ridiculed by officials from state departments, such as when reporting the crime, while others are stigmatised by health officials meant to treat them (bbc 2018; davies 2002). male victims could face more specific health risks, such as sexual anxieties (de visser et al. 2003), sexual dysfunction and possibly impotence, and systemic barriers because most health services are geared toward females (cummings et al. 2018). tewksbury (2007) argues that few societal discussions occur about the physical, mental and sexual health consequences of sexual assault against men. when such discussions occur, they often package male rape as an ill that is exclusive to men in correctional centres. such ill-conceived perceptions serve to undermine other (also) legitimate experiences of men who experience rape in other contexts, outside of the prison environment, including war zones (ferrales et al. 2016). while the rape 32 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape experience is real and traumatic for male and female victims, societies often question whether a man can be raped. reactions by communities and service providers to male sexual assault victims often depend on the (perceived) sexual orientation of the victim, as well as the perpetrator’s gender (davies 2002). societies appear to be more sympathetic to female and child rape victims, with both groups designated as vulnerable in most countries. the negative effects, which arise from the rape of men, differ slightly from those of women. in south africa, the sexual abuse of men remains underreported and largely undisclosed by victims when it does occur (samsosa 2019a). there are no official statistics about male sexual abuse in south africa, mainly due to denial about its occurrence (ibid.). given that male victims rarely report male rape, the possibility is that the actual number of victims is higher. in the uk, 96% of male rapes go unreported (bbc 2018), even though reports of sexual offences against men and boys have more than tripled in the past decade. statistics show that there were 12 130 offences reported in england and wales in 2016/17, compared to 3 819 in 2006/07. these statistics might show an increase because many of the male rape victims reported historical experiences (bbc 2018; cummings et al. 2018). societal bias the largely obscure male rape problem, if not ignored by society, is constantly juxtaposed against female rape and arguments of feminist agendas, which further minimises it to the point of trivialising the experiences of self-reported victims. societies constantly monitor female and child rape statistics. in south africa, for instance, 2018 statistics indicated that over 40% of rape cases in the country were committed against children (andersen 2018). services that societies avail to victims of rape, such as the teddy bear foundation in south africa, are often tailored towards serving women and children, who are afforded privacy, leading to the marginalisation of men. young et al. (2016) found that many of the female rape victims studied were provided with family and other support, in addition to referrals to secondary services, when compared to the males. in patriarchal societies, where male victims of sexual abuse are often ridiculed, discreet support services could better provide much-needed privacy, which would encourage disclosure by male victims. discreet support would enable male victims to find services for their mental, emotional and physical health. male rape is often shrouded in myths, including beliefs that boys and men cannot fall victim to sexual abuse, or that the perpetrators of male sexual abuse are always male (samsosa 2019b). such myths result in the stereotyping and labelling of male rape victims as homosexual. more importantly, the inability to counter these myths results in self-ostracism by victims who feel disempowered to dispute the information. if male victims feel that they will lose social capital due to cultural influences or processes, the social risks are higher, and the pressure not to disclose is greater. 54 sitto & lubinga masculinity norms and representations masculinity norms driving the male sexual rape myth prevailing in many societies. the bbc (2018) reported that the chief executive of a uk male rape and sexual abuse charity organisation said men who disclosed their victimisation received comments like “men can’t get raped, they can’t be sexually abused”, and were treated with disbelief. many patriarchal societies perpetuate hegemonic masculinity and sexism, cultivating expectations of a gender order in society in which the male is represented as an alpha the dominant and more superior sex. javaid (2017) notes that male rape victims symbolise subordinate masculinities, perceived to be vulnerable, they are “othered”, marginalised and considered to be abnormal. social representations of men are often based on expressions of power, wealth, leadership and control. all these social representations centre on the male being a dominant member of society, on whom expectations of taking charge in society and the state are placed. in societal representations, few spaces can be found for men of different physiques, sexual orientations, or atypical gender roles. the notion of male rape challenges social representations of hegemonic masculinity prevailing in many societies, making society uncomfortable with the idea of males being in a position of perceived weakness. reitz-krueger et al. (2017) state that societies’ relative neglect of male rape victims may partly be a result of “faulty” rape myths suggesting that men cannot be sexually assaulted, especially by women. male rape is a social violation of the common representation of males as the guardians of society. rather than being seen as a social risk, due to the potential reaction of members of society to reports of male rape, non-disclosure is considered by individuals to assume an absence of the issue (samsosa 2019b). non-disclosure is rife in clashes for social dominance, such as during times of war when rape is used as a tool of submission and to dominate societies by bringing their ‘strongest’ members to breaking point (storr 2011). male rape is historic too. history shows the prevalence of using male rape for social dominance (johnson 2018). reports of such occurrences are documented during the colonial rule of natives being subordinated, using male rape of the strongest and most dominant males of native societies. the rape of enslaved men was common in the southern united states of america and cuba, where it was a part of the slave system by the spanish. even then, though the rape of enslaved men was as prevalent as the rape of enslaved women, the phenomenon of enslaved men being raped remained unknown because men were “generally shy to voice that they had been raped by male merchants or their owners” (ibid.). in addition, stories of enslaved men being raped were not believed, given that many of the perpetrators were married or had several girlfriends. another social risk of male rape is the clandestine manner in which victims are lured by their violators and taken advantage of. as with other sexual violations, more often than not, the perpetrator of male rape is intimately known to the victim, is part of their social network, and is a trusted, well-respected member of society. in the usa, 7 out of 10 rapes are committed by someone that the victim knows (vaglanos 2017). 54 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape examples of perpetrators include teachers, child minders, relatives, or church clergy. there are multiple reports of the systematic and repeated abuse of male children, who are shunned for making such accusations against their perpetrators because of the social power the perpetrators hold. this served as a deterrent for other victims to come forward, perceiving the social risk of disclosing to be too costly, and risking their social capital, however, small it might be. obscurity of male rape narratives many societies misconstrue male-on-male rape to be a homosexual act. male victims of rape are labelled as homosexual, with perceptions about them being willing participants of those experiences. south african gender activist, mbuyiselo botha, states that reported male rape cases are few because men are viewed to be willing partners in the experience (shange 2019). “more often than not, you would hear that society says men cannot be raped or violated. it is assumed that the men are always ready for sex so when you are asking about how many of them report such cases, it is next to zero” (ibid.). societal stigma against male rape, buoyed by cultures, exhorts men (including victims) to show their masculinity through a display of strength and silence, with speaking out about it perceived to be a sign of weakness. male rape is not only a risk to the survivor, but to family and friends who may not know how to relate to their relative’s traumatic experience or to assist them to cope with the effects, which could include psychological, emotional or physical – medically related among others – effects. as mann (2015) argues, “there needs to be a dialogue and a safe space for men to confront these experiences and come to terms with the fact that they are not to blame”. theoretical framework social amplification of risk framework (sarf) the social amplification of risk framework (sarf) provides a structural description of how various hazardous events interact with psychological, social, institutional and cultural processes, leading to the intensification or attenuation of risk perceptions and related risk behaviours (sarathchandra & mccright 2017: 2). these authors argue that news media amplify risk signals and events, and in the absence of personal experience, individuals learn about the risks through traditional and electronic media. the media thus play an important role in creating awareness and building knowledge about risks in society. in the case of male rape, such knowledge could contribute to demystification of the longstanding male sexual rape myth and influence prevailing masculinity norms that negate the experiences and reporting of victimisation by victims. as snss have grown in popularity, they have become a significant part of the media mix that amplified risks (best et al. 2014). however, social media might not always be used as spaces for self-expression; they might reinforce a spiral of silence between users who know one another in offline settings (boyd & ellison 2007; gearhart & zhang 2015). 76 sitto & lubinga depending on the type of risk, how it is reported, and the public’s reaction to it, these factors determine how much social attention it can generate; that is, risk amplification (kasperson 1992; kasperson & kasperson 1996). risk attenuation (sarathchandra & mccright 2017), such as that of male rape, is fuelled by cultural discourses and boundaries with respect to the societal representation of males as being the dominant gender. male rape bears high risk and yet receives little social attention with respect to its prevalence, the narratives of the victims, the perpetrators within society, and how survivors can be helped. victims of male rape might risk not having any support as notions of culture demand the protection of families or the communities’ image, with the individual needing to be altruistic in his experience. the disclosure of male rape, or even the voicing of victimisation might be considered cultural dissent, and victims could be shunned or ostracised. male victims of rape could be emasculated and mocked, and have their masculinity brought into question through their disclosure. they bear the social risk of there being no support for their story, should they disclose, and possibly to the point of them having no personal network due to rejection, particularly if they do not retract their public disclosure (young et al. 2016). this amplifies the social risk to male rape victims, making them even more vulnerable to social scrutiny of their lifestyle. male rape victims “…are also at social risk for victimization, that is, if they lack friends who can protect them or if they are widely devalued by peers” (hodges et al. 1997: 1037). social media has provided a space for activism for previously incommunicable issues, giving a space to voices previously not heard in media spaces (pal & dutta 2008). male rape victims might find online communities of support; thus, reducing their social risks. the victims could use snss to increase their social capital (best et al. 2014), and in turn gain friends and personal networks online that could protect them as a group and at an individual level (hodges et al. 1997). this support is critical for victims of male rape. the social and technical risks for victims of male rape could be amplified online by the survivors and their allies using snss as democratised spaces to amplify the experiences of silenced male rape victims and to prevent a spiral of silence. spiral of silence theory the spiral of silence theory explains why some opinions become publicly explained, while others are not discussed. the theory assumes that the media in general limit the range of opinions that are available to the public (noelle-neumann 1973). moreover, issues that are value-laden or morally controversial tend to evoke public discussions (noelle-neumann 1993; scheufele 2007). in relation to social media, the spiral of silence theory reinforces relationships between users who know one another in offline settings (boyd & ellison 2007; gearhart & zhang 2015). however, the online opinion environment can differ greatly from an individual’s offline world in such a way that the opinions he/she comes across online are likely to be more diverse (schulz & rössler 2012). for an emerging issue such as male rape, online spaces could offer a necessary platform for diverse, though possibly polarised, narratives about an issue that is seldom talked about. conversely, online settings could enable patterns of selective exposure, with the same issues being discussed; ultimately restricting 76 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape the diversity of viewpoints that users might encounter (garrett 2009). the theory was developed during the age of traditional mass media, yet is applicable to online media. some authors (matthes et al. 2013; schulz & rössler 2012) argue that the pressure to suppress minority opinions might be minimised by the proliferation of online and social media, and challenge the theory’s key assumption of the muting of dissenting voices by dominant ones. in online settings, the spiral of silence is still possible regarding certain social issues where hegemonic voices reign, for such domination to occur. in online settings, individuals who are certain about their opinions are not reluctant to express them (leonhard et al. 2018; zerback & fawzi 2017). methodology the study used twitter conversations harvested in april 2019 (sexual awareness month) with the hashtag #sexualassaultawarenessmonth to evaluate the types of discussions and the volume in comparison to other sexual violations. the term “male rape” was used as a filter to understand the discourses that took place during the month. the tweets were combined in a single document and the text was formatted to prepare the content for netnographic analysis. the study employed netnography, a rigorous methodology suited for studying the uniqueness of online communities (kozinets 2002: 62). kozinets (2015: 98) developed 12 methodological steps, which are “non-exclusive and often-interacting process levels” of netnography. the 12 steps were used in a non-linear fashion for purposes of engaging in netnography on the topic of male rape in the following manner: 1. introspection – reflection of the role of research in approaching how the data would help achieve the research aims and objectives of the study. this included reflection on the limited social discourses with respect to the risks of male rape in the purposive selection of online conversations on the topic. 2. investigation – the search for conversations on sexual assault online on twitter during an awareness month, namely april 2019, centred on collecting data for the purpose of analysing public conversations about male rape. 3. information – ethical considerations involved accessing only publicly available conversations on twitter, including building anonymity in the interpretation of the data collected by excluding the handles of users. 4. interview – the sites to be inspected were twitter and facebook, although there was more volume on twitter, and only these high volume conversations were included for analysis. 5. inspection – this linked to the conversations on #sexualassaultawarenessmonth and specifically those mentioning the term “male rape” over the month of april, with thorough analysis and data collection of each thread of the conversation. 98 sitto & lubinga 6. interaction – the entrée strategy was through a public search on twitter, which allowed for these conversations to be identified. 7. immersion – the authors had to immerse themselves in the conversations, including reading article links, analysing each picture and video, as well as collecting the original tweets and replies on male rape. 8. indexing – this phase was about weighting the data collected with respect to the social and technical risks of male rape, selecting more high quality and meaningful data from each conversation. 9. interpretation – interpretive analysis, which is termed interpenetration; that is, an analysis-seeking depth of understanding. the interpretation was done using the social risk theory to code the tweets in an attempt to understand them without distorting them through interpretation. 10. iteration – there were phases within these phases for this netnographic analysis, including thematic analysis from coding to the development of themes and arrangement on tweets across different themes. 11. instantiation – for this article, the analysis approach that was most appropriate was humanist, given the sensitivity of the topic of male rape and the gendered nature of the conversations. 12. integration – the authors then integrated the data with the research objectives to develop insights from the netnography, forming part of the overall findings and interpretation discussion of this article. one of the benefits of netnography is the near-automatic transcription of the contents downloaded, and the ease with which the data was obtained (kozinets 2002). netnography helps provide insights into individuals’ experiences (xun & reynolds 2010) with respect to male rape, and how they communicate these experiences. netnography as a method therefore “provides a window into the cultural realities” (kozinets 2006: 282), such as those of male rape in south africa, the social discourses and arising themes. people frequently take part in important discussions in their online communities, such as twitter, to inform and influence each other using “relevant symbol systems” (kozinets 2002: 61) that are culturally informed. only publicly accessible tweets were used, and none were selected from any private conversations or direct messages, to which the authors had no access. the tweets analysed included multimodal media, such as memes, emojis, images, gifs and videos, as this article was not only interested in conversations, but other representations of social risks in discussions of male rape online. to add texture to the data, the tweets were also analysed using a word cloud to observe the frequency of terms on male rape. results and discussion a total of 122 tweets were coded and analysed. the authors took cognisance of the fact that twitter as an online tool, by limitation, allows a privileged few with access 98 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape to online facilities to engage in conversations. emergent themes were considered significant if two or more tweets carried similar sentiments with respect to an aspect of male rape, and these ranged from discussions to views. the most notable themes involved constant juxtaposition of male rape and female rape, as well as gendered stereotypes about males, including sexual orientation. tweets referring to the sexual behaviour of men, as being responsible for them being raped, or the perceived lower risk of male rape compare to female rape, contributed to the risk attenuation of victims of male rape. perceptions and misconceptions towards male rape the most prevalent observation from the tweets is the lack of consistency with respect to definitions of male rape. even in an online “democratised” space, where voices should be equal, male rape discussions were dominated by challenges of definitions, based on how female rape is defined. the primary challenge within this theme was the idea that only men are able to rape, a cultural stereotype of masculinity, and that by definition rape only involves a male penetrating a female forcefully without consent. ‘willing’ male rape victim? discussions arose regarding male rape victims’ pleasure manifesting through ejaculation. debates concerned views to whether male ejaculation is a consequence of pleasure or a physiological function (or both), and whether such victims are willing participants. deriving pleasure also in a lot of male on male rape. the victims ejaculate. not because they had fun being raped. but bcos having a boner and or ejaculating is a natural sensory reaction in men. for those who think a man cant be raped bcos he had a boner. absolute rubbish rape is about power, not sex" is a naive ideological tool and has been debunked… male on male rape rate is the same. figure 1: deriving pleasure male rape perpetuated by men? an oversimplified and narrow definition of male rape perceives male rape to be a weapon used by men against other men, and in instances of female-on-male rape, it was labelled assault and not rape. the fact that male rape lacks a standardised definition as a crime makes it difficult for focused online conversations about it to take place in isolation from discussions about other assault crimes. the risks that male rape victims face are attenuated through the muddling of discourses about crime. 1110 sitto & lubinga male rape a crime not merely assault rape is a criminal offence and can only be committed by men.” are you fucking kidding me? way to go, achieving gender equality through segregation and bias. i hope this is changed. it’s already difficult enough for male rape victims... and i don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that the majority of male rape victims are raped by other men. both female-on-male sexual assault (anal) and maleon-male rape try to feminize the victim as a woman or gay he would be of less value all women participating in sexual violence of all sorts are participating in sexism against women 1in4 men are sexually assaulted in the uk. i just took the required everfi course about sexual assault here's what i noticed-about half the example were of women abusing men. however, according to the most recent cdc data, male rape victims usually are attacked by men. i know a male rape victim as well as numerous male victims of domestic assualt. all done by women. i only know 1/ the 10 or so that actually did smthing and reported it. was harrassed for doing so. what a world figure 2: male rape a crime not an assault in online spaces, it seems that the prevalence of male rape is comparatively discussed in relation to female rape cases and assault, perpetuating gendered discourses about related crimes suffered by women. there were also questions raised about the differences in legal sentences between male rape, murder, and female rape. the discussion of the classification of male rape in different societal laws presented it not as rape, but as an assault, even though the risks to the victims of the crime are those of rape, as are the legal consequences. the framing of rape in the law is seemingly informed by cultural influences on masculinity and the role of patriarchy in forming notions of what a male should be. 1110 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape gendered online discourses gendered myths, ‘societal indifference’ and risk attenuation societal values and norms are blamed in these twitter conversations as being responsible for upholding gendered myths in discourses and perpetuating fears around male rape being discussed as a reality. gendered discourses patriarchy toxic and men eill [sic] frequently be deeply drawn to the gut idea of male dominance like that doesnt exist, its similar to the cry that male rape doesnt exist its walls built in fear supported by the public. steam: female rape not okay male rape totally okay mk11 developers: sexual female characters not okay sexual male characters totally okay. they should merge together. male rape jokes are too widespread, and it's no laughing matter. they even appear in children's television. i think i pointed out "vaginal rape". if it's a male rape by female and there's no physical injury or contracted stis evidencing the claim then it may be very difficult because male rape is under-researched unlike female rape which has a high occurrence rate. figure 3: gendered discourses toxic masculinity culture is embedded in online discourses on male rape and masculinity, and how it prevents male rape survivors from seeking help. the online discussions about male rape point towards toxic masculinity as being responsible for the attenuation of male rape by denying its existence and trivialising the risks associated with it. toxic masculinity is considered responsible for the erasure of discourses about male rape and victimhood. discomfort appeared to rise during discussions about representations of male rape displayed through traditional media, such as in movie scenes. however, discussions about toxic masculinity still appear to compound male rape with male dominance and male-on-male rape, shifting the focus away from victims of male rape. 1312 sitto & lubinga toxic masculinity toxic masculinity would have us believe that the idea of a male rape victim is absurd. rare, even. patriarchy toxic and men will frequently be deeply drawn to the gut idea of male dominance like that doesnt exist, its similar to the cry that male rape doesnt exist its walls built in fear supported by the public. aren't the army statistics an indication? male on male rape is the common problem that needs more discussion. toxic masculinity doesn't allow the topic to be discussed. the way of consent needs both problems to be addressed to really get the issue eradicated. figure 4: toxic masculinity dominance of the female rape agenda alongside toxic masculinity lies the notion of feminism with related perceptions of females as victims of rape in society, while males are considered the perpetrators. the tweets demonstrate that discussions could have been silenced on the basis of the de-legitimation of male rape and the assertion that the perpetrators of female rape are always male. a comparison of rape statistics is used to delegitimise male rape, as “proof” of who the “real” victims of rape are – female victims with a much higher rate of reported cases. online discussions on the observed shock of audiences to a male rape scene in a movie were mocked and trivialised in relation to the “everyday” experiences and fears of women of being raped. there was further risk attenuation of male rape, questioning why male-to-male rape was being discussed more than female-to-male rape in the results of the twitter search. conversants, some vicious in their discussions, noted that conversations about male rape only arise when female rape is mentioned. 1312 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape dominant female rape agenda if the only time you talk about male rape survivors is when you are interrupting women talking about sexual assault statistics and their own experiences, don’t pretend you give a shit about male rape survivors. …sharing adels nudes is terrible & it is part of rape culture however, notice the *crickets* from men? & how not a single one of them mentioned male rape/revenge porn victims? & how when we are discussing female victims they will mention that male victims exist? one in five women will be raped at some point in their lives > 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are female. 9% are male > rape is the most underreported crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported. it’s heartbreaking and simultaneously eye-opening when the immediate response was “where’s the proof” and “why are you only speaking out now?” other disappointments include bringing up male rape, as if none of this matters because a man is not at the centre of it all. flashback to 1994: all of the men watching pulp fiction in a theater aghast and groaning at the male rape scene. a group discussion broke out after the movie. the women were like, "we fear this shit every day. you know what my next argument will be ? i’m well aware that women can rape men. you mentioned that male rape cases are higher than women rape cases with the intention of equating women’s implication in social ills to that of men, but how when those male rape statistics are...by both women rape men and men? i know your next argument will be "women cannot rape men". what agenda are talking of? i'm a concerned figure 5: dominant female rape agenda 1514 sitto & lubinga others blamed feminism for silencing discussions about male rape. feminism silencing male rape discourses bad feminism is denying male rape victims the right to a voices. its transphobic. its racist. feminism has nothing to do with being a tom boy or not. ah yeah, i remember when you said all male rape victims needed to be silenced during metoo. i hope this is related. i can't explain why female on female rape is even less acknowledged than female on male rape. as a woman let me say that “men’s rights” is the most gaslight issue i’ve ever seen & it’s attack is led by fembabies who are too scared to acknowledge: damages of circumcision, false rape accusations, double standards in society and of male rape victims hurt by women, figure 6: feminism silencing male rape discourses a few dissenting voices noted that the blame placed on feminism is uncalled for and that feminism is an ally, not the enemy. others pointed out that “bad feminism” should take the blame, rather than feminism. “bad feminism” vs feminism to blame lmao my video says women who put down sex workers are against abortion are not supportive of trans women who only advocate for white people who dont believe in male rape are bad feminists. yes i said it and since you want to call me out... which of these do disagree with? men have to create safe spaces amongst each other to talk openly and honestly about their experiences of male rape, domestic abuse and violence and then start a dialogue with the society at large to end those cycles. feminism is your ally in that. not your enemy. feminists campaign for male rape victims to b taken seriously, for male domestic abuse victims to b taken seriously, for men to have equal custody in a divorce settlement, for more representation of men in modelling n on tv, for male body positivity, for men’s mental health… if the narratives of black male rape and black domestics violence are being erased, it's because the masculinity that black men have constructed/uphold does not allow them to admit their victimhood and vulnerability. they are holding themselves emotional prisoner. not feminism figure 7: ‘bad’ feminism vs feminism 1514 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape there were a few male voices discussing the victim’s plight. tweets victim selfreporting − it annoys me how some people react to rape. esp male rape because that doesn't happen to men.... yes it fucking does! like the queens in the village backing the person who had forced himself on me... they all thought i was making it up. i know what happened not you! − i don't think the headline quite helps with the seriousness of male rape. more like how rape ruined a promising army career. it just doesn't flow right. amazing strength to share his story. − by the way, you want to talk about privilege? i'm the son of an actual refugee from cuba. i'm also a male rape victim, and the system is such that i'm not considered a rape victim because being made to penetrate isn't legally rape. actual institutional oppression meant to silence figure 8: victim self-reporting other male voices were vicious in their observations about societal attitudes and perceptions towards male rape: societal bias against male rape i know a male rape victim aswell as numerous male victims of domestic assualt. all done by women. i only know 1/ the 10 or so that actually did smthing and reported it. was harrassed for doing so. what a world! you and the rest of your sexist filth buddies appeal to physical appearance when you have no actual argument. you're scum. the definition used for the ucr, up until 2012, excluded all male rape victims. it still excludes many and biases it towards female rape victims. couldn't agree more. "not everyone who says “but men get raped too” truly cares about male rape victims." well, neither do those who say the things that mr landrith describes, i've been tearing my hair out for years at the contempt shown males. serious tweet; fuck you if you don’t take male victims of abuse seriously, fuck you if you don’t take male rape victims seriously, fuck you if you think the mother should always have custody even if the father is a better parent, fuck you if you don’t think men can get hurturvivors from the "caring" folk. figure 9: societal bias 1716 sitto & lubinga female dominance was evident in the most prevalent words (figure 10) from twitter discussions on male rape, which were the terms “women”, “female” and “woman”. figure 10: most recurring words as used in the tweets figure 11: number of times terms were used in the tweets 1716 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape other factors driving silence about male rape apart from (bad) feminism, another factor identified as responsible for the silence about male rape was homophobia: homophobia homophobia causes men who have experienced a male-on-male rape to fear telling their stories.” we must recognize barriers that men face & offer support by responding to males sexual trauma.never allow judgement/gender norms to deter survivors from sharing. figure 12: homophobia others pointed out a lack of commitment by society to take male rape seriously. lack of societal commitment serious tweet; fuck you if you don’t take male victims of abuse seriously, fuck you if you don’t take male rape victims seriously, fuck you if you think the mother should always have custody even if the father is a better parent, fuck you if you don’t think men can get hurt. i made my article on rape more accessible. it highlights germane issues we often sweep under the rugmarital rape, male rape. you can now download it without a hitch. i'm so sorry to hear this fam the way you hide your pain makes me sad you know who talk to when you need to vent and also people should stop talking about male rape like it's a facade it happens to so many young boys and no one is doing anything about it” not saying i agree with what you are insinuating but .... what about male rape victims? what are they called "in other words. figure 13: lack of societal commitment the media was blamed for focusing on female rape in their coverage, while disregarding stories about male rape. the tweets included accusations of the silence by the media about rape and an apparent agenda to keep conversations on rape focused only on women, to the exclusion of male rape. the media was also accused of deliberately hiding information from the public, and perpetuating a spiral of silence on issues of male rape, even when positive healthcare interventions for male rape victims, such as a dedicated hospital in sweden, were introduced, which would be fodder for media coverage. the erasure of male rape from public discourses is blamed on the seeming lack of physical evidence of injury if female-to-male and the lack of research on the prevalence of male rape. this silence on male rape contributed to the risk attenuation 1918 sitto & lubinga of the issue in online discourses, where society is made immune to the risks through normalisation of certain risky behaviours in television programming. most of the tweets centred on the passivity of society in acknowledging the risks of male rape, to the point of including it in children’s programming, and the unemotional reports of its prevalence in films. the supporting evidence of the passivity was conversations on how the one male rape survivor, out of a number of female-to-male rape victims, was on the receiving end of harassment for reporting his experience. tweets media silence − this is an outrage i bet the newspaper editors love it but then when did they give a crap about rape victims especially male rape survivors. − @bbcnews just been watching #bbcnews on sky channel 503 and they were discussing the new rules regarding rape cases and not once did either 'expert' or the presenter mention that rape victims could be men. it was all focused on women. i am a survivor of male rape! − hiding it from people and media, like germany hides rape of their girls and sweden hides their new male rape hospital in stockholm. google figure 14: media silence the expectation about snss is that these are democratised spaces for discourse to take place on virtually any topic. it is a space that facilitated amplification of issues on male rape. users have the advantage of online anonymity to gain access to communities and take advantage of the support available online. twitter discourses on male rape, however, silence the victims and minimise the risks by comparing the prevalence of male rape to that of female rape, including negative social externalities, such as online bullying of male rape victims. male rape is portrayed as enjoyable to victims, particularly female-to-male rape, which is considered as an opportunity to be sexually active. it appears through the tweets, that male rape victims are thought to “enjoy” male-onmale rape because of their physical reaction and are urged to consider female-onmale rape as a “privilege”. this trivialises a traumatic experience, diminishes the risks to male rape victims, and attenuates the health risk consequences of the victims of this type of sexual assault. from these online discussion, male rape is not considered a serious form of sexual assault, and jokes about it are generally acceptable. male rape risk and mockery despite the significant volume of tweets making light of male rape and the risks involved for survivors, a section of the discussions was dedicated to highlighting the risks. the discourses revealed that male rape could be used as a tool of threat or coercion, pointing out the risks of male rape happening to a victim. the arguments 1918 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape are that male rape should be treated the same as female rape, in respect of the risks involved for victims. tweets surfacing / amplificat ion of male rape − notice how you never talk of male rape, which is just as prolific. ? why? − i believe you for sure. it’s probably just preprogrammed bias about male rape coming through on my part . i know it happens.... − male rape as a punishment or as a threat to coerce another man is socially regressive, patriarchal and homophobic. i'm not defending this guy, i challenge the weaponisation of sex between men as something degrading and humiliating. check this out https://youtu.be/uc6qxd2_yqw − & yall dont think male rape is a thing? this is attempted rape and sexual assault. not cool https://twitter.com/desimoninahuel/status/112160 0479841136640 … − well, we all should be equal. that's what i mean. male rape should be treated the same way female rape is. that's all. − i'm just saying men actually get raped more than women plus there's so much stigma around male rape no one cares about it at all and just believes what they see online even when it's not the truth − (i know rape is a complex action that encompasses a lot more than a man forcibly inserting his penis into a woman, i'm talking about the male rape fantasy that's often pretty specific.) − feminists campaign for male rape victims to b taken seriously, for male domestic abuse victims to b taken seriously, for men to have equal custody in a divorce settlement, for more representation of men in modelling n on tv, for male body positivity, for men’s mental health... − well it’s a good thing that’s not the only time i talk about male rape survivors − male rape is a much bigger issue. − male rape jokes are too widespread, and it's no laughing matter. they even appear in children's television (see last link posted). − as we already established, most reporting organizations (such as rainn) exclude femaleon-male rape from the data. there is no solid data on perpetration and victimization rates. − two words: male rape − i think i pointed out "vaginal rape". if it's a male rape by female and there's no physical injury or contracted stis evidencing the claim 2120 sitto & lubinga tweets male rape victim mockery − notice how in a lot of his photos he's got his hands closely clasped on his zipper? that's a defensive position subconsciously used by male rape victims. he was probably raped with starwars playing in the background that's why he hates it so much. − the only acceptable rape jokes in society today are prison/male rape jokes. − they hoped she got raped again so she would come to her senses.they also laughed at a male rape victim. what about the army who harrassed a girl into thinking about suicide? your talking about a plagiarism allegation and some hair color??? ok. − laugh at a rapey joke ... i have seen comedy movies making male rape jokes n to ppl that's funny for some reason − i wish female-on-male rape happened more frequently maybe then, id have a higher chance of getting laid − i love tentacles. i would suck on it. no matter if i'm a male. me and my girlfriend would lke to be fk by that. please malerape me. pic.twitter.com/uqjgkzvwmk − think it might do some of these jokers good to be made to understand male rape in all its ghastliness. figure 15: male rape mockery conclusion while online spaces could, and have, effectively acted as platforms for the amplification of health issues, their success appears to be dependent on the type of issue involved. for example, while snss have enabled discussions and support for seropositive people, and facilitated disclosure and attenuated negative public perceptions about the disclosure, the same has not happened for male rape. online discussions about male rape appear to be as rare, as those in offline spaces are often limited to ngos that specifically deal with those issues or during awareness months dedicated to sexual assault. when these discussions do take place, they are volatile because of divided views about male rape; a matter that is accentuated by societal attitudes and perceptions towards the victims. disclosure of an individual’s hiv status has been a stigmatised and has been a controversial issue in society for decades, yet male rape, which has existed for centuries, has the potential to, but does not yet enjoy positive online developments. the reality of the full risks faced by male rape victims does not attract significant public attention, perhaps with the exception of public days of significance. even then, the discussions are gendered, and sexual assault victims are reported with a female bias or a bias towards children. male rape is hardly supported both in online and in offline settings, which are simultaneous hotbeds of hegemonic representations of feminism and masculinity. therein, male victims are considered subordinate and emasculated by men, but also 2120 gendered myths, risks and the social amplification of male rape undeserving by women, yet they too suffer a myriad of health problems including mental, emotional and physical. male rape is a risk to society with opportunities for snss to play an important role in risk amplification, but at present, they are mainly tools reinforcing existing misconceptions. snss have also facilitated the silence of marginalised rape experiences. male rape is suppressed by culture in some societies, which promote masculinity norms, and it is hardly acknowledged as a problem. victims lack support systems, which has led to some of them committing suicide. society should first acknowledge the problem in order to offer the necessary support. future studies could conduct online experiments exploring possible bystander effects on discourses of risky health issues, such as male rape. this study contributes to the few available studies on online discourses of male rape, in line with sexual assault awareness. furthermore, it highlights the risks faced by male rape victims and survivors through the silencing of their experiences through media cultural resistance and feminism. references andersen, n. 2018. shocking stats reveal 41% of rapes in sa are against children. 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however, this study is the first to explore brand trust using the card scoring method. this study can at least partly provide useful reference points on these issues and inform marketers in debatable questions such as whether there is a difference in rating scores following a crm campaign intervention. the study also extends the card scoring method and brand authenticity of fast food by connecting consumer perception and brand trust within an african context. keywords: cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, brand authenticity, brand trust, fast food, pre and post-test research designs introduction the use of cause-related marketing (crm) occurs when an organisation has donations tied to consumer transactions. crm refers to an organisation’s marketing strategy to associate itself with a good cause with donations to charitable partners being contingent to corresponding consumer transactions (varadarajan & menon 1988). according to bergkvist and zhou (2019: 7), crm is “a tanitta matiringe tshiangala the independent institute of education, vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : nittamat@gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-9090-7145 dr abyshey nhedzi the independent institute of education, vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : abyshey1@gmail.com (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-2438-2686 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.7 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 85-105 date submitted: 20 november 2021 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:nittamat@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9090-7145 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9090-7145 mailto:abyshey1@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.7 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 8786 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi form of leveraged marketing communication that aim for the brand to benefit from consumers’ positive associations to another object (e.g., a cause)”. crm has been measured using brand authenticity and brand trust (portal et al. 2019) but there are limited empirical studies on the rating of crm initiatives in fast food. of course, to win in a competitive market, acting as a “corporate citizen” is not enough to make consumers choose one brand over the other, but it is necessary to get their trust, which in turn is a strict condition for having consumers of the future even consider choosing a brand (holt 2002). this view places significant importance on consumers’ trust in brands. active work with corporate citizenship is crucial because trust has become part of the brand strategy. thus, implementing brand authenticity as linked to brand trust requires engaging beyond marketing. it is building trust through all parts of the organisation behind the brand. past research suggests that authenticity provides a competitive edge in crowded marketplaces (hallem & guizani 2019), stimulates brand trust (anderberg & morris 2006), helps and moderates emotional attachment to a brand (hallem & guizani 2019), is important to the success of crm partnerships (kotler et al. 2012), and helps consumers find genuineness, truth, and virtue within their mix of consumption goals (michael & beverland 2010). the overview of the extant literature and previous study findings suggest that maximising the benefits of crm entails complex efforts; therefore, marketing practitioners need to understand the key relationships better. ethical consumers feel better about their purchase decisions and themselves because the ethical significance that contributing to any socioeconomic cause results in feeling good (laroche 2017). as a result of consumers who display behaviour that is increasingly socially conscious and ethical, organisations attempt to adapt and compete within the new global market using crm (vrontis et al. 2020). crm is at an all-time high as 90% of consumers want to see organisations and brands contribute to a social cause (causegood 2017). for example, landrum (2017) found that millennial consumers both expect and prefer brands to engage in socially responsible behaviour that improves society. this phenomenon is shown with heavy investment in crm and relevant campaigns (grolleau et al. 2016; coleman et al. 2019). previous studies proposed that evidence-based (indexical), impression-based (iconic), and self-referential (experiential) cues are central to the formation of consumers’ brand authenticity perceptions (morhart et al. 2015). research shows crm campaigns to supply an array of important benefits to sponsoring firms, non-profit causes, and participating consumers. marketers can differentiate their offerings from the competition, increase revenue, charge a premium, generate more connection points to their customers, and improve their reputation (nielsen 2014). the total amount to be donated and how it is communicated can influence consumer reaction to crm campaigns (tsiros & irmak 2020). scholars are not keeping up with crm changes despite decades-long scientific attention (e.g., morhart et al. 2015; varadarajan & menon 1988). a review of the existing works on the topic further presents a diversity of even contradicting findings. this is hardly surprising since crm as a marketing philosophy, strategic tactic, and individually 8786 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants behavioural and collectively social phenomenon is bound to impact broader cultural changes and shifts to soft product features. the volume of extant works on the subject (e.g. vrontis et al. 2020) also does not reflect its evident importance among businesses, particularly in the african context. crm in emerging markets lacks empirical validation since even fewer studies have attempted to examine this topic (vrontis et al. 2020). the latter still bears significant questions about implications, effectiveness, crosscultural and developing market habits, varied consumer demographics and diverse international markets, heterogeneous markets and competitive conditions, local rivals’ factors, and digital or online factors, among many others (laroche 2017; vrontis et al. 2020). exploring contemporary insights in the african market in the cause-related context of fast food is imperative for both scholars and marketing practitioners. the main research question is: is there a difference in rating scores following a crm campaign intervention? the objectives are: ♦ to determine the impact of brand trust on consumers’ ratings of brands; and ♦ to examine the impact of a brand cause-related marketing campaign on consumers’ ratings of a brand’s authenticity conceptual framework crm effectiveness depends on the consumer, charity, and company (guerreiro et al. 2016). similarly, laferty et al. (2016) classified the independent variables into that of the consumer, cause, and firm characteristics. the elaboration likelihood model (elm) and prosocial behaviour theory have been incorporated into consumer cause-related marketing research (moharam et al. 2020). the elm model of persuasion describes the change of attitudes. petty and cacioppo (1979) coined the concept of elb, which aimed to explain different ways of processing stimuli, why they are used, and their outcomes on attitude change. consumers who are highly involved often display higher cognitive elaboration (petty & cacioppo 1979). consumers’ involvement with the cause is the result of their previous experience with cause-related products and even more so, if they find the offer is personally essential and relevant to them (patel et al. 2017). organisations tend to act in socially responsible ways through crm initiatives. prosocial behaviour theory represents a broad category of acts, defined as those that normally benefit others, including helping, aiding, sharing, donating, and assisting (bar-tal 1976). prosocial behaviours are generally considered to be acts that are perceived as voluntary and have positive social consequences without the anticipation of an external reward (moharam et al. 2020). a cause-related product may be viewed as a form of commercial purchase that is linked to prosocial values. consumers may consider crm as a combination of a purchase decision and some kind of prosocial behaviour (ross et al. 1992). 8988 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi effects of cause-related marketing this article uses crm to refer to the long-term strategies brands undertake to address social causes. many studies have shown numerous benefits of using crm campaigns as part of corporate social responsibility (anghel et al. 2011). the benefits include that of attracting new customers, increasing sales of products or services, creating a favourable brand image, and raising funds for a social cause. crm campaigns have a role in enhancing economic performance and effectively communicating the company’s mission to different stakeholders. thus, the company’s goals are economic, non-economic, or mixed (anghel et al. 2011). the three supportive causes draw consumers who are attracted by the creative, innovative idea of the company communicating with and directly involving them in sustaining charities. over time, numerous companies including starbucks, pepsi, uber, coca-cola, dove, and jetblue, have adopted this marketing strategy to create social and shareholder value. some examples of crm include the procter and gamble initiative in establishing a long-lasting partnership with unicef to help eliminate maternal and new born tetanus by providing one tetanus vaccination for each purchase of pampers (vanhamme et al. 2012); tommy hilfiger that donated 50% of the price of a specific bag to breast health international (müller et al. 2014), and ebay for charity that raised more than 100 million us dollar for charities in 2018 by enabling people to support their favourite cause when they buy or sell on ebay. crm has evolved over time, with companies establishing longer-term alliances with non-profit organisations and often partnering with more than one cause (lafferty & goldsmith 2005). researchers explored different facets to understand consumers. some, for example, investigated the effect of crm campaigns on businesses in developed countries with increased sales and profits, and in brand image building (kim et al. 2021; woodroof et al. 2019; he et al. 2019, vanhamme et al. 2012). moreover, studies examined the effect of crm on consumers, particularly their attitudes, intentions, and purchasing decisions (lee & johnson 2019; melero & montaner 2016). brand authenticity the concept of authenticity is derived from the latin word authenticus and the greek word authentikos, conveying the sense of trustworthiness (cappanelli & cappanelli 2004: 1). brand authenticity corresponds to various attributes since there is no unique definition of the authenticity concept, particularly in the branding context (woo et al. 2020). combining these thoughts and results, authenticity seems to be related to and connected with terms such as stability, endurance, consistency, particularity, individuality, trustfulness, credibility, keeping promises, genuineness, and realness. authenticity is essential for creating brand value where brand authenticity outcomes would include brand trust (södergren 2021). prior consumer experience with a brand has a greater impact on positive outcomes than that of a brand that is recently introduced via crm activities (christofi et al. 2015). 8988 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants brand trust corporate credibility refers to which extent consumers believe that a brand can design and deliver products and services that satisfy customers’ needs and wants (keller & aaker 1992). the credibility of the brand is linked to three dimensions of company expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. brand trustworthiness refers to the brand and the extent to which the brand is motivated, honest, dependable, and sensitive to consumer needs. the results from a previous study (kim et al. 2005) suggest that firms perceived as highly credible have an advantage over firms perceived as less credible when carrying out the same cause-effect related marketing actions. this implies that the higher the brand authenticity or corporate credibility is, the more favourable is the brand trust perception. brand trust is conceptualised as “the confident expectations of the brand’s reliability and intentions in situations entailing risk to the consumer” (delgado-ballester 2004). the 2019 edelman trust barometer found that trust and transparency were ranked the same as the quality of products and services in determining a corporation’s reputation (edelman 2020). the rise in distrust among consumers has united them in their desire for change. consumers are increasingly demanding engagement and action. the trust– commitment model (hess & story 2005) asserts that personal connections are derived mainly from trust, while functional relationships derive from satisfaction, but both those connections lead to brand commitment. the authors claim that trust is the bridge between product satisfaction and personal contact necessary for commitment to a brand. it is generally accepted that consumers use brands to represent their desired self-image and project their image to others for social approval or self-respect; therefore, a personal or social self-concept plays a significant role in influencing brand attitudes and consumer behavioural intentions (escalas 2004). ilicic and webster (2014) demonstrate that brand authenticity increases brand attitudes and purchase intentions as well as brand trust and commitment towards the brand (moulard et al. 2016; portal et al. 2019). when a brand delivers what it promises, it is endowed with credibility, which seems to follow through to brand trustworthiness (erdem & swait 2004). past research showed that csr activities, such as cause marketing campaigns, prompted positive associations that influence consumers’ favourable responses to organisations and their products (sen & bhattacharya 2001; södergren 2021). methodology this study aimed to investigate the impact of cause-related marketing on consumers’ ratings of fast food brands. the study followed the pretest-posttest control group design with 151 consumers in johannesburg, gauteng, south africa. the sample was recruited through the convenience of an intercept approach and single randomly assigned to four groups. to generate strong internal validity, a systematic and spontaneous random allocation of consumers was utilised. an ideal context for an experiment design provided the best possible mechanism to determine whether there is a causal relationship between independent and dependent variables by applying the intervention to one group of research respondents (experiment group) 9190 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi while withholding it from another group (control group). the study focused on seven classes of extraneous variables that could undermine the strong internal validity of an experiment design, namely history, maturation, experimental mortality, treatment diffusion, instrumentation, statistical regression, selection, and experimental environment (see table 1). table 1: internal validity threats threat how it was dealt with history no external events occurred during the experiment that influenced only some respondents. maturation the chance that respondents can change or mature during the experiment was equally shared through random allocation. experimental mortality no respondents abandoned the experiment as it was short, and the same number made it through to the end. treatment diffusion both groups were exposed to the pretest, and so the difference between the groups was not due to testing. instrumentation the same instruments were used in pretests and posttests, or the same researcher administrated a measurement tool. statistical regression if this was a problem, it would have manifested equally in the experimental and control groups due to randomisation. selection selection bias was avoided through random assignment. all respondents had an equal chance of being in treatment or comparison groups, and the groups were equivalent. demand characteristics a single-blind trial was applied consistently to all respondents participant-predisposition effect a single-blind trial was applied consistently to all respondents experimenter-expectancy effect while communicating, researchers were aware of their bias, used similar instructions, and were attentive to accurate recording, analysing, and interpreting data. source: kaya (2015), campbell & stanley (1963) 9190 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants data collection a statistical expert and an academic professor in marketing communication who are both familiar with and knowledgeable about the subject to ensure that it was correctly formatted, assessed this experiment. prior to data collection, a pretest with a sample of 30 participants was carried out. this made it possible to improve and clarify the wording of the questions, show the technique’s feasibility, and test the procedure (brysbaert 2019). next, the core study was implemented (n = 151). the final sample (n = 151) accounted for a 100% response rate (as the researchers were present when all experiments were conducted), which was deemed satisfactory. data was collected between december 2020 and march 2021. operationalisation card scoring experiment procedure a field experiment involving the pretest-posttest control group design was used for this study. this was an exploratory, quantitative study based on a pretest-posttest control group experimental design (campbell & stanley 1963; 1966; nhedzi 2020). ewing et al. (2012) state that experimental studies investigating causal relationships are preferred to develop future best practices for brand authenticity. the experiment design allowed for reliance on real-life brand situations based on the study objectives. the researchers were also able to exert high control over the study, which enhanced its internal validity. this study design is based on the one employed by nhedzi et al. (2016) and nhedzi (2020), which was the first to test the effect of brand linkage through card scoring. the experiment had a single factor (brand linkage) between subjects’ designs. nhedzi et al. (2016) and nhedzi (2020) used an experimental method to test the effect of brand linkage on brand relationships. similarly, a pretest-posttest control group design was used to evaluate whether there were significant differences in brand ratings between the (experimental) group, who were aware and unaware of the kfc add hope campagin, and the (control) group, who were aware and unaware of the kfc add hope campaign. manipulation the manipulation involved participants reading and viewing a description of the kfc crm campaign initiative because of its relevance to brand communication and consumers’ assessment of brand authenticity, brand trust, and crm. the researchers randomly allocated participants to a spontaneous single blind trial to rule out potential brand-related confounds, offering brand knowledge and authentic positioning. at the outset, randomisation minimises the bias in allocating respondents to the intervention and control group; however, it does not exclude the chances of differential treatment of groups, or biased adjudication of outcome variables (kirk 2013). a single-blinded trial involved blinding any group of individuals. for this study, the respondents who received the intervention were blinded to the intervention assignments. if respondents are not aware that they are getting an experiment or not, the clinical outcomes are rarely influenced by their expectations. thus, blinding respondents helps in the reduction of expectation bias. 9392 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi the participants were randomly divided into four groups, and each participant received 99 cards. to achieve high internal validity, random assignment was employed through single blinding (kirk 2013); yet the chances to be included in a given group were equal for all consumers, and independent from their characteristics or prior experience with the brand (i.e., kfc). the researchers measured brand trust before and after participants were exposed to the kfc add hope campaign, and then created an index by subtracting the before-exposure score from the after-exposure score. at the pretest, the respondents were given envelopes labelled with the names of six major fast food brands and a set of 99 cards. they were asked to allocate these cards to each brand in accordance with their general assessment of the brands in terms of how they trust these brands to give to a charity by placing cards in each envelope. in order to preclude confounds, the researchers held the specific information constant on the target; bland and neutral across conditions except for the experiment groups. the kfc campaign was identical across conditions. the process of sorting the cards into six envelopes was repeated at post-test. the four groups: ♦ 29.1% (n=44) aware experiment (ae) group, in which the participants who mentioned crm r2 initiatives were linked to kfc and were shown the advertisement; ♦ 29.8% (n=45) aware control (ac) group, in which the participants were aware of the kfc crm initiatives and then no campaign was shown to them; ♦ 20.5% (n=31) unaware experiment (ue) group, in which the participants did not mention crm r2 being linked to kfc and were shown the kfc campaign; and ♦ 20.5% (n=31) unaware control (uc) group, in which the participants were not shown any campaign. as a rule of thumb, the study ensured sufficient statistical power; the size of 30 to 40 participants per experimental condition seemed to be an adequate size, with a total number of 151 respondents (geuens & de pelsmacker 2017). the number of participants required was 105 to 220 participants, as per requirements related to the pairwise post hoc tests (brysbaert 2019: 16). the results for six fast food restaurant brands are presented in figure 1. the total number of votes allocated was 14 949. if these votes had been randomly distributed (that is, no differentiation between brands), each brand would have received 2 491.5 votes. kfc’s score of 4 070 was therefore 61% higher than a random score. the average score for kfc per respondent was 26,9 votes (4 070/151) compared to an average random score per respondent of 16,6 votes. 9392 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants  20.5% (n=31) unaware experiment (ue) group, in which the participants did not mention crm r2 being linked to kfc and were shown the kfc campaign; and  20.5% (n=31) unaware control (uc) group, in which the participants were not shown any campaign. as a rule of thumb, the study ensured sufficient statistical power; the size of 30 to 40 participants per experimental condition seemed to be an adequate size, with a total number of 151 respondents (geuens & de pelsmacker 2017). the number of participants required was 105 to 220 participants, as per requirements related to the pairwise post hoc tests (brysbaert 2019: 16). the results for six fast food restaurant brands are presented in figure 1. the total number of votes allocated was 14 949. if these votes had been randomly distributed (that is, no differentiation between brands), each brand would have received 2 491.5 votes. kfc’s score of 4 070 was therefore 61% higher than a random score. the average score for kfc per respondent was 26,9 votes (4 070/151) compared to an average random score per respondent of 16,6 votes. figure 1: results for six fast food restaurant brands the respondents were then asked whether they were aware of these brands being associated with charity initiatives in any way. responses were recorded in a short questionnaire. there were 89 respondents who were spontaneously aware of the kfc add hope initiative. these “aware” 1590 4070 1897 2003 2030 3359 1483 5544 1555 1805 1608 2954 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 wimpy kfc steers nando’s chicken licken mcdonald’s series1 series2 figure 1: results for six fast food restaurant brands the respondents were then asked whether they were aware of these brands being associated with charity initiatives in any way. responses were recorded in a short questionnaire. there were 89 respondents who were spontaneously aware of the kfc add hope initiative. these “aware” respondents allocated 6 590 votes to kfc, which on average rated kfc 30,8 votes, compared to a random allocation score of 16,6 votes and the kfc average of 26,9 votes. the spontaneously aware results showed that the respondents of this charity association were more likely to rate kfc’s salience much higher than average. therefore, the clinical results gave a clear indication that the brand trust itself (after exposure to the kfc crm brand campaign) resulted in noticeably higher ratings of kfc as a trusted brand connected to add hope, by those who were aware of the crm initiative. data analysis and results all statistical analyses were computed by utilising the statistical package for social sciences (spss v.26). the researchers used the test and one-way analysis of variance (anova) (lipsey & hurley 2009: 51). one-way anova was used to compare the groups because it is considered the prototypical experimental design in which one treatment group is compared with one control group. a paired-sample t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention on consumers’ scores on the kfc crm. 9594 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi sample the researchers collected demographic profile information, including gender, age, ethnicity, education qualification, employment status, and family income. the proportions of males (49.7%) were almost the same as of females (50.3%). the sample was generally educated: most participants (65.6%) held a certificate or diploma, or undergraduate degree. this study also determined that nearly two-thirds of the respondents (65.6%) who participated in this study were employed. lastly, more than three-quarters of the respondents had a gross monthly household income between r10 001 and r30 000 (58.2%) (see table 2). table 2: sample characteristics variable frequency % gender male female 75 76 49.7 50.3 age 18-24 years 25-38 years 39-54 years 55-73 years 34 92 24 1 22,5 60,9 15,9 0,7 ethnicity black african white coloured indian or asian 89 30 23 9 58,9 19,9 15,2 6 highest academic qualification high school certificate/diploma degree postgraduate other 28 48 51 22 2 18,5 31,8 33,8 14,6 1,3 employment status employed self-employed unemployed/ retired student 78 21 24 28 51,7 13,9 15,9 18,5 9594 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants variable frequency % monthly household income less than r5 000 r5 001 to r10 000 r10 001 to r20 000 r20 001 to r30 000 more than r30 000 3 21 44 44 39 2,0 13,9 29,1 29,1 25,8 differences between the four groups after intervention to determine whether any between-group differences were found at the end of the study due to participants’ intervention across groups, intergroup comparisons were first conducted to determine whether there were significant differences between the four groups’ posttest scores following exposure to the intervention. table 3: differences across four groups (post-test) n mean std. std. error min. max. f sign. post_ kfc aware experiment (campaign) 44 48,23 14,752 2,224 30 89 15,600 ,000 aware control 45 36,89 17,741 2,645 1 93 unaware experiment (campaign) 31 30,90 8,990 1,615 15 49 unaware control 31 25,94 15,593 2,801 5 99 total 151 36,72 17,011 1,384 1 99 significance: (p<.05); not significant: (p>.05); confidence level: 95% post hoc tests revealed statistically significant differences across the four groups and how respondents rated kfc (aware experiment, n = 44: aware control, n = 45: unaware experiment, n = 31: unaware control, n = 31), x4 (4, n = 151) = 15,60, p = ,000 after the intervention) (see table 3). the aware experiment group recorded a higher mean score (m = 48,23) than the other three groups, which recorded mean values of 36,89, 30,90 and 25,94. 9796 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi table 4: multiple comparisons − post hoc test results (i) group (j) group mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound aware experiment group aware control group 11.338* 3,173 ,003 3,09 19,58 unaware experiment group 17.324* 3,509 ,000 8,20 26,44 unaware control group 22.292* 3,509 ,000 13,17 31,41 aware control group aware experiment group -11.338* 3,173 ,003 -19,58 -3,09 unaware experiment group 5,986 3,493 ,320 -3,09 15,06 unaware control group 10.953* 3,493 ,011 1,88 20,03 unaware experiment group aware experiment group -17.324* 3,509 ,000 -26,44 -8,20 aware control group -5,986 3,493 ,320 -15,06 3,09 unaware control group 4,968 3,801 ,560 -4,91 14,85 unaware control group aware experiment group -22.292* 3,509 ,000 -31,41 -13,17 aware control group -10.953* 3,493 ,011 -20,03 -1,88 unaware experiment group -4,968 3,801 ,560 -14,85 4,91 *. the mean difference is significant at the 0,05 level. post hoc tests shown in table 4 reveal that the aware experiment group (m = 48,23, sd = 14,75) is significantly different from the aware control (m = 36,89, sd = 17,74; p = ,003), compared to unaware experiment (m = 30,90, sd = 8,99; p = ,000) and to unaware control group (m = 25,94, sd = 15,59; p = ,000). furthermore, the aware control group (m = 36,89, sd = 17,74) was significantly different from the unaware control group (m = 25,94, sd = 15,59; p = ,011). however, there was no statistically significant difference in mean scores between the unaware experiment and unaware control groups (p = ,560). similarly, there was also no statistically significant difference in mean scores between the aware control and unaware experiment groups (p = ,320). 9796 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants differences between the four groups over time (intra-group comparison) it was also necessary to investigate each of the four groups separately and compare for significant differences between the rating scores before (pre) and after (post) a kfc crm intervention for each group. hypotheses the ‘null hypothesis’: h0: there is no difference in mean preand post-ratings scores and an ‘alternative hypothesis’: ha: there is a difference in mean preand post-rating scores table 5: difference between pre-and post-intervention ratings for each group on kfc mean n std. deviation std. error mean t df sig. aware experiment (campaign) pre_kfc 32.70 44 11.145 1.680 -6.907 43 ,000 post_kfc 48.23 44 14.752 2.224 aware control pre_kfc 29.18 45 14.110 2.103 -5.035 44 ,000 post_kfc 36.89 45 17.741 2.645 unaware experiment (campaign) pre_kfc 19.55 31 5.988 1.075 -7.768 30 ,000 post_kfc 30.90 31 8.990 1.615 unaware control pre_kfc 22.97 31 15.072 2.707 -2.957 30 ,006 post_kfc 25.94 31 15.593 2.801 in table 5, a paired sample t-test was conducted to compare the number of scores on kfc for each group’s pretest and posttest. firstly, there was a significant difference in the scores for kfc aware intervention pretest (m = 32,70, sd = 11,15) and aware intervention posttest (m = 48,23, sd = 14,75) conditions, t(43) = -6.907, p = ,000. secondly, there was a significant difference in the scores for kfc aware no intervention pretest (m = 29,18, sd = 14,11) and aware no intervention posttest (m = 36,89, sd = 17,74) conditions, t(44) = -5.035, p = ,000. thirdly, there was a significant difference in the scores for kfc unaware intervention pretest (m = 19,55, sd = 5,99) and kfc unaware intervention posttest (m = 30,90, sd = 8,99) conditions, t(30) = -7.768, p = ,000. finally, the results showed statistically significant difference between pretest unaware no intervention (m = 22,97, sd = 15,07) and posttest unaware no intervention 9998 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi (m = 25,94, sd = 15,59) conditions, t(30) = -2.957, p = ,006. overall, the results confirmed that there is evidence to suggest that participants experienced statistically significantly greater brand trust before and after intervention on kfc scores. the results are summarised in table 5. the null hypothesis is rejected since p < 0.05 (in fact p = .000 or p = .006). discussion and conclusion this research adds to the general understanding of the influence of cause-related marketing strategy effects in fast food restaurants on brand trust and makes several contributions to the existing literature. this experimental study meets the demand by probing, for the first time, the impact of brand trust on consumers’ ratings of brands and cause-related marketing. the research advances knowledge of crm marketing by examining brand trust using the card scoring method. the unit of analysis is the individual card scoring and perception of crm initiative. empirically, the researchers observed whether consumers score more on kfc when exposed to crm initiatives than not. it was with the assumption that the card scoring outcome follows a good cause impression of the brand. in line with previous research (nhedzi 2020; nhedzi et al. 2016), the researchers specify the stimuli as the kfc add r2 hope initiative campaign. in summary, the crm initiative can substantially enhance brand trust, as card scoring compared to other brands in post-test declined on experiment groups. theoretical implications possible contributions of the current study are threefold. firstly, the results confirmed that the crm manipulation was successful: participants in the experiment (i.e., received the intervention of exposure to crm campaign) brand condition rated the brand significantly higher on each of the card scores than participants in the control group condition (i.e., did not receive any intervention). cause-related marketing can positively affect a brand in such a way because the cause can cultivate consumer attitudes that the brand is supporting worthy causes; thus, the consumer should support the brand and its associated causes. previous research found that crm initiatives increased consumer attitudes towards a brand, regardless of product-cause relationship (nan & heo 2007). another study revealed that cause-related marketing effectively increases overall attitude towards a product, because the warmth associated with a cause is partnered with the competence associated with a brand, which leads to positive effects on overall attitudes for both the product and cause (aaker et al. 2010). secondly, the study was applied in the context of a field experiment. by nature, field experiments are dynamic, and situations may arise that threaten its internal validity. this, in turn, can affect the results of the experimentation. the researchers conducted an experiment with a strong degree of internal validity. according to the classification specifically for the study, as such guided by kirk (2013) and campbell and stanley (1966), some of these situations are history, maturation, experimental mortality, treatment diffusion, instrumentation, experimenter behaviour, and environmental environment, and so on. 9998 does the use of cause-related marketing in fast food restaurants thirdly, the present study found that the significant difference between groups was mainly between the exposed participants and those who did not receive any intervention. the differences between the four groups after intervention showed no statistical significance between the unaware control group and the aware control group, as well as the unaware experiment group. this finding implies that it may be important to measure the amounts of donations’ influence on crm within the fast food industry. future research, therefore, may extend our understanding of crm to other low-ranking fast food restaurant brands. this will encourage a comparison with larger fast food restaurant brands. managerial and societal implications the debate on crm has been central and continuous (anghel et al. 2011; coleman et al. 2019). as part of their social responsibility, many brands practice cause-related marketing in which brands donate to a chosen cause with every consumer purchase (vanhamme et al. 2012). in particular, principal component analysis on factors such as personal and restaurant attributes positively influenced perceptions of restaurant authenticity (dipietro & levitt 2019). no academic studies have dispelled the belief that brand trust through the card scoring method, a nonverbal rating of crm effectiveness, has an impact on the brand. the findings from this study can at least partly provide both useful reference points on these issues and serve to inform marketers of debate questions such as whether there is a difference in rating scores following a crm campaign intervention. in effect, the current study shows that marketers operating in the fast food restaurant industry looking to raise the strength of a marketing plan, should consider add hope for crm hunger initiatives. thus, the evidence from this study confirms the assertion of dipietro and levitt (2019) that brand equity increases the likelihood that consumers will choose that particular brand as well as pay a price premium over competing brands. thus, from a managerial point of view, crm hunger initiatives of fast food restaurant brands could potentially be a lucrative value-adding tool for brands within this industry. in addition, this study’s results share similarities with vanhamme et al.’s (2012) findings that enhanced identification with the cause leads to a more positive evaluation of marketing campaigns for a cause type and cause scope. thus, consistent with the findings of this study and prior research findings, it is recommended that brand trust increased significantly with the endorsement, should provide a useful guide for marketers. bergkvist and zhou (2019) suggest that crm affects brand evaluation along two paths: the indirect transfer path, mediated by the attribution of motives, and the direct transfer path in which attitude towards the cause is transferred to the brand. similarly, this finding is aligned with the result of prior studies that crm can have positive feedback effects on the cause (lafferty & edmondson 2009; samu & wymer 2014). another contribution of this research is to fill the gap described by bergkvist and zhou (2019) as missing in almost all crm persuasion studies based on experiments that compared different levels of independent variables to ascertain the effect of independent variables. most studies did not include a no-crm control condition, or at least one condition with other forms of marketing activity that this study employed. 101100 matiringe-tshiangala & nhedzi this study extends the card scoring method and brand authenticity in fast food by connecting consumer perceptions and brand trust within african contexts. limitations and future directions firstly, although a convenience sample is generally used for exploratory purposes, using a nonrandom sample of consumers might weaken the generalisability of these findings to the whole population. therefore, future researchers are encouraged to augment external validity by replicating the experiment procedures in different settings. it should also be noted that prior experience towards a particular brand (i.e., fast food restaurants) can affect dependent variables (i.e., brand trust, crm). however, this study utilised field experiments in a real-world situation to maximise internal validity. therefore, there might be possible extraneous variable effects that could not be controlled in the study. thus, to increase the generalisability of the results, it is recommended for future studies to examine the impact of pre-existing attitudes by utilising less controlled research settings over a larger representative sample. another limitation is that this study used a well-known fast food restaurant brand. it might be fruitful to measure the variable (i.e., crm, brand trust) after exposing the participants to different types of actual stimulus campaigns of other brands in future research. to improve the generalisability of the study findings and establish strong causality, there is a need for future research to employ a more rigorous experimental framework to examine whether the results reported here differ across large populations and settings. therefore, the current study reveals more subtle and causal levels of insight. another important issue is that this study is quantitative, which implies that in-depth individual insight is limited, unlike those in qualitative studies. future research could consider in-depth qualitative methods to establish the perceptions of consumers on crm in fast food restaurant brands. despite its limitations, this study is believed to meet the urgent need to establish how a brand cause-related marketing campaign impacts consumers’ brand ratings. for this purpose, the present research provides empirical findings pertaining to the consumers’ ratings of crm campaigns in the fast food restaurant industry via the pretest-posttest control group design using an actual crm initiative and the actual brand. hence, the researchers propose the hypothesised inquiry as an initial exploration, hoping 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https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720916463 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720916463 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1134-0 https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298805200306 https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298805200306 https://doi.org/10.1108/imr-05-2019-0144 https://doi.org/10.1108/imr-12-2018-0349 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00660-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00660-y _hlk82254152 _hlk82254163 _hlk82254181 _hlk82254193 _hlk73749470 _hlk82254224 _hlk82254268 _hlk82254304 _hlk82254315 _hlk82254329 _hlk82254363 _hlk72322160 _hlk73123858 _hlk73999940 1. melissa steyn the diversity imperative: excellence, institutional culture, and limiting assumptions at some historically white universities communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 1 17 melissa steyn* abstract contrary to a still common belief that diversity lowers standards, current research in higher education indicates that an institution that wishes to maintain a competitive advantage needs to put well-managed diversity very high on its agenda, for reasons of academic and pedagogical excellence as well as to be responsive to changing local and global dynamics. in order to rearticulate diversity as an imperative driven by the search for excellence, the established institutional culture needs to be interrogated to understand why diversity is constructed as a “problem” and attitudes and values are maintained that are hostile to an inclusionary culture. a key element in this institutional culture is whiteness, and different forms of multiculturalism can be identified in terms of their relationship to the power of white privilege. this article names and discusses several assumptions that may underpin received practices and approaches within historically white universities (hwus), which need to be rigorously challenged, and argues for an approach to diversity which can be described as “critical diversity”. 1 * professor melissa steyn is the director of intercultural and diversity studies at the university of cape town. introduction this article reflects on some issues pertaining to diversity1 at universities in south africa, particularly those that may be regarded as historically white (hwus)2, and is informed by some trends in the higher education sector both in south africa and internationally. the research on which the article is based was conducted at two such institutions (steyn & van zyl 2001; van zyl, steyn & orr 2003). nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume that resonances will exist within the institutional cultures of other hwus in the country (see, for example, hugo 1998). as the entire postapartheid education system restructures in response to changes brought about externally by globalisation and internally by the new legislative environment—particularly the demographic shifts occasioned by new access policies—diversity has been put firmly on the agenda. michael cross (2004: 406) comments: south african campuses have embarked upon a wide range of initiatives to foster and respond to the changes within south african society while preparing students for the realities of increasing globalisation. they are slowly but steadily redirecting their student bodies and their staff to reflect the demographics of south african society. they have developed an increasing awareness about the need to address the social imbalances inherited from apartheid and the need to be responsive to wider social needs. the diversity project has gained momentum in this process. however, fragmentation of effort and a piecemeal approach still dominates institutional responses to these challenges (cross 2004: 406). as institutions face these new realities, the need is being felt to understand the impact of diversity, and to develop capacity at both an institutional and individual level in managing our new educational spaces. a fair body of knowledge has been built up detailing staff and student demographics, staff and student experiences, perceptions and attitudes, and organisational climate/culture. this work shows that demographically, the student composition has changed considerably. for example, by 2000 there was a majority of african students both in universities (60%) and technikons (72%), a demographic shift which has been hailed as amongst the most remarkable in the world (cassim 2005: 658; cooper & subotzky 2001). nevertheless, the changes to the student body are uneven within the hwus—figures for contact students in 2005 show that the university of johannesburg had a black3 student intake of 70%, ufs had 65% black students, uct had 49% , and wits 64%. the university of stellenbosch had 27% (doe 2006: 29). changing the composition of the staff at universities, by contrast, has been “slow and lethargic”, raising the question of “whether transformation is taking place at all” (cassim 2005: 658). it is estimated that the current profile will be difficult to change over the next 25 years (hall 2007). the percentage of black staff in instruction and research positions, particularly, points to “serious employment inequalities in 2005” (doe 2006: 40): the university of johannesburg has 29% black academic staff, wits had 25%, uct 21%; ufs 17%, and stellenbosch 12%. 2 this unevenness results in a “lack of fit” between students and lecturers. it can be stated generally that it is often at the interfaces between the different university constituencies, between faculty, students and administrative staff that difficult diversity issues most visibly come to the fore. moreover, lack of transformation is perceived as a problem mostly by underrepresented groups, whereas dominant groups show less concern for the issues, may feel threatened by change, or even show latent hostility to transformation processes (steyn & van zyl 2001; erasmus 2006). the upshot is that as far as effecting inclusive diverse communities is concerned, our institutions are not where we want them to be, and much remains to be done (duncan 2005; erasmus & de wet 2003; ismail 2002; narsee 2004; shackleton et al. 2006; steyn & van zyl 2001). to a large extent, the challenge is to move beyond the rhetoric of inclusion to practices that ensure it. this includes addressing the way in which dominant norms affect marginalized groups (gubitosi-white 1996; narsee 2004). the established norms in institutional culture at hwus the changes undertaken towards transformation at the hwus generally reflect the understanding of transformation as being a process of “putting mechanisms in place to change the profile of staff and students” (lewin 2000: 7). even in south african ‘best practice’ institutions, the activities that were engaged in and deemed high in priority were those that dealt with the specific functional aspects of legislative compliance. for example, the development of policy was rated 1 by all four institutions (most important), as was the preparation of the annual equity reports (which are required to be submitted to the department of labour in september of each year). target setting, which is part of the legislative requirements, was also rated 1 by all four institutions. it would thus appear from the rankings, as well as from the depth interviews that equity officers are preoccupied with compliance as a major part of their daily activities (cassim 2005: 427). lewin (2000) points out that such notions of transformation, linked with technicist discourses of planning, have addressed the liberal rights aspects of change but have not inculcated values and culture that support, sustain, and promote equity. the consequence, she stresses, has been that even the programmes of changing the liberal rights base of universities have been undermined, exemplified in the inability to change staff profiles, the failure to draw on the “full reservoirs of talent and diversity of perspectives and experience within the country”, and providing few positive role models for marginalized groups (uct ee plan section 1 2000: 2). creating an institutional culture4 conducive to the happiness of a diverse population requires active attention to the experiences of people within an institution. given the power of establishment, and contrary to popular wisdom, such change does not simply fall into place with time, but is best facilitated through processes of genuine dialogue and deliberate policy. the dominant, inherited institutional culture, which was shaped around, and arose out of, a specific cultural base, needs to be made visible to those that function within it. unless this process of raising awareness is actively taken on, it 3 remains a taken-for-granted given, operating mostly at an unconscious level to determine “the way things are”. for those whose cultural base forms the core of the institutional culture, the system works so seamlessly that, in most instances, they are more than likely not aware of the fact that there is a specific cultural bias at work. it is just experienced as the “normal” way of doing things. where a great deal of status and privilege attaches to the cultural positionality, the invisibility of the assumptions deepens into assumptions that these “normal” ways of doing things are, in fact, appropriate for all people, and that they can, and even should, be universalised. other ways are seen as deficient, as falling away from the norm, and therefore a problem which needs to be fixed, altered, and educated away. “default identities” are characterised by a lack of reflexivity about how power underpins the privilege which defines the norms (walker 2005: 135). for those who fall outside of the centered positionality, there is an acute sense that the system does not work for them, and that the assumptions of the normality of the centre act as unarticulated, but powerful, barriers to success and comfort. in such an environment only those most adept at assimilation can succeed, and then at a price. for this reason, in education as in other social domains, the assimilation model is not regarded as supportive of developing or drawing upon the talent and abilities of a diverse population. in sum, the “problem” needs to be redefined as emanating from the centre, not the margins—and this applies not only as regards questions of race, but also gender and sexuality. any serious work aimed at transformation needs to make visible the discourses, strategies and practices on which the centre depends for its legitimation and reproduction. a crucial notion in the contemporary debates on “race” is that of “whiteness”. this can be seen as the social positioning which was opened up for those of european descent in relation to “others” through the enormous differences in power, wealth and influence established over three or four hundred years, and then further rationalised in the past 150 years through “race” theories and discourses (steyn 2001). this privileged position continues to reproduce itself socially and ideologically, through normalising itself as the invisible centre of power, while keeping attention focused on the “others” which it marginalises, and constructs as being the source of the problems that need to be solved in a multicultural context. an example of how whiteness operates is through mobilising key tropes around which dominant and resistance discourses of transformation are clustered, such as “educational standards”. the meaning of terms like these are construed as transparent and immutable, obscuring the fact that meanings are embedded within complex discourses which derive their meanings historically—in this case entrenched in eurocentric notions of education and knowledge. despite attempts from various quarters to implement transformation in line with the democratisation of the country, such discourses still work to channel and maintain relations of power, to construct and organise definitions of transformation, and prescribe its extent and form. different social subjects are located in relation to each other within these discourses: the people 4 who are centred are the (mostly) white males who “know what it takes”, and who are able to construct themselves as benevolent, even charitable, gatekeepers of that which must be protected from deterioration for the sake of all involved, the models of what it means to have “merit”. for black people, the subjectivities that are constructed are those of the bearers of the “problem” that must be changed: they need to be helped, trained, reconstructed. they must follow and practice diligently, all the time depending on the models to show them how, and to decide when, and on what terms, they may gain access or succeed. inextricably intertwined with the power of whiteness, the sheer inertia of the past has a formidable force in resisting change, requiring great energy and commitment from those who are straining to transform institutional culture. as in so many south african organisations generally, there appears to be a disjuncture between the formal rhetoric of commitment to transformation and the underlying, privately held attitudes of a large percentage of those whose everyday choices, decisions and manner of operating serve to create and maintain the status quo institutional culture. critical multiculturalism and diversity both the terms multiculturalism and diversity acquired a bad reputation through the way in which the apartheid system used them to manipulate differences to further its goals of dividing people and institutionalising inequality. because we need a vocabulary to talk about difference within a framework of social justice, however, we need to retool this vocabulary (cross 2004; cassim 2005). i therefore outline various schools of multiculturalism which can be distinguished in terms of the position they adopt towards the centred institutional culture described above. conservative approaches to multiculturalism try to keep the colonial and white supremacist relations as intact as possible, without naming them as such. characteristically, such versions of multiculturalism construct those seeking to be accommodated in systems from which they were previously excluded as coming from “culturally deprived backgrounds”. other groups are “add-ons” to the dominant culture, and can benefit from “joining the club” — provided they denude themselves of their “other” practices. it posits monolingualism, and the knowledge, practices, measures and discourses of dominant (european) culture. liberal multiculturalism, by contrast, posits a natural equality between all groups, maintaining that with a certain measure of reform everyone would be able to compete equally. nevertheless, the legitimising norms are identified with white cultural and political communities. it largely ignores the workings of established power and privilege, and universalises the privileged white subject. in its commitment to bringing about equitable education in the context of a historical legacy of unequal distribution of privilege and power, much of the thinking which gives impetus to the transformation of the national education system is informed by what can be called critical multiculturalism (chisholm 2001; labusi 2001; ministry of education 2001). the strength of this position is that it does not present itself as value-free but 5 rather declares its social agenda upfront. in brief, this particular stance towards diversity: • departs from a profound commitment to the values of democracy, social justice, equity and empowerment; • recognises that incorporation of those once marginalised involves not assimilation, but a transformation of the cultural milieu to bring about new meanings and representations; • rejects essentialised notions of identity, naturalised notions of race, gender, etc, and discourses which reify homogeneity; and • stresses that identity and difference are constructed within specific historical, cultural and power relations (goldberg 1994; giroux 1992). in other words, critical multiculturalism can be distinguished from both conservative and liberal multiculturalism through its refusal to (re)stabilise centred whiteness, and to maintain systems of unequal power and influence while (and through) tampering with the margins. while this analysis has focused on the debates within multiculturalism, a similar line of argument needs to posit a critical diversity5 approach to issues of all marginalised groups, not merely focused on “culture”. diversity as a human rights issue international thinking on human rights increasingly recognises diversity as a human rights issue: valuing diversity is seen to be a counter measure to racist, fascist, imperial and colonial ideologies. the declaration of the world conference against racism, held in durban in 2001, is headed tolerance and diversity: a vision for the 21st century. it unequivocally identifies a new attitude towards diversity as holding the key to the 21st century: instead of allowing diversity of race and culture to become a limiting factor in human exchange and development, we must refocus our understanding, discern in such diversity the potential for mutual enrichment . . . for too long such diversity has been treated as threat rather than gift. and too often that threat has been expressed in racial contempt and conflict, in exclusion, discrimination and intolerance (wcar declaration 2001). the failure to create an equitable environment for the diverse groups that live, work, study, and play in any social context constitutes a form of human rights abuse. this is, of course, crucial in the context of south african education which is struggling to overcome the legacy of injustice it has inherited. an education system as the primary system responsible for cultural and ideological reproduction (freire 1972; giroux 1992) is invariably implicated in the social ambitions of governments. for example, segregated education, with the express intention of preserving white social and political supremacy, was introduced to cape education by langham dale in 1893. the 6 education of white youth was to be on a par with that of their peers in europe, while coloureds and africans were to be educated for a subordinate position in society. attempting to entrench the historical advantage people of european descent had attained, the apartheid government organised society to maintain the exclusionary privileges of a white minority. many inequities were enforced and maintained by law, others operated on intangible processes of exclusion. it firmed up the white supremacist impetus in the education system with the introduction of christian national education, the principles of which were formulated in 1939. south african youth came through a strictly divided and fragmented education system, characterised by gross inequity in terms of investment per child, syllabi, resources, linguistic fit of tuition and every other aspect of education. in line with the political aspirations of the postapartheid society, the new constitution enshrines rights like equal access to equal education, and protects and supports diversity. subsequent to 1994, the new government had passed a series of laws such as the higher education act of 1997, and the employment equity act of 1988. these acts seek to integrate education, and create a more equitable and accessible education system for staff and students through addressing previously entrenched disparities. however, social inclusion, as cele and menon (2006) point out, is “a radical paradigm that advocates the transformation of societal values through its institutional frameworks and arrangements in a manner that transcends policy assertions” (cele & menon 2006). it goes to the heart of how we do our daily business, including our attitudes and approaches within the lecture hall, the content of the curriculum and our levels of selfawareness generally as social actors. narsee (2004: 87) states pertinently that “because our identities are constructed through dialogue, the failure to respect and recognise diversity in our students can be a form of oppression”. diversity as a hallmark of excellence in an attempt to persuade universities to play a pivotal role in social transformation the state has placed equity and redress imperatives at the core of the general university activity (teaching, research and community service). because this does, in fact, emanate from an external political agenda, the emphasis on diversity may be seen as violating traditional academic values such as academic freedom6, compromising the academic integrity of the university. that is a separate issue, and needs to be debated on its own merit. nevertheless, there are other reasons, intrinsic to the nature of higher education, that urge us to take diversity seriously. internationally there has been a shift in how diversity is viewed. far from being a liability to an excellent monocultural hegemonic educational system, conceded only because of legal equity requirements, diversity is recognised as a key indicator of excellence and integral to the “business case” of the university as an institution of learning, teaching and research. internationally, universities have found that attention to diversity is healthy selfinterest, and that it should be seen to be such by all members of the university body. an institution that wishes to maintain competitimve advantage needs to put diversity very 7 high on its agenda (american council of education 2000; american council of education & american association of university professors 2000; anderson et al. 2000; the diversity coalition 2002; maruyama & moreno 2000). cassim (2005: 655-656) refers to three imperatives that may motivate equity activities: the legislative imperative, the strategic imperative and the moral imperative. taking the legislative imperative as a given, and having made some comments on the moral imperative, i argue that those institutions that wish to lead the way in institutionalising diversity in their campuses should integrate diversity into the core activities of the university as an imperative determined by the search for excellence. i argue that there are at least three pillars on which the excellence driver in higher education rests: the academic imperative, which identifies diversity as a factor in the quality of academic output, to the point that the ability to use the benefits of diverse perspectives becomes one of the primary indicators and determiners of excellent outputs; the pedagogical imperative, which affirms that infusing diversity practices into the teaching environment, materials, curricula, etc. makes for a superior educational outcomes; the social imperative, which reinforces the need to consciously understand the diversity in our increasingly complex and global societies, and to prepare students for citizenship in this world, and to integrate this consciousness into our knowledge production. these imperatives point us back to the centrality of institutional culture, and the need to examine the attitudes, values and beliefs that inform the dominant ways of going about things, and the need to “surface” the assumptions that secure the sedimented “common sense” inherited from our diversity-averse histories, and which continue to shape our mindsets. as narseee (2004: 89) reminds us: valuing differences should go beyond seeking to reduce conflict and maintaining harmony. interactions among diverse understandings, perceptions, histories and discourses must engender opportunities for continuous critical examination of dominant cultures and core values both in the organization and in the curricula (narsee 2004: 89). in the following section, i draw on the research conducted at two hwus to identify a few assumptions shaping some institutional cultural responses to diversity, and working against the direction of critical multiculturalism/diversity. challenging embedded assumptions assumption: increased diversity compromises excellence on the contrary, diversity is essential to excellence — universities need to be able to draw on the widest possible pool of talent, incorporate a rich repertoire of perspectives and experience, and invite challenges to otherwise unproblematised lines of thinking. increasingly, we will be ill-equipped in our pursuit of excellence without a multiperspectival approach (duster 1993; marin 2000). as hall puts it: universities with established high rankings in international league tables are invariably those that attract talent from a wide, often global catchment. leading us 8 research universities would not be what they are if they had not succeeded in recruiting excellent students and faculty from india and china, and both countries are now benefiting enormously from the reverse flow of expertise (hall 2007: 9). one of our greatest challenges is to counter the lingering ethnocentrism and even racism that avers that difference will “pull down” the university, and that “others” need to learn, but have little to contribute. assumption: diversity is an add-on, it is not part of the core business of the university in south africa, the notion is not widespread that bringing diversity into the curriculum is not just simple political correctness, but can strengthen scholarship (cross 2004: 393). well-managed diversity in the university makes for good teaching, good learning, and good research (gurin 2002; hurtado 2003; marin 2000). in a diverse academic environment different perspectives need to be considered and incorporated, assumptions are challenged, thinking becomes more complex, and people skills are developed, to name only a few of the ways in which people are more stretched. diversity should consciously be part of all our core activities, a precious resource not wasted through poor management of differences, or implicit norms that inhibit full participation of all and create undue levels of comfort for some and discomfort for others. at the very least, students need to be prepared for the complex and heterogeneous world they are entering, and we need to teach and produce knowledge applicable to that world. assumption: diversity is only an issue because of the political situation in sa internationally, there is recognition that the internal demographics of nation states are becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous, and that this is happening within an increasingly interconnected world. one of the effects of globalisation and its countercurrents is that the need to understand, produce knowledge about, and cater for diversity is becoming one of the more widespread pressures on higher education generally (humphreys 1997). the pressure is linked to the perceived competencies required for graduates, generally7, and also the need for universities to remain relevant to their societies. south africa offers one of the most instructive sites at which one can learn these lessons, and, ironically, a person who does not wish to acquire such capacity here is likely to be poorly equipped for the diversity challenges of any society. assumption: diversity is primarily about changing numbers diversity should be understood in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. it concerns our response to difference, as such. changing the representation of groups where there is imbalance is essential — at the very least it is part of what makes a more welcoming place for all and develops visible critical masses — but on its own adjusting numbers and bringing people into the same pedagogical space does not necessarily bring about mutual learning or better attitudes, though it may do so to an extent. a liberal academic environment often tends to be individualistic, competitive and elitist, with the result that differences tend to be constructed into hierarchies. yet the crux of turning 9 difference into the resource it should be centres on creating a caring, supportive environment for all who work and study on campus. successful diversity management would be concerned to support difference in its many forms, and to cater for the most vulnerable and marginalised; such an environment enables all to contribute their best. the rub is that it requires conscious work on the part of the university community, a commitment to building an ethos of care, and willingness to confront prejudices, stereotypes, assumptions, and blind spots. assumption: increasing diversity at a formerly white institution is for the sake of the disadvantaged it is not uncommon for people to talk as if white students are being compromised by increased diversity, whereas the benefit flows unilaterally to those who would not have had access unless special measures were instituted to “bring them in”. this assimilationist model deprives those students who often stand to gain the most from interaction. learning to function competently in settings characterised by difference is necessary for the mainstream—for whites, males, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, etc. research has shown that such students are likely to benefit in innumerable ways, not only through intellectual and emotional challenge, but also through developing better attitudes towards citizenship and improved preparation for democratic approaches and increased racial and cultural understanding. they are also more able to engage in lifelong learning, to mention only a few gains (chang & astin 1997; gurin 2002; marin 2000; narsee 2004). assumption: diversity is primarily for the sake of the student body some staff may recognise the value of difference for student development, but do not consider that they themselves need to be exposed to, and challenged by, difference for the sake of developing their own competencies and for their own growth. yet it is clear that many staff members are not prepared for the diverse classrooms, tearooms, meeting spaces and payrolls that they are now encountering. confinement to homogeneous environments stunts exactly such preparation, preserving limitations without recognising them for what they are (gudeman 2000). at the very least, contemporary university staff should be exposed to opportunities to enhance teaching skills and classroom management of diverse groups, in order to hone their skills for the new environment in which they teach (the diversity coalition 2002). assumption: if most people are satisfied with how diversity is handled, then it must be a “good environment” there is asymmetry in the way different groups are affected by prevailing norms and customs, and therefore in their perceptions and experiences of the same environment (erasmus & de wet 2003; humphreys 1997). generally, black people carry the major burden of race and racism, and it is the same for other marginal positions (women, disabled, homosexual, etc). one of the greatest difficulties in moving forward is the indifference that characterises dominant positions, such as whiteness. to name only one effect of this indifference: it tends to close down the dialogue that is essential to the development of mutual understanding. 10 assumption: diversity is the university administration’s problem while it is true that diversity intervention has to be driven from the most senior positions in the university if it is to be taken seriously, it also has to be seen to be, and taken on as everyone’s problem. the adoption of values of inclusiveness, mutual concern, supportiveness, a sense of the responsibility to right wrongs of an inequitable legacy, and to bring the best out in all members of the campus community must be part of the work we all do energetically. the willingness to dialogue, listen and learn must become part of a university’s ethos. assumption: change will happen best if it is left to happen gradually, naturally. it does not need to be driven, monitored, etc. inertia, subconscious resistance or fear, the weight of practice, benefits from the status quo, perhaps the unrecognised extent to which we are invested in way things have been done in the past, lack of acknowledgement of privilege — these and many more factors result in the fact that change actually doesn’t happen unless accountability is built into every node of an organisation’s operations. in embracing diversity as a core value for excellence, universities would need to concentrate on doing business as unusual. in line with best practice elsewhere, countering the tendency to reproduce the familiar entails drawing up a detailed, multifaceted action plan that assigns objectives, actions, and accountability, specifically focused on diversity, to specific people/posts, all the way across the university (smith 2003). there are many examples of such action plans (see, for example, anderson et al. 2000; the diversity coalition 2002). the plan should include procedures for systematic evaluation, so that the capacity to learn from our progress is built into the strategic thinking (clayton-pederen, parker & smith 2003; washington 2003). it is essential that in this process the voices of those who are underrepresented on campus should be given the chance to influence the core business of the organisation, rather than to be tangential to the process (smith 2003). funding needs to be earmarked specifically for ensuring that the objectives of an action plan can be met. this article does not make specific suggestions for the content of such an action plan, but it should include creating dedicated spaces that bring together the many efforts that are being made on campus and make them visible, as well as spaces for dialogue and encouraging service/experiential learning. it should put in place the measures to encourage pedagogical techniques that promote developing awareness of different perspectives (duster 1993) and “retooling” staff, and also for recognising and assisting students at risk. and importantly, it also requires that we re-examine our curricula to ensure that we develop inclusive curricula that “accurately reflect the experiences, voices, struggles, victories, and defeats of all racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and other social groups” (cross 2004: 403) and that institutional sites are nurtured where critical diversity scholarship is undertaken. it should ensure that diversity objectives are “hardwired” into the structures and procedures, and it should be a public, living document. such visibility goes a long way towards communicating that an institution 11 is serious about its commitment to its diverse and diversely talented community, both actual and still potential. however, as this article has argued, something more is required. it is a commitment to understand the new demands placed upon higher education in the new times, to change with them, and to develop knowledge which reflects that understanding. and because of our situated knowledge as a place of great diversity which needs to be put on a different footing, cross (2004) is surely correct when he says that it falls upon south african academics to develop diversity theory which integrates “the need for integrating the politics of cultural and identity recognition with the politics of social justice and equity, which represents a key strength in south african diversity discourse (cross 2004: 407). endnotes 1 in this article, equity is understood to be concerned with fair treatment and equality of opportunity, whereas diversity is regarded as “acknowledging and managing differences to attain multicultural institutions in which there is no form of discrimination” (cassim 2006: 420). as will become clear from the discussion in the article, it is not possible to achieve diversity in this sense without ensuring equity and addressing the power imbalances that obstruct the full expression of those differences which are compatible with social justice. 2 since the recent merging of universities the distinction between historically white and historically black institutions is no longer clear-cut. nevertheless, those universities that were established as “whites only” still continue to deal with the legacy of their whiteness, and thus for the purposes of this article, the acronym hwu will be used. 3 following the doe report, “black” includes black african, coloured and indian. 4 institutional culture is the “sum total” effect of the values, attitudes, styles of interaction, collective memories — the “way of life” of the university, known by those who work and study in the university environment through their lived experience. one is therefore addressing many layers of practices, norms and attitudes, some of which are more tangible than others. 5 adapting winddance twine’s (2006) concept of racial literacy, i define diversity literacy as: “diversity literacy” is a set of practices. it can best be characterised as a “reading practice” — a way of perceiving and responding to the social climate and prevalent structures of oppression. the analytical criteria employed to evaluate the presence of diversity literacy include the following: 1) a recognition of the symbolic and material value of hegemonic identities, such as whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity, able-bodiedness, etc.; 2) analytic skill at unpacking how these systems of oppression intersect, interlock, co-construct and constitute each other; 3) the definition of oppressive systems such as racism as current social problems rather than a historical legacy; 4) an understanding that social identities are learned and an outcome of social practices; 5) the possession of a diversity grammar and a vocabulary that facilitates a discussion of race, racism, and anti-racism, and the parallel concepts employed in the analysis of other forms of oppression; 6) the ability to translate (interpret) coded hegemonic practices; 7) an analysis of the ways that diversity hierarchies and institutionalised oppressions are mediated by class inequality; and 8) an engagement with issues 12 of transformation of these oppressive systems towards deepening democracy in all levels of social organisation. 6 see the debate on academic freedom and the autonomy of the university in sajhe 20(3). martin hall (2006) sums up the issue well: in a way, this current debate completes a circle with t. b. davie’s formulation of academic freedom half a century ago. then, the university was a homogenous community (overwhelmingly white, predominantly male, english speaking, economically privileged) facing outwards to a highly unequal society in which discrimination by race was being enforced and enshrined in law. now, the university is a diverse community (increasingly black, increasingly representative by gender, multilingual, and with students from a wide range of economic backgrounds) looking inwards at the challenges of achieving and maintaining social justice within itself. in this context, the issue of whether academic freedom is an absolute right or a conditional privilege remains unresolved (hall 2006: 14). 7 for example, the fortune 500 companies regard the ability to work in diverse teams as a core competence for the graduates they employ. readers may wish to consult http://diversityinc.com for similar information. 13 references american council of education. 2000. internationalization of u.s. higher education: preliminary status report. american council of education & american association of university professors. 2000. does diversity make a difference? three research studies on diversity and college classrooms. washington, dc: american council of education. anderson, c. a., williams ii, d., ashley, d., ferguson, d., fisher, s., gill, d., et al. 2000. a diversity action plan for the ohio state university. 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(eds.) beyond a dream deferred: multicultural education and the politics of excellence. minneapolis (mn): university of minnesota press. erasmus, z. e. 2006. living the future now: ‘race’ and challenges of transformation in higher education. south african journal of higher education 20(3): 51-63. erasmus, z. & de wet, j. 2003. not naming “race’: some medical students’ experiences and perceptions of “race’ and racism at the health sciences faculty of the university of cape town. cape town: incudisa. freire, p. 1972. pedagogy of the oppressed. harmondsworth: penguin. giroux, h. 1992. border crossings: workers and the politics of education. new york: routledge. goldberg, d.t. 2004. multiculturalism: a reader. cambridge (ma): blackwell. gubitosi-white, a. 1996. critical moments: an approach for easing the cultural isolation of under represented college students through multicultural discussions. phoenix, arizona: the onyx press. gudeman, r. h. 2000. college missions, faculty teaching and student outcomes in a context of low diversity. in does diversity make a difference? three research studies on diversity and college classrooms. washington, dc: american council of education gurin, p. 2002. expert report of patricia gurin: gratz, et al. v. bollinger, et al., no. 9775321(e.d. mich.) grutter, et al. v. bollinger, et al., no. 97-75928 (e.d. mich.) 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[online]. available at: http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/actionplan.html [accessed on 02/02/2004]. twine, f.w. & steinbugler, a.c. 2006. the gap between “whites” and “whiteness.” du bois review 3(2): 1–23. university of cape town employment equity plan 2000-2002. [online]. available at:h ttp://www.ucy.ac.za/misc/emequitysectn-01.htm [accessed on 02/02/2004]. 16 van zyl, m., steyn, m. e. & orr, w. 2003 “this is where i want to belong” institutional culture at wits: staff perceptions and experiences in 2002. cape town: incudisa walker, m. 2005. rainbow nation or new racism? theorizing race and identity formation in south african higher education. race ethnicity and education 8(2): 129–146. washington, h. d. 2003. learning through evaluation: the james irvine foundation campus diversity initiative (cdi) project. diversity digest 7(4): 1. world conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. tolerance and diversity: a vision for the 21st century. united nations, office of the high commissioner for human rights. 17 untitled communicating feminism to the community: the continuing relevance of feminism fifty years after 9 august 1956 communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 1 20 engela pretorius* abstract the history of women in south africa is the history of their oppression due to patriarchy a system of domination which still persists in south africa, and has done so since precolonial times. however, in the case of black women, it has been justly argued that under apartheid they suffered from the triple oppression of racism, sexism and classism which characterises the country's history. although opposition to patriarchy has not so much been in evidence among black women in this country, they do indeed have a history of strong opposition to the politicisation of race. this article traces the historical development of feminism in this country, focusing on african feminism(s) and its multiple manifestations. the role of feminism in the liberation struggle is then explicated by first describing the variety and diversity of patriarchies, followed by an exposition of the surfacing of political consciousness among women in this country. the article concludes that 50 years after the momentous event of 9 august 1956, an active and feminist voice in civil society is still needed due to factors such as the fact that the struggle for gender equity has to a large extent become a state-led venture, and because of what is perceived as a hardening of patriarchies. 1 * professor engela pretorius is vice-dean of the faculty of the humanities at the university of the free state. introduction this year we celebrate 12 years of democracy. more importantly, 9 august marks 50 years since the historic protest march, mainly by black women in defiance of yet another immoral act of the erstwhile apartheid regime. the history of women in south africa is the history of their oppression due to patriarchy a system of domination which still persists in south africa, and has done so since pre-colonial times. however, in the case of black women1, it has been justly argued that under apartheid they suffered from the triple oppression of racism, sexism and classism which characterises the country’s history (flepp 1985). although opposition to patriarchy has not so much been in evidence among black women in this country, they do indeed have a history of strong opposition to the politicisation of race. according to bernstein (1985: 115), before 1994, certain contradictions characterised the lives of african women. on the one hand, their status was one of deprivation and oppression; yet, on the other, “… they emerged with militancy and confidence, with persistency and strength, in the struggle.” this was particularly evident, for example, in the mobilisation against pass legislation2 in the 1950s. even though their protests ultimately did not succeed in their objective of preventing the imposition of passes, their actions are remembered and celebrated every year on woman’s day. women from the other population groups, such as afrikaner women, have a less well-known history of protest, which also did not yield the desired results. yet, despite the failed protests in this country, there has remained a sense of confidence in the ability of women to be agents of social change (miller 1998). this article traces the historical development of feminism in this country, particularly emphasising its role in the liberation struggle with a view to pointing out the relevance of the women’s movement in south african communities 50 years after the momentous event of 9 august 1956. defining feminism the word “feminism” conjures up many images and elicits many reactions, oftentimes negative ones. verbal abuse is common, but in extreme cases the reactions become violent as is illustrated by an incident that happened at the university of montreal’s ecole polytechnique in 1987, when 27 women were shot and fourteen of them died. all but one of the dead women had been students in engineering. their killer, who later committed suicide, considered himself “a rational erudite”. he had shouted, before the first six women were killed, “you’re all a bunch of feminists and i hate feminists”. the terrible irony of this is that most women engineers are not feminists at all (scanlon in delamont 2003: 12). what this illustrates is the power of feminist ideas which provoke either fear, or loathing or misogyny. the term “feminism” suggests a single ideology, but in reality it is a broad term for a variety of conceptions of the relations between men and women in society. due to historical precedents, the current legal status of women in certain countries and certain other factors, feminist ideology has been compelled to move in different directions to achieve its goals. as a result, there are many different kinds of feminism. essentially, 2 feminists question and challenge the origins of oppressive gender relations and attempt to develop a variety of strategies that might change these relations for the better. even though feminists share the same ideas in terms of what gender oppressions might mean, they differ widely in terms of analysing the origin of such oppression and in determining what precisely constitutes women’s liberation (mannathoko 1992: 71). the origin and historical development of feminism the history of feminism is generally divided into three broad phases, referred to as “waves”. first wave feminism is generally said to have begun in the 19th century. it focused on securing for women rights in public spheres, in particular the right to vote, the right to education and the right to entry into middle-class occupations and professions, such as medicine. the liberal heritage is quite evident in these quests. the originator of the movement for women’s rights was the english author and social reformer, mary wollstonecraft. her major work, a vindication of the rights of women published in 1792, argued for better education and political equality for women. she argued that if women were not capable of rationality and reason, it was due to their lack of proper education and the way that they were socialised to be passive, emotional and helpless: “i will venture to affirm, that a girl, whose spirits have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless confinement allows her no alternative” (wollstonecraft 1996: 43). yet, it was not only women who held feminist ideas. the philosophical standpoint of british philosopher, john stuart mill, addressed the issues raised by wollstonecraft in his book, on the subjection of women (1869), arguing that the natural justice accorded men, should be extended to include women. in 1867 he introduced to parliament 1449 signatures on a woman suffrage petition as an amendment to the reform bill of that year. the amendment failed. only in 1918 did the representation of the people act give the vote to certain groups and classes of women. parliamentarian merriman described the enfranchisement of women as “a case of democracy gone mad”. finally, in 1928, british women won equal voting rights with men (gaidzwana 1992; hughes 2002; walker 1990). britain was the power which colonised most of the countries in southern africa. thus, the colonial gender politics in southern africa closely mirrored those of britain, in that suffrage was extended first to those who were privileged on the basis of gender, namely white men, then to a few men of the labouring classes or races, next to white women and lastly to black women. in south africa, white women in the cape province were given the vote in 1929 in order to neutralise the effects of a qualified franchise granted to black men of education and property (gaidzanwa 1992). as in the case of the united states, when it came to standing up for black people’s right to vote, white english and afrikaans/afrikaner suffragists’ commitment to anti-racist politics turned out to be thin – so that racial and class interests tended to prevail when the chips were down. 3 the second wave (1960s) is generally thought of as having been introduced by betty friedan’s publication, the feminine mystique (1963). it was concerned, on the one hand, with social reform, such as free school meals for poor children, and health care for poor women; on the other, it was concerned with a “revolution” in the private sphere in respect of, inter alia, a demand for the right to contraception and the end of the sexual double standard. early second-wave feminism is particularly remembered for how it theorised motherhood as an oppressive institution (hughes 2002). two key slogans emerged during this time (1970s): the first was “the personal is political”. the slogan was first used by civil rights and new left activists and then articulated with more depth and consistency by feminist activists. the idea behind the slogan is that many issues that have historically been deemed “personal” – abortion, battery, unemployment, birth, death, and illness – are actually deeply political issues (thompson 2002). the second slogan was “sisterhood is powerful”. both slogans implicitly endorsed the idea that women were universally oppressed and exploited and that only through recognition of this common situation could women change the structures that oppressed them. an argument of engels to the effect that in marriage women are the proletariat and men the bourgeoisie, was popular even among those not particularly sympathetic to marxism (evans 1997: 11). third wave feminism, from 1980s to the present, has again been concerned with public issues (equal pay, an end to gender discrimination in employment, pensions, mortgages, etc.) and with making formerly private issues (such as rape and domestic violence) matters of public concern and reform (delamont 2003). a major aspect of the third wave of feminist theorising is postmodernist feminism, which underscores diversity and difference. proponents of postmodern feminism are critical of the work done in the 1960s and 1970s, in that it was characterised by a generalised, monolithic concept of “woman” as a generic category in stratification. postmodern feminism therefore focuses on the factual and theoretical implications of differences among women (lengerman & niebrugge-brantley 1992: 480). the critical effort of these feminists is aimed not only at gender ideology and the unequal status of women, but more broadly at all systems of domination – sexist, racist, classist, heterosexist and imperialist. it is also critical of the false consciousness that has led middle-class, white, heterosexual women to use the term “woman” as a monolithic category in opposing male domination while actually ignoring their own acts of domination toward women who do not share their class, race and affectional preference. however, feminists are not in agreement when it comes to accepting postmodern feminism. there are those who “… hesitate before the brink of full postmodernism” (delamont 2003: 144). these women (some african-american) point out that the origins of postmodernism lies in post-war paris among white men (such as lévi-strauss, lacan, foucault, derrida, lyotard) who are or were misogynist, sexist and in foucault’s case, even gay. brodribb (in delamont ibid.) states: “postmodernism is the cultural capital of late patriarchy”. others, like sandra harding, argue in favour of adopting a postmodern position, stating that it has the most intellectual power of any feminist perspective yet devised (delamont 2003). according 4 to klopper (1996), the postmodern premise is that the power to emancipation lies precisely in women’s marginal existence and in their privileged position of being different from the fallacious norm. tensions in contemporary feminism during the mid-1980s, the term “postfeminism” began to appear in the media. at the heart of postfeminism is the implication that feminism is over. it began to be significantly present as a concept in 1991 when susan faludi published backlash: the undeclared war against women. this book acknowledged the concept and from a feminist point of view, tried to dispel it as a media-inspired attitude that feminism was passé because women had arrived at their goals. the truth of the matter was that a massive mainstream defence of the status quo was actually producing the ideology of postfeminism. by the 1990s, several highly articulate, anti-feminist, but assertive independent women were attacking feminism and/or proclaimed postfeminism as appropriate and established. what they were experiencing was the lack of an energetic and robust political movement, the lack of an identity, that of “woman”, with which to align, and the perception of restrictive and detrimental positions associated with feminism – this while many of the concerns of women about equality, free expression, power, respect, and sexual subjectivity were still present and compelling. also expressing discontent during third wave feminism are “women of colour”. they have been responsible for a trajectory of critique, challenging the hegemony of feminisms constructed primarily around the lives of white, middle-class women. they reject the concept of global sisterhood because to them it pre-supposes “an original, mother feminism” (msimang 2002). they also challenge the common notion that women-of-colour feminists emerged in reaction to and therefore later than white feminism, stating that black feminist organising and white feminist activism occurred virtually simultaneously (thompson 2002). according to thompson (2002), “hegemonic feminism” is white led; it marginalises the activism and world-views of women of colour, it focuses mainly on the united states and it treats sexism as the ultimate oppression. hegemonic feminism is rejected because it deemphasises or ignores a class and race analysis, generally sees equality with men as the goal of feminism, and has an individual, rights-based, rather than a justice-based vision for social change. the feminism of women of colour are characterised by varied concerns, they adopt multiple intellectual stances, and are depicted by different terms. apart from multiracial feminism, terms used for the feminism of women of colour are multicultural feminism, third world feminisms, indigenous feminisms, black feminism and african feminisms (zinn & dill 1997). one should, however, immediately caution that each of these categorisations should not be treated either as a single analytical framework, or its principle architects – women of colour – as an undifferentiated category. these terms tend to homogenise vastly different experiences and can falsely universalise experiences across race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age. 5 in the south african context the term “african feminisms” has come to be accepted and it is to an explication of this brand of feminism that we now turn. african feminism[s]: multiple definitions and manifestat i o n s african feminism signifies a protest against the white/western history of and also white/western domination within feminism. african women have long realised that their oppression is different from that of white women, and thus necessitates a different process of liberation. however, western feminism failed to recognise and incorporate this difference in the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, thereby alienating many women of colour in the process. jayawardena (in msimang 2002: 6) thus articulates this critique: it has been variously alleged that...feminism is a product of ‘decadent’ western capitalism; that is based on a foreign culture of no relevance to women in the third world; that it is the ideology of a local bourgeoisie; and that it alienates or diverts women from their culture, religion and family responsibilities on the one hand, and from the revolutionary struggles for national liberation and socialism on the other. western feminism’s subsequent practice of “adding on” black women to existing feminist ontology is likewise regarded as inadequate in that it does not capture black women’s needs. many black activist women have therefore fought to give a voice to their unique experiences of slavery, colonialism, male oppression and poverty. from the above, it is apparent that african feminism emphasises the necessity of taking into account the material circumstances and cultural histories of african societies. the diversity of these social realities on the african continent has had a lasting effect on conceptions of feminism, making it necessary to use the plural, i.e. feminisms, in respect of feminism in africa. nonetheless, one is able to identify certain broad generic characteristics of african feminisms (arndt 2002): • the idea of a cooperation or complementarity with men and the affirmation of motherhood and the family. • the concern to criticise patriarchal manifestations in african societies in a differentiated way. this means above all that african feminisms consider precisely which traditional institutions are agreeable and positive for women, or at least can or could be, and which of them disadvantage women so severely that their abolition seems imperative. this careful consideration has much to do with the position of many african feminists, namely that the criticism of african societies inherent in the criticism of african gender relationships weakens africa’s position vis-à-vis the west, as well as african resistance to western cultural imperialism. • african feminisms aim at discussing gender roles in the context of other oppressive mechanisms such as racism, neocolonialism, (cultural) imperialism, socio-economic exclusion and exploitation, gerontocracy, religious fundamentalism, 6 as well as dictatorial and/or corrupt systems. with this approach, african theories of feminism by far exceed even the race-class-gender approach ofa f r i c a n a m e r i c a n feminism in scope. • many african feminists not only criticise patriarchal structures, but they also attempt to identify both traditionally-established and entirely new scopes and alternatives for women to overcome their oppression. many african women and men are repulsed by the term “feminism”. thus, many black african men consider gender to be a divisive concept imported from the west to “enslave” african women, and to alienate them from african men and, ultimately, the general struggle against racism. in the same vein, many african women initially reject feminism, perceiving it to be a western ideology imported to africa to ruin the family structure. as such, the labelling of “african feminism” is regarded as an oxymoron, an anomaly or an incongruity (kolawole 2002). these sets of views and perceptions have compelled several women to conceptualise african alternatives to the western concept of “feminism”. the best-known alternative is the concept of “womanism” or “african/africana womanism” (hudson-weems; kolawole; ogunyemi; walker). other neologisms are ogundipe-leslie’s stiwanism acronym of social transformations including women in africa and nnaemeka’s negofeminism feminism of negotiation (wikipedia 2006). those writers/activists who use the term “african feminism” do so to express the ambivalence of, on the one hand, being located within the network of a global feminism, and, on the other, the emergence of foci and concepts from the concrete social and cultural constellations of african societies. “womanism” has become the most favoured alternative for feminism. it emerged as an explicit race critique of feminism. according to gqola (in aniagolu 1998) “womanism asserts a hard-line pro-black position, (and) is in favour of the positive representation of black people as a whole”. this “hard-line, pro-black” stance was demonstrated at the first women in africa and the african diaspora conference held in nigeria in 1992. here, there were obvious differences between the views of african women and women of the diaspora on the issue of whether white women should be allowed at the conference or not. the black diaspora feminists decided to boycott panels with white participants and viewed the conciliatory stance of conveners as betrayal (opara 1998). the nigerian hosts felt that excluding the whites, their visitors, from the conference was contrary to the igbo tradition which avows that a friendly visitor is never rejected/“pushed out in the rain” (okpala & ogbanna-ohuche 1998). the german, sabine jell-bahlsen (1998), described the tactics used by some african-americans to intimidate and abuse white participants as appalling, stating that she had never experienced that kind of hostility from an african, or from an african-american fully conversant and in harmony with the african culture. kolawole (2002: 96) also plays down race, stating that “african” does not only include blacks: “any person, male or female, who has the legal citizenship of a nation located on the african continent is an african.” 7 other characteristics of womanism emphasise cultural contextualisation, the centrality of the family and the importance of including men (kolawole 2002). it has, however, been accused of condoning black male patriarchy and therefore not advancing women. to kolawole (2002) the rejection of womanism by western scholars reveals a lack of sensitivity to the way of thinking of black african women. in her opinion womanism is here to stay as an option preferred by many of these women. she does not regard this stance as dividing the struggle, but as providing an increase in diversities and options. feminism and liberation in south africa having conceptualised and explicated feminism in all its diversity, it is now linked to the struggle for liberation in this country. women’s subordinate status in south africa: a tapestry of patriarchy the history of women in this country is the history of their oppression due to patriarchy. this system of domination still exists in south africa, and has done so since precolonial times. in this regard, the analogy of a patchwork quilt (bozzoli 1983:149) or of a tapestry (finnemore & cunningham 1995:188) is often used to describe the variety and diversity of patriarchies. thus, women from different races, cultures and classes have found themselves located in different scenes within the tapestry and have experienced patriarchy in different forms and degrees of severity. african women and pre-colonial patriarchy before the arrival of the european settlers, black women were the tillers of the fields. they were also responsible for producing children the future labour force. women’s reproductive and productive capacities were highly valued. the patriarchal system that existed in these rural communities ensured that these capacities were controlled and appropriated by males. the chief, being the hierarchical head, was entitled to the greatest appropriation. decision-making was the prerogative of the chief and his advisors. women had little say over marriage choices as these decisions were dominated by men. however, women were highly valued and were accorded significant status in the community. a web of traditional customs and practices provided security within their homes. traditional african society accepted women as equal producers in the selfsubsistent economy and they were therefore given access to their own productive land, they possessed livestock and controlled the products of their labour. t h o u g h subordinate to men, they were no more dependent on them than men were on women. under colonialism, customary law and administration were codified by the courts. the result was that black women were relegated to the position of perpetual minors, unable to transact any business, or own any property (finnemore & cunningham 1995; meer 1985). according to bernstein (1985) african women were not – despite their background in patriarchy – as subservient as many of their counterparts in some parts of asia and africa. thus, these women played a notable part in many anti-colonial struggles before the demise of the traditional era. 8 afrikaner women: man-made women both the dutch and the british settlers reinforced patriarchal values in south africa. even though the initial hardships of frontier life placed demands on women that often fell far outside the expected private realm of womanhood and family, the stereotypical conception of the role of women nevertheless persisted. for dutch women, their involvement in the great trek, where they fought side by side with men, as well as their sufferings during the boer war, whether in internment camps or on deserted farms, was ultimately romanticised and idealised by male writers. according to brink (1990), it was a deliberately constructed ideal, the work of male cultural entrepreneurs who created an ideology of women, consisting of a set of images of women, centred mainly on their nurturing and home-making roles. one such a male was the writer cj langenhoven who wrote an article in 1909 encapsulating this viewpoint (walker 1990: 339). although devised by men to counter the impacts of the intense social changes of the early 20th century, women ultimately not only accepted these images, but also produced them. thus the volksmoeder, characterised by selfsacrifice, patriotism, religious commitment, determination, energy, courage, desire to serve one’s fellow beings and a responsibility to use reproductive powers to ensure the development of the volk, became part and parcel of an afrikaner nationalist mythology. it clearly defined a socially, morally, economically and politically subordinate place for afrikaner women within society. the volksmoeder ideal promoted a dependent position for women, as participants in the lives of their husbands and children rather than active in their own lives. only within this circumscribed role could women achieve social recognition (brink 1990). the significance of this notion was that it represented the ideological incorporation of women into a male-dominated nationalism. both middleand working-class women identified with the image of the idealised volksmoeder, but for different reasons. the volksmoeder ideal found resonance among middle-class women because it gave legitimacy to their role in society as wives, mothers and voluntary workers, as well as a sense of stability and purpose in a rapidly changing world. there was, however, a contrasting reality. after the devastation of the boer war, many young afrikaner women were compelled to seek work in the laundry, clothing and footwear industries where they were paid and treated very poorly. these garment workers were well aware of and mostly supported the prevailing view that a woman’s place was at home raising her family. however, they also recognised that women confronted with financial hardship in their families were faced with a dilemma. when a garment worker, anna jacobs, was disapprovingly accused by a male opponent of the union of working outside the home, she retorted: “does it serve any purpose if we women work among the pots and the pans and these are empty? must we fold hands and wait until food falls into the pots automatically?” (brink 1990). not all afrikaans women embraced this ideology. the feminist voice of marie du toit, sister of the poet, totius, was a lone cry in the dark. she was an afrikaans counterpart 9 to olive schreiner, but her views did not find acceptance in either middle-class or working-class afrikaner circles. her book vrou en feminist of iets oor die vrouevr a a g s t u k published in 1921, was an attack on generally-accepted notions of womanhood. yet, du toit’s book is virtually unknown it was not widely read at the time and has received little or no mention in subsequent literature on women in south africa. as it questioned the ideological parameters of the idealised notion of afrikaner womanhood, this is hardly surprising. english women: liberalising the victorian legacy for british women their role as housewives was dictated by victorian middle-class values. they were proficient in running a household, skilled in needlework, inhibited in dress and manner and controlled in relationships, which were confined to private rather than public life. the frustration felt by some women with their social stereotype was articulated by olive schreiner, who in 1883 wrote: “[b]ut this one thought stands, never goes if i might but be one of those born in the future, then perhaps to be born a woman will not be to be born branded” (noome in finnemore & cunningham 1995: 192). most white, middle-class women invested their energies in charitable work, entering the so-called women’s professions of teaching, nursing, and social work or supporting their husband’s careers. they did not strive to enter the boardrooms of the mining and manufacturing houses, nor were they encouraged to do so. the system of the “old boys” network of exclusive clubs, the skewed education system which channelled women into domestic careers, legal impediments such as the marital power of a husband over his wife’s property and ability to enter into contracts as well as lack of access to the corridors of power and finance, ensured that women remained in the private sphere (finnemore & cunningham 1995). women’s emancipation the white ruling class the first recorded, albeit forgotten, example of afrikaner women’s claim for political rights in south africa was made by a group of voortrekker women in natal in 1843. they wanted a promise honoured which had been made to them that they would be entitled to a voice in all matters concerning the state of this country due to their contribution to the battles in which they had fought side-by-side with their husbands. the delegation of voortrekker women, led by susanna smit, told a british officer that they would rather walk bare feet over the drakensberg than to remain under british authority. this was the only protest aimed at a foreign power. nothing came of this claim. an ambiguous motion of the transvaal volksraad did go so far as to confer burgherreg (citizenship) on the wives of all burghers of the republic in 1855, but there is no record that these women ever utilised the vote. in 1892 an attempt to extend the franchise to suitably qualified women was defeated in the legislature. jx merriman, arch-conservative on the issue of women’s rights, was applauded for his admonition that women’s counsel and brandy are both assets to be used circumspectly (cape debates, 1892 in walker 1990). 10 the other two occurrences of afrikaner women protest were aimed at fellow afrikaners from whom they differed politically. the first of these protest marches took place on 4 august 1915 during the first world war. some afrikaners had rebelled against south africa’s participation in this war. when one of the leaders of the rebellion, the boer general christiaan de wet, was captured by government forces, a group of women decided on a protest march by means of which to pressurise the government to release the convicted rebels. approximately 6 000 women, representing more than 65 000 women country-wide, participated in the march to the union buildings. they did not achieve immediate success in respect of their goal of securing the release of general de wet as this was only realised later. what they perhaps did not realise at the time, was that this episode marked the political awakening of afrikaner women, despite the fact that they did not have the vote as yet (grobler 2005; walker 1990). it was another war 25 years on namely world war ii which occasioned the next large women’s protest march, again to the union buildings. on 22 june 1940, women marched in protest against south africa’s participation in this war in europe. the then prime minister, jan smuts, refused to accept the protest document, describing the march as party political propaganda. eventually another minister, jh hofmeyr, met the nearly 10 000 women on behalf of the prime minister. once again, the protesting women did not accomplish what they had set out to do. naturally, the english press condemned the act, as did the pro-government afrikaans press, calling it “a blemish on our history” (grobler 2005:7). the afrikaans press not supporting south africa’s participation in the war wrote of the protest in highly appreciative terms, while the organisers regarded the event to be a gilded page in the history of the afrikaner people. white, english-speaking women perhaps had the greatest opportunities to challenge the patriarchal system. access to education was more available and desired; their exposure to more liberal values allowed more latitude to challenge patriarchal practices. liberal women who broke with the mould were to play a major role in securing the franchise for white women in south africa in 1930. the progress of the suffrage campaign was a particularly visible measure of the adjustment in attitudes towards women. by 1930 motherhood was no longer seen as incompatible with political equality and female virtue was no longer coterminous with staying at home all one’s life. the tight controls on women’s independent standing prevalent in pre-industrial white society had loosened considerably. however, the fact that white women were granted formal political equality did not in any way represent a revolution in male-female relations. according to walker (1990), the principle of supreme male authority over the household, though less securely rooted than in the 19th century, remained unchecked: victorian gender organisation persisted unchecked. the suffrage movement also highlighted the lack of gender loyalty on the part of white women their primary identification was with their own community, class and colour. thus, among white women, ethnic loyalty to their own language group took first place, proving a major obstacle to the establishment of an organisation representative of both english and afrikaner suffragists. moreover, while up until 1930 white and black 11 women had shared a common oppression of patriarchal domination, the difference in status and opportunities between black and white women was to widen considerably in subsequent years. however, some liberal women did play a role in black women’s emancipation throughout the struggle years. in 1944, during a boycott of seven weeks against a rise in bus fares, some middle-class white women drove to and from the township of alexandra, providing black women with transport. during the campaign against the introduction of “bantu education” in 1955, white women – mostly teachers – also participated. the most notable such women were ray (alexander) simons, helen joseph and helen suzman. a number of women’s organisations were established as a result of white women’s concern at the soweto uprisings in 1976, such as women for peace convened by mrs harry oppenheimer. the best-known and most active o rganisation among white women was the black sash anti-apartheid women’s movement, established in 1955 to protest against the removal of coloured voters from the common role (bernstein 1985). nelson mandela (1990) described this movement as the conscience of white south africa. disenfranchised black women political consciousness among african women surfaced earlier than among their white sisters and resulted in the establishment of the bantu women’s league in 1913. this organisation preceded the anc women’s league which was established in 1948 and which played a leading role in the liberation struggle and the establishment of the democratic dispensation in south africa. at best, the organised suffrage movement approached the situation of black women from the perspective of charity, and not of sisterly solidarity. in order to preserve their existing privileges, white women had to close ranks with white men as a class and what is more, white women often shared with white men in the exploitation of blacks. therefore, there are hardly any examples of white women including black women in their struggle for suffrage. the only recorded time that the women’s enfranchisement association of the union (weau) was addressed by a black woman, was in 1921, when charlotte maxeke, a prominent social worker and founder of the bantu women’s league, was invited to speak at its annual conference (walker 1990: 329). her address was socially rather than politically oriented as she did not speak on the suffrage, but on the devastating conditions of life among african women in the towns. this is interpreted by meer (1985), walker (1990) and hassim (in lewis 1994) as a lack of a gender or feminist consciousness. however, boyce davies (in bonner 1990) states that traditions of resistance and activism among african women go back to pre-colonial times; in other words, she contends that there were indigenous “feminisms” prior to contact with europeans, just as there were indigenous modes of rebellion and resistance throughout the period of colonial domination. this aspect will be discussed more fully in the next section. whatever the point of view in this regard, the fact of the matter is that south african women were not organised along gender lines, mainly as a consequence of class and race factors (meer 1985). critics such as spivak and minh-ha (in lewis 1994) have 12 argued that gendered experiences are always affected by racial and class identities. thus, the social definitions of “woman” and “man” cannot be explained independently of racial, class or regional affiliations; the gendered social subject is never simply “woman” or “man”, but always “black woman”, “white man”, “first-world woman” and so on. in contexts where oppression takes a variety of forms, and where the subjection of individuals derives from different relations of power and exploitation, it becomes extremely difficult to specify any single form of oppression as dominant. this results in the incorrect assumption that gender struggles because they are so inextricably bound up with other political struggles are absent. the particular brand of feminism that developed among black women was one which recognised a common struggle with african men for the removal of the yokes of foreign domination and european/american exploitation. in 1985 meer had stated that “[a]s long as racism continues and a people, not a particular sex, is the object of oppression, the women will continue to overlook their own discrimination and dedicate themselves to the liberation of their people”. steady (kolawole 2002: 94) concurs that for african women the struggle against gender oppression has always been “…fused with liberation from other forms of oppression, namely slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, poverty, illiteracy, and disease”. this subordination of sectional demands – such as women’s emancipation – in black nationalist movements was mirrored in the nationalist ideology of the overriding struggle of the afrikaner people against british imperialism (walker 1990: 19). among the asian population, it was women from two ashrams3 from the then natal and transvaal4 who transformed the elitist indian resistance movement, initiated by ghandi, into a mass movement. in 1912 they defied the anti-asiatic law and were instrumental in provoking the miners of newcastle, a town in the province of natal, to go on a strike. then followed an epic march by a thousand workers and led by ghandi. in 1946 the south african indian congress launched a passive resistance campaign against an act which aimed at limiting the asian community from occupying land. bernstein (1985) views the passive resistance campaign to have been of particular importance for the political advancement of women as six of the 17 people who initiated the campaign were women. women did not participate in the campaign in significant numbers – 300 of the 2000 arrested were women. what is, however, more significant than mere numbers, is the fact that their participation was carried forward into the campaigns of the 1950s. women’s role in the national liberation struggle the decade of the 1950s was a decade of turmoil in south africa. in the urban areas, a strong alliance was being forged between racially-oppressed groups and sympathetic whites. the non-racial congress alliance organised bus boycotts, stay-at-homesand rent strikes in the african townships – their most significant campaign being the one against the pass laws, and in particular the extension of reference books to african women. 13 as has already been indicated, protest against the pass laws was not an innovation of the 1950s. what was significant about the 1950s was that the primary catalysts of the anti-pass protests were not the traditional male leaders, but thousands of african women, many of whom had never before been involved in political protests or demonstrations. the militancy of the women, their level of organisation in the urban areas, and the ease with which they discarded their expected subordinate role came as a shock to many of the men and even to some of the women. as the women’s campaigns gathered strength, the anc national executive committee pointedly acknowledged the role of women in the liberation struggle. according to schmidt (1983), “[i]t was obvious, from the wording of its statements, that the importance of women to the struggle had not previously been assumed”. in its report to the annual conference of december 17-18, 1955, the anc national executive committee remarked that the anc women’s league, which was formed in part to “take up special problems and issues affecting women”, was not just an auxiliary to the african national congress, but an ally without which liberation could not be won (schmidt 1983). as was the case forty years before, the women’s anti-pass protests of the 1950s began in the orange free state. however, it was a meeting in langa township outside cape town on 4 january 1953, where hundreds of men and women assembled to protest against the impending application of the native laws amendment act, that signalled the beginning of the women’s campaign. subsequently, preparations were made throughout the union of south africa for the first non-racial national conference of women, to be held in johannesburg in april 1954. here the federation of south african women was formed and the wo m e n ’s charter written. it included the first comprehensive set of statements on gender from within the national liberation movement. the charter affirmed the participation of women and men in the fight against racial laws, and went on to identify the intersecting gender oppression that affected women’s struggles. the charter included the following emphases: • the participation of women in the struggles of anti-apartheid organisations and trade unions domains formerly restricted to men. • patriarchal attitudes and structures trapped women in domesticity and restricted their participation. the charter asserted that women should no longer play the passive, auxiliary or accommodative roles that had characterised their political involvement between 1913 and the 1940s, and that there should be equal rights for men and women (lewis 1994). the women’s charter was ultimately incorporated into the freedom charter in 1955. the second major demonstration was on 9 august 1956, when 20 000 women from all parts of south africa staged a march on the union buildings. the prime minister, who had been notified of the women’s mission, was not there to receive them. they left bundles of petitions containing more that 100 000 signatures at the prime minister’s door. they concluded their demonstration by singing freedom songs, including a new one, composed especially for the occasion: 14 wathint’ abafazi (now you have touched the women) wathint’ imbokodo (you have struck a rock) the last anti-pass demonstration took place in march 1960. on april 8 the anc and the pac were banned under the terms of the newly-passed unlawful organisations act. on october 26 1962, the government announced that all african women aged 16 and over, would be required to carry reference books as of february 1 1963. by that time the anc women’s league had been outlawed and the federation of south african women had effectively ceased to exist. much of their leadership had been banned, banished or imprisoned. the women’s anti-pass campaign had lasted for more than a decade. tens of thousands of women had participated in the resistance, forcing the government to delay for eleven years the mandatory extension of reference books to african women. they had resisted the implementation of laws which threatened the very core of their existence – their position in society, their ability to provide for their children, and their capacity to create for their husbands and children a stable and secure family life. the women had clung to their last remaining freedom – the freedom of movement – with a tenacity unparalleled in other struggles. although they were defeated in their immediate objective – the repeal of pass laws affecting women – the women had won a major victory. they had gained their rightful place in the struggle for national liberation, on an equal footing with men (schmidt 1983). two perspectives from one perspective, the women’s role in national liberation signifies the emergence of african women’s proto-feminist politics. brooks (2003) defines p roto-feminist politics as those struggles waged by black women against discrimination before coalescing into a more formal feminist movement. from another perspective, black women’s political activity, being located within a masculinist national liberation struggle, is depicted as “womanist” (lewis 1994). many individuals and organisations have acknowledged indebtedness to the concept of “womanism”, such as the black consciousness movement in the early 1970s. the movement fore-grounded masculinity and was avowedly “womanist” in the sense of advocating that “motherhood [be directed] towards the fulfilment of the black people’s social, cultural, economic and political aspirations” (rambally in lewis 1994: 169). many of the anc women’s league pronouncements on women’s role in politics have endorsed womanist claims by concentrating on women’s nurturing role vis-à-vis black men and children. however, it would be misleading to conclude that black women have always been victims of patriarchy, or that women’s political mobilisation and struggle focused exclusively on race or class oppression. it is evident that since the inception of the anc, black women did not passively comply with the requirements of this maledominated organisation (lewis 1994). on the contrary – the creation of space for women within the anc, e.g. by establishing the bantu women’s league within the organisation in 1914, shows that women’s political potential was taken seriously. this was, of course, after the anti-pass campaign of 1913 and black women’s active demands for a political role. however, after the anti-pass campaign of the early 1900s 15 up to the 1940s, women in the anc did not play a major role. they were accorded only auxiliary membership in congress, and the bantu women’s league declined as a driving force after the pass issue died down. while the weak status of the bantu women’s league after the pass campaign suggests that african women easily accommodated themselves to male domination in congress, one cannot conclude that black women lacked any self-awareness. what is important is that black women successfully resisted the regulations to which black men were subjected. the anc women’s league (ancwl), constituted in 1943, was a result of women being granted full memberships status in the anc. the government’s renewed attempt to introduce passes for women in the 1950s, gave the ancwl a focus for independent political action. the ancwl therefore played a prominent role in the defiance campaign by dominating the anti-pass protests. the formation of the federation of south african women (fedsaw) in 1954 was a direct result of the perceived need to consolidate anti-pass action and to mobilise a wider range of women (lewis 1994). during the anti-pass actions of the 1950s, women confronted not only the intransigence of the state which stepped up its repression, but also the suspicion and frequent hostility of anc men. the formation and activities of the women’s league and the federation of south african women are therefore milestones in the south african women’s movement: black women forged active and independent political roles, often defying male assumptions of superiority, while simultaneously challenging the racial laws of the state. conclusion: post-nationalist reconstruction and beyond for most of the anti-apartheid struggle, gender was a secondary issue, the idea being that it would be addressed properly after liberation from apartheid. unlike many women’s organisations in the first world, black women’s movements in south africa rarely evolved independently of race and class mobilisation. thus, the feminism that has developed here emerged out of women’s deep engagement with and commitment to national liberation. according to mama (2003), pride can be taken in the success of the south african women’s movement in the transition to democracy as the women involved in this movement managed to escape the fate of many women in postnationalist reconstruction, namely that they are marginalised by it. it did not happen here. in this country gender equity concerns have been introduced into the democratic debate so that in this point in time, women’s demands are made on the grounds of democracy and not in terms of the demands or the internal consistency of national liberation. in addition, these claims are now articulated independently of the anc by means of the women’s national coalition (wnc), a national representative structure for the women’s movement. this structure was instrumental in mainstreaming gender equity into public discourse. more than ten years into democracy women’s political participation in the realm of representative government has reached more than 30%, while a range of institutions has been created to represent and defend women’s interests in policy-making. this having been said, one cannot ignore certain warning signs and inadequacies of the post16 nationalist experience. therefore, upon closer scrutiny, it would seem that institutionalisation has not, as yet, translated into what schmitter (in hassim 2003) calls “power advantages” one reason being the lack of depth in respect of the institutionalisation of gender equity principles. in particular, substantive equality has not been incorporated into actual policy programmes, with the result that political statements on gender equity often remain at the level of rhetoric. another crucial issue raised by hassim (2003) is the degree of autonomy and organisation of the women’s movement. the relocation of key activists from the women’s movement into government has changed the struggle for gender equity into a state-led project. one consequence of this development is that areas of change that lie beyond the limits of the state are neglected. so, for example, in spite of the legislative framework in respect of violence against women, there are numerous social practices and cultural norms that legitimise male violence. this, she contends, can only be addressed by an active and feminist voice in civil society. to what extent a feminist movement outside the state is feasible, is cause for concern. msimang (2002: 15) perceives what she calls a hardening of african patriarchies, while feminists regard the events surrounding the zuma rape trial as reflecting rampant misogyny (gqola 2006). one therefore has to concur with hassim that the formal institutions for women within the state will not be effective in the long term, irrespective of the sophistication of their design or the amount of resources they can command, unless an effective feminist women’s movement outside the state is sustained that can question and challenge the terms on which social policy is made. the history of feminism has often indicated the backlash women experience when making headway in terms of empowerment. it is no different in this country at this point in time. because of the “ugly and convenient use of culture against african women” (gqola 2006) and women’s continued suffering, particularly because of hiv and aids, feminism needs to work for girls and young women now more than ever. therefore, a luta continua the struggle continues. endnotes: 1 the designation ‘black’ is used as a collective form for african, indian/asian and so-called coloured groups. 2 pass legislation a key instrument of apartheid and one of the main factors in the oppression of women – involved a system of regulation of movement applied only to africans. this was enforced by means of pass documents (reference books) which had to be carried. in 1955 the then minister of native affairs stated “african women will be issued with passes as from january 1956”. in 1950 the law had been amended 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(eds.) through the prism of difference. readings on sex and gender. boston: allyn & bacon. 20 1pb the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution employees’ usage abstract e-newsletters provide organisational information and employee engagement opportunities to overcome behavioural and communication isolation in departments within an organisation. by optimising e-newsletters, employees can better utilise the content of the e-newsletter to perform their daily operational tasks and to fulfil organisational goals and objectives. in order to convey the organisational information in an e-newsletter, it needs to be delivered in an appealing manner regarding content, layout, ease of navigation, quality of photographs, and inspirational messages or quotes. the purpose of this study was to determine employees’ perceptions of e-newsletters based on their characteristics relating to content, layout, ease of navigation, quality of photographs, and inspirational messages. a quantitative, self-administered web-based survey was disseminated to employees of a higher education institution in south africa. the results indicate that the frequency of receiving e-newsletters and personal touches to the e-newsletter affect employees’ perception of e-newsletters. this research highlights the importance of including information in an e-newsletter that appeals to employees on a personal level. keywords: corporate communication; organisational communication; strategic communication; e-newsletters; internal communication; e-newsletters; higher education introduction support departments often provide the most essential services for the continued working of core functions within an organisation. when support departments are secretive about their workings and in turn create negative attitudes and behaviours in the core functions, this generates great discontent amongst employees and management alike (gressgård et al. 2014: 639-640). for an organisation to operate optimally with the resources at hand it requires its employees to be fully informed of their roles within the organisation and it requires employees to make the most of the typical eight-hour workday to complete carly smith department marketing and retail management, university of south africa email: prinsck@unisa.ac. za (corresponding author) orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0003-46343503 prof. johannes a. wiid department marketing and retail management, university of south africa email: jwiid@unisa.ac.za orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-2195532x doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.7 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-17 date submitted: 20 august 2019 date accepted: 25 october 2019 date published: 03 desember 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:prinsck@unisa.ac.za mailto:prinsck@unisa.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4634-3503 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4634-3503 mailto:jwiid@unisa.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2195-532x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2195-532x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.7 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 smith & wiid their work tasks. an obstacle to employees being fully informed is communicating with them without disrupting their productivity. another obstacle is how to bridge the gap between departments within a large organisation, which have to work together, but do not have the time to have inter-departmental meetings to discuss how to go about the relay of work between the departments. these obstacles are overcome by making use of e-newsletters, which can provide a platform for communication regarding the inner workings of particular departments to enable supporting departments to understand what it takes to get the work done (kowlaski 2011: 136; little 2011; gressgård et al. 2014). the purpose of organisational information is lost when employees are bombarded with a surplus of information that leads to information overload. to facilitate reading organisational information, which is distributed via e-newsletters, the e-newsletter needs to be easy to read and user-friendly (vidgen et al. 2011: 85). a poorly designed e-newsletter, in addition to information overload, could contribute to employees’ unwillingness to use the e-newsletter for the purpose it serves (ibid.). thus, it is vital that the characteristics of the e-newsletter are conducive for easy reading and that it has an appealing nature. for the purpose of this study, the variable of perceived usefulness was utilised as the design characteristics of an e-newsletter are essential considering that how well an e-newsletter reads will affect readership rates. the study aimed to answer the following research question: to what extent do the characteristics of an e-newsletter contribute to the use of e-newsletters, and are the characteristics equally important to the employees when reading the e-newsletter? literature review internal communication internal communication is the combined efforts by the organisation to share organisational information with employees, garner employees’ support for organisational goals and objectives, and to synchronise departmental tasks to achieve those organisational goals and objectives (men 2014: 256; smith 2013: 173). when employees are engaged by the organisation, greater levels of organisational citizenship behaviour, customer satisfaction and employee retention are evident. employees are also more likely to be attentive and dedicated, feel a connection to the organisation, be willing to work longer hours when needed, and to contribute to the organisational goals (men & hung-baesecke 2015: 448). given the improved productivity levels when employees are engaged, internal communication has become essential when it promotes commitment to the organisation and an understanding of the organisation’s ever-changing aims, and creates a sense of employee belonging and awareness of the organisations fluctuating environments (welch 2015: 390). for internal communication to be successful, an appropriate communication channel is required. with technological advances, there has been a change in the 32 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... organisational communication landscape – ranging from traditional communication channels, including print media, face-to-face meetings, e-mails and telephone calls, to internet-based communication, which entails intranets, blogs and social networking sites. the most commonly used internal communication channel is the e-newsletter. e-newsletters electronic newsletters, or e-newsletters, are the electronic form of paper-based newsletters (molenaar 2012: 111). e-mail has made it easier to send newsletters electronically as all employees who have personalised organisational e-mail addresses are able to receive e-newsletters (kowlaski 2011: 136). e-newsletters’ information dissemination is achieved through the creation, distribution and application of knowledge in organisations (dixon 2012: 11). e-newsletters typically have a number of objectives: breaking down silos, reducing email overload, and reinforcing other communication (snapcomms 2017). the main objective of e-newsletters is to inform employees of relevant organisational information pertaining to the organisation’s goals and objectives, employees’ roles, current corporate news, training courses, community outreach projects, and corporate financial information and change in policies. a newsletter is relevant when valuable content is included in the newsletter, such as engaging articles, resources, latest news and trends, and links to content on the organisation’s main website (jefferson & tanton 2015: 90). the characteristics of e-newsletters, discussed in the subsequent section, refer to content, layout, ease of navigation, quality of photographs, and inspirational messages or quotes (“thought for the day”). in addition, the matter of frequency of distributing or delivering e-newsletters to employees is discussed. limited research exists on the characteristics of e-newsletters on research databases, such as ebscohost academic search premier, nexus, sage journals online, scopus, and taylor and francis online; thus, material produced by industry experts was utilised for the following discussion. characteristics of e-newsletters quality of photographs e-newsletters must be photograph-rich as it enhances the e-newsletter, especially when the articles cover particular stories such as employee achievements (murphy 2014). in addition, when brand-aligned photographs or images are included it reinvigorates the content and can increase click-through rates (modlabs 2014). to achieve click-through rates, photographs must be aligned to the subject title and the text; otherwise, it will simply be an irrelevant inclusion in the e-newsletter. furthermore, size matters, as a large photograph can slow down the download time (especially when the e-newsletter is accessed through a mobile device or on a tablet). if a photograph is too small, it can be difficult to view because of poor pixel quality. high-resolution photographs appear crisp in e-newsletters, whereas low-resolution photographs often look unclear and detract from their purpose (mailbakery.com 2015). 54 smith & wiid content the content of an e-newsletter depends on the organisational mission statement, goals and objectives. the content is based on the organisational values and principles that the organisation wishes to convey to employees (newsom & haynes 2011: 88). an e-newsletter’s content should be aligned to the organisational goals, which provides the tone and direction of electronic communication with employees. in addition, e-newsletters should be aligned to the communication objectives, which provide a focus, a tactical standard for consistency, an indication of the duration to complete goals, and strategic organisational scope (fourie 2014: 170). e-newsletters should be centred on the audience, which in this case are the employees. thus, when an e-newsletter is designed properly, it can encourage employees to be more active in the cultural and work organisational environment (kaufman 2016). therefore, e-newsletters should include information that affects the employee in terms of product launches or new policy changes. moreover, an employee spotlight section recognises and creates awareness about employees regarding the excellent service they provide (furgison 2017). an e-newsletter can boost morale and motivate employees when they are reminded of the quality products and service that the organisation delivers; thus, reminding employees that they are part of an organisation that thrives. layout an e-newsletter should have a consistent structure so that employees are always aware of what to expect in terms of sections/divisions (furgison 2017). the e-newsletter design should be a good balance between minimal, relevant text and photographs or images (everlytic 2015). tracking how employees read the e-newsletter gives a good indication of where to place the most important information. as seen in examples of e-newsletters, the majority of the clicks occurred above the fold, which is where the organisation can place their most pertinent articles. further layout additions include (dixon 2012: 16-17; molenaar 2012: 111-112; everlytic 2016: 1): ♦ short messages (minimum of five lines) and a link that can be clicked on for further information. ♦ provide an interaction possibility (response), but also a possibility to prevent the receipt of further messages. ♦ the newsletter is highly visual, with imagery and content that leads. ♦ the design should be about engagement, compelling the reader to take the next step in clicking on the call-to-action link of the e-newsletter. ♦ relate the e-newsletter to the organisation’s website in terms of the design. ease of navigation consistent navigation should be evident both in terms of how the e-newsletter appears but also in terms of where it appears. promote ease of use by having easy to find information, which remains the same over time so as not to confuse employees who 54 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... are used to a particular navigation (de greyter 2012). in addition, if an e-newsletter has particular categories or divisions, then clearly indicate the differences through categories or sub-categories, which are clearly and visually defined, and have accurate navigational titles. it is also important to ensure that the search function works so that the employees are able to find the relevant results. functionality of the e-newsletter should allow the reader to find current articles, as well as past editions of the e-newsletter (snapcomms 2017). as full articles cannot be included in the e-newsletter, it is thus necessary for a call-to-action button, which leads to more information. this call-to-action button or highlighted text should be clearly visible. inspirational messages a personal note gives the e-newsletter a more appealing nature (everlytic 2015). inspirational quotes are powerful tools in internal communication as these capture the mood, aspiration and ideals of the organisation. these messages can enliven the organisational policy, as long as the quote is pertinent to the policy. inspirational quotes in the form of a “thought for the day” can inspire and motivate employees and form part of the internal communication to boost morale, albeit in a small measure (myhub 2017). by engaging with employees, an organisation and its management team can increase productivity (grossman 2016). frequency of e-newsletter distribution with the advances in technology, internal communication is distributed more easily and instantaneously, with increased speed of communication and frequency (paxson 2010: 3). internal communication, in particular e-newsletters, can be sent with a number of attributes, which include documents, worksheets, and links to other sites, photographs or attachments (kinzey 2013: 156). in the creation of e-newsletters, decisions are made on what the e-newsletter will include in terms of content and photographs; how the e-newsletter will be distributed; at which frequency the e-newsletter will be distributed; what the overall design of the e-newsletter will look like; and how it will be delivered to the employees (hume 2010: 8, smith 2013: 229). research methodology procedure and design the study was exploratory in nature and adopted a quantitative approach, with a cross-sectional design. data was collected from employees at a south african higher education institution through a self-administered web-based survey, which is in line with the online delivery of e-newsletters. the respondents were selected based on the role of a university’s research outputs and resulting innovation, which affects private organisations and public research institutions (nyerere & friso 2013: 663-664). respondents were required to rate the importance of the following characteristics of e-newsletters in general, as well as in relation to the specific e-newsletter of the higher institution itself, on a 5-point likert-scale ranging from 1 “very unimportant” to 5 “very important”: 76 smith & wiid a) content b) layout c) ease of navigation d) general quality of photographs e) inspirational message/“thought for the day” the characteristics of e-newsletters in general in predicting wanting to receive an e-newsletter and the characteristics of the institutional e-newsletter in predicting wanting to receive the institutional e-newsletter were both examined in order to compare whether similar models and characteristics could be identified in predicting whether respondents would like to receive e-newsletters or not. furthermore, respondents were also required to indicate whether they want to receive an e-newsletter or not, the frequency of use of e-newsletters, the preferred frequency of receiving an e-newsletter, and their perception regarding the importance of a daily or weekly e-newsletter in terms of organisational information. sample the overall sample for the study consisted of 404 respondents. the majority of the sample were female (59.7%, n = 241), with 34.9% (n = 141) male. table 1 provides a detailed breakdown of the demographics of the sample. table 1: demographic breakdown of sample gender n percentage male 141 34.9 female 241 59.7 missing 22 5.4 age 18-25 2 0.5 26-35 90 22.3 36-45 109 27.0 46-65 201 49.8 65+ years 2 0.5 term of employment less than 5 years 117 29.0 5-10 years 111 27.5 11-15 years 45 11.1 more than 15 years 127 31.4 missing 4 1.0 76 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... data analysis data was analysed using basic descriptive statistics, as well as logistic regression analysis, utilising the statistical package for the social sciences 22 (spss 22). the enter method was utilised for the logistic regression analysis (all predictor variables entered into the model simultaneously) because of the explorative nature of the study. findings and results the findings are presented by firstly examining the results of the logistic regression analysis based on the characteristics of e-newsletters in general. following this, the results of the logistic regression, focussing on the characteristics of the specific e-newsletter from the higher education institution where respondents are employed, are examined. finally, additional factors associated with the reception and the use of e-newsletters will be examined. logistic regression analysis: e-newsletter characteristics in general for the purpose of the logistic regression model concerning e-newsletter characteristics in general, “wanting to receive an e-newsletter or not” was included as the categorical criterion variable with content, layout, ease of navigation, quality of photographs and “thought for the day” included as predictor variables. overall, 83.9% (n = 339) of the respondents within the sample indicated that they want to receive an e-newsletter, with 16.1% (n = 65) of the respondents indicating that they do not want to receive an e-newsletter. table 2: mean ratings for e-newsletter characteristics in general predictor mean content 4.06 layout 3.90 ease of navigation 4.16 quality of photographs 3.88 thought for the day 3.39 overall, all the characteristics of e-newsletters in general were rated above average by the respondents, with mean ratings for all the characteristics of e-newsletters in general >3 (see table 2). hence, all the characteristics were deemed “important” by the respondents. 98 smith & wiid table 3: hosmer and lemeshow goodness-of-fit test for characteristics of e-newsletters in general chi-square df sig. 4.729 8 .786 note: model χ2 (5) = 66.534, p < .001 in terms of goodness-of-fit, the hosmer and lemeshow statistic was found to be nonsignificant with p = .786 (p > .05), indicating that the model was a good fit for the data (see table 3). the overall model chi-square was also found to be significant (p < .001), further indicating that the model improves prediction and that it provides a good fit (field 2005; hair et al. 2010). table 4: predictors for receiving e-newsletter in general predictor b se wald sig. exp(b) odds ratio ci (95%) content .386 .296 1.704 .192 1.471 .824 2.625 layout .404 .264 2.337 .126 1.497 .892 2.511 ease of navigation -.591 .286 4.271 .051 .554 .316 .970 quality of photographs .305 .217 1.974 .160 1.357 .886 2.076 thought for the day .697 .137 25.771 .000** 2.008 1.534 2.629 ** significant at the p < .001 level of the predictors entered into the model, only the inspirational quote or “thought for the day” was found to be a significant predictor of whether the respondents wanted to receive a newsletter or not, with b = .697, wald χ2(1) = 25.77, p < .001 (see table 4). none of the other predictors was found to be significant in predicting whether or not the respondents would like to receive an e-newsletter or not (p > .05) (see table 4). the odds ratio (expb) for the predictor “thought for the day” was found to be greater than 1, indicating that an increase in the predictor would increase the likelihood of wanting to receive an e-newsletter (see table 4) (field 2005; hair et al. 2010). 98 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... table 5: observed and predicted frequencies for receiving e-newsletters or not: e-newsletters in general observed predicted % correct yes no yes 333 6 98.2 no 46 19 29.2 overall % correct 87.1 note: cut value = .5 the overall model ensured that 87.1% of the cases were classified correctly (see table 5); 98.2% of cases falling in the “yes” category (want to receive an e-newsletter in general) was classified correctly, whilst 29.2% of the cases falling within the “no” category (do not want to receive an e-newsletter in general) was classified correctly (see table 5). the model thus seems to be more accurate in predicting wanting to receive an e-newsletter in general, as opposed to not wanting to receive an e-newsletter. logistic regression analysis: institutional e-newsletter characteristics similar to the above for general characteristics of e-newsletters, “wanting to receive an e-newsletter or not” was included as the categorical criterion variable with content, layout, ease of navigation, quality of photographs and “thought for the day” included as predictor variables for the logistic regression model related specifically to the characteristics in relation to the specific institutional e-newsletter. overall, 83.9% (n = 339) of the respondents within the sample indicated that they want to receive an e-newsletter, with 16.1% (n = 65) of the respondents indicating that they do not want to receive an e-newsletter. table 6: mean ratings for institutional e-newsletter characteristics predictor mean content 4.08 layout 3.87 ease of navigation 4.06 quality of photographs 3.74 thought for the day 3.27 1110 smith & wiid all the characteristics of the institutional e-newsletter were rated above average by the respondents with mean ratings for all the characteristics of the institutional e-newsletter > 3 (see table 6). all the characteristics were thus rated as “important” by the respondents overall, if the means are considered. table 7: hosmer and lemeshow goodness-of-fit test for institutional e-newsletter characteristics chi-square df sig. 5.988 8 .649 note: model χ2 (5) = 49.069, p < .001 the hosmer and lemeshow goodness-of-fit test was found to be non-significant for the model with p > .05 indicating a good fit for the model to the data (see table 7). furthermore, a significant overall model chi-square square was found (p < .001), indicating that the model improves prediction and is a good fit for the data (field 2005; hair et al. 2010). table 8: predictors for receiving institutional e-newsletters predictor b se wald sig. exp(b) odds ratio ci (95%) content .089 .262 .116 .733 1.093 .654 1.826 layout .508 .285 3.180 .075 1.662 .951 2.903 ease of navigation -.545 .280 3.773 .052 .580 .335 1.005 quality of photographs .177 .202 .766 .381 1.193 .803 1.772 thought for the day .561 .124 20.544 .000** 1.753 1.375 2.234 ** significant at the p < .001 level in line with the previous model concerning the characteristics of e-newsletters in general, only “thought for the day” was found to be a significant predictor of whether respondents wanted to receive a newsletter or not, with b = .561, wald χ2(1) = 20.54, p < .001 (see table 8) for the current model relating to the specific institutional e-newsletter characteristics. the other predictors in the model were all found to be non-significant in predicting whether or not respondents would like to receive an e-newsletter or not (p > .05) (see table 8). an odds ratio (expb) of 1.753 was found for the predictor “thought for the day”, indicating that an increase in the predictor will increase the likelihood of wanting to receive an institutional e-newsletter (see table 8) (field 2005; hair et al. 2010). 1110 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... table 9: observed and predicted frequencies for receiving e-newsletters or not: institutional e-newsletters observed predicted % correct yes no yes 339 0 100.0 no 57 8 12.3 overall % correct 85.9 note: cut value = .5 overall, the model ensures that 85.9% of the cases can be classified correctly (see table 9). furthermore, 100% of cases falling in the “yes” category (want to receive an institutional e-newsletter) were classified correctly, whilst only 12.3% of the cases falling within the “no” category (do not want to receive an institutional e-newsletter) were classified correctly (see table 9). the model thus seems to be predict wanting to receive an institutional e-newsletter more accurately than not wanting to receive an institutional e-newsletter. additional factors related to reception and use of e-newsletters in order to further examine factors that may impact on whether respondents would like to receive an e-newsletter or not and on their use of e-newsletters, the respondents were required to indicate whether or not they prefer other channels of communication, the preferred time for receiving the e-newsletter, the frequency of use and reception of an e-newsletter, and the importance of daily or weekly e-newsletters for organisational communication. figure 1: preference for alternative communication channel to e-newsletters 1312 smith & wiid the majority of the respondents (87.6%, n = 354) indicated that they do not want to receive communication via a different channel than an e-newsletter, with only 12.4% (n = 50) of the respondents indicating otherwise (see figure 1). figure 2: preferred times for receiving an e-newsletter in terms of the preferred times identified by the respondents for receiving e-newsletters, they predominantly identified early in the morning (47.3%, n = 191) as the preferred time, with 42.3% (n = 171) of the respondents indicating that it does not really matter when they receive the e-newsletter (see figure 2). thus, some ambivalence seems to exist regarding the preferred time for receiving e-newsletters. figure 3: frequency of use of e-newsletters in terms of the reported frequency of use of e-newsletters by the respondents, the majority (36.4%, n = 147) indicated that they use the e-newsletter about once a day, 1312 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... followed by several times a week (19.1%, n = 77), and several times a day (16.6%, n = 67). the respondents thus seem to display a high frequency of use for e-newsletters (see figure 3). figure 4: preferred frequency of reception in line with the above, the majority of the respondents (55.4%, n = 224) indicated that they preferred receiving an e-newsletter once a week, with 35.1% (n = 142) indicating that they would prefer receiving an e-newsletter on a daily basis (see figure 4). figure 5: importance of e-newsletters for organisational information concerning the importance of daily and weekly e-newsletters as a means to convey organisational information, the majority of the respondents indicated that e-newsletters 1514 smith & wiid were important or very important with regards to both a daily or weekly e-newsletter (see figure 5). discussion from the data it is clear that in terms of the characteristics of e-newsletters, the inclusion of an inspirational quote or “thought for the day” was found to significantly predict whether the respondents would like to receive an e-newsletter or not. whilst the other characteristics included in the study were rated as important, the inclusion of an inspirational quote in an e-newsletter specifically may increase the likelihood of the respondents wanting to receive an e-newsletter. this result corresponds with the idea that an inspirational quote makes the e-newsletter more appealing to read (everlytic 2015), or, as grossman (2016) writes, “employees won’t care about your business until you care about them”. therefore, employees made use of the e-newsletters more so because of the inclusion of a motivational, inspiring, and employee engagement tactic. this was found when examining the respondents’ perceptions regarding the characteristics of e-newsletters in general, as well as in relation to the specific institutional e-newsletter they receive as part of communication in the higher institution where they are employed. with regard to additional factors that may influence the use and the need to receive an e-newsletter, it is clear that there is a high frequency of use for e-newsletters and that e-newsletters, whether they are received daily or weekly, are perceived to be important in ensuring the communication of organisational information. in terms of preference of frequency, the majority of the respondents indicated that they would like to receive a weekly newsletter. if this is considered in light of the fact that the majority of the respondents indicated that they use an e-newsletter once a day and that they prefer an e-newsletter to different channels of communication, it is clear that the e-newsletter may be a key source of information for the respondents. this result links to consistency, relating to how the e-newsletter appears, but also in terms of where it appears (de greyter 2012). employees also expect e-newsletters to be delivered at a particular time and at a particular frequency. in order to ensure a greater likelihood of the respondents wanting to receive an e-newsletter it is thus crucial to ensure that e-newsletters are distributed regularly and that the e-newsletter contains relevant organisational communication and information. in compiling the e-newsletter, apart from the consideration of additional factors such as frequency of distribution and information contained in the e-newsletter, the inclusion of an inspirational quote as a characteristic of the e-newsletter may increase the likelihood that employees would like to receive the e-newsletter, and ultimately the frequency of use of the e-newsletter by employees. limitations the current study examined the perceptions of the respondents regarding the characteristics of e-newsletters within a specific higher education institution only. 1514 the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting higher education institution... thus, the findings may not be generalisable beyond the institution within which the study was conducted. further explorative research is suggested to determine whether there might be other factors that could also be important for the expansion of the characteristics of e-newsletters, which based on this study predict the reception and use of e-newsletters. regarding sample size, there was a distinct difference between the groups within the sample for the categories of the dependent variable. whilst the minimum criteria were met for each of the categories (ten respondents per predictor) and logistic regression analysis was robust in terms of differences in variances between the groups, more equally distributed groups may provide a more stable model (field 2005; hair et al. 2010). recommendations whilst the current study focused specifically on the perceptions and characteristics of e-newsletters within a specific higher education institution in south africa, further studies could illuminate the specific characteristics that increase the likelihood of use and perceptions regarding the reception of e-newsletters in a myriad of other environments. considering the similar odds ratios (expb) of other predictors within the model, which are similar to those found for the “thought for the day” predictor (see table 4 and table 8), future studies could consider the utilisation of a stepwise logistic regression analysis. a stepwise logistic regression analysis could be used to further analyse the significance of the other characteristics in predicting the perception of receiving and using e-newsletters based on further theoretical review. in addition, considering the significance of the inclusion of an inspirational quote in e-newsletters and the link to employee engagement, future research could be conducted on the role of e-newsletters in employee engagement and inspirational or motivational quotes. conclusion the current study examined the characteristics of e-newsletters in predicting whether or not the respondents, who work at a higher education institution in south africa, would like to receive an e-newsletter. it was found that the inclusion of an inspirational quote as a characteristic of an 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marketing communication; brand communication; customer-brand relationships; reputation; pre-visit experience; loyalty; tourism introduction tourism is a significant tool for promoting economic growth (rather et al. 2019) and the development of existing and new tourism destinations propels new businesses (honey & gilpin 2009). this industry has a positive impact on foreign exchange earnings, combating unemployment and poverty, and stimulating domestic consumption (habibi et al. 2018). in developing countries, tourism accounts for 83% of export and it is the most significant foreign exchange source after petroleum (richardson 2010). however, in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) context, this industry is also revolutionised by technology development (buhalis 2019). according to sertkan et al. (2019), technology and tourism have a symbiotic relationship. technology, as an interaction point between tourists and destinations, is becoming a key aspect of this industry’s survival (garcía-milon et al. 2020). tourism service delivery has shifted from the traditional direct and contact-based modus to one of remote self-service (opute et al. 2020). the 4ir environment brings about globalised tourist markets, aggressive global competition and transformed global marketing (vassileva 2017). it has given rise to many competing attractive offers, low switching costs, and unpredictable customer bases (chuaha et al. 2017). in this context, the quest to understand tourists’ loyalty intentions has become one of the most important goals for tourism researchers (ashour 2020). authors such as quadri-felitti and fiore (2012), and chen et al. (2016) confirm that understanding loyalty intentions in tourism in light of 4ir is crucial. loyal customers are profitable (anagnostopoulou et al. 2020), trust the brand, are committed to it (lerbin & aritonang 2017), are more likely to repurchase it, and spread positive word of mouth (raza et al. 2020). therefore, studies that interrogate the relationship between 4ir and tourism industry loyalty has become an attractive field for academic scrutiny. customer loyalty can be enhanced by the service provider’s reputation (khoa 2020). for the context of this study, reputation will also mean online reputation (the one facilitated by the 4ir technology). an organisation’s online reputation can facilitate customers’ vicarious experience of the service before they physically experience it, which can in turn produce loyal customers (anagnostopoulou et al. 2020; jin & chen 2021). alwi et al. (2017) write that customer loyalty can be a function of the service provider’s reputation. technology can be harnessed by customers to experience services virtually, such as in virtual travels (hollebeek et al. 2020). ict can render brand communication more experiential, offering a desired pre-consumption experience that can help lift brand attitudes (nyt 2017). the resultant experience can help engage customers and strengthen consumer-brand relationships (hollebeek et al. 2020). therefore, customer loyalty can be seen as a function of customers’ emotional attachment (srivastava & rai 2018) and virtual experience (ong et al. 2018; siebert et al. 2020). a good brand attitude, strong consumer-brand relationships, and an emotional customer attachment are the building blocks of customer loyalty. 127126 mgiba the brief discussion above suggests that online reputation (reput) and pre-visit experience (previsit) can be the antecedents of loyalt and the mechanism through which the impacts of 4ir on loyalt are transmitted. in addition to the 4ir-loyalt relationship, a deeper insight into the role of the 4ir environment, technology-enabled pre-visit tourists experience (previsit), and technology-enhanced destination reputation on tourists’ loyalty is a worthwhile venture (tercia et al. 2020). background and context the novelty of the direct and indirect impacts on 4ir on loyalt for a developing country’s tourism industry motivated this study. vilakazi street precinct in soweto township, with a population of approximately 2 million people (coetzee et al. 2017), provided an ideal setting, both because of its size and its rich anti-apartheid history (hoogendoorn et al. 2019). vilakazi street precinct is the struggle route (rogerson 2004), as it was home to two nobel peace laureates, nelson mandela and desmond tutu (mtapuri & giampiccoli 2020). another flagship in the precinct is the hector petersen memorial (booyens & rodgerson 2019). tourists visit the precinct to experience black south africa’s past and present (ramchander 2007). this study deals with one of the most important components of the south african economy, the tourism industry. according to aratuo and etienne (2019), tourism growth can happen even in economic stagnation. consequently, tourism is one of the biggest drivers of the world economy and provides an excellent tool for development in emerging economies (khan et al. 2019). according to paramati et al. (2017), tourism provided 10% of the world’s gdp in 2014. problem statement and purpose numerous studies have shown the positive association between customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions (chuaha et al. 2017; ferreira et al. 2019), and between technology use and customer loyalty intentions (badwan et al. 2017). mgiba and chiliya (2020) indicated that 4ir directly impacts the tourist centre’s reputation (reput) and customers’ pre-visit (previsit) intentions, which also influence loyalty intentions (loyalt) via customer satisfaction. however, despite the relevance of tourism and the effects of technology on tourists’ loyalty intentions, there is scant research on both the direct and the indirect effect of 4ir technology on customer loyalty in south africa (beneke et al. 2010; rudansky-kloppers 2014). consequently, the impact of the 4ir environment on loyalt and the mechanism of this impact are not well understood. this article was conceptualised as an effort to illuminate the 4ir-loyalt relationships in the south african context through the lenses of two well-known theories discussed below. the investigation highlights the importance of reput and previsit as antecedents of loyalt and as mechanisms that transmit the effects of 4ir on loyalt (ndofor et al. 2011). for this study, reput and previsit are conceptualised as having a direct impact on loyalt, and mediating the relationship between 4ir and loyalt. mediation analysis assumes a sequence of relationships in which an antecedent variable affects a mediating variable, which then affects a 127126 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles dependent variable (mackinnon et al. 2007). according to aguinis et al. (2017), mediation can explain the process and mechanism by which 4ir affects loyalt. for the present study, the direct relationships between 4ir, reput, and previsit with loyalt are first hypothesised and confirmed. the testing of the possible mediating effects of both reput and previsit on the 4ir-loyalt relationship follows. this research synergistically integrates constructs from the technology acceptance model (tam) and the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) in the tourism context (wu & chen 2017) and proposes a novel theoretical framework. these theories provide models that can be applied to study the adoption behaviour of customers across it products and services (kamble et al. 2018). furthermore, according to williams et al. (2009) and pattansheti et al. (2016), the integration produces a more comprehensive understanding of customers’ intent to adopt technology applications. the integration is expected to further extend the two theories’ validity and applicability in the tourism industry (hu et al. 1999). drawing upon these grounding theories, the study develops a research model that links 4ir, reput, previsit, and loyalt. this proposed model can help predict consumer acceptance of technology in the tourism industry (pavlou 2003). it will inspire academic debate on the best permutations of the well-known constructs from these two grounding theories. moreover, it will add considerable weight to the existing literature on the application of technology in the tourism business and other services businesses for developing countries. the study involves mediation analysis, which aims to uncover causal pathways along which changes in 4ir are transmitted to loyalt (pearl 2015). this is an important consideration in light of both technological advancement and the covid-19 pandemic. this study can also help managers in the deployment of 4ir strategies that will maximise benefits. literature review and hypotheses development technology use within the tourism industry could enhance the tourist experience. to adopt appropriate approaches and implement suitable strategies within the digital environment (kennedy-eden & gretzel 2012), tourism providers need to comprehend the ways in which technology could be used to influence tourist decision-making and behaviour. to that end, this study utilises two major theories, namely the technology acceptance model (tam) and the theory of planned behaviour (tpb). tam is one of the most effective and widely used information systems theoretical frameworks (holden & karsh 2010; lee et al. 2003). the most common usage of tam has evolved to be the determinant of the relationship between perceived usefulness (pu), perceived ease of use (peou), the attitude towards technology (salloum et al. 2019; scherer et al. 2019), and the anticipated future usage of emerging technologies (koul & eydgahi 2018). it is a useful theoretical model for predicting and explaining behavioural intention (hansen et al. 2018). tam states that to adopt technology, perceived usefulness and ease of use standards must be met (hu et al. 1999). it further assumes that individual adoption of technology is influenced by enjoyment. 129128 mgiba tpb has become a framework for explaining and predicting behaviour (fishbein & ajzen 2010; steinmetz et al. 2016). it states that the main driver for behaviour is the intention to perform the behaviour, and that intentions are the best predictors of behaviour (armitage & conner 2001). intentions account for 24% of the behavioural variance (sheppard et al. 1988; winkelnkemper 2014). the theory’s ability to predict intentions and behaviour across a variety of behavioural domains is supported by several studies (c.f. haus et al. 2013; overstreet et al. 2013). tpb is a useful framework for designing behaviour change interventions and to explicate the mechanisms by which interventions are expected to exert their effects on behaviour (c.f. kothe & mullan 2014; yardley et al. 2011; armitage & talibudeen 2010). intentions, in turn, are influenced by the attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control (pbc) (steinmetz et al. 2016). tpb is used to model the acceptance of new technology and predicts the levels of usage (xie et al. 2017). from the brief description of the theories, it is evident that individually these cannot fully explain the use of technology within the tourism industry to achieve customer loyalty. tam deals with the elements that make the technology appealing to users and the prediction and explanation of future engagement; tpb deals with explaining and predicting future behaviour by use of intentions and how desired behaviour changes can be achieved. therefore, tpb provides the link between favourable attitude, satisfaction, and loyalty intentions. all these elements from the two theories cater for the chosen constructs for the present study, which are 4ir, reput, previsit, and loyalt. together their explanatory power is enhanced. concept operationalization the operational definitions for each of the constructs are listed in table 1 below. table 1: operational definitions construct operational meaning sources tourism visit a centre to which an individual is attracted, to fulfil some personal interests, which results in economic activity and growth. camilleri 2018; opute et al. 2020; fernándeza et al. 2019; brida et al. 2016; dino & ong 2020 fourth industrial revolution environment (4ir) digital technology-driven connected environment characterised by information availability, ease of communication, lowered switching costs and increased completion because of the enhanced virtual pre-trial of products and services. prasetyo et al. 2020; fotiadis & william 2018; mavrageni et al. 2019 129128 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles construct operational meaning sources virtual reputation (reput) perceptual representations, attitudes, and associations consumers hold about a service or product, which influences purchase decisions and consumer behaviour. de chernatony 1999; keller 1993; fombrun & rindova 1996; kim & ko 2012; jin 2012; ruiz et al. 2014 pre-visit experience (previsit) technology-enabled virtual encounter, an experience that facilitates changes in attitudes and purchase behaviour because it is based on trust of the message sources. fäs & zumstein 2019; christyou 2015; djafaro & rushworth 2017 loyalty (loyalt) trust and satisfaction-based deeply held attitude towards a brand that results in repurchase decisions in the presence of other alternatives, and gives rise to positive word of mouth, lowering of marketing costs and business growth for brands. faraoni et al. 2018; aaker 1991; eid 2011; gola et al. 2016; sniewski et al. 2018; wery & billieux 2017; sadeghi et al. 2019; oliver 1999; lerbin & aritonang 2017; chang & chen 2009; yen & lu 2005 tourism and 4ir the tourism industry is one of the pioneer industries in the application of new technologies (ghorbani et al. 2020). in the 4ir era, digital technology is the main prerequisite for those who run tourism businesses (prasetyo et al. 2020). tourism actors can use digital technology to fulfil agility and competitiveness requirements (prasetyo et al. 2020). new technology enhances customer encounters and service processes. it leads to significant changes in the way organisations deliver their services and the way consumers evaluate their service encounters. hypotheses development figure 1 illustrates the hypothesised research framework where the direct and the indirect effects of 4ir on loyalt are represented. 131130 mgiba reput loyalt 4ir previsit h4 h5 h3 h2 h1 figure 1: proposed research framework the model also highlights the mediating roles of reput and previsit. it shows that, in addition to their direct impact on loyalt, reput and previsit mediate the relationship between 4ir and loyalt. 4ir and loyalty intentions (4ir-loyalt) 4ir-enabled tourists’ sources of information are key for generating expectations, fostering visit decision-making, and shaping final satisfaction levels (money & crotts 2003; zarezadeh et al. 2019). this effect is amplified when technology is accessible, deemed useful, and user-friendly. as information can be offered and accessed electronically (garcía-milon et al. 2020), the customer does not necessarily interact with the brand in a face-to-face setting (luarn & lin 2003). further, technology allows for quick feedback to customers (umashankar et al. 2017). tourists become more engaged with the service itself and with service providers. this has shifted the industry from passive consumption to a more engaging service space (taheri et al. 2019). 4ir promotes amusement, emotional interaction, and enhances the entire tourist experience (buhalis & sinarta 2019; tiago et al. 2018). all these developments affect tourists’ attitudes and consumption behaviour (buhalis & sinarta 2019; leung et al. 2019). it also affects customers’ satisfaction levels, which in turn affects their loyalty intentions (fatima et al. 2018; rasoolimanesh et al. 2019). it can be argued that if technology can be accessed by tourist business centres and potential tourists, it 131130 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles should produce beneficial effects. based on these arguments, it can be hypothesised that: h1: the fourth industrial revolution environment is positively related to tourists’ loyalty to the vilakazi street precinct. reputation and loyalty intentions (reput-loyalt) consumers’ online comments usually are considered as honest and transparent, which can shape the behaviour of potential consumers (mellinas & reino 2018). hence, online comments can build or ruin an organisation’s reputation (rosamond 2020). in the context of 4ir, the word reputation and online reputation are used interchangeably (bakos & dellarocas 2011). having a strong reputation is a valuable asset for any business (sadeghi et al. 2019). consumers are unwilling to purchase from companies, which they have little information on (sadeghi et al. 2019). osakwe et al. (2019) state that building a corporate reputation is one of the most pressing concerns for a business’s long-term success. a company’s good reputation has a positive relationship to its pricing and customers’ product quality perceptions (caruana & ewing 2010). several studies have highlighted the great influence of online reputation through reviews and ratings and how it affects purchasing decisions by others (mgiba & chiliya 2020). customers tend to purchase more from a corporate with a high reputation than a corporate with a low reputation, and feel more satisfied with their purchase (sadeghi et al. 2019). a good online reputation can result in decreased consumer considerations, increased positive comments, and increased repurchase intentions (lai 2019). it also gives rise to increased customer commitment and trust and encourages purchasing, which could enhance commitment to the brand (sadeghi et al. 2019). h2: vilakazi street precinct’s reputation has a positive impact on the loyalty intentions of tourists for the street precinct. pre-visit experience and loyalty intentions (previsit-loyalt) 4ir technology enables people to encounter brands virtually (bailey et al. 2015; hsu et al. 2018). the virtual encounter can plunge potential customers into a world of real context (guerra et al. 2015), and stimulate a sense of presence in the real world (gül & gül 2018). the encounter can generate emotions and social interactions (guerra et al. 2015), and elicit the same reactions and emotions as those felt during a real experience (garrozzino & bergamasco 2010). therefore, services can be experienced and impressions about them formed pre-purchase and pre-consumption (kharat & kharat 2017). these experiences and impressions might even affect their intentions and behaviour (kumar et al. 2013; prasad & jha 2014). their encounters and impressions might lead to positive word of mouth (wom), and an increase in consumers’ trust and willingness to use that brand (dolbec & chebat 2013; khan & rahman 2015). an technology-enabled experience can trigger feelings of loyalty to a brand (kauv & blotnicky 2020). in the tourism context, ghorbani et al. (2020) state that travel also encompasses the movements of the mind, an area that is enhanced greatly by 4ir technology. 133132 mgiba marketers often attempt to influence these impressions and responses (kharat & kharat 2017; van der westhuizen 2018) by using social media marketing (chen & yuan 2018), and by using influencers to recommend their brands (djafarova & rushworth 2017; fäs & zumstein 2019). influencer and social media marketing have become valuable assets for tourism due to their significant impact on tourist destination experiences (chatzigeorgiou 2017). they could provide online reviews and ratings, which significantly influence potential consumers’ experience, and their purchase decisions (mellinas & reino 2018). to achieve the desired outcomes, organisations use individuals who are regarded as trustworthy and authentic by their customers (gupta et al. 2017; seiler & kucza 2017) to recommend their brands (fäs & zumstein 2019). a good pre-visit experience may result in a favourable attitude towards a brand and predisposes the customer to repeat purchase behaviour (chang & chen 2009). li et al. (2020) state that online destination experience and loyalty are positively related. furthermore, 4ir technologies can improve customer experience by the use of customisation and thus improve customer satisfaction (swart et al. 2019). satisfaction has a significant effect on loyalty intentions (cho 2019). customer trust and satisfaction are the determinants of customer loyalty (faraoni et al. 2018). based on the above, the following hypothesis is proposed: h3: pre-visit experience has a positive impact on loyalty intentions for vilakazi street precinct. online reputation is a positive mediator between 4ir and loyalty intentions a firm’s online reputation defines customers’ opinion of it (dorčák et al. 2017). reputation can reduce perceived risk, which is shown to be particularly high in the tourism decision-making process (loureiro & kastenholz 2011). over 70% of consumers report that they trust online reviews (zervas et al. 2015). following this logic, the next hypothesis is proposed: h4: reputation is a positive mediator between the fourth industrial revolution environment and loyalty intentions for vilakazi street precinct tourists. pre-visit experience is a positive mediator between 4ir and loyalty intentions pre-visit experiences are formed by the correlation of service features and the perceptions and experiences of other tourists. these experiences mediate consumer responses and attitude (coghlan et al. 2012) and influence satisfaction perceptions, wom, and loyalt (serra-cantallops et al. 2018). positive wom (serra-cantallops et al. 2018), attitude, and satisfaction are antecedents of loyalty (picón et al. 2014; serra-cantallops et al. 2018). a technology-enabled tourism experience is significantly associated with travel experience satisfaction, which has a positive effect on tourists’ happiness and revisit intentions (pai et al. 2020). based on this line of argument, it can be concluded that in addition to the proposed direct effect of previsit on loyalt, previsit also mediates the relationship between 4ir and loyalt. the study, therefore, proposes the following hypothesis: 133132 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles h5: pre-visit experience is a positive mediator between the fourth industrial revolution and loyalty intentions. methodology this study investigated the causal relationship between 4ir, reput, prev, and loyal intentions, using data obtained from tourists who visited the vilakazi street precinct in the gauteng province of south africa between october and november 2019. a questionnaire was designed according to the hypotheses stated above. based on literature recommendations, each of these constructs contained several context-specific developed measurement items (khan et al. 2019; ringle et al. 2015; thompson et al. 1995). all survey items were measured using a 5-point likert scale, which ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree. participants were eligible if they were over 16 years old, and provided written informed consent. on sample size decision, majchrzak et al. (2005) recommend that there should be at least five to ten times the number of samples as the maximum number of model paths. pursuant to requirements for conducting ethical research, approval was obtained from the ethics committee of a johannesburg-based south african university. the protocol number is h20/03/14. socio-demographic characteristics were collected including ethnicity, age, education level, yearly income, and marital status. it was emphasised to participants that there were no right or wrong answers, and that what was required from them was honest responses. participants were also assured of anonymity, confidentiality, and freedom to ask clarity-seeking questions. in addition to the anonymity of the survey, this study attempted to separate questions for different variables as much as possible. the researcher collected data in separate phases for the predictor (4ir), outcome (loyal), and the mediator (reput) and (previsit) variables to avoid the possible cmv effects. data analysis approach and outcomes in total, 235 participants provided the data for this study and were included for analyses. since this study included parallel mediation, involved a marginally complex model, and had a relatively small sample size, the researcher used the smart pls analysis approach (chen & lin 2019; khan et al. 2019). this approach can simultaneously handle the model constructs and the measurement items (petter et al. 2007). moreover, pls is more appropriate when the measurement items are not well established or when they are used within a new measurement context (khan et al. 2019). smart pls (version 3.2.7), developed by ringle et al. (2015), was more suitable than other sem analysis methods (khan et al. 2019). this approach is also recommended for reducing measurement errors, and the avoidance of collinearity (khan et al. 2019). the analysis stage follows the scholarly recommended approach of doing the descriptive part before analysing both the direct effects and the mediation effects (yu et al. 2019). for the descriptive summary, see table 2 below. the smart pls sem analysis follows the brief descriptive summary. 135134 mgiba the descriptive outcomes: socio-demographic characteristics socio-demographic characteristics were collected, including age, education level, yearly income, and tourism expense levels. the results indicate that the majority of the participants were mature (above 39 years old) males. in addition, vilakazi street precinct visitors are likely to be highly educated individuals. about 58% held either a master’s degree or a phd. they are more likely to be high net-worth individuals, judging from their income and expense levels. table 2: descriptive summary description levels percentages gender male female prefer not to state 52.8 45.5 1.7 age < 18 years 18-25 years 26-38 years >39 years 2.6 19.1 28.1 48.9 education level below matric degree honours degree master’s degree phd degree 6.9 20.9 14.9 50.2 4.7 income level <500000 50 0001-750 000 750-001-1000 000 1 000 001-1 250 000 >1 250 000 prefer not to state 4.3 1.3 2.1 6.0 29.8 56.6 expense level < r1000 r1001r2000 r2001-r3000 r3001-r4000 r4001-r5000 >r5000 prefer not to state 6.4 5.1 2.1 3.0 3.4 27.7 52.3 135134 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles the first step in evaluating pls-sem results involves examining the measurement (outer) models, which included the reliability of each item and the internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of each construct (risher et al. 2019). the reliability of items was tested by the corresponding loading of the questions. factor loading presented the extent to which the construct can be measured by some questions, and the threshold value was 0.6, which was used to represent individual reliability (hair jr. et al. 2010). composite reliability (cr) values for each construct were higher than the threshold value of 0.7, indicating the constructs were internally consistent (0.892-0.928) (chin 1998). convergent validity was assessed by average variance extracted (ave). according to fornell and larcker (1981), if this index is > 0.5, this construct has good convergent validity. it can be seen from table 2 that the aves for potential variables of the constructs in this study were between 0.694 and 0.903, indicating good convergent validity. table 3: measurement model statistics (reliability and ave of the outer model) construct item loadings ca cr ave 4ir 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 0.749 0.826 0.863 0.747 0.802 0.691 0.871 0.904 0.611 reput 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 0.503 0.557 0.561 0.498 0.545 0.634 0.891 0.928 0,682 previsit 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 0.570 0.673 0.640 0.663 0.650 0.639 0.910 0.928 0.682 loyalt 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 0.317 0.576 0.544 0.631 0.556 0.848 0.892 0.626 137136 mgiba following henseler et al. (2015), the researcher evaluated discriminant validity through heterotrait-monotrait ratios (htmt). from table 4, all the htmt values between the constructs are below the 0.90 threshold, pointing that discriminant validity has been achieved. table 4: heterotrait-monotrait (htmt) ratios for discriminant validity variable 4ir loyalt previsit 4ir loyalt 0.776 previsit 0.871 0.679 reput 0.773 0.833 0.737 quality of the model one cannot interpret the hypothesised relationships before the collinearity possibilities and the predictive power and accuracy of exogenous variables are resolved. these checks determine the quality of the structural model (hair et al. 2017; hair et al. 2019; rigdon 2012). for instance, the presence of collinearity can bias the results (hair et al. 2014; risher et al. 2019). collinearity possibilities were assessed by looking at the degree of collinearity among the independent variables (4ir, reput and previsit) by use of the variance inflation factor (vif). according to hair et al. (2011), the variance inflation factor (vif) value of 5 or above typically indicates a collinearity problem (daoud 2017; robinson & schumacker 2009). the values for this study are tabulated in table 5. table 5: collinearity test values independent variable vif value 4ir 2.877 reput 2.069 previsit 2.734 the criteria used to assess the model’s predictive quality included the model’s predictive power (r²) and the effect size (f2) (hair et al. 2016). r2 is the variance explained values, which describes the amount of variance the model can explain (plonsky & ghanbar 2018). a 50% value or more is acceptable (hair et al. 2011). for the r2 values for this study see figure 2 below. effect size (f2) measures the power of a variable’s impact on others (hair et al. 2016). the values are shown in table 6 below. 137136 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles table 6: f2 effect sizes values table construct reput previsit loyalt 4ir 0.151 1.50 0.076 reput 0.291 previsit 0.002 hypotheses testing results the solid measurement and structural properties enhanced the confidence in testing the hypothesised relationships. the hypothesised relationships tests dealt with 4ir-loyalt, 4ir-reput, 4ir-previsit, reput-loyalt, and with the parallel mediations of reput and previsit. table 7 summarises the outcome of the direct and indirect relationships. table 7: direct and indirect effects direct and indirect relationships table direct effect coefficients bootstrap 95% relationships coefficients decision/significance 4ir-loyalt (c) 0.298 significant/accepted 4ir-repu (a1) 0.687 significant/accepted 4ir-previsit (a2) 0.775 significant/accepted reput-loyalt (b1) 0.494 significant/accepted previsit-loyalt (b2) 0.217 significant/accepted indirect effects indirect effects point estimate vaf calculations h2:a1*b1 0.34 43.3%% h3: a2*b2 0.17 21.0% total indirect effs 0.51 64.3% 139138 mgiba a2=0.775 reput r2=0.512 4ir loyalt r2=0.590 previsit r2=0.598 key: a1, a2, b1, b2, and c-path coefficients figure 2: model analysis results discussion this study attempted to understand how tourists’ loyalty intentions to the vilakazi street precinct are impacted by the 4ir environment. in pursuit of that, it attempted to extend and connect two different theories of technology adoption with online reputation and virtual experience literature to predict tourists’ loyalty intentions surrounding the precinct. the findings indicate that, in addition to the impact of 4ir on satisfaction (mgiba & chiliya 2020), the 4ir environment also directly affects loyalt. existing literature shows that users often share their experiences online when they feel positive towards a service (kar 2020). the findings are also in line with other studies (huang et al. 2019; giovanis & athanasopoulou 2017). the second set of findings deals with the mediation effects of reput and previsit. in a digital world, reputation is a value (lăzăroiu & rommer 2017) that in itself can lead to loyalty intentions. this study confirms that this conclusion also applies to tourism destinations. on 4ir’s impact on previsit and previsit’s impact on loyalt, the study confirms that potential customers can gain a priori perception of a service (khan et al. 2019). it also shows that an organisation’s stronger reputation can mitigate feelings of risk perceptions (khan et al. 2019). these findings are important as they confirm other findings for service businesses. because service products are intangible and cannot be easily described, consumers tend to rely on word of mouth from an experienced source to lower perceived risk and uncertainty. 139138 the fourth industrial revolution, loyalty intentions and the mediating roles implications of the study in the competitive marketplace of tourism, the vilakazi street precinct needs to present its unique features online to draw tourists’ attention. tourism being a service industry, customers cannot distinguish the service they receive from the people who provide it (mavrageni et al. 2019). 4ir technology offers novel and unparalleled opportunities to create value for marketers and academia. tourism experience is co-created by marketers, consumers, and potential consumers. this article describes opportunities for future research for improving marketing efficiencies, and gives pointers for policy-making. the academic merits are significant. by augmenting the conceptualisation of the effect of 4ir on vilakazi street precinct’s reputation, pre-visit experience, and on tourists’ loyalty intentions, it enriches the current sparse research on african tourism-based economies and technology. the model proposed in this study not only contributes to the existing literature, but also helps researchers gain a better understanding of tourists and potential tourists’ engagements with technology both before and after visiting african tourist destinations. the model provides a better explanation and richer insights into technology adoption in the tourism industry than the individual grounding theories used in the study. promising areas for future research involve the refinement of the proposed framework by looking at additional constructs that mediate the relationships between 4ir and loyalty intentions, even from outside the chosen theories. the present mediating constructs only account for about 60% of the loyalty intentions. the article also contributes to the improvement of management practices for businesses that are affected by technology. management practitioners must be aware that continued loyalty intentions are affected, not only directly by 4ir, but also indirectly via reput and previsit. this study provides evidence that tourists can enjoy the tourism centre vicariously, which can lead to their loyalty intentions. the findings should help managers to fine-tune their marketing campaigns, especially in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. for policy-makers, the findings of the study could be of value in adopting policies that promote the use of technology for both country branding and tourism centre branding. organisations operating in the precinct can be incentivised to utilise available technology to not only attract visitors to the precinct but also patronise their operations. limitations and direction for future research in this study, several limitations provide opportunities for further research. first, the proposed model was tested only for one urban destination. this situation limits the generalisability of the findings. second, this study was conducted during a particular point in time and circumstances (pre-covid-19). residents’ place image and their perceptions of tourism impacts are dynamic, and may change over different stages of the destination’s lifecycle, and as circumstances transform. further validation of the model in other south african destinations and other african regions is required, as tourist destinations vary in their image characteristics, the type of 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were willing, randomly selected participants completed a questionnaire on campus. non-probability sampling was used in selecting these participants due to the difficulty of obtaining a sampling frame. a total of 380 surveys were returned and used for analysis and insights. descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling were conducted to generate results using spss 25 and amos 25 respectively. a key finding established that ‘perceived ease of use twitter’ and ‘perceived usefulness twitter’ were the most correlated constructs regarding its effectiveness in raising funds. based on the findings, implications emerged as well as interesting insights into how students perceive twitter as a viable tool for raising tuition fees. the limitations of the study were highlighted. lastly, further research suggestions were proposed. keywords: social media; twitter; online communication; marketing communication; digital marketing; funding; university tuition; crowdfunding introduction crowdfunding has emerged as a valuable funding source for entrepreneurs (belleflamme et al. 2014). this study, however, viewed crowdfunding from the context of generating funds for tuition fees at a higher education institution. it is understood that one of the biggest changes in human interaction to date has been the introduction and rise of online social networks (tiago & verissimo 2014). this rapid growth has shaped and moulded the human activities and interactions we know salusiwe qomfo school of economic and business sciences, faculty of commerce, law and management, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa email: salusiwe.qomfo@ students.wits.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-55846634 dr norman chiliya school of economic and business sciences, faculty of commerce, law and management, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa email: norman.chiliya@ wits.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-19007248 dr tinashe chuchu department of marketing management, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of pretoria, south africa email: tinashe.chuchu@ up.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-73258932 dr eugine tafadzwa maziriri department of business management, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: maziririet@ufs.ac.za orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-80474702 mailto:salusiwe.qomfo@students.wits.ac.za mailto:salusiwe.qomfo@students.wits.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5584-6634 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5584-6634 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5584-6634 mailto:norman.chiliya@wits.ac.za mailto:norman.chiliya@wits.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-7248 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-7248 mailto:tinashe.chuchu@up.ac.za mailto:tinashe.chuchu@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 mailto:maziririet@ufs.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4702 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4702 32 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro today. although social media is still a growing phenomenon, it is considered one of the most effective and commonly used means of communication (coelho et al. 2017), with approximately 25% of the world’s population making use of social media. however, one cannot mention social media without mentioning what one would call the “mother” of it all – digital marketing. kannan and li (2017: 23) define digital marketing as “activities, processes and institutions facilitated by digital technologies for creating, communicating and delivering value for customers and other stakeholders”. digital marketing is an evolving concept and, simply put, it is about people (marketers) connecting with other people (consumers) to build relationships with the purpose of increasing revenue (ryan & jones 2009). twitter, a microblogging service launched in 2006, has become prevalent among university students (johnston et al. 2013). twitter allows users to share their thoughts, information and links in real time, as well as communicate directly, privately (through direct messages), or publicly with other twitter users (ibid.). in terms of digital marketing, the social relationships that existed in the real world have shifted to the virtual world; this has resulted in the formation of online communities (tiago & verissimo 2014). these online communities provide users with a great source of electronic word of mouth (akar & mardikyan 2014). berthon et al. (2012) differentiate between web 2.0 and social media, with web 2.0 referring to the technical infrastructure (both hardware and software) which allows for two-way communication, allowing the user to have control over design, collaboration and community online. it allows users to share, link and collaborate (thackeray et al. 2008). social media is the product of applications that are internetbased that use web 2.0 technological foundations and allow for the creation and interchange of user-generated content (berthon et al. 2012). the extensive adoption and popularity of social media sites like twitter implies that these online technologies are successful among individuals because of their acceptance and usage in three spheres of human life: people’s personal, social and professional life (rauniar et al. 2014). based on the technology acceptance model (tam), the reason for some social media sites failing could be indicative of their inability to gather acceptance and popularity from their intended target audience (ibid.). dr tinashe ndoro department of marketing management, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of pretoria, south africa email: tinashe.ndoro@ up.ac.za orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0003-30315161 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.11 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-17 date submitted: 18 september 2019 date accepted: 13 november 2019 date published: 12 december 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:tinashe.ndoro@up.ac.za mailto:tinashe.ndoro@up.ac.za http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3031-5161 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3031-5161 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3031-5161 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.11 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication the theoretical models used in this study are the theory of reasoned action (tra) and tam, which was adopted by davis (1986) from the former theory. these models are widely recognised and used in academic literature (akar & mardikyan 2014). in short, tra is said to explain a person’s behaviour through their intentions (rauniar et al. 2014). it describes how the attitudes and beliefs that people hold about a particular system lead to behaviour (karahanna & straub 1999). tra is a well-known intention model proven to be successful in predicting and explaining people’s behaviour across a wide variety of topics (davis et al. 1989). davis et al. (1989) state that due to the model’s general nature, one is able to use it to elucidate any human behaviour. tam, on the other hand, is an adaptation of tra and was specifically designed to explain one type of behaviour, namely computer usage (ibid.). the research objectives are presented in the following section and most of these are associated with student perceptions towards the national student financial aid scheme of south africa (nsfas). research objectives the research objectives of this study are: ♦ to investigate the relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived information and credibility and the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans on the perceived usefulness of twitter; ♦ to investigate the relationship between perceived usefulness and the intention to use twitter for university funding; ♦ to investigate the relationship between the intention to use twitter and the actual use of twitter for university funding; ♦ to investigate the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the intention to use twitter for university funding; and ♦ to investigate the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the actual use of twitter for university funding. problem statement although there are relatively few fully inclusive studies on how, for which reasons, or in what ways university students use twitter (weller et al. 2014), there is evidence that students rely on twitter now more than ever to fund their university fees as many do not qualify for nsfas or bursaries, as part of the so-called “missing middle” (mulaudzi 2015). according to booysen (2016), there has been a significant growth of debt amongst students, with south african students owing about r711 million in student debt. 54 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro theoretical framework figure 1: revised tam for social media (source: rauniar et al. 2014) figure 2: conceptual model 54 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication tam is often revised in studies to fit a specific context of technology being studied (rauniar et al. 2014). in this study, the revised tam for social media (figure 1) has been adapted to represent the conceptual model for this study, shown in figure 2. perceived ease of use, perceived information and credibility and the desire to look for funding without assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans have replaced critical mass, capability and perceived playfulness. the variables perceived usefulness, intention to use and actual use remain unchanged, but with trustworthiness removed as a variable. through adopting this model, the pivotal question regarding the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the intention to use twitter can be investigated. the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the actual use of twitter is also examined. h1: the relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness h2: the relationship between perceived information and credibility and perceived usefulness h3: the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and perceived usefulness h4: the relationship between perceived usefulness and intention to use h5: the relationship between intention to use and actual use h6: the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the intention to use twitter h7: the relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans and the actual use of twitter research design and methodology the study used a quantitative research design as it focused on hypothesis testing. this section briefly discusses the sampling design, questionnaire design, data collection and data analysis approaches. the target population for this study was university students registered at the university of the witwatersrand, who are twitter users. to gauge only those who are twitter users, a filter question was included in the questionnaire, asking whether individuals are twitter users or not. the sample size consisted of 380 students. a convenience sampling method (non-probability) was used. in order to determine the sample size number, the raosoft sample size calculator was used with 35 000 students as the population size. the measuring instruments used in this study were adapted from existing research to suit this specific study. the questionnaire measurement instruments on perceived ease of use were based on heinrichs et al. (2011) as well as lane and coleman (2012); while, perceived usefulness was a combination of heinrichs et al. (2011) and rauniar et al. (2014). the perceived information credibility questions were modelled after heinrichs et al. (2011); while, intention to use and actual use questions were 76 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro based on rauniar et al. (2014), including lane and coleman (2012). where necessary, new questions were included, for example the variable “the desire to look for funding without assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans”. literature review and context of research higher education in south africa south africa boasts a vibrant higher education sector with more than a million students enrolled in the country’s 24 state-funded tertiary institutions (matsolo et al. 2018). since 1994, the number of students enrolled in institutions of higher education has improved significantly. however, high university fees continue to contribute to the under-representation of black students (ibid.). according to bronkhorst and michael (2017), trying to improve the participation rate for black students remains a central issue for the government. however, the participation rate can only be improved through funding. this is because lack of funding tends to be the reason for high underenrolments from this population group (bronkhorst & michael 2017). south africa’s higher education institutions have faced several challenges over the past few years, including high student dropout rates, the demand for free education through the #feesmustfall protests, the unavailability of on-campus residences, the unavailability of spaces to admit recently matriculated candidates, as well as the demand to decolonise the curriculum (moloi 2016). lack of funding in africa, there is a direct correlation between poverty and student retention (bronkhorst & michael 2017). hence, many students are financially excluded and some fail to complete their degrees and diplomas after gaining access into university (ibid.). the amount of money injected into student funding schemes, such as nsfas, is indeed a reflection of the government’s commitment and efforts to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of bursaries and loans. however, if one compares how much the south african government is spending on higher education versus other g20 countries, like argentina, india, saudi arabia, brazil, russian federation and indonesia, it is the lowest at 0.75% (bronkhorst & michael 2017). in 2012, the government expenditure on higher education was 0.71%, (universities south africa 2016). challenges university students face the #feesmustfall movement brought to light a number of challenges that students confront when pursuing higher education (dominguez-whitehead 2017). despite the obvious challenge of tuition fees that students face, there are several other trials faced by students. those trials are class and race, student activism, decolonisation of the curriculum, inclusion and exclusion, as well as food and housing (ibid.). students struggle to access basic needs, such as food and shelter, due to the rising cost of living and increasing tuition fees. poverty and the lack of sufficient funding are cited as key factors for academic failure and the reason why students find it difficult to progress. students continuously face the pressures of either prioritising their own financial needs 76 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication or those of their families. it is said that food and housing challenges are widespread in universities across south africa (dominguez-whitehead 2017). food and housing are often overlooked and assumed to be accessible to every student pursuing a higher education, as entry into higher education institutions has traditionally been reserved for the elite. student debt and university dropouts dropout rates are driven by a combination of academic factors and financial constraints (enca 2018). in 2001, south africa had one of the lowest graduation rates in the world, at approximately 15% (matsolo et al. 2018). of the students entering a three-year degree in university, less than half of them complete their degrees and out of those who do complete their degrees, some 50% take six years to graduate. one in four students drop out before they reach their second year of studies. students enter higher education in the hope that they will graduate with a qualification (enca, 2018); however, the challenges faced by students are often so overwhelming that many drop out in their first year of study (moodley & singh 2017). matsolo et al. (2018) write that one of the most common reasons for students not pursuing tertiary education or dropping out is financial difficulties. lack of funding is the most cited reason for students dropping out of university, which makes financial aid a critical factor in improving student retention (moodley & singh 2017). loans are said to be the most used form of financial assistance among students of the united states, but the use of loans and the problem of student debt is not confined to the united states (gassman et al. 2018). student debt is a growing problem, which seems to affect students worldwide (perkins et al. 2016). efforts to alleviate the current issue the south african government’s efforts to alleviate the current issue of lack of funding and student challenges are discussed below, ranging from concessions, proposals for free education, nsfas and food banks. the authors refer to the #feesmustfall student movement often because it triggered a turnaround in higher education (booysen 2016), including funding concessions, as well as policy elaborations. in 2015, the government approved a zero percent fee increase for 2016. it also reprioritised higher education and approved additional funding for the higher education sector, which was previously neglected. the government eventually acknowledged that to assist a wider range of poor students, nsfas needed to be re-organised, well managed, and better funded. previously students were excluded due to historical debt, but in 2015, the government conceded that students should not be excluded because of this. student debt was negotiated (some was written off) or covered by new sources, from nsfas or in some instances the private sector (ibid.). discussion of variables perceived ease of use heinrichs et al. (2011) define perceived ease of use as the user finding the social networking site easy to operate, which means that the user will not have to exert 98 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro unnecessary effort in operating the site to achieve his/her desired objective. rauniar et al. (2014) define it as the degree to which someone believes using a specific system will be free of exerting effort. according to heinrichs et al. (2011), perceived ease of use can encourage users to participate and share on social networking sites. if social networking sites are easy to use, they will have a higher probability of being adopted and used (ibid.). bugembe (2010) adds that individuals are more likely to accept social networking sites that are easier to use than those that are not. additionally, if a social networking site is relatively easy to use, users will be more willing to learn about its features and will intend to use it frequently (hamid et al. 2015). according to bugembe (2010), previous research established that perceived ease of use is an important factor influencing user acceptance and usage of information technologies. perceived information credibility before using a social networking site, users want to ensure that the information provided on the site is credible and of quality (li & suh 2015). information credibility is the extent to which a user perceives information to be believable. li and suh (2015) state that believability or credibility is one of the criteria used to filter information. providing information that is accurate and trustworthy plays a role in ensuring that users return to the site (heinrichs et al. 2011). although heinrichs et al. (ibid.) mention information quality in their research, perceived information credibility is the same thing. perceived information credibility can be seen as information that is accurate, relevant, complete and consistent. heinrichs et al. (2011) suggest that social networking sites, which provide high-quality information, will lead to the sites having greater perceived usefulness and that perceived information credibility should influence users ongoing participation on these social networking sites. desire to look for funding without assistance limited literature exists for the variable related to searching for university funding on twitter. however, the authors noticed the trend of twitter users using the social network platform to fund their university studies; hence, they began to question the correlation between the desire to look for funding without assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans, with the perceived usefulness, intention to use, and actual use of twitter. this variable refers to how students have found alternative routes to finance their studies, rather than relying on the systems currently in place such as bursaries, nsfas and loans. perceived usefulness of twitter the perceived usefulness of twitter refers to the users’ belief that using a specific system application or social networking site will improve their overall performance (heinrichs et al. 2011). bugembe (2010) refers to perceived usefulness as the individual’s perception regarding the outcome of a particular experience. venkatesh and davis (2000) have noted that, according to tam, perceived usefulness is influenced by perceived ease of use because all things being equal, the easier social networking sites are more useful. perceived usefulness is an essential driver of usage 98 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication intentions as it has continuously been a strong determinant of users’ usage intentions (venkatesh & davis 2000). hamid et al. (2015) echo this statement by saying that perceived usefulness is a direct predictor of the behavioural intention to use a system. interestingly, when tam was applied in finland it was found that perceived usefulness is not only a direct predictor of the intention to use, but it is also a determinant of actual behaviour (jahangir & begum 2008). intention to use and actual use the term “intention” refers to a decision that someone has made about whether to perform a behaviour or not, and it is formed through deliberate thinking, conflict and commitment (rauniar et al. 2014). rauniar et al. (2014) add that the intention to use social media is known as a voluntary and cognitive illustration of a user’s willingness to actually use the platform. this variable can be used to envision and predict the motivation and willingness of a user to perform a particular action or behaviour (durodolu 2016). heinrichs et al. (2011) view the intention to use as the extent to which a user would like to use or revisit a social networking site again and ultimately is the function of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. the perceived benefit the user receives from using social media determines his/her intention to use the social network; thus, if a user has a favourable attitude towards a social network his/her intention to use it will be higher (rauniar et al. 2014). results of the study this section consists of a summary of the respondents’ demographic profile/ background information. it includes a discussion of the respondents’ gender, age, the faculty they belong to, whether they are a full-time or part-time student, and who is funding their university studies. table 1 indicates that males accounted for 61% of the sample, while females accounted for about 38%. more than 90% of the participants were in the age range 19 to 30. the engineering and the built environment faculty was the most represented faculty, with 111 students participating out of a total of 380 respondents. the majority of the students were funded by their own parents (33%), followed by private company (bursary/ scholarship) funded students. the smaller groups were nsfas-funded, “other” sourcesfunded and self-funded students – 24%, 11% and 7% respectively. 1110 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro table 1: demographic profile of respondents gender frequency percentage male 231 60.8 female 143 37.6 prefer not to say 6 1.6 380 100.0 age 18 17 4.5 19-20 127 33.4 21-30 234 61.6 31 and above 2 0.5 380 100.0 faculty frequency percentage commerce, law and management 106 27.9 engineering and the built environment 111 29.2 health sciences 15 3.9 humanities 101 26.6 science 47 12.4 380 100.0 type enrolment full-time student 370 97.4 part-time student 10 2.6 380 100.0 funding of respondent’s university studies frequency percentage parent(s) 127 33.4 self 28 7.4 private company (bursary/ scholarship) 94 24.7 nsfas 91 23.9 other 40 10.5 380 100.0 structural equation modelling structural equation modelling was conducted based on the two-step procedure, which examines model fit comprising of confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) and hypotheses testing. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was primarily performed to examine the scale accuracy (including reliability and convergent validity) of the multiple-item construct measures using amos 25. the correlations of the constructs were adapted for the study. the inter-construct correlation matrix depicting the extent to which the conceptual model’s constructs interrelatedness is presented in the following section. 1110 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication table 2: inter-construct correlation matrix peu pic pu itu au dtlf peu pearson correlation 1 pic pearson correlation 0.294** 1 pu pearson correlation 0.371** 0.372** 1 itu pearson correlation 0.376** 0.252** 0.676** 1 au pearson correlation 0.402** 0.206** 0.589** 0.721** 1 dtlf pearson correlation 0.189** 0.241** 0.446** 0.256** 0.280** 1 key: perceived ease of use (peu), perceived information credibility (pic), desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans (dtlf), perceived usefulness (pu), intention to use (itu), actual use (au) as indicated in table 2 above, all the constructs showed uniqueness and independence from each other. this is because none of the correlations between the constructs reached “1”, which is a requirement for proving that each construct measured a completely independent aspect of the measurement instrument from the other. the mean, standard deviation and cronbach’s alpha values were also generated from the analysis and are depicted in table 3 below. table 3: item statistics research construct mean value standard deviation cronbach’s α perceived ease of use (peu) 4.17 0.947 0.808 perceived information credibility (pic) 2.94 0.955 0.831 desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans (dtlf) 3.69 1.109 0.691 perceived usefulness (pu) 3.67 1.073 0.882 intention to use (itu) 4.16 1.053 0.856 actual use (au) 3.79 1.237 0.823 in table 3 above, the mean values ranged from 2.94 to 4.17; this proximity in value indicated that the data was fairly distributed. in addition, all standard deviation values ranged from 0.947 to 1.237, which is below the (-2 to +2) range required to confirm normal distribution of data. the cronbach’s alpha (α) values were used for assessing the reliability of the data of the associated measurement scales. these values ranged from 0.691 to 0.882, meeting the required threshold of 0.7 recommended by nunnally and bernstein (1994). 1312 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro table 4: model fit indices (cmin/df) (gfi) (nfi) (ifi) (tli) (cfi) (rmsea) 2.166 0.904 0.904 0.946 0.934 0.945 0.055 key: cmin/df: chi-square, gfi: goodness of fit, ifi; incremental fit index, tli; tucker lewis index; cfi; comparative fit index, rmsea; root mean square error approximation the measurement model generated a ratio of chi-squared value over degree-offreedom of 2.166, which is acceptable, as it is lower than the recommended 3 (ullman 2001). other model fit indices, which included the gfi, nfi, ifi, tfi, and cfi, were 0.904, 0.904, 0.946, 0.934, 0.918 and 0.964 respectively. all these model fit measures were above the recommended threshold of 0.9. the rmsea was 0.055, which fell below the recommended threshold of 0.08 (hooper et al. 2008). these values provided confirmation that the proposed conceptual model had a good fit with the data. finally, the last test in the analysis was that of hypothesis testing. these results are depicted in table 5 below. table 5: hypotheses results hypothesis estimate p-value results peu → pu h1 0.798 *** supported and significant pic→ pu h2 0.421 *** supported and significant dtlf→ pu h3 0.526 *** supported and significant pu → itu h4 0.780 *** supported and significant itu → au h5 0.781 *** supported and significant dtlf→ itu h6 -0.111 0.090 not supported and insignificant dtlf→ au h7 0.191 *** supported and significant key: perceived ease of use (peu), perceived information credibility (pic), desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans (dtlf), perceived usefulness (pu), intention to use (itu), actual use (au) the hypotheses were tested at a 99% level of confidence, as three asterisks are shown. by looking at table 5, it can be seen that six out of the seven hypotheses are supported. the first hypothesis (h1, pe to pu) produced an estimate of 0.798, in addition to being supported and positive at p<0.01 level significance, confirming that there was a relationship between the perceived ease of using twitter with its perceived usefulness in terms of its effectiveness in generating funds for university fees. it should be noted that this was the strongest relationship of the conceptual model, suggesting that perceived ease of use had the most impact on twitter’s perceived usefulness. the second hypothesis (h2, pic to pu) produced an estimate of 0.421. this relationship was both supported and positive at p<0.01 level of significance; thereby, 1312 perceptions of the effectiveness of twitter as a crowdfunding communication confirming that there was a relationship between perceived information credibility and perceived ease of use as far as twitter was concerned. the three hypothesis (h3, dtlf to pu) produced an estimate of 0.526. this relationship was both supported and positive at p<0.01 level of significance; thereby, confirming that there was a relationship between perceived information credibility and perceived ease of use as far as twitter was concerned. the fourth hypothesis (h4, pu to itu) produced an estimate of 0.780. this relationship was both supported and positive at p<0.01 level of significance, confirming that there was a relationship between the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries and perceived ease of use as far as twitter was concerned. the fifth hypothesis (h5, itu to au) produced an estimate of 0.781 and was both supported and significant at p<0.01 level of significance. this suggested that if intention to use twitter is high, the actual use of twitter increases. as for the sixth hypothesis (dtlf and itu), the relationship had an estimate of -0.111 and a p value of 0.090, which was not significant at p<0.01 level of significance. this relationship was also not supported, due to the negative outcome when a positive result had been anticipated. this thus suggested that the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans had nothing to do with the students’ general appreciation of using twitter. this meant that students would still use twitter to raise funds, despite support from bursaries and nsfas. for the last hypothesis, h7 (dtlf and au), the relationship had an estimate of 0.191. this relationship was both significant and supported at p<0.01 level of significance. this suggested that the desire to look for funding, without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans, led the students to consider using twitter as a viable fundraising tool. this means that a fundraising platform allowed them to have more control over communicating their needs. summary of findings and conclusions the study was an attempt to understand the impact of twitter as a tool for generating funds to pay for university fees, or for communicating the need for funds. the technology acceptance model, one of the most established frameworks in examining useracceptance of technology, was adapted to achieve the objectives of this study. as revealed by the findings, it is clear that twitter was perceived as an effective tool for generating funding to pay for university fees. the students who were the target audience re-enforced their appreciation for the use of twitter in communicating and crowdfunding for university fees. the majority of the respondents in the study were full-time students (370), whilst ten were part-time students. this drastic difference in student enrolment could have affected the results as most of the students listed parent(s), private companies or nsfas as the people or institutions responsible for their university fees, rather than themselves. part-time students might have perceived the variables studied differently from full-time students, especially when it comes to the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans. 1514 qomfo, chiliya, chuchu, maziriri & ndoro implications and contribution of research the contribution of this research was to add to the understanding of a common social media platform (twitter) and an emerging fund-generating concept (crowdfunding) in determining student perceptions on its effectiveness in raising higher education funds. to achieve this, an adapted version of the technology acceptance model was utilised. the desire to look for funding without the assistance of bursaries, nsfas or loans was found to be unrelated to the intention to use twitter. this implied that even though students wanted to raise funds, it was not a direct antecedent of their affinity for the use of twitter. however, twitter was perceived to be useful for crowdfunding, but this could possibly be due to many factors. the findings of the study also provide implications for policy makers in that they present the perceptions of the actual beneficiaries of services, in this case education for students. this therefore suggests that policy makers should encourage the use of non-traditional communication platforms, such as twitter and alternative funding sources such as crowdfunding, as was evident from the generally positive views of the students. limitations and future research for the purposes of this study, only students from one university were used. this could have created both sample and respondent bias, as all the participants were exposed to the same stimuli and environment. it would therefore be encouraged to include students from different higher education institutions, as their perceptions could potentially be different. in addition, the university in question was a public institution partially funded by the government; therefore, student from privately funded institutions might have conflicting views. this would therefore add more rigour to the debate and significantly contribute to the discourse. moreover, future research could benefit from screenshots being presented to the respondents, which depict the actual past tweets of students asking for financial assistance, or communicating their needs. theoretically, future research could also involve analysing a direct relationship between the perceived ease of using twitter and the actual use of twitter when it comes to generating funding for higher education tuition fees. this would help to understand how much the mediators used in the 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understood. an analysis assists in creating a definition with a sound theoretical base, promoting consistency in using the concept, and understanding the underlying defining characteristics. the walker and avant approach was used to guide this concept analysis. the characteristics of health dialogue include an equal, symbiotic health relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider, and reciprocal health communication towards reaching an identified health goal via a health message. antecedents include both patient and healthcare provider presenting with a positive attitude towards health dialogue, displaying sensitivity towards cultural, contextual and societal factors, and receiving training on health matters and communication skills. the consequence is an improved health outcome. empirical referents comprise sharing an understanding of responsibility/decision-making, establishing a health plan, applying context-sensitive health communication strategies, and declaring mutual benefits received from the health relationship. this concept analysis serves to clarify the concept within theory development and research. the defined characteristics further afford healthcare providers ways to measure the concept in their work environment and encourage health communication. keywords: health communication; health dialogue; health message; concept analysis; walker and avant approach; participatory communication; participatory paradigm; transactional communication introduction this article reports on an analysis of the concept “health dialogue”. the research argues for the implementation of said concept to replace the currently popular collection of terms such as “health communication” and “health education”. patient healthcare provider interaction and academic research is in need of a more distinct, patientfriendly and positive concept to use in the health discipline. dr marianne reid school of nursing, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa (reidm@ufs.ac.za) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-10741465 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-20 date submitted: 30 january 2019 date accepted: 22 july 2019 date published: 10 october 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:reidm@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1074-1465 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1074-1465 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 reid background and problem statement health concepts that encompass psychosocial and behavioural phenomena are abstract and not observable or measurable. such concepts should be researched by means of a concept analysis in order to assure mutual comprehension, interpretation and general cognition among scholars and academics in view of conducting valid and reliable research as well as effective health interventions (alligood 2014; bousso et al. 2013). scholarly cognition of a concept is distinguished from everyday subjective meanings. the use of multiple terms to describe one specific concept leads to confusion and disarray in patient interaction and research. a basic feature of health practice interventions includes the “conversation” between healthcare worker and patient. this interaction is generally referred to as “health communication” (munodwafa 2008; rimer & kreuter 2006) and its alternatives, including health promotion, counselling or health education. these concepts have become challenging as they are experienced by patients as implying that they play subservient and passive roles in the relationship (schöpf et al. 2017). these terms could imbue the caregiver-patient relationship with negative attitudes, which could lead to non-compliance of health interventions. consequently, the academic community has sought to use the more recently coined term “health dialogue” to describe patienthealthcare provider interaction. the term “health dialogue” implies patient engagement and participation in the process of providing health information and knowledge. this fits well with the greater realisation of the complexity of cultural and ethnic diversity that exists within the relationship with patients. it is within the participatory paradigm, strongly influenced by theorists such as paulo freire, that dialogue is presented as a “two-way, interactive and participatory” process (tomaselli 2011). freire’s understanding of dialogue embraces communication between people in an equal relationship, with critical-thinking and self-realisation taking prominence. during the process, great value is placed on aspects such as mutual respect, humility and trust (rule 2011). dialogue within this paradigm is based on the sharing of knowledge, rather than a top-down linear approach from an “informed” source to a “passive” receiver. the transactional nature of the dialogue process between two or more people takes centre stage, creating the platform to work towards a healthy population (corcoran 2013; tubbs et al. 2012). health interaction occurs in different settings (tubbs et al. 2012). the concept analysis offered in this article pertains to interpersonal, small-group and mass interface scenarios. the focus of data gathering and analysis is on adult and intercultural research of different texts. the problem this research seeks to address is conceptualising the concept “health dialogue”, promoting consistency whenever the concept is used. likewise, the research ascertains whether the concept “health dialogue” meets the requirements of endorsing the validity and reliability of the research. nuopponen (2010) maintains that the creation of conceptual clarity is of importance for all kinds of research. 32 health dialogue: a concept analysis research design the concept analysis of “health dialogue” was conducted researching a large quantity of applicable literature. the study is underpinned by a participatory paradigm and employs the concept analysis model of walker and avant (2011), which is often used in health research (nuopponen 2010). by executing this model, the structure and function of the concept is determined as well as the potential benefits of establishing the concept within healthcare. this simplified classic concept analysis modified by walker and avant (2011) involves eight steps used as an iterative process, namely 1. selecting the concept; 2. determining the purpose of the analysis; 3. identifying all possible uses of the concept; 4. determining the key characteristics; 5. identifying a model case; 6. constructing a borderline and contrary case; 7. identifying the antecedents and consequences; and 8. keying the empirical referents. data collection data gathering according to a multi-stage strategy sources for the concept analysis were sought in a series of stages (see table 1), with the assistance of a co-data analyst and librarian. stage one identified hard and electronic copies of dictionaries from the credo reference database (n=792). after including only english explanatory dictionaries referring to individual use or combinations of the terms “health” and “dialogue” within any context and thereafter removing non-explanatory, non-english and duplicate dictionaries or dictionaries not referring to individual use or combinations of the terms “health” and “dialogue”, the final selection of dictionaries (n=143) was concluded. various explanatory dictionaries repeated the same definition of either “health” or “dialogue”. a developed data extraction form assisted the researchers in copying the unique definitions of health (n=62) and of dialogue (n=40), excluding repetitive definitions. the data extraction form further assisted in reflecting all repetitive words from dictionaries, which allowed the compilation of a search string used during stage two. the search string was used in stage three to identify abstracts (n=1570) from the ebscohost interface, specifically targeting adult patients in health dialogue with healthcare providers. the health dialogue could have taken place in either an interpersonal, small group or mass communication context. health dialogue amongst healthcare providers were excluded, and duplicate abstracts were manually removed, determining the final list of abstracts (n=1154). 54 reid stage four presented the opportunity to identify articles (n=324) from abstracts also using the ebscohost interface. the same inclusion and exclusion criteria applicable to abstracts applied to article identification (n=147). the article search was further limited to available copies, scholarly publications with a length of more than one page, and english publications between 2000 and 2013. duplicate copies were removed manually and book reviews were excluded. the multi-stage search strategy directed researchers to review the identified articles, which facilitated identification of the key characteristics of health dialogue that occurred repeatedly, deepening insight into the concept. in summary, the characteristics of health dialogue include an equal, symbiotic health relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider. table 1: multi-stage search strategy stage resources sources stage 1 electronic/hard copy dictionaries: identified (n=792) used (n=143) source: credo reference database (credo reference is a commercial database containing full-text reference e-books. currently it contains about 3 507 788 full text entries in 742 reference books (dictionaries and encyclopaedias, both general and subject specific). it is available through subscription from http://search. credoreference.com/ an advanced search option is available, allowing users to search within headings, resulting in relevant results.) dictionaries (n=143) with usable concepts describing: health (n=62) dialogue (n=40) stage 2 search strings compiled (conversation* or talk* or interchange* or discourse* or argument* or chat* or chit-chat or chitter-chatter* or gossip* or dialog* or communication* or jawing or gassing or gabbing or nattering or chin-wag* or confabulat* or converse or conversat* or dulogue* or colloquy* or discuss* or “stakeholder participant*” or “formal discussion*” or “exchange* of opinion*” or “public participant*”) and (health* or “physical condition*” or “mental condition*” or “sound* of body” or fitness* or haleness* or “good shape*” or “fine fettle*” or “good kilter*” or robust* or strength* or vigor* or vigour* or soundness* or salubrit* or heartiness* or “absence of ailment*” or “without ailment*” or “absence of disease*” or “without disease*” or “absence of illness*” or “without illness*” or “optimal level*” or “physical well-being” or “mental well-being” or “medical service*”) and ((health or medic*) and (dialog* or communicat*)) not (“book review*” or “reviews the book”) http://search.credoreference.com/ http://search.credoreference.com/ 54 health dialogue: a concept analysis stage resources sources stage 3 abstracts identified (n=1 570) used (n=1 154) source: ebscohost interface (academic search complete, africa-wide information, ahfs consumer medication information, cinahl with full text, eric, health source consumer edition, health source: nursing/academic edition, medline with full text, psycarticles, psycinfo, socindex with full text, sportdiscus with full text, communication & mass media complete, humanities source, masterfile premier) stage 4 articles identified (n=324) used (n=147) source: ebscohost interface (academic search complete, africa-wide information, ahfs consumer medication information, cinahl with full text, eric, health source consumer edition, health source: nursing/academic edition, medline with full text, psycarticles, psycinfo, socindex with full text, sportdiscus with full text, communication & mass media complete, humanities source, masterfile premier) rigour this concept analysis, guided by walker and avant’s (2011) framework for performing a concept analysis, assisted the researchers to be meticulous throughout all the stages of the analysis. an audit trial of each stage of the analysis was kept. the iterative nature of a concept analysis, as well as consensus discussions between involved researchers, further strengthened the rigour of the reported research. results of the literature review the literature review informed the stages of the analysis model as suggested by walker and avant (2011). stage one: selecting the concept the concept “health dialogue” was selected for analysis because it is nominated to become the term that emphasises the reciprocal relationship between healthcare provider and patient in the clinical setting. in the discipline of nursing, “health communication” is used interchangeably with the terms “health education” (han et al. 2009; mcmillan et al. 2008), “health promotion” (kemppainen et al. 2012; dubenske et al. 2010), “counselling” (gessler et al. 2012; bradley et al. 2011), and “health information” (goodall et al. 2010). all these concepts denote the patient as being merely the receiver of education, information, advice or knowledge. there is a suggestive notion of an unequal partnership between healthcare provider and patient. 76 reid according to munodwafa (2008), “health communication seeks to increase knowledge gain. this is the minimum expectation and acceptable requirement to demonstrate that learning has taken place following an intervention using communication”. the focus here is on mere knowledge gain, which is not a reciprocal action. rimer and kreuter (2006) and longtin et al. (2010) also negate participatory pedagogy when they adopt the general stance that health interaction and conversations should comprise the offering of information and behaviour change strategies related to positive health outcomes of interest to the patient as derived from individual assessment. the authors maintain that researchers should “identify key leverage points for impact on such intermediate outcomes as persuasion and yielding” and that “patient participation is increasingly recognised as a key component in the redesign of healthcare processes”. these references clearly convey the submissive stance of the patient when interacting with a healthcare provider. the author’s 20 years of clinical experience in the primary healthcare setting resulted in an awareness that healthcare providers tend to revert to a top-down linear approach in their relations with a patient. although it is observed that the intention of healthcare providers appears to advocate patient empowerment and self-management, the knowledge base of healthcare providers when employing this approach seems vague. the impression exists that they do not have a grasp of the terminology and its application. the use of multiple terms to describe one specific concept leads to confusion in patient interaction and research. the concept “health dialogue” presents a modernistic portrayal of the caregiver-client interaction. acknowledgement, recognition and respect for the client as an equal is implied by the term. the author’s clinical and academic background has been strongly influenced by the position taken by participatory pedagogy in choosing the concept “health dialogue”; especially as, within the stated participatory paradigm of this study, the concept “health dialogue” takes a much stronger interactive position than concepts such as “health education” or “health promotion”, which has a suggestive notion of an unequal partnership between healthcare provider and patient. stage two: determining the purpose of the analysis the purpose of the analysis is to determine how lexical evidence as derived from dictionaries and obtained from articles informs the concept “health dialogue” as it pertains to the reciprocal sharing of knowledge, experience, understanding, feelings and practices between the healthcare provider and the patient. the data obtained from the literature search should authenticate the concept in order to validate research. stage three: identifying all possible uses of the concepts ‘health’ and ‘dialogue’ health within a health setting, dictionaries refer to “health” as a state of being free from illness or injury, both physical and mental (white 2006). the sense of well-being accompanied by being healthy is not merely limited to the absence of disease or other abnormal conditions (hornby 2010). health is also described as a wish expressed for a person’s 76 health dialogue: a concept analysis welfare, a toast drunk in a person’s honour. furthermore, health could be seen as enabling a person to face crises competently and so fulfill social roles (white 2006). dialogue dialogue is most often used to denote a conversation between two or more people (stevenson & waite 2011; cresswell 2010). the conversation forming part of the dialogue is often directed towards the exploration of a particular subject or the resolution of a problem (hornby 2010). dialogue has also been defined as a means of exchange between people of facts and ideas involved in a process of public or stakeholder participation (schiavo 2014; cowan 2005). the conversation can be presented orally as part of a formal discussion or in written form, such as conversations in a book, play or film (stevenson 2010). stage four: the key characteristics of health dialogue equal, symbiotic health relationship an effective healthcare provider-patient relationship is characterised by shared decision-making and common expectations (hornby 2010). such a relationship is found when both role players agree to be equal partners in a health relationship; thus, leading to reaching a health goal dependent on the input of both parties. healthcare providers could be challenged to acknowledge the patient as an expert on how to lead his/her own life, whilst simultaneously adding his/her own expert knowledge to the discussion (coulter et al. 2008; vivian & wilcox 2000). despite the challenges faced, such collaboration and participation can be effective in various healthcare situations and can be fruitfully utilised in various contexts, especially when healthcare providers use innovative approaches to strive towards a relationship where the patient is acknowledged as an equal partner. reciprocal health communication reciprocal communication is only possible when patients become full participants in their own healthcare. such participation is likely when healthcare providers follow a patient-centred perspective and patients follow a proactive approach by communicating about their health with healthcare providers (neuhauser et al. 2009). such a twoway process would allow both patients and healthcare providers to work towards early diagnosis and effective treatment of an illness as well as patient empowerment (osterlund et al. 2009; butow et al. 2007). health message health messages can combine various communication strategies to be used in different contexts (kreps & sivaram 2008; bernhardt 2004). such health messages should be audience-specific (varma et al. 2010) and could be presented as an online chat group (donelle & hoffman-goetz 2009) or in a face-to-face engagement between patients and healthcare providers (harvey & o’brien 2011; petts & niemeyer 2004). using multiple strategies when catering for the unique needs of patients may consolidate learning and recall in contexts where the behaviour is to be performed (briscoe & aboud 2012). 98 reid stage five: identifying a model case model, borderline and contrary case examples, as suggested by walker and avant (2011), are presented. model case walker and avant (2011) suggest a model case to act as an example demonstrating all key characteristics of the concept. thus, the identified three key characteristics of the concept health dialogue are presented in the following constructed example as a model case, implying that all three key characteristics are present. mrs n, a non-english-speaking patient diagnosed with diabetes regularly visits her healthcare provider for her scheduled follow-up appointments. her established relationship with her healthcare provider is based on their shared understanding of their respective roles and responsibilities, allowing both parties to bring their own knowledge to the table. after various discussions, they have decided how to manage her blood glucose levels in order to stabilise it at 5mmol/ℓ. mrs n is thankful that her healthcare provider addresses her in her own language in a manner she understands. she expresses her satisfaction with her ability to improve her blood glucose levels, whereas the healthcare provider expresses satisfaction with mrs n’s positive report of the patient opinion survey, which emphasises their positive healthcare relationship. an equal healthcare relationship exists between mrs n and the healthcare provider, as evidenced by their shared understanding of their respective roles and health responsibilities. furthermore, the relationship is symbiotic in nature, as declared by both parties in the healthcare relationship. the win-win situation culminates in the patient opinion survey, with the patient reporting positively on the dialogue/care received and therefore the healthcare provider experiences having provided good care. reciprocal health communication takes place between mrs n and her healthcare provider as they have established a collaborative healthcare plan, clearly identifying who is to do what, to reach a specific aim – in this case, a stabilised blood glucose level. the health message takes place within an interpersonal context, whilst being patient-sensitive, as mrs n is addressed in her own language at a level acceptable to her. stage six: constructing a borderline and contrary case borderline case a borderline case contains most of the key characteristics, but not all of them (walker & avant 2011). a constructed example of such a case is the following. mr b, a teacher and known hypertension patient, visits his healthcare clinic to collect his repeat prescription. his complaints of constant headaches and dizziness lead the healthcare provider to provide mr b with an information leaflet on hypertension management. no further discussion takes place between mr b and the healthcare provider. despite being satisfied with receiving treatment and information about his hypertension, mr b still struggles to control his blood pressure. the healthcare provider is satisfied with the quality of healthcare provided to mr b. 98 health dialogue: a concept analysis although a health relationship exists between mr b and the healthcare provider, the relationship is not equal, a there is no shared understanding of their respective roles and health responsibilities. it appears as if the healthcare provider sees her role as mainly providing repeat prescriptions and health related literature. she expects mr b to collect the prescription. as both mr b and the healthcare provider are satisfied with the health relationship, a seemingly symbiotic health relationship exists. no reciprocal health communication occurs between mr b and his healthcare provider, as no discussions concerning a health plan/goal takes place. the use of an information leaflet to convey a health message to a literate man such as mr b demonstrates a degree of patient-context sensitivity, as the healthcare provider may assume mr b to understand the supplied health related literature. however, such an assumption could be wrong. contrary case a contrary case acts as an example of “what the concept is not” (walker & avant 2011). a tongue-in-cheek example of a contrary case is a book in afrikaans, addressing antenatal care exercises, which is displayed in an empty waiting room for african geriatric patients. no equal healthcare relationship exists because no patient or healthcare provider is present. no symbiosis in a healthcare relationship is, possible without participants. therefore, reciprocal health communication cannot take place. the afrikaans book could be used to convey a health message, but it is not context-sensitive, as evidenced by the language medium of the book as well as by antenatal care exercises being an inappropriate topic for geriatric patients. this case is a clear example of what the concept “health dialogue” is not. stage seven: identifying the antecedents and consequences antecedents in refining the social context in which health dialogue takes place, it is also important to identify events/incidents that need to occur prior to the occurrence of health dialogue. literature searches assisted in identifying the following antecedents: the patient and healthcare provider should have a positive attitude towards health dialogue; sensitivity is displayed towards cultural, contextual and societal factors; and training has been received on health matters and communication skills. within a participatory paradigm, identified antecedents are applicable to both the healthcare provider and patient. • positive attitude a positive attitude towards the health dialogue requires of both the patient and healthcare provider to be open towards creating a platform for collaborative interaction with all the identified role players and so move towards a shared understanding of responsibility and decision-making (street jnr et al. 2009). following a holistic approach, the dignity of all is to be acknowledged (neuhauser et al. 2009). a positive attitude will further be fostered within a relationship portraying a shared understanding of responsibility, whilst the following relationship characteristics are present: trust, empathy, confirmation and emotional support (castro et al. 2010). 1110 reid • sensitivity/respect it is essential to be sensitive and to show mutual respect towards the culture, belief system and socio-economic milieu in which health dialogue takes place (taylor et al. 2013; degni et al. 2012; kalbfleisch 2009). acknowledging existing health knowledge, linguistic difficulties and technological skills, as well as the availability of technological devices, are further aspects that require sensitivity prior to engaging in the health dialogue (suggs & mcintyre 2009; vahabi 2007). another way in which respect can be shown towards the patient within a health communication encounter is by emphasising tailored health messages (harvey & o’brien 2011; hinchliff et al. 2005). combining various communication strategies (briscoe & aboud 2012; lapinski et al. 2009) has also proven beneficial. • training healthcare providers benefit from training in communication skills, especially if emphasis is placed on cultural sensitivity within the communication process (malta et al. 2010; redsell et al. 2010; durant et al. 2009). this makes the healthcare providers more sensitive towards patients who might not have been exposed to formal communication skills training, but who still bring their indigenous skills to the health communication encounter. such indigenous skills/knowledge is seen as “training” that the patient has undergone. communication skills alone would not be of much benefit without healthcare providers who have the necessary knowledge base entering health communication (savdie & chetley 2009), whilst simultaneously acknowledging patients’ own knowledge base. consequences the literature confirmed that the outcome of the concept “health dialogue” was an improved health status (roach et al. 2010; street jnr et al. 2009). however, the researchers were able to identify the consequences stemming from each of the three antecedents (positive attitude, sensitivity/respect and training) respectively. • positive attitude a positive attitude towards an equal healthcare relationship leads to a deeper understanding of patients’ problems (butow et al. 2007), which in turn allows the healthcare provider to tap into the strengths of the patient population (street jnr et al. 2009). patients who take an active role in their care, therefore displaying a positive attitude towards their own healthcare, achieve better health outcomes than patients who are not actively involved in their own care (song et al. 2013; roach et al. 2010). a health relationship grown from such a positive outlook leads to enhanced compliance (hornby 2010), patient satisfaction (royal college of general practitioners 2014; hardee et al. 2005), and a strengthened relationship between the patient and healthcare provider (ko et al. 2011), as well as better recall of health messages (gutheil & heyman 2005). 1110 health dialogue: a concept analysis • sensitivity/respect mutual sensitivity and respect towards reciprocal health communication lead to various positive outcomes, such as gaining an understanding of a health problem (sanders thompson et al. 2008), sustained behaviour change (cross & bloomer 2010; lee 2010), quality health communication (norgaard et al. 2012), and achieving social justice (schiavo 2014; detmar et al. 2002). when sensitivity is shown towards the communication needs of specific patients, a positive health outcome is inevitable, especially when using combined health communication strategies, consolidated learning and recall in the context where behaviour is to be performed (mcgilton et al. 2009; hinchliff et al. 2005). • training training in communication skills for healthcare providers indirectly leads to improved health due to the increased quality of healthcare (quinn et al. 2011; mcgilton et al. 2009). apart from the resultant empowerment of the healthcare provider (savdie & chetley 2009), patient-centred healthcare and better cultural competency skills (quinn et al. 2011) would lead to acknowledging the indigenous knowledge and skills patients bring to the health communication table. stage ten: keying the empirical referents empirical referents create the opportunity to measure the key characteristics (walker & avant 2011). each key characteristic therefore has its own specific empirical referent. consequently, the characteristic “equal, symbiotic health relationship” has as its empirical referent “shared responsibility/decision-making”. any observable phenomena depicting the presence of shared responsibility/decision-making would thus be seen as the empirical referent for the key characteristic “equal, symbiotic health relationship”. such an example was provided in the discussion of the model case as a clearly demarcated role distribution between the healthcare provider and the patient, with subsequent responsibilities. the characteristic “reciprocal health communication” has as its empirical referent a “health plan and mutual benefit” for both healthcare provider and patient. again, the model case proposed such to be a healthcare plan with clearly identified actions and expected outcomes, whilst making it clear who is responsible for which action. such a plan can be a formal written document, but is often rather an informal agreement between the healthcare provider and patient. the third key characteristic, a “health message”, has as its empirical referent a “context sensitive communication strategy”. again an example of such a communication strategy was provided in the model case as interpersonal communication between the healthcare provider and patient, in a language the patient understands, and in a manner that is acceptable to her. the message could also be packaged in other formats, such as illustrated in the borderline case, where a health information leaflet was used. 1312 reid discussion figure 1: conceptual map of health dialogue: antecedents, characteristics, empirical referents, consequences figure 1 depicts the conceptual map developed during the data analysis derived from walker and avant’s (2011) framework. from the map, it becomes clear that all the antecedents need to be present prior to identifying key characteristics of the concept. each key characteristic in turn becomes visual or measurable through a specific empirical referent. although the overall consequence of the concept leads to an improved health outcome, examples discussed under “consequences” illustrated more specifically how health could be improved, as aligned to a specific antecedent. the linear presentation of the various health dialogue elements (antecedents, key characteristics, empirical referents and consequences) should not be confused with the iterative nature of the process that was followed to get to the conceptual map in figure 1. although these steps have been discussed sequentially, this does not necessarily depict the sequence in which the steps were executed. the thought processes during the mental construction of a concept follows an iterative process. in order to reach a more precise analysis, it is often necessary to make revisions in an earlier step because of insights arising from a later one. the key characteristics and other elements of the concept “health dialogue” have a rigorous theoretical underpinning. the use of walker and avant’s (2011) framework provided a useful methodology to guide and organise the concept analysis. using a concept analysis as part of a research programme poses various advantages. in this 1312 health dialogue: a concept analysis article a concept clarification with a sound theoretical base was established, which promotes consistency whenever the concept was used. understanding the underlying characteristics assisted in the development of an operational definition, which in turn could be used towards the development of a research instrument. due to the measurable nature of these elements, the presence of each element can be tested. in practice it implies constructing an item using empirical referents to reflect each of the identified characteristics (walker & avant 2011). this opens new research directions in health dialogue, such as offering the opportunity for researchers to investigate the extent to which these elements occur during health dialogue between the healthcare provider and the patient. the measurement of the elements can in turn assist healthcare providers and policy makers to create a platform for a monitoring system for health dialogue, usable in different contexts. an example is an observational checklist operationalising antecedents and empirical referents, thus allowing the identification of health dialogue elements during health communication between healthcare providers and patients. the health dialogue elements identified with this concept analysis could act as a “golden standard” to strive towards during health dialogue. the saying rings true: “if you aim at nothing, you will surely hit the target”. if we were to look again at mrs n, presented in the model case, such an observational checklist could be used to observe the interaction between mrs n and her healthcare provider, followed by feedback to these role players – in this way identifying elements to be strengthened, and ultimately improving health outcome. limitations of the study the aim of the current research was to present the results of a concept analysis of health dialogue; however, some limitations need to be noted. the empirical work reviewed was limited to material available in english from 2000-2013 and references were set as the limiter in the article search. although material outside this period was excluded, no concept analysis on health dialogue was found up to date. despite a rigorous analysis process, with two persons independently performing the data analysis, followed by consensus discussions, the presented concept analysis can never be seen as the final product. the tentative nature of the final product can be ascribed to two people not necessarily coming up with exactly the same characteristic due to the fast pace of knowledge generation and the influence of aspects, such as culture and society, on affecting change (walker & avant 2011). it is further possible that researchers or healthcare providers, who have not previously been exposed to the participatory paradigm, could struggle to fully appreciate and apply their minds to the equal role the patient plays within health dialogue. even though the data included depicted communication between adult patients and healthcare providers within an interpersonal, small group or mass communication context, it could potentially be a greater challenge to apply some elements within a mass communication context. 1514 reid conclusion the major challenge offered in this analysis concerns how healthcare providers can enrich their theoretical conceptualisation of health dialogue in order to improve the health outcomes of patients. the step-by-step process of walker and avant (2011) enabled the researchers in the conceptualisation of health dialogue. significant role players in taking the concept analysis forward are healthcare providers, such as nurses, policy makers and researchers. nurses, often the backbone of health provision, play an important role in the health dialogue between the patient and the healthcare provider. the potential significance of the nurse’s role in the health dialogue between the patient and the healthcare provider becomes even more meaningful when considering that patient participation leads to a significant improvement in personal and community health (rensburg & krige 2011), especially seen within a participatory paradigm. nurses therefore benefit from the vast number of studies on various aspects of health communication conducted and published in recognised journals and data bases worldwide (nazione et al. 2013; sakai 2013; damasceno et al. 2012; gessler et al. 2012; sherman et al. 2011). policy makers need to operationalise the concept and construct a monitoring system for health dialogue that can be used in various settings. such a monitoring system, reflecting the key elements, would offer healthcare providers a base to measure the concept in their work environment, and so encourage health communication. the empirical foundation provided by the set of key characteristics and other elements of the concept offers further research directions and could be tested by means of quantitative research. acknowledging criticism of participatory approaches as making more sense theoretically and not necessarily translating to on-the-ground realities, researchers’ assistance is needed in exploring the willingness of patients and healthcare providers to buy in to the elements of the concept presented. undertaking this concept analysis provided a step-by-step, structured approach to clarifying the potentially ambiguous concept of health dialogue. the analysis process produced an operational definition of health dialogue, which include the key characteristics of an equal, symbiotic healthcare relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider and reciprocal health communication towards reaching an identified goal via a health message. it also allowed for the identification of the antecedents, empirical referents and consequences of health dialogue and presented model, borderline and contrary cases. acknowledgements the author would like to acknowledge mrs karin venter who acted as a co-data analyst, mrs annamarie du preez for assisting with literature searches, as well as dr marianne viljoen for acting as the critical reader and language editor of this article. 1514 health dialogue: a concept analysis competing interests the author declares no financial or personal relationships(s) may inappropriately have influenced her in writing this article. the concept analysis forms part of a complex intervention 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integrated brand communication; media channel planning; media planning; new media frameworks introduction digitalisation has changed the way consumers expect to find, share and discuss information across different online and offline media channels; thus, media channel planners have a wide array of contact decisions to make in developing an omni-media channel strategy (kotler 2014; reis 2016; straker et al. 2015; young 2016; shpak et al. 2020). a consumer media journey characterises the consumers’ interaction with the brand (duncan 2005; yorke 2015; clarke cameron belling1 email : ckbelling@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-85113554 dr carla enslin1 email : censlin@ vegaschool.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-68742690 alec bozas1 email : mwbozas@ mweb.co.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-75039693 1the independent institute of education: vega school, cape town, south africa doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.2 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 20-32 date submitted: 28 june 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ckbelling@gmail.com mailto:ckbelling@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8511-3554 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8511-3554 mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6874-2690 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6874-2690 mailto:mwbozas@mweb.co.za mailto:mwbozas@mweb.co.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7503-9693 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7503-9693 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.2 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 2120 a proposed media channel framework for integrated brand communication 2120 2014) and guides the media channel planner in understanding how the process of media channel integration can be achieved through the implementation of media contact points (edelman 2015; young 2016; laurie & mortimer 2019). a media planning strategy requires a balance of new and traditional media channels to provide the consumer with a seamless experience within the envisaged media journey (de vries et al. 2012). thus, integrated brand contact planning is seen as the process to deliver a cohesive consumer experience at every media contact point and it comprehensively leverages media channels through an integrated consumer media journey to sustain and grow the brand (kotler et al. 2013; rana 2015; mosca & casalegno 2020). media channel planning naturally finds itself in a constant state of evolution as new media channels emerge in the media channel spectrum (yorke 2015; clarke 2014). integrated media channel planning the development of an omni-media channel strategy in media planning is generally guided by a media planning framework. as a graphic illustration of a planning process a framework simplifies complex concepts, constructs, variables, operational definitions and propositions into comprehensible states and relationships (castronovo & huang 2012; hadjicharalambous 2013; huang et al. 2014; kannan 2017). frameworks have existed within brand communication since the advent of modern advertising to guide industry professionals in decision-making and planning processes (killian & mcmanus 2015). for example, the emergence of niche marketing in the early 1960s introduced agostini’s (1961) widespread brand reach construct, the media mix framework (belch & belch 2008), and evolved constructs such as media channel relevance, media channel engagement and media channel timing (lane et al. 2011; kosterich & napoli 2015; katz 2016; rubtcova & pavenkov 2019). it is noted that a media planning framework should not be rigid but instead provide the foundation for the media channel planner to form a solution for integration with their brand contact plan. the value of a framework therefore lies in its efficiency to assist media channel planners to make informed and cohesive strategic decisions (dias et al. 2013; velasquez & hester 2013; maity & dass 2014). the review of existing published frameworks of media channel planning reveals a continued emphasises of traditional mass media channels. frameworks have at best adapted to new media channels, instead of developing an integrated omni-media channel perspective that encompasses new media channels and enables integrated planning (sissors & baron 2010; mirzabeiki & saghiri 2020). authors forewarn that the mere incorporation of new media channel options within existing media channel frameworks potentially leads to fragmented brand contact thinking and media channel planning, causing inconsistencies in the brand voice (benady 2014; newman 2014; matthews 2015; pagani et al. 2019). the challenge with integrated brand communication, as several authors note, is that it is both a construct and a planning process. a media channel planner has to consider all brand communication needed in an integrated approach, ensuring what has become known as the “one-voice, one-look approach” to how a brand is presented across a myriad of media channels (kotler et al. 2013; huang et al. 2014; macinnis et al. 2015). 2322 belling, enslin & bozas despite a wide search, the literature review was unable to find any existing framework that guides integrated media channel planning in the public domain. the review of literature also reveals that media agencies often adapt “public” media planning and media channel planning frameworks to develop proprietary media channel planning frameworks, which provide the media agency with a competitive advantage in the field (mulhern 2009; koekemoer 2014; gálvez 2020). media channel planning frameworks three leading global advertising agencies contributed to the development of the concept of integrated brand communication and, by implication, media channel integration (subramanian 2015). in 1985, the ogilvy group developed the concept of “ogilvy orchestration”. this concept provided prospective clients with a complete advertising spectrum through the coordination of all services the agency had on offer; it coined the phrase “many instruments and voices to form one big sound” (hackley & hackley 2015). consequently, other agencies saw the need for integration and specifically for their departments to work together in order to overcome silo-thinking and planning operations. even earlier, in 1972, young and rubicam spoke about the “whole egg”, while tbwa developed their framework of “connection strategy” (kotler 2012). this was the start of integrating departments and other external agencies into a unified full-service agency that could develop an integrated brand communication framework (frost 2015; hepp et al. 2015; kotler 2014; straker et al. 2015; gálvez 2020). today media channel planners strive to integrate a host of online and offline media channels to guide consumers through a consumer media journey (kapferer 1993; sissors & baron 2010; young 2014; subramanian 2015; katz 2016; dasgupta & grover 2019), and to deliver a cohesive brand experience of both traditional and new media channels (armstrong 2009; fuxman et al. 2018; demmers et al. 2020). however, it seems that media channel planning frameworks merely provide a starting point for media channel planners in the allocation of media channels and lack an approach that facilitates the integration of new and traditional media (kotler et al. 2013; schultz 2014; huang et al. 2014; macinnis et al. 2015; young 2016; shpak et al. 2020). this study could not find a media channel planning framework in the “public” domain that incorporates both online and offline media channels across the consumer media journey, which enables and supports cohesive brand communication. the literature review also affirmed that a disconnect of the brand message often occurs when brand messages move from one channel to the next (newman 2014; young 2014; wayne 2017; gálvez 2020). it must be noted that the development and introduction of new media channels will always result in new additions to a media channel planner’s spectrum; thus, planning frameworks should be able to accommodate an evolution in media channels and contact points. this research was motivated by the need for an integrated media channel planning framework to guide media planners in connecting both online and offline media channels in order to maintain the brand message across multiple channels (demmers et al. 2020). such a framework would need to consider the integration of media channels in relation to media contact points; the segmentation of media contact points to specific phases in the consumer media journey; and the inclusion 2322 a proposed media channel framework for integrated brand communication of both traditional and new media channels in the consumer media journey. as such, the introduction of a media channel planning framework to the “public” domain could contribute to integrative media channel planning, but also receive continuous input from practitioners and academics in order to serve a purpose (rana 2015; katz 2016; wayne 2017; chen & xing 2019). research methodology the exploratory and interpretivist research study revolved around three core questions in the development of a media channel planning framework: rq1: what media channel planning perspectives and frameworks support integrated brand communication? rq2: how are media channel planners incorporating new media channels in the development of integrated media channel frameworks? rq3: what media channel planning frameworks are media channel planners using to develop integrated brand contact plans? a purposive sample was selected from forrester global media report, an international report consolidated from an independent consulting firm. this provided an unbiased source of media agency review criteria to determine the population and sample for the study (lograsso 2016). the aim was to collect the perspectives of senior media planning professionals who would have valuable insights into media channel planning constructs and frameworks for the development of cohesive brand contact plans (saunders et al. 2012). the forrester global media report tracks 34 leading media agencies across multiple regions and is based on comprehensive media services, global presence, activation capabilities and market share. it is compiled quarterly as opposed to other media agency reports that reflect an annual period. this was an important consideration as external factors cause the media landscape to change frequently, which encourages leading media agencies to remain continuously relevant in their planning practices. a quarterly review of media agencies assisted in identifying the media agencies that keep abreast of the media channel planning environment. the forrester global media agency report q3 2018 was selected to identify the sample of global media agencies and senior media planners, managers or directors who participated in this study. the sample provided a rich mix of global perspectives on media planning agency decisionmaking tools, techniques and frameworks within media channel planning. the perspectives of senior media channel planners were explored through in-depth interviews and thereupon through sound-boarding iterations of the proposed integrated media channel planning framework. interview saturation was reached at interview number eight (saunders et al. 2012; lograsso 2016) with senior media planners, managers or directors from eight of the leading media agencies identified in the forrester global media agency report q3 2018. the names of the agencies and the participants are confidential and have been coded to ensure their identities remain anonymous. 2524 belling, enslin & bozas analysis, findings and iterative review thematic analysis was utilised in the data analysis and it produced five core themes and seven interrelated subthemes. table 1: hierarchical view of themes and subthemes of the primary study core themes subthemes integration − creates a seamless brand experience integration is built through media contact points integration is delivered through consumer media journeys planning − embodies media-neutral decisions biased media mixes prevent the balance of media channels in the brand contact plan consumer need for information is delivered through relevant contact points perspectives – professional perspectives influence decision-making media channel planners’ experience to integrate is based on prior learnings frameworks – use in media agencies planning requires the balance of purposeful media channels media contact points – relevance to overall media channel plan strategy brand engagement requires consumer centric media contact points key insight 1: integration − creates a seamless brand experience most of the participants shared the notion that integration is a challenge across media agencies. while the goal is for media channels to be interconnected, interdependent and transparent, it is not always achieved through media channel frameworks. the subthemes indicated that integration is delivered through cohesive consumer media journeys and that integration can be built from media contact points. participant 4 stated, “new channels are constantly added to our media landscape. clients want to try them out but do not consider the goal or objective of using a new channel.” 2524 a proposed media channel framework for integrated brand communication key insight 2: planning − embodies media-neutral decisions several of the participants shared the notion that a seamless brand experience starts at the planning phase. media-neutral decisions allow for a non-biased approach to media channel selection and, in turn, non-biased contact points as seen through the subthemes of unbiased media mixes that prevent a balance of relevant and meaningful media channels within the brand contact plan. participant 7 mentioned that media agencies that are integrated within creative agencies often yield a better result due to the closeness of the relationship between both agencies, as the review of literature indicates, would produce a better collaborative working relationship. “by taking on the client’s interest in channels will often lead to a disconnected consumer journey,” as mentioned by participant 4. the second subtheme requires that the consumers’ need for information is provided through relevant contact points. key insight 3: perspectives – personal perspectives influence decision-making the participants shared the notion that personal perspective can influence decisionmaking in media channel planning, as media channel planners learn from past experience and bring about their experience with brand contact plans and consumer media journeys. participant 3 mentioned that some media channels are more important in different countries based on the consumer profile you are targeting. “twitter is a social platform of choice for many americans; however, in most of europe instagram is a better choice.” thus, as a media channel planner one needs to consider the media channel selection available to ensure that there is integration within the consumer media journey. key insight 4: frameworks – established media planning frameworks many of the participants shared the notion that integration starts from the client brief and that existing media agency structures often present silos that lead to media planning disconnects. the fundamentals to achieve integration of media channel planning is through discussion of proprietary frameworks. participant 6, for example, stated that with the ongoing digitisation of media channels, the evolution of media channels and audience fragmentation appears to become a challenge for media planners to encounter if there is not an integrative media channel planning framework; thus, reinforcing the review of literature and the purpose of this study (mulhern 2009; matthews 2015). participant 8 highlighted the increasing degree of separation and identified a number of negative effects’ impact on the start of a media channel plan. participant 8 and participant 5 suggested that creativity and exploration into new media relied upon a number of factors, including internal structures employed to reduce silo mentality, and the size and diversity of media agency expertise. 2726 belling, enslin & bozas key insight 5: media contact points – relevance to overall brand contact plans the participants were of the view that the balance of media contact points work in synergy upon identifying a media channel planning framework. subthemes established under this theme build upon the consumer-centric synergy of the brand contact plan. participant 7 found that traditional media channels, such as television, were more effective than new media channels, such as digital channels, as these media channels offer a range of measures relating to attitude and awareness aimed at gaining the consumer’s attention. participant 5 also established that the traditional channels of television, radio, newspapers and direct mail retain their historically favoured attributes of trust and reliability of information, even among “tech-savvy” younger audiences. for consumers to move through the brand contact plan, each contact point needs to be relevant and meaningful to the anticipated target audience. therefore, the selection of contact points should encompass the consistency of the brand voice through the brand contact plan. upon completion of the in-depth interviews and consolidation of the thematic data analysis a proposed contemporary framework, which could be used within the field of media channel planning to provide integration of new and traditional media channels, was developed and shared with the participants in the study. six of the eight participants assisted in crafting the proposed framework by primarily enhancing flexibility for media channel planners to revisit planning elements to ensure that brand and message integration can be achieved. to prevent the proposed framework from being seen as a linear process, its visual composition and depiction of elements consequently demonstrate how all elements of media channel planning work in unison to enable and achieve brand cohesion. planning frameworks, as is also confirmed by the literature, should not be rigid and must provide a foundation for media channel planners to form a solution for integration within their brand contact plans (matthews 2015; pagani et al. 2019; mosca & casalegno 2020). the changes incorporated in the proposed framework furthermore show a detailed approach with subtasks for media channel planners to consider. media channel planners start with understanding the consumer profile, which specifically leads to insights into behaviours and determining a relevant media mix and media contact points, which in turn translate into potential connections delivered through the brand message and consumer media journey. however, as participants indicated, insights gained along the route can lead to planning movement within the framework, reviewing and reconsidering how variables could or should work together towards message integration and brand cohesion. framework performance is therefore also reviewed as the final step to measure for improvements of the brand contact plan. a final iteration of the proposed integrated media channel planning framework met with full participant approval and is presented in figure 1. the participants confirmed that the framework supports the planning fluidity necessary to achieve integration within media channel planning. 2726 a proposed media channel framework for integrated brand communication figure 1: proposed integrated media channel planning framework overall the final iteration presented a synthesis of the literature review and the primary insights gained from the qualitative research to provide an integrative approach to the media channel planning process and to avoid a disconnect between new and traditional media channels (mulhern 2009; kotler 2014; matthews 2015; young 2016; mosca & casalegno 2020). achieving integration in media channel planning across the multitude of media channels available is the challenge participants mentioned most frequently. while the categories of new and traditional media channels are not shown as specific elements in the framework, this was purposeful to not limit the considered media to new and traditional. instead, new and existing media channels can be considered using this framework to ensure integration. the measurement of success is ensuring seamless brand message transitions across the media channels. the proposed integrated media channel planning framework brings together the common and essential elements of media channel planning (consumer journey, consumer profile, metrics and media contact points) into an integrative media channel planning framework for media channel planners. this contemporary framework is therefore also the starting point for future research and the development of case studies facilitating integration in media channel planning and measuring the effect of media channel integration. several of the participants also suggested that further research 2928 belling, enslin & bozas should explore planning dynamics in each of the categories and sub-categories to produce detailed guides for media channel planners. lastly, research could focus on the application and nuanced development of the conceptual framework in and for specific markets and media environments. insights from such a study could contribute to the expressed need for appropriate media channel integration based on south african consumer segments, as consumers utilise media channels across a multitude of different media contact points (beakbane 2012; wayne 2017). conclusion a study of literature was unable to uncover an integrated media channel framework in the public domain and media agency planning frameworks tend to be held confidential. literature furthermore revealed a continued emphasis of traditional mass media channels and, at best, references to new media channel perspectives. primary research thus explored media channel planning perspectives and frameworks through eight in-depth interviews with media channel planners at global media agencies and gained valuable insights into how new media channels are being incorporated into media channel planning frameworks. it is important to note that media channel planners recognise the need for an integrated media channel planning framework. the overall value of this study is strategic to the practices of media planning as it presents a media channel framework for integrated brand communication planning and guides media channel planners to: ♦ recognise the importance of consumer targeting profiling in the planning of a brand contact plan; 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stakeholder engagement; science communication; indigenous knowledge systems; corporate social responsibility; communication strategy; narrative inquiry introduction the |xam, a san tribe, were the first people to walk the land where the square kilometre array (ska) will be constructed. the ska project in south africa works with stakeholders on different levels. these include individuals, local bodies like municipalities and local farming unions, regional, dr anton binneman department of strategic communication, faculty of humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email : anton@ska.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-31356846 dr corné davis department of strategic communication, faculty of humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email : cdavis@uj.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/000-0002-84656773 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-17 date submitted: 22 july 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:anton@ska.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3135-6846 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3135-6846 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3135-6846 mailto:cdavis@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/000-0002-8465-6773 https://orcid.org/000-0002-8465-6773 https://orcid.org/000-0002-8465-6773 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 binneman & davis provincial and national bodies, like the south african san council and the national khoisan council, as illustrated in figure 1. this means that both the governmentacknowledged bodies and individuals from local communities are engaged and the organisation is open to working with other stakeholders that come forward, ensuring that all stakeholders are engaged. there has been some criticism from social anthropologists and social scientists with regard to the work the nrf|sarao (national research foundation | south african radio astronomy observatory) is conducting with the san people and specifically the san council. the criticism is based primarily on online documents referring to the memorandum of understanding with the san council and interviews with selected individuals from one specific community (chinigò 2019; walker & chinigò 2018; parkington et al. 2019; walker 2019). a key criticism of the ska sa project in these articles (parkington et al. 2019; walker 2019) is that it has sterilised the land in the northern cape and has dispossessed the descendants of the |xam people from reclaiming their identity. a second criticism is that the development plans introduced by the project are top-down and not conceived by the local people, especially the |xam descendants. all these articles make statements about the lack of consultation and the wish of |xam descendants to re-establish their identity, which is bound in the land. anthropologists acknowledge that it is hard to identify |xam descendants as they do not have a representative organisation or organisations. walker and chinigò (2018) do not specify how they identified the widespread demand for access to the land to re-establish identity. the article by parkington et al. (2019) disputes the commonly accepted version of the location of specific san groups in the karoo. the articles by walker (2019) and chinigò (2019) focus on what they regard as problems with the ska sa in the karoo, especially with regard to development and its impact on the way local san people identify themselves. the articles all acknowledge that the samples are limited and apply to this sample only and cannot be generalised. another common feature of these articles and critiques is that all social and other investment in communities is disregarded and is not mentioned. radio astronomy projects require large open spaces with minimal radio frequency interference, light and air pollution to ensure optimal observations. stakeholder engagement with indigenous minority groups often living on or having cultural rights to land in such areas has gained increased attention in recent years. in strategic communication, discourse has shifted from stakeholder management to stakeholder engagement, with the emphasis on collaboration and cooperation. the ska sa project is evolving this aspect of its strategic communication with a focus on sustainability. this article discusses how the ska sa used the san peoples’ narratives on astronomy to facilitate stakeholder engagement. both australia and south africa see cultural minority groups as important, therefore projects like the shared sky exhibition were developed to tell the stories of the san and the wajarri and how they understand cosmology. at present, there is no academic publication that documents the process and challenges of stakeholder engagement with the san peoples. the aim of this article is to report on the stakeholder engagement initiative that took place in the central karoo region of south africa and to show how narratives could be used to 32 star stories mitigate challenging stakeholder engagement. the authors argue that stakeholder engagement with indigenous minority groups in scientific projects, such as astronomy, can be facilitated by drawing on their indigenous knowledge. considering the san peoples have been telling stories about astronomy for centuries, their narratives can offer insights into their cultural heritage that can be a point of departure for further engagement and collaboration. the discussion commences with a description of the ska sa project and its stakeholder challenges. the literature review focuses on the ska sa scientific project, stakeholder engagement and the san peoples’ previously recorded stories about astronomy. the study used semi-structured interviews to compare documented indigenous knowledge with current narratives from a selected group of san peoples in central karoo. the results show how this method of engagement could facilitate effective stakeholder communication. figure 1: nrf|sarao stakeholder pinnacle the square kilometre array project the ska project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope. south africa’s karoo region and western australia’s murchison shire were chosen as co-hosting locations for many scientific and technical reasons, ranging from the atmospherics above the sites to the radio quietness as a result of being two of the most remote locations on earth. south africa’s arid karoo region will host the core of 54 binneman & davis the mid-frequency dishes, extending over the african continent, whereas australia’s murchison shire will host the low-frequency antennas. as one of the largest scientific endeavours in history, the ska will involve a wealth of the world’s leading scientists, engineers and policymakers to bring the project to fruition. an overview of astronomy in south africa, covering its history and a brief discussion on the instruments that have been established worldwide, as well as in south africa gives a perspective on the enormity of the ska project and how it involves multiple disciplines, including science, engineering, anthropology and strategic communication. the ska in south africa the ska organisation, with its headquarters at jodrell bank observatory near manchester in the united kingdom, was established in december 2011 as a not-forprofit organisation to formalise relationships between the international partners and to centralise the leadership of the project. eleven countries are currently members of the ska organisation – australia, canada, china, germany, india (associate member), italy, new zealand, south africa, sweden, the netherlands and the united kingdom. the scale of the ska demonstrates the immense progress in both engineering and research, as well as the development towards building and delivering a radio telescope that will most likely produce an exponential and transformational increase in scientific capacity. the brief descriptions of the different projects below highlight the aims and scope of the different programmes. as mentioned before, and indicated in figure 2, the karoo region in south africa will host the core of the mid-frequency dishes, extending over the african continent, whereas australia’s murchison shire will host the low-frequency antennas. while the 11 member countries are the cornerstone of the ska project, around 100 organisations from approximately 20 countries are participating in its design and development. the project requires the involvement of world-leading scientists and engineers to design and develop a system with supercomputers that are faster than any in existence at this time, as well as network technology that will generate more data traffic than the entire global system of interconnected computer networks or the internet. figure 2: location of the telescope in south africa and australia (source: square kilometre array organisation) 54 star stories the ska sa will eventually use thousands of receivers and up to one million lowfrequency antennas that will enable astronomers to monitor space in unprecedented detail and survey the entire night sky much faster than any system currently in existence. the ska’s unique configuration will give it unrivalled scope in observations, largely exceeding the image resolution quality of the hubble space telescope. the ska sa will be able to produce images of large areas of the sky in parallel; a feat no survey telescope has achieved on this scale and at this level of sensitivity. with a range of other large telescopes in the optical and infrared spectrum being built and launched into space over the coming decades, the ska sa will augment and complement scientific discovery. the nrf|sarao spearheads the ska activities in engineering, science and construction in south africa. the nrf|sarao is a facility managed by the nrf and incorporates radio astronomy instruments and programmes such as the meerkat and kat-7 telescopes in the karoo; the hartebeesthoek radio astronomy observatory (hartrao) in gauteng; the african very long baseline interferometry (avn) programme situated in nine african countries; as well as the human capital development and commercialisation endeavours that support these projects. south africa has a rich history of astronomy and has collaborated with international astronomers frequently over the past 100 years. these collaborations were mostly in optical astronomy, but there have been collaborations in radio astronomy as well. the hartrao was built in 1961 by the national aeronautics and space administration (nasa) from the united states of america. a 26-metre diameter antenna was used to retrieve data from and send commands to many unmanned us space probes beyond earth’s orbit. the san people of southern africa are among africa’s most intriguing people. genetic evidence suggests that they are some of the earth’s most ancient people, having been around for 22 000 years (barnard 1992). for centuries, the san people of southern africa have experienced colonial violence, ethnocide and dispossession, which has pushed them into arid lands in the north of south africa (lee, hitchcock & biesele 2002). by the beginning of the 20th century, the remaining formal san in south africa were found in the arid areas of the northern cape, southern namibia and botswana with descendants across the areas where they moved prior to 1900. the san people’s early ancestors, the !xam, walked the land where the ska sa will be hosted. this group has mostly been driven from the area, with only some descendants remaining. this is evident when one looks at the heritage found by barnard (2002) on the land procured for construction of meerkat and the ska sa. the san were driven from the land by white settlers and later the british government in the 1800s. the complexity of the san peoples’ heritage and genealogy has been well documented by authors such as bleek and lloyd (1911). the ska sites in western australia and south africa are on land that traditionally belonged to indigenous peoples. for the entire ska project, engagement with these peoples is a priority. consequently, discussions with the san council started in 2012 to look at opportunities for collaboration with the san peoples. the opportunity for mutually beneficial projects was clear, considering indigenous minority groups such as the san peoples have limited resources. 76 binneman & davis the ska sa will transform the karoo and the northern cape socially and economically and will provide opportunities for the people who live there. these opportunities include human capital development through school programmes, bursaries and artisan apprenticeships, community development, job opportunities and socioeconomic investment. even though the objectives of and opportunities provided by the ska sa and meerkat projects illuminate multiple stakeholder benefits, there were many challenges and barriers to stakeholder engagement presented by common denominators such as historiography, language, culture and socio-economic factors. informed by experts from multiple disciplines, the ska sa decided to use the san peoples’ indigenous knowledge of astronomy to facilitate stakeholder engagement. stakeholder engagement against the background of the ska sa and the san peoples as stakeholders in the project, it followed that conventional organisation-focused stakeholder approaches would not provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for this study (roloff 2008). an organisation-focused approach would not be relevant to these stakeholders as they had no knowledge of the ska at the time. the need for an issue-focused approach, as discussed by roloff (2008), was apparent and in this case narratives on astronomy provided the link to the issue of science and its connectivity to global sustainability objectives (united nations 2019). though the ska sa project commenced with a stakeholder management approach (binneman 2017) to secure the bid for the land in the northern karoo, it soon became clear that a stakeholder engagement approach, as discussed by cornelissen (2014), was the preferred option to secure long-term communication with the stakeholders. it has become apparent in other studies on corporate social responsibility and global sustainability objectives (aguinis & glavas 2012) that multi-level issue-focused stakeholder engagement aimed at collaborative problem resolution has become a popular approach in stakeholder engagement (roloff 2008). in this regard, the benefits of the ska sa for scientific development can make sense to the san peoples because of their existing indigenous knowledge, which can help to place current knowledge of astronomy in context for them. eriksson and barnes (2018) affirm that language, culture and history present many challenges for communicating with the san peoples. therefore, engaging with these stakeholders through narratives that acknowledge their indigenous knowledge, cultural heritage and ancestry can be considered an effective communication strategy. eriksson and barnes (2018) confirm that storytelling is an inclusive approach towards stakeholder engagement aimed at problem solving and innovation. the san peoples’ indigenous knowledge of astronomy there are several indications in history that astronomy is not of western origin and that peoples like the san developed early astronomy. the east, islam and china have very early documentation of the night skies and its uses in their cultures and religions. this is similar for the san although their knowledge was mostly depicted in rock art 76 star stories (binneman 2017). this article focuses on how the ska sa project used the san narratives and understanding of astronomy as part of the stakeholder engagement process. the san were also referred to as bushmen, and one of their ancient sayings is: “a bushman without a story is a bushman without a home.” in terms of astronomy and cosmology this is especially true, as emphasised by bleek (1875) and bleek and lloyd (1911). these narratives can be aligned with existing scientific knowledge. the karoo has some of the clearest night skies in the world and therefore it hosts numerous astronomy projects like the south african large telescope, meerlicht, hera and hirax, to name a few. san peoples have been observing these skies for thousands of years, which has resulted in their linking what happens in the sky to what happens on earth. the visible objects from the dominant sun and moon to even minor points of light, like antares, canopus and sirius, and the planets in our solar system move in both daily and longer-term time scales. these movements are regular and predictable; the patterns of movement are linked to other significant events such as the flowering and fruiting seasons of plants, the movements and life cycles of game species, and the shifting periodicities of temperature and rainfall change. in some regards, the san and most other indigenous peoples could be viewed as some of the first astronomers, perhaps dating back to times before galileo galilei, and thus creating common ground for engagement and projects. the san peoples had to make sense of what the night skies meant for their everyday life and how this fitted into their cosmology. this was done through the narratives that were handed down for generations and are still to some extent being told by the descendants of the ancient san peoples. there are many san tales told of the sun, moon and stars. there are also stories about the relationship between the ancient bushmen and the night skies. some stories say that the sun was once a man, from whose armpits shone rays of light. he dwelt alone in a hut and his light shone only for him. some children of the first bushmen were sent to throw the sleeping man high up into the sky, from where he now shines upon all. in the evening, he draws his blanket of darkness over himself to keep warm. but the blanket is old and has many little holes in it and at night the sun still shines through these holes to make stars. another story tells of a lonely young girl who awaits the return of her hunter companions. to light their way in the dark of the night she throws up a handful of white wood-ash. this became the stars in the milky way, and even when there is no moon, its shining light guides the hunters home. in another tale, the moon, say the bushmen, is really an old shoe belonging to mantis, who lost it while running errands for the gods. as the moon rises on early summer evenings, it is red with the red dust of the kalahari and cold like old leather. these are some of the stories documented by bleek and lloyd (1911). what the ska and san cosmologies have in common is a sense of wonder at the expanse of a clear night sky. although the versions differ considerably, both begin with the ideas provoked by the innumerable points of light that move as if alive. following intensive study of the |xam san beliefs and ritual practices, as well as those of other san groups in southern africa, lewis-williams (1996) and lewis-williams and pearce (2004) have formulated a bi-axial model of the san cosmos, shown in figure 3. from 98 binneman & davis this figure, it can be concluded that cosmology and astronomy formed an important part of the san peoples’ lives. figure 3: simplified bi-axial model of the |xam cosmos (source: lewis-williams 1996; lewis-williams & pearce 2004) san cosmology is thus not narrowly spiritual but entails an all-encompassing worldview, the influences of which extend into every sphere of their existence (yates & manhire 1991). san cosmology simplified would be that the horizontal line essentially represents daily life and the vertical line represents spiritual matters with the waterhole as an important aspect of life. everything in this cosmology is connected. god first created himself and then the land, its food, water and air. if god is angered, he sends bad fortune. ouzman (2008) explains that potency is a key foundational feature in san cosmology, stating that “[s]mall amounts of potency aid apotropaism, astral travel, healing and rainmaking, but high concentrations can kill. controlling potency and passage to the spirit world requires everyone’s labour”. morris (n.d.: 35) describes san cosmology as intimate, writing that it is “a relational epistemology, a perspective that does not assume from the outset a world divided between animate and inanimate, human and non-human, culture and nature, earth and sky.” broadly, san cosmology can be described as using these elements: ♦ creation and god ♦ mantis and his family ♦ the baboons ♦ how mantis stole fire from ostrich ♦ the rainbow ♦ the sun, moon and stars 98 star stories with reference to the stars, table 1 lists some of the known stars mentioned in |xam stories told by the san peoples. when compared to figure 3, it is clear that most of the observable celestial bodies had been observed and named by the early san people. there are also some similarities between the wajarri and the san in this regard (square kilometre array organisation 2020). the ska organisation could use this to facilitate future collaboration between the san and the wajarri and to further engage with these peoples. table 1: san astronomy narrative themes celestial body san name/description achernar “star digging stick’s stone” aldebaran “he-hartebeest” apha orion (betelgeuse) “she-hartebeest” aquila “they were named by the great star” canopus “ant egg star” / rice star” (ant’s eggs are “bushman rice”) castor and pollux “eland’s wives” cetus “orphan, poor person” corona australis “bush, hut, branch house, nest” magellan clouds the |xam saw a family of steenbok (!koeŋ) in this celestial body milky way this was made by one of the earliest bushman girls, who threw ashes into the sky and ordered them to become the “milky way”. she wanted a little light to be made so that the bushmen would be able to return home (even) in the night; for, the earth, then, could not even be a little light; were it not for the milky way and the stars. the same girl also thought that she would throw up into the sky a certain root so that it would become stars. the flesh of this root, when young, is white and when old it turns red – this makes some of the stars white, and others red. momo a constellation round the moon (a lunar rainbow) is the dust made by a dancing party that ascends and surrounds the moon. 1110 binneman & davis celestial body san name/description moon the moon was created by a being called |kaggen, who, once being inconvenienced by darkness, threw one of his shoes up into the sky to become the moon and make light. the moon is red because the shoe was dusty with red dust, and cold because it is skin (or leather). the moon is also looked upon as a male being; a man with whom the sun becomes angry (on account of his going out before him). the sun then stabs and cuts him with his (the sun’s) knife, i.e. rays. these attacks are continued until the moon is reduced to a mere backbone, which he entreats the sun to spare so that he may live to return home and see his children. “the sun has mercy and spares the little piece, which goes home, and grows again to a full moon; – when the stabbing and cutting process recommences. the wife and children of the moon are in his house.” orion “three she-tortoises hung upon a stick” pleiades “they are like ostrich eggs; therefore, the bushmen seek for ostrich eggs, when they come out” regulus or alpha leonis “day’s heart’s child” sirius “to sing” and “honey”, southern cross “male lions”. the lions themselves are alpha and beta centauri, the pointers as stated above. from this one can deduce that the |xam saw in the southern cross, or at least in part of it, a pride of lions. sun the sun was a man; but not one of the early races of people [...] he only gave forth brightness for a space around his own dwelling. before the children threw him up, he had not been in the sky, but had lived in his house on earth. as his shining had been confined to a certain space at and around his own dwelling, the rest of the country seemed as if the sky were very cloudy; as it looks now, when the sun is behind thick clouds. the sky was black (dark?). the shining came from one of the sun’s armpits as he lay with one arm lifted. when he put down his arm, darkness fell everywhere; when he lifted it up, it was as if day came. in the day, the sun’s light used to be white; but at night it was red, like a fire. when the sun was thrown up into the sky it became round, and never was a man afterwards. before being thrown into the sky, the sun was called “sun-armpit” (||koiŋ|k”átten-ttu). a version of this myth appears in bleek and lloyd (1911: 45-57). a longer version appears in guenther (1989: 75-81). venus “the daybreak’s great star” 1110 star stories the early san had names and stories for and about most of the visible celestial bodies. some of these stories were mentioned in the interviews with the san elders. what was realised during and after the interviews was that some of the stories once told by the |xam were no longer being told and, except for the documentation by bleek and lloyd, are not used by the san peoples. nonetheless, these stories can serve as a bridge between the san and modern science infrastructure projects like the ska sa. the ancient people can be seen as astronomers and cosmologists in their own right, pondering over the same scientific questions as modern astronomers. method the main purpose of the research was to explore how indigenous knowledge can be used to facilitate stakeholder engagement in scientific projects, such as astronomy. for this purpose, narrative inquiry was used to establish the san peoples’ current knowledge of astronomy compared to the indigenous knowledge documented by bleek and lloyd since the end of the 19th century. the aim was to use their indigenous knowledge as points of connectivity for future engagement with the san community. these stories could then also be used in future initiatives, such as the protection and preservation of san culture and heritage through arts and other craft initiatives or projects similar to shared sky. a qualitative approach was used to explore existing indigenous knowledge and to compare it to evidence that had been documented to establish whether or how these stakeholder narratives have evolved. the intention was not to generalise but to identify. the population was the san peoples and san council members who attended the kalahari desert festival held from 23-25 september 2017. snowball sampling was used to identify the most authoritative members of the community. the method was semi-structured narrative interviews and three themes were explored. the first question was what stories they know and tell about the moon and the stars. the second question related to how the san peoples use the stars, and the third question was whether they believe they could learn from the ska sa, and vice versa. six knowledgeable participants were identified. the participants had to be prompted at times, using the themes identified by bleek and lloyd. the san elders were interviewed at a san festival in the northern cape near witdraai. all san elders attend this festival as it coincides with other san leadership events. the sample included six san leaders representing six different san tribes. these stories are being told with the permission of the elders, with the understanding that it needs to be to the benefit of the san peoples and promote the san culture in general with no commercial gain. this work was presented at the public communication of science and technology conference in dunedin, new zealand, in 2018 with the same permission and understanding from the san leaders. as this was an exploratory study not aimed at generalisation, a representative sample was not required. the interviews were transcribed, and the findings were thematically analysed and compared to themes in narratives recorded predominantly by bleek and lloyd. 1312 binneman & davis results and discussion the expectation when starting the interviews was that the bleek and lloyd documented folklore should be the stories that the elders would tell. however, this was not the case; the majority of the stories were linked to the use of the stars by the san. these stories mention most of the visible objects in the southern hemisphere. when table 1 is compared to figure 3, it is clear that although different, the ancient san people had methods of observing the night skies in detail. one finding is that the participants of the study were not familiar with all the stories documented by bleek and lloyd. in some cases, it could be assumed that aspects of these stories still exist but not in the same manner as the early documented stories. one aspect that stood out in the interviews with older san people was the use of stars in everyday life, for example, navigation and tracking of the seasons. stories like the creation of the milky way by the girl who threw ashes up into the sky is a popular story that exists in different forms. figure 3: southern star chart (source: anon 2003) 1312 star stories what is certain is that western influences have slipped into these ancient stories. some of the |xam stories would have been erased with the |xam if not for early scientists like bleek and lloyd. some san leaders blame the loss of the indigenous knowledge of the |xam people who first walked the central karoo on “the great san genocide”, a process through which the |xam people were hunted like animals and driven to the north by the early settlers, the khoi, the british government and the xhosa, a process confirmed by the following inscription in the announcement book of the dutch reformed church in fraserburg: “today we want to congratulate elder smit for shooting four bushmen.” when talking to the san about a lot of different aspects linked to their indigenous knowledge, they mention this genocide. the surviving san were forced to give up their tradition and language and to become farmworkers, say the san leaders. most of them were classified as coloured and integrated to become part of the khoi. the san leadership made it clear that they are not khoisan, but san; that is, bushmen, one of the oldest cultures in the world. stories about times long past are, to a large extent, all that the san people have left of the central karoo. the land where their forefathers walked, their heritage left there, their graves and the veld they once knew well was mostly off limits to them. when reflecting specifically on the interviews conducted with the san elders, one can assume that due to the language and cultural barriers, the participants answered the questions in terms of their own frames of reference. the key themes that emerged among the six participants pertaining to their recall of san narratives about the moon and stars are presented in table 2. table 2: key themes in san elders’ stories about astronomy key themes sub themes creation of the milky way through spreading of ashes the moon is the shoe of mantis and created the stars through humans and nature stories are interwoven with how the san people use the stars stars are important to the san modern san people view themselves as linked to their ancestors in different ways. one of the ways they experience this link is through the stories they tell. one participant said: “the stories we tell are stories about the beginning of times; they are the stories our people remember about the creation of the world.” all the participants indicated that the stars and stories about the stars are important to the san, making statements such as “[i]t influences who we are as people”. the chief of the platfontein san peoples said that the stars were woven into the san peoples’ being and who they are. he explained that this was partly because they only had stars in the evenings and nothing else to occupy them. it is evident from their answers that most of the other stories recorded by bleek and lloyd were not referred to, suggesting that they may have been forgotten. 1514 binneman & davis considering all participants’ acknowledgement of the importance of their narratives, it can be of great value to re-introduce their ancient narratives to the san peoples. table 3: key themes in san narratives about their use of the stars key themes sub themes looking to and at the stars influences who and what we are as people the stars are important in understanding significant events the stars are important in everyday life for navigating and telling time frequented places orientation identifying events the san understanding of the stars is not just about astronomy. the elders said that the stars and the stories about the creation of the stars determine who they are as people. one of the participants remarked: “when we look to the stars, they remind us of important things that happened to our people.” another stated: “as children our elders told us stories about how the stars were formed and how we are part of that.” they told stories about how they used the stars to navigate, tell the time, determine seasons and to identify significant events. some of these stories are ancient and can be used by western scientists to understand how the san view the night skies. in some communities, the san still use the stars to navigate, to determine the change of seasons and to tell time. while the ska sa is a scientific project that uses advanced technology, it is interesting to note that it seeks to answer similar questions to those addressed in the san narratives with reference to the origins of the universe, how everything fits together and what the future holds, using the stars as points of reference. the third question aimed to establish what the san people thought they could learn from the ska sa and what they could teach it in return, as discussed below. table 4: key themes in the san’s perceptions of what they could learn from the ska sa and vice versa key themes sub themes san stories can complement modern science western science can learn from the san stories mutually beneficial collaboration restoration of san history the san who were interviewed all held the opinion that the ska sa could learn from the san and the san from the ska sa. one elder said that the wide-open karoo provides a space for everyone and everyone is connected. the elders interviewed had different views on how the collaboration would work. the participants all indicated that 1514 star stories the stars were used by the san people in everyday life since the earliest days. their stories are considered historical in their own frame of reference and can be used by modern scientists to gain an understanding of an almost extinct race that occupied the area, which, in turn, is becoming a historical site in its own right. based on astronomy and cosmology, it is perceived as fitting that the area holds value for the san who were subsequently displaced from the area, only for it to again become dominant in the field of astronomy. one of the respondents said: “the san people are excited about the project and what has already been done.” the participants suggested that role-players should have meetings where the scientists could tell the san about their “satellite” science and the san could tell the scientists about their “use” of the stars. conclusion this article explored the narratives that were used by the san peoples to make sense of the cosmos. although it is not a new way of engaging stakeholders it is definitely an effective way of doing so. these stories are a useful bridge between the ancient culture of the san and the high-tech science projects conducted by the ska sa. while the ska sa states that it is committed to social development one of the strategic objectives of the project is to communicate science and encourage communities to take ownership, understand and be excited about science in general. these narratives create common platforms to start sharing in a decolonialised way, where the knowledge of the san is not a lesser knowledge than that of the modern technology-driven science. the main questions asked by both the san and the modern science of the ska relate to where humans fit in and how to make sense of it all. the ska sa site in the karoo was once an important area for the ancient san people and their understanding of the cosmos and astronomy. now this area is one of the most important astronomy sites in the world, one that will answer similar questions to those the ancient san once asked. this article is a unique account of how the san were engaged to participate in one of the largest scientific projects in human history. the stories told by the san and documented by bleek and lloyd created a bridge between the ancient san and the ska, which was useful for the stakeholder engagement with the san. the shared sky exhibition is one example of how this was done by using stories told through art. from this common ground established by them telling their astronomy stories other initiatives followed that could benefit the san peoples and could be used to reestablish some of the cultural heritage that has been lost. through this process it became evident that indigenous knowledge of peoples like the san is under threat and needs to be protected and developed. this process also provided a platform to conduct community development initiatives. for the san peoples, a substantial number of narratives have been documented by bleek and lloyd, and these stories have been preserved and are still available to the san peoples. unfortunately, some of the stories and indigenous knowledge systems have been lost. it is clear from this exercise that narratives of indigenous peoples could be used in other scientific infrastructure projects. these stories create an effective platform for 1716 binneman & davis engagement with indigenous peoples and indicate what is important and, to some extent, sacred to them. it follows that listening to and taking the indigenous knowledge systems seriously ensure that this knowledge is not portrayed to be unscientific or dissimilar to western science. indigenous knowledge systems of communities such as the san peoples create a platform for engagement. this research demonstrated how narratives could bridge the divide between ancient indigenous knowledge systems and one of the most advanced technology and astronomy projects in history. disclaimer statement dr anton binneman is stakeholder manager at ska|sa/nrf|sarao. references aguinis, h. & glavas, a. 2012. what we know and don’t know about corporate social responsibility. a review and research agenda. journal of management 38(4): 932968. doi: 10.1177/0149206311436079 anon. 2003. getting started in astronomy. 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https://doi.org/10.2307/3889007 _hlk2062381 _hlk44613032 _hlk44612837 _hlk44868799 _hlk44439367 _hlk44327539 _hlk44521015 _hlk2174583 untitled 53 reflections on drawing communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 53 63 leoni schmidt * abstract this article is presented in three parts. an introduction considers the current emphasis on drawing within the visual arts and literacy debate. an analysis is then offered of key strategies and counter-strategies (including trajectories and cornerstones) in the recent history of drawing as a complex arts practice predicated on different and often contestatory assumptions about how we understand and visualise our world. the third section explores connections between drawing and registers for visual communication and literacy, with specific attention to umberto eco's semiotic typology of modes of sign production. * leoni schmidt is a professor in the school of art at otago polytechnic, dunedin, new zealand introduction in the history of western art, drawing has traditionally been under-acknowledged in favour of painting, sculpture and architecture. even today, drawing is seldom offered as a major subject in tertiary art schools, and often seen as a support discipline aimed at facilitating outcomes in other areas. in recent decades, however, drawing has claimed a central place for itself within much of international contemporary arts practice. at the same time, a growing body of scholarly research on drawing has uncovered some of its complexities, while also connecting it to other fields of interest such as, for example, communication studies, semiotics and visual literacy investigations. international networks of scholars and artists who focus on drawing exist today as expanded fields of interest functioning across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. for example, the international drawing research institute operates between the glasgow school of art, the college of fine arts of the university of new south wales in sydney, the china central academy of fine arts in beijing, and artistacademics involved (e.g. robert palmer, roger wyatt, blair cunningham and gordon hookey) have been in residency at the school of art in dunedin, new zealand, where the author of this article works as a drawing researcher. another example of drawing’s recent international collaboration is the connection between the united kingdom power drawing project and the drawing australia research program (darp) at macquarie university in australia. eileen adams, who leads the project in england, writes: “drawing provides the means for learning to see. in this visual world, drawing provides a vivid shorthand. it is an extraordinarily versatile tool in many subject disciplines, ranging from tiny sketches containing big ideas to whole sets of drawings that give all the information necessary for building a house or an aircraft”(2001: 2). with regard to the above-mentioned projects, literacy researcher shirley bryce-heath states: “the future curriculum needs to integrate visual, verbal and other representational modes as schools move closer in goals and process to non-school communities and organisations” (2000:121). in an era of visuality and the so-called “pictorial turn”, we read the following in conjunction with drawing research iniatives: “effective learning in our increasingly visual environments requires educators and others to reconsider the importance of visual learning and literacy and to re-evaluate learning methods and teaching strategies. in a world dominated by visual concepts and communication, the agenda… in the 21s t century requires attention to visual intelligence.” (darp 2005:2) this article argues that key strategies and counter-strategies within the recent history of drawing as an arts practice suggest a field of activity connected with semiotic modes of sign production which can function as registers for visual communication and literacy. before making connections between drawing and such registers, a brief analysis of the relevant key strategies and counter-strategies in the recent history of drawing follows below in part 2 of this article. 54 drawing students in the fine arts have traditionally been expected to attend the life-drawing class, where observational drawings of nude models and of still-life objects were produced. one justification for such exercises was that they would teach students (and thus future artists) to look adequately at the world around them, and that this act of looking would make it possible for them to represent that world on a two-dimensional surface. in the twentieth century, another justification was that drawing could make it possible for students or artists to then translate from such renderings to a vocabulary of abstract forms, especially in painting; or to use such renderings as a basis for graphological expression through personal “handwriting” or gestural marks on surfaces. these expectations respectively harked back to the history of drawing as a practice positioned as “preparational” within western arts academies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; to a modernistic focus on the language of visual abstraction; and to the expressive, emotive freedom gained within the context of abstract expressionist painting by the 1950s. while students and artists in that decade still worked towards fulfilling such expectations, other iniatives were already afoot which would shift the centre of gravity for drawing towards its own domain, although it would still be deployed within the practices of painting, sculpture and architecture (and later increasingly so within other media too). this shift occurred along four trajectories. one of these foregrounded drawing as a connective act across surfaces, as in the work of cy twombly. the second of these registers referred back to older traditions of drawing as deployed in sinopias (large preparatory drawings for fresco paintings on walls) and cartoons (underdrawings for paintings) in order to lift the drawing out of the sketchbook or off the page towards a sculptural and architectural scale, as in the work of sol lewitt. a third trajectory focused on drawing proceeding within the expanded field of the landscape, as where walter de maria imposed perspectival lines on the surface of the mohave desert. the fourth trajectory is exemplified through the work of joseph beuys, where he created his dense mindmaps, tracing ideas and arguments with chalk on blackboard. it can be argued that drawing by the late-1970s had undergone a revolution which claimed spaces of its own for drawing. these spaces seemed to be predicated on four cornerstones. line itself is considered the main constituent of drawing. leymarie, monnier and rose (1979: 243) write: “the line itself is always seen as line even as it merges with other lines to build tone, even when confined within the scheme defined by the motif.” furthermore, line was seen as tracing “process”, as so famously insisted upon by artist richard serra. in the faculty of art, design and architecture at kingston university in london, drawing as process research has, for example, resulted in postgraduate courses, conferences and exhibitions. 55 a strong conceptual focus – rather than an expressive one – was claimed for drawing. the story of drawing from the mid-fifties onward is the story of a gradual disengagement from painting and an emotive cooling of the basic mark, the line itself. bernice rose (1992: 10) would later add: “as drawing has moved toward its new status, it has asserted both its linear autonomy and its conceptual control over other [visual arts] disciplines.” this shift – from the expressive to the conceptual – also involved an acceptance of the reproducibility of gesture and image, “…so that the idea of drawing as graphology, as a kind of personal handwriting, [became] a dead issue, as was spontaneity” (leymarie, monnier & rose 1979: 248). the shift towards sculptural and architectural scale increasingly included corporeality in the act of drawing as the whole body of the artist or audience became involved in the work. one has to move inside or alongside lewitt’s drawings and has to walk between the lines in a de maria landscape. leymarie, monnier and rose (ibid.) write about the former’s transference of drawings to the wall: “this made his drawings coextensive with the viewer’s real [corporeal] space in an attempt to further cut down on illusionism and [to] totally enfold the viewer in his subjective mental space.” the mental space of many artists involved a testing of their own approaches to drawing “…in relation to previous styles and to previous notions and conventions of drawing by reappraising them at what may be described as an ironic distance, by isolating their specific conventions, conceptualizing them, and recreating them as… paraphrase” (leymarie, monnier & rose 1979: 247). rose (1992: 12) would later add: “remembrance of the past is iconographically integral to the new language of art. within this general idea of agreement, there is an enormous range of play inherent in the new mode, and drawing, with its enormous potential for overwriting, has become a primary vehicle for this…” thus an engagement with the history of art speaks through the drawing revolution after the middle of the previous century. for example, when one is looking at a drawing by cy twombly, one is simultaneously aware of his connective line across the surface, while reading it as an historical reinscription of alexander cozens’ late eighteenth-century experiments in drawing and printmaking. the abovementioned cornerstones of the mid-twentieth-century drawing revolution culminated in a changed discourse within the discipline by the early 1980s. however, within this very discourse were already inherent the counter-strategies which would increasingly problematise and complicate its assumptions. again, these can be summarised through four (counter-) cornerstones. it has been demonstrated that line can be subsumed within surface as can be seen in some of lewitt’s own drawings, in which it is almost impossible to distinguish individual lines. theorist vilém flusser considers the relationship between line and surface. he talks about how surfaces have become ubiquitous and metaphorically ever more important in our surroundings today; as against the importance of lines in the cartesian model. he argues that in our era of visuality we seize the totality of a picture’s surface at a glance and then proceed to analyse it; that is, we work from synthesis to 56 analysis; while reading along a line works from analysis to synthesis, just as we have to follow a written text if we want to get to its message. “…this points to the difference between the one-dimensional line and the two-dimensional surface: the one aims at getting somewhere; the other is there already, but may reveal how it got there. this difference is one of temporality…the times involved in the two processes are different…we may say that the reading of pictures takes less time because the moment in which their messages are received is denser; it is more compacted. it also opens up more quickly…” (flusser 2002: 23). the strong conceptual focus on drawing as process has been questioned through a pictorial turn aimed at reinstating the importance of visuality in all its material physicality, including subject-matter and recognisable motif. laura hoptman has curated the third in a series of major contemporary drawing exhibitions (1976, 1992, 2002) at the museum of modern art in new york. in the publication concurrent with the 2002 exhibition, she writes as follows of the works: “…these drawings are finished and autonomous and to some degree representational. they are also what yve-alain bois has called ‘projective’, that is, they depict something that has been imagined before it is drawn, as opposed to being found through the process of making…with all respect to serra, for many artists today drawing is not a verb but a noun” (hoptman 2002: 12). ugo rondinone’s careful topographical renderings and thoba khedoori’s precise architectural drawings are cases in point. the corporeality of drawing has become increasingly integrated with post-media, interdisciplinary performance and immersive environments in the arts. two explanatory examples can respectively be mentioned here. south african artist william kentridge recently exhibited his “7 fragments for georges méliès” – an early french filmmaker – at the national gallery of victoria in melbourne, australia. as has been the case with many of his animations, this work is also the result of drawings made, erased, redrawn and filmed intermittently into sequence through a short walk between drawing board and camera. in this cycle, however, the boundaries between the artist’s own body and the drawings are increasingly erased. jason smith writes: “…they form an immersive environment…[depicting]…the artist at work in his studio or interacting with one of his signature animated drawings. the main protagonist of kentridge’s films is the artist himself…in the studio as creative laboratory…images and graphic phenomena emerge and disappear before our eyes, as a torn self-portrait of the artist magically reintegrates and morphs into man himself…we are witness to [his] hesitation and uncertainty, his tentative mark-making yet intuitive sense for the ambiguity of particular forms and their suggestion of an alternative state” (2006: 6). another example can be found in a 2005 project entitled “grayscale drawing” by new zealand artist kurt adams. he draws digitally to create a large archive of elements and creates digital soundbites. these are then introduced into enormous 40-minute moving image and sound environments through a complex rendering process utilising thirty computers at a time. the dramatic black, white and grey result on large screen envelops and overwhelms the audience in a sublime land and cityscape through which sound 57 becomes visual and drawing becomes audible. adams (2005: 2-3) writes that painter claude monet “walked across bridged ponds, diverted water to create veined reflections of [water-] lilies. adding and subtracting from the orchestrated landscape, he surrounded himself in canvas; painting a picture already designed to be painted…this feedback is a method i also use. initially drawing from real life i then began to draw in front of the screen. sketching from my own fabricated habitats…[engaging] with brian massumi’s descriptions of …virtual…‘infoldings and outfoldings, redoublings and reductions, punctual events falling away from themselves.’ the digital noise and artefact ruptures the surface of my drawings, the artificial horizon aches under erasure and relocation, the grey porridge mountains curdle with pencil…a concrete garden shimmering like an enormous futurist machine [made with] utopian playdough…”. the reader realises how the language used here strains to relay the corporeal impact of the drawing on the artist and the audience. historical reinscription in drawing has itself been overwritten with more overt political engagements, as artists today are often acutely aware of the implications and effects of their alignments with the world around them. one can mention here that drawing as an arts practice which tends towards the incomplete and fragmentary is eminently suited to the concerns kentridge has famously revealed in south africa, namely that he is “…interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain endings…” (smith 2006: 3). ralph sykes points out that “…when a drawing [and by extension a print] deals with social injustice, it can have a quality of [political] indignation…the sharp thin line can sharpen the bite of a message, increasing the sting of an attack” (1969: xxiv). current drawing practitioners who particularly engage in the political overwriting of historical reinscription are, for example, bucharest-based dan perjovschi and filipino artist jose legaspi. perjovschi explored public graffiti in 2003 for one of his many projects. by that time, graffiti had already entered the hallowed halls of accepted artistic practice (as against its position some decades ago). the artist played with the short history of graffiti as theorised art in postmodernist practice (which in turn, of course, also references its historical antecedents harking back to, for example, lurid inscriptions on walls in early acadian settlements around 2000 bce). perjovschi’s overwriting involved public walls at essen in germany; public memories of graffiti historicised by their long-term inhabitation of that part of the town; and his new inscriptions with their direct references to current political events in europe. legaspi’s recent drawings have been arranged as one thousand a4-size chalk and charcoal drawings on paper covering an enormous wall and depicting scenes of extreme violence: obliteration, castration, impalement. exploring the work further, one comes to realise that the artist refers to the filipino past with its catholic connection to regional monuments such as the “spolarium” in the national museum in manila – where an enormous nineteenth-century mural realistically depict dying roman gladiators being dragged out of the colosseum. on the other hand, the drawn images suggest all too recent atrocities, both personal and public, where private and domestic 58 violence overlaps with suggestions of homophobia and political torture, as well as with reflections of the appalling social conditions in contemporary manila. practices such as those discussed above are the stuff of critical conversation between internationally networked research communities in the visual arts, particularly for those artists and academics involved with drawing. outside these contexts, such practices may arguably sometimes seem difficult to access. however, david rosand reminds us that through drawing we can all reach out and be put in active touch with the world (1999: 23). amongst many other researchers, dexter points out that this act is part of everybody’s daily life: “drawing is everywhere, we are surrounded by it – it is sewn into the warp and weft of our lives; we practice it as one of our earliest experiences as schoolchildren… people draw everywhere in the world; drawing can even be used as a global visual language when verbal communication fails” (2005: 5). the next part of this article explores connections between the key strategies and counter-strategies (including trajectories and cornerstones) identified in recent drawing practices and modes of sign production as registers of visual communication and literacy. visual communication and literacy visual communication can be seen as a sub-discipline of communication studies. however, sandra moriarty and keith kenney (2006: 1) have pointed out that it is also a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional effort. for example, sol worth’s studying visual communication (1981) came from visual communication theory; arthur asa berger’s seeing is believing (1989) from semiotics; john berger’s ways of seeing (1972) from marxist discourse analysis; and deborah curtiss’ introduction to visual literacy (1987) from aesthetics. all of these examples agree to some extent that visual literacy is a learned process. this view was challenged in favour of “natural process” by paul messaris in his visual literacy: image, mind and reality (1994). this article argues with a range of scholars from theorists nelson goodman (languages of art: an approach to a theory of symbol, 1976) to umberto eco (semiotics and the philosophy of language, 1984) to art therapist rawley silver (art as language: access to emotions and cognitive skills through drawings, 2000) that visual literacy is indeed a learned process similar to language acquisition. eco (in lechte 1994: 129) insists on the conventionality of signs. “…even where there appears to be a clear case of an object, or behaviour, which seems to exist outside any conventionalised format [or language], i.e. beyond the code…such instances rapidly become conventionalised.” eco identifies four modes (physical labour; recognition; ostension; and replica) in his typology of code production (1976/79: 183-184) and these modes can be useful for an understanding of how (visual) literacy can be acquired and thus how (visual) communication can be effected. in the third part of the article, these modes are reviewed briefly in relation to the material presented in part 2 above. 59 “physical labour: effort required for the production of a sign.” contemporary drawing does not only involve such physical labour, but also signals it as, for example, when john baldessari makes the sharpening of a pencil the subject-matter of his pencil story; or when kentridge utilises the marks of erasure made with a rubber to “materialise” movement in the filmic translation of his drawings. writing about the history of drawing, emma dexter focuses at one point on the ideas of paul klee, the early twentieth-century artist who theorised this mode of production from a practitioner’s perspective. klee’s (1925) book, the pedagogical sketchbook, “…connects drawing with all the physical phenomena of the world. klee used the working relationship of bone and muscle, the flow of the bloodstream, waterfalls, the flight of birds, the motion of the tides as examples of ‘coordinated linear motion’.” he argued furthermore that an understanding of physical acts leads into an understanding of drawing outcomes. the increased corporeality of drawing practices in recent years – referred to already – is relevant in this context. “recognition: object or event is recognised as expression of a sign content, as with imprints, symptoms or clues.” contemporary drawing does not only provide an “imprint”, but also foregrounds its expression of a sign content. michael newman explains that in drawing each stroke is a sign of the hand’s agency and its withdrawal, unlike painting which covers its surface and hides its moment of making. he writes that drawing’s “…peculiar mode of being lies between the withdrawal of the trace in the mark and the presence of the idea it prefigures” (see bryson 2003: 95). drawing’s revelation of its own processes has also been indicated earlier in this article. “ostension: an object or act is shown to be the exemplar of a class of objects or acts.” contemporary drawings do not exist in a vacuum, but are rather doubly contextualised. on one level, they are contextualised through our recognition in them of the physical acts necessary for their performance. on this level of “natural process”, messaris is correct in arguing that visual literacy does not depend on (visual) language acquisition. however, contemporary drawings are also contextualised on another level precisely by behaving as exemplars within the limits of a language. just as we can read a map through understanding the codified relationship between the map and the geographical terrain it refers to, so too can we read a drawing through understanding its codified relationship with the art historical and theoretical terrain within which it is located. artist simon evans even makes this relationship the subject-matter of his drawing entitled map of the world. elsewhere, jean leymarie acknowledges the codified nature of drawing before commencing with an analysis of exemplars: “[drawing is a thing as mysterious and primordial as language itself…” (1976: vii). the various drawing discourses in recent practice – as indicated in part 2 of this article – can be seen as subsets of a visual language with its own rules, codes and communicative outcomes. “replica: takes on features of codification through stylisation, examples are emblems, musical types, mathematical signs.” contemporary drawing is highly stylised in conjunction with a recognition that all representational outcomes are constructed by a practitioner rather than merely reflective of objects and events. so confident is 60 contemporary drawing of its replication of code that it can play with the limits of its own language. an example is when mel bochner organised an exhibition in the codified space of a new york art gallery in 1966 with the title: “working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art.” dexter (2005: 7) writes: “for this show he borrowed numerous drawings and other works on paper…working drawings, a bill, a mathematician’s calculations and a page from scientific american.” bochner then photocopied these items and presented them as artworks on plinths. visitors were left to wonder where the art was and arguably it was in the idea that drawing shares vital characteristics with other modes of learning. drawing happily embraces other modes of learning and new technologies and often makes them the subject-matter of its own outcomes. an example is where australian artist donal fitzpatrick incorporates the effect of the photocopier in his drawings in such a way that the drawings become an archive of a copying process, rather than being reflections through an observational act. in summary and conclusion, umberto eco writes about a process resulting from his four modes of sign production: “invention: unforeseen by the existing code, it forms the basis of a new material continuum.” contemporary drawing has reinscribed historical instances and has then overwritten such reinscriptions (see part 2 above). old forms and formats have been the basis for new material continuums, for example where lewitt deploys the historical format of the sinopia or where dan perjovschi overwrites the history of graffiti. where she discusses drawing’s relationships with the past, emma dexter writes: “drawing…is the medium through which the past has often spoken most clearly and directly…as artists have sought out new narratives and new versions of history…social histories have been best expressed through the informal and anecdotal codes of drawing…drawing provides the locus for [a] reconnection with aspects of [earlier] culture” (2005: 9-10). sibyl moholy-nagy claims that drawing “urges on to further explorations, both in space and spirit” (see klee 1925: 63). this article argues that the above modes of sign production can form the matrix for visual communication and literacy learning through an engagement with drawing practices. it argues that contemporary drawing provides a field of activity through which visual communication and literacy are performed and through which it can be learnt and understood by analysis of exemplars and their relationship with the codified art historical and theoretical context in which they are located. the article attempts to make connections across the disciplinary boundaries of drawing practice, its historical and theoretical framing, and semiotic modes of sign production as registers for visual communication and literacy. making such connections is predicated on an agreement with many current researchers – such as graeme sullivan (2005: 129) – that visual literacy and visual knowing is a “transcognitive” activity, an activity that involves language, context, modes of signification and the materials and processes particular to an arts practice (such as drawing). 61 references adams, e. 2001. power drawing: campaign for drawing, in engage, 10, autumn 2001: 2-10. adams, k. 2005. grayscale drawing. unpublished master of fine arts dissertation, otago polytechnic school of art, dunedin, new zealand. berger, a.a. 1989. seeing is believing: an introduction to visual communication. mountain view, california: mayfield. berger, j. 1972. ways of seeing. harmondsworth: pelican. bryce-heath, s. 2000. seeing our way into learning, in cambridge journal of education, 30(1): 120-130. bryson, n. 2003. a walk for a walk’s sake, in newman, a. & de zegher, m.c. (eds.) the stage of drawing: gesture and act: selected from the tate collection. london & new york: tate publishing & the drawing centre. curtiss, d.p. 1987. introduction to visual literacy: a guide to the visual arts and communication. englewood cliffs nj: prentice-hall. darp, drawing australia research program, at http://www.aces.mq.edu.au/drawing as last visited on 5 may 2006. dexter, e. 2005. introduction, in butler, j. et al. (eds.) vitamin d: new perspectives in drawing. london: phaidon. eco, u. 1976/79. a theory of semiotics. bloomington: indiana university press. eco, u. 1984. semiotics and the philosophy of language. london: macmillan. flusser, v. 2002. writings. minneapolis & london: university of minnesota press. goodman, n. 1976. languages of art: an approach to a theory of symbols. indianapolis: hackett. hoptman, l. 2002. drawing now: eight propositions. new york: museum of modern art. klee, p. 1925. the pedagogical sketchbook. london: faber & faber. lechte, j. 1994. fifty key contemporary thinkers: from structuralism to postmodernity. london & new york: routledge. leymarie, j., monnier, g. & rose, b. 1979. history of an art: drawing. london: macmillan. messaris, p. 1994. visual literacy: image, mind & reality. boulder co: westview press. moholy-nagy, s. 1925. endnotes, in klee, p. (ed.) 1925. pedagogical sketchbook. london: faber & faber. 62 moriarty, s. & kenney, k. 2006. visual communication: a taxonomy and bibliography at http://www.ivla.org/resources.htm as last visited on 5 may 2006. rosand, d. 1999. drawing acts: studies in graphic expression and representation. london & new york: cambridge university press. rose, b. 1992. allegories of modernism: contemporary drawing. new york: harry n. abrams. silver, r. 2000. art as language: access to emotions and cognitive skills through drawings. philadelphia: brunner-routledge. smith, j. 2006. william kentridge’s 7 fragments for georges méliès. melbourne: national gallery of victoria. sullivan, g. 2005. art practice as research: inquiry in the visual arts. london: sage. sykes, r. 1969. the indignant eye: the artist as social critic in prints and drawings from the 15th century to picasso. boston: beacon. worth, s.1981. studying visual communication. philadelphia: university of philadelphia press. 63 1pb guidelines to enhance recall and recognition of product placement strategies abstract product placement is used to break through the marketing communication clutter that viewers are exposed to daily. it refers to the inclusion of branded products into, for example, television programmes or movies. a product placement strategy should be meticulously chosen to enhance the placement’s effectiveness and to live up to marketers’ expectations of conveying the brand message to the target audience, or at least creating awareness of the brand. product placement strategies include prominence, verbal mentioning of the product, interaction between actors and the product, partial display of the product, and the combination of audio and visual clues pertaining to the product in the placement. this study explored the effectiveness of some of these strategies in creating recall and recognition. by means of the tobii eye tracker device, respondents were exposed to scenes in soap operas, each containing different types of product placement to explore their recall and recognition of the placed products. the findings confirm that product placement has a definite place in the integrated marketing communication mix. the article highlights a number of guidelines by which a marketer or marketing practitioner could improve the likeliness of a placed product or brand to be recognised and be recalled. keywords: product placement; product placement strategies; tobii eye tracker; integrated marketing communication; brand integration; marketing communication; brand message introduction product placement is becoming a valued alternative to traditional advertising (clow & baack 2016). product placement, also referred to as brand integration, refers to the inclusion of branded products or identifiers through audio and/or visual means within mass media programming. however, product placement is not as simple as it sounds. apart from the fact that it should form part of the integrated marketing communication mix, there are also different placement strategies that could be employed. as product placement is even more expensive than traditional advertising, it should not be considered an easy alternative. elshé van der westhuizen postgraduate student, department of communication science, university of the free state, south africa email: elshe@itec-bloem. co.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-08314800 dr dalmé mulder department of communication science, university of the free state, south africa email: mulderd@ufs.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-84913792 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-22 date submitted: 21 august 2019 date accepted: 3 october 2019 date published: 07 november 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) elshe@itec-bloem.co.za elshe@itec-bloem.co.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0831-4800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0831-4800 mailto:mulderd@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8491-3792 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8491-3792 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 van der westhuizen & mulder this form of marketing communication should be thoroughly planned to ensure that the placement of the product is done in the most effective manner. this article reports on a study aimed at determining the effectiveness of some of these strategies in creating recall and recognition. the placement of products product placement is designed to influence the audience (d’astrous & chartier 2000) by unobtrusively inserting branded products in entertainment programmes (ouwersloot & duncan 2008; suggett 2016). marketers benefit from this type of marketing communication, as viewers are unlikely to be aware of the persuasive intent of the placement – if done effectively. directors of soap operas, on the other hand, reap the benefit of featuring a real-life branded product in a programme, as it adds a sense of “realism” to the programme, which is appreciated by viewers (delorme & reid 1999: 2). central to the concept of product placement is the idea of adding value to the brand building strategy. according to hong et al. (2008), organisations struggle to gain a competitive advantage over similar brands in the market; product placement seems to offer an alternative option in this ongoing battle. different types of product placement marketers can choose from several forms of product placement. the visual insertion of products in a programme is the most common example. beneke (2012) is of the opinion that a product should be promoted visually to convey a clear message to the audience. there are different ways in which the product can be visually displayed; for example, in the foreground or background. another form of visual placement is if only part of the product or brand is visible, as it is suggested that there is better recall of a brand if a part of the name is omitted from the placement. this prompts individuals to think further of what the organisation, or the one responsible for the placement, is trying to accomplish through this “broken placement” strategy (brennan 2008: 495). the verbal mentioning of a brand is another placement type. occasionally a combination of both visual and verbal presentation (wilson & till 2011) is employed, or the actual use of the product by the actors in the programme (baker et al. 2004) is shown. hiam and rastelli (2007) state that marketers can benefit greatly from the fact that product placement offers the visual benefits of promoting a product; it can also demonstrate how to use the product. this can convince people of the benefits of buying the product and it can be linked to popular actors and characters to endorse the product. a final form of placement is when the storyline is written around the product (russell 2002). clow and baack (2016: 308) refer to this as branded entertainment. russell and belch (2005) regard this type of strategy as an effective form of product placement as the product is woven into the storyline in order not to disturb the viewers and prevent them from feeling that they are forced to watch an advertisement. 32 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... aspects to consider in product placement according to karniouschina et al. (2011), sung and de gregorio (2008), and law and braun (2000), that an integrated approach to marketing communication proves to be most effective. in other words, brand touch points through different marketing communication techniques (such as advertising, sponsorships or direct marketing) should support product placement. the placement strategy cannot function effectively as a stand-alone marketing communication technique (beneke 2012), but should be supported by an integrated marketing communication strategy. laforet (2010) supports this view and suggests that consumers must be informed about the product prior to the placement (by means of exposure to advertising or packaging), so that they can recall the facts that they have already obtained of the product through other means of contact. placing a new product (unfamiliar brand) in a programme does not have the same effect on viewers as it would have if consumers saw a product in a programme that they had previously encountered it in an advertisement or any other brand touch point somewhere else (roozen 2008; yoon et al. 2011). it is also important to acknowledge that a product placed in a television programme has to have a level of relevance to the programme and the audience to be able to affect viewers. the relationship between the programme and the type of product promoted seems to have a significant effect as the product and programme influence one another (alwitt & prabhakar 1992). beneke (2012) adds that the setting where the product appears in the programme is important when it comes to attitude and recall. humorous scenes that contain a placed product could have positive results, while a depressing scene that contains a placed product could cause a negative attitude or response by the viewers towards that specific product. the content and context of the product placement strategy have to be taken into consideration and be critically analysed prior to exposure to ensure that viewers receive optimum information about the brand, but also to ensure that they do not drown in a pool of stimuli. according to george (2008), a simple aspect such as colour can also have a dramatic influence on recall and recognition, therefore the marketer has to analyse in advance how the brand should appear in the programme. a final aspect that marketers should consider is product relevance to the specific viewers of the programme in which the placement features. if targeted customers can associate with the actors and the programme, the placement will influence their attitudes and purchase behaviour, or they might reject the product (roozen 2008). challenges in product placement product placement is an expensive way of communicating with the target market because marketers pay according to the time slot that the product appears in the show, or the estimated success and range of the audience that the directors expect (ouwersloot & duncan 2008). one of the limitations of the product placement strategy is that marketers have to be satisfied with the amount of exposure they receive in the programme, which may not always meet their expectations (cowley & barron 2008). the director can edit the scene; hence, recognition of the product might fall short. 54 van der westhuizen & mulder another limitation emphasised by ouwersloot and duncan (2008) is that the success of the programme can never be established prior to the broadcast, and sometimes marketers might not reach the expected optimum exposure. it is also possible that viewers will not notice the product in the programme, or see it, but disregard it as they could feel that it is too invasive and that it interferes with the programme. it is against this background that the different types of product placement strategies and the visual impact of products placed in television programmes were explored to determine whether the viewers were able to recognise and recall the products placed in a specific television programme; in this instance, a soap opera. research methodology both qualitative and quantitative data were used in this study. the quantitative strategy entailed the tobii 320x eye tracker and tobii studio 1.5.0 software. eye gazes and the verbal comments of respondents were captured with a logitech webcam while they were watching video clips in which the selected product placement strategies were utilised in two south african soap operas, villa rosa and binnelanders. the respondents’ verbal expressions while they watched the video clips were used to gain an understanding of their preferences and experiences with regard to product placement, and to supplement the numerical data collected by means of the eye tracker device. the tobii eye tracker determines the way in which the respondents’ eyes move across the screen during each scene. the methods used to analyse the data include gaze plots, heat maps, bee swarms and areas of interest (aoi). aois were identified in each scene to calculate how many respondents looked at these areas for a specific period. the results for each respondent were reflected in a different colour to differentiate them from one another. each circle (dot) represents the fragment of time that each respondent focused on a particular area of the image. a few areas of interest were marked on each of the images to estimate the focus of the respondents during the exposure to the stimuli. a bee swarm indicates where the respondents’ focus was at a specific interval in the particular image. each dot represents a different respondent and indicates where he/ she were looking when the screen shot was taken. after the respondents watched the video clips, a screen shot was shown to them to evaluate if they could recognise the product that featured in the scene. the respondents then answered questions regarding the milieu (setting), the actors and the product, or whatever they noticed in the image. the green areas on the images represent the areas where the least attention was focussed, and the red area where the respondents focused most. the gaze plot was used to determine the way in which the respondents viewed the image. the numbers in the circles indicate the sequence of the eye movement while the respondents were watching the scene. the bigger the dot, the longer their eyes were fixated on a specific object in the scene. 54 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... the study population targeted was afrikaans-speaking, third-year marketing communication science students at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, south africa. only afrikaans-speaking respondents were selected, as the dominant language used in the selected soap operas is afrikaans. the selection criteria were that the respondents had to be regular viewers of the selected soap operas. convenience sampling was used (marlow 2001). a total of 21 respondents participated in the study, but three of the respondents’ eyes did not register on the eye tracking device and their interviews had to be discarded. the respondents participated voluntarily and gave consent for their interviews to be recorded. semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were used during the interviews. there were three phases in each interview. firstly, the respondents watched all the video clips while the eye tracker monitored their eye movements. this phase explored the visual impact of the product/brand in the scene – in other words, whether it caught the respondent’s eye. secondly, the respondents’ ability to recall the placed products was tested. thirdly, the respondents were shown still pictures of scenes in which the placed product/brand appeared and had to recognise the product/brand. to capture both audio and facial expressions, a video recording was made of each respondent’s interview to facilitate analysis of their responses while watching the video clips and during the interviews. as no significant data were recorded with regard to facial expressions, only the audio data were included in the results. the data were transcribed, analysed and then linked to the eye tracker results to simplify the process of comparing similarities and differences among the responses. the brands/products chosen are all well-known brands in south africa that are supported by national marketing communication campaigns. eight screen scenes were included in the study representative of: ♦ a product with a bright colour that is placed in the foreground (pritt) (figure 1); ♦ a product with a bright colour that is placed in the background (king pie) (figure 2); ♦ a dull product placed in the background (pick ’n pay no-name brand) (figure 3); ♦ partial display of the brand/logo (first national bank – fnb) (figure 4); ♦ a product that is displayed prominently in the foreground (snowflake) (figure 5); ♦ a brand that was part of a campaign (south african national blood service – sanbs) (figure 6); ♦ interaction between an actor and the product (skype and acer) (figure 7); and ♦ a product being used (minute maid) (figure 8). 76 van der westhuizen & mulder figure 1: product placement of pritt the product is placed prominently on the desk in the foreground (in the lower left-hand corner of the image). figure 2: product placement of king pie the brand king pie that is placed in this scene (figure 2) is prominent, although it is in the background (in the upper left-hand corner of the image). 76 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... figure 3: product placement of pick ’n pay no-name brand pick ’n pay no-name products are reflected in figure 3. the products can be seen in the background on the kitchen sink (middle of the image). figure 4: product placement of fnb in figure 4, only parts of the fnb logo are visible. the brand can be seen in the background (in the right hand corner of the image). 98 van der westhuizen & mulder figure 5: product placement of snowflake the snowflake product is placed prominently in the foreground of the scene (figure 5). the actress is busy using the product (in the lower left-hand corner of the image). figure 6: product placement of sanbs sanbs (figure 6) can be seen on a poster in the background of the scene (in the upper left-hand corner of the image). 98 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... figure 7: product placement of skype and acer the brands, skype and acer (figure 7), were prominently visible in this scene (in the upper right-hand corner of the image and the lower right-hand corner of the image). in the scene, the actor interacted with the product. figure 8: product placement of minute maid the product that is placed in this scene (figure 8) is prominent as the actress places the can of minute maid on the counter in the foreground (the upper centre of the image). 1110 van der westhuizen & mulder a strategy where a product was not presented visually, but only mentioned verbally, was included in the study. the brand used in this strategy was king pie. product placement, where the storyline is built around the product, was not in the soap operas utilised for this study. this strategy could therefore not be included in this study. results and discussion product placement strategy 1: pritt in this strategy, a product with a bright red colour placed in the foreground of the scene was used for analysis. the two actors and the product in this image were marked as aoi (see figure 9). the results of the amount of time that the respondents focused on a certain aoi, to indicate where their interest and focus were, are shown in figure 10. figure 9: area of interest (aoi): (pritt) figure 10: duration that respondents focused on aoi (pritt) 1110 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... respondents focused mainly on face 1. the actress spoke most of the time during the scene. the respondents then looked at face 2 when the actor started to speak. as soon as the actress put the flower on the desk, the focus moved from the actors to the table and then to the product that had been placed in the scene. the respondents looked at the actors, but when there was a movement on the desk, the focus moved to the product placed in the scene. the heat map in figure 11 reflects this observation. figure 11: heat map (pritt) there was a tendency among the respondents to look at the images in the shape of a triangle. the gaze plot (figure 12) is only representative of two of the 18 respondents to illustrate the triangle shape in which the respondents focused. figure 12: gaze plot (pritt) 1312 van der westhuizen & mulder most of the respondents focused on the product, on one or more of the actors, and on another object that caught their eye. the product featured in the lower left-hand corner of the image, where only two (11.1%) of the respondents were looking. both of them were not looking directly at the product, but their focus was in that direction. although none of the respondents looked at the product for a fixed period, the majority of the respondents (72.2%) reported that they had seen the product and recalled it when they were asked what they could remember about the scene. the reasons provided by the respondents why they could remember the product included the fact that they were familiar with the brand, the colour red stood out in contrast with the neutral colours that were used in the scene, and the product was prominent and easy to spot. these reasons are all supported by the literature. karniouschina et al. (2011) highlighted the importance of using product placement as part of the marketing communication mix; in other words, to create familiarity of the brand through techniques such as advertising and then supplementing the strategy by placing the product in a mass media programme. more than three decades ago, gardner and houston (1986) had established that visual cues, such as colour and prominence, play a significant role in advertising. three (16.6%) of the respondents could not recall the product, but as soon as they looked at the still image they recognised the product and said they remember it, but forgot to mention it. two of the respondents could not recall the product at all. product placement strategy 2: king pie a product with a bright colour placed in the background was used as a placement strategy in this scene. the aoi in this image were the two actresses and the king pie placement in the background (see figure 2). although there was more than one placement of the king pie brand in this scene, only the logo on the left-hand side of the image was chosen as an aoi. as shown in figure 13, most of the focus of the respondents was on face 1 (20.95%), presumably because this actress did most of the talking in the scene. as soon as face 1 shuffled the papers on the table, the focus moved to the table and then to the bright king pie logo on the left. the bee swarm data confirmed this movement and shift in attention. when the respondents were asked to look at the stimuli and indicate whether they could remember the placement, they remembered that the scene was shot in a king pie restaurant. the heat map data showed that the areas on which they mostly focused was face 1 (the actress facing the camera) and the king pie logo. the gaze plot revealed a tendency amongst the respondents to look at the actors in the scene, then at the pies, and the fridge in the background. after the actress sitting at the table spoke to the other actress, the respondents’ focus moved from the table to the placement on the left-hand side that featured in the upper left-hand corner of the image. 1312 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... figure 13: duration that respondents focused on aoi (king pie) fifteen (83.3%) of the 18 respondents saw the placement within the first five fixtures of the video, while three of the respondents saw the placement only after the first five fixtures (between 5 and 10 seconds) after the video started and the placement featured. two of the respondents looked at the placement while they watched the video, but did not mention during the interview that they had seen it. a reason provided for the recall of the placement included that the respondents were familiar with the brand. the data in the gaze plot supported the respondents’ statements that they had seen the placement. the strongest argument for the success of the placement in this instance again was the fact that the respondents were familiar with the brand through previous encounters. product placement strategy 3: pick ’n pay no-name brand as indicated in figure 3, the monotonous coloured pick ’n pay no-name brand products were placed in the background of the scene involving two actors talking. three areas of interest marked in this video clip included face 1 (the actor facing the camera), oaks xlarge (the wording on the actor’s sweater) and the placement (pick ’n pay no-name brand). the total fixation duration reflected that the majority of the focus was on the talking actor (47.1%). the respondents also focused on the wording on the actor’s sweater (18.3%) and to the same degree on the pick ’n pay placement itself (18.6%). the bee swarm and heat map supported these findings. some of the respondents (29%) only noticed the placement after they were asked whether they could recognise a placement in this scene. according to the gaze plot, the respondents again looked in a triangular formation between the actors, the wording on the sweater, and the placement that appeared on the washbasin. two (11.1%) respondents saw the placement within the first five seconds of the scene when the placement featured. five (27.8%) respondents saw the placement after the first five seconds that the product was visible and 11 (28.9%) did not see the placement at all. the respondents speculated that they might not have 1514 van der westhuizen & mulder seen the placement because it was not very prominent, it was not colourful and visible, and the fact that they focused more on the two actors than anything else in the scene. when asked to recall what they could remember from the scene, four (22.2%) of the 18 respondents mentioned the fire extinguisher that was behind the actor. thus, they recalled the bright red fire extinguisher in the scene and not the placement, even though these objects were not situated far from each other. one explanation supported by gardner and houston (1986) could be the colour difference – the red colour drew the attention. product placement strategy 4: fnb first national bank employed the strategy to place a partial display of the brand/logo in the scene. the three areas of interest that were tested in this image (figure 4) were face 1 (the actor facing the camera), tonik (the name of the hospital cafeteria where the scene was shot), and the fnb atm in the upper right-hand corner of the image. the total fixation duration on the actor’s face was 38.4% because he was talking to the person walking next to him. the total fixation duration on the tonik logo was 36.8%. the reason for this might be that the tonik logo was prominent and bright green. the bee swarm data indicated that the respondents focused on the two actors in the scene, but also on the rapid care logo on the back of the actor’s shirt. during the interviews, four respondents also mentioned the south african flag that featured on the sleeve of the talking actor’s shirt. the respondents only focused on the fnb atm when they were asked to identify the product placement that featured in the scene, but they did not pay it much attention while watching the video clip. the heat map indicated that the respondents focused on the actor who was facing the camera and not so much on the other actor walking next to him. the detail on the clothing of the actor facing the camera also drew the respondents’ attention. the other elements that the respondents focused on were the tonik logo on the right-hand side of the image and the fnb atm in the upper right-hand corner. thirteen of the 18 respondents (72. 2%) looked at the placement within the first five seconds that it featured and the remaining five (27.8%) only saw it after the first five seconds, or they did not see it at all. twelve (66.7%) of the respondents could recall the fnb atm. the main reason provided for their ability to recall the brand was familiarity with the brand. a second reason was that the positions of the people were in a specific pattern that led the respondents to look at the fnb atm. two (11.1%) respondents looked at the placement during the time that they watched the video, but failed to mention it during the interview, and four (22.2%) respondents did not see the placement and could not recall it either. the respondents who did not see the placement during the scene only saw it after they were told that it was there. product placement strategy 5: snowflake the snowflake brand is displayed prominently in the foreground of the scene. the faces of the two actors that featured in this scene were marked as aoi. the third aoi was the placement itself (see figure 5). the respondents focused mainly on the face of 1514 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... the actress (face 1) talking to the actor. the total amount of time that the respondents focused on face 2 (the actor) was 29.8%. the placement was focused on for 10.3% of the total time they looked at the image. the bee swarm data (figure 14) indicated that the movements that took place in the scene drew attention, namely when the actor took the newspaper off the table and the gestures of both of the actors while they were speaking. due to the movement on the table, the focus shifted from the newspaper to the placement in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. figure 14: bee swarm for snowflake placement the respondents focused on the actress after the actor took the newspaper. the focus then shifted towards the actress and what she was doing. it was clear that she was baking something and it was easy to see that she used snowflake flour. the heat map data reflected that the respondents immediately saw the snowflake placement when they were asked if they recognised the brand in the scene. this might be because it was rather prominent in the lower left-hand corner of the image, and is a well-known national brand in south africa. most of the focus was on the actors and the movements they made in the scene. during the recall test, four (22.2%) of the respondents remembered the newspaper and three (16.7%) the pick ’n pay no-name brand eggs that featured in the scene. fourteen (77.8%) respondents saw the snowflake placement within the first five seconds, when they had to recognise it. the remaining four (22.2%) only saw the snowflake placement after the first five seconds. none of the respondents stated that they did not see the product. during the interviews, the respondents provided the following reasons why they had seen the placement: the placement was prominent, the colour enhanced the visibility of the placement, they were familiar with the brand; and they saw it because they focused on the actress and realised that she was busy with 1716 van der westhuizen & mulder the product. hiam and rastelli (2007) state that the use of a product in a placement strategy contributes to the effective observation thereof. product placement strategy 6: sanbs this product placement strategy entailed the use of a brand that was part of a campaign implemented during the time the programme was broadcast. three areas of interest were visible in this image, namely the two actresses (face 1 and face 2), and the sanbs poster. the respondents focused mainly on face 2, and even though she was not facing the camera, she spoke most of the time during the scene. the sanbs poster in the upper left-hand corner of the image received only 7.0% of the attention during the time it was visible. when the still image was shown to the respondents, they focused mostly on the poster (sanbs) in the background (in the upper left-hand corner of the image). some of the respondents indicated that they looked at the poster because they knew the organisation. the other respondents said they looked at it to figure out what the poster was representing. in figure 15, two respondents’ gaze plots are used to show the common tendency of eye movement among the respondents. they looked at the actresses and the items on the desk, and then their focus shifted towards the poster to identify what it was. nine (50.0%) respondents saw the placement within the first five seconds it featured. seven (38.9%) of the respondents saw the placement after the first five seconds, and two (11.1%) did not see the placement at all. the reasons provided why they saw the poster was because they were familiar with the specific campaign and that the word “blood” that appeared in big bold letters on the poster immediately caught their attention. these respondents could directly link the slogan with the appropriate logo and organisation that it represented, which indicated that they had been exposed to other marketing communication messages within the same campaign. the respondents also commented that it was a suitable place for that type of advertisements because the scene was set in a hospital. alwitt and prabhakar (1992) reported that the relevance between the programme and the type of product that is being placed has a significant impact on the effectiveness of the placement strategy. from the results reported it appeared as if the relevance of the context or the setting within which the product was placed also played a noteworthy role. 1716 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... figure 15: gaze plot for sanbs placement the respondents who did not see the placement said it was because it was not very colourful and not prominent enough to have an effect on the viewers. these views and the repeated mentioning of the importance of the prominence of the product placement seemed to contrast with the findings of matthes et al. (2007), who are of the opinion that the more unique, yet subtle and non-intrusive the placement is, the more effective the results of recall and recognition will be. product placement strategy 7: skype and acer this placement strategy entailed interaction between an actor and the product placed in the scene (figure 7). three areas of interest were marked in this image, namely face 1 (the actress facing the camera), the skype placement that was visible in the upper right-hand corner of the image, and the acer placement that was visible in the lower right-hand corner of the image. the respondents only focused 7.7% of the time on face 1. they focused 27.4% of the time on the skype logo, and 22.0% on the logo of the acer laptop that was used to communicate via skype. the remainder of the time they looked at other elements. when the respondents were asked whether they could recall the placement that featured in the scene, they immediately identified the skype placement, but not the acer placement. the respondents focused mainly on the skype name on the task bar in the upper left-hand corner of the image. the rest of their focus was on the actress who featured in the scene and on the skype icons in the lower half of the image. there was a tendency among the respondents to look at the actress, the skype logo, and other elements in the scene, in various sequences. when the respondents were asked to recognise products in the scene, only five (27.8%) respondents could identify both of the placements that featured in this scene. 1918 van der westhuizen & mulder nine (50.0%) of the respondents looked at the skype placement within the first five seconds of viewing the scene, while three (16.7%) respondents looked at the acer placement within the first five seconds of the scene. two respondents could identify skype by its unique sound before they even saw the logo of the skype placement. six respondents (33.3%) did not see the acer placement at all. it was stated once again that it was not prominent and that they thought that the name of the laptop would rather appear at the top of the screen and not at the bottom in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. the respondents who saw the placements said it was because they were familiar with the brands and used them. the fact that marketers should use a combination of sensory data (hollensen 2007) in their strategies was underlined in this placement as respondents did not only react to the visual cues but the audio cues strengthened the recall effectiveness. product placement strategy 8: minute maid the minute maid placement was selected as a product being used by an actor. there were four areas of interest identified in this image, namely the actress, the minute maid product, and the two king pie logos behind the actress (figure 8). the respondents focused 11.7% of the time on the actress while she was talking and only 3.4% of the time on the placement. the remainder of the time, they looked at the two king pie logos behind the actress for 21.1% and 15.5% of the time, respectively. most of the focus was on the king pie 2 logo because the entire logo featured in the image and not only half of it (as in the case of the king pie 3 logo just above her head). this finding challenges the suggestion by brennan (2008: 504) that a “broken strategy” is more effective. although the respondents focused on several objects in the scene, the focus moved to the actress when she reached for the product, looked at it, held it with the logo facing towards the camera, and reached out to pick up the straw. according to the bee swarm data, the respondents focused mainly on the can of juice in the scene, the actress’ face, and the complete king pie logo that featured to her left. not much attention was paid to the king pie logo that was only partially displayed. when the respondents were exposed to the still image to test the recognition of the placement, they focused mainly on the placement (minute maid) that the actor in the scene put on the counter for the actress. the respondents also focused on the actress in the scene because she was talking at the time. to the left of the actress’s head was a king pie logo, which also received a great deal of attention. fifteen (83.3%) of the respondents saw the placement within the first five seconds that the brand featured and the remaining three respondents only saw the placement after the first five seconds. two (11.1%) respondents looked at the placement and stated during the interview that they saw the can of juice that the actor handed to the actress, but they were not able to identify the brand. one respondent did not see the placement at all and only focused on the actress and what she was saying. the reasons provided for noticing the placement were its prominence and the fact that the logo was facing the camera. the respondents were familiar with the product and some of them mentioned that the unique design of the can with the black block at the top, in which the name 1918 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... “minute maid” appears, enhanced the visibility of the placement making it easier to recall the specific product. roozen (2008) and yoon et al. (2011) found in their respective studies that it is important that the actor who uses or mentions the product should fit the image that the marketer wishes to communicate about the brand. however, this was not mentioned by any of the respondents, or tested in this study. this placement seemed to be the most effective of all the strategies tested in this study, as all respondents saw the placement within seven seconds. the prominent manner in which the product was used, with the label turned to the camera, appeared to enhance the recall and recognition of the brand. product placement strategy 9: king pie the final product placement strategy that was included in the study entailed a product that was verbally mentioned in the scene, but not visually presented. in this scene there were two actors (a man and a woman) standing in the corridor of a guesthouse. they had a conversation, but the actor could not understand a word that the actress was saying because she was speaking russian. the actress tried to explain something to the actor, but he said that he could not understand what she was trying to say, and they should rather go to king pie. the respondents focused on several objects in the scene, including the two actors and a picture that was hanging on the wall. in the gaze plots, it was clear that the respondents looked at various items while following the conversation between the actors. in this scene, 14 (77.8%) of the respondents were able to recall the product that was mentioned. four (22.2%) of the respondents said they could not recall the verbal mention of king pie because they lost interest in the conversation, as they did not understand what the actress was trying to say. those respondents (77.8%) that could recall the product said that they caught the last sentence of the conversation because it was in a language (afrikaans) that they understood. from these results, it can be concluded that the context of the placement plays an important role in the viewers’ ability to recall it. in this particular scene, the respondents could not follow the conversation because of the language barrier. however, when the familiar brand name king pie was mentioned, it was something that they had heard before and this might have contributed to the fact that approximately 80% of the respondents were aware of this placement. conclusion and recommendations marketing academics and practitioners agree that it is difficult to break through marketing communication clutter. there is also consensus that an integrated approach to marketing communication enhances its effect. the results of this study suggest that product placement could be used to great effect in an integrated marketing communication mix. however, a number of aspects influence the effectiveness of placements. from a practitioner’s perspective, it is important to take note of some guidelines that could enhance recall and recognition of placed products: 2120 van der westhuizen & mulder ♦ the placement should be used as part of the marketing communication mix and not as a stand-alone technique. brand familiarity should be created before the product placement strategy is used. ♦ prominence and colour are elements that influence recall and the recognition of the products – the brighter the colour of the placement and the more prominent, the better the chance that the brand will be noticed. ♦ recall and recognition are enhanced when the actors manipulate the viewers’ eye movement towards the placement through certain actions. when the actors perform an action that guides the viewers’ eyes towards the placement, they are likely to notice and remember the brand. ♦ the context of the scenes in which the placement occurs has an influence on recall and recognition. it is important that the colour of the placement should be in contrast to the rest of the objects in the scene to enhance ease of identification. ♦ recall appears to be higher when the brand is placed in an environment that the viewers are familiar with, and if they have had a previous, separate encounter or experience with the brand. ♦ preferably, there should not be more than one placement in a scene as these placements compete for the viewers’ attention. when there are too many other objects in the scene, it also draws the attention away from the placement. ♦ when there is relevance between the context or setting and the product (for example, the blood donation poster in the hospital), it plays a noteworthy role in enhancing recall and recognition. ♦ gaze motion can be used to enhance the effectiveness of product placement. the triangular gaze motion seems to benefit the placement – in other words, the placement should form one of the triangle’s corners together with two other prominent objects in the scene (for example, two actors). ♦ when actors use the products, recall seems to be high, which underlines the effectiveness of interaction between an actor and the product placed in the scene. ♦ a non-visual (auditory) placement should be used towards the end of a scene, or in a scene where it is prominent. ♦ the placement should be visible for more than five seconds as most of the recognition only takes place after the first five seconds that the product is visible. ♦ the combination of more than one stimulus – for example, visual and auditory cues – should be considered in the placement as it also improves recall and recognition. from an academic perspective, the research offers insight into the use of product placement in mass media programmes. although the findings confirm several suggestions with regard to product placement that resulted from previous research, it adds a number of aspects that have not been identified previously. as only one mass 2120 guidelines to enhance recall and recognition ... medium was included in this study, it would be useful to investigate the influence of different media used for product placement. for example, the use of television, cinema, 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'n doktorsgraad in politieke wetenskap is in 1989 deur die universiteit van die oranje-vrystaat aan hom toegeken. meo iudicio lusern, mielies en koringaanplantings verbou word. orania was egter 15 jaar gelede ’n geplunderde, bouvallige en vergete dorpie. orania se unikum ontlok ’n hele spektrum van reaksie by waarnemers en besoekers. waargeneemde persepsies wat ontstaan, wissel aan die een kant vanaf dié van kuriositeit en vreemdheid en beweeg verby gewaarwordinge van rariteit en eienaardigheid tot by ’n ander (moontlik meer realistiese) pool van gevolgtrekking, nl. dat dié ontwikkeling in der waarheid op merkwaardige sosiale konstruksie berus. die spesifieke sosiale weefsel teenwoordig, en die geformaliseerde konstruksie daarvan in orania, groei uit ’n groot mate van eenstemmigheid onder die lede van die gemeenskap betreffende hul kollektiewe strategiese benadering tot: • die langtermyn-ekonomiese oorlewing van orania; asook • die behoud en uitbou van die afrikaner-kultuur as essensiële doelwit; • hul gemeenskaplike politiek-staatkundige oriëntasie; • ‘n praktiese sosiale en arbeidsetos wat inpas met hul kollektiewe waardestelsel is, en • gemeenskapsbemagtiging wat elke keer as uitdruklike motivering nagejaag word. hierdie verskillende samestellende samelewingsdimensies vorm in die geheel die breë sosiologiese gang van – selfs dag-tot-dag – sake in orania en wel op ’n heel spontane wyse. dit bring ook mee dat die verskillende elemente daarvan se samehang enersyds ’n interafhanklike, maar andersyds ook ’n wedersydsbepalende dinamiek vorm. die politiek-ekonomiese broosheid van die totale orania-gemeenskapsvestiging en ontwikkelingsproses word in die eerste plek deur oraniërs erken en begryp. om hierdie rede word selfopgelegde politiek-ekonomiese riglyne deur die gemeenskap op hulself toegepas. nieteenstaande ’n moontlike ekonomies-remmende resultaat wat uit hierdie riglyne kan volg, toon die orania-ontwikkeling steeds merkwaardige ekonomiese groei. (die gevandaliseerde spookdorpie en ’n aangrensende stukkie braakgrond is bv. 15 jaar gelede vir r1,85 miljoen aangekoop en die konserwatief gewaardeerde waarde van die orania-ontwikkeling word tans ongeveer op r100 miljoen gestel.) orania word volgens die gemeenskap se interpretasie van relevante voorsienings wat daarvoor gemaak word in die suid-afrikaanse grondwet (artikels 30, 185 (i) en 235 van wet 108 van 1996) as die eerste ekonomies-kulturele manifestasie van ’n voorgestelde afrikaner-selfbeskikkingsgroeipunt opgestel en bedryf. die wenslikheid van verskillende vorme van aktiwiteite wat kollektiewe besluitneming v e rg, word daarom beoordeel binne ’n raamwerk bestaande uit die volgende oorwegings wat as kritiek beskou word: (i) staatkundig-ekonomiese selfstandigheid; (ii) selfwerksaamheid; (iii) volhoubaarheid; (iv) gemeenskapsekonomie met ’n sterk sosio-maatskaplike bewustheid; en (v) die vermyding van polities-ekonomiese isolasie. 186 die gemeenskap van orania is bewus daarvan dat die langtermyninstandhouding van die gemelde raamwerk egter onmoontlik is indien dit nie met sensitiwiteit en begrip vir die eise van die makro-omgewing geskied nie. kortom: langtermynbestendigheid (ook met die oog op eksterne kragte en weerstande) word met elke besluit gekies bo meer opportunistiese korttermynwinsnajaging. daar sal geredeneer kan word dat nóg meer bereik sou kon word as dit nie was vir bv. die beperking van finansiering slegs uit eie bronne, en die benutting – sover as moontlik – van slegs eie arbeid nie. internasionale ervaring wys egter dat gemeenskapsbemagtiging wat op hierdie moeiliker wyse bewerkstellig word (nl. uitsluitlike benutting van die gemeenskap se kollektiewe bronne sover haalbaar) tot meer permanente selfopheffing en gesonde gemeenskapsontwikkeling lei. hierdie beginsel stel so byvoorbeeld weer deurlopende groter, intern-gerigte kommunikasieeise. die onlangs waarneembare opswaai in die gewildheid van orania as vestigingsopsie illustreer terselfdertyd die positiewe sowel as die negatiewe wat deur die oraniabenadering geïmpliseer word. tesame met die groeiende belangstelling verskyn daar ook negatiewe kommunikasie-eise op die radarskerm. die rasionaal agter hierdie stelling is dat terwyl toename in belangstelling as korttermynwins verreken kan word, moet die belangstelling verkieslik primêr op trekfaktore berus (dus: vereenselwiging met die selfstandigheid-selfwerksaamheidsvolhoubaarheidsideale) en nie op drukfaktore nie (bv. kriminaliteiten misdaadontvlugtingspogings; en heimlike strewes by nuwelinge om hulself en hulle belange op orania te kom isoleer). drukfaktore impliseer so korttermynwins en moontlike langtermyn-afvalligheid en onvoorspelbaarheid. dit beteken ’n moontlike inherente gebrek aan volgehoue toegewydheid. trekfaktore impliseer weer moeisamer (tydsamer), kleiner, korttermyngroei – maar bestendiger langtermynvoordele en -stabiliteit vir orania. toewyding is tesame met plaaslik geïnspireerde kreatiwiteit die spreekwoordelike xfaktor vir die langtermynsukses van orania. kommunikasiemodel: orania die voorafgaande strategies/taktiese raamwerk – wat op filosofiese oortuiging berus – en wat ook die operasioneel-funksionele “moets en moenies” rig – plaas orania se kommunikasiebenadering in konteks. nie–verbale kommunikasie word aangewend om konstante, simboliese ondersteuning te verleen aan die ideaal dat orania ’n suksesvolle groeipunt van ’n voorgestelde volkstaat moet wees. ’n dorpsvlag en dorpsembleem wat geskep is, die dra van oranje klere, t-hemde en pette wat die embleme vertoon, ens. is ter sake. ook die plaaslike ora-ruilmiddel vertoon eie afrikanersimboliek op die note. intern-gerigte kommunikasie die kritieke sleuteldoelwitte met die intern-gerigte kommunikasie sentreer rondom gemeenskapsopvoeding, konsolidasie, motivering, vertolking, ingeligtheid en gemeenskapsdeelname op alle vlakke van die samelewing sover haalbaar. 187 die sleuteldoelwitte beklemtoon ook die noodsaaklikheid vir volgehoue breë konsensus binne die gemeenskap as dié voorwaarde tot langtermynbemagtiging en opheffing. konsensus is egter nooit ’n statiese toestand nie. dit vereis deurlopende wisselwerking tussen alle vlakke van die gemeenskap en wel ook aangesien ’n gemeenskap – soos orania – sy vordering binne ’n deurlopend veranderende omgewing moet bewerkstellig. die sleuteldoelwitte (vir interne kommunikasie) word met die volgende kommunikasiekanale aangespreek: (i) “dorpnuus” ’n gemeenskapskoerant wat twee tot drie keer per maand verskyn en veral gerig is daarop om inwoners in te lig oor gebeure in die dorp. hoewel die “dorpnuus” deur die dorpsraad geborg en uitgegee word, kan enige inwoner artikels of briewe voorlê vir publikasie. (ii) dorpsraadkennisgewings bied hoofsaaklik inligting oor dienslewering, maar dek ook onderwerpe soos omgewingsbewaring, dorpsverfraaiing, troeteldierbeheer of selfs verlore goedere, ens. (iii) inligtingsessies vir nuwe intrekkers een keer per kwartaal woon nuwe intrekkers op twee agtereenvolgende saterdae inligtingsessies by waar hulle op hoogte gebring word van die dorp se geskiedenis, arbeidsetos, infrastruktuur, gemeenskapsaktiwiteite en algemene doelwitte. die sessies is interaktief en ruim tyd vir vrae en gesprekvoering word gegee. (iv) gemeenskapsvergaderings belangrike gemeenskapaksies van algemene belang word gewoonlik voorafgegaan deur gemeenskapsvergaderings waarna alle inwoners uitgenooi word en waar elkeen die geleentheid kry om insette te lewer. (v) gemeenskapsradio “radio 100” het as gemeenskapaksie inwoners op hoogte gehou van verwikkelinge op die dorp en sosiale interaksie bevorder. die radiostasie is beman deur vrywilligers uit die gemeenskap wat as omroepers opgetree het. die radiostasie is in november 2005 deur die onafhanklike kommunikasie-owerheid van suid-afrika (okosa) gesluit, maar die gemeenskap is uitgenooi om weer aansoek te doen vir ’n uitsaailisensie. (vi) tans word die implementering van ’n reeds beplande breëbandinternetfasiliteit, orania internet diensverskaffer (oidv), getoets by die gemeenskap. oidv se missie is om ’n gemeenskapsorganisasie te word wat elektroniese kommunikasie tussen lede van die gemeenskap onderling (intranet), en die gemeenskap en die buitewêreld (internet) op ’n bekostigbare wyse moontlik maak. die kommunikasiemedium is ’n koordlose breëbandstelsel wat dit moontlik maak om persone met mekaar in verbinding te bring sonder die gebruik van landlyne. die verbinding na die buitewêreld sal d.m.v. ’n diginetlyn van telkom bewerkstellig word 188 wat 24 uur per dag kontak met die internet sal verseker. die kostestruktuur is gebaseer op die hoeveelheid data wat die gebruiker oor die netwerk wil s t u u r. deur die beskikbaarmaking van ’n bekostigbare kommunikasiemedium poog dié beplande gemeenskapsorganisasie om eerstens onderlinge ekonomiese aktiwiteite in die gemeenskap te bevorder en tweedens om dit moontlik te maak vir die gemeenskap om sy produkte en dienste aan die buitewêreld te bemark en te verkoop. gedagtig aan die snelgroeiende impak van ’n ekonomies-globaliserende wêreldbevolking, waar gemeenskappe wat opheffing benodig nog verder agtergelaat word, besef orania die belangrikheid daarvan dat die oidv deurgevoer móét word. orania is moontlik meer gereed as die meeste ander gemeenskappe van dieselfde demografiese omvang om lokalisering suksesvol met globalisering te koppel. (vii) inligtingsforum dié forum vergader weekliks om gebeure van die afgelope week te evalueer en op hoogte te kom van gebeure die komende week. hoewel hierdie vergaderings hoofsaaklik gerig is op persone wat betrokke is by inligtingsdienste (toerisme, publikasies, ens.) is dit ’n oop vergadering wat deur enige belangstellende bygewoon kan word. kommunikasie na buite hierdie kommunikasie-aktiwiteite fokus onder meer op die bekendstelling van orania; volgehoue verduideliking en perspektiefstelling (en persepsie-skepping) om bestaande wanpersepsies teë te werk; en om isolasie in alle vorme af te weer (polities, ekonomies, nuutste inligting, nuwe insigte en denkpatrone, tegnologiese ontwikkeling, ens). die volgende kommunikasiekanale is geskep: (i) orania webwerf die webwerf verskaf inligting oor orania t.o.v. ideologiese onderbou, ontwikkeling, ekonomiese bedrywighede, instellings en projekte. die webwerf ontvang gemiddeld 3000 besoeke per maand. (ii) “voorgrond” orania-inligtingstydskrif wat vier keer per jaar verskyn en veral ondersteuners van buite op hoogte hou van gebeure in orania. (iii) internetgespreksgroep “oraniagesprek” is ’n internetgespreksgroep met ongeveer 100 ingetekende lede. hierdie gesprek vind deurlopend op die internet plaas. ondersteuners van letterlik dwarsoor die wêreld kan inteken by oraniagesprek-subscribe@yahoogroups.com en deelneem aan gesprekke oor aktuele sake wat orania raak. (iv) elektroniese nuusbrief een keer per maand word ’n elektroniese nuusbrief aan meer as 1 000 belangstellendes en ondersteuners uitgestuur. 189 (v) mediaverklarings die orania-beweging reik deurlopende mediaverklarings uit oor belangwekkende gebeure op die dorp. hierdie mediaverklarings word ook op die webwerf geplaas. (vi) besigtigingstoere drie toergidse vergesel besoekers op aanvraag op ’n toer deur orania. (vii) belsentrum die orania-beweging doen landswye werwingswerk deur middel van ’n belsentrum. belangstellendes word telefonies uitgenooi om by die beweging aan te sluit. (viii) bemarkings dvd ’n dvd waarin ’n oorsig gegee word van die beginsels waarop orania berus (bv. nie regs, rassisties of isolisties nie) en ’n algemene beeld wat die lewenswyse en ontwikkeling op orania uitbeeld, word in die bemarking gebruik. wa a r d e b e paling en vo o rtgesette opknapping van die orania-gemeenskapstrukture die beplanning en aanvanklike grondwerk is reeds afgehandel om alle gemeenskapstrukture weer te ondersoek (voorraadopname), en opgedateerde doelwitte na binne en na buite waar dit benodig word op te skerp. die moontlike nuwe kombinasies van strukture vir groter effektiwiteit sal ook geformuleer word. die kommunikasie-aktiwiteite sal in totaal ook hier weer onder die loep geneem word. metodes om die gemeenskap by hierdie opskerpingsaksie te betrek is in plek aangesien só 'n opknappingsoefening met deelname van die gemeenskap moet geskied, want daarsonder is dit 'n futiele oefening. nieteenstaande aanvanklike, ernstige eksterne weerstande is die orania-ontwikkeling ongetwyfeld besig om te slaag. dié gemeenskap het bv. uit eie bronne alleen 'n kommunikasiekragveld in en om hulle geskep waarvan die positiewe resultate heeltemal buite verhouding met hulle demografiese omvang is. die persepsuele redusering van die ontwikkeling deur sommige kritici as synde “bloot die tydelike, laaste stuiptrekkings van 'n egoïstiese en uitsluitende afrikanerbenadering te wees” is deur goeie, stelselmatige kommunikasie-aksies die stryd aangesê. die resultate hiervan is meer as bemoedigend. eerlike, goedbeplande en deurlopende interne kommunikasie-aksies in lyn met die besef dat breë konsensus in die gemeenskap nooit 'n (voltooide) afgehandelde proses in ’n dinamiese werklikheid kan wees nie lei onder meer daartoe dat daar in orania nie met die verlammende probleem van “dieselfde kerngroepie mense wat altyd ál die werk doen” gelaat word nie. daar is interne inklusiwiteit, breë betrokkenheid en kollektiewe motivering. normalisering van orania se beeld na buite het in 'n groot mate omstredenheid vervang ofskoon die gemeenskap gedwing was/word om telkens die moeilike, beginselgerigte roete te volg. weerstande sal egter altyd teenwoordig wees en dit word as ’n realiteit beskou waarmee gehandel moet word. 190 die suksesvolle koppeling van deurdagte fundamentele beginsels met die alledaagse praktyk (d.m.v. volgehoue kommunikasie) lei tot 'n ongeforseerde funksionering van die gemeenskap waarin kreatiewe oplossings gedy. internasionaal bekende en gerekende ontwikkelingkundiges huldig die mening (m-net“carte blanche” oktober 2002, dr. norman reynolds, dr. johan van zyl) dat die state sowel as die nie-regeringsorganisasies van suider-afrika net eenvoudig nóóit die reuse opheffingstaak wat vir die sub-kontinent vereis word, alleen sal kan oorbrug nie. ekonomiese opheffing kan nét slaag, bevind hulle, waar gemeenskappe basies vólle verantwoordelikheid neem vir die grootste deel van hulle ekonomiese opheffing en ontwikkelingsbehoeftes. dié kundiges beskryf die oraniaekonomiese model as een van die mees waardevolle gemeenskapsgebaseerde bates in die land waarby ander gemeenskappe vir wie hulle eie opheffing primêr is kers kan en moet opsteek. orania het die punt bereik waar daar in 'n volgende fase van die ontwikkelingsproses inbeweeg kan en moet word. belegging is egter kritiek, maar ironies genoeg mag belegging ook nooit vir orania in 'n kollektiewe gemaksone inlei nie. die gemeenskap is ook gereed vir interaktiewe aksies om andere by te staan. 191 1pb community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication in service delivery protest areas: the desirability of a strategic communication approach abstract service delivery protests have increased alarmingly yearon-year. protests appear to be community members’ only recourse in expressing their frustration concerning the perceived lack of delivery of municipal services. indications are that a lack of engagement by ward councillors is adding greatly to these frustrations. at the same time, very little is known about how ward councillors communicate. the purpose of the study was to explore ward councillors’ current communication approach as perceived by community members in sebokeng, known for the prevalence of former violent service delivery protests, and to evaluate the desirability of a strategic communication approach. semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with six focus groups of different ages. the findings indicate that ward councillors are perceived as not visible to community members and that interactions with ward councillors are experienced as monologues and top-down. consequently, community members feel unheard, forgotten, and ultimately disengaged. at the same time, community members express the need to self-organise and collaborate with ward councillors in solving community issues, as long as it is coupled with tangible delivery. the research provides insights into volatile community sentiments suggesting a pattern with previous findings, as well as suggestions for a strategic communication approach that may increase the legitimacy of ward councillors in communities. keywords: ward councillors; service delivery protests; community members; stakeholder theory; stakeholder engage­ ment; strategic communication; accountability; collabo ration; self­organisation; bottom­up communication introduction there have been a number of reports on the incidence of service delivery protests in south africa. saba and van der merwe (2013) reported that over 3000 service lebohang molefe postgraduate student, school of communication, university of johannesburg, south africa email: lebo.molefe@ absa.co.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-41980020 prof. nina overton de klerk school of communication, university of johannesburg, south africa email: ndeklerk@uj.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-74668837 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-18 date submitted: 20 may 2019 date accepted: 26 august 2019 date published: 07 november 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:lebo.molefe@absa.co.za mailto:lebo.molefe@absa.co.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4198-0020 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4198-0020 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4198-0020 mailto:ndeklerk@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 molefe & overton -de klerk delivery protests occurred between 2008 and 2013. however, in the same period, municipal iq, which only tracks service delivery protests against municipalities, reported 655 (heese 2018). conclusive statistics are not available as there is no single organisation that solely measures the occurrence of these; however, media reports as well as municipal iq’s data show an increase in the prevalence of service delivery protests. according to heese (2018), an economist at municipal iq (a specialised local government data and intelligence organisation that collects data on service delivery protests staged against municipalities), there was a significant increase in violent service delivery protests in 2018 and there were also more service delivery protests in 2018 than in any other year since 2005. protests in the first quarter of 2019 surged to a new record (municipal iq 2019). figure 1: major service delivery protests by year (2004-2019*) source: municipal iq 2019 *january-march 2019 apartheid and its legacy issues surrounding service delivery protests need to be contextualised within wider debates occurring globally and on the continent with respect to governance, social change, activism and development. authors differ as to whether activism involving protest, conflict and violence should be distinguished from community organising, which is the result of a coherent, long-term strategy to effect social change (the power versus protest debate) (alinsky 1987; bobo et al. 2001; chambers 2003). nonetheless, it appears that protest is but one aspect of a larger social struggle, which in south africa should be seen against the backdrop of apartheid and its legacy, as well as ensuing transitional politics and democratisation. the british colonial era in the late 19th century and the 20th century resettled racial groups under the pretence of responding to disease epidemics in neighbourhoods that were overcrowded (findley & ogbu 2011). the land segregation was formalised and enforced by the natives’ land act of 1913, which reserved 90% of south african land for a small minority white population, and the 10% left over for the non-white 32 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... population (bond 2000: 405; findley & ogbu 2011; nodjimbadem 2015). allan and heese (2013) confirm that most of the service delivery protests have occurred (and continue to occur) in informal settlements in the largest metropolitan municipalities. moreover, it needs to be acknowledged that “these cities experience the highest population growth rates of all our localities; and in fact there is a strong statistical link between high levels of migration and service delivery protests” (ibid.). these migrants experience lack of access to economic opportunities, housing and services. “the rapid growth of informal settlements as well as metros’ unwillingness to accept them as a permanent reality in their midst has meant a slow response to the service delivery needs of communities in these areas” (allan & heese 2013). this results in community members being frustrated by a lack of visible progression, while they witness other communities progressing. lately, the issue of land expropriation without compensation has added fuel to the fire. reasons for protests as reported by coetzer and terblanche (2013), protests occurred at least every second day and involved more than two million south africans annually since 2008. some documented reasons for protests include costly electricity, lack of water and electricity, lack of economic and housing development, infrastructure and health care, the exorbitant cost of medicine, allegations of corruption, poor living conditions, and more recently the issue of land reform (mail & guardian 2014a; mail & guardian 2014b; mail & guardian 2015; mail & guardian 2017; news24 2018a, news24 2018b). allan and heese (2013) define service delivery protests as “galvanised by inadequate local services or tardy service delivery, the responsibility for which lies with a municipality”. a study by paradza et al. (2010) found that the inability to communicate effectively with all residents in the randfontein municipality indirectly affected service delivery. according to the municipal iq hotspot databases, the most recently reported issues leading to protests point to “a clear dissatisfaction with the management of a municipality”, which includes councillor accountability (municipal iq 2019). on the other hand, a study conducted by overton­de klerk and oelofse (2010) highlighted the need to combat the lack of hope and escalating violence in poor communities by establishing ongoing structures of community engagement and dialogue, involving formal as well as informal leadership, thereby facilitating a sense of connectedness and bottom­up participation in challenges facing the community. against this background, the purpose of this study was to explore community members’ perceptions of ward councillors’ current communication approach in service delivery protest areas, and to explore the desirability of an alternative leadership communication approach based on strategic communication principles. 54 molefe & overton -de klerk research objectives the objectives of the research were as follows: ♦ to explore ward councillors’ current communication approach as perceived by community members in selected service delivery­stricken protest areas. ♦ to explore the desirability of a strategic communication approach in a community where service delivery protests are prevalent. ward councillors and their role according to the south african local government association (salga), a ward councillor is “directly elected to represent and serve the people in a specific ward, and is the chairperson of the ward committee” (salga 2006: 53). furthermore, ward councillors are instructed by salga (2006) to be the following: ♦ accessible to the public in order to encourage their input in government matters; ♦ communicate all activities to community members in order to increase transparency and to promote public participation; and ♦ hold regular public meetings in order to interact directly with interest groups in order to promote democracy by listening to the views of the community. drawing on the instructions of salga (2006) and the work of paradza et al. (2010), the role of ward councillors who “serve as representatives of the people” (salga 2006: 48) can be summarised as follows: ♦ to be close to the community, both in terms of proximity as well as to their communities’ activities and concerns; ♦ to keep their communities informed with respect to council decisions, programmes and budgets that affect them; ♦ to give feedback on their communities’ questions and concerns to various councils and committees; ♦ to promote public involvement and invite communities to confide in them on all matters to assist them; ♦ to be open and transparent in their activities and decision­making to ensure democracy as well as legitimacy; and ♦ to adhere to a code of conduct, amongst others not to acquire any direct benefit from work done for the municipality, not engage in any other paid work without council consent, and not used privileged information for their own gain. the ward councillor’s role can be compared to that of a “boundary spanner”, a construct referred to by overton­de klerk and verwey (2013: 16). boundary spanners are responsible for making connections with external sources and for bringing new information into the organisation. in the same vein, ward councillors as boundary spanners have the ability to sense, hear and experience community members’ day­ 54 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... to­day challenges because they are based within the community. the ward councillor should be able to mirror the expectations of his/her environment and thus make efforts to address them. as described by salga (2006:120), “the ward councillor needs to be in touch with the issues in the area, understand the key problems and monitor development and service delivery”. a number of studies have highlighted the role of the ward councillor and the lack of communication in service delivery challenges facing local government. one of the key municipal weaknesses that paradza et al. (2010) identified with respect to service delivery issues within the randfontein municipality was the incompetence of councillors and other officials to communicate effectively with all residents in the municipality. according to allan and heese (2013), protests occurring in metropolitan municipalities illuminate the issue of a lack of access to information due to a lack of communication from ward councillors, resulting in frustration, and the spreading of rumours of favouritism, corruption and mismanagement. all the aforementioned studies emphasised that communication can improve matters – “good communication can play a mitigating role in service delivery challenges relating to a shortage of resources in the municipality. informed residents who are aware of municipal weaknesses and challenges and what officials are doing to address these challenges, are less likely to be frustrated with poor service delivery” (paradza et al. 2010: 37). allan and heese (2013) share these sentiments by stating the following: [l]ocal councils, through ward councillors and local officials, need to develop a specific communication strategy to include communities in informal settlements in the processes of local councils. this will not only serve to include people in planning processes and alleviate the current frustration that most of these communities have expressed of being excluded, but will also deal with the current lack of communication in these areas and the spread of often false or exaggerated rumours of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement. strategic communication strategic communication can be described as purposeful communication in an organisation or institution to achieve its mission (hallahan et al. 2007). it not only includes institutionalised forms of public communication, but all of the organisation’s communication. this means that communication has moved beyond a role or function and “through its enactment is reflexively shaping the organisation itself” (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013: 370). strategic communication thus represents an important paradigm shift from a functional perspective that focuses on the top­down production of communication messages to a co­creational perspective, which sees stakeholders as co­creators of meaning and communication (hallahan et al. 2007; zerfass & huck 2007; overton-de klerk & verwey 2013). according to verwey (2015: 8), “all stakeholders become active participants in shaping strategy through emergence”. hallahan et al. (2007: 7) furthermore emphasise that strategic communication focuses upon “how the organisation presents and promotes itself through the intentional 76 molefe & overton -de klerk activities of its leaders, employees, and communication practitioners”. this study views ward councillors as the local government’s voice; therefore, they have a crucial role to play in purposefully communicating with community members as stakeholders, in line with the mission of local government. according to chapter 7 section 151-164 of the south african constitution (1996), one of the objectives of local government is “to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government”, which places the ward councillors’ communication approach as a top priority to achieve the local government’s objective. paradigm shifts in strategic communication building on the work of hallahan et al. (2007), ströh (2007), zerfass and huck (2007) and others, overton­de klerk and verwey (2013) characterise the emerging paradigm shifts in strategic communication as follows: from top-down to bottom-up communication has shifted from a one­way information transfer aimed at ensuring compliance to a participative, inclusive process involving stakeholders at all levels to enable buy­in and change from the bottom up. from monologue to dialogue communication has moved from one voice to a diverse engagement of many voices where a multiplicity of viewpoints and freedom of speech are encouraged, which could lead to creative solutions to challenges. from control to self-organisation communication that moves from controlling the flow of information to communication that creates an environment conducive to self­organisation, where stakeholders spontaneously participate in dialogue from the bottom up towards creative solutions. from consensus to dissent in a climate of complexity, where heterogeneity has become unavoidable, the role of the communication manager has moved beyond the seeking of consensus to one that ensures multiple voices are heard and even encourages dissent, which may give rise to new forms of understanding. from communication management to communication influence the view that strategic communication represents a paradigm shift from a functional perspective that focuses on the top­down production of communication messages to a co­creational perspective, which sees stakeholders as co­creators of meaning and communication; hence, regarding communication professionals’ roles as facilitators of communication discourse and social influence. 76 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... from corporate social responsibility to accountability communication that moves from using stakeholders as a means to an end to seeing stakeholders as “ends” in themselves. communication that enhances accountability by the organisation to its stakeholders and to society through transparency. from integration to collaboration the acknowledgement that communication messaging can no longer be strategically controlled or coordinated top down and that increasing complexity requires collaboration with, and ultimately co­creation by stakeholders beyond the control of the organisation. these shifts highlight the active inclusion of stakeholders in decision­making and in key interactions that, it can be argued, appear not to be prevalent in communities where service delivery protests occur. therefore, strategic communication provides a tool for both corporate and government organisations to better communicate and collaborate with their stakeholders. strategic communication is a form of participatory communication (hallahan et al. 2007: 16) that invites dialogue in organisational activities. true participation extends communication from being heard to being represented in the final decision-making process (ströh 2007: 132). the strategic communication approach can therefore be differentiated from a linear top­down approach by: ♦ an evolving and emerging process of discourse and negotiations with affected stakeholders; ♦ the facilitation of conversation and discussion for change to evolve spontaneously through collaboration; ♦ the encouragement of self­organisation through dialogue and debate; and ♦ the positive management of conflict and dissent among many diverse voices, which increases the perceived legitimacy and encourages the accountability of the communication. stakeholder theory stakeholder theory, as formulated by thought leader r.e. freeman, drew upon the academic fields of sociology, economics, politics and ethics, and especially the literature on corporate planning systems theory, corporate social responsibility and organisational theory (mainardes et al. 2011: 229). the stakeholder theory proposes that an organisation has a relationship with all its stakeholders in order to understand what its stakeholders expect from it to be able to assist them and, in turn, assist the community (steib 2009; alpaslan et al. 2009). this approach is ideal when facing a crisis because when an organisation has a relationship with all its stakeholders it is able to detect problems at an early stage, and thus can respond effectively and recover quickly. this also applies to the role of the ward councillor in detecting problems in the community – if the ward councillor is intimately integrated in the community. ward councillors need to make 98 molefe & overton -de klerk decisions that take into account the interests of all community members because they all have the ability to affect how the government is run. stakeholders a stakeholder is defined as an individual, informal group, organisation or institution who impacts or may be impacted by an organisation’s policies and operations (mainardes et al. 2011). stakeholders do not always have to have a direct stake in the organisation, but are viewed as influencers and recognised according to moral and philosophical guidelines that go beyond business and legal expectations (overton­de klerk & verwey 2013). stakeholders are the people who essentially have the power to make or break the organisation because without their approval the organisation will not be given the right to operate. conversely, with the support of the stakeholders, the success of the business is possible. this becomes more apparent in times of crises. a crisis is a critical situation that has the possibility of turning into a negative outcome for the organisation, company or industry and its publics, products, services and reputation (skinner & zimmer-gembeck 2007; wilcox & cameron 2009). an organisation’s ability to overcome a crisis is dependent on its assumptions and knowledge concerning its stakeholders’ behaviour in the context of the crisis (alpaslan et al. 2009: 2), making the stakeholder theory an appropriate guideline in overcoming crises. for instance, when ward councillors have a relationship with the community based on trust, credibility, transparency and respect, they are able to detect and attend to community problems at an early stage; thus, they are able to respond effectively to them. research design as this was not an area that had been researched before, an explorative qualitative research design, within the context of an interpretive paradigm (struwig & stead 2007; babbie & mouton 2014), was regarded as most suitable to obtain an in­depth understanding of community members’ perceptions, thoughts and feelings with respect to ward councillors’ communication style in a service delivery protest area. data collection the data collection was done by means of focus groups. this kind of interviewing technique provides data that is rich in ideas and provides opinions and attitudes from the participants’ point of view (du plooy 2007: 199). due to the nature of the study, a careful observation of the participants, through interaction and extensive note taking was adhered to (gravetter & forzano 2009: 147). the population of this study was communities who had experienced service delivery protests. in the two years before the research was conducted there were reports of violent service delivery protests in a number of communities, namely (but not limited to) bronkhorstspruit, sebokeng, mothotlung, nelspruit, the north west province, sasolburg, protea glen, the eastern cape province, and boksburg (city press 2014; coetzer & terblanche 2013; saba & van der merwe 2013). in the reports, the sebokeng community, situated in the south of gauteng, experienced some of the most violent 98 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... service delivery protests, where a community member was shot dead during a service delivery protest in 2014 (city press 2014). residents of this community were protesting for decent housing and demanded that the then president, jacob zuma, address them instead of the premier of gauteng. these were indications of a community that was deeply frustrated and displeased with its relationship with the government. conversely, when one of the researchers was on route to conduct research in the area on 16 april 2016, a delivery protest had just been dispersed. during discussions with the research participants, it was established that it was a service delivery protest, which confirmed the prevalence of this type of protest action in the area, two years after the reported violent service delivery protests. nonprobability sampling was used to recruit the participants, as the entire population was not completely known. the sampling method was based on factors, such as common sense and ease, with an effort to maintain representativeness and avoid bias (gravetter & forzano 2009: 134). snowball and purposive sampling methods were used because community members were difficult to locate as the researcher was not a member of the community (babbie & mouton 2014: 167). purposive sampling is a method based on the researcher’s judgement with the intention of researching a small subset of the larger group, which would be near impossible to access for the study (babbie & mouton 2014: 166). initially, four focus groups consisting of a minimum of six participants each and within the two age groupings of 18 to 24, and 25 and above, were requested to participate. two of the focus groups the researchers were able to recruit had a mixture of age groups and did not have the required minimum six participants. therefore, two further focus groups were requested to participate, which consisted of at least four participants each within the desired age groups. adding more focus groups was also a means to ensure that data saturation could be achieved. the first four of the focus groups were conducted on 16 april 2016 and the other two were conducted on 24 april 2016. while there was no assumption that the rest of the population was homogeneous, the reason for having different age groups was to evaluate whether relatively younger and older groups differed with respect to their views of ward councillors’ communication. table 1: sample realisation – focus groups focus group number area age group number of participants 1 sebokeng 25 and above 5 2 sebokeng mix (18­24 with inclusion of two above 25) 5 3 north sebokeng mix (18­24 with inclusion of one above 25) 4 4 north sebokeng 18­24 4 5 north sebokeng 25 and above 5 6 north sebokeng 18­24 4 1110 molefe & overton -de klerk a semi­structured discussion guide, based on the literature, was developed for these focus groups in order to allow for spontaneous and unprompted responses from the participants, yet providing enough structure to make a comparable analysis possible. the participants were asked follow-up questions using probing and mirroring techniques, which elicit more information about the participants’ attitudes, emotions and behaviours (du plooy 2007: 159). qualitative data analysis all interviews were audio­recorded and transcribed verbatim. thematic analysis was used to interpret the data, where the responses from the participants were grouped into themes emerging from the thematic analysis according to the frequency of repetition of the sentiments. where appropriate, verbatim statements from the participants were used to illustrate the themes. the trustworthiness of the study was further increased through extensive field notes and transcripts, as well as ensuring that data saturation was achieved (babbie & mouton 2014: 276). research findings the findings were analysed and grouped according to 11 emerging and dominant themes. ward councillors are not visible all the participants stated that their ward councillors were not visible at all. most of them did not know who their ward councillors were. i don’t know him. honestly. i don’t know him. i don’t even know his value here (group 4). the participants in each focus group highlighted, with full support from the other participants, that their ward councillors have houses within the community but generally do not live in them. instead, their primary houses were located in suburban areas and, as a result, they were out of touch with the community. other participants expressed the opinion that their ward councillors availed themselves to certain people, for example anc members, but not the wider community. when the participants were asked whether the violent service delivery protests could have been prevented if their ward councillors were more visible, all of the participants agreed without hesitation. when the community members were asked how they thought their ward councillors could become effective communicators, most of the responses were: “come to the people”. community members are disempowered the sentiment was repeatedly expressed that community members required assistance and support in self­organising, which they believed they did not receive. one participant stated that ward councillors were possibly delivering on some aspects, but the issue related to the discrepancies between themselves and communities who had a majority of whites who did not complain about service delivery. this alluded to 1110 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... the possibility that white communities were better serviced and received better support when attempting to self­organise: …but then people who try, they struggle with funding, that’s the problem as well. and as compared to the white communities, it’s a different story. so a lot of time it hurts; for a white child these days we’ll say life is too easy for them, it’s like they are destined to be successful…i’ve been looking for jobs all over and still i’m unemployed… (group 3). ward councillors do not communicate with community members no, they don’t speak to us… i remember this other day when we were fighting about the electricity and water. so after he was called, he didn’t come to us, he didn’t communicate with us. he was scared of the community; he doesn’t want to speak to us because he’s never come to talk to us about what we need… (group 3). the participants were asked what issues their ward councillors typically communicated to them. the majority of the participants cited their community infrastructure, such as their rates and taxes, apollo streetlights, clinics, electricity, libraries and potholes. alarmingly, some of the participants expressed that their ward councillors did not communicate anything to them. community members expressed a desire to have two­way communication with their ward councillors in order to relay their issues and challenge their ward councillors to create solutions collectively and collaboratively. however, the participants emphasised that dialogic communication would not entirely solve the problem because communication without delivery would be pointless as their needs would not have been met. ward councillors do not keep their promises the participants responded that their ward councillors were not perceived as legitimate communicators because they believed that ward councillors made promises that they did not keep. the perception was that they communicated promises to them before election times and once given the power to lead the community, they disappeared and did not fulfil the promises they made. they only come for votes; giving people food parcels and after the elections, we don’t get those food parcels or anything, which is bad. people are flippen disappointed (group 1). the participants observed that they were promised a number of things, which were not delivered but the then president, jacob zuma, was able to fulfil his exorbitant needs and the government was willing to support him in doing so; however, the community was left without houses and a lack of service delivery. ward councillors must take responsibility stemming from the accusations that the ward councillors did not deliver, as they initially promised, statements were made that ward councillors did not take responsibility for their lack of delivery and that they were not accountable. when ward councillors were perceived as making empty promises, added to the fact that they were not visible in 1312 molefe & overton -de klerk the community, it created the perception that they were not accountable; this therefore led to continued protests. they will keep fighting until they do what they are supposed to do. until things happen and they do what they are supposed to do, people will keep fighting (group 1). corruption is a key contributor to dissatisfaction a dominant theme, which was constant throughout all the groups, was the corruption of the ward councillors. almost all of the participants relayed examples or agreed on instances where the only way to either get a job or a tender, or get involved in meetings and community activities and developments, was if you had a membership card of the ward councillor’s political party. there was a time i went to go apply at the municipality. i spoke to this other woman and she said to me, you know what, for you to get a job here you have to be registered as an anc what what…you have to have the membership for anc, or for whatever party that is in… (group 3). or da. even da itself has come to do its thing this side. you have to have a card so that the jobs will arise (group 3). the community members expressed the view that they did not receive the same opportunities as those that were known by their local government officials; this included bursaries and subsidies that the community was entitled to. corruption was named in media reports as one of the contributing factors to service delivery protests. this does not form part of strategic communication; however, it identifies the kind of communication that is not accepted within the community, but it prevails with no consequences. corruption hinders a collaborative stakeholder approach. community members want to work with ward councillors a recurring theme throughout all six focus groups was the desire to be a part of community activities, particularly those who were unemployed in order for them to gain some work experience. whenever there’s a project happening in our ward…if there are projects you see people who are not working, take them into those projects so they can work (group 1). community members would like to become involved in the community, assist the community with whatever that is lacking, and at the same time obtain experience and be employed. the participants observed that meetings were held but only a select few were invited and no feedback was given to the community post these meetings. ward councillors do not work for the people the majority of the participants declared that their ward councillors lacked a sense of compassion. they relayed examples of how when the ward councillors wanted to be elected, they would engage with them and make multiple promises, but when they 1312 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... were elected, they forgot about the community and their needs, and only looked out for themselves by purchasing expensive cars and buying houses. when we see them, only around elections and then after we see them in social places, buying expensive bottles of alcohol at emerald [casino], at functions, where they host their parties. imagine one person drinking a bottle of r7000, king george the 7th, johnny walker blue label. do you know how much that costs? whereas there is someone who…who sleeps in a shack, he can’t even read, he reads using a candle. imagine! (group 1). unheard and forgotten seemingly, community members felt unheard and forgotten. numerous participants conveyed this sentiment, who said that they had been forgotten. they highlighted how other areas, such as soweto, received more attention than they did; they want it to be remembered that they were also part of the gauteng province. we are also gauteng. joburg and soweto, vaal. most of the things they take as soweto; they are the only region that is better than vaal. when you are from vaal it is like you are from some other place… we are in the same province, we are in gauteng. but they take vaal as something that is out (group 2). these experiences point to a deep disappointment and hurt of being forgotten as an area. this theme serves as a potential consequence of the lack of communication by ward councillors with their community members. more so, it strongly signals the possibility that community members feel completely out of touch from their ward councillor, which leads to disengaged community members. experiences of the two age groups it is apparent that the two age groups, 18 to 24 and 25 and above, had very similar experiences of their ward councillors’ communication, as well as their leadership styles. both age groups opined that their ward councillors were corrupt and criminals, and that they did not fulfil their promises. these age groups agreed that service delivery protests occurred because community members believed that it was the only way to be heard, as the ward councillors did not deliver on their promises and did not communicate with them. as much as the two groups were in agreement about their experiences, the two groups placed different emphasis on certain issues. the 18 to 24 age group placed emphasis on the criminal activity in the community, on substance abuse, as well as the need for jobs for the youth. they also placed importance on the need to involve the youth in job experiences, such as learnerships or internships, because the youth was disengaged, which resulted in them participating in service delivery protests. the 25 and above age group emphasised the corruption of the ward councillors. they were of the view that the only way to gain access to information on developments in the community or job opportunities was to have membership of the ward councillor’s political party. all these shared experiences of ward councillors and their communication approach have implications for the community’s future, service delivery protests, as well as communication practices. 1514 molefe & overton -de klerk discussion the findings point to extreme frustration experienced by community members with respect to the ward councillors’ communication approach – to the extent that possibly their only perceived recourse was to violently protest in order to vent their anger. lack of communication, lack of trust and lack of opportunity to participate appeared to be the main issues, which supported the findings of earlier studies (paradza et al. 2010; allan & heese 2013). the participants relayed numerous examples of perceived disengagement from their ward councillors – they were not being heard and their needs were not being met because of corruption. a potential result of this despondency and disengagement was for them to find solace in activities that helped them to forget about reality, by becoming intoxicated. this was mentioned frequently in the discussions. this could point to a broken community or, at the very least, a broken youth within the community because of the number of challenges they have experienced as the community members of sebokeng. this is consistent with previous findings that a lack of hope lay at the root of social ills, such as substance abuse, in poor communities (overton­de klerk & oelofse 2010: 402). according to the findings, ward councillors did not disseminate information and, even if they did, they did not engage in strategic communication, which enabled bottom­ up communication and dialogue and allowed for dissent and self­organisation. that residents clearly had a desire for their ward councillors to utilise such strategic communication principles in their communication approach was underscored when a participant expressed his appreciation of having the researcher engage with them on their experiences and suggested that if their ward councillor did the same, a better relationship would exist between them and their ward councillor. this signalled the importance that community members placed on the visibility and engagement by ward councillors as stakeholders in the spirit of ubuntu (steib 2009; bertsch 2012). it also supports the findings of overton-de klerk and oelofse (2010: 406) with respect to poor communities as corporate stakeholders who emphasise the importance of entrenching a culture of listening and engagement with community members and other stakeholders (rensburg 2012: 11; bbc media action 2016). the findings strongly indicate that the ward councillors were perceived by community participants to be out of touch with community members and their realities; therefore, missing the opportunity to influence them. the perceived absence of the ward councillors evidently played a role in the state of the community. if ward councillors are removed from their communities, they cannot be influenced by community members, nor are they able to influence their community members. this certainly is a lost opportunity for both parties. as indicated in the findings, community members had ideas to develop the community, create jobs, and create rehabilitation and sports centres, yet they were unable to share these ideas to their ward councillors because they were perceived as not visible and unreachable. when communication influence is heightened, opportunities for self­organisation are made possible, which lessens the onus on the ward councillor to deliver in certain respects. this is an advantage of the shift from management to influence in strategic communication (overton-de klerk & verwey 2013). a potential 1514 community perceptions of ward councillors’ communication ... result of this shared social influence could be heightened community involvement and a more positive experience of ward councillors’ communication. if regarded through the lens of strategic communication, ward councillors were further perceived by the community participants to lack legitimacy as communicators for not delivering on their mandate and for using a top­down approach. hence, they did not afford their communities the opportunity to self-organise through empowerment; nor did they collaborate with community members on community developments. at the same time, the findings suggested that community members wanted to collaborate with ward councillors to solve issues faced by the community and to curb unemployment. they also had a desire for dialogue with their ward councillors; however, this dialogue needed to be jointly executed with accountability and service delivery. as indicated earlier, the role of the ward councillor can be described as a “boundary spanner” (overton­de klerk & verwey 2013) between community members and local government. community perceptions of councillors and local municipalities, regardless of their accuracy, must remain the subject of ongoing dialogue and should not be ignored, even if it includes dissent. robust, and even conflict-ridden, discourse often leads to new self­organising networks and decisions, and can encourage novel ways of problem solving (ströh 2007; overton-de klerk & oelofse 2010). ward councillors would be well served if they engineered a shift in their role from managers to facilitators of channels and multiple fora for discourse and free participation of community stakeholder involving informal opinion leaders, such as peer or civic leaders (overton-de klerk & oelofse 2010; deetz 1995). conclusion this study is limited as it only presents a cameo of the perceptions of community members of their ward councillor in a particular area in time. neither did it include the perceptions of ward councillors and other municipal employees in the research. nonetheless, some of the findings strongly support the findings of earlier research conducted in poor or volatile communities, confirming a pattern. at the same time it should be noted that the findings point to some serious social ills and other systemic and endemic issues, such as corruption and lack of governance on the part of ward councillors, which would require further investigation and concerted intervention of local and national government. continued research on how communication is experienced by key stakeholders in communities is not only necessary, but also essential in a climate where service delivery protests are escalating dangerously. this research should also explore the perceptions of ward councillors, municipal employees, as well as other informal leaders. such research could potentially facilitate a comparative and more complete picture on the value of adopting strategic communication principles and entrenching a leadership culture of listening, particularly in those areas where community members feel unheard and forgotten. 1716 molefe & overton -de klerk references alinsky, s.d. 1987. reveille for radicals. new york: vintage books. allan, k. & heese, k. 2013. understanding why service delivery protests take place and who is to blame, 13 may 2013. 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(all of the archival material that follows is from the skukuza archive, folder nk27.) this prof. ian glenn department of communication science, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email : glennie@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-08933118 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 34-43 date submitted: 09 august 2021 date accepted: 11 february 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za mailto:glennie@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0893-3118 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0893-3118 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 3534 norma foster and ‘wildlife in crisis’ 3534 article examines how and why foster gained such access to the kruger, which had traditionally not been particularly receptive to filmmakers and was a difficult place to film wildlife, compared to the serengeti, etosha or the okavango. correspondence suggests that she enjoyed support from figures such as former cabinet minister dr connie mulder and the department of information figure les de villiers, although there is no evidence that the south african department of information offered any financial support (rees & day 1980). foster and her camera crew drew on earlier kruger films made by the american programme wild kingdom that focused on animal captures to overcome difficulties foster and her director faced given her time constraints. they turned to covering scientists and parks officials and foster’s own interactions with animals as their primary focus rather than aiming for a traditional blue-chip documentary. the article suggests ways in which this series, the first wildlife programme shown on the new south african television service in 1976, influenced viewers as well as the careers of those who worked on it. it concludes by suggesting that the privileged access foster enjoyed meant that south african parks, particularly the kruger, were less willing to collaborate with other international filmmakers. norma foster’s life and career foster was a former beauty queen – the first miss south africa in 1956 who competed in the miss world competition in london that year – who then turned to working in theatre and film, in south africa, england and the united states. she won the first miss south africa competition in 1956 based on public voting for photographs sent to newspapers. biographical information at the time shows that she came from an east london family and that her older sisters were also local beauty queens who won competitions like miss east london. information in the newspapers suggests that she acted as a photographic model and secretary for a local company producing swimwear, but in her curriculum vitae she sent the parks board in support of her application to make films, she produced a far more impressive list of career achievements: norma foster became a singer and dancer at the age of twelve and throughout her school days, she studied acting, creative design and stage craft. she became an ice-skating champion at sixteen, a champion ballroom dancer of latin american dances at seventeen and miss south africa at eighteen. her devotion to the stage was only equalled by her love for nature’s wildlife which surrounded her throughout her youth. the unusual career of norma foster began in south africa where she was born. she divided her time between performing in and the creation and production of live shows. between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, she created, designed, produced and co-produced countless musical revues – in which she also starred. the shows played theatres, cabarets and supper clubs in johannesburg, cape town, durban and salisbury. when columbia pictures producers cubby broccoli and irving allen went to south africa to film the hellions with lionel jeffries, richard todd and other well3736 glenn known british stars, they asked norma foster to assist them in casting the “local” talent. norma wound up playing the co-starring role of lottie herself and was promptly invited by the producers to come to london and expand the scope of her show business experiences. norma accepted the invitation. in london, norma studied with iris warren, famed coach of sir laurence olivier: she appeared in many films, plays and major television productions. her 15 british made international film credits include those magnificent men in their flying machines, the spy with a cold nose, and the great catherine; she also starred in a different life, refuge in rio and several other germanfrench co-productions. on the stage, norma foster played the lead in diary of anne frank, cat on a hot tin roof, suddenly last summer, the children’s hour, ring around the moon, romeo and juliet, look back in anger, miss julie, st joan and other plays. on television she played many roles for shows produced by the b.b.c, a.t.v. and associated redifusion. during these acting days, norma foster worked as director-producer-designer and “jack of all trades” at london’s illustrious actors workshop. by producing and directing showcasing for young actors and actresses she gave vent to her own creative ability and at the same time proved her capacity as a showbusiness executive. still in her twenties, norma foster went to the united states in 1967. she joined the screen actors guild and appeared in two columbia pictures which – ironically enough – were filmed at mgm studios. she became a member of professor goodman’s famous department of theatre arts, at u.c.l.a. there she was given the opportunity to produce, direct, act and in general assist the department. in short order, she became an assistant professor and gave classes in shakespeare. prof goodman expresses himself most enthusiastically in referring to norma’s work in his department. after some travels abroad and visits to the land of her birth, miss foster embarked upon a film producing career. in 1972, she founded her own production company, norma foster enterprises, inc. and normavor productions (pty) ltd. her first feature film and television spectacular is due for release in america and great britain late in january, 1974, to be followed in mid-january with a television special captured to be free. thus, norma foster’s career has come full circle. she relives her experiences with wild animals of early childhood days and intends to devote the sum total of her know-how to the production of the television series wildlife in crisis which is slated for production in early 1974. when she wrote of the “illustrious actors workshop” in london, was she actually referring to “the theatre workshop” run by joan littlewood, famous for its left-wing dramas such as oh, what a lovely war? there does not seem to be any actors workshop active in london in the 1960s. her claims about teaching, presumably as an adjunct professor, in the ucla theatre arts department, are difficult to verify although professor henry goodman was a senior faculty member in the 1970s. 3736 norma foster and ‘wildlife in crisis’ for the south african audience, foster stresses her highbrow theatre roles, from shakespeare and shaw and ibsen to christopher fry, lillian hellman and john osborne. it would have been relatively easy for her, as a commonwealth citizen, to claim british citizenship in 1961 and one can speculate that she moved before south africa left the commonwealth in may 1961. there are many impressive achievements claimed in her letter. the hellions may not have been a box office success but broccoli a year later co-produced dr no, starting the james bond film phenomenon and the south african cast for the hellions included ken gampu and patrick mynhardt, suggesting that if foster was in some way responsible for casting or local recruitment, that she was well connected and astute. her english film and television roles were relatively minor: perhaps most prominently as a bit player to margaret rutherford’s miss marple in murder ahoy. californian divorce records reveal that she was briefly married to an american, james arnold doolittle, a well-known theatre manager and producer, particularly of dance, after whom the doolittle theatre in los angeles is named. their date of marriage and divorce is given as october 1972 and their residence as being in los angeles. wildlife in crisis was shown on us television, translated and sold in other countries such as japan, shown on the sabc, and regularly used for rest-camp viewing in the kruger park itself. she seems not to have made any more films after that series and to have carried on living in the usa where she had a few dozen twitter posts from 2011 till 2016 under the handle @jarrett2like with most of her posts being re-tweets of material about beauty queens and the treatment of wild animals. in 2021, she was still alive in los angeles though in poor health. how are we to understand her career and achievements? was she a beauty queen celebrity whose charm and south african background she exploited to get special access to the kruger and other national parks to produce pro-south african propaganda at a fraught political period just prior to the 1976 soweto uprisings? or was she the one being exploited by south african authorities? an examination of her correspondence in the kruger park archives suggests that she should be seen as a more complex feminist figure who undoubtedly used her beauty queen credentials and south african connections, but was intellectually ambitious, as shown by hiring a coach like iris warren, the highbrow theatre appearances, and managing to appear in british films. her writing and command of english was good and, judging from her letters, she was socially able to handle a variety of media and audiences. the range of topics covered in the films and the outlines of these suggest a strong scientific and conservation background undoubtedly owing largely to the input of south african national parks staff, but foster, as the presenter of the programme had to understand, accept and publicise these concerns. in february 1976, foster gave an interview to an american journalist dwight newton for the san francisco herald examiner (newton 1976). her interview with newton starts powerfully: “‘the cheetah is the fastest animal on earth and it is not going to outrun civilization,’ predicted norma foster here yesterday.” 3938 glenn the role of the department of information how did foster suddenly emerge as a film producer able to engage the full cooperation of the national parks board? what persuaded viacom, then in the business of producing television content, to invest in such a series and the national parks board to co-operate? the answer is suggested in a letter to the park authorities in which foster shows the political support the project enjoyed and her rationale for doing it: as you are aware, the honourable dr c. mulder m.p. has given his blessing to this project through messrs reineke m.p. and l. de villiers of the south african information office. the latter have suggested that your board arrange as wide press coverage as is possible to publicise the commencement of shooting and to arrange a function on the first day of shooting if possible, to which will be invited heads of those government departments involved in this project, government personnel and those dignitaries without whose wonderful help and encouragement, i would not have been able to bring the series to fruition. i feel that this series is the start of an important step forward for the republic in the media into which it is entering. the goodwill attached to this whole project and which will be gained throughout the world cannot be measured financially. the world will be shown what south africa is doing in regard to animal wildlife preservation and also how south africa, without prior experience in television, will, with a predominantly south african operation, film a television series of this magnitude for international release. it seems likely that this “l de villiers” was les de villiers, who was closely linked to eschel rhoodie and the department of information. though this suggests that the project, like a nearly simultaneous laurens van der post film for the bbc (glenn 2020), enjoyed the support of the department of information, this was probably in the form of arranging access and local logistical support and the co-operation of wildlife authorities rather than direct financial support. there is no mention of this project in various exposés of hidden department of information funding. although foster was the producer and presenter, viacom arranged for arthur dreifuss, a well-known hollywood director, to direct the series while south african henk maartens was presented as the main camera operator in the set of cvs that foster submitted to the national parks board to justify the project, with maartens’ work on the mutual of omaha’s wild kingdom episodes and the emmy won for their work in 1970 mentioned. the challenge making 26 half-hour wildlife episodes – in effect two years’ worth of broadcasts – in a year was a daunting proposition. from the beginning, foster planned to highlight “present and future research that is being done” (letter september 13, 1973) but she also seemed to underestimate the complex demands of filming game, asking airily for assistance in helping to “locate the game which we are to shoot around in each episode possibly the day before to facilitate us keeping up to schedule” (ibid.). 3938 norma foster and ‘wildlife in crisis’ this was obviously an unrealistic expectation and their start, according to les kottler, the sound technician on the crew at the outset, made this clear: firstly, the scale of the production being talked about seemed over-ambitious to me. how could 26 episodes of an essentially-unscripted in today’s terms, reality series be produced in a year, shooting all over sa and other parts of africa, with a crew of 2 camera operators (francois and henk mertens shooting on 16mm film, not today’s infinitely more sophisticated and much more portable hd gear), one sound tech (me), and one editor (bill asher from killarney studios, if i recall)? i do recall some kind of shooting outline (there may even have been a script francois may remember), but, naturally, the animals weren’t about to learn their lines, much to the chagrin and frustration of our hollywood ‘b movie’ director and former choreographer, arthur dreifuss, who thought he could get the animals to do what he wanted on cue! alas, it was not to be ... surprise … rob and francois will laughingly recall how arthur, at the start of shooting, lost his cool while waiting in a hide for an animal to show up at a waterhole. hours later, with arthur’s patience at boiling-point, a giraffe and a zebra (?) show up to drink, and arthur, thinking he’s back in hollywood, yells out something like, ‘go on, giraffe, $@#$ the zebra now! action, $@#$ the zebra now, now!!’ i’m not making this up i remember this like it was yesterday! (and i don’t remember too much else about working with arthur!) we’re all doubled over laughing, trying to shoosh arthur as, needless to say, the animals beat a hasty retreat! and so it went. i seem to recall we were soon told we were already ‘behind schedule,’ but, obviously though not to arthur! there could be no production schedule in the bush. as i noted above, for all my inexperience at the time, i felt that what we were being sold was beyond norma’s reach, for all her noble environmental intentions. wildlife filming is and was then, too a specialized area of production, for which norma had no real previous experience. loving animals ain’t enough. she hired a (talented) feature-film director with no documentary, no wildlife, and no african experience. she embarked on a worthy project, on an unrealistically-ambitious scale and timetable… my sense over the years has always been and maybe this is being unfair, but i’ve always felt this way, nevertheless that she sold the idea of wildlife in crisis on the basis of her miss south africa credentials, her beauty, her ‘foreign experience’ and her not-inconsiderable verbal and written sales skills… but the fact that she got a project of this scale off the ground is, in and of itself, a testament to both talent and determination [21 may, 2020]. this start probably soon convinced foster and dreifuss, perhaps influenced by henk maartens with his experience of filming animal captures and animal rehabilitations for the american programme wild kingdom, that their film should not focus on the animals but on their human protectors. the opening credits of the series eventually became the hyperbolic: “wildlife in crisis is the true story of the dedicated people whose courage and determination have saved countless rare animals from extinction. in this report, wildlife investigator norma foster will give us her eye-witness account of their tireless efforts.” much of this rhetoric mirrored that in wild kingdom episodes where threats to endangered species such as cheetahs or rhinos were mentioned. while some of the episodes may have stressed social or political issues, such as an episode on poaching, most of the episodes were resolutely scientific and dealt 4140 glenn with the problems veterinary scientists and scientists faced. it was a tour de horizon of wildlife in southern africa, ranging from the kruger to the private ostrich farms of oudtshoorn, the triumph of the provincial natal parks in saving the rhino, the desert lions of the kalahari, and the benefits of a walking safari in the tuli block. mixed with the strongly scientific issues such as the treatment of anthrax or research on stresses when animals are captured were episodes designed to show foster who presented the show to good effect in dealing with orphaned animals, cradling baby animals, or watching targa, eddie young’s semi-tame cheetah, hunting. scientific kruger the major emphasis of the episodes on the kruger scientific services was to show that south africa was a world leader in dealing with wildlife health and management. the series managed, for example, to show off dr toni harthoorn, a major figure in darting big game for capture (harthoorn 1970), who had moved to south africa from kenya, with a sophisticated laboratory set up in the veldt examining darted animals. a few years after chris barnard had performed the world’s first heart transplant in cape town, the bush doctors were showing that they too were world leaders. as jane carruthers has pointed out, the management of kruger by this time had moved to a far more scientifically guided administrative ethos after the gifted amateurism of stevenson-hamilton (carruthers 2008). it seems clear that foster took her directions on what places to visit, what scientific issues to focus on, and which figures to feature from local authorities such as kruger park veterinarians but also national parks board authorities. these films thus give an intimate sense of how the national parks board wanted to communicate itself and its mission at this time but also a national sense of how south africa saw its conservation efforts and successes across national resources (the kruger and other national parks), provincial parks (the natal parks board reserves), private initiatives such as ostrich farming, and the efforts in the increasingly disputed area of south west africa where foster visited gobabeb, the research station in the namib desert and also the desert lions of the kalahari. foster paid for her bravado in riding a camel in one of these episodes, as she fell off and suffered a serious back injury. while the department of information and the national parks board may have collaborated behind the scenes on what foster should film, it seems more likely that local officials were pleased to work with a south african born, afrikaans-speaking presenter who often dealt with them in afrikaans even though she spoke english on screen. her films highlighted their efforts rather than claiming the limelight as the wild kingdom presenters had done. a serious but probably boring topic like the dangers posed by anthrax could get serious treatment with the local experts shaping the script and narrative. any discussion of this series is hampered by the fact that only six of the episodes have been available for viewing – and those thanks to foster sending copies to dr eddie young of episodes in which he had featured – though there are detailed synopses 4140 norma foster and ‘wildlife in crisis’ of the other episodes available. there are reportedly copies of all the episodes in foster’s possession in the usa. effects of the series the south african parks authorities were obviously highly satisfied with what norma foster had produced. her series was shown on south african television when it started in 1976 and was an influential early portrayal of careers in wildlife and conservation and the value of this sector. eddie young’s widow, nicki young, says that she and many of her school contemporaries of the time were inspired by the films to take up careers in conservation. copies of the films were also donated to camps in the kruger and regularly shown there, also highlighting the value of conservation. many of the people who worked on her film, like francois marais, went on to make important contributions to the genre. the most important influence, however, may have been on a young kruger worker, danie van der walt, who became involved in helping the production and later became the producer of south africa’s most important documentary television programme 50-50, with the balance being between coverage of nature and culture. without foster’s films and the confidence they gave local figures, south african television may have had a slower start. this preference for foster as presenter came at some cost, however, in that the kruger in particular stopped collaborating with wild kingdom from the time foster started working in the park – something evident in letters from warren garst in 1976 and in 1978. garst inquired about possible subjects for filming on february 11, 1976, writing to brynard and praising the kruger for its work done there and noting that several of their most memorable episodes had been filmed there but that years had passed without collaboration. on 20 february, tol pienaar replied, saying that brynard had passed the letter on to him for reply. pienaar responded warmly to the “pleasant surprise” of hearing from garst, but then noted that “norma vorster productions have been filming quite extensively in our national parks for the last few years, producing more than a dozen films which cover a very wide field of research projects and management practices, particularly in the kruger park”. pienaar suggested some alternative projects: on gus mills’ research on brown hyenas in the kalahari gemsbok park or dr robinson’s research on bats. there seems to have been some further correspondence between wild kingdom producers and kruger staff because on june 20, 1977, lion researcher butch smuts wrote to wild kingdom associate producer richard reinauer to say that the lion research work he was doing had already been filmed twice: by the sabc and normavor productions. smuts points out that both these films, made mainly at night, involved lots of effort and says he cannot see the point of another film repeating the previous ones. he nonetheless suggested further discussions in skukuza to discuss possible alternatives. nothing seems to have come of these alternatives and a year later, on march 13, 1978, garst again wrote, this time to pienaar. in his letter, he again says flattering things about the quality of research done in south africa, and points out that wild 4342 glenn kingdom had not filmed in south african national parks since 1971. he then makes a critical observation about norma foster: in the past, you’ve said that norma vorster has filmed your operations for the american tv market. we’ve made an effort to determine how widely these films are distributed. in the last two years we have found only one station, in the los angeles area, which has shown them. there are probably more, but the coverage is certainly not as wide as your projects deserve. certainly not as wide as we can offer with an american audience of 35 million and a world-wide audience of 100 million in 40 countries. pienaar’s reply made the kruger’s preferences clear: in this respect i must point out to you that since our last contact nothing has changed. we are still under obligation to norma vorster to cover our research and management projects for the overseas tv programs, and this arrangement has the official blessing of our government. this has been brought about by the factual and non-sensational nature of her films and a very positive publicity which she has always promoted for her country of birth. i’m afraid i do not agree with you that she does not get good coverage for her films in the united states and other countries, and having seen the many excellent reviews which her material has elicited all over the world (even behind the iron curtain), we have no reason to change the present arrangement. as we have limited scope for long-term filming projects of this kind i do not see my way clear in offering your organisation anything substantial which will not also be covered by norma vorster’s unit. if you’re going to visit south africa in any event you’re welcome to discuss the whole matter with me should you come to skukuza, and we may then be able to work out something that will be to our mutual satisfaction. here pienaar reveals the extent to which foster/vorster enjoyed official government support for her films. he recuperates her south african identity by changing her name back to vorster and by implication snubs gerst’s very well-known programme. consequences wildlife in crisis won an award for the “best location documentary series” at the 11th hollywood festival of world television with the award given at the cannes tv trade fair in april 1977 and was also shown on japanese television. one other consequence of norma foster’s highly positive portrayal of the conservation efforts of the kruger and other national parks was that the kruger became far more receptive to approaches from filmmakers – particularly if they were south africans with a strong scientific background. the tone of letters to filmmakers like david hughes in the second half of the 1970s from pienaar and other leading officials is far more genial and positive than earlier responses had been. foster thus arguably helped open the kruger park to filming. but garst’s observation is telling: south african national parks, in cutting links with wild kingdom in favour of a local presenter with limited north american or international 4342 norma foster and ‘wildlife in crisis’ reach, sacrificed not only most of its chances to influence an american audience but also a large international audience. the undoubted benefits of developing a local industry and local filmmakers and of producing content that would appeal to local watchers thinking of a career in conservation have to be weighed up against what was lost. the kruger and other parks could conceivably have had both but the point butch smuts made was pertinent: scientists and local managers only had limited time to engage with filmmakers. the irony of this development is that the department of information, in trying to control international perceptions of south africa and its leading role in conservation, may have diverted the kruger and other national parks’ resources and collaboration from the leading international wildlife programme at the time and lost a sympathetic international audience at the very time, after the upheavals of june 1976 in soweto, when they needed it most. references carruthers, j. 2008. conservation and wildlife management in south african national parks 1930s–1960s. journal of the history of biology 41(2): 203-236. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10739-007-9147-3 glenn, i. 2020. conservation propaganda in south africa? the case of laurens van der post, the department of information and the national parks board. southern journal for contemporary history 45(2): 83-103. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150509/sjch45. v2.4 harthoorn, a.m.. 1970. the flying syringe: ten years of immobilising wild animals in africa. london: bles. newton, d. 1976. “norma’s wild life.” san francisco herald examiner, february 12. rees, m. & day, c. 1980. muldergate: the story of the info scandal. johannesburg: macmillan. 1pb a framework for integrating social media brand communication in non-profit organisations abstract as competition creates infinite choices, companies look for ways to connect emotionally with customers, become irreplaceable, and create enduring relationships. the continuous search for ways to establish emotional connections and create strong corporate brands could be achieved by the ability to integrate various online and offline communication tools. given the wide range of communication tools available to connect with stakeholders, organisations must consider ways to combine these in the best possible ways since traditional media will not become obsolete. this article is based on the findings of a quantitative study that identified three broad foundational elements and unique features of a framework to achieve the integration of social media brand communication. the elements and features were empirically tested and verified. results supported the correlation and a strong positive linear association between the elements confirmed the internal reliability between the sets of features, and indicated strong statistical justification of the combination of the features in the respective elements. by adopting an interdisciplinary focus on the corporate brand, social media, and integrated communication (ic), the article proposes a framework whereby the integration of social media brand communication could be attained; thus, promoting a strong corporate brand. the framework incorporates distinct strategic and tactical points at which the coordination of social media brand communication may occur. keywords: non-profit organisations; social media; social media brand communication; corporate brand; integrated communication introduction as competition creates infinite choices, companies look for ways to connect emotionally with customers, become irreplaceable, and create enduring relationships. a strong dr christelle swart department of communication science, college of human sciences, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : cswart@unisa. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-7119519x doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 1-19 date submitted: 30 january 2021 date accepted: 04 may 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:cswart@unisa.ac.za mailto:cswart@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-519x https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 swart brand portrays the “face” of the organisation that makes it stand out in a densely crowded marketplace; thereby allowing people to become attached to it, to trust it, and to believe in its superiority (langmade 2020). a strong corporate brand is particularly beneficial for valuable and lasting relationships (vernuccio 2014: 211). organisations in the non-profit sector depend largely on strong brands that permit them to be distinctive and create positive impressions thereof (daw et al. 2011: 3-4, 20). moreover, organisations in this sector are required to operate in the same business environment as for-profits and vie with similar organisations to attain their organisational objectives and promote their causes. daw et al. (2011: 20) view a brand as the organisation’s most valuable asset, comprising a “collection of perceptions about an organisation, formed by every communication, action, and interaction”. there is a continuous search for ways to establish emotional connections and create lasting relationships with stakeholders; in this regard, a key principle is deemed to be the ability to utilise a variety of communication tools, both online and offline, in an integrated way (daw et al. 2011: 30). the prominence of stakeholders and their perceptions of and relations with the non-profit organisation necessitate a more substantial involvement of the organisation as opposed to earlier views that merely called for the coordination of some communication elements (duncan 2005). the value of stakeholders in achieving social media integration and sustaining social media brand communication features distinctly in the framework presented in this article. the above assertions reveal that communication is seemingly intrinsically related to the success of non-profit brands and incorporates the ways in which a brand connects and interacts holistically with stakeholders, including the message content used to convey desired brand messages (cf. abratt & kleyn 2012: 1055). holtzhausen (2008) and niemann (2005) confirm the worth of an integrated communication (ic) approach to gain an advantage over competitors, which accentuates the benefit of using communication with stakeholders in an organised way. when brands and stakeholders connect and share on social media, it is described as engagement or interaction that, in line with the objectives of corporate branding, aims to create emotional bonds crucial to the development of relationships. the ways in which organisations connect with stakeholders are perceived to include tangible presentations or touchpoints and intangible elements that organisations purposely put forward (cf. langmade 2020). collectively, these can be referred to as communication touchpoints and they incorporate numerous organisation-wide endeavours, ranging from expressing the organisation’s standpoint pertaining to the environment and broader societal issues, its conduct towards its workforce, the total behaviour of all employees, and all communication efforts. it is also termed a brand persona (ibid.). given the wide range of communication tools available to connect with stakeholders, it is vital that organisations consider how to combine these in the best possible ways, as traditional media will not become obsolete. against this background, this article mainly aims to report on research into concepts for a conceptual framework for the integration of non-profit organisations’ social media brand communication. the research adopted an interdisciplinary focus on social 32 a framework for integrating social media brand communication media, the corporate brand and ic, primarily because social media can be applied in different contexts. the lack of an individual theory of social media compelled the researcher to consider classical perspectives on human action, as well as contemporary perspectives on human action and interaction, symbolic interaction and social presence. this served as the theoretical framework for the study. key concepts social media (sm) following a search of the diverse definitions and descriptions of the social media concept in the literature, and for the purposes of the current study, social media is defined as an interactive online platform that enables organisations and stakeholders to readily connect and interact in various ways. an integrated approach to social media brand communication insight into the coordination of an organisation’s communication revealed various concepts, of which ic and communication integration (ci) are prominent. in searching for a definition of an integrated approach to social media brand communication, and considering the interdisciplinary focus of the study, it is proposed that it be defined as a philosophy of integration to achieve synergy and consistency of the communication endeavours of non-profit organisations on social media platforms (cf. cornelissen 2013; johansen & andersen 2012). corporate brand the premise of this article is that a favourable corporate brand permits the organisation to build a trustworthy corporate brand and a good reputation that allow non-profit organisations to reach their strategic business objectives. a favourable corporate brand is perceived as the “visual, verbal and behavioural expression of an organisation’s unique business model” (knox & bickerton 2003: 1013) and represents the organisation as a whole, including all its products or services. according to views expressed in the literature, corporate brand is defined as the point of interaction between the organisation and its stakeholders, with communication fundamental to create positive associations and impressions (cf. urde 2013: 744). corporate brand communication and social media brand communication ouwersloot and duncan (2008: 65) assert that touch points refer to the numerous ways in which an organisation communicates or connects with its stakeholders, as these concurrently provide ways to expose stakeholders to the brand message. these touch points include the corporate identity, image and reputation. the researcher defines corporate brand communication as the numerous ways or touchpoints whereby non-profit organisations connect emotionally with stakeholders. 54 swart based on the above conceptualisation, social media brand communication is then understood as the communication endeavours of the organisation by means of social media. for purposes of this article, the two-fold focus on social media and the corporate brand in the non-profit context points to the varied ways in which organisations apply social media to communicate and engage in conversation or discussion about the corporate brand. social media essentially allows organisations and stakeholders to connect and interact through creating and sharing content to fulfil a basic human need for social interaction. social media conversations the concepts of interaction and conversation are not clearly distinguished in the literature. for purposes of this article, social media conversation is understood to be a type of social interaction specifically aimed at engaging in dialogue on social media and it suggests the exchange of messages over time, as opposed as to a single post on facebook, for example. hence, social media conversation refers to dialogue or dialogic engagement on social media platforms with and between the organisation and its stakeholders. online electronic word of mouth conversations on social media platforms about and with the corporate brand allow stakeholders to express their opinions about an organisation without restrictions. in an online setting, mentions and discussions about the organisation between stakeholders are known as electronic word of mouth (ewom) (cf. moriarty et al. 2015: 83). for this article, ewom is defined as all statements and mentions about the organisation that are expressed between various stakeholders on social media. stakeholders based on the traditional definition of a stakeholder by freeman (1984: 6), namely “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s purpose and objectives”, the concept is understood to refer to prominent groups who have an effect on and are affected by the activities of non-profit organisations in south africa. methodology this study used a quantitative strategy to empirically investigate possible elements and features of a framework that could guide organisations to integrate their social media brand communication. the potential elements and features emerged from a literature review combined with the investigation of historical ic models, ic models in a south african setting, and digital ic models. population, sampling frame and sampling the population of the study was the total number of non-profit organisations in south africa. the sampling frame comprised registered non-profit organisations in the prodder ngo online directory. a two-pronged approach was used for the online survey, namely 54 a framework for integrating social media brand communication by using random sampling to select the accessible population, followed by purposive sampling based on selection criteria set by the researcher. the selection criteria to select the sample included that the non-profit organisation should (1) be a registered non-profit organisation; (2) be registered on the prodder online directory; (3) be active on at least one social media platform; (4) have a dedicated person responsible for managing social media; and (4) be accessible to confirm the selection criteria (1), (2), and (3) above, and to receive a personal invitation to participate. data collection the online survey software programme surveymonkey was used to design and execute the questionnaire. the online questionnaire was self-administered and respondents could access it via a link in an email invitation. the response format selected for the present study was a ranking scale, namely the likert scale. data analysis the proposed elements and distinct features of the framework were empirically verified through statistical research. the pearson correlation coefficient test was used to establish whether a possible association existed between the three broad elements (specified in table 1). the aim was to obtain insight into whether the suggested combinations of the elements could be suitable for integrating social media brand communication. table 1: correlation between elements for integrating social media brand communication correlations between elements elements/sections n mean std dev fundamentals for integrating social media brand communication 42 1.96071 0.54140 brand contact points 42 2.19892 0.65143 ways to sustain social media brand communication integration 42 2.34560 0.64424 as illustrated in table 1, the average scores between the three broad elements (between 1 and 3, but closer to 2) clearly reveal strong associations. hence it can be concluded that the three elements were highly correlated. as further validation, the pearson correlation coefficient of p = ˂.0001 (table 2) supported the correlation and revealed a strong positive linear association between the elements. 76 swart table 2: pearson’s coefficient for internal reliability of elements for integrating social media brand communication correlation for internal reliability of the elements element 1 element 2 element 3 fundamentals for integrating social media brand communication 1.00000 0.66472 <.0001 0.60205 <.0001 brand contact points 0.66472 <.0001 1.00000 elements 0.79633 <.0001 ways to sustain social media brand communication integration 0.60205 <.0001 0.79633 <.0001 1.00000 the cronbach coefficient alpha was used to measure and confirm the internal reliability of the sets of attributes/features in each of the three elements (table 3). table 3: internal reliability of sets of features in each element the fundamentals to integrate social media brand communication brand contact points ways to sustain social media brand communication integration variable alpha variable raw variable raw raw raw 0.877911 raw 0.893907 standardised 0.735044 standardised 0.879016 standardised 0.895959 the results indicated acceptable and excellent reliability between all the features, which revealed strong statistical justification for the combinations thereof in the respective elements. foundation of a conceptual framework for integrating social media brand communication three overarching principles derived from the interdisciplinary view and through statistical research form the foundation of this framework and focus collectively on the use of social media in an integrated way. these are a philosophy of communication integration and the objective to achieve a favourable corporate brand, both of which are 76 a framework for integrating social media brand communication underpinned by a social media focus and its key elements. the key elements inherent in social media and in this article context include connectedness (fuchs 2014: 37), participation (fuchs 2014: 52), the sociality of this media (finkbeiner 2013: 6), social interaction (hocevar 2013: 1), a social presence (gooch & watts 2013); interactivity (fourie 2017: 19), and social media conversation (romenti et al. 2014: 10). key elements of the framework three broad concepts are proposed for integrating social media brand communication in non-profit organisations, namely fundamentals for integrating social media brand communication, brand contact points, and ways to sustain social media brand communication integration. insights gained from the literature review, complemented by the findings and interpretations from the empirical research, revealed specific features that are proposed to constitute each of the elements above. figure 1 illustrates the foundational principles, key elements, and unique features of each. figure 1: foundational principles, key elements and unique features of the framework for integrated social media communication this framework focuses exclusively on strategic (elements 1 and 3) and mechanistic or tactical (element 2) levels at which the coordination of social media brand communication may occur. considering that the strategic intent of non-profits needs to be distinct, this focus allows for a balanced view thereof, together with the ways in which the organisation can communicate with stakeholders in an integrated way. 98 swart element 1: fundamentals for integrating social media brand communication this element attends to social media presence and social media strategy as essentials for a foundation to integrate social media communication. social media presence a social media presence is assumed to be a prerequisite for organisations to be active and to communicate on social media platforms. significant is the notion that social media contributes to a sense of being in the presence of others (gooch & watts 2013: 507), which allows stakeholders to perceive the organisation as present and the communication with and from it as real. in this way the organisation is permitted to exhibit its brand persona and create a certain image. a social presence thus facilitates online conversations that create the perception that the organisation is human (langmade 2020). gallaugher and ransbotham (2010: 199, 200) assert that a distinct presence influences engagement and is essential to attract dialogue with stakeholders. moreover, not only do stakeholders expect organisations to establish and sustain a social presence (ibid.) but, in turn, it can earn social media recognition for the organisation (rampton 2014). an organisation’s presence is supposedly achieved through different social media efforts, such as participating in conversations, sharing content, and engaging in discussions about the corporate (cf. digital marketing institute 2018). the digital marketing institute (2018) suggests the importance of a strategy to improve presence on social media. a social media presence is furthermore recognised as a way of portraying the brand persona, which could generate support for the nonprofit organisation’s cause. since the aim of achieving a positive corporate brand, among others, is to form emotional connections with stakeholders, social presence in an online setting could be linked to creating an “emotional sense of belonging” (wei et al. 2012: 530). social media strategy effing and spil (2016: 2) define social media strategy as “a goal-directed planning process for creating user generated content, driven by a group of internet applications, to create a unique and valuable competitive position”. as mulder (2015: 15) asserts, such a process should consist of principles that deliberately guide the consistent integration of communication endeavours. in this context, a social media strategy permits the all-inclusive planning of social media activities in an integrated way, with an improved social media presence as the most significant benefit (digital marketing institute 2018). the literature reveals various perspectives on the items that such a strategy ought to contain, as well as a lack of clarity on whether it should be a separate guiding document or part of a broader communication strategy. nonetheless, the significance of such a guiding document to provide strategic direction to organisations towards the integration of the organisation’s social media communication is evident (mulder 2015: 18). specific elements are proposed to constitute a social media strategy, namely (1) core organisational objectives for social media brand communication, 98 a framework for integrating social media brand communication including a decision on the type of social media engagement required; (2) knowledge of stakeholders and their preferences, needs, and preferred platforms; (3) operational capacity, including available and skilled staff; (4) a social media content plan by identifying brand messages and messages strategies and deciding on the ratio of owned, co-created and curated content; (5) an ewom plan to encourage and measure favourable ewom where attention should be focused on the social media communication mix, the most suitable platforms to use, and their integration; and (6) establish the effectiveness of the strategy through social media analytics software, social media monitoring, and a social media audit. there are many advantages associated with having a social media strategy. the changes and opportunities when communicating via social media should compel organisations to appreciate the importance of a social media strategy that, in the long run, can cultivate enduring relationships and thereby grow their business (digital marketing institute 2018). equally important in the context of this article, a social media strategy is said to be beneficial in optimising a social media presence, which is the first attribute/feature of this element (digital marketing institute 2018). element 2: brand contact points of social media integration a brand contact point refers to any place of connection between the brand and stakeholders, which allows interaction with the organisation and that could alter the way in which the brand is perceived (cf. patterson 2018). it is proposed that this element be broadly pitched at a tactical level, focusing on contact points or ways through which the integration of communication on social media can be achieved. the three main opportunities for progressing towards social media integration are stakeholder integration; social media content; and the social media brand communication mix. it is noteworthy that communication – or brand contact points – should not necessarily be identical, but should consistently support the broad philosophy of the organisation (torp 2009: 1999). stakeholder integration a stakeholder perspective is key to achieving communication integration as it requires consideration of all the groups and individuals with which the organisation communicates. it focuses on understanding the needs, expectations and preferences of those prosumers of social media content with whom the organisation wishes to connect, create loyalty, and build long-term relationships (cf. steyn & de beer 2012). this increasing focus on stakeholders is also referred to as “stakeholder perspective” (cornelissen 2011: 40), which corroborates the importance of considering the needs and interests of stakeholders when communicating with them in an integrated way (cf. finne & grönroos 2009: 180). the view here is that stakeholder integration denotes that organisations will embrace conversations with and between stakeholders on social media platforms. this article proposes that stakeholder integration can be achieved by being attentive to the conversations and reflecting on and responding to discussions on social media about the corporate brand. this implies attention to two-way communication, implementing 1110 swart a listening approach, and enduring dialogue. additionally, it incorporates brand-point integration that exposes stakeholders to brand messages from the organisation. an ewom plan, as part of a social media strategy, could be valuable to monitor mentions and conversations on social media. social media content despite the many references to the concept of social media content in the literature, no single definition exists that notably distinguishes between different types of content. what is widely agreed on, however, is that content is at the core of social media and permits social media users to connect, interact, create, share, discuss and converse widely (cf. kaplan & haenlein 2010: 61). as social media content encourages unrestricted conversations, it allows stakeholders to create and share experiences about the corporate brand. social media thus acts as the vehicle to reinforce corporate brand messages through such unhindered engagement (cf. ashley & tuten 2015: 15). in this sense, content can be understood as being both the driver and the product of social interaction on social media platforms in different ways, including images, blogs, posts and reposts, tagging, videos, tweets and retweets, and the like (sachan & emmanuel 2011: 145). the researcher classifies social media content as created, cocreated and curated (rakić & rakić 2014: 197). definite possibilities for stakeholders exist; particularly in creating content and assisting in the co-creation of content on social media platforms the possibilities are limitless and allow for their integration. integration can thus be achieved through the management and coordination of social media content and, particularly, the timing thereof, the monitoring of content on these platforms, a combination of the different forms of content (posts, tweets, images and the like), and the ratio in which the three types are applied. social media brand communication mix in line with the aim of this framework, social media is viewed as suitable to serve as an integrated platform by means of which a collection of online and digital media is used in unison/jointly. this term is used when referring to the comprehensive collection of communication methods, tools, mechanics or tactics that the organisation uses to communicate and that needs to be integrated. decisions around the blend of different types of media should be stipulated in a social media strategy, in much the same way as the decisions about the different social media content that an organisation uses. in respect of the communication mix, it is vital to adopt a holistic view of all communication by the organisation, namely to consider all possible types of traditional and social media platforms and the different communication methods used, including email, promotions, personal selling, ewom and other communication actions (rakić & rakić 2014). decisions about the communication mix require the organisation to ensure alignment of content with its cause and the overall organisational objectives; thereby, deciding on the best way to communicate and align content and the most relevant and effective methods. 1110 a framework for integrating social media brand communication the significance of an integrated approach to the communication mix provides the basis for the current focus on aligning and integrating the communication endeavours of various functions of the organisation to align the corporate brand with the desired reputation and image. it must be acknowledged that communication is an intraorganisational (internally and across different departments) and an outward-directed (with stakeholders) activity that suggests that all management functions should be concerned with and involved in the conceptualisation of communication initiatives that directly impact the image of stakeholders (christensen et al. 2008). such communication focuses on crossing traditional organisational boundaries and the inclusion of all “traditional” management functions in its quest to achieve a coherent image of the organisation. the framework distinctively attends to the following two aspects, namely (1) the use of social and traditional media collectively; and (2) the use of multiple platforms that allow for the combining of video, voice, image and data (referred to as media convergence). combining traditional and social media the combination of different types of media to achieve communication consistency requires thorough deliberation. careful consideration is needed if the organisation wishes to align its communication actions and ultimately achieve communication consistency. the combination of all communication tools and methods into a single toolbox is evident in historical and contemporary ic models (gronstedt 1996; niemann 2005; rakić & rakić 2014). this refers to the comprehensive collection of communication methods, tools, mechanics or tactics, which organisations need to apply in an integrated manner. the use of multiple social media platforms extends this idea in an online setting, mainly as a result of technological advances, and it implies the inclusion of all traditional and social media available to the organisation. considering the views on this issue, it is essential to differentiate between traditional and newer types of media and to incorporate both in an overall strategy. examples of traditional media are media releases, brochures and newsletters, and social media platforms that specifically enable conversation, such as twitter and facebook. a non-profit organisation’s unique cause, specific objectives and the methods readily available should serve as points of departure to ensure that the set of communication tools and methods are suitable and functional. furthermore, organisations should weigh up the value of using traditional media to increase awareness of the platforms that they actively use, and consider the value of links on social media to content in traditional media. media convergence media convergence is loosely described as the use of various platforms that allows for the combination of video, voice, image and data, and it essentially enables communication, or the “flow of content”, to take place on many platforms (jenkins 2006). 1312 swart the distinctions between different types of content, as well as the types of social media platforms, necessitate a two-fold approach. first, content should be repurposed and converted to suit different types of platforms. insights into which content succeeds on each platform is vital to ensure it is appropriate and shareable, for example, videos on youtube, or pictures, photographs and other images on instagram. second, content convergence (as referred to in this article) is needed and signifies the use of content in different forms to promote the corporate brand. when the types of content are diversified and used in different ways to advance the same brand message, it not only creates interest and awareness of the corporate brand, but also drives conversation and triggers emotions. examples include pictures, videos, comments, statistics and articles on social media, which are then modified in an article or media release in traditional media. employing multiple social media platforms allows the sharing of uniform corporate brand messages with stakeholders on the platforms they regularly access. moreover, as stakeholders connect across geographical boundaries, it extends the reach of corporate brand messages when stakeholders share these with a wider audience. element 3: ways to sustain social media brand communication integration this element is pitched at the strategic level and specifically considers the continuation of the communication integration initiative. therefore, organisations should consider specific aspects to maintain such an endeavour. this element focuses on a social listening orientation that encompasses listening to discussions and responding on social media; the importance of community, where stakeholders meet and connect around noteworthy topics; the need for the integration of environmental aspects into social media issues and the inclusion of all management functions (crossfunctional); the tasking of a multi-skilled individual or a team of communicators to manage the synergy and consistency of communication activities; and the evaluation or measurement of the social media communication integration. a social listening orientation tran (2020) defines “social listening” as the tracking of social media platforms for mentions and conversations related to the corporate brand. in this way organisations may uncover opportunities on which they can act. this view points to a two-fold process that allows organisations to detect conversations by stakeholders and thus to reveal prevailing attitudes and emerging topics that need to be addressed, followed by decisions on the appropriate action to be taken. listening to stakeholder conversations on social media platforms is key to achieving ic and successfully integrating stakeholders and their conversations by paying attention to their discussions. social listening also seems beneficial to track competitors and indicates where the brand is positioned in the marketplace (tran 2020). moreover, social listening is valuable to obtain an understanding of the online mood, which indicates how stakeholders feel about the corporate brand (tran 2020). this is also referred to as social sentiment, with the monitoring thereof being fundamental to social listening (tran 2020). the opinion is that listening demands comprehensive 1312 a framework for integrating social media brand communication knowledge of a particular organisation. listening commences with an understanding of the organisation itself, its most important programmes and issues, and key concepts relating to these programmes that will ultimately point to the popular topics on the social media platforms. this underscores the strategic importance of this element. literature supports the idea that exchanges between stakeholders on social media take place unhindered and in multiple directions (romenti et al. 2014:10). thus, the online mood will be reflected/evident in conversations with the organisation and with others about the organisation that are therefore explicitly extended through the heightened interaction on social media platforms. the implication for non-profit organisations could be either to strengthen or weaken the corporate brand (vernuccio 2014: 215); hence, the need for deliberate efforts to stay informed of these discussions. community the significance of community as a foundational element of social media is underscored in the framework. this is founded on insights in social media literature in related disciplines, which reveal that social media is primarily community-driven and centres on the need for human interaction. leiner et al. (2009: 29) explain that the “internet is as much a collection of communities as a collection of technologies, and its success is largely attributed to both satisfying basic community needs as well as utilizing the community in an effective way to push the infrastructure forward”. the ability of social media to congregate people around common interests and topics contributes to the forming of online communities. in the same vein, it allows for the identification and mobilisation of influential people, such as brand ambassadors, influencers and advocates, who can extend awareness of the non-profit corporate brand by connecting its supporters across geographical boundaries (boster et al. 2011: 180). the framework proposes certain considerations to promote the formation of brand communities: 1. utilise social online platforms to create awareness of the non-profit brand and to introduce and connect the non-profit organisation with existing and potential stakeholders. the all-inclusive planning contained within a social media strategy will guide the decision on which social media platforms are best suited to promote the organisation’s cause. this includes aspects such as available resources, the organisation’s stakeholders, and the social media platforms most preferred by the organisation. the value of using certain social media platforms is that they intensify interaction with and between stakeholders to eventually form and maintain online communities and promote stakeholder relations. 2. purposely engage in conversations with influential groups about the corporate brand. these will be people who have a sense of connection with the brand and its cause, for example brand ambassadors or advocates, who could thus be identified and connected. against the background provided thus far it is fair to conclude that interaction on social media offers numerous opportunities 1514 swart that could be optimised to unite stakeholders who share a passion for the brand and who will drive conversations about it (berger 2020). 3. prefix hashtags to campaigns, events, topics or conversations that allow stakeholders to discover and assemble around these activities in distinct communities (sachan & emmanuel 2011: 145). as the creation, adaptation and sharing of different types of content is central to social media, it is important to post content that stakeholders view as worthy to be engaged in (kaplan & haenlein 2010: 61). 4. build community by creating social media content that resonates with stakeholders. tailored content can create meaningful connections with stakeholders, as well as permit the formation of communities of like-minded people (anon 2019). the involvement of both organisation and stakeholder to co-create content for social media could leverage the use thereof. this point demands an in-depth knowledge of the organisation’s stakeholders and their needs, preferences and pertinent community issues to create brand awareness (anon 2019). 5. accept the importance of brand ambassadors, influencers and advocates to create communities by creating and extending brand awareness. the existence and impact of influential and well-known people with the aptitude to connect widely dispersed audiences around certain topics and interests would be invaluable to the non-profit sector. organisations should be committed to identify, acknowledge and exploit the connectivity of these individuals to unite stakeholders into communities. 6. create personal bonds with and empower brand ambassadors (berger 2020). it is vital to build relationships with those who are passionate about your brand and allow the organisation to connect with communities authentically (anon 2020). therefore, organisations should provide ambassadors with the necessary resources to allow them to communicate and extend the reach of the corporate brand. they should be clearly informed of requirements and guidelines through the availability of a support channel when needed (anon 2020). organisations could support their personal projects and possibly create an ambassador community to link them with other ambassadors. 7. knowledge of interests and common bonds. an early definition by ridings et al. (2002: 273) identifies the key elements of community as being the “common interests and practices” that are regularly communicated. this highlights the importance of identifying and getting to know the causes, interests and passions that could create an association with the corporate brand and a sense of belonging. environmental and cross-functional integration although these two elements are not consistently emphasised in the literature on integrated communication, the framework proposes that they should form the basis of a strategy for social media brand communication. niemann (2005: 260) asserts that environmental integration recognises the impact of “political, social, economic and 1514 a framework for integrating social media brand communication related environments” and specifically refers to integration into these settings. from an ic outlook an intense awareness of the external environment is needed, which points to the necessity of being aware of these dynamics and applying the insights to communication strategies and tactics. though seemingly understated, the online environment – as a communication setting – demands organisations to keep up with rapidly evolving social media trends. christensen et al. (2008) define integrated communication as the “efforts to coordinate and align all communications so that the organization speaks consistently across different audiences and media”. the idea is that integration should specifically be concerned with the comprehensive integration of all traditional areas of communication of the organisation (johansen & andersen 2012: 276). when combined, the strategic input of traditional functions, such as corporate communications and marketing, drives value to the organisation in terms of a positive corporate brand, as well as to stakeholders, by meeting their expectations (the conference board 2016). cornelissen (2013) refers to this as “the orchestration and coordination of all communication and content” that, in the context of this article, will allow organisations in the non-profit sector to achieve uniform impressions of their corporate brand. the research revealed that communication professionals in these organisations are often expected to fulfil more than one role and, in turn, are authorised to pursue synergy and consistency of communication about the corporate brand. management of synergy and consistency of communication endeavours contemporary south african models on integrating communication justify the appointment of a multiskilled communicator or a specific team to attend to the communication of the entire organisation; thereby, achieving alignment and cohesion of communication (niemann 2005). however, recent integrated models on digital communication that are relevant in this context, such as those by gurău (2008), castronovo and huang (2012) and rakić & rakić (2014), fail to consider this aspect. this is contrary to the basic premise adopted in this article, namely that a favourable corporate brand is beneficial in creating a good reputation for non-profit organisations. it stands to reason that such a coordinator or team should be appropriately positioned to ensure progress in the strategic consistency of communication. this function necessitates a sound knowledge of the organisation’s strategic purpose and overall intention, which comprises the goals and values of the organisation, the structure of the organisation to achieve cross-functional communication consistency, as well as sound knowledge of social media platforms and the different content that can be used thereon. evaluation the proposed framework intends to assist non-profit organisations to attain a desired corporate brand by way of consistent communication. for this reason, organisations should regularly gain an overview of the progress made towards the integration of social media – hence, progress towards the ic effort of the organisation. it stands to reason that the success of the integration of social media brand communication needs to be measured in terms of the strategic objectives pursued. 1716 swart conclusion by adopting an interdisciplinary focus on the corporate brand, social media and ic, the article proposes possible elements for a framework whereby the integration of social media brand communication could be attained; thus, promoting a strong corporate brand. the article provided valuable insights into a possible framework to integrate social media brand communication in non-profit organisations – one that could contribute greatly to the practice of communication in these organisations. distinct strategic and tactical points were identified for incorporation in the framework. the combination of the theoretical aspects of the proposed elements was statistically confirmed with a high correlation between the elements. the findings of the study suggest that while non-profit organisations in south africa acknowledge the importance of social media, they are not yet utilising the possibilities strategically. the main limitations of the study were the lack of relevant social media theory, particularly with an ic focus and in a non-profit context; the fact that the response rate did not allow for an investigation into the relationships between the variables; and an incomplete and incorrect database. meaningful statistical analysis provided adequate statistical support for the inclusion and combination of the three elements in the framework, but the conduct of factor analysis to determine the relationships between them could not be achieved. lastly, inaccurate information was found in the database and for-profit organisations were included in some instances. references abratt, r. & kleyn, n. 2012. corporate identity, corporate branding and corporate reputations. european journal of marketing 46(7/8): 1048-1063. anon. 2019. 13 ways to create content for social media that connects with your brand’s audience. 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https://doi.org/10.1016/s0963-8687(02)00021-5 https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij-05-2012-0041 http://0-dx.doi.org.oasis.unisa.ac.za/10.1007/978-0-85729-436-4 http://0-dx.doi.org.oasis.unisa.ac.za/10.1007/978-0-85729-436-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-436-4_7 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-436-4_7 https://conference-board.org/topics/integrated-corporate-communications-and-marketing https://conference-board.org/topics/integrated-corporate-communications-and-marketing https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280910953861 https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280910953861 https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2013.12 https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488414525400 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-012-9234-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-012-9234-9 _hlk83286642 _hlk60311791 _hlk83287377 _hlk48734136 _hlk51230461 _hlk48734170 _hlk61955965 _hlk48734202 _hlk83283852 untitled 125 corporate strategies and market developments in south africa's telecommunications industry communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 125 136 brilliant mhlanga* abstract this article focuses on various factors that are usually exploited by media institutions to impede competition. a case study of south africa's telkom and three cellular phone service providers is used to illustrate how such factors are often used to buttress monopoly in the market and impede other smaller competitors. this article posits that company size alone cannot yield higher profits and market gains without factors like concentration strategies and forms of integration; vertical, horizontal and diagonal expansion; the impact of regulation; policy stipulations; and technological innovation. demand size also causes a ripple-effect to the increase in value of a product, thereby increasing the volume sold. economies of scale and scope also need to be analysed concomitantly. * brilliant mhlanga is a graduate student and research fellow in the department of culture, communication and media studies (ccms) at the university of kwazulunatal in durban. background, purpose and research method the debate concerning implications of company size on the market, and the degree to which it can be an aiding factor in impeding smaller market actors, provides an intricate situation in the telecommunications industry. this article focuses on the telecommunications sector, specifically telkom as a national company in south africa, but also on other key telecommunications players in the south african terrain. in this regard, vodacom, mtn and cell c, south africa’s three main cellular phone service providers, form part of the effort to understand the telecommunications environment and help us to glean on the corporate strategies employed by these companies to impede competition and entry of smaller companies into the market. furthermore, this article argues that company size alone cannot yield higher profits and market gains without other factors like concentration strategies that can be interpreted as forms of integration; vertical, horizontal and diagonal expansion; the impact of regulation; policy stipulations; and technological innovation. the use and attainment of these corporate strategies will lead to the creation of barriers to entry for smaller market actors. in the analysis of the effects of company size on profits and the fulfilment of investors’ expectations on continuous and sustainable profit growth, kolo and vogt (2003: 251) warn that there is a growing assumption that company size does work in isolation from other factors. they further refer to this as “conventional wisdom” whose mask has been used to entrench the notion that the bigger the company size and its market share, the more successful it is (cf. sanchez-tabernero 1993:7; hoskins, mcfadyen and finn 1997:22; doyle 2002a:47). it is worth noting that size effects can be achieved through improved utilisation of resources and capabilities in tandem with regulation. doyle (2002a:9) says effects add up to improved economies of scale and scope that act as barriers to entry for smaller firms into the market. a brief assessment of economies of scale shows that these economies would exist if a company increases its operating unit, which in turn reduces the costs of production or distribution. the reason for this development can be due to the fact that the size of an economically viable product generates a large output exceeding fixed costs. as will be shown in the case study of telkom, due to its diversification drive, the company, which has been a monopoly for years, formed synergies with multinational companies: thintana consortium from malaysia and sbc from america. this helped in the injection of capital meant for infrastructural development and service provision. the company is now viable and competing with cellular phone service providers, a positive development on the part of telkom as it had lost most of its customer base to wireless service providers due to the customers’ preference of cellular phones. this move from being a monopoly to a duopoly coupled with diversification, as will be shown in this article, has maintained telkom’s grip on the market. specialisation is another factor which has been proffered as the main reason for the attainment of economies of scale and a barrier to entry for smaller market actors. if a big company decides to concentrate on its core business, even in the face of competition 126 it tends to yield profits. kolo and vogt (2003:251) add that the merger of american online (aol) and time warner, for example, which formed the largest company, created buzzwords whose results had nothing to show on the ground, whether the merger was positive or negative. they are quick to posit that the ambitious expectations of media and communications executives, as well as investors, have faded following the unsuccessful specialisation deal on profitability and economic performance. linked to the above point is the suggestion that if a big company buys more inputs it may realise more returns. in telecommunications these inputs can be in the form of new technologies meant to enhance efficiency, improve company output and service delivery, such as integrated services digital network (isdn), digital subscriber line (dsl) and voice over internet protocol (voip). hoskins, mcfadyen and finn (1997:22) also suggest that economies of scope occur when the total cost of producing different goods within one company is less than the sum of the costs of producing various goods in separate companies. it is also noted that mergers and not company size alone exacerbate the attainment of these economies; this also reduces effective competition and may be a deterrent for smaller market actors. in summary it implies the creation of a monopoly and that there is power in monopoly caused by the merger which can be exploited to increase profits. hoskins, mcfadyen and finn (2004:101) add that economies of scope are often the motive for mergers or joint ventures involving companies making different products, in some cases at different vertical levels of the same industry. in the case study of telkom it will be noted that the merger with some internet service providers (isps) increased the returns for telkom and the realisation of profits, as telkom’s services now expand to internet facilities such as domain name provision and e-mail solutions. kolo and vogt (2003:252) say these economies of scope include tangible and intangible resources coupled with organisational capabilities. tangible resources would mean the elimination of duplication of facilities between companies and the creation of a single shared facility. in telecommunications this can be seen in the case where cell c as a small and new company was allowed to operate following an arrangement with vodacom that required it to use vodacom’s base stations. following this arrangement, cell c uses vodacom’s base stations to this day. this move is characterised by a combination of the three forms of integration: vertical, horizontal and diagonal expansion as a way of diversifying. these corporate strategies are often based on synergies or mergers resulting from convergence, as in the case of telkom, which now combines the use of satellite facilities and voice over internet protocol (voip) in an effort to influence profit and economic growth in telecommunications. this article is informed by a case study research method, rooted on a phenomenological underpinning with a qualitative paradigm. the research techniques that were used to amass the data include the desktop method, with the use of the internet for online journals, newspapers and research into various websites for telkom, mtn and vodacom. other secondary sources of information used include books, journals and newspapers. 127 telkom and its corporate drive telkom, south africa’s leading telecommunications company, provides an interesting case study of a national service provider whose drive has seen an incorporation of various corporate strategies to maintain its market grip and development. due to its various market strategies, telkom has earned south africa the profile of being the leading country in telecommunications in africa. this follows telkom’s corporate drive to seek to offset impending challenges from other players in the communications sector. these include cellular service providers, namely vodacom, mtn and cell c. south africa’s telecommunication sector possesses 40% of all telephone lines on the african continent. this is also characterised by marked growth levels in the telecommunications sector linked to the significant changes in the institutional environment governing the sector. the enforcement of the communications act of 1996 brought about rapid growth in the telecommunications sector, a move which indirectly implied that telkom ltd., a company which was once state-owned, now held a de facto monopoly on fixed telephone line services. furthermore, south africa’s two major governing authorities, the south african telecommunications regulation agency (satra) and the independent broadcasting authority (iba), were merged in 2000 to form the independent communications authority of south africa (icasa) (ali 2003:125). icasa’s main task is to regulate communication structures and technologies at national level (republic of south africa telecommunications act 103 of 1996). the purpose of this merger was to clarify the situation in the telecommunications industry. this new regulatory board expressed the need for consistency in the evolution of the telecommunications sector through technology convergence and with opening up for other players (market liberalisation) thus embracing a free market approach where market forces play the determinant role. this paved the way for two major cellular phone operators (vodacom and mtn) by 1997, a move which saw the number of subscribers rising to around 1,4 million in that same year. these two new entrants had the task to invest in community projects aimed at promoting widespread access to telecommunication services in south africa. vodacom was tasked to allocate 22 000 lines in underprivileged areas over a four year period, while mtn created 7, 500 access points countrywide. russell southwood (2006)1 says vodacom’s background shows its link with vodafone, whose main area of concentration has always been in the north of sub-saharan africa. he states that in 2005 vodafone increased its stake in vodacom from 35% to almost 50% in a deal worth us$2,4 billion. telkom remained with almost half the shares. this means that telkom to a certain extent controls vodacom’s activities in south africa. telkom’s corporate strategy is to exploit all opportunities and also to benefit in some services offered by vodacom. a third cellular phone operator, made up of groups of local business traders and foreign partners who own 60% shares (specifically oger telecom south africa, a subsidiary of the saudi arabian company, oger), was also granted the licence to operate. this led to the establishment of cell c. by 2001 an estimated number of subscribers to cellular telephony was pegged at 9 million. 128 it was agreed that cell c will not open its own base stations but use vodacom’s already existing ones. this became a horizontal integration and was obviously advantageous to vodacom, as it meant that in effect there were two cellular operators merged to compete with mtn. vodacom offered a facility called receive a lot, which charged r29 monthly, whereas mtn’s was r30 for three months. this difference forced vodacom to shift to three months. in response, mtn shifted further and changed its facility for life, hence the slogan mtn for life.2 following all these changes vodacom had to change and offer their facility for life. mtn responded to this move by further diversifying and introducing the call per second facility. this implies that a conversation is no longer determined by the units one has, but by the time one will spend on the phone. in turn, vodacom introduced the for you package which operates in a similar way to that of mtn!3 this competition between the three service providers saw the creation of business ties with major stores, supermarkets and outlets being established for the distribution of vodacom, mtn and cell c products, such as sim-packs and fixed lines with gadgets for contract lines. big stores such as edgars, jet, game, shoprite and some furniture shops offer distributing services. this has been followed by incentives offered by most furniture shops, whereby if one purchases furniture, they offer a particular brand of cellular phone, either with mtn, vodacom or a cell c sim-pack. the brand in most cases is nokia following co-production and distribution deals entered between nokia south africa and these cellular phone service providers. this case provides an example of a vertical supply chain and expansion as a corporate strategy meant to boost sales and profits. the telecommunications operators have further diversified to sponsoring sporting activities in a bid to expand their customer base. for example, vodacom sponsors south africa’s two major football teams, orlando pirates and kaizer chiefs, and is a premiership soccer league sponsor. mtn sponsors a junior talent picking league, and recently sponsored the africa cup of nations tournament (afcon 2006 staged in egypt). mtn has further expanded through its global system for mobile communications (gsm) networks to eight african countries, with an estimated 17 million subscribers by june 2005.4 these networks involve wireless communications services that offer the following technologies: general packet radio service (gprs), enhanced data rates for gsm evolution (edge) and the third generation gsm services (3gsm). this is another form of vertical integration aimed at improving market efficiency and service delivery. the most recent horizontal expansion as a corporate strategy by mtn follows its acquisition of econet’s shares in botswana’s mascom wireless company, and a deal to operate in congo-brazzaville, sealed at the end of 2005. this entails the expansion of mtn’s market share either by acquisition through internal growth or by acquisition of another firm with a similar product. gillian doyle (2002a:25) says such a move is 129 motivated by the firm’s desire to maximise profit in order to have greater market power and ensure efficiency gains. however, she warns that much as the achievement of efficiency gains might be seen as serving the public, the accumulation of market power and market dominance may lead to the company’s policies that run contrary to the public interest. the impact of cellular phones on the south african market signalled the demise of telkom which had enjoyed a monopoly before the final merger of satra and iba in 2000. this meant that telkom had to diversify as a corporate strategy meant to regain its market share, development and control. telkom therefore embraced technological convergence, which ranged between high value-added and high-yield sectors such as network development and service data integration systems, and low-yield sectors such as computer manufacturing and distributing outfits. this vertical integration, coupled with a seemingly diagonal expansion (as in the case of computer manufacturing and distribution) exploited the real opportunities in the information technology market characterised by the emergence of an economy increasingly based on the internet, the development of e-commerce, and technologies of media convergence. telkom now offers a wide array of internet services ranging from integrated services digital network (isdn), digital subscriber line (dsl) to voice over internet protocol (voip) and telkom offers satellite services also known as telkom internet powered by satellite (tips). this facility is targeted at customers in remote areas and reduces the previous burden of setting up poles for telephone lines, a move which saw them losing potential customers to cellular service providers. tips uses space stream express and space stream office to enable a single satellite dish antenna for receiving and sending information.5 in november 2005, telkom south africa announced that it had embraced the services of a global israeli company called amdocs based in america by fully utilising its integrated customer management strategy (icm).6 these services include the following: amdocs billing, amdocs crm and amdocs order management products. telkom’s vertical supply and horizontal integration strategy to employ these services is meant to increase its ability to track service issues that affect its network and subscribers. telkom’s installation of amdocs’ trouble-ticketing software aims to speed up the company’s response to customer reports regarding service problems and reduce the amount of time customers spend on the phone with customer service representatives. this new software advances the integrated customer management (icm) strategy and is aimed at placing the customer at the center of telkom’s key business processes. telkom had to exploit these services in a bid to challenge the market, which was increasingly slipping away towards the other three cellular service providers: vodacom, mtn and cell c. furthermore, telkom plays a big role in corporate social responsibility by sponsoring a wide range of social activities. soccer tournaments form part of the main social responsibility programme. examples include the annual telkom charity cup and the recently launched premier soccer league (psl) telkom knock-out cup competition 130 (for 2006/7 soccer season), which has been dubbed as “the richest tournament in the history of south african football”7. other forms of corporate social responsibility include the recently packaged national brand meant to entrench the spirit of patriotism and nationhood in south africa called proudly south african. this brand is a product of various south african companies, notable among them the south a f r i c a n broadcasting corporation (sabc), south african airways (saa) and eskom holdings limited, a south african electricity services provider. the use of this brand by telkom is meant to advertise and also sell its products, such as world-call cards and phone cards among others. the impact of regulation on the market the impact of regulation, whether positive or negative, in the south african case cannot be seen in isolation from other militating factors, especially political factors. initially, the government’s commitment to privatising state-owned utility monopolies was impeded by the fear that new-comers might solely focus on making profits and lowpopulation areas would be left out because of costs of rolling out infrastructure. this fear was aggravated by the ruling african national congress’ (anc) tripartite partners, the congress of trade union of south africa (cosatu) and the south african communist party (sacp) whose socialist perspective was that liberalisation was not a means to an end. instead, it was seen as a way of increasing profit margins at the expense of the poor and previously disenfranchised communities. they further argued that telkom already had a backlog which it was suppose to offset before any plans towards privatisation are to be considered. in light of this view, storsul’s (forthcoming:03) case study of telecommunication companies in denmark, norway and ireland offers interesting comparative insights on problems likely to be experienced by market liberalising. she suggests that by liberalising, universal provision of services will be affected as the state monopoly would have faded, giving way to competition and with dominant players likely to use their market power to hinder smaller actors from entering the market. while this view would give a tinge of being pro-monopolies, it provides another insight into the political privileges a monopoly would enjoy in the case of telkom in south africa. in a monopoly, telkom had an obligation to provide services nation-wide in exchange for their monopoly subsidies that transcended between profitable and non-profitable areas, thereby politicising nationwide access to telecommunications services (storsul 2002:03). this political pressure from the tripartite alliance members puts the government in a bind, as it had a political will to fulfil on the one hand and business interests for telkom on the other. from the government’s view, privatisation was the best for attracting foreign revenue, a move which was believed to be the conduit for the provision of services without telkom incurring losses, thereby achieving economies of scale and scope. they had to settle for a compromise, that is, managed liberalisation slowly privatising the state utility companies over several years. hence the 30% sell of shares. 131 however, the telkom monopoly had to be extended to give the company the market and an advantage to complete the roll-out of infrastructure, especially in the rural areas and other disadvantaged areas. this move was buttressed by the telecommunications act of 1996, which gave telkom a revised monopoly over fixed telephone lines for five years, but went on to stipulate specific service delivery obligations for a five-year period. this meant an entrenched duopoly instead of monopoly considering that telkom had earlier on sold 30% of its share.8 according to various analysts, the state of quandary the government found itself in had to be viewed from a two-pronged approach by assessing the willingness of those who are exerting pressure on both sides. in a bid to trade cautiously the government had set out to continue with its policy of managed liberalisation by introducing a second national operator, a move which was spurned by its overseas business partners (malaysian and american) and other local captains of industry. two different views opposed to opening up the market for other market actors came from the already mentioned interested parties. the first being cosatu and sacp who were getting upset with the anc-led government’s zeal for privatising state companies, and so they threatened to withdraw their voter support in the next election. then, on the other hand, the big business owners of the south african telecommunications sector threatened the government as they felt that more competition might give them less chances to make profit. specifically m-cell, the holding company of mtn, threatened to withdraw its proposed investment plan in the second national operator if another national operator was to be allowed. as stated above the government was in a state of quandary as it had a significant shareholding in m-cell, therefore such a move would dent the state coffers. furthermore, thintana consortium threatened to sell most of its telkom shares into the market once telkom was listed in the johannesburg stock exchange (jse). this move generally threatened telkom’s economic hold, as it would mean that if the overseas conglomerate dispensed of its shares into the market at the same time as the government, the value of telkom shares would fall and the government would fail to realise about r18 billion from selling its share as initially planned. in essence, this implied that partial privatisation has acted as a barrier to smaller market actors, thereby hindering competition which is likely to usher in an era of revised lower prices. furthermore, the threat by an overseas conglomerate, thintana consortium, from a developed world had a negative impact on the possibility of having new entrants, a move meant to protect their share price and market grip. this also serves as a pointer that local companies are and will be less able to compete in the international market. the other factor brought forward by this move is that more competition would mean improved service provision, the price of local calls would be lowered and more people would be able to afford information and communication technologies (icts) such as internet, especially the voip facility which telkom had initially chosen to restrict and effect a ban on. a shift from a monopoly to a duopoly poses a danger of taxing smaller companies with higher charges and banning efficient technologies like voip.9 132 it is worth suggesting that the final move to open up the market has been done, though in a government-managed style. telkom has benefited in that the company has had to widen its scope by embracing new technologies of communication as can be gleaned from its now wide network of service provision to the extent of expanding to regional countries like namibia and angola. telkom has also been given time and space to locate its niche in the market. furthermore, through its core-sponsored brand, proudly south african, telkom has a slight stake in the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc) and is listed on the johannesburg stock exchange (jse). discussion and conclusion following the argument presented in the introduction that company size alone cannot act as a barrier to entry for smaller market actors, the case study has shown that other factors such as corporate strategies pursued by a company, regulation and political factors play a role in impeding entry for other actors in the market (picard 1996:30). these corporate configurations that companies tend to adopt in a bid to maintain their hold on the market include cross-media growth expansion, strategies of monomedia (doyle 2002a:17) together with strategies of horizontal, diagonal and vertical expansion. the case study of south africa’s telecommunications industry shows how big actors, namely telkom, vodacom, mtn and to a lesser extent cell c, employed these corporate strategies to maintain their market share, growth and development. the arrangement between vodacom and cell c, that the latter uses vodacom’s basestations, provides an example of horizontal expansion. this is a corporate strategy which most companies in the telecommunications sector in south africa seem to have first explored. it has advantages, some of which include efficiency gains, creation of a greater market power, and ensuring an entrenched public interest and customer base. the major aim to be realised is the attainment of economies of scale. cell c is expected to benefit from this arrangement by exploiting already existing infrastructure. this means a reduction in expenditure on the part of installation of base stations and other inputs that vodacom was offering. vodacom also benefited from this arrangement, as it meant that it had some share from the cell c’s returns. the other advantage is that by competing with mtn, vodacom was incurring losses as it had to shift most of its policies in order to stay afloat as mtn was fast becoming popular with its services. cell c therefore was a window of compensation for the losses vodacom incurred. in view of this development, albarran and dimmick (1996:43) proffer what in their study of media concentration and economies of multiformity is referred to as “across-industry” concentration. across-industry concentration entails a situation where a company, in this case vodacom, crosses to acquire shares and business influence in cell c as an independent entity, but engages in a similar line of business. there are some advantages associated with this form of business development: the attainment of economies of multiformity being one. economies of multiformity in this form of concentration result from the enhanced revenues and lowered costs due to the operation of companies in more than one communication 133 industry. albarran and dimmick (1996:43) add that economies of multiformity constitute a form of corporate efficiency analogous to economies of scale. the difference could be that it is not only realised within a single industry but from corporate operations, that is, in two or more similar industries. a recent development involving the acquisition of 20% shares by mtn and another substantial amount by telkom in the mhn98, a media firm housing m-net and supersport, provides an interesting case of diagonal expansion as a corporate strategy. the form of diversification into the film industry as in the case of mtn and telkom’s shares in m-net further entrenches the two companies’ hold on the market share. this also acts as a barrier to entry for smaller market actors, as cell c is almost invisible having entered the market in 2001 and only managed to gain 10% of the market. the corporate strategies employed by the three big telecommunications companies in south africa (telkom, vodacom and mtn) impede the entry of other players except on the condition that the new entrant has to be swallowed. it can best be viewed and analysed following herman and mcchesney’s (1997:71) description of rupert murdoch’s corporate strategies as those of a media tycoon who wants to conquer the world and seemingly is about to achieve his goal. telkom appears, despite the establishment of icasa and re-regulation in the form of managed liberalisation, set to control the south african telecommunications market share and even expand across the african continent as can be seen by its acquisition of 50% shares in vodacom. mtn also appears to have found the market niche in the african terrain through its activities in eight african countries. the above discussion shows that many factors meant to develop a company double up as impediments to competition and entry of new players in the market. the exercise of market power by large media groups serves to impede competition; it therefore confers strategic advantages on a big company such as telkom, which simultaneously acts as an obstacle to market efficiency and a barrier to entry for smaller market actors. storsul (forthcoming:03) warns that there is need for a “strategic model” which states that full competition alone, if not checked with some form of intervention (regulation), would also be a barrier to entry. similarly, doyle (2002b: 63) concludes that the greater “market power” which many firms command undoubtedly serves to enhance their profitability, but it also has the potential to harm consumer interests and threaten the efficient operation of the market. endnotes 1 russell southwood’s (2006) article, “the new scramble for africa”, provides an interesting insight into some corporate strategies employed by the big multinational companies. he also sees this move as blocking other local small market players from participating in the market as big companies create synergies that later influence governing authorities on regulations and policy moves. this article can be found in the following website: http://mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=2618 134 2 see mtn website: http://www.mtn.co.za 3 see vodacom website: http://www.vodacom.co.za 4 refer to mtn section ‘who we are’, on their website. 5 for more information on services provided refer to telkom’s website: http://www.telkom.co.za/athome/products/satellite/index.html 6 for more information on these services visit the following website: http://www.amdocs.com/hotnews.asp?news_id=533 7 information on telkom’s latest soccer knock-out cup competition can be accessed on: http://www.psl.co.za/latest_news/story_12428.shtml 8 for further consultation on this subject refer to bridges.org, on the following website: http://www.bridges.org/case_studies/122 9 see bridges.org on the website stated above. 135 references albarran, a. b. and dimmick, j. 1996. concentration and economies of multiformity in the communication industries. the journal of media economics 9(4): 41-50. ali, f. 2003. the south african telecommunications environment: a brief assessment of regulatory change. communicatio 29(1&2): 144-28. doyle, g. 2002a. understanding media economics. sage: london. doyle, g. 2002b. media ownership: the economics and politics of convergence and concentration in the uk and european media. sage: london. 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distributive challenges and national differences. in lucas, p. (ed.) convergence and fragmentation. bristol: intellect (under publication). 136 1pb exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in south africa abstract there has been an increase in lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in mainstream media in south africa. this suggests that brands are starting to acknowledge lgbtq consumers as an important consumer market needing representation in advertisements. however, to date little empirical research has examined the response of heterosexual consumers to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements. therefore, this study examined the impact of tolerance of homosexuality on attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and brands. the findings revealed that participants with a high tolerance towards homosexuality have more positive attitudes towards advertisements and brands. the attitudes towards the advertisements have a significant positive influence on the attitude towards the brand. in addition, the study revealed that heterosexual men exposed to lesbian and gaythemed advertisements tend to have negative attitudes towards advertisements compared to heterosexual women. managerial implications are discussed. keywords: lesbian and gay-themed adverts; lgbtq; heterosexual consumers; brand attitudes; marketing communication; advertising introduction with approximately five million members (lbm gay consumer profile 2012), or approximately 10% of the population – and an estimated buying power of r152 billion in 2017 – the south african lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (lgbtq) market has been coined the “dream market” (bagnall 2011). according to um (2014), same-sex households’ income is substantially higher than their heterosexual counterparts. as such, 79% of lesbian and gay individuals in south africa earn r10 000 per month and above, with 85% holding a tertiary qualification (lbm gay consumer profile 2012). south africa has one of the most nkosivile welcome madinga school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: nkosivile.madinga@ uct.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-40267423 philip broster school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: philip.broster@uct. ac.za andrianna kappatos school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: andrianna.kappatos@ alumni.uct.ac.za julia kirr school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: krrjul004@myuct. ac.za junaid kader school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: kdrmoh017@myuct. ac.za mailto:nkosivile.madinga@uct.ac.za mailto:nkosivile.madinga@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4026-7423 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4026-7423 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4026-7423 mailto:philip.broster@uct.ac.za mailto:philip.broster@uct.ac.za mailto:andrianna.kappatos@alumni.uct.ac.za mailto:andrianna.kappatos@alumni.uct.ac.za mailto:krrjul004@myuct.ac.za mailto:krrjul004@myuct.ac.za mailto:kdrmoh017@myuct.ac.za mailto:kdrmoh017@myuct.ac.za 32 madinga et al. liberal constitutions in the world and was the first country in africa to integrate sexual orientation in its bill of rights in 1996 (francis & msibi 2011; traeen et al. 2009). as a result, homosexuality in south africa has become more acceptable (aung & sha 2016; munyuki & vincent 2017; ncanana & ige 2014) and lgbtq consumers are considered an attractive market (dixon 2015; livermon 2014; rogerson & visser 2011). lgbtq consumers have been acknowledged as a key consumer segment due to their substantial spending power (angelini & bradley 2010; um 2016), and they have been identified as a sector where brands can grow their revenue and market share (um 2014). however, this segment is still an “untapped” market in developing economies such as south africa. as a result, brands are now targeting this consumer base. furthermore, several scholars state that lgbtq consumers tend to purchase products advertised directly for them. therefore, brands are now utilising lesbian and gay-themed advertisements to reach the lgbtq market. akestam et al. (2017) define lesbian and gaythemed advertisements as those featuring homosexual portrayals. initially, brands placed lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in so-called gay media (greenlee 2004). however, a growing number of brands have now started to place lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in mainstream media (akestam et al. 2017), thereby reaching both heterosexual and homosexual consumers (puntoni et al. 2011). numerous studies indicate that lesbian and gay-themed advertisements might alienate heterosexual consumers (akestam et al. 2017; greenlee 2004; um 2014). likewise, lesbian and gay-themed advertisements are not always received positively by heterosexual consumers (braun et al. 2015), particularly those with a lower tolerance towards homosexuality. thus, research confirms that some heterosexual consumers tend to have a negative attitude towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in mainstream media (wan-hsiu 2011). marketing scholars and practitioners have expressed concern about the impact of lesbian and gay-themed advertisements on consumers, particularly heterosexual consumers (um 2016). notwithstanding the increase in lesbian and gaythemed advertising, much is still unknown about the attitudes of heterosexual consumers towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements. the present study explores the response chandra mophethe school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: mmscha002@myuct. ac.za aparna joseph school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: aparna.joseph@ alumni.uct.ac.za sebastian roodt school of management studies, faculty of commerce, university of cape town, cape town, south africa email: rdtseb001@myuct. ac.za doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.8 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 2-20 date submitted: 27 january 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:mmscha002@myuct.ac.za mailto:mmscha002@myuct.ac.za mailto:aparna.joseph@alumni.uct.ac.za mailto:aparna.joseph@alumni.uct.ac.za mailto:rdtseb001@myuct.ac.za mailto:rdtseb001@myuct.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.8 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements of heterosexual consumers to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and brands. accordingly, this study revisits marketing practitioners’ anxieties over marketing their products to lgbtq consumers, and examines whether advertising to lesbian and gay consumers results in an undesirable effect on heterosexuals’ attitudes towards the advertisement and the brand. the findings ought to provide practical implications for brands and marketers who are considering targeting lgbtq consumers to grow their brand and increase their sales and market share. literature review tolerance towards homosexuality in south africa some of the most influential forces in the community that react to sexuality and perpetuate discrimination are homophobia and heterosexism (um 2014). according to bernat et al. (2001), the most common definition of homophobia is an attitude of hostility towards people with a homosexual orientation. this definition tends to individualise the process of discrimination and rejection of homosexual individuals (fraisse & barrientos 2016). heterosexism is described as a belief that every person in the society is (or should be) heterosexual (chamberland & lebreton 2012). deliberately (and not deliberately), society tends to privilege heterosexuality, erasing, undervaluing, oppressing or discriminating against the lgbtq community in the process (francis & msibi 2011). research among different cultural demographics across the globe has revealed a high correlation between the relationship of a country’s gay rights laws and the attitudes and perceptions of the people within the country (levy & levy 2017). when apartheid ended more than two decades ago, the new government in south africa quickly adopted progressive legislation, passing laws that enshrine gender equality and freedom of expression (de greef 2019). despite the fact that south africa passed a bill of rights in 1996 that forbids discrimination against individuals on the grounds of sexual orientation, the lgbtq community still suffers homophobia, particularly in townships and rural areas (nduna et al. 2017). a study conducted by hosken (2017) found that approximately 50% of the respondents knew and/or had heard of a gay individual who has been assaulted, raped or murdered for being gay. in south africa, there has been a significant change in how homosexual individuals are perceived and treated. according to akermanidis and ventor (2014), there are two theories explaining the shift in changes of attitudes towards homosexuality: ♦ the generational-replacement theory explanation, which states that the older, more conservative generation is being replaced with a younger generation with a higher tolerance towards homosexuality; and ♦ changes in politics, social norms and religious affairs have accelerated the acceptance of homosexuals (vivien 2002). society’s general attitude towards homosexuality, while not entirely accepted, has become more positive with the growing acceptance of different sexual orientations (mathenge & owusu 2017). the social identity theory of in-group favouritism and out54 madinga et al. group discrimination is a way in which some heterosexual people attribute negative characteristics to homosexuals as a way of maintaining a positive in-group social identity. as a result, some heterosexuals consciously or unconsciously perceive homosexualthemed advertisements as a threat to their in-group superiority (gong 2019). lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in mainstream media gay advertisements have been defined as “ads targeting gay consumers by carrying implicit or explicit gay references – from vaguely implying same-sex bonding, to explicitly showing self-identified gay characters – and by depicting erotic desire and affection for/between members of the same sex” (tsai 2004). thus, there are two types of advertisements in terms of how homosexuality is represented and how the lgbtq community is targeted (oakenfull et al. 2008), namely explicit and implicit lesbian and gay-themed advertisements (berisha & sjogreen 2016). implicit lesbian and gay-themed advertisements can be crafted with models or symbols of cultural significance. therefore, this approach reduces the backlash from heterosexual consumers (oakenfull & greenlee 2005). both implicit and explicit lesbian and gay-themed advertisements are aimed at engaging homosexuals in mainstream media without alienating heterosexual consumers. as previously discussed, more companies have begun to target the lgbtq community through mainstream media as it is becoming profitable for advertisers (ivory 2019). according to read et al. (2018), advertisements that feature the lgbtq community were traditionally only found in niche markets. however, according to research, “marketers [recognised] that gay and lesbian consumers consume mainstream media vehicles as much or more than targeted vehicles” (hester & gibson 2007). ivory (2019) found that marketers face difficulties targeting the lgbtq community through mainstream media, as the advertisements will also be viewed by heterosexuals who might respond negatively. through his investigation of gay-themed advertisements in gay magazines, kimb et al. (2015) concluded that directly advertising to gay consumers through gay media has the potential of alienating the heterosexual market entirely. but it also meant that it eliminated the small yet growing market of gay consumers who consume traditional media. tolerance towards homosexuality and attitudes towards the advertisement and brand um (2014) found that people with a high tolerance toward homosexuality have a more positive attitude towards gay-themed advertising compared to those who have a low tolerance. hester and gibson (2007) also found that heterosexual respondents who had a low tolerance for homosexuality were more repelled and troubled by gaythemed advertisements compared to those with a high tolerance, who were more accepting. this is confirmed in the study by bhat et al. (1998) who found that “ads with gay imagery produced strong negative emotional responses in those with negative attitudes toward homosexuality, but not in those without such attitudes”. based on the foregoing discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: 54 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements h1: tolerance towards homosexuality has a significant positive effect on heterosexual attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements. h2: tolerance towards homosexuality has a significant positive effect on heterosexual attitudes towards the brand. attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and attitudes towards the brand lesbian and gay-themed advertising has attracted more attention with the increase in revenue generated from consumers in the lgbtq community. according to kimb et al. (2015) gay-themed advertisements usually show two men and/or two women’s feet touching under a table, rainbow flags, pink triangles, equal rights, or gay couples showing affection. there has also been a growing interest in understanding consumer attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements (berisha & sjogren 2016), and their impact on the advertised brand. according to shimp (1981: 15) “the attitude toward the advert is defined as the predisposition to respond (react) in a favourable or unfavourable manner to a particular advert, and has two different components: an affective component reflecting the emotions evoked by the advert and a cognitive component reflecting how well-made and useful the message and the information in it is considered to be”. the attitude towards the advertisement and the attitude towards the brand have been extensively explored in consumer research (cuomo et al. 2019; handriana & wisandiko 2017; royo-vela & black 2020). the relationship between these variables has been explored in previous studies. mitchell and olson (1982) were among the scholars who examined the impact of attitudes towards the advertisement on the advertised brand. their findings revealed that the attitude towards the advertisement significantly influences the attitude towards the brand. similarly, marchegiani and phau (2010) found a positive relationship between the attitude towards the advertisement and the attitude towards the brand. based on this argument, the following hypothesis is proposed: h3: attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements influence attitudes towards the brand. gender differences in attitudes towards homosexuality and lesbian and gay-themed advertisements the attitude of heterosexual men towards homosexual men is that a principle of mascu linity is domination, which can only be achieved through the marginalisation of other forms of masculinity – such as gay men (van der walt 2007). the period from 1970 to 1990 showed trends that indicated males, in comparison to females, were experiencing an increase in negativity towards homosexuality, specifically towards gay men (holland-muter 2018). on the other hand, in a study of 345 participants, females were significantly more tolerant towards homosexuality and homosexualrelated issues. this could suggest that females have more personal relationships with homosexual individuals, compared to men, and these relationships were more likely to decrease their negative perceptions of the lgbtq community (vivien 2002). an 76 madinga et al. investigation was conducted on how gay male imagery for jeans and shampoo in magazine advertisements affects consumers’ attitude towards the brand. the study indicated that heterosexual males responded negatively and that advertisers should be cautious when developing gay-themed advertisements as it might alienate their primary heterosexual customer base (thatcher et al. 2013). this was also concluded by um (2014), who found that heterosexual males are less tolerant of homosexuality than heterosexual females are. therefore, the following hypotheses were proposed: h4a: the impact of tolerance of homosexuality on the attitude towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements is higher for female consumers than male consumers. h4b: the impact of tolerance of homosexuality on the attitude towards brands that use lesbian and gay-themed advertisements is higher for female customers than male customers. figure 1: conceptual model   tolerance of  homosexuality  attitude towards  advert  attitude towards  brand  gender  h1  h3  h2  h4a  h4b  figure 1: conceptual model research methodology homosexuality remains a sensitive issue in many african countries. due to the sensitivity of the current study, the researchers designed a web-based self-completion questionnaire using survey monkey and posted the questionnaire link on several social networks (such as facebook, twitter and whatsapp). the assumption was that the respondents were more likely to “open up” to a computer-based survey, than they would in a face-to-face environment. the researchers made use of filter questions to ensure that the respondents were appropriately categorised. responses from 76 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements 262 survey participants were collected. incomplete surveys, as well as responses from participants who stated they were homosexual or preferred not to state their sexual orientation, were removed (82 in total). after deleting these questionnaires, 180 responses were used for the data analysis. table 1 describes the demographics of the study’s sample. the demographic information pertains to the participants’ age, gender, and education level. the sample comprises 52.8% women and 47.2% men. the majority of the participants had a high school certificate (43.3%), while 40.6% had a degree or diploma, and 16.1% possessed a postgraduate qualification. just over 64% (64.4%) of the respondents were age between 18 and 22, while 24.4% were between the ages of 23 and 26, and 8.9% between the ages of 27 and 31. only 2.2% participants were aged 38 and above. table 1: demographics of the participants items types full sample (n= 180) no. % age 18-22 116 64.4 23-26 44 24.4 27-31 16 8.9 32-37 0 0 38+ 4 2.2 gender female 95 52.8 male 85 47.2 education level primary school 0 0 high school 78 43.3 degree/diploma 73 40.6 postgraduate degree 29 16.1 measures this study examined three constructs: ♦ tolerance of homosexuality ♦ attitude towards the advertisement ♦ attitude towards the brand the measurement scales utilised in this study were validated and considered reliable in previous studies. the measurements for tolerance of homosexuality were adopted from 98 madinga et al. herek (1988). an eight-item scale was used to measure tolerance of homosexuality. the scale, developed by sengupta and johar (2002), was used to measure the attitude towards the brand. this scale is a three-item scale that determines the consumer’s attitude to a product or a specific brand. the attitude towards an advertisement was determined by using the three-item scale developed by homer (1995). a six-item scaled adopted from homer (1995) was used to measure the attitude towards the advertisement, while a five-item scaled adopted from sengupta and johar (2002) was used to measure the attitude towards the brand. a seven-point likert scale was used in this study for all the items. results the structural equation modelling (sem) approach was used for data analysis in this study. sem is also known as a second-generation technique that offers simultaneous modelling of relationships among multiple independent and dependent constructs (lim et al. 2017). partial least squares structural equation modelling (pls-sem) was deemed appropriate to comply with the predictive oriented objective of this study (hair et al. 2017). the pls-sem method, using smart pls 3.0, was applied for analysis purposes, and a two-step approach was followed. first, the measurement model was estimated based on confirmatory factor analysis. second, the structural model was analysed, the path coefficients estimated, and the hypotheses tested. the aim of this study was to identify the relationships among tolerance of homosexuality, attitude towards an advertisement, and attitude towards the brand. measurement model the reliabilities of the measurement instrument utilised in this study were computed by performing pls-sem. a two-step approach (anderson & gerbing 1988) for separate estimation and re-specification of the measurement model with confirmatory factor analyses was applied before the simultaneous estimation of the measurement and structural model. in the first step, the researchers checked for measurement items with loadings of less than 0.5. the intention was to delete items with less than 0.5 loadings. the loadings for the study were between 0.720 and 0.960, as shown in table 2. consequently, all the item loadings were retained. the loadings were statistically significant; therefore, indicating that the findings demonstrated high convergent validity. the measurement instrument comprised of three research constructs, namely tolerance of homosexuality (8 items), attitude towards the advertisement (6 items), and attitude towards the brand (5 items). in total, the measurement instrument had 19 items. table 2 indicates the measurement items, their means, standard deviations, outer loadings, and average variance extracted (ave) for each latent variable. all the items were administered using a seven-point likert scale format, from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree). the cronbach’s alpha (α), and ave for each latent construct were calculated and are also displayed as measurement properties in table 2. the cronbach’s alphas of the three variables in the study were satisfactory, as they were above the threshold of 0.7, indicating internal consistency reliability. for discriminant validity, ave was calculated 98 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements for each latent construct. according to hu and bentler (1999), a set threshold level of 0.5 for ave is recommended, which was attained in this study as the ave values were between 0.721 and 0.855. the validity was tested using the fornell and larcker (1981) criterion. the results presented in table 3 indicate satisfactory coefficients; therefore, meeting the required standards. table 2: measurement properties of dependent and independent constructs research construct mean sd outer loading cronbach’s alpha value α composite reliability average variance extracted (ave) tolerance towards homosexuality (tth) tth1 2.228 1.693 .781 tth2 1.644 1.268 .905 tth3 1.628 1.247 .878 tth4 1.917 1.556 .925 .952 .960 .750 tth5 1.800 1.485 .900 tth6 2.006 1.526 .898 tth7 1.383 0.871 .785 tth8 1.428 1.033 .843 attitude towards advertisement (ata) ata1 3.333 1.378 .745 ata2 3.756 1.555 .720 ata3 3.517 1.611 .887 .922 .939 .721 ata4 3.161 1.502 .918 ata5 3.017 1.420 .902 ata6 2.878 1.448 .899 attitude towards brand (atb) atb1 2.883 1.568 .920 atb2 2.728 1.475 .960 atb3 2.689 1.499 .954 .957 .967 .855 atb4 2.817 1.565 .941 atb5 3.283 1.600 .844 note: average variance extracted (ave), composite reliability (cr) 1110 madinga et al. all scale endings were administered using a seven-point likert scale, from 1 = strongly agree to 7 = strongly disagree. table 3: discriminant validity according to fornell and larcker (1981) criterion 1 2 3 attitude towards advertisement .849 attitude towards brand .597 .925 tolerance of homosexuality .240 .530 .866 prior to estimating the structural model, collinearity statistics was performed. the vif values were between 1.902 and 4.813. the vif values were below the threshold value of 5 (hair & lukas 2014). therefore, no lateral collinearity issues were detected. results of model estimation to evaluate model suitability, the researchers used two approaches, namely the standardised root mean square residual (srmr) and global goodness of fit (gof). the srmr measures the variance between the observed correlation matrix and the correlation matrix involved in the model. according to hu and bentler (1999), srmr less than 0.8 shows good model adaptation. the model of the current study has a srmr value of 0.060. therefore, the model is suitable. gof presents the overall measure of adjustment, and which is the average of the mean extracted variance (ave) and the mean of r² of the endogenous variables (tenenhaus et al. 2005). the formula, suggested by tenenhaus et al. (2005), was used to calculate the goodness of fit (gof). the formula is as follows: goodness of fit = 2√ (average of all aves values* average of all r2) = 2√ 0.775*0.543 = 0.42 ave represents the average of all ave values for the research variables, while r² represents the average of all r² values in the full path model. the calculated global gof is 0.42, which exceeds the threshold of gof>0.36 suggested by wetzels et al. (2009). assessment of structural model the measurement model was tested for this study. the predictive accuracy of the model was evaluated in terms of the portion of the variance explained. the results suggest that the model is capable of explaining only 5.7% of the variance in the attitude towards an advertisement, and 51% in the attitude towards the advertisement (see figure 1). nonparametric bootstrapping was performed with 5 000 duplications to assess the structural model. 1110 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements figure 2: results of structural modelling analysis hypotheses testing hypotheses testing: direct effects (h1 to h3) in table 4, pls-bootstrapping (preacher & hayes 2004) results (with 95% bias corrected confidence interval) reveal that tolerance of homosexuality is a significant determinant of the attitude towards an advertisement (β = 0.240, t-value = 2.422, p-value = 0.016), therefore, supporting h1. a study conducted by bhat et al. (1998) on how heterosexual consumers respond to gay imagery advertisements found that the level of tolerance towards homosexuality strongly influences heterosexual consumers’ emotional response to gay-themed advertisements and brands. tolerance of homosexuality has an influence on attitude towards brands (β = 0.411, t-value = 5.889, p-value = 0.000); therefore, supporting h2. berisha and sjogren (2016) conducted a qualitative study on heterosexual consumers’ attitudes toward homosexual-themed advertisements. after the analysis of the participants’ responses, berisha and sjogren (2016) established that heterosexual consumers have a positive attitude towards brands that feature a lesbian or gay individual in their advertisements. most respondents indicated that brands that feature homosexuals in their advertisements appear to be thoughtful. one of the respondents indicated that he has a desire to associate himself with brands that are not racist or homophobic. this study’s finding is supported by hester and gibson (2007), who found that individuals who are more tolerant of homosexuality showed a positive attitude towards brands that do not exclude homosexual individuals in their advertisements. lastly, attitudes towards gay-themed advertisements significantly influence the attitudes towards the brand (β = 0.499, t = 7.374, p = 0.000); thus, h3 is also supported. this finding is in line with a study conducted by handriana and wisandiko (2017), which found a positive relationship between attitudes towards an advertisement and attitudes towards a brand. according to christian et al. (2014), attitudes towards the 1312 madinga et al. brand depends on attitude towards the advertisement. therefore, consumer attitudes towards the advertisement are strongly linked with attitudes towards the brand. table 4: overall results of hypotheses testing hypothesis relationship path coefficient (β) t-value p-value result h1 tolerance of homosexuality = attitude towards advert .240 2.422 0.016 supported h2 tolerance of homosexuality = attitude towards brand .411 5.889 0.000 supported h3 attitude towards advert – attitude towards brand .499 7.374 0.000 supported hypotheses testing: moderating effect (h4a and h4b) the sample was divided into two sub-groups, namely, females and males. multi-group analysis (mga) pls analysis was performed to compare the differences between the male and female participants. mga analysis was performed to examine the moderating effect (henseler et al. 2016) of gender on the effect of tolerance of homosexuality on lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and brands. the mga results revealed that the path coefficient between tolerance of homosexuality and attitude towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements is significantly larger in female participants than male participants (β_female = 0.363, β_males = 0.160); thus, supporting h4a (see figure 3 and figure 4). this finding has ample support from previous empirical research studies. latour and henthorne (1994) established that men and women react differently to advertisements. previous studies have revealed that heterosexual men’s attitudes towards homosexuality is relatively negative, while heterosexual women’s attitudes towards homosexuality is positive (eagly et al. 2004; herek 1988; klug & vigar-ellis 2012). a study by iacoviello et al. (2019) on the attitudes of heterosexual men towards homosexuality confirmed that heterosexual men tend to have less tolerance towards homosexuality. on the other hand, a study conducted by lim (2002) examining gender differences and tolerance of homosexuality found that women are more comfortable with homosexuality compared to men. dotson et al. (2009) investigated gender impact on gay and lesbian-themed fashion advertisements. the authors exposed the participants to different fashion brand advertisements, namely an overtly gay men-themed advertisement; an overtly lesbianthemed advertisement; a heterosexual-themed advertisement; an ambiguously lesbian-themed advertisement; and an ambiguously gay-themed advertisement. their 1312 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements findings revealed that heterosexual men tend to have a negative attitude towards advertisements with overtly gay men and ambiguously gay men than heterosexual females. furthermore, the path coefficient between the tolerance of homosexuality and attitude towards the brand was larger in male respondents than female respondents (β_male = 0.462, β_females =0.201); therefore h4b is not supported. this is in line with the findings of dotson et al. (2009) who established that heterosexual women have a decrease in their attitude towards a brand after being exposed to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements. figure 3: female samples (n=95) figure 4: male samples (n=85) 1514 madinga et al. importance-performance matrix analysis to analyse the relative importance and performance of each construct for “attitude towards brand”, an additional analysis was conducted using the importanceperformance matrix analysis (ipma) (ringle & sarstedt 2016). the results (table 5) showed that the attitude towards the advertisement was the most important construct for influencing the attitude towards the brand (0.558), while tolerance was the least important construct in influencing the attitude towards the brand (0.525). in terms of performance criteria, the attitude towards the advertisement was well performing (around 31%), while tolerance towards homosexuality had minimum value (around 12%). table 5: additional analysis: ipma results (target constructattitude towards the advert) constructs importance performance attitude towards advertisement 0.558 31.065 tolerance towards homosexuality 0.525 11.650 managerial implications the findings revealed that south african heterosexual consumers generally had a tolerance towards homosexuality. thus, brands should take account of the magnified prominence of homosexual individuals in the community, media and consumer markets, and specifically identify and view them as an important consumer group by integrating corresponding advertising profiles beyond heteronormative images targeting heterosexual mainstream consumers. it is clear that brands can make use of lesbian and gay-themed advertisements without endangering the advertised brand. it can be argued that, when lesbian and gay-themed advertisements become popular in the mainstream media, homosexual individuals would feel a greater sense of belonging in society. brands that feature homosexual individuals in their advertisements can help change society’s attitudes towards homosexuals, which might reduce homophobia in society. the need not to offend sensitive consumers is one of several problems that advertisers face. for several other purposes, advertisers can utilise inclusive strategies. for example, brands that incorporate lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in their communication strategies are considered to be on the “cutting edge” of social issues. among heterosexual consumers, the negative effect originating from lesbian and gay-themed advertising is expected to decline as society’s perception of homosexuality shows a trend towards increased acceptance. in fact, they can be seen as being morally or socially responsible enough to advance the concept of inclusiveness. furthermore, heterosexual allies tend to have a negative attitude towards brands that do not show their support for minority groups, such as the lgbtq community. 1514 exploring heterosexual responses to lesbian and gay-themed advertisements before using lesbian and gay-themed advertisements, marketers need to understand the social and demographic factors of their market. kotler and keller (2012) indicated that marketers who want to “think outside the box” and produce advertisements that consumers are not used to seeing, must be careful not to overstep social norms. for instance, brands can use explicit homosexual advertisements to target homosexual consumers in south africa, namibia, botswana and mozambique, as these countries have a high tolerance of homosexuals (o’donnell 2016). this tactic can be risky in masculine and low tolerance towards homosexuality african countries such as senegal, guinea, uganda and burkina faso (o’donnell 2016). regional advertising is recommended in south africa, as the country has lgbtq-friendly cities and antilgbtq friendly cities. according to gallagher (2018), cape town, johannesburg, durban and knysna are the most gay-friendly cities in south africa. placing lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in anti-lgbtq cities might generate a backlash from heterosexual individuals. although using gay media to reach the lgbtq community is advisable, it is recommended that advertisers should also use mainstream media. according to um (2014), less than 50% of the lgbtq community read magazines or other publications aimed specifically at gay people. conclusion there has been an increase in lesbian and gay-themed advertisements in mainstream media. this suggests that brands are starting to acknowledge lgbtq consumers as an important consumer market that needs representation in advertisements. however, to date little empirical research has been carried out on the impact of lesbian and gay-themed advertisements on the attitudes of heterosexual consumers, especially in developing countries such as south africa. this study attempted to fill the void by exploring how the tolerance of homosexuality by heterosexual consumers influences their attitudes towards lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and brands. the study revealed that tolerance of homosexuality has an impact on consumer attitudes towards the lesbian and gay-themed advertisements and brands advertised. furthermore, heterosexual men were found to be less tolerant of homosexuality compared to heterosexual women. brands that make use of lesbian and gay-themed advertising are seen to be socially responsible by advancing the idea of inclusivity. it is important to note that such brands run the risk of offending some customers. however, in lgbtq-friendly countries such as south africa, the benefits obtained from being lgbtq-friendly outweighs the backlash from consumers with a low tolerance towards homosexuality. disclosure statement this publication is based on research that has been supported in part by the university of cape town’s research committee (urc), and this work is based on research supported in part by the national research foundation of south africa (grant number 120619). 1716 madinga et al. 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south african mining companies. it was found that mining companies implement csr projects intending to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability within their host communities. stakeholders are actively engaged in project planning as their involvement in decision-making is critical for sustainable projects through obtaining stakeholder buy-in, collaboration and involvement. the study recommends that management balances diverse stakeholder expectations and educate stakeholders on corporate mining issues. theoretically the study adds to the understanding of stakeholder engagement for sustainable csr outcomes in the south african mining industry. keywords: strategic communication, corporate communication, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder engagement, sustainability, mining industry, south africa introduction south african mining communities are considered unique because they are primarily rural and secluded, have high illiteracy levels, and depend on mines for their source of revenue (marais et al. 2020: 2). these communities also dr muriel serfonteinjordaan department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email : muriel. serfontein@up.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-14811624 sixolile dlungwane department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email : sixoliledlungwane@ yahoo.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-00983137 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.1 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 1-20 date submitted: 23 february 2022 date accepted: 13 april 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:muriel.serfontein@up.ac.za mailto:muriel.serfontein@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1481-1624 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1481-1624 mailto:sixoliledlungwane@yahoo.com mailto:sixoliledlungwane@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0098-3137 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0098-3137 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane experience poor socio-economic circumstances (memela 2020: 4). in addition, the nature of mining is temporary as it relies on the availability of mineral resources (cronjé & chenga 2009: 413). therefore, these communities need sustainable economic activities to support them when the mine ceases its operations (hooge 2009: 32). the pressure is increasing for mining companies to be more responsible in their conduct towards the host communities where they operate (frederiksen 2018: 496). this implies that the mine’s principal business activities should attempt to equally balance production, profitability and corporate social responsibility (csr) (agudelo et al. 2020: 14). csr is defined as the set of commitments businesses make to their stakeholders to address environmental, social and economic issues in their communities (khanifar et al. 2012: 586). there is a call for businesses to take responsibility for the impact their operations have on the environment and societies and include this in the agenda during stakeholder engagements (selmier & newenham-kahindi 2021: 4; marrewijk & were 2002: 107). csr is especially valuable to a country such as south africa where the government cannot solely address society’s diverse needs (hooge 2009: 30). csr is gaining momentum in the daily operations of businesses in several sectors, the mining industry being no exception (jenkins 2005: 537-538). jenkins and obara (2008: 2) emphasise that for businesses to survive, generate revenue and grow, they must be mindful of stakeholder expectations and safeguard the sustainability of the environment. bearing this in mind, corporations must find a balance between generating a profit and demonstrating accountability for their activities to contribute positively to the survival of society (marinina 2019: 5). frynas (2005: 581-582) investigated the effectiveness of csr projects within the mining industry. although mining companies are rebranding themselves as responsible businesses, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate how the rebranding solves sustainability issues in the community and if community development activities enable a more sustainable community (jenkins & obara 2008: 1). the industry has made substantial efforts to emphasise its commitment towards addressing communities’ needs and safeguarding the environment. however, insufficient research exists to confirm the sustainability of csr projects implemented by mining companies (frynas 2005: 581-584). previous studies investigated several focus areas of csr; for example, the connection between sustainable development and csr (moon 2007; whellams 2007), stakeholder management and csr (cheng & ahmad 2010), integrating csr into business strategy (evans & sawyer 2010), csr partnerships in the south african mining sector (hamann 2004), and stakeholder perceptions on csr in the mining industry (jenkins & obara 2008). however, most research investigated csr in developed countries, where societies are efficient and effective (arli & lasmono 2010). concentration on csr has gained increasing acceptance in the literature (friedman & miles 2001: 538), resolving that companies must assimilate the values of sustainability into their corporate strategies (ofori 2010). this aspect raises questions regarding the sustainability of csr initiatives achieved by mining companies. 32 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes this study aimed to investigate the types of csr projects implemented by south african mining companies and the sustainability levels of these projects, together with the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr outcomes. theoretical framework stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and the tbl model are interconnected, as organisations must balance generating a profit and fulfilling social responsibility by incorporating community development practices into their business activities. this involves fulfilling their philanthropic, ethical, legal and economic responsibilities (legitimacy theory) by pursuing sustainable economic, social and environmental outcomes (tbl model), while considering all stakeholder groups affected by the organisation and its decision-making process (stakeholder theory). all the elements in the theoretical framework, thus, need to be implemented simultaneously to achieve maximum sustainable csr outcomes (alhaddi 2015: 6-10). corporate social responsibility as a point of departure, the study employed the world business council for sustainable development’s definition of csr as “the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as the local community and society at large” (watts & holme 1999). the rationale behind using an older definition is that the researchers are of the opinion that it best depicts csr in the mining industry, namely to improve local communities’ quality of life and promote socio-economic development. furthermore, this definition acknowledges that businesses contribute significantly to the well-being of stakeholders through csr initiatives. corporate social responsibility in mining csr in the mining industry is not a novelty. around the mid-1990s the mining industry globally came under pressure as to how it interacts with and responds to local host communities; this pressure was exacerbated by several disasters tarnishing the reputation of the industry (van der watt & marais 2021: 2). as a result, mining companies and governments increasingly “started introducing several interwoven approaches to improve relationships between mining companies, local government, and communities”. these included csr and the notion of a social licence to operate (kemp & owen 2013; bice 2014). hamann (2003: 237) states that csr in the mining industry refers to projects and initiatives that the mining company embarks on to attain social, environmental and economic sustainability. mining companies accept a shared responsibility to fulfil some of the community’s economic relief expectations (bongwe 2017: 15). local communities are often considered the primary stakeholder for mining companies since mines operate within or near to these communities, and their activities influence the communities or are influenced by the communities (gibson 2000). bearing in mind the aforementioned, it is understandable that local communities are increasingly applying 54 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane pressure on mining companies to act more responsibly. as a result, mining companies have realised the importance of obtaining community agreement and support before implementing any project (danielson 2006). in 2002, the mining, minerals and sustainable development project (mmsd 2002) introduced collaborative planning. it suggested a “relationship of collaboration, trust, and respect between the community, the company, and the government to ensure that adverse effects are avoided or mitigated and the benefits of mineral development shared with communities” (van der watt & marais 2021). hence, collaboration between the companies in the mining industry, the local governments, and the host communities is essential to achieving these goals. in the south african mining industry, the vehicle employed to ensure the fair distribution of all benefits associated with mining is the social and labour plan (slp). the mineral and petroleum resource development act of 2002 states that a mining company can only obtain a mining license if the department of mineral resources and energy (dmr) approves its slp (van der watt & marais 2021: 2). aligning of the slp of a mining company with the integrated development plan (idp) of the local municipality is a precondition for approval; as a result collaboration between mining companies and local governments has become mandatory (dcgta 2009; van der watt & marais 2021). the idp provides a developmental framework to co-ordinate the work of the local government and other industries within the community in a coherent strategy to improve the quality of life for all people living in an area (arenas et al. 2009; dcgta 2009). in addition to the aforementioned mandatory nature of csr in the mining industry, walker and howard (2002) suggest the following reasons for the significance of csr initiatives to mining organisations, namely 1) the public opinion on mining organisations is often poor, 2) the mining industry experiences constant legal pressure from a global and local level, and 3) mining companies need to maintain a social licence to operate – this specifically has always been a challenge for mining companies, as communities often retaliate against the expansion of mining activities because of the lack of community engagement on pertinent community concerns. corporate social responsibility and stakeholder engagement greenwood (2007: 315) defines stakeholder engagement as several practices initiated by an organisation to enable the constructive involvement of stakeholders in the organisation’s activities. stakeholder involvement is essential as it promotes robust participation in csr initiatives and assists stakeholders in expressing their perceptions and expectations (el-gohary et al. 2006: 596). ihugba (2012) observed the stakeholder engagement approach to, justification for, and consequences of managing csr in the nigerian mining industry. the study established that inconsistent stakeholder engagement reduces the sustainability of csr initiatives. in order to prevent this, ihugba (2012) suggested that a framework for stakeholder engagement is required to promote informed involvement of primary stakeholders to facilitate sustainable csr practices. ideally, such a framework should facilitate balanced and knowledgeable stakeholder involvement and progressive csr initiatives. constructive engagement 54 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes with communities is required to enhance sustainability aspects as this facilitates mutual understanding, common goals and objectives (hamann 2003: 240). to achieve sustainable csr outcomes, mining companies should address all aspects of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) in their engagements (matikainen 2020). table 1 below summarises the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr outcomes in the mining industry according to the three sustainability factors. table 1 guided the researchers in assessing if, and how, the mining companies under investigation use any of the stakeholder engagement tactics, and how these influence the sustainability of csr outcomes. table 1: stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr outcomes aspect of sustainability sustainability factors the role of stakeholder engagement economic creating new jobs source of income for local communities maintenance of buildings and infrastructure establishment of pension funds including communities in the decision-making structures stakeholder collaboration to gain inputs on decisions engagements to create jobs supporting local businesses through employment social skills training and development avoiding public health issues avoiding community dependency on the mine serving local communities’ social needs stakeholder engagement to understand stakeholder values creating shared value in ways that promote stakeholder values including local communities in the decision-making structures environmental protecting the environment provision of sustainable landscape gardening adoption of clean energy incorporate lessons learnt in the way of work in the future engaging in multi-stakeholder fora to solve environmental concerns adapted from matikainen (2020: 38) sustainability sustainability in corporate social responsibility sustainability is defined as securing intergenerational equity by focusing on environmental, economic and social issues and balancing these over the short and long-term (bansal & desjardine 2014: 70). economic sustainability is the level of progression of the standard of living in a community. in contrast, environmental 76 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane sustainability addresses the preservation of the environment. social sustainability addresses equal access to resources and opportunities in society (bansal 2005: 200). an organisation as well as its initiative cannot be sustainable on its own; therefore, it is crucial that stakeholders be included and engaged accordingly (schaltegger & burritt 2018: 241). mining companies are no exception and cannot achieve elevated levels of sustainable csr outcomes alone. partnering and engaging with primary stakeholders, such as government and local communities, help achieve progressive socio-economic and environmental improvements. in addition, they provide valuable inputs to guide decision-making (hilson & murck 2000: 230). forming partnerships with local government and communities is therefore crucial for stakeholder collaboration (rodrigues & mendes 2018: 89). mining companies must acknowledge and address their csr challenges truthfully because of the growing global expectations placed on the industry. co-creating csr approaches and solutions with local communities and continuously engaging them helps sustain trusting relationships (hamann 2004: 280). it is necessary to measure progress towards sustainable csr initiatives. the tbl model, which forms part of the theoretical framework of this study, provides a possible framework for mining companies to measure the levels of sustainability of their csr projects (alhaddi 2015: 9). table 2 below shows the tbl indicators measuring the levels of sustainable csr project outcomes. the study employed these to assess the levels of sustainability of the csr outcomes in the observed mining companies. table 2: tbl indicators that measure sustainability of csr outcomes tbl indicators sustainability factors economic increased business and job opportunities increased household income increased value and number of possessions and resources saving and avoiding costs increased economic productivity social increased opportunities for females and minors increased opportunities and assets for low-income people increased local ownership environmental prevention of environmental degradation progress in environmental conditions improved sustainable practices elimination and reduction of environmental hazards recycling of existing materials adapted from bailey (2008) 76 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes conceptual framework figure 1 is the initial conceptual framework of the study, as proposed by the researchers, based on the theoretical framework and the literature reviewed. mining companies must implement effective stakeholder engagement to achieve sustainable csr projects. stakeholder engagement builds trusting relationships and tailors csr projects according to the stakeholders’ needs (afreh 2016: 45). sustainable csr outcomes are therefore achieved by addressing the community’s needs through primary stakeholder consultations. stakeholder s stakeholder engagement environmental social economic local government communities ngos adapted from afreh (2016: 46) figure 1: proposed conceptual framework on csr and stakeholder engagement methodology the study was conducted according to a multiple-case study research design, considering that the purpose of the research design is to develop a realistic multiplebounded system by collecting comprehensive data using various information sources (creswell 2013). the cases were selected to predict comparable or conflicting findings based on the theory, in order to investigate how stakeholder engagement affects sustainable csr outcomes in the south african mining industry. the study used primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with various participants. the integrated reports for each of the cases were thoroughly analysed, which informed the development of the discussion guide. the research design enabled the researcher to replicate the findings across subjects. the unit of analysis for this study was mining companies operating in south africa and implementing csr initiatives in their host communities. homogenous sampling was employed by selecting companies with similar characteristics (creswell 2012: 518). similarly, homogenous sampling was employed to select the study participants. the participants had to have the following mutual characteristics: 1) participants had to be a community development specialist, or in a similar role, in a south african mining company; 2) participants had to have at least one year’s professional experience in this role; and 3) participants’ areas of responsibility had to encompass stakeholder engagement for the implementation of csr projects. 98 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane the data was collected through semi-structured interviews as this allowed the researcher to obtain detailed descriptions of the participants’ perspectives. the literature review and a thorough review of integrated reports of the unit of analysis organisation which detailed csr activities guided the formulation of the discussion guide. the data collected was analysed using thematic analysis to identify and organise patterns, and thereafter develop themes and sub-themes. findings the findings are reported per the three main themes, as indicated in table 3 below, each with several sub-themes. table 3: overview of themes and sub-themes themes types of csr projects implemented by south african mining companies sustainability of csr projects implemented by south african mining companies the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr projects subthemes education health infrastructure agriculture skills development enterprise supplier development (esd) poverty alleviation environmental the lifespan of csr projects short-term projects long-term projects sustainable impacts of csr projects economic impact social impact environmental impact stakeholder involvement stakeholder buy-in stakeholder collaboration theme 1: types of csr projects implemented by south african mining companies education mining companies prioritise improving education infrastructure and services in their host communities. education projects can be either shortor long-term. the rationale for short-term projects is to satisfy needs arising at a particular time. these 98 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes initiatives take the form of donations of items, such as school uniforms, spectacles, laptops, textbooks, and stationery. long-term initiatives attempt to address education infrastructure challenges and support the teaching and learning process to ensure an environment conducive to learning. education infrastructure projects include building new classrooms, libraries, ablution facilities and science laboratories, as well as refurbishing old or damaged classrooms. additionally, mining companies aim to address the poor pass rate in mathematics, physical science and technical subjects. they develop programmes to aid learners with extra classes to improve their marks. lastly, to improve employment potential in the community, mining companies offer the topperforming students bursaries, scholarships and learnerships to further their tertiary education in mining disciplines with the opportunity of being employed at the mine upon the successful completion of their studies. health health support is an important csr focus area for mining companies as they intend to improve the poor standard of health services in the community. these projects include building and refurbishing clinics and hospitals, training health personnel, donating ambulances, and hosting awareness programmes for hiv/aids and cancer. since the outbreak of covid-19, mining companies have partnered with the department of health and ngos to assist local clinics and hospitals with essential items such as ppe and testing equipment to help alleviate the pressure on the health system. mining companies erected covid-19 testing centres and vaccination sites for their employees and local communities. in this area, they didn’t have a clinic. so, they had to travel 40 km to get to a clinic, and because it’s a rural area, there [are] no taxis, so they have to hike three times to get there. so, we then built a clinic bringing the health services to the community. (participant 12) infrastructure community infrastructure projects are a significant focus for mining companies. local municipalities have limited resources and cannot provide essential services to communities. lack of proper road infrastructure, housing, water, electricity and recreation facilities are among the challenges encountered by communities. moreover, the excessively high cost of data and lack of internet connectivity in rural areas cause societies to be excluded from the global village. mining companies understand their role in responding to community infrastructure challenges and therefore implement six main infrastructure projects: road, water and sanitation, electricity, housing, recreational facilities and telecommunications infrastructure. road infrastructure projects aim to repair poor road conditions, and mining companies construct tar roads within communities to allow easy and safe access in and out of the community. 1110 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane most communities lack access to electricity, clean water, and sanitation. as a result, mining companies partner with local municipalities to implement infrastructure projects to remedy this challenge. these projects include installing electricity in households, building and refurbishing water reservoirs and boreholes for underground water extraction, and upgrading landfill sites for waste removal. we implemented the electricity project [where] we assisted more than 600 households with electricity. we also have a problem [with] water installation in our local community ... because at this moment, they are drinking water from streams ... [so], we are implementing water infrastructure projects, and as a result, they will have access to clean water. (participant 5) housing conditions in some communities are deteriorating, and as a result, mining companies construct houses for these communities. furthermore, the lack of recreational facilities in the communities is a significant driver of crime, alcoholism and drug abuse among the youth. as a result, mining companies have built and renovated various recreational community centres. another emerging issue in mining communities is the lack of telecommunications infrastructure for internet connectivity. as a result, mining companies install wi-fi hotspots in communities to enable internet access to allow the community to submit job applications, do schoolwork, and have general internet access. agriculture mining companies have identified agricultural development as an opportunity for local communities to improve food security, alleviate poverty, and help create employment opportunities. as a result, they assist farmers within the community with skills training and funding to sustain and grow their livestock and crop farming businesses. some of the participants expressed their challenges of implementing sustainable agriculture projects attributable to the poor soil quality due to mining activities. we do have agricultural programmes, but i’ll be honest [in] saying that they haven’t been successful ... [the] mining activity directly impacts on the environment, so it makes it difficult for your crops to grow ... [in] areas where we see that agriculture is a viable option, then we do try to assist with that, but in a lot of areas we have seen it’s difficult to, you know, create agricultural programmes on a more massive scale. (participant 9) skills development mining companies implement various portable skills training programmes to address the challenge of unemployment in communities. for example, unemployed community members are invited to attend training in computer literacy, hospitality, and construction. upon completing the training, some members are employed by the mine, whereas others use their acquired skills in other industries to become financially stable. additionally, mining companies aim to diversify their skills training to ensure that the community does not solely rely on the mine for employment. 1110 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes enterprise supplier development mining companies’ esd programmes aim to generate an income for host communities. these programmes encourage entrepreneurship and provide training, mentoring and funding for small businesses. community members are encouraged to register businesses that supply goods and services to the mine and other institutions. beneficiaries also learn how to operate and market their businesses. through entrepreneurial development, mining companies implement preferential local procurement of goods and services, which benefit local communities’ businesses, according to one participant. we look at implementing initiatives that can assist our local [small, medium and micro enterprises] and see how we can develop a project that can allow them to grow from where they currently are ... so that they can supply at a larger scale, whether it be to the mine or other industries not only limited to mining. (participant 4) poverty alleviation mining companies implement ad hoc initiatives to help alleviate poverty in communities. these include donating food, blankets, clothes and sanitary towels. this was useful during the covid-19 pandemic, as several households had lost their income and were in distress. environmental mining companies implement environmental csr projects aimed at reducing any adverse effects on the environment from mining operations, as well as to create employment. these initiatives include waste management, recycling and awareness programmes to educate communities on responsible ways to take care of the environment, which will benefit future generations. we did a one-year project which was labour intensive, because we created employment for 30 people to pick up rubble from all over the area to get it to a dumping site where it was then disposed ... [we] also linked it to the local schools where they were also collecting rubble, and they were sorting and recycling it as well. (participant 7) these findings confirm the findings of afreh (2016) and bongwe (2017) regarding the csr projects that mining companies implement. additionally, this study found that mining companies implement telecommunications infrastructure projects to build more sustainable communities. theme 2: sustainability levels of csr projects in south african mining companies lifecycle of csr projects this study established that mining companies implement shortand long-term csr projects. although mining companies strive to implement long-term projects, a challenge remains in developing sustainable projects that will decrease the communities’ dependence on the mine. 1312 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane short-term csr projects short-term csr projects take the form of donations. the rationale for implementing such projects is to address one need at a particular time, such as the lack of food. although these donations provide temporary relief, they are not sustainable. they address the symptoms and not the root cause because they only benefit a small group of beneficiaries instead of the broader community. as a result, such projects are unsustainable and cannot benefit future generations. short-term projects provide temporary relief; i don’t think they necessarily put communities in a place to sustain themselves ... i definitely think that’s something that the mining industry still struggles to do, in terms of finding projects to invest in that are sustainable and that can allow communities to function without needing the mine. (participant 9) to mitigate this challenge and improve the sustainability of csr outcomes, some mining companies have developed policies outlining that they will only implement long-term sustainable projects instead of short-term ones. long-term csr projects long-term csr projects have a longer life cycle and subsequently benefit more communities and beneficiaries. the study established that long-term projects, such as infrastructure, education, health and skills development, are sustainable because they benefit future generations, and their impact advances the community from an economic, social and environmental perspective. sustainable impact of corporate social responsibility projects the tbl approach provides a framework to measure the sustainability of an organisation’s csr projects according to economic, social and environmental factors (goel 2010). the study established that mining csr projects advance sustainability in line with these factors. economic impact mining companies make a significant economic impact through their csr projects, such as vocational skills training programmes for the unemployed and entrepreneurial training for small businesses. these initiatives have increased employment and, subsequently, household income, which are functional economic benefits to the communities and mines. the issuing of bursaries increases the employment potential for the beneficiaries upon successful completion of their studies, as the mines offer them employment. mining companies also prioritise local procurement and, therefore, source goods and services from within the community, which benefits the community economically. road infrastructure projects have also unlocked the economic potential within the communities by allowing easy access in and between villages. as a result, people have opened businesses and become financially independent. lastly, communities 1312 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes have realised a cost saving on data because of the installation of free wi-fi, car repairs because the new tar roads reduce the wear and tear effect compared to gravel roads, and travel costs to access health care services because clinics have now been built in the communities. social impact mining companies address the social needs of different classes of people living in mining communities, especially vulnerable groups such as females and minors, through health, education, skills training and infrastructure projects. health-related projects, such as donating ambulances and building clinics, provide pregnant women with easy access to healthcare and safe childbirth. road infrastructure projects have also assisted with this because pregnant women sometimes cannot get to a hospital in time to give birth because of the poor state of the roads, as emphasised by one participant: sometimes, we’ll have a pregnant woman in that village. and when they are in labour, they don’t arrive at the hospital; they must give birth on the road because of the poor road conditions. (participant 1) crime, alcoholism and drug concerns within the communities are addressed by building community recreational centres. moreover, gender-based violence initiatives are a priority for mining companies to create awareness and effect change in the fight against it. environmental impact the study established that mining companies implement projects to promote environmentally sustainable practices. these include awareness and education programmes and initiatives to improve environmental conditions by planting trees, recycling, upgrading landfill sites and community clean-ups. mining companies also ensure sustainable practices in the community by ensuring that waste is timeously collected and disposed of at mechanised landfills. similarly, community members are encouraged to practise organic gardening methods and farming. the study established that mining companies’ csr initiatives meet the call for mines to address the issue of economic, social and environmental sustainability that arise through mining activities. furthermore, this indicates that mining csr activities are aligned with the tbl model, focusing on the economic, social and environmental impact (elkington 1997: 2). theme 3: stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr outcomes stakeholder involvement stakeholder engagement is crucial for project success as it leads to stakeholder involvement and gratification (shenhar 2001). this study established that mining companies ensure stakeholder engagement and participation in csr project planning. 1514 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane local municipalities the study determined that initial engagements with local municipalities ensure that the mine implements projects are aligned to the idp. this provides an understanding of the communities’ needs and municipalities’ earmarked and approved projects. mines partner with municipalities to execute infrastructure projects and will hand over these projects to the municipality involved upon completion. both parties enter into a memorandum of understanding before the project commences. this agreement clarifies the roles and responsibilities of the mine and the municipality and states that, upon handover, the municipality will be responsible for the project’s maintenance. this is important to ensure sustainability, as mines cannot maintain projects as it promotes high dependency on the mines. therefore, the mine must engage with the municipality and align with the idp to ensure sustainability, as emphasised by one participant. we measure [sustainability] through the [idp]... [we] know that if it’s in the idp, the community has identified it as a critical need. so, we know that it’s something that the community will actually use. (participant 12) this finding partially contrasts siyobi’s (2015: 3) finding, who found that mining companies fail to implement projects due to the challenge of poor alignment with the national and local development plan. the study found that mining companies heavily rely on the local development plan to ensure the projects are aligned with the municipality’s local development plan. communities the study confirmed that communities are essential stakeholders to engage with in order to understand their needs from the initial project planning phase onwards. for a project to be sustainable, it must address the communities’ needs, as they are the project beneficiaries. mining companies engage with the communities in the preliminary stages of project planning by hosting regular stakeholder engagement fora, well represented by traditional authorities, ngos, ward councillors, local business fora, community leaders and the local municipality. during these engagements, stakeholders contribute to the decision-making, planning and implementation of projects. stakeholders may express their views as such representation promotes a balance of perceptions during engagements. the study’s participants also stated that when the mine cannot meet stakeholder expectations, transparent communication – instead of empty promises – is critical to build and maintain stakeholder trust. ultimately, the mine uses the information obtained to cocreate impactful projects that the communities need. you use [stakeholder] engagement to understand what the community wants... [the] problem sometimes is that ideas are brought by [the] head office without [the] participation of the community. you cannot use a top-down approach, you must use a bottom-up approach, and the only way you will understand the need is by engaging with that community and ask[ing] them what is it that they need. (participant 11) 1514 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes these findings confirm those of el-gohary et al. (2006: 599) that stakeholder involvement is essential to promote robust participation in csr initiatives and for stakeholders to express their perceptions and expectations for project success, as it results in stakeholder involvement and gratification. on the other hand, these findings contradict the existing literature that the stakeholder engagement process is too controlled in the mining industry (ihugba 2012). the participants stated that engagements were two-way communication, where stakeholders expressed their views and the mine listened and responded accordingly. stakeholder buy-in the participants emphasised the role of stakeholder engagement in obtaining stakeholder buy-in for csr projects, particularly from the communities involved. buyin from the project beneficiaries is essential as this provides them with a sense of ownership of the project. they observe it as their own instead of it belonging to the mine. when communities take ownership of a project, they will protect and defend the project infrastructure and ensure that it becomes a success. conversely, when they feel as though a project is being forced on them – when they lack a sense of ownership – they will be inclined to damage the infrastructure and sabotage the project. when you involve these communities, they get a sense of ownership to a particular project, and if they have sense of ownership, they’re also able to defend and also protect those projects. (participant 1) this finding confirms that of evans and sawyer (2010) that a local community stakeholder group is critical for project development and that their buy-in and commitment are of utmost significance for project success. collaboration the participants indicated that mining companies do not work in isolation to implement csr projects. collaboration in the form of partnerships is necessary for projects to succeed and be sustainable, and this can only be done through engagements. for instance, mines must collaborate with various government departments, the municipality, and other industry peers to execute csr projects. for example, when the mine builds a clinic there has to be a collaboration with the department of health to ensure that the new facility has the required equipment and staff. similarly, co-operation with the department of education is necessary for school infrastructure projects. although collaboration with mining industry peers is beneficial, some of the participants mentioned that this is currently not happening at the rate it should because each company wants credit for the work done. instead of collaborating and realising more significant influence, mining companies often develop smaller projects in isolation. with the mining peers, it is always a paper exercise... [you] find instances where we are literally sharing a community, and instead of collaborating, i don’t know if it’s the egos or what, but we’d rather all go to a school and do three different things when we could have come together and do one big thing. (participant 7) 1716 serfontein-jordaan & dlungwane the study also established that mining companies collaborate with municipalities to address the issues of poor service delivery and lack of capacity through a programme called municipality capacity building. the programme aims to address the technical skills gaps and empower local municipalities by building capacity for the efficient delivery of essential services and local economic development. the ultimate goal is to attract investment and stimulate growth and sustainable communities. this finding confirms what hamann (2003: 280) indicated – that co-creating csr approaches and solutions with local communities and continuously engaging them help sustain trusting relationships. tri-sector partnerships with civil society, the government, and the private sector contribute to sustainable csr outcomes. conclusion the analysis of the findings in terms of 1) the nature of csr projects implemented, 2) the sustainability levels of csr projects, and 3) stakeholder engagement in achieving sustainable csr outcomes indicates only similarities between the cases, and no significant differences were noted. the study established that collaboration is key to achieving greater sustainable csr projects in the host communities; however, mining companies operating in shared communities are not collaborating at the rate they should in order to realise significant impact. therefore, mining companies are encouraged to form partnerships with other mining houses to develop csr projects that will have a more significant effect instead of implementing their own smaller projects in isolation. the study further established that mining companies rely on the idp document to guide their infrastructure projects. thus, it is recommended that mining companies participate in the idp document preparation process to provide input based on their engagements with the community so that the final document can be inclusive of and have balanced community needs. in addition, because of the consultative and collaboration process, the study established that mining companies face the challenge of demands from diverse stakeholders. it is, therefore, recommended for mining companies to manage the expectations and demands of various stakeholders effectively. prioritising stakeholder issues, risks and concerns in the stakeholder mapping and engagement planning process will be critical to achieving this. management can address diverse stakeholder expectations by selecting stakeholder representatives based on their impact and influence on the business. likewise, management should be transparent, effectively communicate to stakeholders, educate them on actual corporate mining policies and concerns, and inform them about realistic demands. revised conceptual framework figure 2 below indicates the revised conceptual framework proposed by the researchers. the study established that through consultation and collaboration there was a formation of stakeholder engagement fora and partnerships for project 1716 achieving sustainable corporate social responsibility outcomes implementation. as a result, this contributed to the sustainability of csr projects. this is because stakeholders’ observations are considered, and csr projects are co-created to approach the communities’ need to resolve economic, social and environmental problems. sustainable csr outcomes stakeholders consultations collaboration partnerships environmental impact social impact economic impact local government (municipalities) communities (traditional authorities, community members and ward counsellors) mining industry peers stakeholder engagement ngos local business fora provincial government (departments of health, education, public works, and social development) figure 2: revised conceptual framework on csr and stakeholder engagement list of references afreh, m. 2016. sustainability of corporate social responsibility outcomes: perspectives from the ghanaian mining sector. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of ghana. accra, ghana. agudelo, m., johannsdottir, l. & david. b. 2020. drivers that motivate energy companies to be responsible: a systematic literature review of corporate social responsibility in the energy sector. journal of cleaner production 247: 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jclepro.2019.119094 alhaddi, h. 2015. triple bottom line and sustainability: a literature review. business and management studies 1: 6-10. https://doi.org/10.11114/bms.v1i2.752 arenas, d., lozano, j.m. & albareda, l. 2009. the role of ngos in csr: mutual perceptions among stakeholders. journal of business ethics 88: 175-197. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0109-x arli, d.i. & lasmono, h.k. 2010. consumers’ perception of corporate social responsibility in a developing country. international journal of consumer studies 34: 46-51. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00824.x bailey, j. 2008. assessment of triple bottom line financing interventions. 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https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.346 https://doi.org/10.15388/omee.2010.1.2.14297 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.01.163 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2938-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125709 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1047-8310(01)00039-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.101984 _hlk66620009 _hlk71029234 _ref87876673 _hlk87283653 _hlk86886306 _hlk87085038 _hlk87094669 _hlk95731406 1pb dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion amongst some south africans abstract discussions about abortion evoke strong, complex sentiments. in many societies, and religious and civil society organisations, using moral grandstanding drives polarised sentiments about abortion in the public sphere. these discussions frequently adopt a stance on the health of women versus the foetus that transcends health-related aspects to include the rights of women versus others in society. yet the complexity and polarisation as reflected in public narratives has been underexplored. this article examines twitter conversations on the topic. through a social representation approach, the article analyses the representations made regarding termination of pregnancy, arising social representations, and the communication consequences. the social ecological model studies people in their environments and the influences they hold on each other. netnography was used to analyse online conversations, which ultimately filtered into traditional media enabling convergence. this study contributes to communication scholarship by highlighting the growing role of social media to enable expression of various dissenting perspectives, from a “safe space” to a subject that would ordinarily be inaccessible through discordance. keywords: health communication; social media; online communication; social representation; social representation theory; abortion; human rights; dissenting perspectives; prolife; pro-choice introduction discussions about abortion and related rights are often complex and reflect the dissonance of personal views about decision-making. sentiments about abortion, as expressed in the public sphere, are usually polarised, with such polarisation often routed along moral grandstanding, mostly by religious groups and civil society pro-choice and prolife/anti-abortion groups. conversations reflecting societal “shaming” and shunning of women with regards to the dr elizabeth lubinga department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg, south africa email: elizabethl@uj.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-1811-7421 karabo sitto department of strategic communication,university of johannesburg, south africa email: ksitto@uj.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-5146-9189 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v24.9 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2019 24: 1-19 date submitted: 5 august 2019 date accepted: 11 october 2019 date published: 03 december 2019 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:elizabethl@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7421 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7421 mailto:ksitto@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5146-9189 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5146-9189 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.9 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v24.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 lubinga & sitto decisions they make about whether not to abort are mostly driven by two prominent basic human values – the principle of reciprocity and the right to life. the principle of reciprocity expounds the argument that humans act to preserve their own lives; therefore, it is wrong to take the life of another. contextualised to abortion, reciprocity implies that a woman, not having been aborted herself, should then respect the sacrosanctity of the foetus. in terms of right to life, proponents argue that the wrong of abortion lies in denying the foetus its future life despite its cognitive abilities at the time of abortion (loi & nobile 2016). in south africa, these debates take place in places of worship, public platforms, and public and private health spaces, and often filter into traditional media (dr eve 2018; kammies 2019) as well as social media. on public platforms, such as social media, there appears to be censorship in terms of what is allowed to be debated and who is allowed to lead or guide the direction of the conversation. traditionally, social media in south africa have not commonly been used as spaces for citizens to engage about termination of pregnancy due to access and affordability challenges, especially for rural citizens (mcleod 2017). however, social media have the potential to create a forum for open engagement about a sensitive and stigmatised subject among citizens, as well as enabling access help online (israelsen-hartley 2018). in terms of south africa law, abortion is legal based on the choice on termination of pregnancy act (act 92 of 1996, amended in 2008). the original version of the act obliged the government to provide reproductive health services to all women, including safe conditions under which the right of choice can be exercised without fear or harm. following the amendment, in recognition of the fact that health professionals hold personal views that may not necessarily be pro-choice, they were provided with an option of referring women to a facility where they could access services if the health professional concerned was not inclined to provide these services for whatever reason. conversations in the media indicate that, despite an abortion law in south africa that has been termed as progressive, there are discrepancies between the law and the lived experiences of women (dr eve 2018; kammies 2019). background: abortion, stigma and shame some of the recurring discussions about the subject centre on stigma and shame about termination of pregnancy, as reflected in revelations in the media by women in narratives about their lived experiences. shame and stigma around abortion are rife in ghana (oduro & otsin 2014) and in nigeria (koster 2003) where women fear ridicule and the cultural taboos associated with it. nigeria’s abortion laws in some of its states make it a criminal offence, unless it is performed to save a woman’s life, punishable by imprisonment, fines or both (iyioha & nwabueze 2015). such stiff laws automatically translate into women engaging in “backyard” abortions, possibly leading to the very maternal deaths that governments try to prevent. conversely, even if such laws allow for saving the life of the pregnant woman, pro-life/anti-abortion groups would still argue that the right to life of the foetus is violated. 32 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... backyard abortions also occur in south africa, even though abortion is legal. more than 50% of an estimated 260 000 abortions that take place in south africa every year are unsafe and illegal pregnancy terminations (sa news 2018). women have cited abortion stigma as being high in the country, especially among health care professionals, whose attitude acts as a deterrent. the high rate of illegal abortions could be attributable to lack of access, suggesting correlation between supply and demand. a high demand for termination of pregnancy services with insufficient supply due to reluctant health care professionals and few physical facilities are some of the causes (stevens & mudarikwa 2018). less than 7% of south africa’s 3 880 public health facilities have the capacity to perform termination of pregnancy services (amnesty international 2017). these factors interface to make the decision to terminate pregnancy more complex for women. this is especially important when considered in context with societal debates about the ultimate decision they have to make – whether to or not to engage in termination. societal debates on abortion taking place in the public sphere are driven by attitudes and beliefs about numerous rights that vie for priority in terms of decisionmaking among women. these include the rights of religious groups, faith-based and civil organisations to protect life, the rights of the pregnant woman and the healthcare professional’s right to perform a termination versus constitutional prescription, and many other rights, which all compete to influence a single decision. social media conversations provide insight into sentiments expressed by individuals about sensitive subjects such as abortion and the clash/coexistence of rights. theoretical framework abortion is not solely a health problem; hence, traditional behaviour communication theories typically used to study health may be partly applicable, but cannot cover the totality of the topic. using health behaviour models to guide communication strategies provide an “engineered” and structured way of thinking (lie 2008). while emphasising the argument that abortion is a conglomeration of rights, it should be noted that it is more of a social issue. social representation theory (srt) provides tools for the identification of social problems as people move through different systems of relation (bratu 2014), observed through interpersonal communication, and face-to-face, online, symbolic and other communication forms. the abortion conversation is one that is often hidden, and a conversation that is dominated in society by moral language. the actual decision is influenced by an intrapersonal conversation that a woman has with and within herself. the same may apply to a healthcare practitioner who makes a decision about assisting a woman to terminate a pregnancy. srt suggests three types of social representations, namely hegemonic, emancipated and polemic (moscovici & hewstone 1983; jaspal et al. 2014). hegemonic representations are coercive and uniform, jointly shared by members of a group. emancipated social representations are “developed by subgroups within a larger social collective… [and] constitute minor amendments of the overarching hegemonic representation” (jaspal et. al. 2014: 112). polemic representations, on the other hand, 54 lubinga & sitto are generated “in the course of social conflict, and characterised by antagonistic relations between groups” (ibid.). abortion and the related decision-making process is a contested representation that polarises families, churches, communities and sexual partners. darvin and norton (2014) sketch these polemic social representations as arising out of conflict; in this instance, the conflict over whose rights are more important. humans can manipulate representations internally by using their minds and even thinking about or reflexively responding to themselves (stryker 2001). abortion has evolved over the years, from an unspoken means or a last resort for pregnant women to conceal pregnancy, to open conversations about health risks involved in obstetrics, to the empowerment of women to make choices regarding their bodies and pregnancy. the development of symbols is based on interpersonal communication taking place between people as social representations provide a code for social exchange (serrano & hermida 2015). these symbols may involve humanising the woman carrying the foetus, using medical terms to explain processes beyond simply “life”, and the use of metaphors or images as representations of abortion. these symbols, or social representations, develop through people’s interactions and communicative behaviour (stryker 2001), and eventually become social norms. according to hogg and reid (2006: 10), “norms are shared cognitive representations” and social representations are norms that can be intentionally communicated verbally and/or non-verbally. social representations through communication are constantly transmitted and shared until they are widely accepted (serrano & hermida 2015). the primary modes of communication of social representations of abortion are through traditional media, churches, civil society organisations, as well as activists. groups and individuals on polarised ends of the debate on abortion fight to preserve their social representations on abortion, be it pro-life or pro-choice. “representations [are] rooted in language and culture because they are the work of collectivity, [and thus] cannot be entirely conscious,” writes moscovici (1993: 40). the social representations people hold about abortion often are connected to their family upbringing, as well as the societal norms of the social groups to which they belong. these may be cultural, religious, civil or even national representations. according to joffe (2003: 60), “[social] representation is concerned with symbols, social reality and social knowledge”. while many south africans know that abortion is legal, means to exercise this right have been curtailed by the amendment to the legislation that hands more decision-making power to healthcare professionals. as mentioned before, healthcare professionals may invoke personal conscience to deny providing services to women seeking termination services, despite their obligation to refer these women to other professionals. there is perhaps a “misguided” social representation, depending on which side one takes, that the rights of the foetus supersede the rights of the individual in whose body the foetus is developing. social representations can be both products and processes. as products, they are shared beliefs, such as the irrevocable representation of the right to life of the foetus, from different sectors of society, stemming from religious beliefs of termination being seen as the taking of a life, or murder. the social representation amongst professionals 54 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... becomes a product of the shared belief of doing no harm, with respect to not harming the foetus. these products of shared beliefs appear not to place value on the life of the woman carrying the foetus. she is merely represented as a vessel to bring forth life, regardless of any personal health risk involved in the process of pregnancy. as processes, social representation encompasses a range of activities, such as communication, exchange and argumentation, which groups as well as individuals engage with. in terms of abortion, these processes take the form of preaching in churches, advertising campaigns, public consultations with individuals in clinics, forced counselling, community naming and shaming, and counting of the number of abortions sought by individual women. according to wagner et al. (1999: 95), “a social representation is the ensemble of thoughts and feelings being expressed in verbal and overt behaviour of actors which constitutes an object for a social group”. an individual enters an interaction holding specific social representations and draws on these during the interaction, and changes them in some way through representing them (howarth 2014). theoretically, the social ecological model by dahlberg and krug (2002) allows for a study of people in an environment and the associated influences that they have on each other. the model shows an interface of influences on people at the individual, relationship, community and societal levels. in relation to this study, the complexity of abortion is reflected in influences at all these levels through social, cultural, religious, moral, legal and other dimensions. conversations in the media also play a role in influencing decisions and behaviour at the various levels. the model proposes that at the individual level, characteristics such as knowledge, attitude and beliefs play a part in influencing decisions. at a relationship level, the importance of relationships with family, intimate partners, peers, as well as the role of the immediate social circle of an individual and their influence plays a part in decisions. at a community level, decisions are influenced by the setting in which social relationships occur, such as in schools or the workplace. at a societal level, decisions are influenced by broad societal factors that either create or inhibit an individual from taking certain actions or decisions, such as social norms, public policies, and religious and cultural beliefs (dahlberg & krug 2002). all four levels of the model affect abortion decisions. at each of the levels, there are rights that are enshrined that are often in polarity. at an individual level, the right of the woman to engage in termination of pregnancy (for whatever reason) clashes with, for example, religious beliefs that discourage abortion. at a relationship level, some intimate (sexual) partners force women to terminate. an american study of almost 1 000 women found that almost 74% were pressured into terminating their pregnancies because they experienced subtle forms of pressure, such as partners threatening to leave them (abbamonte 2018). communities also exert their influence. for example, in south africa health professionals in public hospitals mistreat women who seek out their services (qukula 2016). at a societal level, policies are made that promote or clash with individual rights, like the amendment to the 1996 choice on termination of pregnancy act, referred to above. 76 lubinga & sitto methodology the article employed netnography (ethnography on the internet) – a rigorous methodology suited for studying the uniqueness of online communities (kozinets 2002: 62). netnography as a qualitative data collection method, which helps illuminate cultural realities, is less complicated and time consuming, less obtrusive, less costly to obtain information, and more naturalistic (kozinets 2002; 2006). people form relationships online because they are inclined to spend time online connecting, working and conducting other transactions, including seeking entertainment (xun & reynolds 2010). kozinets (2002) developed five steps to help researchers using netnography with methodological rigour, and expanded these steps to 12 methodological steps (kozinets 2015). kozinets’ (2015: 98) 12 steps are “non-exclusive and often-interacting process levels” of netnography. two noteworthy conversations that took place in south africa on the topic of abortion and rights of women were selected for analysis. they were selected for their volume of engagement and the high number of participants in these conversations, as well as for the convergence between mass media and twitter. the first conversation was a radio conversation during sexual reproduction health month on a private talk radio station about stigma, which remained an obstacle to abortion rights in south africa (qukula 2018). this conversation was converged with a conversation on twitter, led by the host of the show. the second conversation resulted from a tweet by a young woman emphatically reminding women that abortion is their right and they need not feel ashamed to access a safe abortion, which sparked debate from different quarters of society and even drew the attention of people outside of south africa with its reach. these conversations were analysed to compare the arising themes and positioning of rights with respect to the termination of pregnancy. sandlin (2007: 289) states, “netnography is naturalistic enquiry… [because it] captures individuals and groups in their natural settings, conducting their everyday life practices”. these conversations were captured in settings where people naturally engage, both on air and on twitter. the following steps were used in a non-linear fashion for purposes of engaging in netnography on the topic of abortion: ♦ introspection – reflection on the role of research in approaching how the data would help achieve the research aims and objectives of the study. this included the purposive selection of conversations. ♦ investigation – the search for conversations on abortion and rights in south africa centred on collecting data for the purposes of analysis of public conversations. ♦ information – ethical considerations involved accessing only publicly available conversations, including building anonymity in the interpretation of the data collected. ♦ interview – the choice of the site inspected was twitter, and only these high volume conversations were included for analysis. ♦ inspection – this only linked to the abortion conversations mentioned with thorough analysis and data collection of each thread of the conversation. 76 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... ♦ interaction – the entrée strategy was through a public search on twitter, which allowed for these conversations to be identified using the terms “abortion” and “abortion in south africa”, and narrowing it down to the conversations with high reach. this was done using an understanding of how twitter works and being a member of the twitter community. ♦ immersion – the authors had to immerse themselves in the conversations, including listening to a podcast of the radio segment, analysing each picture and video, as well as collecting the tweets and replies. ♦ indexing – this phase involved weighting of the data; selecting more high quality and meaningful data from each conversation. ♦ interpretation – interpretive analysis was done using srt to attempt to understand the social representations on abortion without distorting them through interpretation. ♦ iteration – there were phases within these phases for this netnographic analysis. ♦ instatiation – for this article, the analysis approach that was most appropriate was humanist, given the sensitivity of the topic and the nature of the conversations. ♦ integration – the authors then integrated the data with the research objectives to develop some insights from the netnography, forming part of the overall findings and interpretation discussion of this research the research for this article did not focus on fora, but rather on two specific conversations on abortion rights in sexual reproductive health. one of the benefits of netnography is the near-automatic transcription of the contents downloaded, and the ease with which the data is obtained (kozinets 2002). netnography helps to provide insight into individuals’ experiences (xun & reynolds 2010); in this instance, the varying perspectives on rights in the execution of abortion and how these are communicated. netnography as a method “provides a window into the cultural realities” (kozinets 2006: 282) of abortion in south africa, the social conversations and the arising themes. capturing the conversations involved a number of steps. the first was to search for conversations on twitter on abortion and abortion rights in south africa and evaluating these conversations based on the volume of engagement. this search was important to conduct in order to identify the conversations that included voices from different people on the discussion of abortion and sexual reproductive health rights to reduce bias in perspectives. all the user names and handles were excluded in the data analysis in order to avoid detracting from the substance of the tweets. mentions of individuals in responses that formed part of the ongoing conversations in the thread of tweets were also excluded. people frequently take part in important discussions in their online communities to inform and influence each other using “relevant symbol systems” (kozinets 2002: 61); that is, using social representations. only publicly accessible tweets were used, and 98 lubinga & sitto no tweets were selected from any private conversations or direct messages to which the authors had no access. the data collection relied on netnography techniques for the collection and analysis of ongoing conversations on the topic of interest and all the tweets collected over this period were from the two conversations identified. tweets in languages other than english were included and translated for purposes of analysis. the tweets analysed included media such as memes, emojis, images, gifs and videos, as this study was interested in not only the conversations, but also the social representations used in discussing abortion online. to add texture to the data, the tweets were analysed using a wordcloud to observe which terms came up most frequently in the conversations about abortion. results and discussion figure 1: radio and twitter conversations wordcloud 98 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... figure 2: converged conversation wordlist figure 3: twitter conversation wordcloud 1110 lubinga & sitto figure 4: wordlist of twitter conversation the conversations about abortion took place eight months apart, one taking place on radio and twitter simultaneously in south africa, and the other on twitter with contributions from people outside of south africa. in both instances, the conversations were sparked by considering the human rights involved in the issue of abortion. the tweets analysed could broadly be categorised under the following themes: ♦ reciprocity of life – your mother had you, why would you choose otherwise? ♦ sacrosanctity of the foetus – governed by representations of religion and morality. ♦ partner rights and responsibilities – with respect to the termination decision or the maintenance of a child, should a woman choose to keep a child. ♦ abortion stigma – seen as a “dirty” choice, based purely on women being selfish; in another conversation, the perpetuation of abortion stigma by medical professionals in public hospitals. the most dominant words in the two conversations, after the topic “abortion”, were “marriage” and “child”. this emphasises the reciprocity of life, with concern for the foetus being labelled a person, whilst medically the definition is different. marriage as a term invokes morality with respect to women waiting for marriage to have sex for procreation, as well as the misguided comparison of abortion with gay marriage rights. life was a top term that appeared in both conversations, and it was used mostly with respect to the argument for right to life of the foetus, regardless of any potential risk to 1110 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... the woman carrying the foetus. abortion was labelled as murder, with conversations casting aspersions on the female’s sexual behaviour, loose morals, selfishness and lack of love or regard for the child they would be “killing”. the social representations of vilification of the women weighed heavily in the words used to describe those that choose to terminate, as murderous, uncaring human beings. leaders use religions scripts, such as the bible, to justify their words and actions in rejecting the rights of women to choose, focusing instead on the loss of potential new life. this despite the choice on termination of pregnancy act (1996), which clearly states that it “promotes reproductive rights and extends freedom of choice by affording every woman [emphasised] the right to choose whether to have an early, safe and legal termination of pregnancy according to her individual beliefs”. a number of themes emerged from the two twitter conversations on abortion and related rights. the themes included discussions with respect to partner rights and responsibilities. reciprocity of life was raised in these discussions, questioning the rights of the child (foetus) superseding those of the woman in making the decision of which right to life matters more. this was closely linked to representations of the sanctity of life of the unborn child, as well as religious moral views on the representation of abortion as the murder of innocent life. tweets referring to the sexual behaviour of women and their rights being compromised by them for not taking precaution to become pregnant squarely place the responsibility on women, socially representing those who are pro-choice as selfish. the stigmatisation of women linked their behaviour, the right to an abortion, the humiliation suffered at the hands of medical professionals, and the policing of women’s bodies. the admonition in these tweets was that women should feel empowered to seek abortions without feeling shame, and in a safe environment. the tweets relating to these themes are discussed in more detail below. partner rights and responsibilities a number of tweets and retweets came from people who identified as male and who clearly argued for the rights of partners in decision-making about abortion by women. they pointed to the fact that their feelings about abortion should be considered too. partner rights while the physical impact of the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy are carried by females, the conversations challenged the rights of partners. many men raised the neglect of their rights in making the abortion decision, feeling victim to their partners not considering their emotions. females, on this right, retorted that men typically do not take responsibility for children, leaving women to fend for themselves. the following conversation is an example: problem is we together smashing but we it comes to abortion guys are not consulted i believe we have the right to be consulted do girls consider how we men feel when they abort? most of y’all deny the baby 1312 lubinga & sitto but then not all of us to do that hey. do you know how it hurts to be robbed the chance of being a father💔 👀 no i don’t, are you a victim? yes💔💔 kodwa kuzo lunga yaz [meaning yes my heart has been broken twice (emojis), but it will get better in isizulu] yho askies 🙆🙆 [oh sorry] partner responsibilities the participants also tweeted about the responsibilities that result from pro-life decisions, yet partner responsibilities do not seem to be taken into consideration in making pro-choice decisions. the sentiments expressed by the partners were that they were only conveniently allowed into children’s lives to maintain and support them, yet when decisions about abortion were made, they were not invited to participate: when you want to have the [sic] and she doesn’t she goes ahead and abort, “she’s within her rights” when she wants the and you’re not ready she can go ahead and have the child, you have to maintain and support the child whether you financially ready or not...😩 the decision to abort must taken by both parties angithi simenze sobabili [meaning we made this child together in isizulu]. if one says yes and the other one says no, the one who said yes keeps child... the one who said no can’t claim him/her.😂 this gets forgotten very quickly, some turn into prophets and say ubabakhe [the father] will run away or reject the child without even telling u that they pregnant. i have never heard or seen guys against abortion, usually they pay for it coz most guys aren’t very keen on fatherhood… i’m impressed with this thread yet the man has no choice in forking over cash for 18 years. liberal society is messed up. reciprocity of life the idea that a pregnant woman was given a chance to life and should therefore treat others, in this case a foetus, in the same way was a recurring theme in twitter conversations: sometimes matter of morals [sic] and been responsible [sic]…why your mom didn’t abort you? i don’t like idiots girls in my life…why at first place you admitted that sex with no protection…condoms are not 100% safe you know. please don’t involve my mom in this conversation. it’s not that hard to understand that ripping a child apart piece by piece and vacuuming its brains out is “wrong” 1312 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... i totally disagree🙅...thats a life already you getting rid off. why cant you just give that kid its right to live just like your mama did for you imagine if your mom had aborted you sacrosanctity of foetal life the sanctity of the foetal life manifests through tweets comparing abortion to murder, with the foetus referred to as an angel, and promising punishment by the devil for terminating a pregnancy. this conversation between two people evokes guilt on the part of the woman, equating her to a murderer and killer with “blood on her hands”: abortion is murder!!! that little angel you have in your womb has right to life, killing him/her is d greatest injustice against nature! he neva asked u to have sex witout protection, y kill him/her? u r heartless!! what about if you are raped? 👀 i’m supposed to live with that? if u r raped, it is still not the child’s fault. he or she has d right to live. give birth to the child and him/her to the orphanage or the social services. murder is murder! could never be me. call me heartless, i don’t care. d devil will care... close your damn legs and stop committing murder! gosh! leave me alone, abortion is legal. kip aborting, good luck in losing ur womb and having blood on your hands! i wonder hw u sleep at nyt and the innocent life? when does life begin? the minute the baby takes its first breathe according to the south african law of persons religious prejudice the response to morality from those adopting a religious view is that of abortion being considered murder. the main contestation and challenge to those viewing abortion as a sin is that christians commit all manner of sins, and yet are selective in their outrage, specifically against abortion: to selective christians: i know the bible says abortion is a sin but what about those other sins y’all are committing? don’t get all holy holy on me because of what i said. people are going to say what they think is right. you are entitled to your perspective. don’t let these folks drag you down. nobody has time for these all of a sudden part1514 lubinga & sitto time christians. these, morally correct for this topic of conversation type of thing. i got you. abortion is not given enough platform it deserves in societal discourses. abortion is clouded by religious prejudices hence opinions like “it is ok for rape”. there are other dynamics that are reasons enough for abortion. female sexual behaviour and rights women are often shunned by communities on the basis of the moral, cultural and religious views held by societies (oduro & otsin 2014). the social representation of these views is that the life of an unborn child, who is innocent, does not deserve to be terminated. linked to this representation is the implied judgement that a female who chooses to abort was irresponsible by becoming pregnant in the first place and did not take the necessary precautions. this places the responsibility for the consequences of sexual intercourse squarely on the shoulders of females, absolving men from the responsibility of pregnancy. women who choose to abort are socially represented as selfish, lacking in maternal instincts and callous with the “gift of life”: neither does that kid deserve to suffer when he/she is born. it’s a catch22. so best to give women prerogative to decide without her being subjected to prejudice. there’s no point of argument here...it’s people who refuse to be responsible for their actions because i believe anyone can hersal [sic] and provide for that baby…there’s always a way out unless you just don’t want to… its not about beliefs...you get pregnant, you not like raped or something that will make sense to abort, and you can find a job even though you gonna hersal [sic]… don’t say you’ll get rid ot it just because you choose whatever you want with your body and just because its 22. hle...it’s a taboo...people need to understand that as much as it’s a sin examples like divorce os [sic] also a sin. but you’d hear people saying “if you’re not happy get out of that unhappy marriage”…but they want people to be unhappy mothers. maybe they just don’t want to have a kid with that specific man. well birth control like any other contraceptive isn’t 100% fool proof. 1514 dissonance of rights: digital space, an enabler of conversations about abortion... and what happens in cases of rape? must we as society force an unwanted child on a woman suffering from trauma? or in cases where in cases where the pregnancy could kill the woman before she even gives birth? she can give it up for adoption saying “give it up for adoption” is not always realistic in sa, as of 2017 the rate of adoption has decreased by roughly 50%, and that number wasn’t great to begin with. according to the children’s institute at uct only 1186 children were adopted between apr 2017 n mar 2018 i personally don’t entertain bullshit…its sad these abortion thing i once experienced “its funny these girl she still young don’t know what she sayin..she will grow and understand…unless she will die stubborn. abortion stigma the discussions mostly emanated from medical professionals speaking out against the stigma that surrounds women who choose to engage in termination of pregnancy and discouraging women from having unsafe abortions. on the other hand, some women pointed out the medical practitioners were the perpetrators of the stigma surrounding abortion: don’t be ashamed to have an abortion it is legal to have it and you’re acting within your rights. don’t let the stigma around abortion force you to go and have back door abortion because you might end up dead and you don’t owe anyone any explanation. it’s your body and your right one of the biggest obstacles for women getting abortions is abortion stigma. it’s the core of what’s inhibiting more abortions being offered to women. it’s unacceptable that women should be humiliated for having this experience. the treatment by the nurses in the hospital towards the women seeking abortions was just disgusting. i’m 28. i’ve had three abortions and i have one son... in my first abortion, i was 19 and i was raped in first year... i was four weeks and told to come back at 20 weeks. that really depressed me. i speak out about my story. i speak out about the stigma because i don’t think it’s fair. i’m pro choice and i find it interesting that it’s men who want to tell women what to do with their bodies. i’m a medical professional in the public sector. the environment is very difficult for women who are seeking abortions. it’s humiliating for the one’s that do come. the circumstances are inhumane for what women are going through. healthcare workers are the biggest culprits of obstructing access. as a med student wanting to be trained in performing tops, senior professionals will alienate you for even asking. 1716 lubinga & sitto conclusion whilst there is recognition in south africa that freedom of choice to terminate is legal, there is an argument against it being morally “right”. in arguing for the moral position, pro-life proponents argue that, from being conceived, a foetus is a living human whose life should not be in the hands of its mother. however, the burden of care is also placed on women as those meant to raise children, by virtue of their own mothers having chosen to birth them. in this way, rights are ranked by perceived order of social importance, and the rights of the foetus take precedence. these are followed by the rights of the woman’s partner, the societal rights in occupying the moral high ground, as well as the rights of healthcare professionals to refuse to help women exercise their right to terminate. these rights are represented as altruistic, and that of the woman wanting to terminate as selfish or uncaring. this also deprioritises women as people, as their right to terminate is enshrined in the constitution. throughout the different social representations that present all other human rights as the main factors in the abortion arguments, women’s bodies are represented as governable entities policed by society. no matter the reason behind the choice to terminate the pregnancy, be it a personal health risk or socio-economic factors, in the conversations analysed as part of this study the women are presented as being selfish and evil. the conversations argue against the sole choice of a woman to choose termination by putting forward these other rights. through hegemonic and gendered social representations carried in communication, the women are blamed for getting themselves pregnant through irresponsible behaviour. their behaviour is seen as testing or violating the behaviour of others; for example, partners and healthcare practitioners. the partners are sympathised with for having to pay for these unwanted terminations, or for keeping the baby when the partner who would have to pay maintenance refused. the abortion conversation in south africa needs to be given the space and room to evolve, given all the existing rights and obligations of those involved in such circumstances. however, it is uncertain but perhaps in line with the controversy of the subject as who is to steer the conversation in order to give all rights adequate and equal regard in making the final decision for termination. the constitution, through an amendment, does not appear to have successfully brought about societal acceptance of a woman’s right to termination. however, opening up spaces for conversation will ensure that different, polarised and contentious views on the subject are given a safe platform to be heard. the authors acknowledge that a limitation of the study is that twitter is a privileged space that does not represent the views of the many who do not have access or a voice. for further study, consideration should be given to narratives in traditional media and how these are shaped by the media in which they take place and by the dominant voices who 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(ed.) handbook of sociological theory. handbooks of sociology and social research. boston: springer. wagner, w., duveen, g., farr, r., jovchelovitch, s., lorenzi‐cioldi, f., marková, i. & rose, d. 1999. theory and method of social representations. asian journal of social psychology 2(1): 95-125. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-839x.00028 xun, j. & reynolds, j. 2010. applying netnography to market research: the case of the online forum. journal of targeting, measurement and analysis for marketing 18(1): 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1057/jt.2009.29 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-839x.00028 https://doi.org/10.1057/jt.2009.29 _goback 103pb facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government abstract the study provides a narrative exploration of the contribution and accentuated value of strategic communication management (scm) in facilitating and fostering inclusive citizenry engagement through bottom-up constructed governance initiatives and citizenry-oriented sustainability programmes, using the north-west province of south africa as the research context. the study ponders on how a provincial sphere of government, as empowered by the national sphere, uses strategic communication to identify and address citizenry needs, interests and expectations from a participatory perspective. the objective was to determine the extent to which scm enables purposeful and deliberate bottom-up centred public participation opportunities for inclusive citizenry engagement to be realised. qualitative focus group and semi-structured interviews enabled the study to interrogate and advance how strategic communication can be positioned to attain, promote and encourage ongoing engagement opportunities that are poised as more inclusive and that are premised on the idea of co-governance and citizenry-grounded sustainability programmes. the study found that provincial government communication was simply operational in nature, and more often, performed and facilitated without a strategic purpose nor deliberate intention by hemispheric and less-skilled communicators with little regard for communication management theory. consequently, little evidence exists on how citizenry interests are identified and addressed to encourage the necessary responsive actions by ordinary citizens. keywords: strategic communication; inclusive citizenry engagement; governance; sustainability; participation; government communication introduction a number of publications expose the accentuated value of strategic communication in various case studies, with specific reference to institutions and the global landscape (lock et al. 2020; zerfass et al. 2018; nothhaft et al. 2018; ihlen & tsietsi mmutle school of communication studies, north-west university, mahikeng campus, mahikeng, south africa email : tsietsi.mmutle@ nwu.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6789-4534 prof. estelle de beer department of business management, division of communication management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email : estelle.debeer@ up.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1265-2703 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.7 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 103-123 date submitted: 01 may 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:tsietsi.mmutle@nwu.ac.za mailto:tsietsi.mmutle@nwu.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6789-4534 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6789-4534 mailto:estelle.debeer@up.ac.za mailto:estelle.debeer@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2703 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2703 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.7 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.7 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 105104 mmutle & de beer frederiksson 2018; heide et al. 2018; nothhaft 2016). however, little is known about how contemporary government spheres use strategic communication to advance inclusive citizenry engagement through public participation podia (sebola 2017; lues 2014). the use of strategic communication management often pays lip service and emphasises top-down information dissemination processes rather than a clear and precise communication-based strategy aimed at creating an impactful and organised community of engaged citizenry. the notion of inclusive citizenry engagement is about the right of the people to define the public good, determine the policies by which they will seek the good, and to reform or replace institutions that do not serve that particular good. inclusivity of citizens can also be summarised as a means of working together to make a difference in the civil life of communities and developing the combination of skills, knowledge, values and motivation in order to make that difference. it means promoting a quality of life in a community, through political and non-political processes. the role of communication that is practised and applied for a strategic purpose is therefore important in advancing inclusive citizenry engagement. it is through the strategic role of communication that debates, discussions and transformative dialogue can be realised as meaningful. communication creates a platform where actors become actively involved in determining important aspects of engaging with each other – and subsequently formulate rules of engagement. however, such communication needs to be two-way, as grunig and grunig (1992) state, for all parties to have equal opportunities of addressing one another and formulating strategies that will benefit all of them. this should take place through a participative process, which allows citizens to identify and prioritise their needs, interests and expectations – which, as a result, should be addressed through community communication as a strategic process. the purpose of this study is to explore the contribution of strategic communication in facilitating and fostering inclusive citizenry engagement within the provincial sphere of government through adequate and dialogic public participation platforms. the provincial sphere of government, especially in south africa, has a mandate to establish legitimate and genuine citizenry needs, interests and expectations with the aim of creating favourable conditions through governance initiatives and sustainability programmes for an engaged society (enabled through community communication and two-way participation). moreover, ordinary citizens often play an essential role in government processes, whether directly or indirectly. in south africa, this role is particularly important within the provincial government sphere, which is delegated by the national government to foster inclusive and collaborative opportunities with those governed at grassroots level, among others. conversely, communities will, at most, participate in development programmes if there are perceived benefits for them; however, such benefits should practically address the immediate needs and interests of citizens for inclusivity to be recognised. contextual to this study, the concept of inclusive citizenry engagement is thus introduced to emphasise a dynamic, interactional and transformative process of dialogue between people, groups, and institutions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an opportunity that enables people, individually and collectively, to realise their 105104 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government full potential and be engaged in their own welfare. the concept further depends on shared governance initiatives and citizenry-based sustainability programmes to enable meaningful participation via the bottom-up approach (community communication and participation). in this regard, allen (2016) posits that strategic communication orients people’s consciousness by inviting them to take a particular perspective, by evoking certain values and not others, and by creating referents for their attention and understanding. literature review it is widely argued that the developmental discourse underwent a critical review since the 1970s, shifting more towards a participatory approach in communication practice. in this respect, development communication recognises the need for the participation of stakeholders in developmental projects. scholars such as waisbord (2014) have observed that few contemporary development projects are operated without a component of a participatory model (c.f. servaes 2014; srampickal 2006; barranquero 2011; huesca 2002). fundamentally, participatory communication is seen as an approach that utilises appropriate communication mechanisms and techniques with the objective of increasing the levels of participation by stakeholders in development projects (including information sharing, motivating and training, particularly at the grassroots level) (oliveira 1993). therefore, it can be argued that the participatory communication approach in the context of this study embeds the will of citizens and government to seek inclusivity in programmes and projects. advocates of the participatory approach often argue that no development can exist without communication, and particularly, communication practised as a strategic orientation (mat tazin & yaakop 2018; waisbord 2014; servaes & malikhao 2012; waisbord 2008). on the other hand, sebola (2017) maintains that people and access to information about public participation opportunities and process is not as easy as it sounds in a governmental context. this is because terms such as “public”, “involvement” and “participation” are often used as buzz words for democracy through participation – it becomes difficult to articulate the extent to which genuine and adequate citizenry participation is fostered in the provincial sphere of government. slotterback and crosby (2012) have also argued that although many governments recognise public participation as a cornerstone for participative governance, they do not have a good understanding of designing processes that will achieve desirable outcomes. strategic communication from a participatory perspective the link between strategic communication and participatory communication is captured conceptually by lie and servaes (2015). these authors argue that strategic communication in the field of development communication is often applied in the thematic sub-discipline of health communication, but is not restricted to this subdiscipline. waisbord (2014) attempts to herald the significant contribution of strategic communication for social change by suggesting that the field supports collective actions – collective communication actions require strategic choices in a participatory environment. these perspectives link the strategic component of communication to 107106 mmutle & de beer communication for development and social change (cdsc). moreover, communication, whether participatory or strategic, should deal with coordinated organisational planning and should manifest a dialogic nature with a strategic and intentional goal. for this reason, participatory communication is considered strategic and intentional because participatory projects and programmes require some form of planning, objectives, coordination and implementation. accordingly, such participatory projects and programmes in the main must be communicated effectively with the people, and they are often constituted for social change (c.f. lewis 2011; mahoney 2012; paul 2011). if communication is not coordinated nor articulated as a sustainable and strategic means, the public apathy that could result from this could be attributed to a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of citizens about how their needs, interests and expectations are being addressed, particularly in government. rensburg and de beer (2011: 152) postulate that sustainability involves the organisation’s assessment and improvement of its economic, environmental and social impact to align it with stakeholder requirements using, among others, integrated reporting. this is further witnessed through participatory communication as linked to the strategic management of communication (waisbord 2014) – where participatory communication also advocates for a stakeholder perspective in development initiatives upon which the needs and interests of stakeholders depend. conversely, a better appreciation and acknowledgement of citizens’ involvement could help the government develop strategies to improve communication and to access target groups (singh 2014). it could be assumed from a participatory communication perspective that governance mechanisms and sustainability programmes are often not interpreted and practically translated to inform citizens about how their needs, interests and expectations are being addressed. consequently, little positive change takes place in the attitudes and behaviour of citizens to improve their lives. it is based on the foregoing that this study measures the strategic role of communication in, among others, influencing participatory endeavours to attain social change through shared initiatives with a view to enable high levels of inclusive citizenry engagement opportunities. another link between strategic communication and participatory communication can be observed from top-down diffusion versus bottom-up participation approaches. in this regard, strategic communication efforts will not succeed if bottom-up participation approaches are neglected and the focus is only on top-down diffusion. arguably, it is believed that citizens intensify their role and contribute wherever there are perceived benefits. it is thus imperative for sustainability programmes to be responsive to the expectations of citizens for continuous public participation, and for communication to be organised systematically to bring about the desired positive outcomes. as a context to strategic communication, it is, therefore, suggested by some scholars that what sounds easy and straightforward is one of the key problems of strategic communication and management. in this regard, more scholars specialising in the strategic management of communication question the ability of actors to act rationally in a contingent environment (frost & michelsen 2017; okigbo & onoja 2017; lock et al. 2020; singh 2014; haywood & besley 2014; balogun 2006; holtzhausen 2002). 107106 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government mitigating citizenry interests and expectations rensburg and de beer (2011: 152-153) indicate that the role of communication in information dissemination and conversation in organisations is changing in a triplecontext (people, planet and profit) environment. in essence, engaging stakeholders in decision-making processes, according to the “stakeholder-inclusive approach to governance”, has become important globally, but particularly in south africa with the publication of the king iv report. in the main, following the traditional approach to integrated communication will not be sufficient in a new organisational context where governance and sustainability issues have become important in organisational decision-making. as a consequence, inclusive citizenry engagement should be considered as a people-oriented approach in the facilitation of dialogue, debates and mutual discussions with the actors and citizens concerned. the notion of inclusive citizenry engagement can further be advanced through selfregulation mechanisms, whereby citizens advance regulatory measures of interactions, engagements and mutual relationships through a particular social cognitive framework (morris 2003). the regulatory framework in this regard should allow citizens to govern their ability to become active and responsive stakeholders within a given society. this assertion of self-regulation is further supported through the theory of self-regulation. the theory presupposes that a self-regulating person controls and manages their reactions and behaviour to achieve goals despite changing conditions and priorities. consequently, when implementing sustainability programmes it can be considered that participatory radio, imbizos and community-based centres form part of government activities with the view to engage community members actively in the planning, implementation and assessment of strategic programmes. accordingly, a key distinguishing aspect of participatory approaches is a stronger focus on the process rather than on a specific communication product, as elaborated by morris (2003), waisbord (2014), and lie and servaes (2015). from these perspectives, governance initiatives and sustainability programmes must be goal-orientated and conform to the expectations of citizens, while addressing their identified needs and interests through projects designed to encourage public participation and inclusivity. for inclusivity to be realised, one of the fundamental tools of the strategic management of communication is the ability to utilise resources significantly in positioning the needs and interests of stakeholders (in this case, citizens) at the forefront. in doing so, organisations are able to manage strategic relationships together with citizens’ expectations for social change and cohesion (waisbord 2014). likewise, this can further be achieved when complete, timely, relevant, accurate, honest and accessible information is provided by the organisation to its stakeholders, whilst having regard for legal and strategic considerations. the inclusive citizenry engagement concept highlights the importance of opportunity creation and challenges the existing ones through consensus building, which becomes imperative to societal objectives. the basic assumption would be that inclusive citizenry engagement can promote equal opportunities between the government and the governed and can use strategic relationship management to bring legitimacy 109108 mmutle & de beer to democratic values. arguably, the concept of inclusive citizenry engagement can be attained through strategic thinking that is aligned with strategic planning and cogovernance among the provincial government and its citizens. notably, heide et al. (2018) further allude to the fact that the fundamental idea of strategic communication is thus inclusive. moreover, legitimacy theory is identified as essential and complementary in advancing the strategic intent of a participatory endeavour. legitimacy theory, in this respect, purposely connects well with strategic communication and the participatory communication perspective, to understand the legitimacy of the provincial government’s communication goals in addressing citizenry needs, interests and expectations. citizens are viewed as an integral part of the government’s environmental component to exercise legitimacy. arguably, societal values and legitimacy are intrinsically dependent on how governance initiatives and sustainability programmes are practically translated to respond to the communication challenges of citizens. for legitimacy to materialise practically, the north-west province, as the research context, has to consider social norms and bounds. as such, citizens remain an integral societal authority who refute or affirm government’s legitimacy to operate. these theoretical presuppositions are the guiding lens to better understand and comprehensively assess how strategic communication, among others, can support governance initiatives and sustainability programmes in the process of striving for inclusive citizenry engagement opportunities. this is done with the sole aim of positioning strategic communication as a beacon of hope or deliberate tool to obtain inclusive citizenry engagement while adopting a participatory perspective. therefore, this study poses the following questions to understand the role of strategic communication in facilitating and fostering inclusive citizenry engagement within the provincial sphere of government: rq1: how can strategic communication management for governance initiatives support inclusive citizenry engagement? rq2: how can strategic communication management for sustainability programmes support inclusive citizenry engagement? methodological orientation this study is exploratory in nature, which is the best way to understand participants’ experiences and knowledge of the phenomenon under investigation and to develop the necessary background for future investigations on this topic. for this reason, a qualitative approach is deemed necessary. the research population comprised citizens from the north-west province across four districts, namely bojanala, ngaka modiri molema, dr kenneth kaunda and dr ruth segomotsi mompati. purposive and non-probability sampling techniques were adopted – purposive sampling was used to draw a sample from the provincial government officials, while non-probability sampling was used to extract a sample from ordinary citizens across the four districts. the reason for using purposive sampling was that there was a need 109108 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government for deeper insights obtained from qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews from a portion of the population. these participants were purposively selected on the basis that they could provide key information for the study and they are in positions of power or authority to initiate, conduct and evaluate engagement opportunities with citizens. to this end, convenience non-probability sampling was done on a spontaneous basis to take advantage of available participants without the statistical complexity of a probability sample – this approach was ideal for diverse ordinary citizens of the north-west province across the four regions. table 1: sampling frame and data collection instruments group level status sample size sampling technique data collection instrument a participants in the provincial government (officials) 20 officials purposive sampling technique semi-structured interviews b participants from bojanala district (ordinary citizens) 20 participants from the district convenience sampling technique focus group discussion c participants from ngaka modiri molema district (ordinary citizens) 20 participants from the district convenience sampling technique focus group discussion d participants from dr ruth segomotsi mompati district (ordinary citizens) 20 participants from the district convenience sampling technique focus group discussion e participants from dr kenneth kaunda district (ordinary citizens) 20 participants from the district convenience sampling technique focus group discussion source: author’s conceptualisation data management and analysis to yield data for the qualitative investigation, different measuring instruments were employed. data analysis was viewed as the process of making sense of the data by consolidating, reducing and interpreting what the participants said and what the researchers observed and read. both the traditional analysis method (manual process) and computer software (nvivo 11 plus) were adopted and synchronized to provide a complementary approach to data management, interpretation and presentation. the raw data collected through the semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews 111110 mmutle & de beer were transcribed; and the topics were coded and classified, the categories developed, and the patterns sought in accordance with braun and clarke’s (2006) perspective of thematic analysis. results and interpretation the study was undertaken with the intention of presenting the experiences, perceptions and knowledge of the participants on the topic of strategic communication management suitable to deliver inclusive citizenry engagement at the provincial government level. to achieve this intention and strategic focus, various methods and techniques were adopted in order to collect the necessary data from the research participants. after gathering the raw data, complementary techniques were adopted to engage with and understand the collected data. table 2: central theme and sub-themes central theme inclusive and collaborative provincial government programmes sub-theme 1 co-governance through deliberate communication to enhance citizenry participation sub-theme 2 communication for adequate representation and participative governance initiatives sub-theme 3 management of citizenry expectations through government communications sub-theme 4 governance initiatives for strategic management by the provincial government source: author’s conceptualisation central theme: inclusive and collaborative provincial government programmes inclusive and collaborative provincial government programmes is the overarching central theme that encapsulates government responsiveness to the challenges and opportunities concerning the welfare of citizens. under this central theme, the participants advanced numerous perspectives and connotations to explain their experiences and knowledge of the phenomena of interest to the current study. the majority of the participants were of the view that some of provincial government programmes had an impact on their living conditions and, as such, propelled a particular desire and expectation to be fulfilled. however, the participants also indicated that most of their expectations in relation to the significance and flexibility of the programmes left much to be desired. it became clear that not all identified programmes and activities encouraged inclusivity because the role and involvement of citizens in the planning and implementation of government programmes was deemed unsatisfactory and often minimal. the participants further opined that the majority 111110 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government of the provincial government programmes were imposed on citizens, rather than negotiated and discussed for consensus and mutual collaboration. the participants also alluded that communication about the programmes benefited selected individuals and communities closer to the provincial government headquarters, and consequently, isolated those in secluded areas of the province. all i can say is that, rona (we) in secluded areas of the province are isolated primarily because of inadequate information shared as a provision to influence our attitude towards the offerings of government. another challenge associated with deficiency of inclusivity was the fact that collaborative participation among the provincial government and ordinary citizens remained restricted. five of the participants contended that the relationship was also unhealthy, as the viewpoints and suggestions often offered by citizens were not incorporated into the broader strategic plan of the provincial government. moreover, political patronage appeared to be extended to politicians and other affiliated parties to gain and maintain political mileage instead of inclusive representation. this practice was cited as an element of maintaining political power, whilst entrenching selective hegemony in government activities. likewise, two other participants stated that the development agenda and future direction of the province was influenced and decided without the consent and input of the majority of the citizens. hence, participants postulated that community unrests and dissatisfaction were at times premised on the inability of the provincial government to prioritise the legitimate demands of citizens, as well as to address their expectations adequately. the participants referred to several other challenges that contributed enormously to the ineffectiveness of government to inculcate a responsive and an inclusive culture: communication campaigns and efforts dedicated to encourage citizenry inclusivity remained less effective as some citizens resembled high levels of apathy towards initiated government activities. identified provincial government programmes for citizens were viewed as abstract and less practical to effect a degree of change either in attitude or behaviour. messaging and planning had no durable effect and essentially are not tailored to resemble communicative action on the part of citizens. governance initiatives and sustainability (developmental) programmes were not citizenry-oriented; thus, citizens often struggled to recognise inclusivity and cogovernance in most government operations. from the aforementioned, it is evident that participants held wide-ranging perceptions of what their relationship with the provincial government suggests. the majority of the views expressed indicated a negative impact on the provincial government’s activities to engage with citizens. inadequate information and ineffective communication processes were often referred to as part of the challenges embedded in understanding the provision of various programmes. this hindered a healthier and dialogic relationship among citizens and their provincial government. 113112 mmutle & de beer in terms of research question 1, namely how can strategic communication management for governance initiatives support inclusive citizenry engagement?, the north-west provincial government is involved in various governance initiatives aimed at promoting various mechanisms to provide services, information, education and favourable opportunities to its constituencies. in providing these opportunities, the provincial government needs to communicate more consistently and regularly through the media. this assertion emphasises the fact that the communication of information has to be strategically managed for each audience to receive such communication in as efficient, effective and acceptable manner as possible – there is no “one-size fits all” situational expectation. furthermore, a commitment to strategic communication champions collective engagement – through constructively transparent discourse all parties form shared values in society. scherer and palazzo (2011) assert that democratic deliberation requires open discourse, transparency, participation and accountability by all actors, as stated in habermassian political theory. these demands challenge management (in this case, senior provincial government officials) to use communication as a vehicle for promoting good in society (heath et al. 2013). in support of this view, the first and most basic purpose of provincial government officials and community/public representatives is to improve citizens’ knowledge of government activities and operations. arguably, a knowledgeable citizenry is a consciously informed and active participant – this participation often leads to high levels of dialogue and public engagements in respect of an inclusive and thriving society. sub-theme 1: co-governance through deliberate communication to enhance citizenry participation it is widely argued that increased community consultation and public participation in government decision-making produce many important benefits. through this process, deliberate communication is shared and interpreted among parties to produce favourable outcomes. in this regard, consensus is maintained on a consistent basis, and public participation becomes a prerequisite for co-governance initiatives and the overarching strategic plan of the provincial government. co-governance through deliberate communication as a priority to enhance citizenry participation was an indirect theme in the comments of several participants, focusing on how purposeful communication can stimulate legitimate interests in advocating for peoplecentred governance initiatives. some of the participants believed that the espoused communication programmes inadequately pursued sufficient citizenry participation. it came to the fore that the channels and techniques adopted to enhance citizenry participation were not optimal in embracing a highly engaged and active citizenry – public apathy remained the primary challenge in leveraging citizenry participation to produce co-governance and an informed citizenry, as the participants articulated. a number of the participants mentioned that sufficient time and effort were not invested in understanding the main concerns advocated by communities. they further held that bureaucratic constraints on the part of the provincial government impaired every opportunity to communicate effectively. in addition, four of the participants were of 113112 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government the view that restrained communicative programmes are often a manifestation of poorly planned and managed communication objectives, and, as such, failed to incorporate the “choices and inputs” of ordinary citizens into the dominant coalition of governance initiatives: they don’t listen to our views; in meetings or any other platform, it is about what they propose not what we want. as the participants further postulated, the realisation of inclusive citizenry participation in shaping and contributing to the development of policies, influencing governance decisions, and mutually reaching solutions to problems associated with communication was observed as an implausible objective. consequently, communication messages and campaigns were viewed as a mere formality, elements of a publicity stunt at times, and most importantly, a process of informing communities about different imposed government initiatives, as the participants confirmed. eight of the participants stated that sufficient opportunities were provided to encourage public dialogue and balanced participation as a vehicle to achieve common goals. in essence, communication channels were selected, sensibly and purposefully, to address the intentions of the provincial government, as the participants suggested. furthermore, it was argued that government programmes, to some degree, empowered citizens to seek more information and productively engage in achieving social, economic and environmental benefits for a sustainable future. in terms of research question 2, namely how can strategic communication management for sustainability programmes support inclusive citizenry engagement?, strategic communication efforts and programmes have the potential to yield positive and continuous benefits for citizens as the governed and for the provincial government as the governor. through strategic communication, the two-way communicative relationship between citizens and the government is the manifestation of a dialogic communication approach. in this context, strategic communication programmes should be leveraged by the aspirations of ordinary citizens via the horizontal approach to communication between the provincial government management and their external stakeholders to ensure that the vertical approach to communication between the same management and their officials adequately influence and reflect the views of the majority of the citizens. moreover, direct community engagement is to be used as an umbrella idiom by the north-west province to include information, consultation, engagement and empowering activities. to this end, the provincial government must recognise that citizens seek more direct ways to become involved in public life and decision-making, particularly on issues in which they have a direct interest. strategic communication is, therefore, a core element of the provincial government – an effective tool to facilitate decision-making, and a way to reach decisions with which the communities feel satisfied. this process ensures that adequate opportunities are established to involve communities in the governance process. strategic communication is advanced and facilitated at provincial government level to communicate effectively ‘with’ citizens the benefits of and their responsibility towards government sustainability programmes. according to thompson et al. (2013), the use 115114 mmutle & de beer of the word ‘strategic’ is a game changer. its appearance in ‘strategic communication’ shifts the focus from context and the recipient to purpose and the sender. strategy does not privilege any one quality of the communication exchange; rather, it focuses on achieving the sender’s predetermined aim (lock et al. 2016). sub-theme 2: communication for adequate representation and participative governance initiatives communication is often negatively cited as a barrier in crisis circumstances that institutions, such as government departments and other private organisations, have to contend with. however, the same communication is never credited with producing economic benefits, whilst also influencing strategic decisions and shared goals. the positive contributions of certain communication programmes and campaigns to the success of organisational objectives are often overlooked and mostly neglected. the participants advanced that communication efforts aimed at constructing an inclusive and integrative society were not successful in adequately representing the immediate needs and interests of ordinary citizens. moreover, targeted communication campaigns were also not successful in advocating for citizenry-oriented developmental programmes and governance initiatives to influence policies, advance ethical leadership, and contribute to the provincial government’s overall rebranding, repositioning and renewal strategy. consequently, a number of participants asserted: with us the development of communication messages to influence and encourage a wider societal representation in governance reforms lacked a participative component; thus, participation is only limited to a few ‘politically sponsored’ individuals and groupings – not everyone. in this sense, a participative component implied the incapacity of communication programmes to resemble collaborative measures for the parties involved to work towards accomplishing negotiated goals through consensus. the participants further expounded: mutual collaborations based on legitimate agreements as a participative component did not guarantee a smooth flow of meaningful two-way discussions among us. in this regard, the consensual participative process would ensure that information was not restricted or limited to benefit individual interests; and the participants were more concerned with ensuring that the process was successful and that it contributed to capacitating community members at large. fundamental to the realisation of adequate representation in governance initiatives and other extended government activities is the competence and the strategic focus of communicators to disseminate tailored messages comprehensively to the targeted audience. the participants thus argued: some government officials, as the carriers of information, lack basic skills to effectively educate us (citizens) on the advantages and benefits of several programmes. that is why we don’t generally participate – it’s not meant for us. they (officials) don’t know what to say to us – they only talk to us when it suits them; to me this is wrong. 115114 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government it remained unclear how citizens were expected to contribute and influence governance initiatives, especially because communicators were viewed as incompetent in transmitting strategic messages for the benefit of ordinary citizens. some participants remarked that in many instances government communicators inspired no confidence when communicating the vision and future prospects of the government. a sense of professionalism in articulating and addressing citizenry expectations was a missing ingredient in achieving participative governance in the province. it is thus crucial that communicators be sensitised to the importance of empowering citizens with information on the services to which they are entitled and that they be guided on how to reap the potential benefits associated with such. sub-theme 3: management of citizenry expectations through government communication the organisation of citizenry expectations cannot be over-emphasised in government communication. the result of the successful management of expectations can lead to consensus, a shared vision, representation, and efficient service delivery efforts. hence, citizenry expectations should be elevated into the dominant coalition and be integrated in the strategic framework through strategic communication programmes. a number of the participants held that provincial government communication had the capacity to facilitate social change, convert abstract programmes into pragmatic ones, and to act as a capacity-building instrument aimed at balanced relationships to the benefit of all actors involved, particularly citizens. subsequently, some of the participants asserted that government communication, at times, advanced an inclusive agenda, seemingly aimed at coaching and promoting independence and strategic thinking from citizens across the province. nna (me), i see the government doing well – it’s us citizens who don’t do our part, especially in clearly identifying what we want. in this light, the majority of the participants stated that it is at the provincial level that a people-centred approach to sustainable government communication could become truly evident. at this level, decisions are taken daily by individuals and groups of people that affect their livelihoods, health, and often their form of survival. from this perspective, strategic communication should be both a ‘centre of government’ concern (i.e. an organic and critical part of the policy-making and strategic process at the highest levels) and a tool to unite the whole of government (i.e. a common feature of all activity at all levels of government). the participants further articulated that only refined and purposeful communication could attempt to consolidate citizenry expectations and the perceptions of government activities. they maintained that such communication had to be results-oriented and research-based in order to reconcile conflictual expectations and interests. provincial government communication and the media have to be regarded as primary instruments to achieve, maintain and strengthen public participation. however, it also emerged that provincial government communication has been conceived as a one-way process passing messages from one point to many others, usually in a vertical, top-down fashion. 117116 mmutle & de beer we never say anything, or i can simply say that we don’t get feedback – there are no follow-ups and opportunities to hear how far are we. effective engagement with citizens depends largely on their understanding of the goal and acceptance that involvement in the communication strategy process demands changes in attitudes, behaviour and institutions. therefore, developing a comprehensive strategy demands two-way communication between policy-makers and the public. this requires much more than government relations initiatives through information campaigns and the media. it needs commitment to long-term social interaction to achieve a shared understanding of sustainable objectives and its implications, and promoting capacity building to find solutions to the challenges. in this sense, the participants strongly believed that being strategic was about setting goals and identifying the means of achieving them – this remained the outstanding ingredient in government operations because of the isolation of citizens, to some degree. sub-theme 4: governance initiatives for strategic management by the provincial government it is important to consider the fact that the existence of the provincial government is largely based on the dictates of the south african constitution and subsequently, the number of votes earned from the political party system (the electorate). it is thus through various political parties that a particular government is arranged, meaning that the victorious political organisation constitutes a governance structure to serve the people. hence, people are governed by the government, irrespective of their initial choice. against this backdrop, the provincial government assumes the responsibility and mandate from both their political organisation and society as a whole – the latter, more often than not, becomes more dominant in its operations. consequently, governance initiatives are often derived and established based on political organisations’ adopted policies, mandate and, most importantly, their standing resolutions (from congresses/conferences). from this perspective, it was evident from the participants that governance initiatives were influenced and developed in accordance with the policies and resolutions of political organisation(s). interestingly, these policies were often implemented together with citizens, as they were meant for them. this narrative implies that the influence and involvement of citizens in general is minimal, unless in circumstances were civil society, ngos and other activists embark on policy amendments, new policy propositions, and so forth. however, a couple of the participants commented that ordinary citizens were consulted via political organisations and that the mandate carried was a manifestation of community engagement. in addition, one of the participants strongly registered: at the provincial government level, sufficient opportunities are created to integrate the views of citizens into policy formulation, programmes and decision-making processes – according to me, we are at least consulted. 117116 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government another participant advanced that the policies and all other governance-related issues emanated from community meetings, public consultations and special forums aimed at gathering the views of prominent figures in society. i believe that all of these opportunities included ordinary people at the helm of strategic governance processes. arguably, this view seemingly contradicted the latter assertion, whereby standing organisational (political) resolutions formed the basis of the provincial government mandate. accordingly, the majority of the participants articulated that ordinary citizens in their capacity remained a strategic unit for advancing government programmes through agreed strategies. in this case, the provincial government in collaboration with the people and various community representatives had a responsibility of ensuring that governance initiatives are successfully implemented. the collaboration process with all active participants is therefore viewed as a component of strategic management. furthermore, several participants asserted that the ability of the provincial government to facilitate dialogue, produce people-centred programmes, promote and address legitimate citizenry expectations, and advance partnerships was a key indicator of effective leadership and strategic management in action. discussion the presentation of the research results sought to ascertain how the phenomenon of strategic communication management was understood as a strategic process with the capacity to elevate participatory projects/programmes in the north-west province. the research also aimed to determine how the realisation of strategic communication management efforts often encouraged and promoted inclusive citizenry engagement through collaborative governance initiatives and people-centred programmes. in short, the research results demonstrate how the research participants related to the phenomena of strategic communication management and ultimately the process of communication management at the provincial government level. the findings reveal that a significant majority of citizens remain disengaged from government operations. a number of reasons were advanced by the participants – they postulated that communication had no durable effect because the government was unable to fulfil their expectations. in most instances, provincial government programmes were not aimed at increasing inclusivity because public representatives extended patronage to their political principals. in light of these assertions, the planning and execution of governance initiatives and the exercise of strategic management often excluded the aspirations of the majority. similarly, those in secluded areas of the province were cited as being more disadvantaged and extremely passive on government operations. in this case, communication with citizens was only concerned with information transfer and remained one-sided, one-way communication at best. as a result, both citizenry passivity and public apathy continued to characterise the failure of government initiatives in reaching and positively influencing collaborative governance measures, particularly in rural communities. 119118 mmutle & de beer liu and horsley (2010) advocate that a democratic government is best served by a free two-way flow of ideas and accurate information so that citizens and their government can make informed choices. a democratic government must report and be accountable to the citizenry it serves. citizens, as taxpayers, must have the right to access government information. however, in this study it was recorded that in many instances government activities were unresponsive and offered less opportunities for citizens to contribute actively to the development of the province. essentially, it was advanced that political patronage and the inability of some public representatives as hemispheric communicators to initiate unrestricted two-way communication with citizens were among the main factors leading to high levels of disengagement and continued apathy. public representatives were also referenced as being incompetent in articulating the aspirations of citizens to senior officials and vice versa. in this context, public representatives were viewed as not strategic in advancing government programmes and communication campaigns, and coordinating citizenry engagements at the community level. similarly, some public representatives had no significant bearing on the living conditions of citizens. it was further argued that public representatives were not equipped and skilled to manage community communication programmes. at this level, communication had no durable impact because citizens were unable to influence government activities and thus opted to remain passive and apathetic towards even genuine projects. in a sense, participatory communication as a two-way process was also neglected simply because citizens failed to realise the participative nature of various projects/programmes. the participants further mentioned that media invitations were often extended as ‘a publicity stunt’ and not as an authentic media relations process. community events and programmes were publicised to gain political mileage and relevance within communities because, under normal circumstances, media houses/outlets were often excluded amid the fear that community members would advance their challenges/grievances, which would be published. it is for these reasons that a number of citizens recorded that government communication programmes and governance initiatives were not integrative; failed to respond to genuine concerns at the community level; and were often characterised by political patronage and gate keeping. pertinently, chaka (2014) argued that government communication could be more symmetrical than was generally accepted. arguably, clear and precise communication leads to accountability and transparency. in dialogue between the government, local authorities and stakeholders (all citizens), the more information that is shared, the more participation and dialogue are encouraged, the more accountable those in power become, and the more transparent their actions must be. as a context, citizens must receive, through various channels of communication, not only the messages of the provincial government and the invitation to engage in dialogue, but also the underlying message that their participation is essential to the process. the outcome of any community activity should be perceived by the population as the result of a provincial effort in promoting a responsive government and inclusive environment for ordinary citizens to be empowered through strategic communication as an enabler for good governance. 119118 facilitating inclusive citizenry engagement in a provincial government it is implicit that, for communication to be construed as strategic, it has to be the result of a planned process, and in this context, citizenry engagement will be a product of public collaboration and an inclusive process (macnamara 2016). the concept of communication is often viewed simplistically as a process of information dissemination, rather than a strategic process. accordingly, efforts to engage with citizens are often decided and agreed to without involving the supposed recipients – ordinary citizens. van der waldt et al. (in singh 2014) maintain that if the community is not informed in relation to government actions, it cannot evaluate them in terms of ethics and morality. such access to information by citizens is enshrined in the constitution of south africa. more often than not, communication policies and guidelines exist to ensure that the highest standards of fairness, equity, probity and public responsibility are front of mind when planning any type of government communication. provincial government communication needs to be effective, co-ordinated, well managed, and responsive to the aspirations of the north-west communities. grunig and grunig’s (1992) two-way symmetrical model suggests that communication fosters the relationship between an organisation, and in this instance the government, and its publics, based on negotiation, trust and mutual respect – a collaborative strategic relationship must therefore be forged for it to function effectively and efficiently. provincial government programmes would be more effective if a strategic communication approach is to be adopted and focused on establishing and managing relationships, increasing participation, and encouraging co-operation between the government and its people – thus, enabling the co-creation of shared norms and an inclusive people-orientated communicative environment. the study moves that inclusive citizenry engagement could only be achieved through collaborative participation mechanisms among the provincial government officials and citizens at the helm. importantly, a participatory philosophy should be adopted in order to elevate the role and value of citizens in society, as they facilitate ways for the provincial government to be more responsive to public needs. the bottom-up (as an outflow of the horizontal) approach should be more active in consolidating the identified citizenry needs, interests and expectations to ensure effective co-ordination, particularly at community communication level. haywood and besley (2014) contend that the most deliberative engagement processes do not guarantee that participation will increase the relevancy and responsiveness of government for individual participants, or the efficacy of subsequent policy implications that may emerge from such efforts. the ability to constitute sustainable citizenry engagement platforms depends largely on the provincial government to increase and expose citizens to relevant opportunities in a responsive manner. as a result, the narrative should move from identifying stakeholders as mere “publics” to them acting as active citizens in the participatory process. holmes (2011) articulates that over the past decade, this view has been reframed to regard the public as citizens whose agency matters and whose right to participate directly or indirectly in decisions that affect them should be actively facilitated. such an approach honours the fundamental principles of an inclusive and democratic process, which power is to be exercised through, and which resides in its citizens. 121120 mmutle & de beer conclusion this study was preoccupied with reporting the significant benefits of practising strategic communication at provincial government level in order to attain and maintain inclusive citizenry engagement. from this resolve, the study indicated that strategic communication management needs to be reprioritised as a deliberate effort towards participative governance and shared goals. to this end, a revolutionary approach to government communication has to be reconfigured adequately to resemble inclusive citizenry engagement through organised public participation opportunities. moreover, efforts should be directed at the realisation of strategic communication management in order to leverage mutual governance initiatives and people-centred sustainability programmes. this process has the potential to engage citizens intentionally, purposefully, and towards a desire for an impactful society. such a society will be empowered, through strategic communication management, to strive for cogovernance and inclusivity in government activities. fundamentally, skilled public representative professionals must develop communication strategies that will improve and build trust, encourage public participation, and contribute to mutual decisionmaking and accountability in an efficient manner – this arguably is why participation matters, as it encourages mutual understanding and ownership of shared perspectives through co-creation by dismembering unrealistic and often illegitimate participatory endeavours. it is for these reasons that a new approach to communication needs to be adopted to facilitate engagements with ordinary citizens on an inclusive, dialogic and more comfortable level. in striving for inclusive citizenry engagement, strategic communication management in the provincial government should become an epitomised process, which is interactive by nature and participatory at all levels in this 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(eds). the handbook of development communication and social change. chichester, west sussex: wiley-blackwell. zerfass, a., verčič, d., nothhaft, h. & werder, k. 2018. strategic communication: defining the field and its contribution to research and practice. international journal of strategic communication 12(4): 487-505. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118x.2018.1493485 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02678.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02678.x https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630802212009 https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118x.2018.1493485 untitled 153 gedagtes oor begeerte en mites in reklamekommunikasie communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 153 168 jeré möller en angelique van niekerk* abstract change in the world is reflected in almost every aspect of our lives how we live, eat, communicate. for reasons of authentication the mass media use real people in real life settings to convince real people to buy or use a product or service. for this reason it can be argued that the mass media (especially advertisements) offer a particular view of society. it is within such a specific system of belief that the mass media sells certain desires. without a specific system of belief it is not possible to sell certain desires, for example: fitness (not sport shoes), or beauty (not lipstick). this view of the world offered by advertisements is unique and therefore advertising can be identified with its unique characteristics and conventions within the bigger media world. the research focus is on the relevance of disciplines such as semantics and pragmatics, and constructs such as denotation, connotation, desire and myth in analysing printed advertising communication and to identify marketing communication as genre type with unique conventions and shared knowledge. * jeré möller is 'n pas-afgestudeerde magisterstudent in mediastudie van die universiteit van die vrystaat se departement kommunikasie en inligtingstudie. dr angelique van niekerk is 'n senior lektor in die departement afrikaans en nederlands, duits en frans aan die universiteit van die vrystaat in bloemfontein. inleiding veranderinge in die wêreld word weerspieël in bykans elke aspek van die menslike bestaan – hoe ons leef, eet, werk en dink, en ook hoe ons kommunikeer en hoe daar met ons gekommunikeer word. ter wille van outentisiteit kommunikeer die media met werklike mense via werklike mense (segspersone, rolmodelle) in sogenaamde werklike situasies. daarom kan die afleiding gemaak word dat massamediakommunikasie, en spesifiek reklamekommunikasie, ’n bepaalde beskouing op die werklikheid bied. binne die denkraamwerk van die massamedia (spesifiek reklamekommunikasie) is dit moontlik om bepaalde “begeertes” te verkoop aan die teikenmark – die samelewing. voorts is dit dié denkraamwerk waarbinne die bepaalde begeertes, byvoorbeeld skoonheid (grimering), gesondheid (vitamienaanvulling) en fiksheid (sportdrag), verkoop word. adverteerders poog dus om ’n bepaalde werklikheid aan die verbruiker voor te hou – ’n ideale wêreld. hierdie voorstelling wat reklametekste deurlopend van die wêreld bied, is eie aan hierdie bepaalde vorm van massakommunikasie, en daarom kan reklame beskou word as ’n spesifieke genre met eie kodes en eie konvensies binne die groter massamedialandskap. pollay (1986) sluit by dié skeefgetrekte beeld van reklamekommunikasie aan deur te verwys na die distorted mirror wat slegs sekere waardes en leefstyle in die samelewing weerspieël. pollay (1986:5) wys in dié verband op die doel van reklame, naamlik “to preoccupy society with material concerns, seeing commercially available goods or services as the path to happiness and the solution to virtually all problems and needs”. binne hierdie konteks is jean kilbourne (1990) ook van mening dat reklame die mites wat in die samelewing leef, weerspieël om so ’n verdraaide weergawe van die ontiese werklikheid te gee: “advertising creates a mythical, mostly white world in which people are rarely ugly, overweight, poor, struggling or disabled, either physically or mentally... far from being a passive mirror of society, advertising is an effective and pervasive medium of influence and persuasion, and its influence is cumulative, often subtle, and primarily unconscious.” weens die mite (oortuigingsisteem) dat ons (die algemene teikenmark se) eiewaarde gekoppel is aan die dinge wat ons koop en besit, is dit dus moontlik om bepaalde begeertes te bemark en te verkoop. die herhaalde voorkoms van konsepte soos moraliteit, waarde, begeerte en oortuiging in die bemarkingsliteratuur bring ’n mens by die konsep mites en dus die fokus van die ondersoek. gegewe reklamekommunikasie as genretipe, is daar bepaalde soorte gedeelde kennis tussen die kommunikator en ontvanger, byvoorbeeld dat die kommunikator die ontvanger probeer oortuig om iets te koop of te gebruik. die sender (adverteerder/reklamekommunikator) glo dus dat: a) die geteikende ontvanger (teikenmark) gewilllig sal wees om te betaal; en b) die geteikende ontvanger oor die nodige lewensmiddele beskik om dit te bekostig, ensovoorts. vergelyk in dié verband die taalhandelingsteorie 154 (van jaarsveld 1987:110, 134; yule 1996:48-49, asook carstens 1997:358363). van jaarsveld (1987:204) omskryf gedeelde betekenis as die opvallende en relevante kontekstuele inligting wat deur ’n spreker en ’n hoorder gedeel word. dit sluit byvoorbeeld kennis ten opsigte van die bepaalde sosiale sisteem, die tradisionele gewoontes en gebruike van ’n betrokke kultuur en die spesifieke gespreksituasie in. dit omvat ook bepaalde mites wat algemeen voorkom binne die sosiale sisteem en dikwels ingebed is in reklametekste. voorts geskied menslike kommunikasie deur middel van ’n stelsel van tekens en kodes. hierdie stelsel word aan die hand van die semiotiek beskryf en ontleed. die skep van bepaalde mites in reklamekommunikasie is dus afhanklik van bepaalde semiotiese tekens. oosthuizen (1996:168) wys daarop dat “myths are not ready-made, just waiting to be used. they are… a product of the active generative process of language, formed and reformed to the relations between social groups and forces.” bignell (1997:17) brei verder hierop uit: “it is as if myth is a special form of language, which takes up existing signs and makes a new sign system out of them… myth is not an innocent language but one that picks up existing signs and their connotations, and orders them purposefully to play a particular social role.” doelwitte hierdie ondersoek het ten doel om: • die relevansie van dissiplines soos die semantiek en pragmatiek en konstrukte soos denotasie, konnotasie, begeerte en mites in die analise van gedrukte reklamekommuniksie te toon; en • reklamekommunikasie as genretipe te onderskei met unieke konvensies en gedeelde kennis. databeskrywing aard en omvang van die datastel ’n datastel van 52 gedrukte advertensies in afrikaans en engels is willekeurig geselekteer vanuit ’n verskeidenheid suid-afrikaanse tydskrifte soos sarie, rooi rose, de kat, insig, huisgenoot, cosmopolitan, men’s health, fhm, longevity, woman’s value, true love, femina en essentials. die enigste kriterium vir die seleksie van advertensies vir die datastel was ’n impakgebaseerde strategie. dié studie bied dus ’n blik op die voorstellings wat daagliks in reklame gekommunikeer, as waarheid voorgehou word, en wat die verbruiker glo of moet glo indien die bedoelde en werklike perlokusie ooreenstem en die illokusie van die reklameboodskap geslaag is. die werklike perlokusie is die ontvanger van die reklameboodskap se interpretasie van en reaksie op die boodskap. indien die ontvanger die bedoelde perlokusie snap en byvoorbeeld die reklameboodskap se voorstelling van 155 die wêreld glo en gepas daarop reageer, is die kommunikasie geslaag (vgl. van jaarsveld 1987:3-5). metode van analise die metode van analise steun op die resepsiebenadering tot interpretasie. die fokus van hierdie benadering val op die ontvanger se konstruksie van betekenis in dié geval van mediatekste. die analise van die datastel (in elk van die afsonderlike reklametekste) is in drie stappe uitgevoer. eerstens val die fokus van die analise op die mees betekenisvolle tekens, gegewe die bedoelde en verwagte perlokusie wat in die reklameteks ingespan word om die bepaalde begeertes te wek. dit kan beskou word as die kerntekens van die bepaalde advertensiekonsep en -boodskap. hierdie kerntekens vorm die semiotiese eenheid van die reklameteks, oftewel die advertensie. die semiotiese eenheid bestaan uit talige tekens sowel as visuele tekens. hierdie interpretasie van die visuele en talige tekens is afhanklik van die denotatiewe sowel as die konnotatiewe betekenis. du plooy (2001:10) beskryf die denotatiewe betekenis van ’n teken as “its common-sense meaning”. die identifisering van konnotatiewe betekenis in hierdie stap van die analise gee dus reeds ’n aanduiding van die mitiese betekenis wat die tekens dra en wat dus funksioneel gebruik is om ’n bepaalde begeerte(s) by die teikenmark te wek. gegrond op die denotatiewe en konnotatiewe inligting is daar in die tweede stap van die analise gefokus op die begeerte wat die reklameteks poog om by die verbruiker te wek. binne die konteks van hierdie ondersoek word ook na begeerte verwys as onbegrens, oneindig en veranderlik omdat dit deur die dinamiek van die samelewing en kultuur gerig word, juis vanweë die ooraanbod van produkte en dienste wat in die mark bestaan. verder is dit ook so dat reklametekste slegs begeertes kan wek op grond van bestaande mites in die samelewing. hierdie verband wat bestaan tussen begeerte en mite is dan primêr in die identifisering van die reklamemites in stap drie van die analise. in die derde stap is gepoog om die sluier te lig op die reklamemites wat binne die reklameteks ingebed is. hierdie mites kan slegs geïdentifiseer en geanaliseer word na aanleiding van die denotasie en konnotasie van die semiotiese elemente en die bepaalde begeertes wat in die reklameteks aangebied word. die ondersoek ondersteun die siening van bignell (1997:16) dat mites verwys na “ways of thinking about people, products, places, or ideas which are structured to send particular messages to the reader or viewer of the text”. mite kan geïllustreer word aan die hand van die advertensie vir pringle-modes: ’n naakte vrou met ’n string pêrels om haar nek word visueel uitgebeeld. die opskrif lui: “wees materialisties.” in hierdie advertensie is die denotatiewe betekenis (hat 2002: 841) van die p ê rel (-halssnoer) funksioneel as die beste, die puikste of iets van besondere waarde, funksioneel. die konnotasie wat verder gemaak kan word, is dié van materiële welvaart. 156 in hierdie konteks kan afgelei word dat ’n begeerte gewek word na styl, goeie smaak, en om smaak uiterlik te vertoon met die aankoop van klerasie. dit lig dan die sluier op die reklamemite dat sukses en welvaart gemeet word aan uiterlike voorkoms. omdat dié mite deel uitmaak van die verbruiker se oortuigingsisteem, kan die adverteerder dus dié begeerte wek. die pringle-voorbeeld illustreer egter ook duidelik dat betekenis nooit vas is nie en, soos wat dit gekonstrueer word in reklametekste, dikwels oop is vir meer as een interpretasie. daar word egter aanvaar dat reklametekste juis ook gekonstrueer word om ’n spesifieke betekenis te laat uitstaan of meer natuurlik te laat voorkom. tolson (1996:10) verduidelik soos volg: “the preferred reading is the reading you might make which is preferred by the text (and presumably the advertiser, though we are just inferring this from the text analysis) even though other readings are possible.” die adverteerder poog dus om ’n preferred reading te konstrueer. dit is egter nie altyd geslaag nie. die p r i n g l e -advertensie is maar een van talle voorbeelde van ’n reklameteks wat oop is vir baie interpretasies en waar die risiko van gebrekkige ooreenstemming tussen die bedoelde en werklike perlokusie bestaan. wat die analise van die totale datastel betref, is daar gepoog om op die p referred re a d i n g van die teks te fokus. dit kan gemotiveer word in terme van die taalhandelingsteorie (van jaarsveld 1987:4). aspekte van bemarkingskommunikasie reklame is slegs ’n deel van die aanbod binne bemarkingskommunikasie as oorkoepelende konsep. bemarkingskommunikasie kan opgesom word as die proses van kommunikasie met verbruikers en/of kliënte. bemarkers teiken ’n spesifieke segment van die verbruikersmark op grond van hul geografiese ligging, demografie en psigografiese karaktereienskappe sodat ’n spesifieke produk of diens aan hulle te koop aangebied kan word. hierdie spesifiek gekose en duidelik gedefinieerde segment word die teikenmark genoem. vestergaard en schrøder (1985:49) dui aan dat die ideale reklameteks gekonstrueer word met die doelwit om aandag te trek; belangstelling te wek; begeerte te stimuleer; die verbruiker te oortuig; en/of aksie te bewerkstellig. begeerte jackson et al. (2004:6) haal ernest dichter (1964) aan, wat die verbruiker se dryfvere en motivering op terreine soos bemarking, sielkunde, ekonomie, ensovoorts beskryf as die “science of desire”. daar kan dus aanvaar word dat die konsep begeerte vanuit ’n verskeidenheid invalshoeke benader en ondersoek kan word. behoefte versus begeerte sinclair (1997:59) benadruk die volgende: “it is true that advertising does not create needs. but it does create wants, symbols of acceptability, belonging and status – abstract concepts to which people aspire... advertising does not create these needs. it creates temporary solutions to them by creating symbols that are tangible and can be purchased. therefore it creates wants.” 157 dit is dus duidelik op grond van bogenoemde dat daar ’n verskil is tussen die konsepte behoefte (“need”) en begeerte (“want”). dit is belangrik om die twee terme van mekaar te onderskei en in perspektief te plaas, aangesien albei terme sentraal staan as motiveringskragte in die “science of desire”. eenvoudig beskou, sou behoefte bloot kon verwys na die onderliggende dryfvere wat menslike gedrag rig. heelwat ondersoek is gedoen na die klassifikasie en dinamika van moontlike universele behoeftes. hiervan is die bekendste bydrae gemaak deur abraham maslow (1954) en max-neef (1991, 1992). behoefte kan as “finite, few and classifiable” beskou word en behoeftebevredigers eerder in die algemeen as “culturally determined, and numerous (if not infinite) in variety”. hierdie eienskappe van behoeftebevredigers as talryk, potensieel oneindig en bepaal deur kultuur, word waargeneem in die ekonomiese gegewe van ooraanbod van ’n verskeidenheid produkte in die verbruikersmark. daar kan dus geargumenteer word dat reklame ook deel uitmaak van die “cultural representations” en dat reklametekste juis poog om hierdie fundamenteel narsissistiese eienskap van die mens te ontgin met gekose simbole en ideale voorstellings. dit is funksioneel, want begeerte kan in die lig hiervan in der waarheid nie bevredig word nie, wat dit in essensie ook onderskei van behoeftes (vergelyk ook silverman 1983). belk, ger en askegaard (2003:327) beskryf begeerte ook binne hierdie konteks as die passie wat spruit uit die verbruiker se fantasieë t.o.v. konsumpsie binne bepaalde sosiale kontekste en situasies. verbruikersgoedere wat nog nie besit word nie, gryp die verbeelding van die verbuiker aan om hom/haar as’t ware te hipnotiseer met die betekenis en beloftes wat die produkte inhou. simboliese aard van verbruikersgoedere in hierdie verband is dit toepaslik om te noem dat verbruikersgoedere in die geskiedenis van die mens lank reeds nie meer net doodgewoon materiële goedere of funksionele artefakte is nie. verbruikersgoedere is belangrik vir die mens ook omdat dit ’n kommunikatiewe funksie vertolk. jackson et al. (2004:24) benadruk hierdie punt: “material commodities are important to us, not just for what they do, but for what they signify: about us, about our lives, our loves, our desires, about our successes and failings, about our hopes and our dreams. material goods are not just artefacts. nor do they offer purely functional benefits. they derive their importance, in part at least, from their symbolic role in mediating and communicating personal, social, and cultural meaning not only to others but also to ourselves.” hierdie gedeeltelike blik vanuit die begeertewetenskappe (“science of desire”) poog dus om dit duidelik te maak dat motiveringskragte dit moontlik en duidelik sigbaar maak dat verbruikers byvoorbeeld nie net koffie koop nie, maar die begeerte het na seksuele plesier (soos blyk uit ’n andervertensie vir ciro-koffieprodukte); nie net ’n motor koop nie, maar die begeerte vul na sekuriteit en status (’n advertensie vir 158 chrysler neon); nie net appelsap koop nie, maar die begeerte bevredig na gesondheid en lewenskrag (appletiser), ensovoorts. semiotiek die primêre doel van enige (media-) teks is die oordra van betekenis. die studieveld gemoeid met die bestudering van die vormgewing van betekenis in kommunikasie is die semiotiek. volgens chandler (1994) is semiotiek egter nie net gemoeid met kommunikasie nie, maar ook met die konstruksie en instandhouding van die werklikheid. in hierdie ondersoek is die identifisering van die onderliggende samelewingsmites slegs moontlik deur die identifisering van die verskillende semiotiese elemente wat hierdie mites in stand hou. semiotiek is verder vir die studie relevant, aangesien dit gebruik kan word, soos fourie (2001a:327) dit stel, “to sharpen our critical awareness of the ways in which the media reflect, represent and imitate reality or aspects of reality with the purpose of conveying a specific meaning usually in support of an underlying ideology, point of view, ideal, argument and attitude”. ’n nedbank-advertensie illustreer die gebruik van semiotiek. daar bestaan ’n mite dat vroue minder finansiële sekuriteit en onafhanklikheid besit as mans weens geslagongelykheid, en daarom is dit moontlik vir die adverteerder om die begeerte te wek na finansiële sekuriteit en onafhanklikheid vir vroue, asook geslaggelykheid ten opsigte van finansies en beroep. eco maak die volgende toepaslike opmerkings, wat ’n aanduiding is dat die gebruik van semiotiek binne die konteks van hierdie datastel funksioneel is: • “a sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. this something else does not necessarily have to exist or to actually be somewhere at the moment in which the sign stands for it. thus semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie.” (1976:7) • “everytime there is possibility of lying, there is a sign-function: which is to signify (and then to communicate) something to which no real state of things corresponds.” (1976:58) dit is duidelik dat die aard van tekens en die menslike gebruik daarvan om betekenis te deel die geleentheid vir elke mens en veral ook adverteerders skep om “werklikheid” selektief te kommunikeer of te manipuleer. konnotatiewe semiologie hierdie navorsing steun op die saussuriaanse tradisie en spesifiek op die grondslag wat die konnotatiewe semiologie van roland barthes (1972) bied, aangesien mites as sosiale konstrukte in die gebruik van reklame ondersoek word. barthes slaag daarin om deur middel van sy konnotatiewe semiologiese analises die mites wat byvoorbeeld in reklametekste gebruik word, bloot te lê. 159 barthes definieer semiotiek soos volg: “semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not l a n g u a g e s, at least systems of signification” (chandler 1994). barthes herinterpreteer saussure en brei verder uit op sy konsepte “signifier” en “signified.” fourie (2001:327) verduidelik barthes se perspektief op die teken soos volg: “in the spirit of post-structuralism he concluded that the meaning of a signifier (sign) is ‘open’ to many possible meanings and interpretations but whatever the meaning of a sign, it has a ‘layered’ structure of first-, secondand third-order meaning. the three orders are (1) denotative, (2) connotative/mythical and (3) ideological meaning.” hierdie onderskeid tussen denotasie, konnotasie en mites word verreken in die analiseproses wat in die ondersoek gebruik is. semiotiese elemente ter sake vir ’n model van analise denotasie die term denotasie verwys na die letterlike of leksikale betekenis wat ’n bepaalde teken oordra, of soos leeds-hurwitz (1993:26) dit stel, “the explicit, obvious, straightforward, first meaning of a sign” (dikwels as referent na die ontiese werklikheid). barthes beskou denotasie as die eerste orde waarop die betekenis van ’n teken geïnterpreteer word. ’n voorbeeld om denotasie te verduidelik, is die talige teken a-p-p-e-l. die betekenisse word soos volg in die hat aangedui: “1vlesige vrug van die appelboom; malus sulvestris, ook die boom self. 2oogbol. 3bolvormige voorwerp wat aan ’n appel laat dink”, ensovoorts. fourie ( 2001:346) merk tereg op: “without being able to attach a denotative meaning to for instance the colour red, or a table, or a facial expression, or a uniform, or to the pictorial signs (representations) of these signs, meaning and communication would be impossible.” dit is verder duidelik dat visuele tekens net soos talige tekens denotatiewe betekenis dra. ’n foto van ’n appel sal net soos die talige teken dieselfde denotatiewe betekens aan die ontvanger oordra. dit is egter ook so dat denotasie nie noodwendig ’n eenvoudige of enkele betekenis oordra nie, veral met betrekking tot talige tekens. konnotasie in teenstelling met denotasie verwys die term k o n n o t a s i e na die subjektiewe interpretasie van die teken vanweë ’n individu (ontvanger) se vorige ervaring en agtergrond. leeds-hurwitz (1993:26) definieer die term as “the implicit, conventional, second meaning of a sign, imposed by a specific culture”. wanneer ’n advertensie vir pierre cardin byvoorbeeld ’n gehapte appel as visuele teken gebruik, word wyer kulturele assosiasies benewens die letterlike betekenis uitgebou. daarom kan die asossiasie met die appel as verbode vrug (intertekstueel) 160 gemaak word. dit is hierdie “kulturele assosiasies” wat barthes konnotasies noem en waarvan ’n reklameteks gebruik maak vir die promosie van ’n produk (tolson 1996:6). uit die analise van die verskillende advertensies was dit ook duidelik dat die manier waarop visuele en talige tekens geïnterpreteer word, verskil. tolson (1996:6) maak die opmerking dat die dekodering van talige tekens meer kompleks is as visuele tekens wat ten eerste bloot herkenning verg. die visuele teken het ’n ooreenkoms met dit waarna dit verwys, byvoorbeeld die afbeelding van ’n appel lyk soos ’n appel. daarteenoor moet die leser egter kennis dra van die taalkodes waartoe die woorde behoort. taalkodes is kompleks en dit is volgens tolson (1996:6) die rede waarom kopieskrywers soveel pret kan hê in die skep van reklameretoriek, aangesien hulle pittig en kleurvol met taal te werk kan gaan. konnotatiewe betekenisse is ook ’n belangrike faktor om in gedagte te hou by die skep van ’n reklameteks, aangesien dit dikwels gebeur dat die ontvanger se dekodering van die teks kan verskil van die sender se enkodering. die oorsaak vir die verskynsel kan afgelei word uit fourie (2001:346) se stelling dat “connotative meanings are relatively unstable: they can vary considerably according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual”. hierdie relatief onvaste/wisselende aard van konnotatiewe betekenis kan aan die hand van ’n advertensie uit die datastel vir die klerehandelsnaam pierre cardin verduidelik word. die betekenisvolle visuele semiotiese teken wat in die advertensie gebruik word, is ’n gehapte appel met ’n pierre cardin-etiket aan. die visuele teken word ondersteun deur die talige opskrif: seductive fashion. omdat die gehapte appel oop is vir meer as een interpretasie, beperk die gebruik van die opskrif in korrelasie met die visuele teken die interpretasie van die teks om sodoende ’n voorkeurdekodering (gerigte interpretasie) vir die teks te skep. die gehapte appel word gebruik om die konsep van verleiding aan die ontvanger oor te dra. hierdie konnotasie is moontlik omdat die gehapte appel intertekstueel na die bybelse verhaal verwys waar eva deur die slang verlei is om van die verbode vrugte te eet. die gehapte appel dra dus ten eerste die konnotatiewe betekenis as verbode vrug. die feit dat die pierre cardin-etiket aan die appel vasgemaak is, dui ook aan dat pierre cardin-klere juis die verbode vrugte is. ’n verdere konnotatiewe betekenis sou dan wees dat dit klere is wat verlei. die relatief onstabiele aard van hierdie teken is veral duidelik as die ontvanger nie vooraf kennis dra van die intertekstuele betekenis van die appel nie. dan mag die gehapte pierre cardin-appel konnotatief byvoorbeeld as ’n “vrugtige” klerereeks geïnterpreteer word. verdere konnotasie kan moontlik gemaak word met gesondheid, natuurlikheid, eenvoud, die rustieke, ontspanning, pret, ensovoorts. die kommunikator en ontvanger moet dus gedeelde konnotatiewe betekenis van die betrokke teken besit indien die bedoelde en werklike perlokusie ooreenstem. 161 verder is dit ook binne hierdie konnotatiewe dimensie waar mites figureer en ’n rol speel in interpretasie. van zoonen (1994:76) stel dit soos volg: “connotation concerns the latent cultural values and beliefs expressed by a sign or sign system. this can take on the form of associations or of complete narratives, labelled as myth by barthes.” mite op soek na ’n werksdefinisie die konsep mite kan vanuit ’n verskeidenheid dissiplines benader en omskryf word. hoofsaak tot die omskrywing van mite is dat die woord sy oorspong vind in die grieks “muthos.” die woord “muthos” beteken “mond” en dit dui op ’n storie, ’n narratiewe struktuur wat ’n impak het op ’n gegewe oortuigingsisteem (macary 2005). mite kan egter vanuit ’n verskeidenheid dissiplines gedefinieer word. ’n kort oorsig van sommige definisies en kerneienskappe van mites is nodig om ’n werksdefinisie te vind vir die analise van die datastel: • “ a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world-view of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society.” (www.answers.com) • “a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world-view of a people.” (www.answers.com) hierdie twee algemene en bekende definisies lê klem op mite as ’n tradisionele storie. dit is egter belangrik om daarop te let dat mites soos gevind in die ondersoek nie fokus op tradisionele stories van verskillende kulture nie. wat wel belangrik van hierdie twee definisies is, is dat dit verwys na die wêreldbeskouing van ’n bepaalde kultuur of samelewing. richard chase (1960) soos aangehaal in cloete (1992: 313) definieer mite as “a narrative which unites the real and the ideal”. dié definisie stel mite voor as ’n narratief, en die verwysing na die verbintenis van die ideaal met die werklikheid is relevant ten opsigte van bemarkingsdiskoers waarbinne werklike mense in geïdealiseerde situasies uitgebeeld word. dennis de rougemont (1956) soos aangehaal in cloete (1992: 313) is van mening dat mites die gedragskodes van ’n bepaalde sosiale of religieuse groep weerspieël. hierdie mening van de rougemont dui weer op die rol wat mites speel in die konstruksie van ’n bepaalde sosiale groepering se oortuigingsisteem. mites rig mense se gedrag en dus ook besluitneming binne die bepaalde sosiale groepering. hierdie funksie van mites bring ’n mens noodwendig uit by nog ’n belangrike element in die omskrywing van mite as ’n rolspeler in die menslike ervaring: ideologie. let egter daarop dat die verband wat daar bestaan tussen ideologie en mites nie bespreek word in hierdie ondersoek nie. 162 die webwerf www.answers.com bied die volgende twee definisies van mite: • “a fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.” • “any fictitious idea accepted as part of an ideology by an uncritical group.” roland barthes wys in sy boek m y t h o l o g i e s (1972:142) daarop dat mites die ideologiese belange van die “bourgeoisie” in ’n samelewing dien: “myth is the most appropriate instrument for the ideological inversion which defines society.” bignell (1997:37) plaas die rol van ideologie binne hierdie konteks: “ads have an ideological function, since they encourage us to view our consumption positively as an activity which grants us membership of lifestyle. but what ads is really doing is serving the interests of those who own and control industries of consumer culture.” mites word egter nie net opgeneem deur adverteerders om bloot bepaalde betekenis oor te dra nie. ’n verdere belangrike dimensie van mite is die feit dat dit wat in wese onnatuurlik is of wat nie in werklikheid ’n gegewe is nie, genaturaliseer word en dus alledaags voorkom. dennis de rougemont (1956:18) soos aangehaal in cloete (1992: 313) is van mening dat die krag van mite juis lê binne die eienskap dat ’n mite so alledaags is, dat die betekenis daarvan nie bevraagteken word nie, en as feit of “common sense” beskou word. as werksdefinisie word mite soos volg omskryf: • mite is ’n sisteem van kommunikasie, ’n boodskap. • mite is ’n vorm van betekenis en hierdie betekenis word toegewys deur ’n bepaalde samelewing gedurende ’n bepaalde tydperk. mites kan dus deel vorm van die bepaalde strukture van betekenis in die samelewing en dit besit dus konseptuele sosiale waarde in bepaalde situasies. • mite besit nie vaste betekenis nie, maar kan juis verander na gelang van die konteks en funksie waarbinne dit bestaan en ook gebruik word. • mite is in baie gevalle ingebed in ’n bepaalde narratief, ’n verhaal. • mite lyk op die oog af na ’n waarheid, maar dit is slegs so omdat distorsie van alternatiewe boodskappe plaasvind of eenvoudig vergete is. • mite gebruik dus ook reeds bestaande tekens en hul konnotasies en rangskik dit om sodoende ’n sosiale rolspeler te wees in die handhawing van ’n bepaalde ideologie met die eienskap om die bepaalde ideologiese boodskap te naturaliseer. die aanname van oosthuizen (1996:169) word ondersteun dat mites in die media en dus reklame geskep (maar bestaande mites ook in stand gehou) word deur: 163 • ’n voorkeurinterpretasie word binne ’n konteks genoodsaak. • die denotatiewe betekenis verminder ten koste van die konnotatiewe betekenis. • duidelike klem word gelê op sekere kwaliteite of situasies. • ’n voorkeurvertolking van die teks word gebied. reklamekommunikasie as genretipe die relevansie van genre is gesetel in die feit dat betekenis ook gekonstrueer word deurdat bepaalde konvensies herhaaldelik voorkom in tekste soos gevind in die massamedia. voorts word daar van die veronderstelling uitgegaan dat die herhaaldelike en daaglikse blootstelling aan reklamekommunikasie (as genre) die verwagtinge, interpretasies en oortuiginge wat die gehoor/verbruiker ten opsigte van sy sosiale werklikheid het, beïnvloed. du plooy (2001:59) verduidelik genre as ’n kode wat ooreenstem tussen die kommunikator en die gehoor wat bepaalde oriëntasiesisteme verteenwoordig. hierdie oriëntasiesisteme ontwikkel en behou tekstuele vorme deurdat bepaalde konvensies herhaaldelik gebruik word om so ’n dubbele stel verwagtinge te vervul. die verdere veronderstelling dat genre ’n bydrae lewer in die ontwikkeling en behoud van tekstuele vorme, omdat die kommunikator bewustelik werk binne sekere reeds bestaande genreparameters (ooreenkomste/konvensies), kan verduidelik word in die lig van die herhaalde gebruik van bepaalde “formules” wat vorige (finansiële) sukses opgelewer het. daarom gebeur dit dat gehore reeds sekere verwagtinge het met betrekking tot hul ervaring van elke reklameteks. die veronderstelling dat genre ook verwagtinge skep, is gebaseer op die argument dat ’n dubbele stel verwagtinge bestaan. aan die een kant moet die teks voldoen aan sekere basiese vereistes waaraan die gehoor gewoond geraak het. terselfdertyd moet die teks egter ook anders, nuut of ongewoon wees. dit is veral sigbaar ten opsigte van reklametekste waar die doel juis is om deur die teikenmark raakgesien te word. genrekonvensies en reklamemites binne die konteks van hierdie studie is die konvensies wat in reklame voorkom, belangrik. volgens du plooy (2001:65) is daar een boodskap, hetsy overt of kovert, sentraal tot alle reklame: “here is a perfect world and you should be part of it.” du plooy (2001:69) wys verder daarop dat die verbruikerswese in reklamekommunikasie as ’n vorm van plesier voorgestel word: “advertisements emphasise the pleasure of consumerism through their structure (form) and appeals.” binne bogenoemde twee genoemde konvensies word bepaalde mites herhaaldelik gebruik. hierdie mites vorm dus ’n essensiële element in die enkodering sowel as dekodering van advertensies. 164 slot die karakter en wese van die mens is intrinsiek saamgeweef in die retoriek van reklame, en die begeertes en behoeftes eie aan menswees word bloot bemarkingstrategie. reklame speel ’n belangrike rol in die vorming en onderhoud van die verbruiker en die verbruikerskultuur, wat die kern is van die massaverbruikersisteem. zukin en maguire (2004:176) is van mening dat “mass consumption was produced by manipulating consumers’ desires to be well dressed, good looking, and beloved; to surround themselves with visions of beauty; and to surrender common sense and sobriety to individual dreams of self-enhancement”. teen die agtergrond wat hierdie ondersoek bied, blyk dit dan nodig te wees om ter uitbreiding van die twee reklamegenrekonvensies van du plooy (2001:65) – “here is a perfect world and you should be part of it” en “you are what you have” – ’n derde oorhoofse (overte of koverte) reklamekonvensie te postuleer. die derde konvensie kan verwoord word as die konstante behoefte na onversadigbare begeertes of “constant need to fulfill unlimited and unsatisfied wants”. binne die konteks van hierdie studie word reklame dus beskou as verleidingskuns. hierdie drie konvensies (illokusie) is gegrond op die gedeelde kennis oor die aard van die “gesprek” tussen die kommunikator en die ontvanger. binne ’n gemeenskap (teikenmark) van oorvloed en welvaart is die effek van onversadigbare konsumpsie ’n saak van potensiële kommer wat verdere kritiese ondersoek regverdig. wat daarmee verband hou, is die rol wat reklame speel in die handhawing en naturalisering van verbruik. ’n belangrike punt wat hierby aansluit, is die feit dat reklame in die meeste gevalle ’n sluier trek oor die aard en wese van die produk of diens, aangesien begeertes voorop staan in ’n gemeenskap van oorvloed en welvaart; die fokus is selfaktualisering en nie oorlewing nie. reklame het die taak om verbruikersgoedere met simboliese betekenis te vul, en dit is op hierdie vlak waar begeerte funksioneer en gemanipuleer word, aangesien dit in die menslike aard is om sin en betekenis aan verbruikersgoedere toe te skryf. die rol wat reklame speel om hierdie sin en betekenis te struktureer deur ons verbeeldingswêreld te koloniseer met die mites, simbole en ideale van diegene in ekonomiese beheer, open onvermydelik ’n moreel-etiese debat. 165 verwysings answers.com. online encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary definitions and more. defining myth. 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spatially, digitally and socio-economically. this study aimed to develop a quantitative instrument to measure the brand perceptions of 18 to 24-year-old south african consumers communicated on facebook. young adults base their perceptions of brands on their touchpoints and other consumer experiences. therefore, brands need to have a reliable means of measuring the brand perceptions of young adult consumers to avoid negative earned media and reputational damage. ten factors that explained 62.812% of total variance were extracted after exploratory factor analysis. these factors are brand fan behaviour, shared brandrelated content, value brand influencers, corporate social responsiveness, user-generated content, brand-related content, familial influencers, premium brand influencers, communication expectations and recommending behaviour. key findings indicate that measuring brand fan behaviour or interactions with brand advocates is critical to building positive perceptions and relationships with 18 to 24-year-old consumers on facebook. second, the shared brand-related content factor highlights the critical role brand experiences and customer opinion play on facebook when shaping the perceptions about brands for young adults via positive and negative earned media. keywords: earned media; shared media; consumer brand perceptions; digital participation; ugc; brand advocates; facebook; youth influencers introduction the current south african business context for brands can be characterised as complex with fluid micro and macro trends. furthermore, brand communication stewards (client and agency) face various challenges such as a fragmented media landscape, advertising fraud, keeping abreast of automation, diverse channel options with various content needs, budget pressures and a distracted and demanding consumer toggling between multiple screens and channels. caroline muyaluka azionya department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email : carolinea@uj. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1051-274x prof. nina overton-de klerk department of strategic communication, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email : ndeklerk@uj. ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-7466-8837 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 33-52 date submitted: 14 october 2020 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:carolinea@uj.ac.za mailto:carolinea@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1051-274x http://ndeklerk@uj.ac.za http://ndeklerk@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7466-8837 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 3534 azionya & overton-de klerk consequently, mobile, digital, social and marketing technologies have largely relegated traditional advertising to an expensive practice – difficult to measure, increasingly avoided, and blocked by consumers (macnamara et al. 2016; shiao 2019). the demand for more accountability on brand communication budget spend and the provision of high impact measurable results on profits and reputation from south africa’s burgeoning digital industry grows daily (pienaar 2020). consequently, marketers are using consumer-centric content strategies to try to capture and engage the attention of key stakeholders, boost sales and solve business problems via digital (pienaar 2020). digital spend in south africa amounted to $1.37 billion in 2019 (datareportal 2020). the literature review outlines the key traits and characteristics of 18 to 24-year-old young adults, followed by an exposition of facebook as a brand communication channel. a comprehensive discussion on media precedes a discussion on how consumer brand perception is influenced by social media. literature review south african youth south african youth are part of a diverse multicultural heterogeneous cohort differentiated by 11 official languages, race, spatial (rural, peri-urban and urban), and polarised socio-economic circumstances. the heterogeneity expresses itself as unique consumer sub-segments even within the same age group and region. “the majority of sa’s youth often falls within one of three categories: uneducated, unemployed, and unemployable” (statistics south africa 2019). south african youth spend despite not having the buying power of their parents, these 18 to 24-year-olds are still a significant consumer group. in 2017, they represented r33 billion in spend (student brands 2017). by 2019, the figure had grown to r44.6 billion (media update 2019). as key decision-makers, south african youth influence the majority of household buying decisions, identifying trends and endorsing brands (media update 2019). currently the youth market is worth r131.2 billion annually in direct and indirect youth expenditure (media update 2019). therefore, building sustainable relationships via expressive social media channels of which they are frequent users (deloitte global 2019) could foster brand affinity, loyalty, current profitability, and lucrative lifetime value. key characteristics and traits of 18 to 24-year-old south africans these young adults are increasingly sceptical towards traditional push advertising and content from brands (jordaan et al. 2011: 2-3; rhodes 2020). therefore, it is difficult for brands to capture and sustain their attention (lazarevic 2012). brand content needs tailoring according to gender, status elements of products, self-congruity, product category, language, and geographical and ethnic requirements to capture their attention (dalziel & de klerk 2018: 267). 3534 the development of a brand perception instrument in the digital sphere, brand messages compete with friends and followers, consumer readers and blogs (phillips & young 2009: 113-114). young adults prefer crowdsourcing opinions and ratings about brand performance from sources outside a brand’s influence, including family, friends and influencers. for credibility, influencers must demonstrate real humanity, achievement, and create emotional connections that foster closeness and friendship (van den bergh et al. 2011). subsequently, young adults’ value and trust directly contact more (mucundorfeanu 2014: 43). these considerations necessitate a channel agnostic approach that avoids the inclusion of digital channels that do not serve a strategic purpose and/or resonate with end-users. prime examples include social media channels created for brands, which have a digital presence that is not updated regularly. in concurrence, nhedzi (2018: 34-35) cautions against discarding traditional print media and television media advertising in favour of digital media. his study advocates a complementary usage reflective of the economic realities of south africa, where access to digital platforms is limited by data affordability. in addition, the internet penetration rate is 62% (n = 32.54 million; datareportal 2020) and the social media penetration rate 37% (n = 22 million; datareportal 2020). radio reaches 37 million out of the 40 million south africans 15 years and older (the broadcasting research council of south africa 2019a) and south africa’s free-toair linear top-rated television show reaches 10 072 999 viewers (the broadcasting research council of south africa 2019b). these are still significant platforms to reach youth with brand messages. however, print media in south africa is experiencing a sharp decline due to pressure on consumer spending and free content online. advertisers are debating the relevance of this platform in light of these declines. although poorer young adults display elevated levels of narcissism, technology addiction and materialism (guse & jesse 2014), there is generally a culture of instant gratification and hyper-consumerism amongst 18 to 24-year-olds (finweek 2013). these youth use a collection of carefully selected value and premium brands, sometimes from the same product category, for these purposes. individual realities and life stage influence these choices. therefore, brands are used to construct, represent and amplify their fluid, multiplicious, inter-connected and individual-centred self-identity; using transference to reflect associated brand meanings and values (robards & bennett 2011: 312-313). they participate in digital culture and manage their digital identities through discourse that signifies their aspired and existing selves via identity-resonant content (berger 2014: 591) and their interests and opinions. young adults tend to be team-oriented, collaborative and prone to activism over issues they care about, such as free higher education. young adults are socially influential, and significantly influence the purchase decisions of their acquaintances and close relatives. digital participation in south africa is complex. sharp differences exist between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to the internet, and more so in rural areas that are under-resourced in comparison to urban areas (bornman 2015). high data costs and a lack of equipment (a smartphone with adequate or expandable memory 3736 azionya & overton-de klerk or computer) exacerbate this inequality. this digital divide in south africa is not only about meaningful access to hardware and the internet; the lack of ict skills, income and education compounds the issue (bornman 2015: 6). therefore, the notion that every young adult is a digital native or has a higher digital competence than older generations is problematic. as is the notion that they engage in educational, business and social activities in a cyber-smart and secure way that does not compromise them to the same extent as their counterparts in the developed world (takavarasha et al. 2018). the digitally connected young adult has the necessary resources for a brand’s survival (education, skills, infrastructure and meaningful access, influence, social capital and network of friends and family). the less digitally connected consumer uses the internet primarily for socialising and entertainment (bornman 2015: 6). in addition to socialising and entertainment, the digitally connected make full use of its capabilities through gathering and disseminating information (jordaan et al. 2011: 3) linked to organisational and personal tasks (bornman 2015: 6). south africa’s most popular social networking platform, facebook, has an estimated 21.1 million users (napoleoncat 2020) who are increasingly using the platform to engage with its news and entertainment features, as well as its video feeds (nhlapo 2018). facebook and facebook lite while internet access and literacy remains a barrier in south africa’s lower income groups, facebook lite has sparked a rapid uptake within this group via its facebook lite app (nhlapo 2018). due to its massive appeal and adoption in south africa and globally it has “become the ideal platform for companies to advertise and approach their consumers”. facebook offers brands user-friendly, cost effective campaign setup and management tools with numerous resources and support. brands can optimise their successes by changing their campaign budgets daily or in real-time in response to visualisations and reports. facebook uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to allow brands to profile and target consumers and prospects and personalise content according to various behavioural (rhodes 2020), demographic, location and interest filters. brands can use various advertisement formats to create awareness, brand discovery, generate sales leads, and boost their presence, or encourage loyalty and measure the success of their campaigns. critical success factors for young adults’ attitudes towards facebook advertising include perceived interactivity, advertising avoidance, credibility, and privacy. social media social media or “social forms of media” are web-based applications enabling multidirectional delayed time/asynchronous and synchronous/real-time computer mediated interactions between individuals or brand communities (romiszowski & mason 2004: 398). they introduced novel interaction paradigms that produce crowdsourced digitised content created and enriched by users and first-person engagement (rossoa et al. 2016: 1). social media are also categorised as shared media (xie et al. 2018: 164). when categorised as shared media, these digital platforms include linkedin, instagram and 3736 the development of a brand perception instrument twitter, as well as messenger applications such as whatsapp (waddington 2018). using online profiles, users make friends, create and share text, photographs, video content (boyd & ellison 2007), audio recordings, or links to other online content. within a brand context, shared content is brand-related consumer generated conversations, content and actions that are exchanged, distributed and received by other consumers (burcher 2012: 8; lieb et al. 2012: 5). this electronic word of mouth (ewom) is a form of user-generated content (ugc). examples include likes, retweets and shares, or comments using smart devices and user-friendly applications. consumers, as evidenced by their preference for less commercial and photoshopped content from brands, generally prefer ugc (rhodes 2020). social media’s multi-directionality affords brands the possibility of interactive stakeholder dialogue and engagement, which theoretically should yield better results than the interruptive monologues of old. although the focus of this article is the social media channel with specific reference to facebook, social media use must be informed by its role and ability to deliver on key strategic business and brand outcomes, as outlined in a content strategy versus a stand-alone or bolted-on element. content strategies detail the creation, distribution and governance of content for the delivery of “relevant, personalised experiences for an audience of one in their micro-moment of need” along the digital consumer journey (lieb 2016: 8). social media content or assets can either be paid, owned or earned. paid social media paid/bought social media is a paid placement of brand-related content on a channel owned by a third party to leverage brand-related content and positively influence various stakeholders. the emphasis is on the distribution of such content for maximum reach and impact. sponsored posts, native advertising, all facebook ads and online branded entertainment are examples of paid social media. paid media is generally the least trusted media by young consumers (rhodes 2020). therefore, the presentation and promotion of paid content forms, such as native advertising “where the ad matches the form, feel, function, and quality of the content of the media on which it appears” (shiao 2019), raises ethical dilemmas; specifically, the lack of transparency and disclosure about the authorship of content for sponsored and native adverts (macnamara et al. 2016). despite the ethical concerns, paid media has a enhancing-enjoyment effect, can be used to spark conversation before and after a campaign, remind consumers, build awareness or interest, and present a call to action or influence perceptions (lovette & staelin 2016: 156; mattke et al. 2019: 802). native advertising on social media platforms specifically can convert sales leads into brand advocates, build a brand’s online community, and heighten the customer experience in non-intrusive ways (lieb et al. 2013: 9; shiao 2019). using social analytics based on real-time data and other customer data (mobile, store, website, purchase behaviour and preferences), the brand can create and share relevant content in posts and other online interactions. the paid social channel gives direct access to the consumer and enables content co-creation with young consumers. lovette and staelin (2016: 156) emphasise that “engagement strategies can be an effective complement to paid media strategies that keep the brand in memory and consideration”. with reference to facebook: it enables 3938 azionya & overton-de klerk brands to incorporate content from a user’s newsfeed into campaign messages to tap into the influence a referral from their social network has over them, thereby theoretically increasing message reception. successful and credible social influencer marketing requires transparency about the contracted influencer remuneration and/or rewards for ethical, legal and reputational reasons. by using paid influencer content, brands can tap into the social media influencer’s following to get their brand message across. however, the trade-off for potential reach is that they seldom have control over the brand message and run the risk of negative posts and comments. owned social media owned social media is any digital content or communication channel a brand owns and stewards on a social platform. these include facebook pages, brand communities, podcasts, branded apps, and branded microsites/websites with social plugins or branded channels, for example red bull media. owned social media are the primary source of brand-generated content (informational, educational and culturally relevant) for all stakeholders. in other words, engaging stories about the brand are usually found on a brand’s owned media (shiao 2019). this relationshipbuilding channel (thompson et al. 2018) potentially facilitates increased interaction and the reinforcement of positive brand association and identification with consumers. brand-related content fulfils a brand positioning function by highlighting its operations, management or employees, and its influential relationships or links to its advertisements and advertorials. to appeal to young adults’ need for co-creation, owned and paid channels must incorporate elements of shareability to spark conversations about the brand versus leading them. when owned social media channel strategies are implemented correctly, brand advocates or fans positively influence their social network and those of other consumers. brand advocates defend and recommend the brand online, and tend to give positive ratings and reviews online (awad & abdel fatah 2015: 38). earned social media in a social marketing context, earned social media is publicity or third party validations of brand related content that is “repurposed” by the third party for its network or “audience” (waddington 2018). the planned expressions of “editorial publicity” are sparked using blogger, influencer and “media relations” (xie et al. 2018: 164). earned social media are not always positive, as is evident in brands going viral on parody accounts and memes. for earned media to have a positive effect on consumers’ brand perceptions, they need to “have a high product involvement, need to perceive the earned media as non-entertaining and non-irritating, but as informative and credible” (mattke et al. 2019: 808). consumers, therefore, evaluate these different forms of media using the following attributes: irritation, informativeness, entertainment, credibility, product involvement (mattke et al. 2019: 802), the strength of social ties, and source credibility. ideally, a brand’s paid and/or owned social media need to spark talk-ability by creating “contagious” content (penn 2010) that consumers will share. research by stephen 3938 the development of a brand perception instrument and galak (2012) compared how earned traditional media and earned social media affect sales. results found both have an effect on sales. furthermore, earned social media drives earned traditional media (publicity and media mentions) and play a predictive versus causal role in intention to purchase (stephen & galak 2012). the measurement of earned media has become a contentious issue. the practice of measuring earned media using the advertising value equivalents (ave) metric has largely been denounced as a vanity metric by the global communication measurement industry (mccarthy 2019) and communication trade associations (amec 2017). consequently, they drew up seven principles for best practices in the measurement and evaluation of communication. principle five from the barcelona principles 2.0 states, aves are not the value of communication. do not use advertising value equivalents (aves). do not use multipliers for pass-along values for earned versus paid media (unless proven to exist). if you must make a comparison between the cost of space or time from earned versus paid media, use negotiated advertising rates relevant to the client, (the) quality of the coverage (see principle 4) including negative results; and physical space or time of the coverage related to the portion of the coverage that is relevant (amec 2015). the main argument against earned aves is these are not suited to social media or digital media and their measurement is not standardised. amec (2015) argues that no peer-reviewed academic research has established the legitimacy of the metric. amec (2015) emphasises the differences in how online advertising works in print and online. online advertising is centred on “paid for exposures instead of guaranteed runs in publications” (amec 2015). therefore, attributing ave to online content is flawed and impossible (amec 2015). an emerging barrier to the clear measurement and evaluation of social media interactions is the emergence of dark social (media) or dark traffic. dark social is the use of less public and more private interactions by consumers, typically via dark social platforms like direct messaging (dms), emails, and links from chat apps (rhodes 2020; swart et al. 2018). in south africa, 89% of internet users report using whatsapp and 61% use facebook messenger chat apps (datareportal 2020). conventional web analytics programmes find it difficult to pick up and track activity through such channels due to a lack of referral data when users click on links (swart et al. 2018). consumer brand perceptions consumer brand perceptions are shaped over time into an overall evaluation based on trust, respect, admiration and a good feeling about a brand and its activities online and offline (foroudi 2018). social media content that is relevant, builds the brand image, attracts consumers and creates an engaged brand community that gives the brand presence and global reach and promotes the brand (helal et al. 2018: 985). young adults base their perceptions on first-hand experiences of a brand’s touchpoints, or crowdsourced peer vetting of their perceptions via online consumer intelligence models such as reviews, ratings and recommendations using web 2.0 technologies. in concurrence, kumar et al. (2018) assert, “crowdsourcing as a concept per se creates favourable consumer brand perceptions and behavioural intentions, 4140 azionya & overton-de klerk provided crowdsourcing involves social initiative”. therefore, social media allow them to search for, create, and consume ugc opinions based on brand independent first and/or second-hand brand experiences. benchmarking of brands occurs according to perceived accountability, sustainability, authenticity, transparency, trustworthiness and dialogic communicative practices (kumar et al. 2018). considering all this, it is important to have a reliable means of measuring the brand perceptions of young adult consumers to avoid negative earned media and reputational damage. research objectives the objectives of the research were: ♦ to develop a valid and reliable measure of 18 to 24-year-old south africans’ communication of brand perceptions on facebook ♦ to determine which variables are related to the construct of brand perceptions communicated on facebook amongst 18 to 24-year-old south africans. methodology the primary purpose of the research was not the generalisation of results per se but rather the development of a valid and reliable measuring instrument. recent research suggests the biggest driver of income inequality in south africa since 2012 has been attainment of a tertiary education (leibbrandt et al. 2018: 12). therefore, the study focused on students pursuing a tertiary qualification, regardless of specialisation, with the assumption they will become the future middle and upper class in south africa. secondly, facebook was selected due to its widespread adoption and use in south africa. according to napoleoncat stats (2020), the largest user group are people aged 25 to 34 (35.1%) followed by 18 to 24-year-olds (24.6%). the largest proportion of students at institutions of higher learning is 18 to 24-year-old undergraduate students and, to a lesser extent, honours students; hence, their selection for this study. a list of all young adults on facebook at institutions of higher learning in south africa was not available. non-probability purposive sampling was used to address this. five hundred undergraduate and honours 18 to 24-year-old students at an institution of higher learning in johannesburg, who are active on facebook, participated in the study. according to du plooy (2009: 112-113), adequate sample sizes are a minimum requirement to ensure research stays within 5% error tolerance and a 95% confidence level. conway and huffcutt (2003: 8) propose a minimum sample of 400 to produce undistorted results for a factor analysis. therefore, the realised sample (n = 468) met both requirements. data was collected using a standardised self-administered questionnaire. the final instrument had 49 items, excluding the biographical data. kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) measure of sampling adequacy to ensure that the instrument measures what it intends to measure, the data was subjected to various statistical tests. firstly, kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo), which 4140 the development of a brand perception instrument measures sampling adequacy, was used to verify if the sample was big enough for factor analysis, and bartlett’s test of sphericity was used to determine the data set’s appropriateness for structure detection (chan & idris 2017). the kmo has a range of 0 to 1. it is an index, which compares the values of correlations between partial correlations and variables (williams et al. 2010). the kmo index for these variables was meritorious (.879) and above the minimum .50 requirement (chan & idris 2017). the approximate chi-square and df values were 8438.153 and 1176 respectively. the data had a sig. value (0.00), which was within the (p<.05) range, and thus suitable for factor analysis because correlations were present (williams et al. 2010). validity test using exploratory factor analysis (efa) factor analysis was used “to determine the extent to which shared variance (the intercorrelation between measures) exists between variables or items within the item pool for a developing measure” (gerber & price 2018). factor analysis was used to provide evidence of a relationship between the contents of the instrument and the constructs it was intended to measure and to show that there was internal consistency in terms of the structure. similarly, factor analysis is used to identify the dimensionality of the constructs by looking at how the items and factors are related. to maintain the methodological rigour used for this research, exploratory factor analysis was conducted, using spss, to validate the instrument. all data associated to cases whose values were missing were deleted from the data set. listwise deletion is useful when the proportion of missing data is small or when the sample is large enough to counter the effect of any missing data. in other words, the statistics are based on cases with no missing values in any variable used in the analysis. content and construct validity to achieve content validity for the instrument, a brand communication subject expert and an expert in questionnaire design were consulted twice and a pilot study using 30 young adults vetted the questionnaire. an exploratory factor analysis was run to measure construct validity and to ensure that the instrument measures what it intends to measure. reliability score the reliability coefficient of the 49 items is α 0.929. from these items, ten factors were identified for the scale. they cumulatively explain 62.812% of total variance. therefore, a high degree of internal consistency was observed for the total scale. results descriptive statistics the results of the descriptive statistics, the factors, their values, and the variances explained are depicted in table 1. altogether ten factors were extracted with each 4342 azionya & overton-de klerk loading on a minimum of three items, with the result of their means, and standard deviations alongside. each factor represented an underlying dimension of the latent variable or construct, cementing the relationship between the items and the factor. mean scores are representative of a set of scores in a latent factor, with the standard deviation indicating the spread of values in relation to the mean. both serve as indicators of how well an item correlates with the rest of the items in a latent factor. factor extraction method factors were extracted according to the maximum likelihood method. it allows for inferential procedures for assessing model data fit and identifies standard errors (ferrando & lorenzo-seva 2013: 16). it is ideal/efficient statistically when inferential interpretation is founded on the normality assumption; specifically, when the degree of model misspecification is small; otherwise, it becomes an unstable procedure (ibid.). the factor retention method used was a combination of eigen values greater than one (≥1) rule and a scree test. promax with a kaiser normalisation was used as a rotation method. this oblique class of rotation was used, as it tends to generate simple, decipherable and correlated factors. ten factors were identified with a minimum of three degrees of freedom (see table 1). table 1: factors, factor loadings, descriptive statistics, variance and reliability for efa factor loading factor m sd factor 1: brand fan behaviour (bfb) eigen value = 12.197; % of variance explained = 24.891; α 0.866 0.417 0.460 0.701 0.541 0.549 0.676 0.633 0.783 0.799 0.560 check for trending topics press the facebook like button for anything on the official brand page comment on the official facebook brand page watch videos on the official facebook brand page look at photos on the official facebook brand page participate in competitions on the official facebook brand page search for new information about your favourite brand on the official facebook brand page ask questions on the official facebook brand page take part in polls on the official facebook brand page rsvp to an event on the official facebook brand page 2.81 3.13 2.68 2.55 3.58 2.60 2.94 2.41 2.42 2.28 1.345 1.054 1.104 1.131 1.133 1.237 1.165 1.113 1.130 1.234 4342 the development of a brand perception instrument factor loading factor m sd factor 2: shared brand-related content (sbrc) eigen value = 3.645; % of variance explained = 7.440; α 0.891 0.811 0.735 0.863 0.794 0.717 a good experience with a brand a bad experience with a brand your opinion about a new brand your opinion about an advert you have seen scandals involving your favourite brands 2.84 3.10 2.98 3.02 2.90 1.288 1.395 1.211 1.270 1.372 factor 3: value brand influencers (vbi) eigen value = 3.235; % of variance explained = 6.603; α 0.855 0.740 0.830 0.837 0.720 0.531 0.525 friends on facebook your favourite blogs customer reviews on facebook customer ratings or reviews for brands on web pages (not facebook) your favourite celebrity product experts 2.37 2.26 2.48 2.63 2.15 3.21 1.175 1.205 1.247 1.296 1.199 1.369 factor 4: corporate social responsiveness (csr2) eigen value = 2.195; % of variance explained = 4.479; α 0.776 0.710 0.746 0.786 0.783 0.782 the brands i buy should treat me with respect the brands i buy should make information about them easy to access the brands i buy should care for their workers more than just making money the brands i buy should give back to the community in which they do business the brands i buy should care for the environment 4.44 4.54 4.47 4.41 4.53 0.811 0.703 0.785 0.834 0.759 factor 5: user-generated content (ugc) eigen value = 2.039; % of variance explained = 4.161; α 0.797 0.747 0.607 0.913 0.601 upload videos you have created about brand(s) upload photos you have taken of brand(s) upload advertising clips you have created about a brand share links to content you have uploaded 1.69 2.41 1.73 2.35 0.962 1.237 1.012 1.221 4544 azionya & overton-de klerk factor loading factor m sd factor 6: brand-related content (brc) eigen value = 1.922; % of variance explained = 3.923; α 0.862 0.596 0.767 0.942 0.867 0.453 product information apps from brands links to free stuff links to promotions click on advertisements about brands 2.46 2.53 2.73 2.74 2.41 1.138 1.135 1.336 1.353 1.138 factor 7: familial influencers (fi) eigen value = 1.636; % of variance explained = 3.339; α 0.737 0.520 0.623 0.622 0.811 parent(s) for premium brands brother(s) or sister(s) – for premium brands parent(s) – for value brands brother(s) or sister(s) – for value brands 3.69 3.29 3.07 2.87 1.160 1.104 1.363 1.218 factor 8: premium brand influencer (pbi) eigen value = 1.461; % of variance explained = 2.981; α 0.751 0.737 0.748 0.445 customer reviews on facebook customer ratings or reviews for brands on web pages (not facebook) product experts 2.84 3.11 3.73 1.262 1.258 1.145 factor 9: communication expectations (ce) eigen value = 1.261; % of variance explained = 2.573, α 0.580 0.848 0.815 0.657 i expect brands to have regular conversations with me on facebook i like it when brands ask for my opinion on a facebook post the brands i buy should have a facebook page in order for me to express myself freely 3.11 3.30 3.47 1.136 1.139 1.186 factor 10: recommending behaviour eigen value = 1.187; % of variance explained = 2.422; α 0.580 4544 the development of a brand perception instrument factor loading factor m sd 0.333 0.419 0.616 it is important to tell my family and friends about brands that don’t deliver my friends regularly ask for my advice when they shop i influence a lot of my family’s buying decisions 4.20 3.54 3.55 0.895 0.952 0.971 *sd= standard deviation, m=mean reliability for entire scale α 0.929. the communalities of the ten factors, another way of showing internal consistency, are reported in table 2. communality is the amount of common variance shared by the items, which indicate the extent of the relationship among the items in the constructs measured. a cursory look at the table of the communality shows that the result of the scale is reliable, consistent and dependable. since the communalities are generally high, it indicates that the extracted factors account for most of the variances. in other words, it shows that the ratio of couplings and dependencies between the variables and the extracted factors are quite high. overall, more factors were retained to give a better account of the variances. table 2: communality factor item description initial extracted bfb check for trending topics press the facebook like button for anything on the official brand page comment on the official facebook brand page watch videos on the official facebook brand page look at photos on the official facebook brand page participate in competitions on the official facebook brand page search for new information about your favourite brand on the official facebook brand page ask questions on the official facebook brand page take part in polls on the official facebook brand page rsvp to an event on the official facebook brand page .475 .438 .633 .446 .531 .516 .551 .626 .654 .458 .403 .417 .646 .383 .554 .481 .530 .649 .708 .397 sbrc a good experience with a brand a bad experience with a brand your opinion about a new brand your opinion about an advert you have seen scandals involving your favourite brands .695 .643 .730 .675 .620 .695 .611 .779 .682 .561 4746 azionya & overton-de klerk factor item description initial extracted vbi friends on facebook your favourite blogs customer reviews on facebook customer ratings or reviews for brands on web pages (not facebook) your favourite celebrity product experts .675 .734 .750 .708 .570 .596 .602 .771 .808 .706 .569 .799 csr2 the brands i buy should treat me with respect the brands i buy should make information about them easy to access the brands i buy should care for their workers more than just making money the brands i buy should give back to the community in which they do business the brands i buy should care for the environment .628 .609 .593 .650 .610 .570 .608 .645 .680 .639 ugc upload videos you have created about brand(s) upload photos you have taken of brand(s) upload advertising clips you have created about a brand share links to content you have uploaded .615 .513 .659 .538 .595 .446 .877 .513 brc product information apps from brands links to free stuff links to promotions click on advertisements about brands .654 .706 .806 .773 .437 .565 .649 .907 .774 .369 fi parent(s) for premium brands brother(s) or sister(s) – for premium brands parent(s) – for value brands brother(s) or sister(s) – for value brands .469 .532 .568 .666 .351 .481 .514 .791 pbi customer reviews on facebook customer ratings or reviews for brands on web pages (not facebook) product experts .663 .608 .510 .626 .738 .505 ce i expect brands to have regular conversations with me on facebook i like it when brands ask for my opinion on a facebook post the brands i buy should have a facebook page in order for me to express myself freely .634 .606 .562 .747 .686 .505 4746 the development of a brand perception instrument factor item description initial extracted rb it is important to tell my family and friends about brands that don’t deliver my friends regularly ask for my advice when they shop i influence a lot of my family’s buying decisions .331 .320 .386 .268 .235 .431 discussion and conclusion the exploratory factor analysis and reliability tests have established that a valid and reliable measure of young adult brand perceptions on facebook was developed, explaining 62.812% of the total variance and representing the key underlying conceptual dimensions; thereby, fulfilling the first objective of this research. the second objective was to establish which variables relate to the construct of brand perceptions communicated amongst 18 to 24-year-olds on facebook. the exploratory factor analysis illustrated that all ten factors extracted with their underlying dimensions can be regarded as valid and reliable underlying dimensions or constructs in the measurement of young adult brand perceptions. brand fan behaviour (bfb) constitutes nearly 40% of the total variances explained, accounting for 24.891%. this indicates that the measurement of brand fan behaviour is critical in perceptions and relationships of 18 to 24-year-old consumers with brands. it is through interacting with brands, via creating and consuming content on a brand’s official facebook page, that loyalty and engagement with them are potentially created. these findings are consistent with dawson (2018) and mattke et al. (2019). the second most important latent variable or factor unveiled by the instrument is the shared brand-related content (sbc), accounting for 7.440% of the variances explained. the factor highlights the important role brand experiences and customer opinion (fombrun et al. 2015: 4) on facebook play in shaping perceptions of brands for young adults via positive or negative earned media. value brand influencers (vbi) explained 6.603% of variance and highlighted the important role of crowdsourcing opinions via reviews and ratings from various nonbrand related sources during the information seeking stages for value brand purchases. these findings are consistent with jordaan et al. (2011: 2-3), lazarevic (2012), and dalziel and de klerk (2018: 267). young adults rely less on brand-generated content (traditional push advertising content) and more on customer and expert opinions for purchases, as validated by the study of kumar et al. (2018). corporate social responsiveness (csr) explained 4.479% of all variance. this is an important issue for young adults as their expectations are that brands should operate ethically, according to good governance and fair trade practices (fombrun et al. 2015). the remaining six factors, namely user-generated content (ugc), brand-related content (brc), familial influencers (fi), premium brand influencers (pbi), communication expectations (ce) and recommending behaviour (rb), had variance 4948 azionya & overton-de klerk values ranging between 4.161% for user-generated content (ugc) to familial influencers (fi), explaining 2.422% of variance. recommendations for future research the study was limited to young adults aged 18 to 24 and geographically confined to an institution of higher learning in johannesburg, south africa. the aim of the research was not to achieve external validity but to develop a valid and reliable measuring instrument for the measurement of young adult brand perceptions on facebook. the measuring instrument can be applied to a broader sample beyond young adults and in different emerging markets in africa to allow for comparisons and establish the diversity of south african adults. while this study represents an important first building block, further triangulation can add to much needed insights with respect to young adults, their brand perceptions, and social media behaviour in emerging markets. references awad, t.a. & abdel fatah, s.m. 2015. the impact of social media branding on developing brand advocates for start-ups. international journal of online marketing 5(4): 37-59. 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social cohesion; radio; radio listeners’ clubs; community radio; social capital; development communication introduction although the “community” in community radio is expressed in the conceptualisation as media owned by the community for the benefits of the community, the roles in contributing to social cohesion and the implications on livelihood improvements constitute an area of study that provides linda s. khumalo school of social sciences, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa email : makhue88@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-0597-7342 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 70-85 date submitted: 25 august 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:makhue88@gmail.com mailto:makhue88@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0597-7342 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 7170 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion 7170 ample scope for research. existing research covers various aspects of community radio’s contribution to social change. in addition to development roles (fraser & restrepo-estrada 2002; mano 2012; manyozo 2007, 2009; megwa 2007; mhagama 2004; mhiripiri 2011; milan 2009; naaikuur & diedong 2014; olorunnisola 2002), community radio is recognised as a powerful tool for creating strong and democratic communities both in the developed and developing world. however, the effects of promoting social cohesion as an important contributor to social change remain scant. moreover, the roles of radio listeners’ clubs as collaborative platforms that ignite social cohesion in communities need to be highlighted. the theoretical importance of social cohesion has often been the focus of research at national level (putnam 2001), while the relational dimensions of social cohesion that occur at small scale and micro-community level need to be understood better. this study contributes to understanding the relational aspects of social cohesion through a community of radio listeners, namely the masibumbane listeners’ club (mlc). the article highlights the intrinsic relationship between participatory development communication and social cohesion through studying a micro-community of khwezi community radio listeners. the article demonstrates the primary characteristics of social cohesion, such as a sense of collectiveness and community expressed through shared values, and the willingness to cooperate for reciprocal gains. the case study of the mlc, an informal association of the khwezi community radio station’s active listeners, examines how social cohesion has been fostered through dialogic communication and interconnectedness between the station’s active listeners. the article asserts that the role of community radio as a platform can strengthen societal harmony and social cohesion, which can result in conflict reduction in listenership communities (al-hassan et al. 2011). research questions this article seeks to address the following primary research question: ♦ what contributions do radio listeners’ clubs bring to social cohesion in local communities? in answering this question, the article presents an analysis of these sub-questions: ♦ what forms and characteristics of social cohesion are present in the masibumbane listeners’ club? ♦ what roles do radio listeners’ clubs, with a particular focus on the masibumbane listeners’ club, play in fostering social cohesion in communities? ♦ what is the potential of social cohesion in facilitating improved livelihoods in communities? 7372 khumalo methods the data on which this article is based originated from the researcher’s doctoral studies. data collection took place from march to november 2019 in kwazulu-natal. data was gathered in the form of interviews, focus groups discussions, non-participant observations and document reviews. specifically, eight in-depth interviews and ten focus group discussions were conducted with members of 13 of the mcl’s 54 branches. the case study approach (henning et al. 2006; stewart 2014) is suitable for the study as it ensures a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon being examined; in this case, the mlc and its contribution to social cohesion in terms of the relational aspects of a particular group of people sharing common interests. a thematic analysis of the data was conducted using nvivo qualitative analysis software. literature review background to social cohesion social cohesion has been defined from various viewpoints by various scholars (friedkin 2004; moody & white 2003; oxoby 2009; putnam 1993; berger-schmitt 2002; stanley 2003). in light of its multidimensional nature, there is little consensus on the conceptualisation of social cohesion. this has resulted in the concept being prone to vagueness and sometimes expression in particularistic ways (moody & white 2003). however, what remains common amongst these is the centrality of a group’s “connectedness”, or how well a group is held together as central to social cohesion. this section presents some of the key components of a socially cohesive society that are present in literature and that provide a frame of analysis for this study. these include 1) belonging and committing to being part of a group; 2) positive interpersonal interactions, for example through face-to-face engagements; 3) social networks with interpersonal ties; 4) fostering inclusion and social relations between groups; and 5) interconnectedness through relational paths. stanley (2003) defines social cohesion as the willingness of societal members to cooperate to survive and prosper. “willingness to cooperate” means they freely choose to form partnerships from which they have a reasonable chance of realising their goals (stanley 2003). similarly, according to (friedkin 2004), individual group membership and the ability to remain in that particular group are central to maintaining social cohesion. thus, the maintenance of structural features of groups and one’s attraction to a group or to other group members are identified as socially cohesive. friedkin (2004) further asserts a two-fold conceptualisation of what socially cohesive groups consist of – firstly, the extent of positive interpersonal interactions expressed through intimate face-to-face interaction among people forms a crucial basis for social cohesion; and secondly, a cohesive group consists of a social network in which all possible interpersonal ties are present and social networks enable the production of consensus and group coordination (friedkin 2004: 417). oxoby (2009) sees social cohesion as intrinsically linked to inclusion and social capital. inclusion is defined as an aspect of how one perceives their access to institutions and 7372 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion resources in the decision-making environment (oxoby 2009: 7). oxyby further argues that greater inclusion incentivises investing in social capital; therefore, inclusion results in greater social cohesion. in contrast, where there is exclusion, there is less incentive to invest in social capital, and consequently there are low levels of social cohesion (oxoby 2009: 8). this study views inclusion as manifesting itself in mlc members’ shared values and beliefs, a sense of collectiveness and willingness to work together to change their circumstances. association with the mlc is characterised by greater inclusion among members and those around them in their communities and results in members accessing various forms of social capital such as shared development information and entrepreneurial approaches. benefits of socially cohesive societies as friedkin (2004) asserts, interaction is the foundation of social processes, and the ability of societies to be socially networked has been associated with societal benefits. for example, the accumulation of social networks, more specifically social capital, is a benefit of social cohesion (putnam 1993). putnam’s work demonstrates the societal benefits of more socially cohesive societies being well integrated and more developed than those that are not, inherently due to the social capital individuals inherit from belonging to groups characterised by reciprocal gains. he considers social capital as either formal or informal, operating within a central characteristic of constituting networks, which can develop through reciprocity and mutual gains across members. similarly, the mlc is characterised as an informal association or network of highly networked listeners who work together to ensure collective gains. putnam (2001: 1) states the central idea of social capital as “networks, and the associated norms of reciprocity have value. they have value for the people in them, and they have, at least in some instances, demonstrable externalities, so that there are both public and private faces of social capital.” the value of having social capital presents reciprocal gains for groups of people within networks. putnam (1993) further argues for the emergence of trust arising from people’s association with voluntary association(s), which fostered communication, dissemination of information and cooperation more broadly. this is closely associated with berger-schmitt’s (2002) conception of social cohesion, which incorporates social capital and inclusion. berger-schmitt (2002) argues that there is a close relationship between social cohesion and improving quality of life. guided by putnam (1993; 2001) and oxoby (2009), this study adopts a critical understanding of social cohesion as being intrinsically coupled with social inclusion and social capital, whereas socially cohesive groups are characterised by collective connections/social networks that are embedded in shared values and the willingness to cooperate for reciprocal gains. community radio listeners’ clubs and social cohesion there is some evidence supporting the critical role of community radio in strengthening social cohesion through bringing communities together. as fairbairn (2009) opines, community media are crucial contributors to social cohesion and integration, given their ability to nurture public opinion and views by facilitating relevant 7574 khumalo dialogues and discussions. for example, rodrguez (2005) demonstrates the role of radio in strengthening social cohesion among ethnic groups through facilitating intercommunication, while jakubowicz (2007) argues for the critical role of media more broadly in building social cohesion through their embeddedness in social relations. jakubowicz (2007) sees media as providing pathways for communication, negotiation, consumption and production of meaning in societies. through media, people can become contributors to economic processes by exchanging information that informs decision-making. however, there is a gap in the development communication discourse that relates to radio listeners’ clubs’ contribution to strengthening social cohesion. notably, radio listeners’ clubs are still an emerging discourse on the african continent, with known studies being in ghana and malawi, where radio listeners’ clubs are closely linked to offering alternative spaces of engagement across groups of people and they are seen as being alternative public spheres (mhagama 2015). theoretical framework in presenting a theoretical and conceptual analysis to study community radio’s role in strengthening social cohesion in communities, this study broadly adopts bergerschmitt’s (2002) conceptualisation, which relies significantly on putnam’s (1993) analysis of social capital as a central tenet to social cohesion. in conjunction with participatory development communication theory, which explains the characterisation of community radio as a dialogic space that facilitates the exchange of developmentrelated ideas across audiences, this provides the theoretical framework. participatory development communication this article adopts an amalgamation of participatory development and development communication theories (melkote & steeves 2015). participatory development is anchored in people-centric development and maintains that people need to be central to their development and should be involved in decision-making about initiatives aimed at their progress. thus, development cannot take place if people do not own it (chambers 1992; mohan & stokke 2000; cornwall 2002; osikhena & chikadzi 2014). on the other hand, development communication argues for the importance of communication, such as through community radio. participatory development communication supports an understanding of the centrality of people having communicative spaces or spaces of interaction that help them to collectively address their communities’ development issues/meet their desired social change. a growing body of research examines the importance of radio listeners’ clubs in facilitating social change through their intrinsic relationship between community radio and the community of listeners (manyozo 2005; mhagama 2015; manda 2015). in essence, radio listeners’ clubs make up the “community” in community radio and provide critical spaces of engagement for listeners to work towards implementing social change efforts in their communities. in the case of the mlc, beyond the radio station programming, listeners of the khwezi community radio station have established 7574 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion bonds within their collective spaces. these spaces are characterised by close ties, shared interests and a sense of family between individuals with similar values. in addition, innovative practices towards livelihood improvements have emerged out of these collective spaces of engagement. the belonging to or membership of the mlc symbolises a form of social capital for many members who have credited their belonging to the club as central to their state of being and livelihood. theorising social cohesion theoretical ideas of social cohesion are not contemporary; in fact, they date back to durkheim (1933), who argued for a two-fold categorisation of social cohesion, namely mechanical and organic solidarity. durkheim (1933) argued that mechanical solidarity was more evident in traditional societies and marked by shared values and closer connections between people who tend to identify with similar beliefs and ways of being. on the other hand, organic solidarity (durkheim 1933) is related intrinsically to modern society, marked by the interdependence of people; for example, due to the division of labour and work specialisation people rely on one another for different tasks. bergerschmitt (2002) provides a two-dimensional conceptualisation of social cohesion, which provides a useful basis for understanding it. according to berger-schmitt (2002), social cohesion consists of the inequality and social capital dimensions. the inequality dimension involves promoting equal opportunities, reducing disparities and divisions, and combatting social exclusion. the social capital dimension embraces all forms of social capital; that is, to strengthen social relations, interactions and ties. berger-schmitt (2002) presents a three-fold conceptualisation of social capital. first, social capital involves social relations and activities within primary social groups and associations. this is associated with putnam’s (1993) work in which he argued that people attaining membership and engaging in voluntary associations contributed to fostering communication and disseminating information, which in turn generated and reinforced trust in societal norms. as a result, putnam (ibid.) argued that associations are conducive to cooperation and have an impact on the economic and social well-being of communities. second, social capital encompasses the quality of social relations, namely shared values, feelings of affiliation, solidarity and trust. the third concept considers the quality of formal institutions such as the political, legal and judicial systems as important contributors to enabling civic engagement and cooperation; hence, supporting economic and social development. social capital is thus concerned with the institution’s functioning, efficiency, reliability and stability as enablers of civic engagement (berger-schmitt 2002; putnam 1993; 2001). results the data points to two key spaces that foster social cohesion in the radio listeners’ communities, namely community co-operatives and the mlc. while this study focused mainly on the mlc as a case study, it is important to show the links between groups belonging to co-operatives and the mlc. for example, mlc club branches typically form community co-operatives exclusively, or with non-mlc members. furthermore, these co-operatives are also an expression of reciprocity amongst community 7776 khumalo members. they collectively work towards achieving common goals to uplift their livelihoods and support the greater societal good. community co-operatives community co-operatives (co-ops) are community groups that mlc members mentioned belonging to, which illustrate collective support among members. one mlc member expressed the idea of joining a co-operative as emerging from one of their listeners’ club’s branch meetings as a form of advice to support each other in various economic activities: we met and were encouraged to start/join co-operatives, to do handwork such as sewing mats. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) co-operatives are a way for individuals and their families to practice farming as well as other forms of handwork as means to maintain their livelihoods. co-operatives illustrate shared efforts and group support in communities catering for their households and sometimes even assisting with broader community needs. one mlc member mentioned the benefits of belonging to a farming co-operative in their area. members support each other with farming approaches and jointly purchasing seeds and manure to facilitate more effective and efficient farming processes: i joined a co-operative, which helps us with manure and tractors as we are farming. we farm, make contributions, and then there’s an organisation where we buy seeds and manure. then each one is able to farm. it’s a big co-operative, it keeps growing. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) community co-operatives are thus an example of community groups fostering social cohesion. noteworthy, on several occasions the membership connected people from the same listeners’ club branches who had established social ties. social cohesion through mlc interactions the majority of mlc members are female as khwezi attracts more female listeners. consequently, group activities with a targeted focus on women supporting each other towards improved livelihoods were reported by participants: we have women programmes, we meet and do gardening, and we have our own organisation called ‘mayisize’ whereby we assist each other. they contribute money to help each other in time of need, and it accumulates interest. we also make crochet shoes and bags, dresses, and we sell them. (focus group discussion, mlc member, pietermaritzburg) groups for women can foster social inclusion, as women from neighbouring communities are likely to share similar concerns and goals, and be willing to cooperate on initiatives that seek to improve their livelihoods, such as co-operatives (moody & white 2003). 7776 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion characteristics and benefits of socially cohesive groups several tenets of social cohesion were expressed through mlc member interactions. these included group coordination in the listeners’ club, social capital gained through members’ association with the mlc, reciprocal gains obtained from the membership, and the shared values and collective approaches adopted to address community development issues. the study found evidence of members collaboratively working to improve community livelihoods. however, the findings also pointed to some inherent challenges in maintaining social cohesion and agreement as individuals’ expectations might diverge from the rest. group coordination and reciprocal gains listeners expressed the benefits associated with the group coordination through their mlc membership. the mlc space offers a feeling of closeness through which members receive reciprocal gains such as support and collective approaches towards sustaining their economic and social livelihoods. notably, the values of the mlc are grounded in khwezi radio’s christian values, where love and caring for one another is central. the communal spirit of “we are better together” strongly embedded in the value of ubuntu was expressed in interactions with mlc members across different branches. in addition, masibumbane members extended the sense of support to their broader community members in times of distress and need. expressing the value of ubuntu in practice, an mlc member expressed the significance of belonging to the listeners’ club as a form of connecting with other members, establishing strong ties, and being able to support one another: we meet our ‘sisters’ at masibumbane; we can help each other. as members of masibumbane, we know that when there is one in need, we ensure that they get help. this is where i saw that masibumbane is like a mother and a father. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) masibumbane membership resembles a strong sense of community connectedness towards the common good and support with reciprocal gains. a case worth highlighting is jointly sharing and implementing ideas to boost financial sustainability through stokvels in various mlc branches. gains in improving members’ livelihoods were elucidated during a focus group discussion: as women, we have stokvels, where, say per month, each person contributes r500 each when it’s nine of us working towards supporting each other towards achieving our specific goals. with my r500 alone, if there’s something i’m planning to do, it becomes more difficult. i think this is now our fourth year pushing this, and we don’t quarrel over it. we are progressing as women; even in our homes, we help our husbands instead of waiting for them to always be giving us money; we are also getting more involved and contributing to our families’ livelihoods. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) another participant indicated how the stokvel pay-out has assisted in them building their house and therefore improving her livelihood: 7978 khumalo when it was my turn to get paid, i was able to build a house and put tiles, and my house is looking good. even if someone from khwezi radio were to walk in, they would see the work of masibumbane. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) social capital it was also evident from the results that the mlc provides active listeners of khwezi with forms of social capital. these ranged from forming closer ties with fellow community members, to sharing ideas and strategies to uplift individual and household incomes, to collectively addressing community development challenges. these efforts resulted in reciprocal gains that strengthened the sense of community and consequently social cohesion. in some instances, being a part of the mlc offered members the advantage of accessing opportunities in their communities. thus, the credibility of the network association and the mlc being a part of khwezi received recognition, which resulted in associated gains for active listeners. one participant remarked how their mlc membership enabled them to grab hold of an opportunity to start a mushroom farming initiative: some were asking me how i got hold of the mushroom opportunity; what helped me was that when i introduced myself, i said masibumbane, which is under khwezi. khwezi has enabled us because even when we speak on air, there are people who know us. i believe that if we get help, the mushrooms can assist the entire kwazulu-natal because some people even wish to know me, the guy who speaks about mushrooms. i want people even out there to see the work of masibumbane, even those that are starting farming programmes. (interview, mlc coordinator, ntembisweni) moreover, the desire to expand the “reciprocal gains” of belonging to the network to other community members is also expressed as a critical prerequisite. this speaks to the key question of the value of social cohesion in improving livelihoods, which, as evidenced in this case, was on a micro-level, supporting the short-term needs of individuals and households. shared values and collective approaches in addressing development challenges social cohesion was further characterised by the social capital obtained from being an mlc member through having mutual support and shared values. these shared values and interests fostered collective approaches to tackling development challenges affecting the group and, to some extent, the broader community. in addition, the values shared within the mlc encouraged members to be proactive and work together to develop themselves and their communities: masibumbane teaches that even when you are not working, you can’t just wake up and do nothing, so one must be engaged in something in order to live well with people. it helps a lot for people to work together in developing their communities. (interview, khwezi staff responsible for mlc coordination) 7978 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion the connectedness and willingness to collaborate across group members demonstrated characteristics of social cohesion. moreover, several mlc branches attested to the value and gains that they received from the network association. this primarily included gains relating to their livelihoods because of the mlc association and members’ willingness to extend their support collectively to address needs outside of the mlc space, such as supporting community members in need of food and clothing. the sense of community and the collective approaches initiated by different mlc members across branches to improve their livelihoods were summarised by the mlc coordinator as follows: at mangethe, we never hear them crying about money, when we say we have a meeting, they contribute money, and they attend. they develop themselves; they are farming, then they sell the crops – they have a garden, and some people have received help from their produce. at darnall, they have a lady who wakes up and goes to stanger every day to go and sell. they are farming vegetables, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, so their community is developed because they can never go hungry. they have food in their gardens, so that’s masibumbane that opened their minds. they grow mushrooms at the ntembisweni branch; they develop the communities so they don’t lack; there’s always something they are doing, they teach each other. (interview, khwezi staff responsible for mlc coordination) shared values were evident through association with the network, which drew from the interconnectedness expressed by mlc members, symbolising a form of social capital given the reciprocal gains that members experienced from these close ties. the participants highlighted how their association with the mlc resulted in nurturing shared values that encouraged a sense of responsibility, proactiveness, and a sense of solidarity closely aligned to the value of ubuntu (as discussed above). values of ubuntu are embedded in the mlc network ideology, with the data illustrating a strong willingness to cooperate in living aligned to the shared values. for instance, one listener expressed how they had learnt the attribute of selflessness and caring for others through masibumbane: i have also learnt to live well with other people. masibumbane has shown me that you cannot be a person alone; you become a person when you are around people. i also learnt that when i have/possess something, then my neighbour should also have some of it. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) moreover, the close ties and interconnectedness between fellow members brought a sense of community and togetherness in tackling life’s challenges, such as in times of distress. a case in point was how men in one mlc branch had supported each other in the fatherhood journey. one mlc coordinator expressed is as follows: we encourage each other about how to be as a father in a household. our branch is diverse men and women. we can meet and talk about issues concerning men and how to treat themselves as men in their households, for instance, when you get home, make sure your family is happy, you’re happy, and not run away. (interview, mlc coordinator, vikindlala) the results demonstrate that the social capital gained from mlc membership translated into individual and household gains, such as improving households’ 8180 khumalo economic livelihoods and the sense of support and togetherness in tackling economic and psychosocial challenges. this demonstrated the value of a sense of community or connectedness and being part of a collective grounded in shared principles and values (moody & white 2003). therefore, there are worthwhile gains in socially cohesive societies. however, while there is some evidence from various mlc branches of these gains reaching beyond mlc members to addressing broader community challenges, the significance to community livelihoods cannot be directly inferred, as it is case dependent. this warrants further research. contributing to improving community livelihoods this research further suggests that socially cohesive groups can support the broader functioning of their communities collectively, indirectly contributing to improving their society’s livelihoods. this was apparent through the cohesive nature of the mlc, contributing in various ways to improving community livelihoods. notably, these are ad hoc efforts mainly targeted at small scale, specific needs, and they are not sustainable interventions. in essence, it cannot be inferred that the examples found in the study support socially cohesive groups improving their community livelihoods more broadly. nevertheless, the examples provided present a valuable depiction of the mlc’s contributions to enhancing broader community livelihoods. some examples of collective support to communities facilitated by the group coordination and shared vision of mlc members included supporting the needy through financial and food contributions, assisting school children with fees and uniforms, and supporting school-going orphans. in addition, the desire to cohesively generate and implement collective solutions to improve community livelihoods, even though this may have been at a small scale, was evident. these are some excerpts from mlc branches detailing their specific contributions: we have instances/examples where our branch has been able to support those in need. we have contributions as branch members that help to meet people’s needs. this helps a lot. we help each other as members of masibumbane who have joined. (focus group discussion, mlc member, kwakopi) you find that some people are suffering in the community; we sit with them as masibumbane so that we understand their challenges and take them to the war rooms. we are able to pass people’s challenges to the councillor. (interview, mlc coordinator, vikindlala) at eshowe, we are united; we support each other, we help children in need, for example, giving school shoes, we contribute through the coordinator, even school uniforms. at samumu, people lost their houses they got burned; we came together and contributed what we had, for instance pots and clothes. (focus group discussion, mlc member, eshowe) these cases demonstrate how mlc members have collaboratively contributed towards addressing various concerns in their communities through the group’s cohesive nature, in a way contributing to improving individuals and some households’ 8180 the role of participatory development communication in social cohesion social and economic livelihoods at varying levels. this further illustrates the shared values and shared approach in tackling life’s challenges across members. other distinctive forms of community support that participants alluded to were in relation to mlc members extending their psychosocial, emotional and spiritual support to community members in need, such as those living in poverty, orphans and vulnerable children, and the elderly. this included providing solace and praying for those facing different forms of distress, such as sickness and grief. a desire for supporting the broader community and civic engagement, even at a personal level, was also revealed: when we have something to give, even prayers, we give to people that need help. we contribute and also help by visiting the sick. unfortunately, we failed in the farming part since we didn’t get help. (focus group discussion, mlc member, howick) we also contribute groceries (those that are able to) at the end of the month and take them to those in need. (focus group discussion, mlc member, howick) similarly, another initiative contributing to improving livelihoods at a small scale through the network of the mlc has been providing support to orphans and vulnerable children by donating school uniforms and food to identified orphaned children in khwezi’s listener communities. the mlc coordinator described the school uniforms initiative as follows: some parents passed away and left their children. we proposed a programme to support these children by collecting donations and then buying these children uniforms; then we go and give them. last year we supported about 25 children we buy them uniforms and groceries, so they have food before going to school. (interview, khwezi staff responsible for mlc coordination) some scholars (kawachi & kennedy 1997; kaasa et al. 2007, jenson 2010) view communities with high levels of social capital as being more likely to provide resources to individuals and have collective resources leading to healthier and more developed societies. in this study, the mlc initiatives may be targeted, and at a smaller scale, such as the school uniforms project, and societal-wide benefits may not be extrapolated. nevertheless, the initiatives, however small, make a valuable contribution to supporting youth education in communities by supporting children to progress with their schooling as an investment in their future well-being. challenges with maintaining cohesiveness it is worth noting that social groups can be divided on core objectives, and these divisions can occur over time, resulting in less cohesion (oxoby 2009). in addition, different expectations could drive groups apart, leading to limited reciprocal gains and withdrawal from the association for others. consequently, a central challenge that emerged from the study pertains to the difficulty of maintaining cohesiveness in a particular mlc branch in which members had divergent expectations, thereby threatening the cohesive sustainability of the group: 8382 khumalo the branch has declined. people don’t know the difference between masibumbane and funeral parlours, so they don’t understand. they don’t understand; some people join for their death and help to bury loved ones and for themselves when they die. they don’t understand that through joining masibumbane, you can find a brother, sister, a mother, a gran, etc. other people give up when they see that they don’t get direct benefits from the club. they don’t see that masibumbane gives you someone who can pray for you and help you grow. (interview, mlc member, ntunjambili) this case, although unique to the study, illustrates the challenges of maintaining cohesiveness in social groups. some member expectations may not align with collective support and shared values towards achieving common goals over time. as a result, there could be frustration when returns are not feasible/evident in the short term. social cohesion is thus an ongoing process, with reciprocal gains such as social capital and reciprocal returns from group collectiveness being witnessed over time. discussion and conclusion the results of the study highlighted the embeddedness of participatory development communication with social cohesion through studying the results of mlc members’ interpersonal interactions and collective efforts towards improving their livelihoods and those of their communities. the results speak to two main characteristics of social cohesion highlighted in literature (putnam 1993; putnam 2001; friedkin 2004; jenson 2010; oxoby 2009), namely social inclusion and social capital. these are demonstrated through the reciprocal gains members receive from network association as well as the primacy of a sense of connectedness characterised by solidarity and building trust among group members (moody & white 2003). the article’s value lies in the emerging empirical evidence demonstrating the role of radio listeners’ clubs as informal associations that are critical in fostering social cohesion in communities. it has done so by unravelling the nature of social capital and social inclusion that members obtained from their membership and association in the network. social cohesion in the mlc group association is expressed through positive interpersonal interactions, strong ties and support across members, shared values such as the value of ubuntu, sharing innovative ideas to improve their livelihoods that members gained from being part of the association, and the willingness to cooperate towards improved livelihoods for members and their communities. however, one of the challenges with cohesive groups is the benefits being maintained within that particular circle of membership, with limited evidence of these reciprocal gains spreading to have a broader, community-wide reach. it is challenging to establish shared values and interests across a wider societal reach as individuals, households and communities are diverse and may differ in community social change agendas and personal interests. understanding the benefits of micro-community socially cohesive groups to improve broader community livelihoods is a recommended area for further study. the question of how radio listeners’ clubs such as the mlc foster cooperation and ultimately the economic and social well-being of communities requires further examination. notably, even though the various forms of social cohesion may be present, the enabling environment plays a critical role in ensuring that social cohesion 8382 the role of participatory development 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methodology: a practical guide. thousand oaks, ca: sage. https://doi.org/10.5789/8-2-168 https://doi.org/10.5789/8-2-168 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506843jrs0901_11 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506843jrs0901_11 https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n14p521 https://doi.org/10.1108/03068290910996963 https://doi.org/10.1108/03068290910996963 https://doi.org/10.1386/rajo.3.3.155_1 https://doi.org/10.2307/3341872 _enref_1 _enref_17 1. melissa steyn 33 on democracy and communication: the dilemma of freedom and the challenge of equality communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 33 49 johann c. de wet* abstract this article aims to explore, through a conceptual analysis and rational argumentation, some theoretical implications of the principles of freedom and equality for a democratic state. with conceptual analysis an investigation is conducted into the use of certain concepts in a given, or in all kinds of, contexts. it is an operation on concepts, contrary to operation with concepts which occurs with the spontaneous application of concepts. conceptual analysis comes into play particularly when confusion exists or can arise about concepts. the concept of democracy is discussed followed by its relation to the principles of freedom and equality respectively. the basic communicological ideas governing the principles of freedom and equality are offered. it is also briefly argued in conclusion that vexing questions that relate to freedom and equality tend to be overlooked in public debates in south african communities about issues that range from press or media freedom to the plight or silence of the have-nots, or to the pervasiveness of violent crime in the land. * professor johann de wet is chairperson of the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction ever since the communication science discipline formally emerged in the united states and europe in the late 1940s (schramm 1983; rogers & chaffee 1983) much has been written about communication practices which govern democratic states. for long, analyses of communication arrangements, patterns, and outcomes that are most likely to promote or block the realisation of democratic values — or to show how far they have been attained — have been part of programmes of (functionalist) communication research into democracies (blumler 1983). the intelligible presentation of choice is vital to the role of communication in democratic states (for a concise, insightful summary of the role of communication in democracies, see davison 1976). this right to choose or freedom, along with equality, are the foremost principles underlying a mainly western conceptualisation of democracy, and have been used to shed light on for example how open or closed a state or a particular system or subsystem of a state functions. the celebrated promise of freedom and equality in a democratic state has not been accepted unconditionally. much of critical theory research for example (emanating from among others the frankfurt school), which systematically analyses communication practices for its hidden assumptions and implications, have questioned the exercise of freedom and the reality of equality in democratic states. critical theory research predominantly asks which structures of domination prevail and whose interests are being served by communication structures and themes. in france where (along with the united states) the modern idea of (western) democracy has its origin, renowned french scholars such as jacques ellul had warned throughout the second half of the twentieth century (see ellul 1964; 1967; 1973; 1981) that the pervasiveness of propaganda practices, misinformation and the abuse of power in an advanced democratic and technological state would spell danger for the promise of freedom and equality in such states. purpose of the research the primary purpose of the article is to explore some theoretical implications of the principles of freedom and equality for a democratic state. secondary purposes are to determine the underlying communicological ideas inherent in the principles of freedom and equality; and to point out briefly, through the use of examples, the relevance of these principles for south african communities. method of research and procedure adopted this article is largely theoretical and exploratory. conceptual analysis and critical and rational argumentation are employed. with conceptual analysis an investigation is conducted into the use of certain concepts in a given, or in all kinds of, contexts. it is an operation on concepts, contrary to operation with concepts which occurs with the spontaneous application of concepts (kistner 1982: 64). conceptual analysis is particularly appropriate when confusion exists or can arise about concepts. 34 the exploratory nature of the article is acknowledged, because a conceptual analysis, as du toit (2005) points out, “is potentially infinite — there are always more lines of inquiry to pursue”. despite the limitations of a conceptual analysis, the lines of argumentation offered in the following paragraphs, attempt to produce pointers which hopefully will stimulate further research. sources used include academic books, original reference texts, articles in journals, audio-visual material and mass media reports. the article proceeds to discuss the concept of democracy, followed by its relation to the principles of freedom and equality respectively. the basic communicological ideas governing the principles of freedom and equality respectively are offered. the article concludes with a brief commentary on a few vexing questions that relate to south african communities in light of the underlying principles of freedom and equality governing the south african state. on democracy democracy is a contested term — there are endless disputes about its proper use. it is most often used in the sense of it being a form of government, even though, and strictly speaking, it is more of a procedure destined to place a government in office and to establish a public legal order in which diverse legal interests are harmonised and balanced (strauss 2006). democracy or demokratia is derived from the greek demos (the people) and was taken in ancient greece to mean literally “the power of people who qualify as citizens” — it is necessary to qualify the idea of “people”, because the greeks never thought of, for instance, including slaves in their conception of people (see van zyl slabbert 1991). furthermore, for the greeks demos meant the people in the sense of “the common people” or “the ordinary man” or, simply put, “the poor” — not in the modern sense of “the people as a whole” or “every member of society”. the ancient greeks are often regarded as the founders of democracy, when the concept is used in the sense of a form of government, but note that antiquity ultimately rejected this form of government (wolheim 1975: 109). it did not last even in athens, and in the realm of speculation such famous thinkers as plato and aristotle opposed it. this is because equality of political opportunity and freedom for the individual to do as he/she likes are for plato and aristotle the salient characteristics of democracy. basically, democracy — as a form of government practised today — is a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. authoritarianism of some type prevailed throughout the world until after the american and french revolution of the late eighteenth century. one characteristic peculiar to all authoritarian systems is the denial of significant political rights or privileges to most members of the body politic. as a consequence minority rule prevails in the sense that ultimate as well as immediate control of the government is confined to a small proportion of the total adult population. policies are 35 decided by officials who are neither legally nor politically responsible to the general public — only to the minority who enjoy a monopoly of governmental power. however, the western conception of democracy as a form of government created by the will of the majority of citizens was not accepted unconditionally during the nineteenth century. in fact, a feature that runs through nineteenth century thought is a fear of democracy — that it could lead to a “tyranny of the majority” (see arblaster 1984: 264283). nowadays and in general, the term “democracy” is usually reserved for governments that accept certain basic normative assumptions. these may be divided into three broad categories (scruton 1982: 115-117; raphael 1979: 146ff): (1) that government should reflect the people’s electoral will and choice — hence the constitutional provision for regular elections, usually under universal suffrage, by secret ballot, with representatives of at least two parties standing for election. (2) the basic individual freedoms (other than political rights) be recognised by government. these freedoms include freedom of speech, information and of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, religious freedom, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. (3) that the basic individual freedoms referred to in (1) and (2) above be exercised according to the rule of law. the rule of law may be described as a doctrine which prescribes that no power can be exercised according to procedures, principles and constraints contained in the law (the law must obviously be directly or indirectly representative of the people’s will) and that any citizen can find redress against any other, however powerfully placed, and against the officers of the state itself, for any act which involves a breach of the law. this would imply that there must be a separation of (governmental) powers; that is, an independent judiciary and an executive separately elected or responsible to an elected legislature. the added idea of an independent political public sphere that operates as an intermediary system between state or government and society in a democracy has long been propagated by the german sociologist and philosopher, juergen habermas. in a recent paper, habermas (2006) notes that the political public sphere should be instrumental in the formation of considered public opinions through, among other matters, diversity of independent mass media and through general access of inclusive mass audiences to the public sphere. habermas (ibid.) suggests that “the different weighting citizens of different nations assign to either rights and liberties, or to inclusion and equality, or to deliberation and problem solving, determines how they see themselves as members of their political community”. “democracy” itself is also an ideology. along with nationalism and socialism, democracy may be regarded as a fundamental ideology in our contemporary age. 36 ideology generally means a system of socio-political ideas which social groups aim to implement practically in a given society. these “ideas” are characterised by (1) an element of valuation (cherished ideas); (2) an element of actuality (ideas relating to the present); and (3) an element of belief (believed, rather than proved, ideas) (ellul 1973: 116). the socio-political ideas connected with democracy have to do with the individual’s natural right to control the government of the day (a cherished idea relating to the present) through regular elections and the exercise of basic freedoms in accordance with the rule of law. the idea that this natural right is recognised only in a democracy, and that democracy is therefore the best form of government, is a believed, rather than a proved idea. in african philosophy, according to kwame nkrumah (murobe 2002: 583), democracy is “a matter of socialist goals and aims”. communalism is identified as the “social ancestor” of socialism by h. odera oruka (2002: 59), a renowned african intellectual. similarly, leopold senghor argues that “negro (sic) african society is collectivist, or, more exactly, communal because it is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate of individuals… africa had realized socialism before the coming of europeans but we must renew it by helping it to regain a spiritual dimension” (murobe 2002: 583). murobe (ibid.) notes that senghor found the spiritual aspect, which he saw as embedded in african collectivism, lacking in western socialism. in thabo mbeki’s (see mbeki 2001: 149-157) definitive speech on the new partnership for africa’s development (nepad), democratic principles and institutions, and popular participation and good governance for the continent are clear objectives. in his call for african leaders to adopt the true spirit of democracy in which, among other matters, human rights are protected and people-centred development and marketoriented economies predominate, a mixture of traditional western and african approaches to democracy comes to the fore. the description of democracy given thus far has focused mainly on its governmental and ideological nature. however, democracy’s distinctive aims are most clearly concerned with a person’s quality of life as manifested in human freedom and equality and, concomitantly, as manifested in a person’s ability to communicate freely to others and the world. it is to the respective principles of freedom and equality that underlie the western concept of democracy that we now turn. democracy and freedom freedom is absence of restraint. the principle has negative and positive connotations: the former conveyed in the expression “freedom from” (for example, legal restraints), the latter in “freedom to” (for instance, realise one’s aims). all too often the negative side of freedom has dominated concerns. one feels that a mere “freedom from” is not enough for freedom to prevail. the quest on the road into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, is also part of freedom. after all, since we do 37 not always know what is best for us, we explore to find solutions. freedom (as the absence of restraint) is therefore always freedom from some possible restraint and freedom to do what you want or choose to do provided that you do it responsibly, that you do not encroach upon another person’s freedom (cf. raphael 1981: 81; scruton 1982: 180-181). individual freedoms and democracy it has been argued above that certain individual freedoms are indeed essential to democracy. these freedoms include rights of direct or indirect participation in the process of government; freedom of speech; information and of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and religious freedom. these freedoms are granted because they conform to basic liberal ideas associated with western democracy, such as (see beck 1979: 47-64): (1) belief in the supreme value of the individual (and thus not of the state). (2) belief that the individual has natural rights (rights which belong to all human beings by nature — such as the right to life and to control government) which exist independently of government, and which ought to be protected by and against government. (3) recognition of the supreme value of an individual’s freedom. note that the relationship between democracy and liberalism is not as natural as one may expect, despite the fact that “liberal democracy” is such a common phrase that one is inclined to imagine that there has always been a harmonious marriage between the two constituent principles. in fact, throughout history there has been constant tension between the advocates of democracy and liberalism. democracy in its original sense of rule by the people or government in accordance with the will of the bulk of the people emphasised equality of people and was regarded by liberals as a bad word, fatal to individual freedom and to civilised living which liberalism stands for. however, since the twentieth century liberals have come to view western democracy not as an end in itself, but as a means of preserving freedom of the individual, to secure a maximum of freedom for citizens (see arblaster 1984: 75-79). by “freedom” (of the individual) is also implied that to which one has a right (with its concomitant obligations), and “right” in turn implies “right to choose”. (note that “freedom” and “liberty” are sometimes used interchangeably. however, liberty is normally used in english to refer only to “social freedom”, that is, freedom from restraint by the action of other persons; it is not used in the sense of freedom to choose — see raphael 1981: 82.) this right to choose (or freedom) also distinguishes human beings from animals. for instance, a human being can choose to commit suicide, an animal cannot. choice is the selection of one possibility among others. more than one possibility or courses of action must be open to a person before that person can be said to have a choice — one must 38 not be prevented by physical or psychological causes from having at least two genuine options open to one. absolute freedom, however, is an unattainable ideal — legal constraints and societal constraints such as custom, tradition and public opinion prevents it. also, to the extent that one is “duty-bound” to respect the freedom of another, freedom is limited rather than absolute. moreover, if all persons were absolutely free to do as they pleased, the extent of an individual’s actual freedom would be measured by his/her power to do what he or she wanted and by his/her ability to resist invasive action by others and the law — power is used broadly here, in the weberian sense, as the chance of an individual realising his/her own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who participate in the action (weber 1982: 80). freedom of thought and discussion a person’s “freedom to choose” in a democracy would also imply that one has a right to think whatever one wants — hence the principle of freedom of thought. any attempt to impose thoughts on an individual or to prohibit him/her through law is doomed to failure. this right to think whatever one wants does not, however, mean that such thoughts are entirely one’s own. in fact, one’s thoughts can never be regarded as a product entirely of one’s own deliberation, free from external influences of any kind. for instance, one’s thinking is conditioned by one’s social circumstances and by various propaganda practices that flourish in a democracy. although it is true that many of one’s thoughts are not one’s own, one can make them one’s own by living them, by attaching meanings to them. in theory, a democracy, by corresponding to the principle of freedom, will attempt to provide the individual with a wide variety of viewpoints which in turn would give him/her an opportunity to choose whichever viewpoint pleases him/her the most, through, inter alia, the doctrine of the freedom of the press. however, freedom of the press, understood broadly as meaning that the mass media should not be under governmental control, does not guarantee that the individual can choose a particular viewpoint among many. private media groups may all propagate the same viewpoint (on the merits of the free enterprise system, for instance) to the exclusion of others in society. freedom of thought is an evasive ideal, but necessary ideal for a democracy. let us turn to mill’s (1975) classic argument in this regard. in his essay on liberty written in 1859, mill advocates complete freedom of thought and discussion within the political order. mill (1975: 50-51) bases his argument on four grounds: first, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. to deny this is to assume our own infallibility. 39 secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. and not only this, but fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct; the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. as levi (1959: 37-46) suggests, mill advocates such freedom of thought and discussion in order to foster free development of individuality. individuality incorporates the elements of spontaneity, diversity and the latitude of choice provided by the very freedom of thought, expression and discussion (mutual criticism). consciousness of individuality is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. historically, human beings have been regarded as social animals. it was only at the renaissance that the individual and his needs began to move closer to the centre of human thought, and mill was thus in line with post-medieval tradition, which he carried forward when he stressed the unique importance of the individual. in doing this, he did not imply that the individual was something apart from, and unrelated to, the society in which he lived and of which he was a product. his point was that each individual is a unique constellation of personal qualities significantly different from those of his fellow men, qualities which must be prized and encouraged for their creative potentialities. for mill, there is no real freedom for a person in a democracy if conflicting interests cannot be recognised without victimising the individual either in his/her relations with the institutions of government or in his/her personal claims against the pressures of mass sentiment. mill, as tocqueville (1951) before him expounds in his democracy in america, emphasises that the threat to individual freedom in a democracy lies not so much in the mandates of law, but from the pressures of public sentiment, which he fears will also lead to intellectual stagnation. on the pressures of public sentiments which enhance conformity, mill (1975: 15) warns that his is not one of the evils which tend to disappear spontaneously but, on the contrary, it tends to grow more and more formidable. people, whether as rulers or as fellow citizens, impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule on others, and this is so energetically supported that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power, and that the power is not declining, but growing. 40 mill’s pointed remarks in on liberty seem to suggest that an individual’s freedom in a democracy could also be dependent on his/her ability to demand and receive the right to seek alone (if necessary) the truth about any matter that interests him/her. dahrendorf (1979) would say that such ability would increase an individual’s “life chances” in a democracy — also see borraine’s (1991) reference to “life chances”. dahrendorf (1979: 34) describes life chances as opportunities for individual action arising from the interrelationship between “opinions” (possibilities of choice) and “ligatures” (bonds which the individual has been born into or has acquired — such as family or community bonds). an individual’s life chances could increase or decrease, depending on the relationship between his/her options and his/her ligatures — the fewer his/her ligatures and the more his/her options, the greater his/her life chances. although dahrendorf does not equate freedom with life chances, he notes (1979: 38) that they are “closely related”, in that freedom is about giving an individual opportunities to choose. freedom in a democracy: the underlying communicological idea theoretically, then, in a democracy, freedom (as a principle with active connotations) revolves around providing an individual with opportunities to make meaningful choices about his/her existence. the democrat is prepared to make his/her own mistakes rather than to be directed by someone else, even though that person may have superior wisdom. the basic idea of freedom here is that self-direction, choosing and expressing for yourself in a responsible manner, is far preferable to having decisions made for you and imposed upon you by another (see dewey 1963: 53-55). democracy and equality some degree of equality is essential to a democracy (see schultz 1977: 110-114; hook 1944: 48-51; raphael 1979: 183ff.). it is generally seen as including the following: (1) equality before the law. this means that the rights of all individuals in a democracy are subject to a sovereign body (such as parliament) which legislates, and to no other factor (such as race or class). naturally there is never full equality before the law. for instance, children and lunatics are treated differently form adults of a sound mind. neither does legal equality guarantee that all individuals will be equally able to take full advantage of the rights conferred. for example, some persons, by reason of superior education or greater wealth may be in a better position to exercise their legal rights that the poorly educated or the many persons with severely limited economic resources. this has given rise to the distinction between de jure equality and de facto equality: both rich and poor have equal rights in law, but it would be wrong to claim that they have equal power to enforce those rights. (2) political equality. this means that there should be equality in the ability to vote someone into office, and to stand for election to office oneself. such political 41 rights should not, for instance, be confined to the rich and the well-born. political equality, like legal equality, never exists absolutely. for example, children never have the vote — universal adult suffrage is usually the norm. also, in the united kingdom, for instance, certain offices of state (noteably that of sovereign) are hereditary and not open to everyone, while in the united states, one can become president only if one was born in that country. in conferring the vote on “all” adults, democracy presupposes the view that all adults generally have the ability to exercise the vote. a form of factual equality is implied; that is, that every adult (excluding lunatics) has the ability to form a political judgement and to make a rational political choice — which, of course, may not in fact be true. (3) equality of opportunity. this means that all individuals should be given the same opportunity (for instance, in the field of education) to develop whatever personal talents they possess and to make whatever unique contributions their capacities permit. equality of opportunity lies in the very spirit of democracy. of course, despite favouring equal opportunity, there are still many inequalities within a democracy, such as inequalities of income, wealth and power. some kinds of equality, it seems safe to assume, are unattainable. differences among individuals in intelligence, in talents, in temperament and in physical characteristics, so far as we know, are inherent in humankind. tocqueville’s warning in writing on the principle of equality in his much renowned treatise on nineteenthcentury american democracy, alexis de tocqueville pointedly warns in democracy in america (1951) that equality can be taken too far and could result in a situation where persons are prone “to be lost in the crowd” of their fellows; they lose respect for their own freedom and soon become grossly indifferent to the free expression of individual thought. as legal, political and social conditions became more equal for persons in nineteenthcentury america, tocqueville notes that americans seemed more and more to take pride, not in their individuality, in their freedom, but rather in their sameness. he says this is because the principle of equality is partly based on the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual and that the interests of the many are to be preferred to the few (1951: vol. 1: 255-256). moreover, tocqueville (who had a definite aristocratic bias — he argues throughout that uniformity, conformity and mediocrity are fixed returns of egalitarian (democratic) society — see aron 1970: 9) suggests that democracy in nineteenth-century america had, in the sacred name of the majority, raised up a tyranny over the minds of men as oppressive and as formidable as any in history: the tyranny of the majority. on specific tendencies which the principle of equality creates, he notes that “the one (tendency) leads men straight to independence and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road to 42 servitude. nations readily discern the former tendency and are prepared to resist it; they are led away by the latter, without perceiving its drift” (1951: vol. 2: 288). equality in a democracy: the basic communicological idea theoretically, in a democracy the principle of equality conventionally relates to equality before the law, political equality and equality of opportunity, bearing in mind that there will always be differences in, for example, the talents and temperaments of persons. the idea of these forms of equality seems to be that all persons should be treated with “fairness” in a democracy. a truly democratic society would then, as dahrendorf (1961: 182-185) suggests, combine a maximum of equality of circumstances with a minimum of equality of character. equality in a democracy would prevail if persons had equal opportunity to participate and to be involved as self-conscious subjects in the communication process. mutual respect, spontaneity and an awareness of the other as an individual would be prerequisites for persons to participate in communication in this way. freedom versus equality one of the essential conditions of a democratic state is the free play of conflicting opinions, the right of all persons to freely disagree. consequently one would expect that a democratic state would also respect the line between the power of the majority and the rights of minorities, also dissident minorities. in fact no state can afford to disregard individual differences, conflicts of interests, and diversity of needs in devising satisfactory solutions for the many problems that arise in all communities. equality is a great leveller. equality makes it exceedingly difficult for one person or a few persons to oppress the many, but in turn it makes it just as difficult for one person to be free from the oppression of the many. equality by itself is not ideal. if all persons were equally wretched, equally poor, or equally powerful, the equality would be no boon; in this sense persons may be more equal under a totalitarian regime than under a democracy. the point is that if persons say they want to be free and equal their demand for freedom often puts a limit on their demand for equality. for example, any attempt to achieve equality in wealth for all citizens would surely result in a form of totalitarianism — to keep persons equal in wealth, in spite of their unequal abilities, work performance and varying aptitudes, would require a degree of all-round regimentation surpassing anything that a dictator has yet achieved. although democracy implies that certain freedoms, such as freedom of speech, are conferred equally on all persons, it has, in the final analysis, to decide which is the more important: freedom or equality. in this respect one would be inclined to agree with dahrendorf (1961) that a person’s freedom must be the supreme goal. applying equality (of persons) as an all-embracing 43 principle leads to the degeneration of humankind: it prevents one from developing one’s personal capacities (which are always qualitatively unequal) to the greatest possible extent — thus sacrificing individuality for the sake of equality. in communicological terms, applying equality as an all-embracing principle would obstruct a person’s power of individual expression, since it aims to make persons think and do alike. persons tend to become the same, rather than becoming self-conscious subjects. it would be in order if equality implied that everyone could communicate on an equal subject footing so that they are able to actualise themselves. in conclusion: a question or two for south african communities while it has been argued above that the principles of freedom and equality should reign supreme in a democratic state, it must be emphasised that the right to freedom is not an absolute right and that absolute equality is unattainable. the principle of freedom, from which freedom of expression, press freedom and religious freedom are derived, bears limitations, obligations and social responsibilities in a democratic state. there is no legal or moral escape from them. broadly-speaking, communication practices in a democratic state are always influenced by social circumstances which include the prevailing politico-ideological climate at a given time. let’s take the recent furore over the prophet muhammad cartoons as an example. the furore has its origin, in short, when the author of a danish children’s book was unable to find anybody to illustrate a book about prophet muhammad. a local danish newspaper, jyllands-posten, regarded this as evidence of a muslim threat to free expression, and decided to commission and publish cartoons of the prophet to make a point (krüger 2006). in south africa, the weekly mail and guardian published one of the cartoons and was vehemently criticised by the muslim community. the editor later apologised after she and her family had received death threats. a high court interdict was granted preventing any further publication of the cartoons in south africa. many commentators shouted that press freedom was under threat in the land. the point is that the press or mass media are also bound by constraints on freedom in a democratic state because they are part of that state. they do not function outside of it. this would apply to any communicative practice which for example promotes “hate speech” [see gelber’s (2002) work on the subject-matter] or the ridiculing, insulting or denigration of a widely-practised religion. a position, albeit a conservative position, on the issue suggests that an apology for publishing the muhammad cartoons or other insulting material does not have ramifications for freedom of expression or press freedom. freedom sometimes has to be balanced against other values such as intercultural harmony which make it legitimate to encroach on it. 44 when choosing to rely on (press) freedom to defend particular communicative actions, individuals and institutions need to consider true human responsibilities in the process of verbal and nonverbal communication, also with regard to religious issues. too many wars have raged, and are still raging, in the name of one or other religion or religious denomination. intercultural sensitivities are rife in south africa. communication practitioners should know this and strive to take their own and other’s viewpoints into consideration. balance is an overriding concern. in communicating interculturally, use of the “free word” or illustration must be approached circumspectly. the free word can cause, and has caused, major conflict. those who use the free word to wound the honour or pride of others actually shoot with words (esterhuyse 2004). one says this fully appreciating that without press freedom a democratic state cannot exist. citizens must be kept informed about socio-economic and political circumstances which influence their lives. public opinion is mainly formed by events which the press and other media have made publicly known. citizen involvement in the interpretation of news is necessary for the effective functioning of public opinion. and an active public opinion steers democratic practices. the press as the fourth estate is irrevocably part and parcel of this process. this implies that the press must be able to do its work fearlessly: in freedom but also with the necessary responsibility to achieve the democratic ideal. the press must be the watchdog and not the ragdoll of government. as merrill (2004: 17) notes, press freedom usually leads to best journalism practices. freedom is necessary for maximum news coverage. freedom is needed for the discovery of truths. freedom is needed for diversity of information. the challenge facing the principle of equality in south africa does not lie in the idea of political equality previously discussed in this article or in equality before the law, but in the idea of equal opportunity in the land. stories of the deep division between the so-called haves (in-groups) and have-nots (outgroups) in south africa abound. for example, winning entries in the 2005 vodacom journalist of the year competition, one of the foremost journalism competitions in south africa (sullivan 2006), show that the south african state is grappling with inequalities. the exploitation of the poor by the rich; the plight or hardship of disabled persons; the plight of the poor in informal settlements and rural villages; and the devastating effects of hiv/aids on especially the poor are realities (see vodacom 2005). inequalities will have to be bridged as soon as possible if political stability is to be maintained over the medium and long term. the divide between rich and poor is not simply, as in apartheid south africa, a racial one. it is also class-based. while political transformation has been implemented in many spheres, the challenge of economic transformation for the benefit of most, if not all, has yet to be realised. 45 perhaps the greatest threat to the new democratic south african state is the pervasiveness of violent crime, which makes a mockery of the principles of freedom and equality. south africa has one of the highest crime rates in africa. in 2006 alone, there were 18 528 murders, 54 926 rapes and 119 726 cases of violent theft. violent crime against especially children is horrifying (raubenheimer & du toit 2007: 1). during the period 1 april 2004 to 31 march 2005, 22 486 cases of rape, 24 189 cases of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm and 1 128 cases of murder against children were committed (internal question paper no 1/2006). other contact crimes against citizens of all walks of life continue unabated. among many citizens, there seems to be very little respect for law and order, and for the life of another human being, when it comes to violent crime in south africa. the principle of freedom in this context has been seemingly operationalised as doing what you want without taking the other person into consideration. with such freedom comes a climate of unhappiness where “communities live in fear, closeted behind walls and barbed wire, ever anxious in their houses, on the streets and on our roads, unable freely to enjoy our public spaces” (mbeki 2007). likewise, the principle of equality is distorted in the land. with regard to violent crime, criminals have become more equal than others through their disregard for another’s dignity or property and for their (often) escaping punishment for such crimes. poverty among large parts of the population and the lack of equal opportunity in the developing south african state is, of course [as president 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(eds.) ideologies of politics. cape town: oxford university press. 49 1pb improving brand linkage effectiveness: customer ratings abstract in the brand linkage literature, assessing consumers’ brand ratings is an important area. despite this, there has been comparatively little research executed to analyse the pre and post brand linkage experience of customers from an african perspective. the study offers practical guidance for improving brand linkage effectiveness – and the competitive advantage for brand assessment strategy – in an increasingly complex world. pretest-posttest control group experiment design was employed to examine the impact of host brand on invited brand and vice versa using a card scoring method. the four groups had an effect on brand linkage ratings, and the partner brands were significant to changes in ratings, confirming brand linkage as a viable strategy for partner brands. keywords: brand linkage; brand communication; cobranding; brand alliance; brand ratings; marketing communication introduction brand linkage effectiveness can be measured in many ways, but in retail it generally is considered to be the brand assessment achieved for a given brand perception rating. brand linkage involves the planned alliance or integration of independent brands into a shortor longterm partnership with the aim of influencing customers. brand linkage effectiveness refers to consumer response to a brand linkage. it has become increasingly popular with brands of various categories, and brand linkage strategies used by marketers are commonly found in both developed and developing countries. the combination of two or more brands into brand linkage or alliance is increasingly common in business markets (yan & cao 2017). although this study uses the term brand linkage, authors define it differently, some label the term as co-branding or brand alliance. authors differ in “brand alliance classification. thus, co-branding, copromotion, co-advertising and similar terms are all part of brand alliances” (voss et al. 2012:929). other well-known brand linkages include taco bell and doritos’ popular doritos dr abyshey nhedzi department of strategic communication, faculty of humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa email: abyshey1@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-24382686 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-20 date submitted: 24 november 2020 date accepted: 03 december 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:abyshey1@gmail.com mailto:abyshey1@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 nhedzi locos tacos, and quaker oats and tyson (yan & cao 2017). the marketing paradigm of competitive corporates is different from that of complementary corporates in that the products of one brand lose sales to the other brand rather than benefit from each other’s sales. in this article, the focus is on competitive corporates and it considers a new cooperative to derive optimal strategies for business marketers when they plan to form a brand linkage. despite research on brand linkage growing rapidly, little is known about how brand linkages are measured and how beneficial they are (nhedzi et al. 2016). such research forms a useful conduit between brand linkage theory and practice. however, less research has looked at how brand linkage manifests within african countries, and there is a need to understand the practice better within these countries where there is a growing trend of promoting brands in international set-ups. since the end of apartheid and the democratic elections, south african businesses have been growing. however, these open opportunities to conduct business with the world markets increased competition with foreign business. on the one hand, it accelerated south africa’s integration into multinational businesses, which has changed the domestic market isolation, and on the other hand, foreign companies’ entry intensified the competition of the domestic market. a brand goes beyond programmes, services, products and displays; rather, it encompasses everything else about an organisation, including reputation, culture and core values. as such, it is not simply advertising or marketing. branding has been referred to as a messaging instrument that helps a business reach its goals and it encompasses the promotion of everything associated with the business (prindle 2011:32). new brand launches are risky endeavours for marketers, as many fail to attract a sustainable customer base. hence, in order to enter into the larger african market, south african enterprises joined forces with foreign enterprises for positive and effective expansions. brand linkage is a strategic intent to add a composite of two or more separately owned brands to leverage brand value while targeting the same market. for instance, south african companies formed partnerships with foreign brand such as simba with frito-lay of the united states of america (usa) in the snacking food industry and robertson’s with best foods in the usa (munzhelele 2014). in addition, pick n pay owns a 49% share of a zimbabwean supermarket business, tm supermarkets. marketers use the brand alliance strategy to create brand value for growth, image, lifestyle and popularity in the minds of stakeholders. however, combining two or more brands may change brand meaning in ways that were never intended. therefore, brands seek to pursue collaboration and joint ventures instead of a single strategy, faced with enormous direct competition. consequently, the study considered the following two questions: 1) what is the impact of brand linkages on consumers’ ratings of brands? and 2) what is the impact of a brand linkage campaign on consumers’ ratings of brands? the following hypotheses were offered: h1: there is high brand rating of the host brand in brand linkage compared to other competitors h2: a brand linkage campaign has a positive relationship with the host brand 32 improving brand linkage effectiveness h3: the brand ratings of brand linkage have a positive effect on the host brand h4: the brand ratings of brand linkage have a positive effect on the host brand, more so for experimental than for competitors’ single retailer brands effect of brand linkage brand linkage can occur in the form of a co-brand. co-branding refers to any combination of two or more brands in a marketing context, such as new product introduction, coadvertising, co-sponsoring, or joint promotions (grossman 1997). this implies any pairing of brands in a collaborative marketing effort, including advertisements, services, promotions, public linkages or distribution outlets (besharat & langan 2014). besharat and langan (2014) further state that co-branding means more than joint ventures, strategic alliance programmes, and value endorsement. in distinguishing co-branding from other brand partnerships, they argue that co-branding differs from other brand partnerships, including brand alliance, ingredient branding, co-promotion/advertising, dual branding, co-sponsorship and cause-related marketing (besharat & langan 2014). brand alliances are defined as a strategic leverage association of brands to improve their images, combining a firm’s brand identity with that of its partner(s) to create a new, stronger competitive position in the market (besharat & langan 2014). a brand linkage may exist without new product formation. this is common in retail sector co-branding or alliances. thus, co-branding is also called brand alliance by newmeyer et al. (2014). besharat and langan (2014) conclude that there is a lack of clarity and consensus on the term co-branding. early studies classified co-branding into three categories, namely market share, brand extension, and global branding (park & srinivasan 1994). the first level is where one company joins another in the form of a merger or acquisition, or otherwise to penetrate the market. the second level is to grow the brand and its product line at times using vertical or horizontal integration, considering the company’s current standing in the market. the third level helps a brand to become a global identity through the unity of two individual brands. with fundamental trends in co-brand research (lei et al. 2008), partnering with other brands can be risky, as it can have negative consequences (thomasson & janusonis 2012; washburn et al. 2004). according to mckee (2009:3), “if [the customer] is not positive – even if it is the other brand’s fault − it may reflect negatively on a partnering brand”. hence, previous studies have focused on important factors affecting consumer attitudes towards cobrands (also referred to as brand alliances), such as the familiarity (levin & levin 2000), perceived quality (helmig et al. 2007) and relative brand equity (washburn et al. 2004) of the partnering brands. many forms of brand alliances have been documented in marketing literature. however, the literature provides evidence of the existing definition complexity on brand alliances and how the inconsistency among various scholars (see nhedzi et al. 2016; anslinger & jenk 2004; gammoh & voss 2011; laforet 2010; leuthesser et al. 2003; simonin & ruth 1998; washburn et al. 2004) is difficult to resolve. some brand linkage efforts 54 nhedzi take various forms, including ingredient brand alliance, joint venture brand alliance, and multiple sponsorship brand alliances. acknowledging the wealth of knowledge accumulated on the success of brand alliances, the trend for brand alliances has grown since the increase in internet access from the year 2000 (mccarthy & von hoene 2014). bigger or more successful rivals have acquired many start-ups, as in the case of overture, which bought altavista in 2003 for only 10% of its market value in 2001. a growing concern about the effectiveness of brand alliances permeates existing marketing and advertising theories and practices, as evidenced in mccarthy and von hoene (2014: 6); if “market trends are any indication, the use of [co-brand] will only continue to grow and expand between companies and brands”. while these case studies inform practitioners on the importance of brand alliances, they are silent on the strengthening of weak or indifferent ones, and weak brand alliances might be obtained in brands from emerging and developing countries. without a practical accounting of effectiveness in brand alliances, marketing communication frameworks will remain misleading and incomplete. fournier and alvarez (2013: 254) argue, “a contemporary marketing environment laced with distrust, hyper-criticism, and increased consumer power exacerbates [brand] problems and encourages malevolent [consumer] brand relationships. strong positive brand relationships can easily overnight turn into hateful and vengeful associations.” the intention of brand alliance strategies is primarily to leverage brand quality, which can enhance positive consumer-brand relationships. most studies have addressed fictitious (unreal) brand linkages or co-brands based on familiarity (simonin & ruth 1998). however, real-world examples of brand alliances (noteworthy examples include engen and woolworths’ convenient food stores; pick n pay and tm) may not fit precisely into such patterns. singh et al. (2014) found consumer perceptions of the positioning strategies of partner brands to be significant determinants of the positioning perceptions of a co-brand and found some evidence for spillover effects on partner brand positioning. wason and charlton (2015) found consumer perceptions of positioning strategies of parent brands to be a significant factor influencing their view of the co-brand. this is similar to other studies as it relies on “a hypothetical pairing of two real brands” (wason & charlton 2015:10). the current study offers an important opportunity to re-examine and build an understanding of existing knowledge about brand linkage effects (nhedzi et al. 2016) in the retail supermarket domain. this explanatory study seeks to examine how a composite brand linkage strategy would add to or detract from the brand value of partnering brands. challenges of the single organisations or brands big retail supermarket brands in emerging markets face many challenges: unreliable government policies; shrinking consumer-brand relationships; pricing pressures; increased competition; culture fit; high promotional expenses; and hostile competition from other supermarkets, both national and international. these challenges overlay a changing landscape in the retail supermarket industry characterised by industry consolidation and a youthful population driving market growth; a prevalence towards direct-to-consumer promotion (at least in the african market); open internet access to 54 improving brand linkage effectiveness affordable products; different suppliers and “all knowing” consumers; and easy access to other developing economies. retail industry in the african context international retail joint venture or brand linkage conceptualisation has inconsistency, with new terms being introduced often because of a lack of a theoretical base. not all international retail brand linkages are similar as they might be distinctive in character and yet interrelated in other ways. this is an inevitable configuration because the form is a result of the complex formation and operation of relationships between brand linkages. sub-saharan africa continues to make inroads into the global index ranking (gri), with three countries (angola, botswana and nigeria) in the top 30 (kearney 2012). south african brands and retailers have been at the forefront of african expansion but global competition might arrive soon. for south africa’s major retail players to keep their competitive advantage, sound strategies and investment plans are required (kearney 2012). pick n pay is one of the largest mass grocery retail (mgr) companies in africa, with a market share of 30% in south africa. the group operates 794 outlets, comprising hypermarkets, supermarkets and family stores. it employs approximately 55 000 people, according to the 2019 pick n pay annual report. moreover, it operates in seven african countries outside of south africa (kearney 2012: 6). the group offers three private label ranges, which are no name brand, pick n pay brand and finest. conceptual framework the model depicted in figure 1 shows four key constructs: brand linkages, brand communication, brand ratings, and redefinition of brand relationships. clearly, brand linkage research details how consumers’ quality perceptions (rao et al. 1999; voss & gammoh, 2004; wason & charlton 2015) and general product evaluations or attitudes (helmig et al. 2007; simonin & ruth 1998) spill over from parent brands to alliances, and vice versa. 76 nhedzi figure 1: brand linkage assessment model source: nhedzi et al. 2016: 61 brand linkage in this setting, two independent firms (brand a and b) team up and form a brand linkage or alliance to cooperate. when the two firms form a brand linkage, they act together to maximise their joint profits and names. the brand linkage is a cooperation that aims at a synergy where each firm’s benefits from the alliance will be greater than what it could achieve from individual effort, but each firm remains an independent organisation. brands constantly seek ways to distinguish themselves in today’s highly competitive market. the brand linkage is of particular interest because many firms enter an agreement to benefit from each other’s resources, capabilities, and core competencies (nhedzi et al. 2016). the following are some of the opportunities available to partnering brands (fournier & alvarez 2013; mccarthy & von hoene 2014): ♦ accelerate growth ♦ access critical capabilities ♦ enter new markets ♦ reduce costs or capacity ♦ accelerate rediscovering of products or services ♦ build a critical skills base in recent years, there has been rapid growth in brands cooperating with other brands across industries. it has become more difficult for companies to differentiate their 76 improving brand linkage effectiveness products because of the increased number of competitors and product offerings. companies face a new challenge of how to preserve or improve their brand popularity (jevons et al. 2002; laforet 2010). according to besharat and langan (2014), these challenges include the high cost of establishing new brands, which suffer failure rates of between 80 and 90 percent, the expense of investments required to enter new markets, and the intense competition in today’s dynamic marketplace. to meet these challenges, companies have adopted innovative strategies, such as creating brand extensions, joint promotions, cooperative advertising and forming strategic alliances (jevons et al. 2002; lanseng & olsen 2012). a variety of terms has been used interchangeably from 1985 to 2004 for international retailing brand linkages. the terms include cooperative arrangements, contractual joint ventures, crossshareholdings links, collaboration, cooperative linkages, equity joint venture, franchise joint ventures, interfirm linkages, conglomerate joint ventures, business partners and interfirm alliances (palmer & owens 2006). brand communication for the purpose of this study, tm and pick n pay’s brand linkage advertisement campaign was used as stimulus to test customers’ ratings of tm. brand ratings brand ratings refer to consumers’ scoring cards of six brands. this is the main method for brand linkage assessment. the brand linkage is of particular interest because many brands enter an alliance to benefit from each other’s resources, capabilities, and core competencies. a non-verbal measuring instrument, known as card scoring, represents the monetary value allocation of consumers’ preferences for supermarket brands (nhedzi et al. 2016). this scale of measurement had 99 cards at the disposal of the participant. brand relationship in this setting, two independent firms (brand a and b) team up and form a brand relationship to develop a linked brand product, instead of developing their own products. when the two brands form a brand linkage to develop the cobranded product, they act together to maximise their joint profits. the brand alliance is a cooperation that aims for a synergy where each firm’s benefits from the alliance will be greater than what it could achieve from individual efforts, but each brand remains an independent organisation. jevons et al.’s (2002) brand-relationship-interaction matrix offers a rare classification of brand relationships. in practice, many well-known brands, including some familiar brands that are treated as single brands, engage in direct or indirect alliances with other brands in the form of strong or weak, or distant or close partnerships. this is justifiable, because no single brand can satisfy the numerous needs of stakeholders; hence, some brands exploit multiple brand lines by formal or informal cooperation or linkages to leverage their brands. to the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has investigated the impact of brand linkage and brand ratings on retail supermarket brands across africa. 98 nhedzi methodology sample the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of brand linkages on consumers’ ratings of african retail supermarket brands. in the study, the experiment was conducted in harare and masvingo in zimbabwe. the city of harare was chosen for having a greater projection in the growth of such services in zimbabwe and because it is the nation’s capital. the majority of the sample had adult customers as the target sample. usually, they have more money, their lifestyle is typical of the consumption situation of most consumers, and they have more experience buying most consumer products. these similarities may resemble their perceptions, motivations, and preferences in the real world. this study aimed to establish whether either brand significantly added value to or detracted value from the other; also, to establish spontaneous awareness of brand linkages. a true experiment design with card scoring was conducted to test the propositions posited by this study. the experimental method is used in marketing communication research as a primary research method for establishing causation, but the card scoring method is rarely applied for empirical research. the researcher examined the impact of brand linkage using experimenting between may 2018 and march 2019. an industry expert with more than 20 years’ experience in advertising marketing evaluated the initial version of the experiment. operationalisation of measures the experiment had a single factor (brand linkage) between subjects’ design. nhedzi et al. (2016) used an experiment method to test the effect of brank linkage on brand relationships. similarly, a pretest-posttest control group design was used to evaluate whether there were significant differences in brand ratings between the (experimental) groups, who were aware and unaware of the linkage, and the (control) groups, who were aware and unaware of the linkage. the participants were randomly divided into four groups and each participant received 99 cards. at pretest, the respondents were given envelopes labelled with the names of six major supermarket brands and a set of 99 cards. they were asked to allocate these cards to each brand in accordance with their general assessment of the brands by placing cards in each envelope. the process of sorting the cards into six supermarkets named envelopes was repeated at posttest. the four groups: (1) 28,6% (n=143) aware experiment (ae) group, in which the participants who mentioned tm being linked to pick n pay and shown the advertisement; (2) 29% (n=145) aware control (ac) group, in which the participants were aware of the brand linkage and then no campaign was shown; (3) 21,6% (n=108) unaware experiment (ue) group, in which the participants did not mention tm being linked to pick n pay and were shown the brand linkage campaign; and 98 improving brand linkage effectiveness (4) 20,8% (n=104) an unaware control (uc) group, in which the participants were not shown any campaign. the study ensured sufficient statistical power; a size of 30 to 40 participants per experimental condition seemed to be an adequate size, with a total number of 500 respondents (geuens & de pelsmacker 2017; van voorhis & morgan 2007). it was “big enough” to find effects of scientific relevance to be statistically significant. however, the population of interest was heterogeneous in terms of age, level of education, and profession, and all these were relevant characteristics in the context of the study, then randomly assigning individuals to small experimental subgroups necessarily led to subgroup equivalence in terms of several of these characteristics. more males (51,6%) than females (48,4%) were part of this study. in the age range, 63,6% were 21 to 30 years, 15,8% 31 to 40 years, 14,4% 18 to 20 years, 4,8% 41 to 50 years, and 1,4% were older than 50 years. in the racial and ethnic make-up, 98,4% were black african, 0,8% coloured, 0,6% white, and 0,2% indian or asian. the employment make-up was as follows: 47,6% were employed (self-employed or working for a company), 33,4% were unemployed, and 19% were students. as described earlier, the researcher had two points of measurement at different times in the study. after the first step of pretest single blinding non-disclosure, the respondents in all conditions were asked to indicate their favourite brand through the card-scoring method. blinding helped in preventing biased ascertainment of outcomes and reduced the chance of co-interventions. this was an exploratory, quantitative study based on a pretest-posttest control group experimental design (campbell & stanley 1963; 1966; nhedzi et al. 2016). this study sought to replicate and extend the brand linkage study; thus, it used a similar design. however, there are two distinct differences between the method used in nhedzi et al.’s (2016) study and this one. the current study did not use two local brands. of the brands used for this analysis, one is local (present in one country), the tm brand, and the other, the pick n pay brand, is an international brand. experiment – main effects this experiment aimed to demonstrate the direct effects of brand linkage and brand perception through brand rating and brand assessment (hypotheses 1 and 2). the author introduced an existing brand as an experimental stimulus, rather than a fictitious one, to generate the reality knowledge of the brand. single blinding or masking was employed to all respondents to control for possible confounding based on prior knowledge of the brand. in a single-blind trial, only the participants were unaware of which intervention they received. supermarkets were selected as the product category because they have been used widely as a target product manipulation in the branding literature. the results for six supermarket brands are presented in figure 2. the total number of votes allocated was 49 500. if these votes had been randomly distributed (that is, no differentiation between brands), each brand would have received 8 250 votes. tm’s score of 13 590 was therefore 65% higher than a random score. the 1110 nhedzi average score for tm, per respondent, was 27,2 votes (13 590/500) compared to an average random score, per respondent, of 16,5 votes.   4221 13590 4508 14134 5096 7944 3912 15835 4093 13595 4801 7264 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000 food world tm mahomed mussa ok zimbabwe choppies spar series1 series2 figure 2: results for six supermarket brands then, the respondents were asked whether they were aware of these brands being associated in any way with any other brand or brands. responses were recorded in a short questionnaire. there were 288 respondents, who were spontaneously aware of the tm/pick n pay brand linkage. these “aware” respondents allocated 8 840 votes to tm, which on average rated tm 30,5 votes, compared to a random allocation score of 16,5 votes, and the tm average of 27,2 votes. the spontaneously aware results showed that the respondents of this linkage were more likely to rate tm’s salience much higher than average, except for ok zimbabwe. therefore, the clinical results gave a clear indication that the brand linkage itself (after exposure to the linked brand campaign) resulted in noticeably higher ratings of tm as a linked brand by those who were aware of the linkage. data analysis and results statistical procedures used to test the hypotheses included correlation analysis, linear regression analysis, and analysis of variance (anova). data analysis consisted of validity and reliability assessments, and covariate analysis using statistical package of social science (spss 26). an alpha level of p = ,05 was required for significance in all statistical procedures (pallant 2013). whilst generalisation may be limited, certain meaningful results may be constructed from the findings, which can direct continued research in this complex arena. 1110 improving brand linkage effectiveness the researcher conducted an experiment with a high degree of internal validity, which reduced the potential influence of extraneous variables to such an extent that the independent variable is the most likely cause of the observed change in the dependent variable. the study focused on seven classes of extraneous variables that could undermine the internal validity of an experiment design – history, maturation, instrumentation, selection of subjects, testing, statistical regression and experimental mortality (see table 1). table 1: internal validity threats threat how it was dealt with history no unanticipated event occurred while the experiment was in progress that affected the dependent variable maturation manifested equally in experimental and control groups as participants in both groups changed (“mature”) at the same rate due to random assignment instrumentation the use of a fixed measuring instrument (card sorting) ensured that this was not a problem selection random assignment, all participants had an equal chance of being in treatment or comparison groups, and the groups were equivalent testing both groups were exposed to the pretest and so the difference between the groups was not due to testing statistical regression if this was a problem, it would have manifested equally in the experimental and control groups due to randomisation experimental mortality the same number of participants made it through the entire study in both the experimental and comparison groups source: bordens & abbott (2014: 326); campbell & stanley (1963: 7-9) the study was a randomised controlled trial (rct), which is a true experiment, which was considered for this study (campbell & stanley 1963). the threat of maturation and testing should be equally manifested between the experimental and the control group; statistical regression, mortality, and selection interaction threats are protected by the random assignment of participants, occurring probably equally across the two groups. randomisation is known to ensure control of extraneous variables by equally distributing them among the groups (campbell & stanley 1963, 1966: 16), whereas parallel grouping provided and minimised control over relevant stimulus factors, because all four groups were exposed to a similar experimental process (kirk 2013). the pretest would sensitise both the control group and the experimental group to the posttest in a like manner; therefore, presenting no internal threat to validity. this platform of prior exposure was typically used as a screen for asking questions that are 1312 nhedzi more detailed about advertising effectiveness, such as message take-out or likeability (dubow 1994). this was to avoid the potentially confounding effects of previous exposure or experience with existing brands (schneider et al. 2015). according to geuens and de pelsmacker (2017: 86), “another solution is to use a control group that is not exposed to any of the experimental stimuli”. existing brand names (tm and pick n pay) had to be used for purposes of comparing the effects of existing brand linkage versus single brands to depict a real-world setting. in this study, existing brands were carefully selected based on their suitability for the research objective at hand. differences between the four groups after intervention to determine whether any between-group differences were found at the end of the study due to the intervention of participants across groups, inter-group comparisons were firstly conducted to determine whether there were significant differences between the four groups’ posttest scores following exposure to the intervention. table 2: differences across four groups (posttest) n mean std. deviation std. error min. max. f sig. post_tm aware, intervention (campaign) 143 39,50 20,271 1,695 0 94 aware, no intervention 145 30,54 17,162 1,425 0 73 15,950 ,000 unaware, intervention (campaign) 108 30,52 18,265 1,758 0 78 unaware, no intervention 104 23,66 16,189 1,587 0 72 total 500 31,67 18,952 ,848 0 94 significance: (p<.05); not significant: (p>.05); confidence level: 95% post hoc tests revealed statistically significant differences across the four groups and how respondents rated tm (aware intervention, n =143: aware no intervention, n = 145: unaware intervention, n = 108: unaware no intervention, n = 104), x4 (4, n = 500) = 15,95, p = ,000 after the intervention) (see table 2). the aware intervention group recorded a higher mean score (m =39,50) than the other three groups, which recorded mean values of 30,54, 30,52 and 23,66. 1312 improving brand linkage effectiveness table 3: multiple comparisons − post hoc test results (i) group (j) group mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound aware experimental group aware control group 8,959* 2,139 ,000 3,44 14,47 unaware experimental group 8,985* 2,314 ,001 3,02 14,95 unaware control group 15,840* 2,339 ,000 9,81 21,87 aware control group aware experimental group -8,959* 2,139 ,000 -14,47 -3,44 unaware experimental group ,026 2,307 1,000 -5,92 5,97 unaware control group 6,881* 2,333 ,017 ,87 12,89 unaware experimental group aware experimental group -8,985* 2,314 ,001 -14,95 -3,02 aware control group -,026 2,307 1,000 -5,97 5,92 unaware control group 6,855* 2,494 ,031 ,43 13,28 unaware control group aware experimental group -15,840* 2,339 ,000 -21,87 -9,81 aware control group -6,881* 2,333 ,017 -12,89 -,87 unaware experimental group -6,855* 2,494 ,031 -13,28 -,43 *. the mean difference is significant at the 0,05 level. post hoc tests shown in table 3 reveal that the aware intervention (m = 39,50, sd =20,27) is significantly different from the aware no intervention (m = 30,54, sd = 17,16; p = 000), compared to unaware intervention (m = 30,52, sd = 18,27; p = ,001) and to unaware no intervention (m = 23,66, sd = 16,19; p = ,000). also, the aware no intervention (m = 30,54, sd = 17,16) was significantly different from the unaware no intervention (m = 23,66, sd = 16,19; p = ,017). similarly, there was also statistically significant difference in mean scores between unaware intervention and unaware no intervention (p = ,031). however, there was no statistically significant difference in mean scores between aware no intervention and unaware no intervention (p = 1,000). 1514 nhedzi differences between the four groups over time (intra-group comparisons) it was also necessary to investigate each of the four groups separately and compare for significant differences between the pre-intervention and post-intervention ratings of tm for each group. table 4: difference between pre-intervention rating and post-intervention rating for each group on tm mean n std. deviation std. error mean t df sig. aware, intervention (campaign) pre_tm 32,76 143 19,988 1,672 -4,473 142 ,000 post_tm 39,50 143 20,271 1,695 aware, no intervention pre_tm 28,50 145 18,100 1,503 -2,129 144 ,035 post_tm 30,54 145 17,162 1,425 unaware, intervention (campaign) pre_tm 22,58 108 17,049 1,641 -4,998 107 ,000 post_tm 30,52 108 18,265 1,758 unaware, no intervention pre_tm 22,43 104 15,527 1,523 -1,224 103 ,224 post_tm 23,66 104 16,189 1,587 in table 4, a paired sample t-test was conducted to compare the number of scores on tm for each group’s pretest and posttest. firstly, there was a significant difference in the scores for tm aware intervention pretest (m = 32,76, sd = 19,99) and aware intervention posttest (m = 39,50, sd = 20,27) conditions, t(142) = -4,473, p = ,000. secondly, there was a significant difference in the scores for tm aware no intervention pretest (m = 28,50, sd = 18,10) and aware no intervention posttest (m = 30,54, sd = 17,16) conditions, t(144) = -2,129, p = ,035. thirdly, there was a significant difference in the scores for tm unaware intervention pretest (m = 22,58, sd = 17,05) and tm unaware intervention posttest (m = 30,52, sd = 18,27) conditions, t(107) = -4,998, p = ,000. finally, the results showed no statistically significant difference between pretest unaware no intervention (m = 22,43, sd = 15,53) and posttest unaware no intervention (m = 23,66, sd = 16,19) conditions, t(103) = -1,224, p = ,224. however, this was expected, as group 4 was not given an intervention condition. there were significant differences among the three groups before and after intervention on tm scores. overall, the results confirmed that a brand linkage campaign was strongly 1514 improving brand linkage effectiveness associated with the brand linkage perception of tm in a positive manner. the results are summarised in table 4. discussion in sum, the findings from the study on real-life brands confirmed the proposed impact of brand linkages on consumers’ ratings of brands. the impact of a brand linkage campaign on consumers’ ratings of brands highlighted that the two different brands had unique positive effects on brand perceptions, in support of hypotheses 1 and 2. consistent with brand linkage assessment and the brand ratings, the results confirmed that brand linkage advertisement exposure through experiment produced higher tm brand perceptions; whereas retail brands advertisement exposure through experiment produced higher brand-rating perceptions. the findings of this research produced implications for both brand linkage theory and practice, with more practical implications for marketing managers in retail brand marketing. in its totality, this research adds clarity and support for a brand linkage rating in retail brand marketing. the theoretical significance of this research is the extension of the brand linkage assessment method, the card sorting to retail brand marketing. this research answers the call in the literature to provide empirical evidence of consumer responses to brand linkage in marketing. furthermore, this research adds to the growing body of empirical research on brand assessment in retail brand marketing in the literature. brand linkage assessment is predicted theoretically and proven empirically (nhedzi et al. 2016), but few studies have examined brand linkage types (an exception is gammoh & voss 2011; jevons et al. 2002). in this cross-african retail market study, there is further clear evidence of the effect of brand linkage; albeit, one brand (ok zimbabwe) scored highest in pretest. the brand linkage campaign effect was demonstrated in several different ways in this study. this corroborates previous work showing that brand linkage can significantly enhance brand recognition, brand attitude, brand image, and the perceived quality of partnership brand (ma et al. 2018). the practical significance of this research is found in its confirmation of the fact that “famous brand helps firms improve the assessment of an unknown brand and improves the perception of quality” (ma et al. 2018: 23). to marketers, the choice of brand linkage becomes a strategic one, with implications for several consumer responses, which leads to the adoption of a brand linkage strategy to improve the perceived value of their own brands and market position, and to obtain a competitive advantage. first, in support of h1-4, the findings suggest that the benefits to marketers of a brand linkage is the spill-over effects of brand linkage that enables alliance partners to achieve these goals with more favourable changes in attitude toward the host brand. given experiment exposure to these retail brand linkage ads, it would seem as if the host brand is more successful at creating a positive perception with the brand linkage. the present study demonstrated that brand linkage shapes the positive ratings and consumer perceptions of brands (ma et al. 2018). it also supports the previous studies highlighting that normally firms, in building brand linkages, achieve more than they can 1716 nhedzi on their own (yan & cao 2017). the analyses revealed significant differences among the manipulation groups concerning the variables of brand linkage perceptions. many of the limitations in this study can be addressed with future research. first, previous knowledge of the brand linkage and ad campaign may influence respondents’ answers. the use of an existing brand linkage (tm-pick n pay) in the stimuli could provide an explanation for the full mediation effect of ad attitude between group condition and brand attitude. in this experimental study on brand message effects, people were directly exposed to one version of an ad, which is in one dimension. in turn, future work could also expand on the findings by including more stimuli – testing a variety of brand categories and different types of characters. future research could expand on this conjecture to determine whether brand and ad campaign familiarity plays a role in affecting consumer responses to the brand linkage ad execution styles examined in this study; and, a comparison of all three brand awareness measures, namely top of mind, aided and spontaneous or recall. the collected data allowed the author to conclude that south african retail units have been accepted relatively easily by desperate consumers under challenging economic conditions, gaining their trust, sympathy and awareness. it will be interesting to determine how consumers’ perceptions will change when the number of stores of each retailer increases and other competitors penetrate the market. these limitations aside, this research holds potential for future research on brand linkage in supermarket marketing. this research shows the power of brand linkage in the age of complexity and an overload of consumer marketing, where two brands are better than one brand, which is expected to create more organic interactions with customers well into the future. conclusion this study provided an opportunity to examine the impact of a brand linkage on brand ratings in a new context, the retail supermarket industry. the study can provide useful insights on the behaviour and decisions of consumers in real-life cobrand situations. the research has benefits for academic advancement of theory, methodology and managerial insights. ultimately, the experiment in this study has a practical mission: to deliver objective, actionable, research-based insights that improve brand linkage assessment. firstly, the originality of the work consists in connecting retail giant supermarket brand alliances from emerging (south africa) and developing (zimbabwe) countries, using a brand assessment methodology. while these important post-modern aspects of brand alliance, such as co-branding, have been analysed previously, they have not been investigated from an african perspective. secondly, it will enrich the strategic brand alliance literature, adding new contexts in which no empirical evidence exists. to the researcher’s knowledge, brand linkage strategies have never been studied in the retail supermarket sector, apart from brands from developed countries. moreover, the study contributes to the test-retest reliability of a brand assessment scale of an experimental study by nhedzi et al. (2016) and card scoring scale methodology. 1716 improving brand linkage effectiveness the retail space in africa has changed rapidly due to the complex macro-environmental complexities that retailers have to deal with when conducting business. until recently, when walmart entered the market in 2012, internationalisation of retailing in africa had not been driven by huge global retailers, but rather by south african actors. this includes retailers such as massmart, metcash trading africa, pick n pay, shoprite, and spar, which have established operations in other african countries (dakora 2012). pick n pay has 56 supermarkets in zimbabwe, 40 trading as tm, and 16 trading as pick n pay. zimbabwe provides an example of a country that has witnessed a transformation of the supermarket space, which was dominated by the actors mentioned previously. these actors have been subjected to a changing economic and political landscape. the country has gone through key phases in its economic and political cycles, which have transformed the retail space, in particular the demise of the supermarket brands. this empirical research will advance marketing communication knowledge by explanatory consumer perceptions and brand ratings of co-brands. it will also answer a call for further understanding of consumers’ attitude towards the partnering brands from an african perspective. moreover, this unique brand rating study will offer definition in the context of retail supermarket brands. the preand post-evaluation of constituent brands and consumer learning about brand linkage was the impetus for this study on brand partnerships. references anslinger, p. & jenk, j. 2004. creating successful alliances. journal of business strategy 25(2): 18-22. https://doi.org/10.1108/02756660410525362 besharat, a. & langan, r. 2014. towards the formation of consensus in the domain of co-branding: current findings and future priorities. journal of brand management 21(2): 112-132. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2013.25 bordens, k.s. & abbott, b.b. 2014. research design and methods: a process approach. 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stakeholder rela tion ship; corporate social responsibility; strategic commu nication; reputation; sustainability introduction although traditionally the relationship between corporates and ngos is seen as that of donor and passive recipient, new views put forward show that stakeholders like ngos can be active participants and collaborators in the value creation process. they can be co-creators of solutions with numerous public-private-social enterprises. from this dr tsitsi mkombe department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email: tsmkombe@ yahoo.co.uk orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-69524916 dr estelle de beer department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email: estelle.debeer@ up.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https:// orcid.org/0000-00031265-2703 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.3 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-20 date submitted: 27 february 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:tsmkombe@yahoo.co.uk mailto:tsmkombe@yahoo.co.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6952-4916 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6952-4916 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6952-4916 mailto:estelle.debeer@up.ac.za mailto:estelle.debeer@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2703 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2703 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2703 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.3 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 mkombe & de beer perspective, co-creation is about engaging with stakeholders in an inclusive, creative and meaningful manner; generating mutual expansion of value; embarking on practices that are human-centric; strategically constructing engagement opportunities throughout the business-civic-social ecosystem; and providing transparency, access, and engagement in dialogue and reflexivity (ramaswamy 2011: 39). in the corporate social responsibility (csr) domain, ngos channel organisational csr activities to communities in society, for which they raise funds from various sources, including corporates. through csr funding, corporates enter into a partnership with ngos to implement projects that benefit communities on the corporates’ behalf. however, the way ngos rely on the external environment for financial support can also expose them to resource dependence and possibly to external control (mitchell 2014: 69). this view of ngos as partners and co-creators of solutions has seen csr evolving from an altruistic response to requesting support into a response entrenched in the corporate strategy and which supports organisational identity. from this perspective, corporates now consider csr funding processes that also provide a competitive advantage (cantrell et al. 2015) to the company. to achieve this, corporates need to develop good two-way relationships with the ngos that are their csr partners. as the competition for corporate funds donated to ngos increases, the need to know how corporates’ follow communicative decision-making processes, leading to who they fund and why, as well as how their decisions are communicated to recipients, increases. research into the corporates’ giving strategies and decision-making criteria is crucial to ngo fundraising efforts as ngos need to know how corporates reach their decisions on donations and partnerships. funds raised are often the lifeblood of ngos and the latter can save time and resources if they know how corporates arrive at their decision on who to fund, which corporates are most likely to fund which ngos, and how donors communicate their decisions about the funding to recipients. literature review in south africa, government and civil society are looking to corporates to assist with solving social problems like poverty, unemployment and education. for most corporates, csr is part of their brand management strategy, as the more they communicate about their csr activities, the more their brand value increases. some corporates have opened up two-way communication channels with their ngo recipient stakeholders and have embraced collaboration through dialogue. according to dahan et al. (2010), ngos and companies can offer missing competences to “complete” each other’s business models. they can also co-create novel and innovative business models. the authors postulate that just like companies, ngos use business models to map out the tools (mostly social, rather than economic) they intend to use to deliver value to their target public. ngos are independent, campaigning and self-governing organisations that do not make any profit and whose attention is on the welfare of others (gray et al. 2006). they are categorised as organisations that primarily exist 32 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos to promote environmental and social goals, instead of protecting economic power or political power through the electoral process (gray et al. 2006: 322). relationship between corporates and ngos the integrative strategic communication management theory was used as a metatheory for this multi-disciplinary study, as it emphasises integrative communication in the processes leading from decisions to action and strategy implementation. the study cuts across the three academic disciplines of corporate communication (including the reflective paradigm, systems theory, relational theory and the two-way symmetrical communication model), business management (including stakeholder theory, decision theory and game theory), and business/corporate law and governance (including legitimacy theory). in the discipline of corporate communication, the terms “reputation” and “credibility” have been used interchangeably in some literature. senior executives of large corporates and multinational companies see protecting their company’s reputation as important and regard it as a strategic objective. reputation represents stakeholders’ perceptions of an organisation’s capability to meet their expectations. the former could be interested in the company for various reasons, including buying the company’s products, and being an employee or an investor (cornelissen 2012: 3). for rensburg and de beer (2011), communication plays a pivotal role in growing stakeholder identification with the organisation – which is an element of corporate identity and therefore corporate reputation. corporate reputation also mirrors a stakeholder’s overall assessment of an organisation and is based on the stakeholder’s first-hand experiences with it. from this perspective, reputation is built inside an organisation’s stakeholder network (rensburg & de beer 2011: 160). stakeholder relationships stakeholders are individuals or groups who are affected by, or can affect, the organisation or its outcomes (bourne & walker 2008; bourne 2011: 1004). ngos also fall in this category of stakeholders when they deal with corporates. the theories of legitimacy, urgency and power are furthermore important for the identification of key stakeholders. also of importance is centrality and density for recognising and showing the power and communication ties within the stakeholder community (bourne 2011: 1004). methodologies established to comprehend and manage key relationships with stakeholders need to offer support for the all-inclusive view of stakeholders (savage et al. in bourne 2011). mainardes et al. (2012) argue that the stakeholder management approach takes place across three levels: identifying stakeholders; developing processes that take into consideration their relevant needs and interests; and establishing and developing relationships with them and with the overall process, taking cognisance of organisational objectives. as a result, stakeholders develop expectations, experience the impact of their relationship with the organisation, evaluate the obtained results, and act appropriately as determined by their evaluations; thus, strengthening their links (mainardes et al. 2012). 54 mkombe & de beer ngos have increasingly become key stakeholders for corporations who partner with them to address social or environmental community needs. together with corporates, they play vital roles in big institutions moulding our society, yet they often have very different agendas. their relationship is both conflictual and collaborative. it is conflictual as ngos and corporations can be antagonistic and filled with conflict (mcintosh & thomas 2002). on the other hand, ngos, through campaigns aimed at corporations, can exert pressure on companies to meet social expectations and legal requirements, and to change expectations about corporate responsibility and government regulations. partnerships and collaborations to highlight ngos’ relationship with corporates, reichel and rudnicka (2009) argue that business organisations regard ngos as valued partners who can play a significant role in bringing society and business together. as a result, corporates try to establish long-term relations with non-profit organisations. to show that ngos are valued, beaudoin (2004) argues that, for management decisions to be effective, it is necessary to include ngos as players in the market place. corporates also need to consider other opinions, apart from their own, when shaping decisions. in general, ngos have been integrated into the business agenda through the stakeholder theory, while at the same time the pragmatic managerial business perspective has mainly focused on the identification of key stakeholders (laasonen 2010: 528). with the ongoing escalation in ngo-corporate relations, engagement is widespread. molina-gallart (2014: 44) posits that engagements can be categorised as funding/philanthropy, partnerships, and ngo-corporate campaigning. from this perspective, corporates regard ngos as partners. corporate-ngo collaboration for cross-sector relationships differ and can take the form of social partnerships, social alliances, inter-sectoral partnerships, issue-oriented alliances, as well as strategic partnerships (dahan et al. 2010: 330). reichel and rudnicka (2009) furthermore argue that collaboration is not in itself without risk as one partner’s good image can be damaged by another partner’s unforeseen and irresponsible behaviour. as a result, taking time to build trust and reaching agreement between partners is paramount. it is also important to be aware of the power dynamics between the partnerships. stakeholder governance ackers and eccles (2015: 524) argue that as much as compulsory legislation and regulations can force companies to up their disclosure levels, some companies will only give minimum (tick-box) disclosures in order to comply, without granting stakeholders significant value. effective csr, however, should extend beyond merely showing compliance to legislation and regulations (as in the case of governance), to include behaviour that is both moral and ethical, and to be considerate of the expectations society has of business (ackers & eccles 2015: 524). rensburg and botha (2014: 144) furthermore assert that globally, corporate reporting is going through drastic changes as stakeholders increase their demands on companies 54 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos and as resources have increasingly become restricted. companies are being compelled to analytically evaluate how they can communicate financially, and transparently, with all their stakeholders. an integrated report can be regarded as communication that shows how, over the short, medium and long-term, an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects can create value (iirc 2013: 2). for eccles and saltzman (2011: 57), an integrated report presents and explains how a company has performed, financially, non-financially, environmentally, socially, and according to its governance (esg) performance. strategic and communicative decision-making the term “strategy” flourishes in discussions of business. the key issue uniting all discussions of strategy is a clear sense of an organisation’s objectives and an understanding of how it will achieve those objectives. a strategy is viewed as a pattern in the organisation’s major decisions and actions, and contains some key areas, which distinguish one firm from another (digman in nooraie 2012: 406). strategic management can be viewed as decisions and actions resulting in the formation and implementation of strategies developed to attain the objectives of an organisation (pearce ii & robinson in nooraie 2012: 12). it is further characterised by its emphasis on strategic decision-making. as an organisation expands and becomes more multifaceted with higher degrees of uncertainty, decision-making also becomes more complicated and difficult. decision-making is one of the most crucial processes that managers take part in; strategic decision-making is a complicated process that needs to be understood entirely before it can be practiced it effectively (nooraie 2012: 405). corporates also apply strategic decision-making in the way they decide which ngos to fund. most decision-makers, be they individual or organisational, are concerned with discovering and selecting satisfactory options. as a result, strategy must deal with choosing the alternative that appears to satisfy a basic set of criteria (vasilescu 2011: 105). reflection is considered to be part of the decision-making process and is identified as being vital, although it is regarded as subjective. schön (in walger et al. 2016: 657) defines reflective thinking as the type of thinking that entails going over a subject in one’s mind and considering it seriously and consecutively. two forms of reflection are suggested: reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. the former happens subsequent to the action occurring or during a careful consideration. reflection-inaction takes place during the action, without interrupting it. another perspective to communicative decision-making is the concept of participatory decision-making, which has been defined as the involvement and influence of a group of individuals in decision-making processes, which are customarily the prerogative or responsibility of a different group of individuals (pollock & colwill 1987: 7). for carmeli et al. (2009), participatory decision-making refers to a management style that includes a high level of employee and supervisor participation in decisions that affect their work. this is done in teams and is often seen as a power sharing practice among team members, which empowers them to partake in strategic decision-making. 76 mkombe & de beer strategic decision-making papadakis et al. (1998) describe the strategic decision-making process as a system of steps, phases or routes towards a decision. for vasilescu (2011), there are four factors that affect decision-making processes: the definition of the problem; the existing rules; the order in which alternative options are presented and considered; and everything that affects aspirations and attention. it is important to note that the dynamics of decision-making mainly occur because stakeholders make efforts to come up with decisions that are as close as possible to their own position. finally, decision-makers will shift their positions to choose a decision that is as close as possible to their own position (stokman et al. 2000:137). in management of meaning processes, convincing information plays a dominant role. the position and importance of a stakeholder are connected to their particular incentive structure. they postulate that the more directly an issue is connected to the central higher order objectives of a stakeholder, and the more an issue is seen as an important condition for its realisation, the more important it is to the manager. the manager’s position on the issue then corresponds to the outcome of the decision that they see as best for meeting their objectives. information for strategic decision-making brunsson (in huebner et al. 2008) defines strategic decision-making as embedded in organisational discourse and communication, and argues that the company is continuously built in communication. from this perspective, the only decisions that matter are those that are communicated (huebner et al. 2008). the availability of relevant information internally and externally is essential in the strategic decision-making process. information of interest to decision-makers, such as on markets, and environments impacting on the company, like the society, competition, markets and technologies, shows the effects of the possible alternatives for decisions to be made. this information plays an important role in establishing the structures of these alternatives (citroen 2009: 11). for this information to be useful, it needs to be strategic. rensburg and de beer (2011) posit that, compelled by information technology and social media in particular, organisations are starting partnerships and joining social networks – even networks of networks. they postulate that stakeholder engagement and communicating enables the identification of stakeholder concerns and allows the organisation to set objectives and crucial performance for each stakeholder group. they further argue that the adoption of corporate dialogue would enable multidirectional flows between the stakeholders, engaging them in communication through the contribution of content, comments, and tagging. decision communication decision communication is about implementing decisions, following up, and getting feedback on how the decisions are accepted and the kind of impact they have 76 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos (mykkänen 2014: 134). mykkänen (2014: 132) argues that decision communication’s role in organisations can be considered as being much more important and significant than just communicating the outcomes of every decision. he cites luhmann’s (2003) organisation theory that states that decision communication can be seen as the force around which organisations are formed. decisions are confirmed through decision communication and transformed for new premises for organisational decisions. organisations as systems have a need for communicative action and organisations live in communicative rationality. from this perspective, decision-making can be regarded as a social action and needs communication to be meaningful. the two-way symmetrical communication model endeavours to reach this balance by improving the relationship between organisations and stakeholders, and by focusing on, amongst others, conflict resolution to negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes. two-way communication gives-and-takes information through dialogue (grunig 1992). corporates’ use of two-way communication between themselves and their stakeholders opens up dialogue and feedback so that they can negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes, such as a stakeholder involvement strategy towards csr communication, which assumes a dialogue with its stakeholders (morsing & schultz 2006: 328). from this perspective, the relationship between a corporate and the ngos that it funds is also vital, and trust is an important component of that relationship. trust is paramount for successful decision-making in collaborative networks it is characterised by transparency, fairness, and openness. ngo recipients should be free to participate in dialogue without fear of disrespect for their ideas. reducing the risk of vulnerability is part of the decision-making process that corporates go through in deciding which ngos to fund. also of interest are the strategic decision-making processes that a corporate follows before a decision to fund or not to fund an ngo is finalised. research has shown that decision-making processes take place in contexts that usually include task forces, councils, executive boards, or boards of directors. parts of these processes include formulating a strategy at a higher level, as well as implementing the strategy at managerial level. thus, the efficient implementation of any strategy ensures that the structure and processes internally match the strategy envisaged (gębczyńska 2016: 1081). part of decision-making also includes selfgoverning structures, in which decision-making happens through the meetings held by members or through frequent interactions that are not formal. decision-making processes can be seen as a reflection of organisational policy or strategies and in turn are influenced by the same. from the above discussion, communicative decision-making can be defined as the two-way strategic communication flow of the strategic decisions made by management that affect all stakeholders. this starts when deciding what to communicate to the stakeholders and how to communicate effectively in such a way that the reputation of the company is not affected and relationships with the stakeholders are maintained both internally and externally. to investigate communicative decision-making in the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients, it is imperative to show how corporates and ngos 98 mkombe & de beer communicate. it has been pointed out that communication remains the missing link in the practice of corporate responsibility and that, although many companies commit to fulfilling their social responsibilities, they fail in communicating their efforts sufficiently to convince anyone of it (dawkins in moreno & capriotti 2009). for initiatives undertaken by corporations to gain legitimacy and the confidence of the public, responsible corporate behaviour ought to be in tandem with a capacity to communicate with and respond to the demands of stakeholders. responsible corporations ought to engage with their stakeholders on csr issues, and should regularly communicate about their csr programmes, products, and impacts with concerned stakeholders (crane & glozer 2016). methodology this study used the qualitative strategy of enquiry to explore the phenomenon of communicative decision-making and how it manifests in the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo participants. the research is phenomenological, as it sets out to understand the participants’ standpoints and views of social realities (leedy & ormrod 2010: 108). phenomenology is viewed as a philosophy, a research method, and a perspective for qualitative research (vanscoy & evenstad 2015: 339). the participants consisted of both corporate practitioners and ngo practitioners. an initial literature review and consideration of theories showed certain concepts as being important in the communicative decision-making process that corporates go through before they fund ngos. the concepts that came up included legal considerations, decision-making, processes, structures, relationship, stewardship, trust, communication management, stakeholders and reputation. from the concepts above, secondary research questions and items for the interview schedule were formulated for both corporates and ngos, as the interest was in the nature of the relationship between the two parties and how corporates arrive at the decision to fund or not to fund ngos. the researcher wanted to dig deeper through empirical research to determine how this plays out in the corporates’ communicative decision-making processes, and then to compare it to the literature. sampling the purposive sampling method was adopted for this study. saunders et al. (2009: 237) argue that purposive sampling assists a researcher to use his/her judgement to choose cases that will best allow him/her to answer research questions and to meet objectives. the goal of purposive sampling is to include those participants who will produce the most relevant and ample data given the topic of study as well as those who will give the widest range of information and perspectives on the subject of study. the sampling decisions for this study were not made in isolation from the rest of the design. it took into account the researcher’s relationship with the study participants; the feasibility of data collection and analysis; validity concerns; as well as the goals of the study. 98 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos the target population was corporate funders who fund ngo projects and ngos who have received funding from the same corporate organisations. as the research problem sought to investigate the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo beneficiaries, both parties were interviewed. the representatives from corporate donors who were interviewed were csr managers, while the representatives from ngos who were interviewed were programme managers responsible for raising funds and reporting to the relevant corporate donors. the sample comprised of 16 field studies. field studies 1 to 8 represented corporate organisations, while field studies 9 to 16 represented ngos. eight csr managers who have been involved in the decision-making processes to fund ngos were interviewed individually, after which eight representatives from (eight) ngos who have received funding from the (eight) corporates were also interviewed. the sample size was therefore made up of 16 individuals in total. the corporates were from various sectors, including the financial, construction, scientific and manufacturing sectors. the ngos were established organisations, have been operating for more than three years, and were in a relationship with one of the corporates interviewed at the time of the study. data collection the first phase of the research involved the design of an administered semi-structured interview schedule, which was used to guide the collection of data in interviews. eight essential items were developed from the literature review. the items focused on asking about the participant’s experience of the communicative decision-making process in the relationship between corporate donors and ngo recipients. eight main questions were posed, while sub-questions were used as probing and follow-up questions. the extra probing questions were used in the event that the initial questions did not reveal all that is required. flexibility in questions was also used to explore other issues. the time length of the interviews varied between one and two hours. data analysis the thematic analysis model, using the leximancer data analysis tool, was used to analyse the data. before obtaining the final leximancer results, the data were also analysed manually. braun and clarke (2006: 79) postulate that thematic analysis is a technique for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data that minimally organises and describes the data set in detail. the data that were analysed for this study were analysed by means of both nonautomated (manually) and automated content analysis, for which the leximancer software was used. following the qualitative data analysis model provided by braun and clarke (2006), the data were analysed using the following six phases of thematic analysis: familiarisation of the data; generating initial codes; searching for themes; reviewing themes; defining and naming themes; and producing the report. 1110 mkombe & de beer analysis of corporates and ngo results the leximancer 4.5 concept maps show the theme depicted by a circle within each theme, concepts appear that make up that theme. the concepts assisted in refining the themes during the data analysis phase. the results of the data analysis are illustrated in figure 1 in the form of combined corporates and ngo concept maps. this section addresses how the various patterns in the responses from corporates and the responses from the ngos link with each other across field studies. it places corporate results next to ngo results to see how they overlap/differ and highlights any other observations that were found. figure 1: combined corporates concept map (top) next to combined ngos concept map(bottom) 1110 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos table 1: results of combined corporate concept map (top) and ngo concept map (bottom) no theme hits relevance concepts 1 ngos 387 100% ngos, partnership, relationship 2 decision 280 55% decision-making, fund, 3 communication 245 48% communication, corporate, stakeholders 4 stewardship 163 45% stewardship, beneficiaries 5 organisation 125 48% organisation 6 strategy 95 36% strategy 7 people 69 26% people 8 process 58 22% process 9 csi 57 22% csi 10 board 53 20% board 11 focus 39 15% focus 12 legal 27 10% legal no theme hits relevance concepts 1 funding 329 100% funding 2 corporates 284 67% corporates, ngo, partnership 3 communication 140 28% communication, relationship 4 decision 114 27% decision, processes 5 reputation 43 13% reputation 6 report 42 13% report 7 policy 19 0.6 board 8 structures 9 0.3 structures themes with regards to similarities, the results indicate that the decision theme and the communication theme are important to both corporates and ngos. differences show up in the following themes: the stewardship theme shows up in the corporates’ results 1312 mkombe & de beer but not in the ngos results; the top theme for corporates is ngos, whereas the top theme for ngos shows up as funding; for corporates, decision-making processes are so important that a separate process theme could be identified from the data, whereas for ngos processes is a concept within the decision theme; corporates identified strategy as an important theme, which is linked directly to the board theme, the decision theme and the communication theme, while a policy theme, which is directly related to funding, was identified from the ngo data. reputation: the reputation theme was ranked fifth in importance to ngos, with 43 hits and 13% relevance, whereas this does not feature at all in the combined corporate map. as much as reputation is important to corporates, ngos see their reputation as crucial. for them it is important to determine (in the decision-making process) which corporates to partner with, because if they partner with the wrong one, it will not only cost them their reputation, but can impact their ability to obtain funding from other potential funders in the future. co-creation: ngos showed the highest relevance to corporates with a 100% relevance, while funding showed the highest relevance to ngos with 100% relevance. this illustrates that corporates need ngos to meet their goal of working with communities, while ngos need corporates for funding in order to meet their goals of working with communities and making a positive difference in communities. in this way a co-creative relationship is established. partnership: partnership came up strongly in both the corporates’ and the ngos’ results. from the data on corporates, ngos was identified as a theme, within which the following concepts were identified: ngos, partnership and relationship. from this it can be deducted that corporates view ngos as partners with whom they have a relationship. on the other hand, the ngos have corporates as a theme, which has corporates, ngos and partnerships as concepts, showing that the ngos also regard the corporates as partners. communicative stakeholder relationship: the communication theme was identified as the third highest in relevance for both corporates and ngos. for corporates, the communication theme has communication, corporates and stakeholders as concepts; while for ngos, the communication theme has communication and relationship as concepts. this shows the communicative nature of the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients. dialogue is also important in the relationship. findings the six research questions are addressed below. rq1: what is the nature of the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients? from the findings of this study, it is clear that the nature of the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients has many different layers and takes different forms. the co-orientation model offered a framework for identifying relationships among 1312 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos various groups involved in the communication process, including corporate donors and their ngo recipients. co-orientation provides a uniting structure for determining the nature of the relationships between the stakeholders in a communication process (brønn & brønn 2003: 292). from the empirical findings of the study, it appears that funding is the main reason for the corporates interviewed being in a relationship with their ngo recipients and that the two parties’ relationship is a contractual one, from a stakeholder theory perspective. hult et al. (2011: 44) highlight that a contemporary stakeholder theory in management can be found in the development of an all-inclusive and integrated comprehension of the stakeholder concept. the systems theory supports the funding principle that corporates are giving to ngos for the benefit of society in a social context. from this perspective, organisations forge linkages with other organisations because they depend on these components within the system to enable them to survive and to reach goals (baldwin et al. 2004: 295). the findings show that corporates value their ngo recipients and attempt to establish long-term relations with them. because they see them as partners, they take time to do research on the potential partner and to conduct due diligence before they enter into a partnership with the ngo. the active management of relationships from a relational theory perspective, and the promotion of shared interests, further shows an intentional understanding and valuing of the relationship between corporates and their ngo recipients. trust emerged as a vital part of the relationship between corporates and their ngo recipients. all the participants interviewed mentioned trust as an important part of the relationship. the concept of power relations also came up and the findings show that corporates are aware of these power relations, and that they have the upper hand because they provide the funds. one corporate, however, highlighted that “when a corporate selects an ngo partner they would also have to look at the extent to which the ngo brings expertise to the relationship”. the findings also indicate that the relationship between corporates and their ngo recipients is collaborative, as they partner to achieve common goals. rq2: what factors contribute towards a good relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients? the main outcome and basis of the relationship between corporates and their ngo recipients is funding. all the corporates and ngos interviewed for the study were in a relationship because of funding received from the corporates. some of the corporates interviewed for the study see their relationship with ngos as a partnership. empirical results also show that corporates use engagement, collaboration, and partnership as ways of engaging with ngos. the findings further express that ngo acknowledgement of/to the corporate donor for the funds or gifts received, and thanking the donor in writing for the funds, is an important part of the relationship between the corporates and their ngo recipients. 1514 mkombe & de beer relevant here is relational theory as it speaks to the relationships between corporate donors and their ngo recipients. this theory posits that the stakeholder approach involves enunciating, expressing, analysing and comprehending corporate relationships (lozano 2005: 63). the agreement/contract between the corporates and ngos includes stewardship of donor funds by ngos. all the corporates and ngos who were interviewed expressed that corporates expected ngos to demonstrate stewardship through reporting regularly via a narrative and financial report to the corporate donor. the findings also express that some corporates prefer to hear, not only from the ngo recipients, but also from the beneficiaries. therefore, the reports can include success stories from beneficiaries with before and after photographs showing the difference the interventions are making. monitoring and evaluation reports are also used as stewardship measures. according to lanis and richardson (2012), legitimacy theory is an explanation for increased levels of environmental csr, which provides a lens to understand csr reporting. this theory is pertinent to the study, as it is part of the communicative process that corporates go through in their relationships with ngos and other stakeholders, as they share information that communicate their csr efforts. rq3: how important is corporate reputation and ngo reputation in the relationship between the corporate donor and their ngo recipients? the corporates interviewed indicated that reputation was important because it is at the base of the business’s support and if a business loses its reputation, they lose everything. reputation is also important because the organisations interviewed would not want to partner with an organisation that would tarnish their corporate’s image. the results for rq3 were interpreted using the reflective paradigm. rensburg and de beer (2011) argue that it analytically defines phenomena like the triple bottom-line (people, planet, profit), multi-stakeholder dialogue, symmetrical communication and ethical accounts, which ultimately contribute to the corporate reputation. all the ngos interviewed in the study stressed the importance of reputation when an ngo is looking to partner with a corporate. from the findings, the ngos indicated that they want to be associated with reputable businesses as partnering with the wrong corporates could jeopardise future funding. the ngos interviewed prefer to receive funding from corporates with a good corporate business conscience in everything they do. these include responsible, ethical corporates that do good in an area where they are seen, but that also do not exploit the environment in their daily business operations. when the corporates were asked how they reduce/mitigate risk when deciding on which ngos to partner with, they indicated that they go through a strict process to root out the ngos that may expose them to reputational risk this would influence their decision-making whether to fund the ngo or not. how the corporates reduce/mitigate risk when deciding which ngos to partner with, will inform their decision-making. 1514 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos the corporate participants indicated that they had someone monitoring corporate reputation (even if for some it was an external party). rq4: what are the criteria for communicative decision-making when corporate donors fund ngos? the findings of this study indicate that most corporates communicate with their ngo recipients through their csi/csr representative. they choose how often to communicate and which channels of communication to use – emails were the most used channel. from the findings, it is clear that ngos communicate what is stipulated in the contractual agreement between them and their corporate funders. the communication takes place through the programme managers who are responsible for the relationship with the corporate donors. data from the study shows that corporates manage the communication with their ngo stakeholders by setting expectations upfront and regularly communicating their expectations. they also regularly state what the ngos can expect, so that they “are all on the same page”, indicating a two-way symmetrical communication process. the two-way symmetrical communication model strives to attain balance by altering the relationship between organisations and publics, and by concentrating on dispute resolution to negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes. two-way communication exchanges information through dialogue (grunig & grunig 1992.) in the study, the use of two-way communication between the corporates and their ngo recipients opens up dialogue and feedback so that they can negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes. the findings further show that corporates set an annual funding strategy, which aligns with the larger organisational strategy, from where they will determine the focus areas for their giving. corporates also need to assign a budget to the focus areas and allocate funds per focus area. after decisions have been made on these allocations, they communicate this to potential ngo beneficiaries. rq5: what are the communicative decision-making processes/ procedures that corporates follow when funding ngos? the findings from the research show that corporates follow communicative strategic decision-making processes when funding ngos. these processes assist them to arrive at the decision about which ngos to fund and how to communicate the decisions made. these decisions, therefore, set a precedence on which ngos receive funding from the corporates. decision theory guided the interpretation of the empirical data relevant to this research question, and it is about how decisions are made. according to de almeida and bohoris (1995), the theory offers a logical framework for resolving real-life problems. the findings show that corporates set criteria for funding before they fund an ngo. to ensure that ngos qualify under the set criteria, the corporates have to do research to find information on the ngo. this information is used by the different structures to make the decision to fund or not to fund certain ngos. 1716 mkombe & de beer the empirical findings of the study show that potential ngos are also given documents to complete in order to obtain certain information about their status. this includes information about their funders, and how much money they have received, to determine whether they have experience in managing large funds. information required from ngos includes audited financial statements, registration documents, and the cvs of the board and the management team. the empirical findings further show that face-to-face meetings and site visits by the corporates to see where the ngos are operating from are part of the communicative decision-making process. rq6: what communicative decision-making structures do corporates use in deciding which ngos to fund? the empirical findings indicate that strategic decision-making takes place through different structures in the organisation, as well as individually; to some extent using the information at their disposal. decision-making includes self-governing structures, in which the former occurs through meetings of members or through informal, frequent interactions. game theory was, amongst others, deemed suitable for the interpretation of these results, as it includes the formal study of conflict and cooperation, which provides a language to analyse, understand, formulate and structure strategic settings (turocy & von stengel 2001). the empirical findings highlight that both ngos and corporates have decisionmaking structures where decisions are ultimately made. the most influential decisionmaking structure for corporates and ngos is the board of directors. the board sets the policies and strategies which guide committees, management teams and individuals in their decision-making. other decision-making structures include board subcommittees, executive committees, advisory committees, management committees and csi/csr committees. discussion and conclusion the main purpose of this research was to investigate the communicative decisionmaking that takes place in the relationship between corporate donors and ngos as the recipients of funding. the results indicate that factors such as reputation, legal considerations, relationship and stewardship influence a corporate organisation’s decision-making regarding which ngos to fund. the findings also indicate that corporates fund according to their strategy, which determines the criteria for funding; moreover, the decision-making process is conducted through decisionmaking structures. the traditional view of the relationship between corporates and ngos is that of donor and passive recipient, but findings from this study indicate that stakeholders like ngos can be active participants and collaborators in the mutual relationship between them, and as such can be co-creators of development solutions. 1716 communicative decision-making between corporates and ngos the research also highlights the importance of a two-way symmetrical communication relationship between these strategic partners. with this in mind, the findings recognise ngos who are recipients of corporate funding as strategic stakeholders and also highlight the strategic and communicative decision-making processes and structures in the relationship between corporate donors and their ngo recipients. lastly, the research indicates that the communicative aspect of the decision-making process is important and can be regarded as a catalyst for the relationship between corporates and ngo recipients. from this perspective, it is vital that the decisionmaking criteria regarding funding should be communicated to ngos at every level of the decision-making process. references ackers, b. & eccles, n.s. 2015. mandatory corporate social responsibility assurance practices: the case of king iii in south africa. accounting, auditing & accountability journal 28(4): 515-550. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj-12-2013-1554 baldwin, j.r., perry, s.d. & moffitt, m.a. 2004. communication theories for everyday life. new york: pearson education. beaudoin, j.p. 2004. non-governmental organisations, ethics and corporate public relations. journal of communication management 8(4): 366-371. https://doi. org/10.1108/13632540410807754 bourne, l. 2011. advising upwards: managing the perceptions and expectations of senior management stakeholders. management decision 49(6): 100-1023. https://doi. org/10.1108/00251741111143658 bourne, l. & walker, d.h.t. 2008. project relationship management and the stakeholder circle. international journal of managing project in business 1(1): 125-30. https:// doi.org/10.1108/17538370810846450 braun, v. & clarke, v. 2006. using thematic analysis in psychology. qualitative research in psychology 3(2): 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa brønn, p.s. & brønn, c. 2003. a reflective stakeholder approach: co-orientation as a basis for communication and learning. journal of communication management 7(4): 291-303. https://doi.org/10.1108/13632540310807430 cantrell, j.e., kyriazis, e. & noble, g. 2015. developing csr giving as a dynamic capability for salient stakeholder management. journal of business ethics 130(2): 403-421. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2229-1 carmeli, a., sheaffer, z. & halevi, m.y. 2009. does participatory decision-making in top management teams enhance decision effectiveness and firm performance? 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likability. the study made use of quantitative methods to obtain the necessary results to make informed conclusions. a self-administered survey was prepared and used to gather opinions. data was collected through convenience sampling from 287 willing participants in braamfontein, a business district in johannesburg, south africa. the results show that trust and likability play a significant role in the influence on consumers when it comes to influencer/social media marketing. keywords: marketing communication, influencer marketing, social media, likability, electronic word-of-mouth introduction the study of influencer marketing/social media has been an ongoing concept that has been investigated since the emergence of celebrity endorsements. it is a relatively new marketing phenomenon and, therefore, there is not much knowledge on how it can be created, maintained and measured (lima et al. 2019). influencer marketing involves marketing products and services to those who hold some sway over the products or services that others consider buying. it is a marketing activity that is used by many brands to raise awareness, to reach targeted audiences, and to a certain extent maintain customer relationships. this study investigates the importance of influencer marketing in the beauty cosmetics industry in the south african market. the aim is to offer some insight into its effectiveness in odireleng ramela1 email : odiramela@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-1867-6749 dr marike venter de villiers1 email : marike. venterdevilliers@wits.ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-3802-699x dr tinashe chuchu1 email : tinashe.chuchu@ wits.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-7325-8932 1 marketing division, school of business sciences, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.6 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 74-84 date submitted: 19 march 2021 date accepted: 06 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:odiramela@gmail.com mailto:odiramela@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-6749 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-6749 mailto:marike.venterdevilliers@wits.ac.za mailto:marike.venterdevilliers@wits.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3802-699x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3802-699x mailto:tinashe.chuchu@wits.ac.za mailto:tinashe.chuchu@wits.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-6749 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-6749 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-8932 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.6 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 7574 assessing the effectiveness of influencer marketing communication 7574 changing the buying behaviour of consumers in this market to give practitioners the opportunity to use this marketing activity efficiently. according to previous studies (martensen et al. 2018), there has been some research on what influencer marketing is, to the extent of identifying the trend of using “citizen influencers” (cis), who are consumers with crowds of online followers who represent a new type of opinion leader. according to lima et al. (2019), there are approximately four billion internet users in the world, in other words, 60 percent of the global population, reconfiguring the human socialisation processes, social relationships and empowering consumers. this adds to the increased use of social media platforms and influencers to market a brand’s products. with the increase in the use of social media marketing it has become imperative for brands to understand how to use influencer marketing and how to use its ability to reach consumers to possibly change their buying behaviour. influencer marketing is considered a form of highly credible electronic word-of-mouth (ewom). this is particularly desirable for brands, as it appears to be more effective than traditional advertising tactics due to higher authenticity and credibility, which subsequently leads to lower resistance to the message (de veirman et al. 2017). with previous studies, there has not been much focus on the beauty cosmetics industry when it comes to influencer marketing, and it has not been explicitly identified how this promotion activity helps in persuading or changing the buying behaviour of the target market nor if this remains effective when conducted via social networks. hence, this study focuses on specific factors that could influence the buying behaviour of the south african market. the study focuses on factors such as the influencer’s authenticity, perceived popularity, likability, their number of followers, the image congruency between the beauty cosmetics brand and the influencer, and lastly, whether the effectiveness of influencer marketing is affected by the social network used to communicate the proposed message. theoretical grounding influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools, taking the idea of celebrity endorsements and placing it into a content-driven marketing campaign. the main difference is that the results of the campaign are usually collaborations between brands and influencers. consumers have always valued others’ opinions; however, the popularity of social media has amplified the effects of peer recommendations as it empowers consumers to share their opinions and experiences one-to-many (de veirman et al. 2017). consumers can freely share their opinions on products on all social platforms, which effectively increases the use of ewom. ewom is defined as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the internet” (de veirman et al. 2017). south african beauty brands have taken an interest in the influencer phenomenon in the advertising world. as opposed to directly targeting the target audience through different kinds of advertising, beauty brands have been encouraging highly followed and admired influencers who are regarded as trustworthy, non-purposive opinion leaders to talk about, review and recommend their products on social media platforms. in this 7776 ramela, de villiers & chuchu way they take advantage of ewom marketing and indirectly market their products. today, consumers have a wide range of available sources from which they can gather information to make their buying decisions. the internet and social media have made it possible to assimilate large amounts of information in a very short time and without substantial costs to the user (de veirman et al. 2017). however, these large amounts of diversified information make it difficult for consumers to determine the value of the information they have access to. therefore, there are factors that should be effectively persuading consumers that the influencer they are looking into is the correct source of information, which will allow them or push them to change their buying behaviour. to clearly understand the reason for changes in the buying behaviour of consumers, this study is grounded in one specific theory, which is referred to as the social cognitive learning theory (sclt). sclt is a learning theory focused on the idea that people learn by watching what others do, and that human thought processes are central to understanding personality (nabavi 2012). several concepts relevant to this study are discussed next. trust/authenticity (ta) trust is believing that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable. it is considered as a key element of the relationship marketing approach: a prerequisite for building long-term relationships between the company and its customers, intermediaries and suppliers, as well as all other members in its micro-environment (sarantidou 2018). authenticity is the quality to be genuine and real. authenticity is seen not as a property of the object, product, event or experience, but as a socially constructed practice of individuals, via acts, and of groups, via performances (gannon & prothero 2016). from the perspective of the consumer, it is necessary for an influencer to appear as an authentic and trustworthy individual for their promotion efforts to be successful in changing the consumer’s buying decision/behaviour. the influencer’s ability to seem to be a good source of information will impact how the brand’s products are accepted by the public market. ewom is desirable for brands as it appears to be more effective than traditional advertising tactics due to higher authenticity and credibility, which subsequently leads to lower resistance of the message. it is for this reason that brands continue to use ordinary citizens to promote their products instead of celebrities. the citizens’ opinions are valued more because they are believed to have the consumer’s best interests in mind. image congruency (ic) image congruency hypothesis is the concept that a consumer selects products and stores that correspond to their self-concept. it has to do with similarities between the brand and the influencer. this speaks to the fact that a partnership between an influencer and a brand should make sense for the appropriate message to be communicated. the brand’s set image should be in line with that of the influencer, as they will reflect the brand itself. the beauty influencer, in this case, acts as the brand’s agent. this indicates that his/her reputation and what he/she says reflects what the brand stands for. to determine congruency, cosmetic brands should have a clear and accurate understanding of their target market and what they want, and then correlate 7776 assessing the effectiveness of influencer marketing communication this description with the influencer’s personality, content and brand as a whole. in this way, there is relevance in the promotion activities that are aimed at positively impacting the potential, actual and former consumer’s buying behaviour. perceived popularity (pp) popularity refers to the fact that something or someone is liked, enjoyed, or supported by many people. an influencer’s success in reach is determined by his/her number of followers. combining the number of followers with the number of people or accounts followed by the influencer may affect a customer’s perception of the influencer. south african beauty bloggers play a key role in reshaping perceptions around beauty because of their large following and ability to connect to audiences in a way that brands cannot. according to a study on marketing through instagram, the number of followers that an influencer has contributes to their perceived popularity. the study states, “the number of followers, which reflects network size and serves as an indication for popularity, is frequently used to identify these influential nodes. accordingly, higher numbers of followers may result in larger reach of the (commercial) message and may thus leverage the power of this specific type of word-of-mouth at scale” (de veirman et al. 2017). the number of followers serves as a great indicator to brands who are looking to collaborate with an influencer because this not only guarantees great reach but also the possibility of a change in the potential consumer’s buying behaviour. likability (lb) likability reflects the receiver’s affection for the source because of the source’s perceived social value, such as physical attractiveness, personality, behaviour and social status (martensen et al. 2018). in this case it is the likability of the influencer to the consumers, who are observing their behaviour. for an influencer to be effective in their efforts the consumers on the receiving end need to have developed a liking for the influencer. this is one of the factors that brands need to consider when looking to identify an influencer to work with in reaching their market. an influencer’s likability is also an indicator of the popularity of the individual. social media platform (smp) a social media platform describes a social network where individuals interact with the influencer. social networking sites like facebook allow users to create a profile as an individual or organisation and interact with other members by sharing their lives, interests, and desires (lima et al. 2019). currently, the most used social platforms for the promotion of beauty cosmetic products are instagram and youtube. given the visual focus of these two platforms, it could be deduced that using visual stimuli could be more effective in marketing cosmetics. brands need to identify the most used social networks and identify the audience who use the said network in order to choose to collaborate with the appropriate influencer on the most appropriate platform for the achievement of their promotion efforts. the conceptual model used for the study is presented in figure 1. 7978 ramela, de villiers & chuchu figure 1: conceptual model generation y generation y refers to a group of individuals born between 1982 and 2005. this group of individuals is said to be technology savvy and advanced in readiness to use new technologies. this generation identifies with working in groups, while also being an individual; hence, the need to fit in with everyone around them while trying to remain unique. this generation is particularly concerned with what their peers think, making them believe that what their peers approve of is what is right or trendy/popular (eckleberry-hunt & tucciarone 2011). a study conducted in 2012 found that members of generation y are more civically and politically disengaged, and more focused on materialistic values. they are more concerned about extrinsic values, like money, fame and image, instead of being concerned about intrinsic values. however, recent research has shown that this group has moved towards becoming more conscious of the greater good of the community. hypothesis development trust/authenticity and buying behaviour trust plays a significant role in the decisions made by consumers, whether it be trust in the brand or in the source of recommendation. it indicates credibility and reliance. previous research has shown that brand trust lowers ambiguity and it frequently affects 7978 assessing the effectiveness of influencer marketing communication buying behaviour, depending on whether the trust exists or not. this phenomenon is the result of the fact that the element of trust increases one’s belief about the performance of the brand (goh et al. 2016). other research has shown that the higher the level of trust consumers have in a brand or an individual representing the brand, the higher the possibility of repeat purchases. morgan and hunt (1994) state that brand trust has an influence on customer commitment; hence, it results in repeat purchases. further, hegner and jevons (2016) found that brand trust has a strong influence on purchase and repurchase behaviour (goh et al. 2016). research on influencers’ persuasiveness found that consumers are more likely to be persuaded when the source is perceived to be trustworthy and communicates in a reliable, honest and sincere manner, without bias. based on the literature discussed, the following hypothesis has been developed: h1: trust/authenticity has a positive and significant relationship with a consumer’s social media usage. image congruency and buying behaviour user image is a stereotypical perception of a generalised user of a particular product/ brand. this principle/concept is transferable to the image of a social media influencer that uses beauty products from brands that share the same image and values. in a study based on the connection between self-image congruence and brand preference for store brands, the findings suggest that congruence between a consumer’s selfimage and celebrity image plays an important role in the endorsement process (postica & cardoso 2015). similarity is a perceived resemblance between the sender and the receiver. similarity of individuals predisposes them toward a greater level of interpersonal attraction, trust and understanding than will be expected among dissimilar individuals (martensen et al. 2018). in a study on the persuasiveness of cis (citizen influencers), similarity was used to identify if it has any relation to the persuasiveness of the influencer. findings showed that a positive relationship is expected to exist between perceived similarity and the cis persuasiveness. the literature above can be used to make inferences on the effectiveness of the relationship between the image congruence of the influencer’s image, the image of the brand, and that of the consumers. hence, the following hypothesis: h2: image congruency has a significant and positive influence on a consumer’s social media platform usage. perceived popularity, number of followers, and likeability with buying behaviour the number of followers and the perceived popularity of an influencer are indicators of the likeability of the influencer. these concepts work together in indicating the popularity of the individual, which some researchers have concluded to mostly have an impact on the decision to form a partnership with the individual or not, as a brand. de veirman et al. (2017) through their research on marketing through instagram showed that the number of followers was merely an indication of the ci’s popularity rather than their influence on the behaviour of their followers. there has been a rise 8180 ramela, de villiers & chuchu in research on the effect of the number of followers that an influencer has, compared to their followers, as it may have a negative relation to buying behaviour when an influencer does not follow a large number of people. while there is a quest for the ideal “followers/followers ratio”, no study has investigated whether the number of followers is an important asset for consumers in the evaluation of an influencer. it is likely that the assumed positive effect of the number of followers on the influencer’s overall likeability might turn negative when the influencer follows only a few people. social media is used to spread information much easier and to raise awareness without the need to spend large amounts of money to achieve the marketing activity. consumers often share their interpersonal experiences and information about products with one another. this aids in spreading awareness about a brand and its products (tsimonis & dimitriadis 2014). according to berger (2014), ewom has a significant influence on customer behaviour. other studies have found that ewom has a strong association with the customer’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and this can determine perceived quality and purchase intent/buying behaviour (tsimonis & dimitriadis 2014). any information shared on social media platforms amplifies the reach and thus the influence that social media ewom may have on the buying behaviour of a brand’s target market. this raises the following hypotheses: h3: an influencer’s perceived popularity has a significant and positive influence on consumers’ social media platform usage h4: an influencer’s number of followers has a significant and positive influence on consumers’ social media platform usage h5: an influencer’s likability on social media has a significant and positive effect on consumers’ social media platform usage findings descriptive statistics this section presents descriptive results for the study. the total number of number of participants were 300. table 1 presents the sample profile. table 1: sample profile gender representation female 73.52% male 23.69% no response 2.79% 8180 assessing the effectiveness of influencer marketing communication age 18-21 49.48% 22-25 39.72% 26-30 5.57% 31-35 5.23% social platform used instagram 40.07% facebook 21.25% youtube 23.34% twitter 15.33% awareness of social media influencers yes 87.11% no 12.89% a total of 73.52% (211 respondents) is female with 68 respondents (23.69%) male. respondents who chose not to disclose their gender totalled 2.79%. most of the respondents belong to the 18-21 year old category (49.48%, n=142). the second largest group was the 22-25 year old category (39.72%), followed by the 26-30 year old category (5.57%). the 31-35 year old category represents 5.23% of the respondents. in terms of social media platforms listed, instagram is the most used by the respondents, with a total of 40.07% (115 respondents). youtube is the second most used platform (23.34%, 67 respondents). as the information in table 1 indicates, 87.11% of the respondents have come across or know of an influencer. prior to testing the hypotheses, the reliability of scales was assessed and it met acceptable criteria. the following section explores the findings of the proposed hypotheses followed by a discussion. table 2: hypothesis testing hypothesised relationships path coefficients p-values significant/insignificant ta → smp h1 0.487 0.006 significant and supported ic → smp h2 0.270 0.023 significant and supported 8382 ramela, de villiers & chuchu hypothesised relationships path coefficients p-values significant/insignificant pp → smp h3 -0.153 0.214 insignificant and not significant nf → smp h4 -0.251 0.751 insignificant and not supported lb → smp h5 0.316 0.001 significant and supported the first hypothesis (h1 trust/authenticity is positively and directly related to a customer’s social media platform use) has a path coefficient of 0.487 and a p-value of 0.006. this relationship is both supported and significant at p<0.01. this finding suggests that the more consumers trust or believe in a social media influencer, the more they engage in continuous use of the particular social media platform. it should be noted that of all the relationships, this was the strongest. the second hypothesis (h2 image congruency directly and positively influences a customer’s social media platform use) has a path coefficient of 0.270 and a p-value of 0.023. this finding suggests that the higher the image congruency, the more the consumer is inclined to use a specific social media platform. the third hypothesis (h3 perceived popularity of an influencer is positively and directly associated with a consumer’s social media platform use) has a path coefficient of -0.153 and a p-value of 0.214. this relationship was neither supported nor significant. this implies that consumers who subscribe to or search for beauty product content on social media are not necessarily motivated by how popular the social media influencer is. this could mean that consumers do not necessarily follow an influencer because they are popular on social media. the fourth hypothesis (h4 likability of an influencer is directly and positively associated with a consumer’s social media use) has a path coefficient of 0.316 and a p-value of 0.001. the relationship is therefore both supported and significant at p<0.01. marketing contributions south african beauty brand companies will have a broader understanding of their audience, as there has not been much research, which creates a clear understanding of the impact of influencer marketing in the context of the south african audience. marketers can identify the influencers to use based on the likability of the influencer and the level of trust their audience places in his/her opinions. previously, it was mainly based on the number of followers, but the study reveals that the number of followers has less of an impact compared to the influencer’s likability. the information gathered could help marketers make informed decisions on the budgeting for their projects. 8382 assessing the effectiveness of influencer marketing communication conclusion the purpose of the study was to investigate the impact that social media influencers have on consumers who intend to buy beauty products. the study relied on a conceptual framework that measured the impact of five predictors on social media platform usage. these predictors included trust or authenticity, image congruency, popularity of the influencer, the influencer’s number of followers, and the likability of the influencer. in general, all the predictors had a certain level of impact on social media platform usage. this implied that these predictors influenced consumers’ usage and following of social media usage when it comes to beauty products. limitations and future research direction this study was limited in that the participants were all from a single geographic region. this could have created sample bias in that all the participants were exposed to the same environment; therefore, possibly limiting diversity in responses. additionally, other researchers could consider looking at different beauty products that are promoted by influencers on social media. conceptually, the study could also have established the socio-economic status of the participants. this could be incorporated in further research on the topic as this would advise on whether the income earned by a social media user influenced their decision-making, or the extent to which they were influenced. theoretically, further research could involve relationships that were not tested in the present study. for instance, testing the relationship between trust or authenticity and image congruency. this could help explain the extent to which image congruency influences consumers’ trust in social media influencers. additionally, a correlation analysis test between the perceived popularity of the influencer and the influencer’s number of followers could help to explain the relationship between how consumers perceive a social media influencer to be popular and the actual number of consumers who follow that social media influencer. references de veirman, m., cauberghe, v. & hudders, l. 2017. marketing through instagram influencers: the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. international journal of advertising 36(5): 798-828. https://doi.org/10.1080 /02650487.2017.1348035 eckleberry-hunt, j. & tucciarone, j. 2011. the challenges and opportunities of teaching “generation y”. journal of graduate medical education 3(4): 458-461. https://doi. org/10.4300/jgme-03-04-15 gannon, v. & prothero, 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https://doi.org/10.1108/sjme-04-2018-0025 https://doi.org/10.1108/mip-04-2013-0056 untitled 85 die rol van oorredingsveranderlikes in bewuswordingsprogramme oor miv/vigs by hoërskole in potchefstroom communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 85 105 c.m. bester en a.m.e. naudé* abstract the elaboration likelihood model (elm) (petty & cacioppo 1996) in the field of persuasive communication can explain the relevant variables when the youth is influenced and persuaded by messages aimed at changing sexual risk behaviour. in order to increase the impact of the department of education's life orientation learning area in the north west province, a study was undertaken to determine which of the intrinsic and/or extrinsic variables as hypothesised by the elm play a role in persuading grade 9 learners to use certain life skills in protecting them from contracting hiv/aids. the purpose of the study was to determine the role of intrinsic and/or extrinsic persuasive variables in the presentation of life orientation classes to selected grade 9 learners at three potchefstroom high schools. relevant literature was analysed regarding hiv/aids campaigns and programmes that had been launched in south africa, especially in instances where the elm was applied as theoretical framework. the empirical study was done by means of a quantative survey as well as qualitative methods (focus groups, personal interviews and non-part i c i p a t o ry observation) to obtain an in-depth understanding of the variables influencing the persuasion of grade 9 learners. the results of the study confirm the premises of the elm and proved that intrinsic persuasive variables play an important role when hiv/aids persuasive messages are conveyed to grade 9 learners through life orientation classes. it can therefore be concluded that grade 9 learners from the three selected potchefstroom schools would process these messages via the central information processing route, which enhances the chances of long term persuasion. furthermore, it appears that in this study extrinsic persuasive variables mostly strengthened the persuasive messages to grade 9 learners. it can therefore be concluded that life orientation, and specifically the content focused on hiv/aids, led to the successful persuasion of grade 9 learners in the selected schools. * elmari bester is a communication officer in the post-graduate school of nuclear science and engineering in the faculty of engineering at the north-west university in potchefstroom. dr annelie naudé is director of g3 business solutions, a provider of strategic communication research and stakeholder management solutions, in bryanston, johannesburg. this article is based on ms bester's master's dissertation at the north-west university which she completed under the supervision of dr naudé. inleiding die voorkoms van miv onder kinders in suid-afrika is ‘n ernstige probleem wat dringende aandag vereis. in die human sciences research council (hsrc) se nuutste studie oor die voorkoms, omvang, gedrag en kommunikasie betreffende miv/vigs (hsrc 2005: 45,50) is ‘n miv-toename van 12,0% in 2002 tot 16,9% in 2005 by meisies in die ouderdomsgroep tussen 15 en 24 jaar gevind. om die probleem van miv/vigs onder kinders van alle bevolkingsgroepe aan te spreek, word ‘n groot hoeveelheid openbare miv/vigs-bewuswordings-, oorredingsen opvoedingsprogramme tans deur verskeie instansies in suid-afrika van stapel gestuur. een hiervan is die lewensvaardigheidsprogram wat sedert 2000 in skole geïmplementeer is (departement van onderwys 2002). vanaf 2000 tot 2004 is die lewensvaardigheidsprogram as tussentydse kurrikulum geïmplementeer en later as ‘n verpligte leerarea (naamlik lewensoriëntering) by kurrikulum 2005 ingesluit. die sukses van miv/vigs-veldtogte en programme kan ongelukkig nog nie deur verminderde miv-infeksies onder die jeug bewys word nie. dit wil dus voorkom asof die verskillende oorredingsveldtogte en -programme gemik op die miv/vigs-kwessie tot dusver nie daarin kon slaag om ‘n noemenswaardige verlaging in die voorkoms van miv/vigs by veral kinders en jong mense te weeg te bring nie. die aanbieding van die boodskappe as deel van hierdie programme of veldtogte behoort intensief ondersoek te word om te bepaal hoe die kernboodskappe meer suksesvol oorgedra kan word sodat dit tot gedragsverandering kan lei. die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel van petty en cacioppo (1996) kan beduidend lig werp op die samestelling van oorredingsboodskappe om langdurige oorreding en gedragsverandering tot gevolg te hê. hierdie model is as teoretiese raamwerk gebruik in ‘n studie oor die rol van intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes by graad 9-leerders tydens die aanbieding van lewensoriënteringsklasse by drie hoërskole in potchefstroom. teoretiese agtergrond die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidsteorie beskou oorredingskommunikasie vanuit die kognitiewe benadering en fokus op die verstandelike prosesse tydens inligtingsprosessering. dit behels ‘n omvattende teorie, wat duidelikheidshalwe tot ‘n model vereenvoudig is. die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel konseptualiseer dat die mate waartoe oorreding plaasvind, deur die roete waarlangs inligting verwerk word, beïnvloed word. volgens die model verwerk die individu inligting van oorredingsboodskappe op een van twee wyses, naamlik deur ‘n sentrale of die periferale roete (petty & cacioppo 1996:263; ross 1994: 69-71; dillard & pfau 2002:156). die verwerking van inligting deur die sentrale roete beteken dat die individu aktief oor die inligting nadink en dit teen reeds bestaande kennis oor die onderwerp opweeg. hierteenoor beteken verwerking van inligting deur die periferale roete dat die individu nie werklik oor die boodskap nadink nie en daarom eerder deur nie argumentatiewe appèlle beïnvloed of oorreed word (petty & cacioppo 1996: 263). 86 petty en cacioppo (1996:266) toon verder dat indien inligting sentraal verwerk word, argumente deeglik oorweeg word en indien oorreding as gevolg daarvan intree, dit relatief permanent van aard is. andersyds, indien die boodskap periferaal verwerk word, is argumente minder belangrik en speel ekstrinsieke aspekte soos persoonlike indrukke ‘n groter rol. indien oorreding deur middel van periferale verwerking plaasvind, is die oorreding gewoonlik meer tydelik van aard. primêre faktore wat bepaal of inligting sentraal of periferaal verwerk word, is persoonlike relevansie en die vermoë van die ontvanger om inligting krities teenoor bestaande kennis van die onderwerp op te weeg. indien die onderwerp vir die ontvanger relevant is, sal die argumente deegliker oorweeg word en sal aktief nagedink word oor die inligting wat ontvang is. indien die onderwerp minder relevant vir die ontvanger is, sal daar nie veel tyd bestee word aan nadenke oor wat gehoor of gelees is nie. die vermoë sluit die volgende in: die hoor van die boodskap, die verstaan daarvan, die besteding van onverdeelde aandag, tyd en energie, asook die omvang van agtergrondkennis oor die onderwerp (littlejohn 1989:86; dillard & pfau 2002:159160; petty & cacioppo 1996:267). navorsers (littlejohn 1989:86; ross 1994:69-70; dillard & pfau 2002:158-160) verduidelik dat indien ‘n persoon gemotiveer is tot kritiese denke op grond van die relevansie van die onderwerp vir hom/haar en oor die vermoë beskik om inligting sentraal te verwerk, die uitkoms afhang van die aard van oorreding en die soort argumente wat gebruik word. indien die ontvanger die aangevoerde argumente as geldig beskou, sal hy/sy oorreed word; indien nie, sal oorreding nie plaasvind nie. tydelike oorreding mag egter plaasvind indien ‘n individu nie gemotiveer is om inligting krities te evalueer of nie oor die vermoë beskik om dit te doen nie. in so ‘n geval bestaan daar ekstrinsieke aspekte, soos die indruk wat die inligtingbron laat, wat in ag geneem moet word (littlejohn 1989:86, ross 1994:69-70; dillard & pfau 2002:158-160). samevattend kan gesê word dat die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel (petty & cacioppo 1996) intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes veronderstel met die ontvangs van oorredingsboodskappe, wat ‘n rol speel by die mate van oorreding wat by die ontvanger kan plaasvind. volgens hierdie model speel intrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes ‘n belangriker rol by langtermynoorreding as ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes. hierdie aannames is gebruik om die rol te ondersoek wat intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes by die aanbieding van lewensoriënteringsklasse aan geselekteerde graad 9-leerders gespeel het. hoewel die studie op intrinsieke én ekstrinsieke veranderlikes gefokus het, word hier slegs op die intrinsieke veranderlikes gefokus, aangesien dit die belangrikste rol by graad 9-leerders by die geselekteerde skole gespeel het. 87 doelstellings die volgende doelstellings het die empiriese studie gerig: • om te bepaal watter intrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes by graad 9-leerders ‘n belangrike rol speel tydens die oordrag van lewensoriëntering om die miv/vigs-kwessie aan te spreek; en • om die geslaagdheid van die graad 9-lewensoriënteringsboodskap om die miv/vigs-kwessie aan te spreek aan die hand van intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke veranderlikes te bepaal. navorsingsmetode hierdie studie is deur metodologiese triangulasie (kwantitatiewe en kwalitatiewe navorsingmetodes) uitgevoer. kwantitatiewe navorsing is toegepas om ‘n geheelbeeld van die oorredingsveranderlikes wat by graad 9-leerders in die afgebakende gebied voorkom, te vorm. kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetodes is gebruik om dieperliggende aspekte van die oorredingsveranderlikes te ondersoek. ‘n vraelysopname is gebruik om te bepaal tot watter mate intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes by graad 9-leerders ‘n rol speel in die aanvaarding van oorredingsboodskappe soos deur die lewensoriënteringsmodules in skole oorgedra word. ‘n sistematiese steekproef is gebruik om 100 graad 9-leerders uit elkeen van drie geselekteerde skole in potchefstroom vir ‘n vraelysopname te teiken. die metode het ‘n hoë responskoers van 82,6% gelewer (du plooy 1996:131). ‘n beskikbaarheidsteekproef is gedoen om graad 9-leerders vir fokusgroeponderhoude te teiken en klasse vir nie-deelnemende waarneming te selekteer. onderwysers/esse is deur middel van ‘n vrywillige steekproef vir persoonlike diepte-onderhoude geselekteer. twee fokusgroeponderhoude is met beskikbare graad 9-leerders uit elk van die drie geselekteerde skole gevoer. die metode is gebruik om kwantitatiewe bevindinge te verifieer (du plooy 1996:118). semi-gestruktureerde onderhoude met onderwysers/esse wat by die aanbieding van lewensoriëntering betrokke is, is gebruik om die graad 9-leerders se response te verifieer (du plooy 1996:120). hierbenewens is een lewensoriënteringklasaanbieding by elk van die geteikende skole bygewoon ten einde die inligting te verifieer wat deur die ander genoemde metodes bekom is (du plooy 1996:106). resultate demografie uit die totaal van 300 graad 9-leerders wat vir die vraelysopname geselekteer is, het 248 leerders vraelyste voltooi, 54,4% (n=135) was seuns en 45,5% (n=113) was meisies. die ouderdomme van respondente het gewissel van 13 tot 20 jaar, met ‘n gemiddelde ouderdom van 15 jaar (n=236). ‘n eweredige verteenwoordiging van skole 88 wat in verskillende woongebiede (tradisioneel swart, bruin en wit woongebiede) geleë is, is verkry. die meeste leerders in die steekproef was tswanasprekend (46%; n =114), terwyl 35% (n= 87) afrikaanssprekend en 10% (n= 25) xhosa as moedertaal gehad het. die res van die steekproef (9%; n=22) het ander tale as moedertaal aangedui, waaronder slegs een leerder engelssprekend was. motiveringsveranderlikes persoonlike relevansie uit die leerders se keuses van opsies op ‘n 7-punt semantiese differensiaalskaal het die meerderheid aangetoon dat die miv/vigs-inligting wat hulle tydens die lewensoriënteringsklasse ontvang, bruikbaar, interessant, belangrik, relevant en prakties is (tabel 1): graad 9-leerders moes eweneens op ‘n 7-punt semantiese differensiaalskaal aandui hoe hulle voel wanneer hulle besig is met aktiwiteite (bv. opdragte en klaswerk) oor miv/vigs. op die kontinuum 1 tot 7 verteenwoordig die opsies by nommer 7 die konsep van persoonlike relevansie. die negatiewe pool verteenwoordig ‘n houding dat die aktiwiteite irrelevant vir leerders is. 89 die meeste graad 9-leerders wat die uitvoering van lewensoriënteringsaktiwiteite oor miv/vigs geniet, raak baie daarby betrokke; konsentreer hard daarop; gee baie aandag daaraan; en voel gemotiveerd daaroor. die afleiding kan dus gemaak word dat die lewensoriënteringsaktiwiteite oor miv/vigs vir graad 9-leerders in hierdie studie persoonlik relevant is. die oorgrote meerderheid van die leerders het saamgestem of volkome saamgestem dat die onderwerpe noodsaaklik, asook toepaslik is (tabel 3). die geredelikheid waarmee ‘n mens oor ‘n onderwerp in gesprek tree, is ook ‘n aanduiding van die relevansie van die onderwerp vir ‘n persoon. graad 9-leerders is gevra om aan te dui hoe gereeld hulle met onderskeidelik hul vriende, familie en onderwyser/es in gesprek tree oor lewensvaardighede wat hulle kan help om miv/vigs te voorkom. die resultate sien soos volg daaruit: ‘n groot hoeveelheid leerders tree wel soms met hul vriende, onderwysers/esse en familie oor lewensvaardighede om miv/vigs te voorkom, in gesprek en is ‘n aanduiding dat die onderwerp tog vir hulle persoonlik relevant is. voorts dui die resultate in tabel 5 aan dat lewensvaardighede beslis as waardevol, goed, noodsaaklik en as hulpvaardig ervaar is. 90 ‘n ander aspek wat die relevansie van ‘n onderwerp aandui, is die mate waartoe ‘n mens oor die onderwerp of kwessie nadink. die meeste (47,9% n=115) graad 9-leerders het aangedui dat hulle gereeld nadink oor hoe lewensvaardighede hulle kan help om infektering met miv/vigs te voorkom. uit die totale groep het 39,1% (n=94) leerders aangedui dat hulle soms daaroor nadink. hierdie resultate bevestig dus verder dat lewensvaardighede om miv/vigs te voorkom wel vir graad 9-leerders persoonlik relevant is. die wyse waarop lewensoriëntering aangebied word, versterk die persoonlike relevansie vir leerders. twee van die drie geselekteerde skole se onderwysers/esse vir lewensoriëntering het verduidelik dat die behoefte van leerders op ‘n gegewe tydstip die hoofbepaler vir die skedulering van die aanbieding van onderwerpe is. die bespreking van onderwerpe op ‘n tydstip wanneer dit vir die leerders toepaslik is, verhoog dus die persoonlike relevansie van die onderwerpe. geen bewys van beduidende verskille tussen afrikaans-, tswana-, en xhosasprekende graad 9-leerders ten opsigte van die relevansie van miv/vigs-onderwerpe soos dit tydens lewensoriëntering behandel word, is gevind nie. behoefte aan kennis die fokusgroeponderhoude het aangetoon dat graad 9-leerders oor die algemeen ‘n behoefte het om hulle kennis uit te brei en om nuwe dinge te leer. dit blyk ook uit die fokusgroep, persoonlike onderhoude en waarneming dat graad 9-leerders graag vrae in die klas vra en spesifiek meer inligting oor miv/vigs wil hê. tabel 6 dui aan waaroor leerders graag meer inligting sou wou ontvang. dit weerspieël watter inligting hulle wil hê oor die onderwerpe wat vir hulle relevant is. 91 die meeste van die graad 9-leerders (74,1%; n=182) het aangedui dat hul meer diepteinligting wil ontvang oor hoe lewensvaardighede hulle kan help om miv/vigs te voorkom. tydens fokusgroeponderhoude het leerders verduidelik dat miv/vigs as onderwerp nie sy relevansie verloor het nie, maar dat die leerders wil weet hoe hulle die kennis wat hulle reeds oor miv/vigs het, kan toepas. leerders het ook ‘n behoefte aan nuwe inligting oor miv/vigs en verbandhoudende onderwerpe. dit is dus duidelik dat graad 9-leerders wel ‘n behoefte aan kennis het, ‘n intrinsieke veranderlike wat die moontlikheid op langdurige oorreding versterk. hierdie soeke na meer of nuwe inligting oor miv/vigs kom ooreen met die bevindinge van die hsrc-verslag (2005:95-96) wat ook bevind het dat die jeug gebrekkige kennis het oor die ontstaan van die mi-virus en watter behandeling of geneesmiddel daarvoor beskikbaar is. vermoë om na te dink vermoë om die werk te verstaan uit die kwantitatiewe response blyk dit dat die meerderheid graad 9-leerders die werk wat hulle in lewensoriëntering oor miv/vigs behandel, verstaan. dit blyk uit die feit dat 36,3% (n=89) leerders van mening is dat die werk wat hulle oor miv/vigs in lewensoriëntering doen, baie maklik is. uit die totale response het 28,1% (n=69) aangedui dat die werk vir hul maklik is. slegs 7,7% (n=19) het gevoel dat die werk moeilik is en ‘n klein minderheid van 4,8% (n=12) het aangetoon dat die werk baie moeilik is. die gesprekke met graad 9-leerders het bevestig dat lewensoriëntering vir hulle maklik is omdat dit oor onderwerpe handel waarmee hulle in hul daaglikse lewe te doen kry. verder is bevind dat dat 37% (n=90) van die leerders baie bekend met die woorde, terme en taal is. ‘n verdere 50,2% (n=122) het aangedui dat hulle daarmee bekend is teenoor 7,8% (n=19) leerders wat voel dat dit onbekend is en ‘n skrale 4,9% (n=12) wat aangetoon het dat die terme, woorde en taal baie onbekend is. in ooreenstemming hiermee het die meeste graad 9-leerders, naamlik 88% (n=201), aangedui dat die redes waarom lewensvaardighede belangrikheid is om miv/vigs te voorkom, vir hulle verstaanbaar is. 92 dit het egter by twee tswana-, xhosaen sothosprekende groepe na vore gekom dat hoewel die werk nie moeilik is nie, die taal waarin dit aangebied word die begrip van sommige aspekte daarvan moeilik maak. aangesien die inligting nie in hulle moedertaal oorgedra word nie, neem dit leerders soms langer om die werk in konteks te verstaan. hierdie leerders is te vinde daarvoor dat die klasse in engels aangebied word, maar verkies dat moeilike konsepte in hul moedertaal verduidelik word. vermoë om te konsentreer oor die algemeen blyk dit uit die gesprekke gedurende die fokusgroepe, asook die vraelysopname (tabel 7) dat graad 9-leerders tydens klasse konsentreer en hul konsentrasie min onderbreek word. die rede hiervoor is dat die dissipline wat in die klas uitgeoefen word, hulle dwing om te luister en aandag te gee. waarneming van die klasaanbiedinge het bevestig dat dissipline in die klasse gehandhaaf word en dat leerders se konsentrasie veral op werk gevestig bly wanneer daar voortdurend vrae oor die onderwerp ter bespreking aan hulle gevra word. geraas en oninteressante onderwerpe is aandagafleiers wat dit soms vir die meeste graad 9-leerders moeilik maak om te konsentreer. 93 hoewel heelwat graad 9-leerders voel dat hul aandag deur geraas afgetrek word, blyk uit die resultate dat 57,2% (n=121) leerders nie aan hul ander skoolvakke dink terwyl hul in die lewensoriënteringsklas is nie. die meerderheid graad 9-leerders (55,8%; n=137) dink ook nie aan sport of hul familie terwyl hulle in die lewensoriënteringsklas is nie. die meeste leerders het aangedui dat hulle baie aandag gee (86,3% n=197) en hard konsentreer (83,6% n=196) terwyl hulle besig is met aktiwiteite wat handel oor miv/vigs. bestaande kennis en houding ten opsigte van miv/vigs en lewensoriëntering die graad 9-leerders se bestaande kennis oor miv/vigs is kwantitatief getoets deurdat hulle tydens die vraelysopname moes aandui watter stellings oor miv/vigs waar of vals is. leerders kon egter ook die opsie weet nie uitoefen, wat ‘n gebrek aan kennis oor die spesifieke stelling aandui. hoewel dit uit die resultate blyk dat graad 9-leerders oor basiese kennis en feite oor miv/vigs beskik, is die persentasie leerders wat onseker oor sommige basiese feite is, steeds hoog. hierdie bevinding stem ooreen met ander navorsing oor miv/vigs en die jeug (hsrc 2005:86). dit kan geïllustreer word deur die groot aantal leerders, 42,9% (n=104), wat nie met die stelling: “die verspreiding van miv/vigs kan voorkom word deur getrou te wees aan een maat” saamgestem het nie, of nie geweet het nie. dit blyk ook, soos geïllustreer in die onderstaande tabel, dat beduidende verskille voorkom tussen leerders uit die taalgroepe se bestaande kennis ten opsigte van die volgende stelling se beoordeling (x2=37,59233; v.g.=24; p=0,03). dit blyk dus dat minder van die tswana-; xhosaen ander sprekendes weet dat mense wat miv-positief is aan sekondêre oorsake beswyk. 94 graad 9-leerders se bestaande kennis oor twee aspekte van lewensvaardighede en houdings as ‘n wyse om miv/vigs die hoof te bied, is ondersoek. hierdie twee aspekte is in die klas behandel en dus is leerders reeds aan die inligting blootgestel voordat hulle die vraelys beantwoord het. daar is gevind dat 69,3% (n=168) leerders saamstem dat selfassertiwiteit ‘n lewensvaardigheid is wat miv/vigs help voorkom. verder het die meerderheid leerders, 75,7% (n=184), saamgestem met die stelling: “respek vir jou medemens is belangrik om miv/vigs te voorkom”. dit is verder duidelik dat graad 9-leerders (66,3% n=164) van mening is dat hulle baie bekend is met hoe lewensvaardighede miv/vigs kan voorkom. uit die fokusgroeponderhoude waar leerders oor miv/vigs in gesprek kon tree, blyk dit dat leerders se kennis oor die volgende aspekte ten opsigte van miv/vigs goed is: • hoe miv/vigs oorgedra word; • die hantering van ‘n oop wond / bloed; • dat mense wat miv-positief is met respek hanteer moet word; • hoe leerders hulleself gesond kan hou – wat ‘n gesonde lewenstyl behels; en • hoe om ‘n kondoom te gebruik. uit die waarneming by die drie skole kan bevestig word dat leerders by al drie die skole oor goeie basiese kennis beskik, hoewel daar steeds baie mites onder leerders versprei en bespreek word. dit word beaam deur twee van die onderwysers/esse wat van mening is dat hoewel die werk oor miv/vigs voortdurend gedurende leerders se skoolloopbaan herhaal word, hulle steeds nie die werk goed genoeg ken nie. graad 9-leerders openbaar oor die algemeen ‘n positiewe houding teenoor miv/vigsinligting wat hulle deur lewensoriëntering ontvang. tabel 11 bevestig dat ‘n groot meerderheid van die leerders die inhoud waaraan hulle in lewensoriëntering blootgestel word, as bruikbaar, interessant en belangrik beskou. 95 hoewel daar geen beduidende verskille gevind is tussen taalgroepe ten opsigte van graad 9-leerders se algemene houding teenoor miv/vigs-onderwerpe wat tydens lewensoriëntering bespreek word nie, is daar tydens fokusgroeponderhoude ondersoek ingestel na moontlike verskille in houdings ten opsigte van spesifieke onderwerpe soos kondoomgebruik teenoor onthouding. verskille tussen taalgroepe en verskille tussen seuns en meisies ten opsigte van hulle houding oor die spesifieke onderwerpe het na vore gekom. seuns is oor die algemeen meer positief teenoor kondoomgebruik, terwyl meisies meer positief ten opsigte van onthouding voel. dit blyk egter dat daar ‘n groot groep afrikaanssprekende seuns is wat ook meer positief ten opsigte van onthouding is. dit is ook duidelik dat veral meisies van al die fokusgroepe positief voel om mense wat miv-positief is, te help en te versorg. ‘n beduidende verskil (x2=13,17070; v.g.=6; p=0,04) ten opsigte van seuns en meisies se mening oor die mate waartoe die miv/vigs-inligting wat hulle deur lewensoriëntering ontvang, hulle persoonlik raak, is bevind. hoewel ‘n groot hoeveelheid seuns (58,9% n=76) aangedui het dat die miv/vigs-inligting hulle raak, is meer meisies (76,8% n=73) van mening dat die inligting hulle raak. hierdie bevinding stem ooreen met heppner et al. (1995: 640-645), wat gevind het dat vroue meer as mans van mening was dat die inligting van ‘n verkragtingsvoorkomingsveldtog hulle raak. dit blyk ook dat meer meisies (74,1% n=69) as seuns (56,1% n=73) voel dat die m i v / vigs-inligting wat hulle gedurende lewensoriëntering ontvang, prakties is (x2=12,53091; v.g.=6; p=0,05). die feit dat meer meisies (83,8% n83) as seuns (60,7% n=79) ‘n positiewe houding openbaar ten opsigte van die inligting oor miv/vigs, word deur die kwantitatiewe resultate dat meer meisies as seuns by die miv/vi g s onderwerpe betrokke raak wanneer hulle aktiwiteite daaroor doen, ondersteun (x2=17,80168; v.g.=6; p=0,006). 96 die verskil in die mate van ‘n positiewe houding by meisies en seuns teenoor miv/vigs-onderwerpe word bevestig deur die resultate dat meisies (75,2% n=73) lewensoriënteringsaktiwiteite wat oor miv/vigs handel, meer as seuns (58,9% n=76) geniet (x2=12,70752; v.g.=6; p=0,04). hoewel ‘n vergelyking tussen die verskillende taalgroepe geen beduidende verskille aandui nie, is tydens fokusgroeponderhoude gevind dat tswana-, xhosaen sothosprekende seuns ‘n houding openbaar om eerder kondome te gebruik as om onthouding toe te pas. seuns in hierdie taalgroepe ondersteun ook die beginsel dat ‘n mens aan een maat getrou moet wees. die aard van argumente in die lewensoriënteringsmateriaal die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel veronderstel dat die sentrale prosessering van sterk argumente ‘n belangrike kriterium is vir die verandering van respondente se houdings ooreenstemmend met ‘n oorredingsboodskap. in hierdie studie behels “sterk argumente” redes en argumente wat graad 9-leerders voel oorredend, sterk, oortuigend en goed is. indien graad 9-leerders dus van mening is dat lewensoriëntering se inhoud sterk argumente bevat en hulle daardie inligting sentraal prosesseer, bestaan daar ‘n groter moontlikheid dat die inhoud van die lewensoriënteringsmateriaal graad 9leerders ooreenkomstig die verlangde gedrag wat geleer word, kan oorreed. tydens die gesprekke met leerders uit al die fokusgroeponderhoude was dit duidelik dat die redes waarom, en maniere hoe, lewensvaardighede kan help om miv/vigs te voorkom, deur leerders as die waarheid beskou word. voorts het hulle verduidelik dat dit inligting is waaraan hulle waarde kan heg. die mees algemene rede wat die meeste leerders in al die fokusgroepe hiervoor gegee het, is dat hulle kan sien dat die lewe ‘n weerspieëling is van die argumente wat in die klas aangevoer word. ‘n groep tswana-, xhosaen sothosprekende meisies het gevoel dat die argumente wat aangebied word, sterk is, maar dat ander materiaal en bronne ook gebruik moet word om die argumente te ondersteun. dit is dus vir leerders belangrik dat onderwysers/esse nie net die handboek se argumente in die klas gebruik nie, maar ook argumente uit addisionele materiaal. ‘n ander tswana-, xhosaen sothosprekende groep het verduidelik dat hulle waarde aan die argumente ten opsigte van miv/vigs heg omdat hulle die onderwyser/-es glo wat die inligting oordra. dus kan die gevolgtrekking gemaak word dat hulle eerder waarde aan die ekstrinsieke veranderlike, naamlik die onderwyser/es heg, en ‘n periferale roete tot inligtingprosessering moontlik deur hierdie leerders gevolg sal word. die wit afrikaanssprekende groep het verduidelik dat hulle die argumente as sterk beskou omdat dit in ‘n handboek gepubliseer is en dat dit daarom belangrike en “korrekte” argumente en feite bevat. 97 figuur 1: die mate waarin graad 9-leerders die inligting wat hulle van die skool ontvang, glo uit figuur 1 is dit duidelik dat die meeste graad 9-leerders enige soort inligting wat deur die skool gekommunikeer word, as geloofwaardig beskou. dit versterk die moontlikheid dat leerders die argumente wat deur skole aangebied word as sterk argumente vir of teen bepaalde gedrag mag beskou. tabel 12 bied ‘n opsomming van graad 9-leerders se houdings teenoor die argumente wat gedurende lewensoriëntering oor lewensvaardighede om miv/vigs te voorkom, gevoer word. 98 graad 9-leerders se menings dat die argumente ten gunste van lewensvaardighede as ‘n wyse om miv/vigs te voorkom waar, bruikbaar, insiggewend en geloofwaardig is, dui daarop dat leerders die argumente as sterk beskou. aangesien die meeste graad 9-leerders, 47,9% (n=115) aangedui het dat hulle gereeld nadink oor hoe hierdie lewensvaardighede hulle kan help om miv/vigs te voorkom, kan daar (volgens die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidsmodel) gesê word dat die nadenke oor inligting wat graad 9-leerders as waar, bruikbaar, geloofwaardig en oorredend beskou, tot moontlike houdingsverandering (insluitende gedragsveranderinge) by graad 9leerders ooreenkomstig die uitkomste van die module kan lei. indien graad 9-leerders die argumente wat hulle as swak beskou, sentraal prosesseer, naamlik daaroor nadink, bestaan die moontlikheid dat teenargumente ten opsigte van die inligting wat deur lewensoriëntering aangebied word, geformuleer kan word. die geslaagdheid van die graad 9-lewensoriënteringsboodskap oor miv/vigs aangesien dit nie prakties moontlik is om leerders se gedrag te ondersoek nie en omdat dit moeilik is om presies te bepaal watter effek verskillende veranderlikes op ‘n individu se gedragsverandering gehad het, is graad 9-leerders se eie persepsies ondersoek ten opsigte van die effek wat lewensoriëntering op hulle gedrag gehad het. figuur 2 dui aan dat die meerderheid graad 9-leerders van mening is dat lewensoriëntering ‘n effek op hulle lewe gehad het. figuur 2: graad 9-leerders se persepsie van lewensoriëntering se effek op hul gedrag graad 9-leerders het tydens fokusgroeponderhoude en deur middel van ‘n oop vraag in die vraelys gemotiveer waarom hulle van mening is dat lewensoriënteringsklasse hulle 99 in die verlede gehelp het om gedrag te verander wat hulle in gevaar kon stel om met miv/vigs geïnfekteer te word. die meeste response dui daarop dat leerders nou meer bedag daarop is om hulleself teen die oordrag van die mi-virus te beskerm deur onthouding, kondoomgebruik of deur slegs aan een seksuele maat getrou te bly. ander redes wat genoem is, sluit in dat leerders weet hoe om hulle teen ‘n oop wond te beskerm en dat hulle mense wat miv/vigs het, met respek behandel en nie bang is om met hierdie mense in aanraking te kom nie. sommige leerders (wat die minderheid van die steekproef uitmaak) voel egter dat lewensoriëntering hulle nie gehelp het om hulle gedrag te verander nie. die meeste van hierdie leerders is nog nie in die verlede met ‘n situasie gekonfronteer wat hulle in gevaar gestel het om met die mi-virus geïnfekteer te word nie. hulle het egter genoem dat die inligting wat hulle deur lewensoriëntering ontvang wel in die toekoms, indien hulle met risiko-gedrag gekonfronteer word, ‘n invloed op hulle gedrag sal hê. dit blyk ook dat sommige leerders op grond van die opvoeding wat hulle by hulle ouerhuise kry, reeds ‘n standpunt ingeneem het om nie tot risiko-gedrag toe te tree nie. bespreking van resultate die studie het die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel se veronderstellings bevestig. die kwantitatiewe sowel as kwalitatiewe data wys daarop dat intrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes wel ’n belangrike rol by die graad 9-leerders speel wanneer miv/vigsinligting deur middel van lewensoriëntering aan hul oorgedra word. dus kan afgelei word dat graad 9-leerders van die drie geselekteerde skole in potchefstroom die inligting sentraal behoort te prosesseer, wat tot langtermynoorreding en –gedragsverandering behoort te lei. dit blyk dat die ekstrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes ’n versterkende of teenwerkende rol ten opsigte van die uitkoms van graad 9-leerders se sentrale inligtingsprosessering van die werk oor miv/vigs in lewensoriëntering kan speel. die rol van intrinsieke veranderlikes motiveringsveranderlikes • persoonlike relevansie miv/vigs is beslis vir graad 9-leerders ‘n persoonlik relevante onderwerp, maar sommige leerders was van mening dat hulle ’n versadigingspunt vir die herhaling van dieselfde inligting bereik het. die relevansie van miv/vigs vir graad 9-leerders het dus verskuif vanaf die belangrikheid van basiese inligting (soos byvoorbeeld hoe die mivirus oorgedra word) na die toepassing van hierdie inligting, byvoorbeeld die emosionele en fisieke effek van miv/vigs op mense se daaglikse take, asook hoe mense wat miv/vigs het, emosioneel en fisiek voel. • behoefte aan kennis aansluitend by die persoonlike relevansie van die inhoud van miv/vigs het die graad 9-leerders ‘n behoefte aan nuwe kennis oor die onderwerp uitgespreek. die leerders 100 wou nuwe dinge leer en hulle bestaande kennis oor die onderwerp uitbrei deur byvoorbeeld meer te leer oor nuwe navorsingsbevindinge aangaande miv/vigs. ooreenkomstig met henning (1999:59) en goliath (1995:188) se navorsing bestaan ’n behoefte aan kennis om die inligting wat hulle reeds oor miv/vigs het in hul lewe te kan toepas, te weet hoe om besluite oor gedrag te neem en die inligting met hul daaglikse lewe in verband te bring. • vermoë om te verstaan die graad 9-leerders het die inoud van die lewensoriëntering, en spesifiek die werk oor miv/vigs, as baie maklik beskou. leerders is baie bekend met die terminologie en woorde wat gebruik word om lewensvaardighede aan leerders oor te dra. die taal waarin klasse aangebied word, blyk in sommige gevalle egter ’n probleem te wees. graad 9-leerders verkies dat die onderwyser/es in staat moet wees om die moeilike konsepte of begrippe in hul moedertaal aan hulle te verduidelik. aangesien graad 9-leerders egter oor die algemeen toon dat hulle die werk oor miv/vigs verstaan soos dit gedurende lewensoriëntering aan hulle verduidelik word, kan die gevolgtrekking gemaak word dat hierdie intrinsieke veranderlike se rol by graad 9-leerders die sentrale inligtingsprosessering van die inligting versterk wat hulle gedurende klastyd oor miv/vigs ontvang. • graad 9-leerders se konsentrasievermoë die graad 9-leerders wat aan die studie deelgeneem het, het oor die algemeen goed in die klas gekonsentreer. die taalprobleem (soos vroeër verduidelik) veroorsaak egter ’n verbreking van konsentrasie by sommige leerders. leerders se konsentrasievermoë neem egter af namate hul nie by die klasaanbieding betrek word deur middel van vrae, aktiwiteite of besprekings nie. onderwerpe of klasaanbieding wat nie vir leerders relevant of interessant is nie, beïnvloed ook hul konsentrasievermoë negatief. dit stem ooreen met vorige navorsingsresultate wat daarop dui dat die oordrag van dieselfde inligting, herhaaldelik en op dieselfde wyse, daartoe lei dat leerders verveeld en afgestomp raak en nie meer gedurende klastyd luister, konsentreer of oplet nie (goliath 1995:170; henning 1999:60). dus kan uit die studie afgelei word dat graad 9-leerders oor ’n hoër en beter konsentrasievermoë beskik wanneer dissipline gehandhaaf word en wanneer leerders in die onderwerpe wat bespreek word, belangstel. dit blyk egter dat graad 9-leerders se belangstelling in die onderwerpe onder bespreking afneem wanneer hulle nie die taal waardeur die inligting oorgedra word goed verstaan nie. situasieveranderlikes • bestaande kennis en houding teenoor miv/vigs en lewensoriëntering hoewel die meeste graad 9-leerders se bestaande kennis oor miv/vigs goed is, word mites in verband met die oorsprong van die mi-virus steeds versprei. dit blyk dat mites 101 oor aspekte van miv/vigs waaroor leerders nie genoeg inligting het nie, gevorm word in ’n poging deur leerders om dit wat hulle nie van miv/vigs verstaan of weet nie, vir hulleself verstaanbaar te maak. graad 9-leerders het aangedui dat hulle nie weet hoe die mi-virus ontstaan het nie en dat hulle graag meer inligting daaroor sou wou hê. aangesien leerders nie weet hoe hierdie virus ontstaan het nie, versin hulle stories of glo hulle gerugte om dit wat vir hulle onbekend is, verstaanbaar te maak en met hul lewe in verband te bring. vorige navorsingsresultate het bevind dat vigs-onderrig gekoppel moet word aan die individue se kennis oor miv/vigs, hul oortuiging ten opsigte van die risiko om met die mi-virus geïnfekteer te word en hoe daardie risiko hanteer kan word (esterhuyse 2001:30). volgens die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel word veronderstel dat vasgestel moet word of ontvangers van oorredingsboodskappe se gedagtes deur ‘n vooropgestelde houding of die boodskapargumente gerig word (petty & cacioppo 1996:266). uit hierdie studie blyk dit dat graad 9-leerders se bestaande kennis hul houdings ten opsigte van miv/vigs bepaal en dat hulle gedagtes daardeur gerig word. ’n belangrike bevinding ten opsigte van die graad 9-leerders se bestaande kennis en hul houdings teenoor miv/vigs is dat daar beduidende verskille tussen seuns en meisies is. meisies het ’n vooropgestelde houding gehandhaaf wat onthouding (geen seksuele omgang voor die huwelik nie) bo kondoomgebruik ondersteun. seuns het op hul beurt ’n vooropgestelde houding geopenbaar wat kondoomgebruik en getrouheid aan een seksuele maat ondersteun. hoewel kondoomgebruik én onthouding tydens lewensoriëntering behandel word, kan gesê word dat meisies die argumente wat proonthouding is, eerder sal ondersteun (en hulle gedrag ooreenkomstig dié boodskapargumente rig) as seuns (met ‘n pro-kondoomgebruik houding) wat eerder hulle gedrag sal rig ooreenkomstig boodskapargumente wat kondoomgebruik en getrouheid aan een seksuele maat ondersteun. dit is duidelik dat graad 9-leerders reeds oor ’n raamwerk van kennis beskik waaroor hulle ‘n positiewe en ondersteunende houding ingeneem het. by meisies ondersteun die bestaande kennis en houding onthouding bo kondoomgebruik. verdere denke oor bykomende inligting wat graad 9-meisies verkry oor gedrag om miv/vigs te voorkom, sal dus waarskynlik hulle bevooroordeelde gedagtes en houding ten opsigte van die voorkoming van miv/vigs-oordrag (nl. onthouding bo kondoomgebruik) versterk. indien ’n oorredingsboodskap deur lewensoriëntering onthouding voorstaan, behoort graad 9-meisies wanneer hulle oor die boodskap nadink hullle gedrag ooreenkomstig die boodskap te rig. dit sal waarskynlik tot die generering van meer gunstige gedagtes en ’n houding lei wat die boodskap verder ondersteun. indien die oorredingsboodskap die gedagte ondersteun dat kondoomgebruik die beste opsie is, sal hierdie meisies (wat reeds ’n positiewe houding teenoor onthouding ingeneem het) se nadenke oor die oorredingsboodskap waarskynlik tot teenargumente ten opsigte van kondoomgebruik lei. 102 • aard van argumente in lewensoriënteringsmateriaal respondente was van mening dat die argumente wat deur die lewensoriënteringsmateriaal ten opsigte van miv/vigs aangebied word, oorredend, sterk, goed en oortuigend is. leerders het aangedui dat die gevolge van miv/vigs wat in die werklike lewe sigbaar is (mense sterf daagliks), bewys dat die argumente wat aangevoer word, sterk en waar is (petty & cacioppo 1981; petty, unnova & strathman 1991:241-280; petty & cacioppo 1996:265-268). die gevolgtrekking kan gemaak word dat indien graad 9-leerders nadink oor die inhoud wat deur lewensoriëntering behandel word en die inligting sentraal prosesseer, hulle hulle gedrag waarskynlik ooreenkomstig die gekommunikeerde boodskap sal rig, aangesien hulle die argumente wat gevoer word as sterk en oorredend beskou (petty & cacioppo 1981; petty, unnova & strathman 1991:241-280; petty & cacioppo 1996:265-268). indien oorreding ooreenkomstig die boodskap intree, behoort dit langdurig te wees, teenargumente te kan weerstaan en tot gedrag lei wat in die toekoms redelik voorspelbaar sal wees. die geslaagdheid van die graad 9-lewensoriënteringsboodskap oor miv/vigs graad 9-leerders se gedrag word nie alleenlik deur die effek van lewensoriëntering en die rol van intrinsieke en ekstrinsieke veranderlikes bepaal nie. ander aspekte, soos byvoorbeeld leerders se godsdienstige waardes, opvoeding en beginsels, kan ook ‘n invloed op hulle gedrag uitoefen. aangesien die studie nie die graad 9-leerders se gedrag bestudeer het nie, maar bloot die leerders se weergawe van hul gedrag in berekening gebring het, is dit nie moontlik om ‘n absolute gevolgtrekking oor die geslaagdheid van die lewensoriënteringsboodskappe oor miv/vigs te maak nie. uit die resultate blyk dit duidelik dat die intrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes wel ‘n belangrike rol speel by die meeste graad 9-leerders wat aan die studie deelgeneem het. indien respondente se gedrag dus wel verander het, soos deur hulle aangedui, kan die gevolgtrekking gemaak word dat die sentrale prosessering van die lewensoriënteringsinligting beslis bygedra het tot die effek op graad 9-leerders se gedrag. die studie het egter heelwat aspekte uitgewys wat die effek van lewensoriënteringsboodskappe oor miv/vigs kan versterk, soos byvoorbeeld leerders se behoefte aan meer gevorderde inligting, hul behoefte aan deelname in die klas, en taal en geslagsverskille wat ‘n rol kan speel. aanbevelings vir toekomstige studies op grond van die beperkings wat uit die studie na vore gekom het, word die volgende aanbevelings vir toekomstige studies gemaak: • die uitvoering van longitudinale studies om die houdingsen gedragsveranderinge ná die blootstelling van oorredingsboodskappe oor tyd te ondersoek en te toets. • alle klasgroepe se klasperiodes moet waargeneem word. waarneming moet ook 103 met die verloop van tyd plaasvind ten einde tendense te identifiseer. daar word aanbeveel dat dieselfde groepe ook tydens die aanbieding van ander modules/vakke waargeneem word ten einde te vergelyk of die mate waartoe intrinsieke en ektrinsieke oorredingsveranderlikes ’n rol by leerders speel, verskil ten opsigte van die onderwerpe waaraan hulle blootgestel word. • daar word voorgestel dat vraelyste ook in een van die afrika-tale beskikbaar gestel word om te verseker dat leerders die vrae korrek verstaan en interpreteer. • die ontleding van materiaal deur middel van ’n inhoudsanalise sal daartoe lei dat ’n vergelyking tussen die werk soos dit deur die verskillende skole aangebied en hanteer word (asook die verskil in effek op leerders se gedrag as gevolg van die verskillende invalshoeke wat deur die skole gevolg word) getref kan word. • die insluiting van ’n groter groep wit afrikaanssprekende leerders en ook wit engelssprekende leerders is noodsaaklik vir toekomstige studies ten einde vergelykings tussen die verskillende taalgroepe te kan tref. slot petty en cacioppo het met die verloop van tyd meer as 50 eksperimente uitgevoer om die basiese aannames van die model te toets (griffin 1991:201). die tipiese studie varieer persoonlike relevansie, argumentkrag en brongeloofwaardigheid. die resultate van die studies verifieer dat motivering ‘n beslissende faktor ten opsigte die roetes tot inligtingprosessering en gevolglike houdingsverandering is. navorsing ten opsigte van houdingsverandering bied gewoonlik resultate wat verwarrend en weersprekend van aard is. petty en cacioppo se uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel neem verskeie onsamehangende resultate en integreer dit tot ‘n verenigbare geheel (griffin 1991:203). hierdie integrerende funksie van die uitbreidingsmoontlikheidmodel maak dit ‘n waardevolle model om oorredingsboodskappe meer geslaag aan te bied. hierdie model behoort ook op ander m i v / vigs-boodskappe en -veldtogte in suid-afrika toegepas te word om die geslaagdheid daarvan te bepaal en om vas te stel hoe die rol van intrinsieke veranderlikes vir die verskillende groepe ontvangers versterk kan word. 104 verwysings departement van onderwys. sien suid-afrika. departement van onderwys. dillard, j.p. & pfau, m. 2002. the persuasion handbook: developments in theory and practice. london: sage publications. du plooy, g.m. 1996. introduction to communication research. cape town: rustica. esterhuyse, e.a. 2001. self-effektiwiteit en miv/vigs-voorkomende gedrag by ‘n groep hoërskoolleerlinge. ongepubliseerde magistertesis. stellenbosch: universiteit van stellenbosch. goliath, c.g. 1995. sekondêre skoolleerlinge se persepsies van vigs en vigsopvoeding. ongepubliseerde doktorale proefskrif. port elizabeth: universiteit van port elizabeth. griffin, e.m. 1991. a first look at communication theory. new york: mcgraw-hill. henning, a. 1999. riglyne vir ‘n vigs-voorligtingsprogram vir graad nege leerlinge. ongepubliseerde magisterverhandeling. johannesburg: rau. heppner, m.j., good, g.e., hillenbrand-gunn,t.l., hawkins, a.k., hacquard, l.l., nichols, r.k., debord, k.a., brock, k.j. 1995. examining sex differences in altering attitudes about rape: a test of the elaboration likelihood model. journal of counseling and development 73(6):640-647, jul/aug. hsrc (human sciences research council). 2005. south african national hiv prevalance. hiv incidence, behaviour and communication survey. cape town: hsrc press. littlejohn, s.w. 1989. theories of human communication. third edition. california: wadsworth. p e t t y, r.e., & cacioppo, j.t. 1981. attitudes and persuasion: classic and contemporary approaches. dubuque, ia: wm. c. brown. petty, r.e. & cacioppo, j.t. 1996. fourth edition. attitudes and persuasion: classic and contemporary approaches. colorado: westview. petty, r.e., unnova, r.h., & strathman, a.j. 1991. theories of attitude change. in robertson, t.s. & kassarjian, h. (eds.) handbook of consumer behavior. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. ross, r.s. 1994. i. fourth edition. new jersey: prentice hall. suid-afrika. departement van onderwys. 2002. north west department of education auxiliary services, potchefstroom district. hiv/aids life skills education. potchefstroom. 105 1. melissa steyn 207 what do i do with my degree? the value of studying in the humanities communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 207 210 willemien marais* * willemien marais lectures in the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. meo iudicio introduction what is the value of studying in the humanities? i’m often confronted with this question by prospective students as well as current students in the humanities. on some level, it seems that degrees in the humanities are perceived to be inferior. how it happened is not entirely clear. the one moment it was the domain of educated ancient greeks, schooled in rhetoric, politics and the essence of man. the next moment it was the subject of disparaging jokes and songs; an academic qualification viewed by some as having less value than yesterday’s perishables: what do you do with a b.a. in english, / what is my life going to be? / four years of college and plenty of knowledge, / have earned me this useless degree. / i can’t pay the bills yet, / ‘cause i have no skills yet, / the world is a big scary place. / but somehow i can’t shake / the feeling i might make, / a difference, / to the human race1. however, that which is often dismissed as a so-called mickey mouse degree, could of course be seen as having origins as old as academic study itself. and the central area of this field of study is one where answers are not that easy to come by: the humanities. knowledge of the essence of what makes us human. a student’s first introduction to university and academia is often also his or her first introduction to the age-old strife between the different qualifications: bas versus everything with a c in the abbreviation — b.sc., b.com., mb.ch.b. b.arch. — often viewed as more important and more difficult than the rest. the least scientific but most convincing evidence of this is people’s reaction to fields of study such as biochemistry or astrophysics — “you must be very clever”. this discussion is not an attempt at muckraking — partly due to the old adage of “never argue with a fool... people might not know the difference”. 208 what should be brought to students’ attention is that a b.a. degree — including those in the field of communication — is, in all probability, the most difficult degree of them all. not because of comparisons between numbers and letters or between chemical formulae or theories. a b.a. degree is certainly not the most difficult academic qualification to obtain. but that is only when the measure of success is based purely on a student’s ability to remember information. a b.a. degree is the most difficult degree to apply successfully. it is the most difficult degree to use. not because the content does not compare a student sufficiently, but because students find it so difficult to apply that content appropriately. the title of this opinion piece is “what do i do with my degree?” — basically a rhetorical question. however, the answer is inherent to the question, as is one’s success. the second reason why a b.a. degree can be considered to be the most difficult degree is the presence of what discerns us as humans: choice. the ability to make a decision, to practise free will. in this case it is a practical choice. most b.a. degrees allow much in terms of choosing which fields of study to add to the core modules of a qualification. one look at history and it becomes ubundantly clear that our ability to choose — especially where the wrong option was chosen — has been instrumental in many of our problems. while most people are able to make a decision or choose an option, not everyone has the ability to choose wisely; to choose the option that would be sustainable in the long run. most university courses have prerequisites for admission. some require specific school subjects as well as an acceptable result in those subjects. others have additional admission examinations, tests and evaluations. one prerequisite that could never become an official requirement for admission, but which is vital in determining a student’s success is that student’s ability to make an informed decision. and although decision-making abilities are important in all degrees and in all professions, it is nowhere more important and instrumental to success than in the humanities. fortunately, students are not left to their own devices. a little-know fact of successfully studying for and completing a b.a. is the three complimentary yet unofficial degrees bestowed on graduation day. added value b.a. critical thinking the baccalaureus artium critical thinking is awarded to a candidate that demonstrates that he/she has the clear, precise and purposeful mental capacity to solve complicated problems creatively, make informed decisions and is able to value the quality of his/her own thinking. being a former journalist2, i’ve had personal experience of how the ability to think critically can add to your reporting skills and your ability to “get the story”. of course critical thinking and its nephew, lateral thinking, are nowadays often over-used and under-utilised. it is one of those abilities — much as is the case with creativity — that 209 people often assume they have. and often the implication inherent to this assumption is a clear indication of the lack thereof. in my experience, critical thinking is the most important tool a journalist — or anyone, for that matter — should have. let’s stick to the example of journalism: of course you should be able to write well. but in most instances it is because of your ability to write well that you’ve chosen journalism as a profession. it is merely a case of applying that ability to the demands of reporting. critical thinking is not that easily explained, nor applied. a simple definition is that one should question all the facts and statements before you. unfortunately, for most people that is where it ends — in the incessant stroppy personality of the obstinate. critical thinking goes beyond simply questioning everything. a critical thinker demonstrates a fair amount of healthy scepticism and intellectual humility. irrespective of which fields you study as part of your b.a. — communication science, political science, history, languages, anthropology, criminology, drama, philosophy, the fine arts — critical thinking will form part of it. and although an official module in the art of critical thinking is not (yet) taught, it is an ability that will develop and continue to develop as part of your exposure to all the different facets of the humanities. again it should be stressed that a b.a. in critical thinking is one of the most difficult degrees to obtain because it demands so much from the student. some students, it seems, register for a degree and then assume that they will become journalists, language practitioners, anthropologists or actors via — to use a term from the natural sciences — osmosis. the faculty of the humanities is a wonderful institution that offers the student access to information on and expertise in many fields, but that merely leads the horse to the water. the drinking is the student’s own responsibility. unfortunately, the drinking has also been the downfall of many a promising student... which brings us back to the ability to make a decision and choose an option. balance is the key, but balance is also one of the first abilities that disappears when one chooses to drink at the local watering hole rather than the fountain of wisdom. b.a. bigger picture the baccalaureus artium bigger picture is awarded to a candidate that demonstrates an awareness of the interdependence between the different fields – in the humanities and other, seemingly unrelated fields. the world is a very big place, but at the same time the world is very small. nothing ever happens in complete isolation. an important breakthrough on the medical sciences (prolonging life) has implications for psychology (people might live longer), politics (people might live longer!), economics (how much will it cost to live longer?) and even the theatre arts or television (a new hospital series). political decisions influence language and how it is managed. nuclear physics enable us to heal people, and to kill people. and, of course, the journalist must be able to write about all of this. an awareness of this interdependence and the insight to follow the rimpling effect of a decision is another ability acquired through a degree in the humanities. one of the first lessons a young academic must learn, is to be an expert on one topic. focus on one aspect of your field and learn as much as possible about that aspect. this might seem 210 to contradict the goal of seeing the bigger picture, but it is only when you know where your field of expertise fits into this picture that you could truly become a master of that field. a b.a. degree is one of the few academic qualifications that enables a student to study other fields apart from the core modules of the degree. for example, a student in media studies could also study sociology or political science. as a communication expert, it is your responsibility to act as the link between these worlds, it is your knowledge of the bigger picture that determines your success, and it is a degree in the humanities that provides you with the telescope and microscope to look for the bigger picture. b.a. better person a baccalaureus artium better person is awarded in extraordinary circumstances to an individual who understands that it is not about being better than others, but about the continuous betterment of yourself. in all its different guises, the humaniora remains the study of man and by implication also of how to be a truly good person. someone with exceptional communication skills, someone with an understanding of others, of their traditions and their culture. in short, it means providing someone with the necessary skills to become a well-read, wellrounded individual. critics will be quick to point out that someone with a b.a. degree seems to be someone who knows something about everything, but not everything about something. and if one does not make the right choices, this might soon be the case. therefore, it is imperative that a student knows him/herself very well. he or she must know what they want. a student who does a broad, general b.a. without knowing what he/she wants, won’t get anything from it. this is, of course, a paradox: few people aged 18 know what they want. a broad, general b.a. would therefore be the ideal way of getting to know yourself and the world. however, this is not practical, because this exploratory degree will have to be followed by another, more tailored degree. the best solution is to speak to as many people as possible, to evaluate your decisions constantly, and to adapt if need be. what do i do with my degree? the question is what would you like to do with your degree? and the answer: whatever you want to. the choice is yours. endnotes 1 lyrics from what do i do with a ba in english? from the broadway play avenue q by jeff whitty (available at http://www.lyricsandsongs.com/song/601684.html). another example of this apparent irreverence towards the humanities is found in the lyrics of the song twentysomething that appears on the album twentysomething by jamie cullum: after years of expensive education / a car full of books and anticipation / i’m an expert on shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot / but the world don’t need scholars as much as i thought (available at http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jamiecullum/twentysomething.html). 2 before joining academia, the author worked as a professional journalist in radio and print media. she still works as a freelance journalist for several publications. 5756 5756 measuring integrated internal communication: a south african case study abstract the multidisciplinary concept of communication as it manifests itself in organisations is becoming more and more important; hence, it is suggested that it should be measured to determine the satisfaction of employees with integrated internal communication (iic). the purpose of this study was, therefore, to develop a measuring tool for iic to address limitations in the existing instruments that are arguably outdated and no longer address current trends. a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach was used to explore existing communication audit instruments that were used as the basis for the development of a new integrated internal communication audit (iica) that was tested to evaluate the communication strengths and weaknesses at the university of south africa library. the findings revealed that the iica tool was an adequate tool for measuring the library’s iic systems, with a cronbach’s alpha of .950, which is seen as excellent. the results indicated that employees preferred communication systems that provided them with timeous, transparent, and continuous communication. employees’ preferred communication channels included email, face-toface meetings, info-web, and written communication like letters and memos. the iica tool recognises the importance of organisational values, employment equity, customised service and ubuntu that are not evident in previous instruments; hence, the results make a unique contribution to the field of organisational communication. keywords: integrated internal communication, communication audit, measuring tool, communication channels, media richness, organisational culture, communication experiences introduction the existing communication audit instruments developed over time by various researchers have limited the ability to address new developments and current trends, particularly in the university of south africa (unisa) library, where the primary focus is on scholarly information resources. as awelani reineth mandiwana department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : amandiwana@yahoo. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-0379-8487 prof. rachel barker department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : barker@unisa.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-8816-9385 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.5 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 56-73 date submitted: 26 november 2021 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:amandiwana@yahoo.com mailto:amandiwana@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0379-8487 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0379-8487 mailto:barker@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8816-9385 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8816-9385 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.5 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 5756 measuring integrated internal communication 5756 communication in organisations is not static, such instruments should be refined to make them relevant to different environments, recognising existing trends, both national and global. this study addresses the internal communication challenges faced by communication practitioners and organisational communication researchers in the field of organisational communication. a communication audit is usually conducted when organisations experience changes imposed by internal and external factors. most studies on communication audits have been conducted internationally (denison et al. 2014), but little research has been conducted on the review of communication audit instruments in the south african library context. scholars (steele & plenty 2015; zwijze-koning & de jong 2015; wilkinson & weitkamp 2016) have categorised communication that occurs in organisations into two approaches: communication within organisations and organisations as communication. the approach of organisations as communication focuses on communication from two perspectives: the constructive and the constitutive views. this study adopts the constitutive view of communication that looks at communication as a platform for questioning and investigating key organisational realities and complexities by exploring and examining communication processes in search of a more favourable organisational outcome for employees (koschmann 2012). subsequently, a measuring tool for integrated internal communication (iic) for the library, called the integrated internal communication audit (iica), has been developed and tested. against this background, this study set out to answer the following research question: what is the most adequate tool for measuring integrated internal communication in the unisa library? to investigate the research question, a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach was adopted. this study is limited to all communication between employees at the muckleneuk campus of the unisa library, and is designed to achieve the following objectives: to conduct a theoretical exploration of iic audits; to conduct a theoretical review of internal communication audits; to explore the communication needs of employees; to explore the internal communication systems; and to explore the latest developments in the field of organisational communication to propose a new measuring tool for iic. literature review organisational communication research has evolved over time to the point where researchers have become interested in addressing communication problems that emanate from the interactions of people within organisations. this has resulted in the need to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the communication that takes place in the internal organisational environment, referred to as internal communication, which is an integrated process (rajhans 2012). this study intends to identify the gaps and inconsistencies in existing communication audit instruments, to address communication challenges and complexities in organisations like the use of rich media or media richness that facilitates the flow of both formal and informal communication in an organisation (pierce 2012; horn 2014), to encourage task-media/channel fit in the transmission of quality information (wilkinson & weitkamp 2016), to provide real-time feedback in the communication process (cheney et al. 2011), to promote 5958 mandiwana & barker two-way symmetrical communication that facilitates relationships between internal stakeholders (chmielecki 2015), and to encourage the use of adequate information communication technology (ict) infrastructure in the communication process (siddike et al. 2011). theoretical framework the theoretical framework that underpins this study is guided by the excellence theory (grunig 2013), the information theory (horn 2014; woodward, 2014), and the media richness theory (hasel 2011; chang et al. 2017). while the information theory facilitates the flow of information in the organisation to cultivate long-term relationships, the media richness theory recognises the communication channels in terms of the task-media fit to make sure that the chosen medium transmits quality information. subsequently, the excellence theory identifies real-time feedback as important in facilitating two-way symmetrical communication. empirical literature review the internal communication audit perspectives that provide background information on internal communication audits include studies conducted by international organisational communication researchers such as crino and white (1981), carvalho (2013), steele and plenty (2014), zwijze-koning and de jong (2015), and daniela and janetta (2015). studies conducted in south africa include nhlapo (2000), antonis (2005), meintjes and steyn (2006), jensen et al. (2013) and wagner (2013). in conducting internal communication audits, organisational communication researchers make use of the following measuring instruments, designed to meet ever-changing organisational needs (crino and white 1981; hecht 1978) that inform this study: the communication satisfaction questionnaire (csq) and the international communication association (ica) audit, adapted and complemented by the organisational culture survey (ocs) and the critical incident technique (cit). hence, the focus of communication audits has shifted to include the study of power relationships, participative culture, organisational structure, organisational communication systems, gender, and diversity of the workforce (hargie & tourish 2009; grunig 2013). this shift resulted from researchers’ need to identify the realities held by employees, to explore individual perceptions of communication, to explore the gaps in communication systems and channels, and to identify the common understanding of organisational life (hargie & tourish 2009). in addressing those challenges, this study integrates different viewpoints on internal communication audits. the concept of the integration of communication audits becomes central in the development of the iica based on recommendations made by mao and hale (2015) who complemented and/or converged one or more measuring instruments with the purpose of improving the validity and reliability of the measuring tool used. moreover, oliver (2004) argues that evaluation tools are not a one-sizefits-all approach; they should be tailored to the specific needs of the organisation under investigation. 5958 measuring integrated internal communication conceptual framework in this study, the integration process results in the development of the proposed iica conceptual framework, which consists of the following seven constructs: informational, relational, informational/relational, communication channels, organisational outcomes, organisational culture, and communication experiences. the proposed iica conceptual framework as presented in figure 1 addresses additional realities experienced in the unisa library, such as the multicultural environment, the transformation agenda, employment equity and affirmative action. (source: developed by researchers) figure 1: the proposed iica conceptual framework methodology the case study was identified as the most feasible method of conducting research, given the objective of the study. the exploratory sequential mixed method design that combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods (creswell 2015) was used to collect data to ensure the richness of data in answering the research question (kumar 2014). the target population comprises employees at the muckleneuk campus of the unisa library. the sample for the qualitative phase consisted of 15 participants comprising members of management, two african males, and 13 females from different racial 6160 mandiwana & barker groups. the library environment is female dominated, thereby resulting in gender disparity (statistics south africa 2017; unisa library 2015). the sample size was determined by means of data saturation (quinlan et al. 2019). a semi-structured interview schedule (kumar 2014) was used to conduct the interviews and the information obtained through interviews was used to develop a survey questionnaire. stratified random sampling (walliman 2011) was used to determine the sample for the quantitative phase of the study. an online self-administered survey questionnaire created by using the surveymonkey software was used to collect quantitative data. the pre-testing of the survey questionnaire was conducted with a sample of 20 participants, to test the reliability of the iica tool. the final survey was administered to the larger population at the unisa library, and out of the 222 employees, 72 responses (64.9%) were received. the items included in both instruments, the interview schedule and the survey questionnaire, measure employees’ perception of different aspects of the communication process of the library as the perceptions of employees are influenced by the internal communication of an organisation (daniela & janetta 2015). findings and discussion the qualitative data was analysed by using atlas.ti. a thematic approach was used and the following six main themes were analysed that were informed by both the existing literature and the interviews: availability of an internal communication measurement instrument, communication audit constructs, internal communication systems, exploring the latest developments or emerging trends in the field of organisational communication, the multicultural perspective, and general issues. in terms of the interviews, most of the participants agreed that a general lack of communication from top management on changes taking place in the library sent contradictory messages to clients, and that results in rumours. the majority of the participants were of the view that managers imposed their views on subordinates. the identified communication channels that comprise the internal communication system of the library include faceto-face communication, written communication, email, newsletters, telephone, and social media. the preferred communication channels include face-to-face communication, email, telephone and the social media channels such as sms and whatsapp, as presented in figure 2. participants identified email as the most preferred channel because it provides written evidence, while face-to-face was identified as the second-best channel that provides a good platform for sharing information, clarifying matters during misunderstandings and disputes, providing feedback, and resolving conflicts without wasting time. 6160 measuring integrated internal communication (source: generated by the authors using atlas.ti) figure 2: participants’ responses on preferred communication channels the following areas of improvement or gaps in the communication system of the library were identified by most of the participants: clear channels of communication, improved communication between managers and employees at lower levels, knowledge sharing and management of tacit knowledge, the recognition of social media for internal communication, and regular communication through the newsletter. the participants 6362 mandiwana & barker emphasise the sharing of tacit knowledge between retiring and young employees, and that tacit knowledge should be converted into explicit knowledge that can be stored in written form for future usage. hartwich et al. (2007) refer to tacit knowledge as knowledge that employees carry in their minds, and that cannot be accessed or extracted. this study considered the transfer of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge as the best practice. the findings were in line with existing literature that indicates that employees used the existing channels to facilitate the directional flow of communication that took the form of upwards, downwards and horizontal direction (hasel 2011). results and discussion the quantitative data was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss) software package and the results on the reliability of the iica tool, the socio-demographic characteristics and the iica constructs confirm the viability of the iica tool. the views of participants were not influenced by their sociodemographic characteristics. reliability of the measurement tool cronbach’s alpha was used to measure the internal consistency of the measurement tool. cronbach’s alpha is a coefficient of internal consistency commonly used as an estimate of reliability. manerikar and manerikar (2015) propose that, if cronbach alpha is ≥ .9, reliability is excellent (high-stakes testing); ≥ .7 is good (low-stakes testing); ≥ .6 is acceptable; ≥ .5 is poor; and < .5 is unacceptable. most scales had a reliability of over .7, with the exception of the construct feedback on communication sent, which was acceptable. in this study, questions 1 to 8 of the survey questionnaire focused on the demographics. the reliability analysis was conducted on questions 9 to 18. the reliability of the entire instrument gave a cronbach’s alpha of .950, which is seen as excellent. it can be concluded that the measurement tool was reliable. the results of the reliability analysis are provided in table 1. table 1: reliability results of the constructs construct no. of items cronbach’s alpha acceptable level q9. information received 7 .801 good q10. information desired 7 .821 good q11. sources of information 9 .705 good q12. feedback on communication sent 6 .620 acceptable 6362 measuring integrated internal communication construct no. of items cronbach’s alpha acceptable level q13. information received through formal channels of communication 10 .785 good q14. information received through informal channels of communication 9 .916 excellent q15. relational 8 .835 good q16. informational/ relational 9 .808 good q17. organisational outcomes 7 .894 good q18. organisational culture 19 .914 excellent total 91 .950 excellent socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents in terms of the socio-demographic characteristics presented in table 2, out of an intended target population of 111, a total of 72 library employees participated in the study, giving a response rate of 64.9%, with a standard deviation of 19.7. the independent t-test and the one-way analysis of variance (anova) were used to determine whether the views of the respondents who participated in the study differed in terms of their socio-demographics. the levene’s (1960) test of homogeneity of variances was used, and the t-test was done at the 5% level of significance and a p-value of less than .05. the results indicated that the views of the respondents were not influenced by their gender, educational qualifications, current position, directorate, or years of experience. the iica tool was consistent in measuring the views of people from different demographic backgrounds. 6564 mandiwana & barker table 2: socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents socio-demographic characteristics category frequency percentage gender male 26 36.1% female 46 63.9% total 72 100.0% race blacks 52 73.3% whites coloureds indians 17 1 1 23.9% 1.4% 1.4% total 71 100.0% age below 30 years 6 8.3% 30–39 years 26 36.1% 40–49 years 13 18.1% 50–59 years 22 30.6% 50 years and above 25 6.9% total 72 100% educational qualifications matric/grade 12 or below 10 13.9% certificate/diploma 9 12.5% bachelor’s degree 19 26.4% honours degree 23 31.9% postgraduate degree 11 15.3% total 72 100.0% current position middle management/ supervisor 9 12.9% specialist 20 28.6% administrative staff 40 57.1% other 1 1.4% 6564 measuring integrated internal communication socio-demographic characteristics category frequency percentage total 70 100.0% directorate information resource distribution 26 37.1% information resource content management 13 18.6% library corporate services 17 24.3% client services 14 20.0% years in current position total 70 100.0% less than a year 11 15.3% 3–5 years 15 20.8% 6–10 years 31 43.1% more than 10 years 15 20.8% total 72 100.0% the communication audit constructs data analysis was also conducted on the seven communication audit constructs: informational, relational, informational/relational, communication channels, organisational outcomes, organisational culture, and communication experience. the results indicated that the respondents preferred communication systems that provided them with more, timeous, transparent and continuous communication. for example, 92.3% (n=60) said that they would like to receive information on the performance of the library more often, with a mean of 4.48 (m = 4.48, sd = .79). a total of 80.3% (n=53) indicated that they often received information on personnel news (e.g. new appointments, changes in remuneration packages), with a mean of 4.00 (m = 4.00, sd = .96). similarly, 81.4% (n=56) said that they currently received information mostly from their immediate supervisor, with a mean of 4.25 (m = 4.25, sd = .95). in addition, 41.2% (n=28) indicated that regular communication from management created an atmosphere of trust in the library. in terms of the informational/relational construct, many of the respondents, 83.6% (n=56), indicated that their immediate supervisor often provided feedback on the communication that they had sent, with a mean of 4.30 (m = 4.30, sd = .82). the results further revealed that 81.4% (n=57) agreed that their relationship with their supervisor was excellent, to such an extent that supervisors alerted them when they made mistakes, with a mean of 3.79 (m = 3.79, sd = .9). the level of agreement on informational/relational constructs are presented in table 3. 6766 mandiwana & barker table 3: level of agreement on informational/relational construct level of agreement on informational/ relational level of agreement mean std dev s tr on gl y ag re e a gr ee n ei th er ag re e no r di sa gr ee d is ag re e s tr on gl y di sa gr ee q16b. my supervisor alerts me when i make mistakes 11.4% (8) 70.0% (49) 10.0% (7) 2.9% (2) 5.7% (4) 3.79 .90 q16a. my supervisor listens to me 12.9% (9) 64.3% (45) 11.4% (8) 4.3% (3) 7.1% (5) 3.71 1.00 q16c. i trust my supervisor 11.6% (8) 56.5% (39) 20.3% (14) 5.8% (4) 5.8% (4) 3.62 .97 q16d. i receive constructive feedback from my supervisor on my performance appraisal 17.4% (12) 53.6% (37) 11.6% (8) 5.8% (4) 11.6% (8) 3.59 1.19 q16e. the library encourages continuous staff development through talent management programmes 7.4% (5) 47.1% (32) 33.8% (23) 1.5% (1) 10.3% (7) 3.4 1.02 q16f. the library’s communication makes me to identify with the institution 9.0% (6) 32.8% (22) 41.8% (28) 9.0% (6) 7.5% (5) 3.27 1.01 6766 measuring integrated internal communication level of agreement on informational/ relational level of agreement mean std dev s tr on gl y ag re e a gr ee n ei th er ag re e no r di sa gr ee d is ag re e s tr on gl y di sa gr ee q16g. regular communication from management creates an atmosphere of trust in the library 5.9% (4) 35.3% (24) 35.3% (24) 14.7% (10) 8.8% (6) 3.15 1.04 q16i. communication practices are flexible to suit organisational emergencies 3.0% (2) 37.3% (25) 34.3% (23) 13.4% (9) 11.9% (8) 3.06 1.06 q16h. the attitude toward communication at the library is basically healthy 5.9% (4) 32.4% (22) 32.4% (22) 19.1% (13) 10.3% (7) 3.04 1.09 the preferred channels of communication included face-to-face meetings [73.8% (n=48) with a mean of 3.22 (m = 3.22, sd = 1.01), info-web [73.8% (n=48) with a mean of 3.37 (m = 3.37, sd = .98), written communication such as letters and memos [72.3% (n=47) with a mean of 3.20 (m = 3.20, sd = .99), emails [76.9%, (n=50) with a mean of 3.58 (m = 3.58, sd = .92), lib-com [60.3% (n=38) with a mean of 3.29 (m = 3.29, sd = 1.21) and the newsletters [54.7% (n=35) with a mean of 2.81 (m = 2.81, sd = 1.23). less than 50% of the respondents indicated that they receive some information from the following informal channels of communication: grapevine 30.1%, sms 37.7%, facebook 32.8%, myspace 13.6%, whatsapp 29.5%, instant messenger 14.8%, twitter 21.3%, and instagram 11.5%. major findings are that 91.4% (n=64) indicated that they want to be engaged on a regular basis on changes taking place in the library, with a mean of 4.53, which was close to 5 (m = 4.53, sd = .76) and 87.5% (n=56) want to receive information on employee benefits, with a mean of 4.44 (m = 4.44, sd = .75). results on the construct on the amount of information received through informal channels of communication revealed that 59.1% (n=39) of the respondents indicated that they received great information from informal face-to-face conversations with a mean of 3.08 (m = 3.08, sd = 1.15). less than 50% of the respondents indicated that they received some information from informal channels like the grapevine, sms, facebook, myspace, whatsapp, instant messenger, twitter, and instagram. the percentages were 30.1%, 37.7%, 32.8%, 13.6%, 29.5%, 14.8%, 21.3% and 11.5% 6968 mandiwana & barker respectively. moreover, 52.5% (n=31) of the respondents indicated that they received very little information through myspace, with an average of 2.31 (m = 2.21, sd = 1.64); 55.7% (n=34) received very little information through instant messenger, with a mean of 2.20 (m = 2.20, sd = 1.59); and 60.7% (n=37) received very little information through instagram, with a mean of 2.13 (m = 2.13, sd = 1.62). furthermore, the respondents indicated that they received a significant amount of information through informal face-to-face conversations. the construct of organisational outcomes was assessed by using a 5-point likert-type scale that ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). a total of 61.4% (n=43) agreed that they did get recognition for outstanding achievements with a mean of 3.39 (m = 3.39, sd = 1.05). more than half, 53.6% (n=37), agreed that they were informed of their progress in the library up to this point in time, with a mean of 3.33 (m = 3.33, sd = 1.00). fifty percent (50%) agreed that they received regular updates on the library’s achievement of objectives, with a mean of 3.22 (m = 3.22, sd = 1.05). all standard deviations were close to one, indicating that the majority gave ratings between 3 and 5 (±1 standard deviation from the mean). in terms of the construct of organisational culture, the majority of the respondents, 69.7% (n=46), agreed that they participated in staff meetings that were held on a regular basis, with a mean of 3.64 (m = 3.64, sd = .97). a total of 62.7% (n=42) agreed that the library accommodated the communication needs of people with disabilities, such as audio equipment, with a mean of 3.46 (m = 3.46, sd = 1.04), and 55.4% (n=36) agreed that they made sure that information services were customised to the specific needs of an individual client, with a mean of 3.45 (m = 3.45, sd = 1.02). a total of 57.9% (n=40) agreed that the library values, as contained in the service charter, were clearly communicated to them, with a mean of 3.41 (m = 3.41, sd = 1.03), 64.8% (n=44) agreed that the people they worked with functioned as a team, with a mean of 3.38 (m = 3.38, sd = 1.15), and 54.5% (n=36) agreed that they had a say in decisions that affected their work, with a mean of 3.35 (m = 3.35, sd = 1.13). the results on communication experiences indicated that the experiences of the employees regarding the communication system of the library were both positive and negative. less than half of the respondents (45%) indicated that the library’s communication system is effective. a few respondents (21%) reported the ineffectiveness of the communication system, and 34% of the respondents indicated that there was neither effective nor ineffective communication. negative communication experiences were mostly encountered with members of top management, and those included poor or lack of communication, and lack of feedback and transparency on the minutes of meetings and on the achievement of goals and objectives of the library. based on the above results, it could be argued that the employees are satisfied with some of the communication that takes place in the library. this was confirmed by the views of the respondents who agreed that they participated in staff meetings that were held on a regular basis; the library accommodated the communication needs of people with disabilities, such as audio equipment; they made sure that information services were customised to the specific needs of an individual client; the library 6968 measuring integrated internal communication values, as contained in the service charter, were clearly communicated to them; the people they worked with functioned as a team; and that they had a say in decisions that affected their work. degrees of relationships between the constructs the pearson correlation analysis, which analyses the strength of the linear relationship between two normally distributed constructs, was used to determine the extent of the relationship between constructs (hauke & kossowski 2011). in terms of the proposed guideline, r represents the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. the “eyeball method” proposes that an r equal to 0 to .2 reflects a weak or non-existent relationship, .2 to .4 a weak relationship, .4 to .6 a moderate relationship, .6 to .8 a strong relationship, and .8 to 1.0 a very strong relationship. the correlations, which were done at the 5% level of significance (salkind 2018), are presented in table 4. 7170 mandiwana & barker ta b l e 4 : p e a r s o n c o r r e la t io n c o e f f ic ie n t s o f t h e c o n s t r u c t s c on st ru ct m ea n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1. in fo rm at io n re ce iv ed 3. 36 2. in fo rm at io n de si re d 4. 34 .3 99 ** – 3. s ou rc es o f i nf or m at io n 3. 36 .6 20 ** .2 84 * – 4. f ee db ac k on c om m un ic at io n se nt 3. 39 .3 12 ** .0 87 .5 84 ** – 5. a m ou nt o f i nf or m at io n re ce iv ed th ro ug h fo rm al c ha nn el s of co m m un ic at io n 2. 99 .3 39 ** .2 16 .4 98 ** .4 09 ** – 6. a m ou nt o f i nf or m at io n re ce iv ed th ro ug h in fo rm al c ha nn el s of co m m un ic at io n 2. 50 .2 87 * .2 47 * .3 63 ** .2 12 .6 30 ** – 7. r el at io na l 3. 24 .1 86 -.1 24 .2 70 * .0 80 .1 74 .2 34 – 8. in fo rm at io na l/ re la tio na l 3. 44 .3 33 ** .0 80 .2 01 .0 26 .4 56 ** .3 66 ** .4 35 ** – 9. o rg an is at io na l o ut co m es 3. 13 .4 62 ** .1 27 .4 33 ** .2 01 .4 12 ** .2 20 .4 01 ** .5 67 ** – 10 . o rg an is at io na l c ul tu re 4. 42 .2 62 * -.0 76 .2 60 * .1 93 .3 47 ** .1 65 .5 96 ** .5 54 ** .6 67 ** – * p <. 05 a nd ** p <. 01 7170 measuring integrated internal communication in terms of the relationships between the constructs, the results of the correlation coefficient analysis revealed two types: strong relationships and weak relationships. examples include the construct on information received that had a strong relationship or statistically significant positive correlation with information desired; source of information; feedback on communication; amount of information received through formal channels of communication; amount of information received through informal channels of communication; and relational, informational and organisational culture. on the other hand, information desired had a weak statistically significant positive relationship with the factor on sources of information and the amount of information received through informal channels of communication. the composite construct on information sources had a moderately significant positive correlation with feedback on communication sent, information received through formal channels of communication, and organisational outcomes. conclusion and recommendations the identified communication audit instruments (csq & ica), complemented by the ocs and the cit, were adapted positively to develop and test the new proposed iica tool in the unisa library. the research findings answered the research question by recommending the iica tool as the most adequate tool for measuring iic in the unisa library, with a cronbach’s alpha of .950, which is excellent. however, this is the first time the instrument has been used to test the south african multicultural perspective and to integrate the ocs and the cit with the communication audit instruments, and it was tested at only one institution. given that south africa is a developing country, the iica tool recognises the importance of some constructs from existing research, with specific emphasis on the following additional constructs: organisational values, employment equity legislation, and the variables of customised service, diversity, and ubuntu. these additional constructs are not evident in previous communication audit instruments or in the findings of previous studies; hence, it is posited that the results make a unique contribution to the field of organisational communication. it is therefore recommended that the study be replicated in other institutions and organisations to validate the results and to further explore the impact of telecommuting on iic. the measuring tool can also be used as a benchmark for future studies. the need for this study is best summarised by carvalho (2013: 374) as follows: the communication audit helped one realise that ic needs to be improved to achieve higher levels of internal and general market orientation, which can lead to better organisational performance and job satisfaction. 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(second edition). oxford: pergamon press. zwijze-koning, k.h. & de jong, m.d.t. 2015. network analysis as a communication audit instrument: uncovering communicative strengths and weaknesses within organizations. journal of business and technical communication 29(1): 36-60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651914535931 https://www.academia.edu/2987170/what_is_organizational_communication https://www.academia.edu/2987170/what_is_organizational_communication https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2015.1025090 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203414958 https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488414525450 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203836071 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203836071 https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651914535931 _hlk514545516 _hlk74302087 _hlk74302206 _hlk74679346 _hlk74198345 _hlk74200920 _hlk74666131 _hlk74682261 _hlk74686642 _hlk74316720 107106 107106 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance: a qualitative critique of the south african advertising industry abstract meaning and purpose in brand advertising has gained prominence in society (deloitte 2019. millennial and generation z consumers in particular demand brands to have a clear position on social causes they care about. consequently, the advertising industry is progressively recognising the importance of investing time and resources to gain an in-depth understanding of the prevailing political and sociocultural dynamics that affect targeted consumers in the social environments in which their brands exist. this enables brands to craft strategies that foster a strong cognitive and emotional connection within a diverse consumer base (keller 2009; badrinarayanan et al. 2016); and leverage these to craft meaningful advertisements that enhance brand resonance, brand equity, and social change (enslin 2019; minar 2016). the aim of this study was to examine the social constructions of gender and queer identity in advertising through the lens of brand communication planners; and to understand how the voices of the queer community are included in the planning and production of advertisements that resonate. methodologically, a critical qualitative research approach was applied to investigate the experiences of the participants. data were collected using semi-structured interviews. queer theory and brand resonance theory were used to analyse and discuss the emerging themes. keywords: advertising; brand leadership; brand resonance; marketing communication; brand communication; queer marginality; queer identity; social change introduction despite progressive developments and notable progress in the advertising industry, the advertising strategies developed by brand communication planners and creative directors in advertising agencies often fail to address the prevalent problem of marginalisation of queer people khangelani dziba the independent institute of education: vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : khangelani.dziba@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-6589-8104 dr carla enslin the independent institute of education: vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : censlin@vegaschool. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-6874-2690 dr nceba ndzwayiba the independent institute of education: vega school, johannesburg, south africa email : nceba.ndzwayiba@ gmail.com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-5688-9035 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.8 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 106-124 date submitted: 6 august 2022 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:khangelani.dziba@gmail.com mailto:khangelani.dziba@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9090-7145 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9090-7145 mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com mailto:censlin@vegaschool.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 mailto:nceba.ndzwayiba@gmail.com mailto:nceba.ndzwayiba@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2438-2686 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.8 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 107106 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance 107106 (rocha-rodrigues 2016; roderick 2017). when the industry attempts to address gender in advertising, it often misrepresents the full spectrum of the lgbtqqiap+ community, centring a particular narrative that is often informed by cis-gender and cis-heteropatriarchal understanding of the community (king 2016; timke & o’barr 2017). this shortcoming mirrors a broader societal challenge that is well articulated by mcewen (2021). mcewen (2021) posits that despite the work that has been done by liberation and decolonisation movements to transform and dismantle the stronghold of coloniality, there is still more to be done to dismantle the colonial legacy relating to the construction of gender and the normalised cis-hetero-patriarchal gender roles; a view that is shared by other feminists and scholars of gender who seek to dismantle this system (butler 1998). research focused on understanding the social constructions of gender by creative directors and brand communication planners in south africa’s leading advertising agencies indicate that they view such constructions as critical to understanding their influence on the production of gendered advertisements, and whether they help to challenge queer marginality to create a strong resonance with this marginalised social group. problem statement the approach of south africa’s brand advertising industry towards being more inclusive of queer people is improving. some of the most contemporary examples that can be referenced from 2021 and 2022 include, but are not limited to, the work done by brands such as lux, chicken licken, stimorol, and nando’s where members of the community have been represented and, in many ways, have had their stories told. notwithstanding this progress, south africa’s advertising industry, as a microcosm of society, is involved in the reproduction of cis-heteronormative standards through the non-recognition of queer identity as a continuum in the planning and production of advertisements. additionally, when the industry produces queer-inclusive advertisements, the advertisements often misappropriate queer liberation activism for the sole purpose of achieving the objectives of the pink economy or pink capitalism. pink capitalism is based on the belief that queer people have more disposable income and buying power compared to heterosexual families (d’emilio 2016). the pink economy is attractive to brands as it contributes an estimated $23 trillion (usd) to the world economy (lgbt capital 2020). in the scramble for queer consumers, brand communication planners and creative directors tend to produce advertisements that portray queer bodies within the extremes of ultra-femininity and hypermasculinity to consumers (timke & o’barr 2017), a perspective that reifies and reinforces the existence of queer bodies through the prism of heteronormative male-female cisgender binary (king 2016). this misappropriation, misrepresentation, and nonrepresentation of queer people triggered the research interest to study and better understand the processes followed by the advertising industry, as well as the values of practitioners that are involved in the process of planning and producing advertisements that resonate with all. it can be reasoned that such values influence both the process of producing the advertisement, and the outcome. 109108 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba research aim the lacuna exists in contextualising the genesis of the advertiser’s thinking (social constructions) within their lived professional experiences. therefore, the main objective of this study was to understand the social construction of gender by south african advertising brand communication planners and creative directors, and how they included queer people in the planning for brand resonance in advertising. to adequately address the main aim, the following objectives were formulated: ♦ to explore brand communication planners’ and creative directors’ social construction of gender and queer identity which may also reinforce forms of queer exclusion; ♦ to establish how south african brand communication planners and creative directors include/or exclude queer identities in the planning of brand advertisements to achieve brand resonance; and ♦ to understand the role the advertising industry could play in the emancipation and liberation of queer people through advertisements that resonate with consumers, or identify the challenges that might lead the industry to be resistant to playing an emancipatory role. literature review and insights according to asmall (2010), the influence of the apartheid regime was the foundation upon which the south african advertising industry was based when television advertising came into effect in 1978. television was introduced in south africa in 1976 and was targeted at white people (asmall 2010). the main contestation by the then ruling government centred race pollination through advertising, which would give power and rise to the voices of black people who at the time were viewed as inferior to their white counterparts (asmall 2010). the apartheid regime did not only enforce racial segregation but also normalised heteropatriarchy through criminalisation of same-sex relations; thus making south africa a white heterosexual state (judge 2021). according to judge (ibid.), the shift in how marginalised groups were treated during this era came to an end when the first vote in 1994 for all south africans (inclusive of those previously maligned) came into effect. the vote would inaugurate a new constitution and dispensation that would not only realise equal racial rights; but further recognise the freedom of the queer community which comprised of anti-discrimination laws on the basis of gender and sexual orientation and the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships and same-sex unions (judge 2021). an understanding of this historical background illustrates how transformation of any kind requires political will which ultimately has an impact on everything society is able to do. thus, it can be inferred that this recognition further had an influence on how the advertising industry was designed. planning towards being more inclusive of marginalised groups was and continues to be a necessity. the alienation of marginalised consumer schemas is essentially what this article sought to examine with respect to the queer community. 109108 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance this is precisely because of the influence and power the advertising industry has on different segments of consumers; and by extension, society in terms of social roles and images that are acceptable and desirable (pollay & mittal 1993; burns 2003). the opposite of alienation is resonance and is a theoretical lens that this research adopts. the core of advertising is to market to consumers by appealing to a particular narrative that has relevance to their lived experience, thus influencing their buying behaviour (mailki 2020). this process in brand advertising is called brand resonance. brand resonance is a theoretical construct that was founded by leading marketing scholar kevin keller (2009) as part of his customer-based brand equity model. the model prioritises the customer and ensures that brands follow key steps in advertising to build relationships with their consumers. this relationship allows consumers to be able to connect with brands and their purpose through advertising as a vehicle of their brand communication. this insight highlights how advertising plays a crucial role in society insofar as having meaning and purpose in the minds of consumers, thereby resonating with all consumers (spence 2009) by educating, challenging, and shifting perceptions on issues like queer marginality in advertising. brand resonance enables an understanding of how critical it is for brands to establish themselves within the consumer’s psyche to establish solid meaning and purpose (aaker 1996; keller 2019). brand resonance also allows consumers to see themselves adequately reflected in the brands they choose to support, allowing brands to achieve brand equity in terms of financial gain and having a relationship with consumers (keller 2019). from a queer theory perspective, the literature confirms that the dominant constructions of gender and sexuality are predicated on the teachings of society in terms of the entrenched and accepted sociocultural roles assumed by male and female bodies (butler 1993). the literature also confirmed that the social framework of gender in society is socially constructed and thus, not a fact of nature or biology (butler 1990; 1993; 1998). people who do not adhere to the discursive frameworks or societal reference of what is considered legitimate according to the societal standards are, as a result, marginalised (raja 2019). the queer community, because of this normality of cis gender identity, has been marginalised and illegitimated. the queer theory literature reviewed further illuminated the complexity of gender, and cautioned against the conflation of sex and gender, as these denote different meanings (ndzwayiba & steyn 2019). queer theory adopts a process of debunking the dominant knowledge paradigms of sex, gender, and sexuality and demonstrates that these are products of power that are strategically deployed to maintain a status quo of inequality and compulsory heteronormativity (rich 1980; raja 2019). although mostly found in the global north, there are empirical studies that had examined queer marginality in advertising by leading scholars as a way of challenging the representation and misrepresentation of the lgbtqqiap+ community. the reviewed theoretical and empirical literature showed that some in the advertising industry were progressively engaged in the critical work of deconstructing the gender binary using one, or a combination of theory and models. thus far, scholars in this domain tend largely to focus on deconstructing the representation of gender through the heteronormative binary lens in advertisements. some authors lament the continued 111110 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba exclusion of minority groups, including the broader spectrum of lgbtqqiap+ people. others argue that the evident limited growth in the inclusion of gay men, particularly gay male couples, in advertisements is largely driven by capitalist interest within the confines of the pink pound rather than a genuine intent to engender real social change. brand resonance (keller 2009) is concerned with the extent to which brands can build relationships and connections with consumers, which can ultimately be leveraged to achieve brand equity. this is achieved by ensuring that the four dimensions of keller’s (2009) brand equity model are achieved in terms of loyalty, attachment, community, and engagement. keller’s model (2009) illuminates how the psychology and emotions of consumers matter through representation and that they can see themselves authentically portrayed by brands. brands like calvin klein (figure 1) and ralph lauren (figure 2) have set the tone globally on how not to exploit the pink economy. rather, they are examples of what it means to plan for brand resonance with the purpose of engendering meaningful change and what it means to be allies of the lgbtqqiap+ community at every touchpoint of their brands. this is particularly important in terms of how brands position their relationship with the community. figure 1: black trans model jari jones fronts calvin klein’s pride campaign 111110 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance (marketing the rainbow 2020) figure 2: ralph lauren pride capsule collection the brand resonance theory was adopted as a suitable lens to merge with queer theory in this interdisciplinary research to understand the relationship between the advertising industry and the queer community. not only that, but it was adopted as a lens through which to critically study how gender is understood and interpreted in brand advertisements to achieve brand resonance with a broader spectrum of society, particularly in emerging markets such as the global south and south africa. some of the guiding principles include authenticity and understanding of consumers in terms of what is of value to them with respect to the brands they choose to support (deloitte 2019). this would then lead to brands being able to communicate effectively with consumers by leveraging secondary associations to land their core reasons of being, also referred to as meaning and purpose by keller (2009) and neumeier (2005; 2020). once this stage has been activated, the four dimensions of brand resonance can be achieved, thereby creating a greater sense of community and engagement that would allow for greater conversations that, in turn, yield not only equity but to also influence how consumers view society (aaker 1996). furthermore, having a greater sense of community with consumers also allows brands to be able to tap into contemporary trends as a way of co-creating brand solutions that resonate. central to this research, therefore, are these principles and how they can be used to create an environment in advertising that is more inclusive of queer people. the implementation of these key insights would achieve what minar (2016) advocates in terms of advertising; ceasing merely reflecting society on itself and instead, engendering much needed change for marginalised members of the lgbtqqiap+ community. 113112 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba research methodology the study adopted a critical qualitative research (cqr) approach to investigate the possible entrenched normative ideas of gender and sexuality in the advertising industry. critical qualitative research connects social phenomena to broader social and historical events to uncover the ubiquitous structures of power, concealed assumptions, taken-for-granted dogmas, and related tyrannical discourses with the aim of calling for real social change. participants in this study comprised of industry brand communication planners and creative directors from leading south african agencies that shape and influence brand advertising approaches. these two groups are central in the planning and production of an advertisement. shukla (2020) further asserts that the success, reliability, and trustworthiness of a study are all dependent on the right sample selection. for this study, the researchers reviewed the agency winners of the industry awards in the south african advertising industry and targeted the brand planners and creative directors working in these agencies for participation in the research. the researchers systematically reviewed adfocus industry awards listings. adfocus is an award platform that is recognised within the industry for honouring the best agencies and practitioners who have produced notable results in terms of strategic thinking and execution, business performance and growth, management, and empowerment (adfocus 2019). these adfocus awards also recognise campaigns that affect and improve the bottom line, contribute towards social change, and strengthen the moral fibre of society. from the 2019 adfocus winners, the 15 top agencies were selected as part of the first round. the researchers then resolved to select the top five within the 15 winning agencies and invited the brand communication planners and senior creative directors working in these agencies to participate in the study. from a sampling perspective, the study relied on guiding principles of shukla (2020) and adams et al. (2014) to select the most suitable population group for the purpose of gaining rich insights from their views and experiences of the phenomenon of inquiry. thus, a purposive sampling technique was applied (maxwell 2008). these comprised senior brand communication planners and senior creative directors from five awardwinning agencies, from the initial list of 15 who agreed to participate in this inquiry. the number of participants was guided by data saturation. thus, the researchers stopped recruiting new participants once the data collected fairly represented the social realities of the studied population group and no new themes emerged (maxwell 2008). research findings and discussion five themes were constructed from the analysis of data collected. these themes and their subthemes are discussed in the context of each research objective outline in the preceding sections of this article. 113112 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance ro1: to explore brand communication planners’ and creative directors’ social construction of gender and queer identity the social construction of gender and queer identity by brand communication planners and creative directors was, in fact, multi-layered as they understood, in their retort of gender and sexuality, that these were two different constructs. this explanation was in line with the research objective and the insights arising from the reviewed literature. however, a more nuanced finding and theme was constructed in this part of the discussion with the participants, in which it was established that there were positive and negative connotations to gender and queer identity. these sentiments during the researcher’s discussion with all participants in all specialties were echoed in terms of the christian values with which the majority of the participants were raised. these values supported a particular education on the roles and functions to be performed by the male and female bodies (butler 1993; mcewen 2021); values that ultimately influenced how they approached the planning and production of advertisements and, furthermore, the reactions they had experienced in their profession relating to other forms of expression of gender identity. social constructivism, which is the epistemological assumption and paradigm adopted by this study, provides a context on how the very assumption of gender identity being fixed and an innate inheritance of the bodies we are born with, is problematic (butler 1993) and further results in social constructs of society that seek to maintain a particular social order (butler 1990). although participants were able to learn and unlearning certain societal perceptions defended about gender and sexuality, it was not something that they could influence on their own as brand agency partners, especially if they wanted to include such insights on sex and gender in the brand strategies and creative productions planned for brand resonance. the reason for this is due to the sentiments shared by butler (1990; 1993) on the maintenance of a particular social order and power dynamics. the initial objective was therefore critical in establishing the context from which brand communication planners and creative directors derived, which influenced their approach to sex and gender in advertising. understanding this lens would align, or misalign, with the findings presented by contemporary gender scholars. therefore, it must be noted that there was a clear understanding from the participants of what the sex and gender constructs denoted and how they should be applied. theme one refers to the negative and positive connotations of gender and queer identity and, more specifically, subtheme 1.3 regarding some of the participants’ self-examination of how they approach gender and sexuality, which is an example of how heightened their awareness is of the fluidity involved with gender and sexuality in contemporary society and the desired need to engender change. however, the negative connotations were not necessarily associated with the participants’ own conceptions of gender and queer identity, which were more reflective of current times where gender has been expressed in different forms and facets. in fact, they attempted to bring these constructs and concepts into some of the productions they were tasked with. however, in the instance where they could potentially incorporate gender fluidity 115114 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba and queer inclusive ideas into brand solutions and brand advertisements, it was often rejected by their clients. the rejection of queer inclusivity is because of social constructions that aim to maintain a particular social order around heteronormativity (raja 2019; mcewen 2021). this insight is linked to theme two, which is discussed in objective two. ro2: to establish how south african brand communication planners and creative directors include or exclude queer identities in the planning of brand advertisements to achieve brand resonance what arose in the discussion with the participants revealed that clients determine the topics that can be explored through their briefs to agencies and that they are key role players in influencing the outcome of the process, followed by brand communication planners and creative directors in their production of advertisements. this revelation was not necessarily referring to the team structures of the agencies and the consultants they worked with that were queer identifying. rather, it was pertaining to whether queer featuring advertisements would ultimately get to be seen in the public domain and in their brands. it is the critical theory realm that exposes the positionality of certain stakeholders and how, in both said and unsaid ways, they perpetuate the maintenance of a particular social order. this cements butler’s (1993) argument on how power and dominance thrive unabated in certain spaces. understanding the general attitudes in relation to the second objective elicited the key reasons why the participants held the views they did. most of the participants indicated that gender and queer identity, in the process of planning and producing advertisements, was largely predicated on the value their clients viewed in terms of being inclusive and diverse in their brands. this was largely pinned to the kind of briefs being issued to agencies that often do nothing to debunk demographics and socio-psychographics. it can therefore be argued that indeed, the meaning of these constructs is often taken for granted. they are in fact approached from a cis-gendered and heteropatriarchal approach, which is alienating of the varying spectrum of marginalised groups such as lgbtqqiap+ people. as was evidenced and discussed in the literature, sex, gender, and sexuality should not be conflated (ndzwayiba & steyn 2019) and, if it is accepted that this argument is true, it becomes evident that how brands currently categorise demographics and socio-psychographics and how brand advertising agencies respond to briefs issued by their clients is problematic and requires re-evaluation. this relates particularly to how, when the industry refers to gender in briefs, it refers to the biological nature of bodies. however, within this classification of sex, there is a disparity, complexity, and exclusion of people who do not necessarily identify with the prescribed binary constructs. contemporary literature further showed that this essentialist way of approaching segmentation and consumer profiling is alienating, oppressive, and reinforcing of cis-gendered heteropatriarchal binaries. 115114 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance while the participants agreed that their role should be to educate clients on the environment in which their brands exist, and in terms of the varying identity prisms that need to be represented through the various brand touchpoints to achieve resonance, their influence could only go as far as their clients allowed. the power dynamics between clients and their agencies is evident, which if not used progressively could yield further oppressive reproductions of marginality and exclusion. subthemes 2.1 (some participants acknowledge the importance of diversity in internal teams and brands they represent as a way of driving diversity in thinking and approach) and 3.2 (no inclusion of (external) queer identifying parties to examine the resonance of strategies except for team members within agencies who identify as queer) demonstrate how some of the agencies realised the importance of diversity in internal teams and brands they represent as a way of driving diversity in thinking and approach. this realisation answered, in many ways, objective two of this study on how agencies realised an opportunity to be more inclusive of queer identities in their planning process. alcoff’s (1996) text, the problem of speaking for others, contends a priori of points around how, when others speak for or on behalf of “them”, it distorts the meaning and truth of the people being spoken for. these include centring a particular narrative from a particular position that may not necessarily resonate with others or may affect those who are listening and how they interpret what is said, or how the one who is speaking is influenced by their set of experiences that may not be the same as those they are speaking for. she further contends that it does not mean that others should or cannot use their position to advocate for those who may not be able to speak for themselves. rather, she suggests the need to be more aware of how complex this task is and how it needs to be an assumed collaborative role. this could not be truer for the brand advertising industry, which is positioned in an influential role in society and thus needs to be aware of its responsibility. most of the participants narrated that it was rare that they had the opportunity to action what has been documented in contemporary literature, primarily because of the nature of the agencies, which is fast-paced and often lacks the budgets to conduct focus groups to test the resonance of brand advertisements centring queer people. according to the participants, this task was not spoken of, and the responsibility was often left to team members who openly identified as queer, particularly from a strategic planning point of view. some of the creative director participants did, however, try to seek queer identifying consultants to help them bring queer-centred narratives to life in ways that would resonate. if alcoff (1996) is understood correctly, being noninclusive both in agencies and brands is problematic, and perhaps it is something that agencies and brands should start looking into and having clear interventions towards addressing it. to further respond to objective two, the research needed to explore what processes were followed by agencies in the creation of brand advertisements that resonate. the answer to this question would further elicit to what extent queer people were included in the planning and production of brand advertisements that resonate. the 117116 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba roles described by the participants were in line with those established by the founding fathers of advertising – bruce barton in 1923, roose reeves in 1950, david ogilvy in 1955, theodore levitt in 1960, and phillip rotter in 1967. they understood that the role of advertising was highly functional with clear sales objectives and therefore had to ensure the uptake of the brand product. while this still forms part of the core of advertising and a measure of success for brand communication planners and creative directors, the approach has evolved to include more sociocultural trends around inclusivity and diversity. although the focus of the research was on participants whose backgrounds were agencies, the importance of diversity in thinking, organisational culture, and representation in brands was not and should not be understood as a priority that only applies to the advertising agency industry. an equal part of successfully achieving diversity and inclusion of all in society needs to be a matter that corporate brands prioritise as part of their mandate as well. this would ensure that the voices of those who are often marginalised are heard and efforts are made to redress the inequalities. this thinking addresses the second research objective and supports the argument made by alcoff (1996) that exposes the problem of speaking for others, and ormsher’s (2021) text that investigates how advertisers can work responsibly with trans talent. in other words, how can brands, and by extension agencies, be more inclusive of those that they aim to represent in the planning and production of brand advertisements that resonate? the last and final section of answering objective two considered whether the matter of gender and queer identity inclusivity was product category specific. this was informed by the literature that revealed that advertising had both functional and emotive approaches that could be applied in the production of advertisements (warc from home 2020). the responses of the participants indicated that they needed to understand the brand briefs in the context of these approaches before applying them. some of the participants agreed that, while there should not be certain brand categories that would be viewed as being able to opt in or out of being inclusive of queer people in their brands, this was tougher for brands that were more traditionally entrenched and well established. the reason for their inflexibility was rooted in capitalistic priorities that aimed to achieve the business bottom line rather than build a relationship with their consumers and become involved with them. the participants stated that this was influenced by several factors, including those identified in themes one and two, on the perceived unreadiness of consumers to engage with advertisements that do not necessarily reflect a cis-gendered schema. it was also because, from a brand perspective, it was sometimes harder to try something new when something has been perceived as always working for the brand in the past. this hesitance can result in brands being less relevant, appearing to be less innovative, and as a result losing resonance with its involved consumers. however, the participants did reflect that younger brands, some referred to as challenger brands, are more fluid and, as a result, more agile and capable of exploring new territories that are inclusive of queer identities. furthermore, most of the participants concede that there is an opportunity within established brands to take advantage of what brand leadership is about, and 117116 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance change perspectives that will encourage them to be more inclusive and reflective of society. the ability to do this would place them in a position to influence other larger brands in all categories to do the same. while the participants reflected on the issue of queer representation that is better suited to certain categories such as the alcohol and beverage, banking, beauty, fashion, fast foods, lifestyle, and technology sectors, it was because the approach to the planning and production of advertisements for these categories was more likely to allow for selfexpression as mentioned in subtheme 4.2 (brands that allow for self-expression are more prone to be inclusive than others). this encourages the use of diverse identities who use these products and services. however, participants experienced resistance from some clients who did not always allow these approaches to come to life, as evidenced in theme two (clients determine the topic and brief). further arising was the authentic use of queer bodies and not merely being performative or ticking boxes, as argued by ormsher (2021) and houston (2021). rather, it should be part of who and what brands are about, thus achieving brand resonance through various touchpoints where queer consumers are able to see themselves reflected in brands equally, have brand experiences, and ultimately build connections with brands (keller 2009; enslin 2019; neumeier 2020). ro3: to understand the role that the advertising industry could play in the emancipation and liberation of queer people through advertisements that resonate with consumers it was important to establish this understanding, considering the trajectory international counterparts have taken in brand advertising, to ensure that inclusivity and representation are at the centre of what they do (see calvin klein and ralph lauren examples in the literature and insight discussion) and in line with what their millennial and generation z consumers are calling for from the brands that they choose to support. south africa is influenced by global trends and therefore, if the advancement of marginalised groups is a project that has taken place globally, it should be championed in the same manner as all other social causes around race and class are championed through brands. this is in line with what deloitte (2019) demonstrates in a market study that shows that meaningful brands are those with the intention of resonating with their target market. these brands bring meaning and matter to today’s purposedriven consumer who wants to derive value from brands that influence social change in society. the meaningful brands index for 2021 also revealed two significant statistics that informed the third objective and should perhaps require advertisers and brand managers to strongly consider moving forward. it relates to brand resonance. these found that 73% of the respondents wanted brands that will make a difference for the betterment of society and the planet. these respondents would not care if 75% of the brands disappeared overnight. this revelation further entrenched the importance of brand communication building that would ultimately ensure meaningful and 119118 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba harmonious strategies with operational analytics and design to ensure the success and survival of brands. the relevance of this insight is that it ignites brand resonance thinking, which essentially centres the relationships brands build with consumers and ultimately society through causes that they care about as a way of creating meaning in their lives. the meaning created achieves the objective of being purposeful in society and influencing the shift of perceptions that could ultimately lead to social change. as evidenced by the studies reviewed, today’s value for brands will come from goodvertising; brand advertising that is change-driven in nature (minar 2016). when executed well, it has the potential for leading brands to gain support from a wider spectrum of consumers while making a positive impact on society. significantly, most of the participants interviewed affirmed that advertising plays an influential role in society because it can shape culture and subculture trends in the lives of consumers. it does this, according to the participants, by reinforcing what is seen in society as acceptable, and this forms part of brand narratives and ultimately, brand resonance. it is because of this potential influence that advertising should intentionally advance issues related to the rise of social consciousness, which is what millennials and generation x are increasingly requiring from brands. it aligns with theme three and subthemes 5.1 (promote tolerance and patience in society), 5.2 (educate society on trends and acceptable behaviours), and 5.3 (shaping and changing narratives in society (creating acceptable cultures)). this was specifically stated by one participant as follows: we need to remember that advertising creates culture. so, at the end of the day, we have a massive responsibility, i think, as advertisers…because what we say becomes popular culture. according to biztrends (2021), consumers are now at the forefront of setting the agenda for brands in terms of the kind of content they want to see coming from them. therefore, within its position of influence, advertising can shift the narrative on issues relating to marginalised groups and ensure representation across all levels of society, including those relating to gender and queer identity. additionally, some of the participants indicated that the advocation for representation of cis-gender identifying consumers, i.e., representation of women and black lives, has reached a stage where it happens organically. here’s the crazy thing. we’ve done that with the heteronormative society. we understand them in all their complexities because that’s all we’ve ever known. but the minute you start to talk about someone who’s different, then it’s like, oh, my god, when will it ever stop? will i ever get it? no. i say for as long as we are willing to share information, let’s be open. it is for this reason that the participants affirm that there could be no better time to start considering the subject matter of queer representation and further action championing issues relating to queer communities in a more profound way. to ensure that this level of inclusion and representation is authentically achieved, the participants 119118 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance acknowledged that it needs to be a collaborative effort with those they aim to speak to through their brands. this would achieve what alcoff (1996), houston (2021), and ormsher (2021) call for: working together with marginalised voices and telling their stories in an authentic and meaningful way. this approach would also have resonance with the broader community and educate them about a community that has often been underrepresented in its entirety. it would further position brands as working together with those who have not always been given the opportunity to influence and shape advertising. subtheme 5.4 (being representative and diverse in thinking and hiring teams) demonstrated how internally, the participants further suggested that they could improve the agency culture to allow for more diversity and inclusion in the types of human resources employed, and work environments that encourage different ways of approaching brand challenges. this, they stated, would need to be an assignment for those in leadership positions and who can influence decisions made. ultimately, participants agreed that brand advertising could play a more meaningful role in society and exploit its assets to empower those who may not have the platform. this sentiment is further echoed in global research: 73% of consumers believe brands must act now). however, to achieve success, both agencies and the clients they lead, would need to take on this task with the intent of changing, shaping, and influencing society as a way of achieving brand resonance. this would allow consumers to see themselves and the things that matter to them reflected in the brands they are loyal to (aaker 1996; keller 2009). to this end, the final theme (the societal responsibility of advertising) aligns with the third objective of this study, which was to determine to what extent the advertising industry could play an emancipatory and liberating role for queer people through brand advertisements that resonate with consumers. it was highlighted by the narrated experiences of the participants; that to achieve emancipation, this needed to be an endeavour undertaken internally and externally by the organisations. this was precisely because the advertising industry is influential and shapes subcultures in both spoken and unspoken ways. it was also made clear that, if the agenda of emancipation is made a priority across the different touchpoints of advertising, the desired change and transformation could be achieved, and there could be a greater level of brand resonance. furthermore, the change and transformation project for the betterment of the queer community needs to be a priority for all decision makers in the value chain, and not just for some of them. the systemic loop to queer marginality and planning for brand resonance after engaging in a discussion with participants and select brand managers on some of the themes emerging from the inquiry, the systemic loop below aims to highlight the structural challenges within the industry that could be explored as a tool to begin peeling the layers involved in achieving brand resonance. 121120 dziba, enslin & ndzwayiba subcultures in both spoken and unspoken ways. it was also made clear that, if the agenda of emancipation is made a priority across the different touchpoints of advertising, the desired change and transformation could be achieved, and there could be a greater level of brand resonance. furthermore, the change and transformation project for the betterment of the queer community needs to be a priority for all decision makers in the value chain, and not just for some of them. the systemic loop to queer marginality and planning for brand resonance after engaging in a discussion with participants and select brand managers on some of the themes emerging from the inquiry, the systemic loop below aims to highlight the structural challenges within the industry that could be explored as a tool to begin peeling the layers involved in achieving brand resonance. figure 3: systemic loop: queer marginality and planning for brand resonance the first step refers to a system overhaul, which was informed by the first theme and its subthemes (positive and negative connotations to gender and queer identity) and the first two additional insights (new ways of doing and institutional fears). it appears that the challenges faced by the industry as it relates to the aim and objectives of this research were interlinked and complex. from a brand perspective, the transformation project would involve brand marketing executives and decision figure 3: systemic loop: queer marginality and planning for brand resonance the first step refers to a system overhaul, which was informed by the first theme and its subthemes (positive and negative connotations to gender and queer identity) and the first two additional insights (new ways of doing and institutional fears). it appears that the challenges faced by the industry as it relates to the aim and objectives of this research were interlinked and complex. from a brand perspective, the transformation project would involve brand marketing executives and decision makers in leadership positions that clearly define their purpose and who they represent. this would need to be led by insights into who their target profile is and understanding the things they care about as a way of integrating them into their brand communication strategies to achieve brand resonance (kantar 2019). from an agency perspective, it would also involve ensuring that the teams working on the briefs of their clients are diverse, inclusive and reflective of the society in which they exist. in addition, they would need to challenge the fears of their clients related to exploring new ways of approaching brand communication to achieve brand resonance with their current and new consumers. they would be able to achieve this by keeping abreast of the latest 121120 queer marginality and planning for brand resonance contemporary research studies produced by contemporary scholars and practitioners. these scholars are armed with insights that they could use to lead their clients to new and unexplored terrains. the second and third steps relate to consumer schema and understanding of their nuanced identities and are linked to theme two (clients determine the topic and brief) and insight three (debunking key constructs in briefs). these two insights reveal that appreciation for the developments occurs not only in industry, but in the consumer schema in terms of their more nuanced identities. evidenced by research conducted by various institutions (deloitte 2019; kantar 2019), such would allow brands and industry to evolve and create brand communication strategies and advertisements that are more diverse and inclusive of marginalised groups and identities. the rewards of doing this would ensure brands achieve resonance and build meaningful relationships with their consumers that would ultimately breed loyalty and affinity to brands. fourthly, inclusive client and agency culture, which is linked to theme five of the primary research, would allow both stakeholders to achieve a lot more in terms of working closely together with more diverse people in terms of background and identity. it would lead to the fifth step where practitioners would be able to interrogate briefs with more vigour, thus allowing industry to see segmentation in a less egalitarian manner and create relevant strategies and brand advertisement productions that resonate. these two steps are interrelated with themes three (the development of advertisements and participants’ role assignments) and four (functional versus emotive briefs) and additional insight five (the need for authenticity) from the discussion with marketing managers. the sixth step relates to inclusive planning and production, which highlights the need to further collaborate with queer people to ensure relevant strategies and advertisement production, which would lead to the seventh and final stage of brand resonance where a relationship and emotional connection are finally established and built with consumers (keller 2009). these link back to theme five (the societal responsibility of advertising) and additionally, insight five (capitalism vs consumer responsibility and purpose). conclusions this study engaged a particular segment of the advertising industry with the intention of initiating dialogue on the issue of marginality, queer identity, and resonance. the findings are limited to the group of participants engaged with and are by no means generalisable. what was deducted is that queer 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social capital; youth; horizontal communication; online communication introduction and background many african countries face challenges related to poverty and unemployment, but the worst-hit population group in these countries, including south africa, are young people below the age of 35. in the vulnerable groups report in 2017, statistics south africa reported that young people in this age group constituted 36.9 percent of the total population. the report further pointed out that 62.7 percent of young people are unemployed and another 1.9 million are on social grants. as pointed out by diof (2003), they are indeed the most affected and vulnerable social group. stenford matenda centre for learning and teaching development, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa email: smatenda@wsu.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-2753-5585 dr gedalla mulliah naidoo department of communication science, faculty of arts, university of zululand kwadlangezwa, south africa email: naidoog@unizulu. ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-5445-0160 prof. hemduth rugbeer department of communication science, faculty of arts, university of zululand, kwadlangezwa, south africa email: vijayrugbeer@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0001-5588-4964 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-15 date submitted: 21 july 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:smatenda@wsu.ac.za mailto:naidoog@unizulu.ac.za mailto:naidoog@unizulu.ac.za https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.10 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer there is general acknowledgement that young people must be integrated into society as this empowers them to contribute meaningfully to the development of society (ahmad & sheikh 2013). the integrated youth development strategy, developed by the national youth development agency, states that integrating this group is the only way south african society can achieve cohesiveness, sustainability and democracy. for young people, inclusiveness is essential as it is a tool for promoting a sense of citizenship. as argued by de zúñiga and valenzuela (2011) and bennet and sergeberg (2011), youth engagement is vital because it provides opportunities for young people to grow their sense of citizenship; thereby, improving participation. this participation boosts democracy and the observance of human rights. participation in the civic, political and economic spheres of governance is also important as it develops a sense of collective efficacy; a deep acknowledgement that one needs to work with others to overcome some of the challenges that face present-day societies. collective efficacy arises from a recognition that all investments in social relations often result in returns to the individual or the group as a whole (munzel et al. 2008). this has been termed social capital, which refers to how one’s social connections can be used to access resources that are important to one’s well-being (bourdieu 1985). given the pervasiveness of social media tools, questions have arisen as to how the resultant social connectivity enables the young generation to acquire social capital. it has become imperative to understand whether the usage of these digital technologies has enhanced the acquisition of social capital. several scholars (bennet 2008; van deth 2009; theocharis 2015; boulienne 2015; papacharissi 2008) have concluded that platforms such as facebook, twitter, linkedin, and youtube have widened and deepened civic participation by young people. given that civic participation involves working with others to address social issues, that participation is a powerful source of social capital. this article examines whether young people in mthatha in south africa’s eastern cape province are deriving any social capital from the usage of such digital tools. social capital the concept of social capital rose to prominence towards the turn of the twentieth century and was appropriated by different social science disciplines, including sociology, psychology, communication science, and politics (putnam 2002). many scholars agree that social capital is essential for any society’s development. however, what has remained debatable is the efficacy of the concept, which led other scholars like lin (1999: 28) to question whether the concept is just a fad without enduring qualities that can underpin intellectual efforts to understand the importance of cooperating with others. while the concept has been defined differently by different scholars, there is mostly consensus among scholars that it involves an individual’s use of social networks to gain access to and use resources, either for personal or community benefit. liu et al. (2016) observe that the need to belong is a human trait and that this need is important for reproduction and the survival of individuals. to overcome problems, human beings co-operate with others to share resources that are required for the 32 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital attainment of mutually beneficial relationships. the underlying theme of this concept is that interacting with others, in as much as it is as old as humanity itself, is important for any human being to achieve personal and social goals. portes (1998) points out that connecting with others has become so important because it is the only way to prevent anomie, as well as self-destruction. some key and pioneering scholars on the social concept (bourdieu 1985; burt 1992; adler & kwon 2002) agree that social relations are essential, as they are a source of other important resources. these scholars’ definition of the concept highlights the value of social connections, be they ordinary friendships or normal contact with colleagues and neighbours. this value in social connections could be changed to other types of capital, which could be mere favours or simply information that is essential for one to access economic capital (portes 1998; lin 1999). however, for these connections to have value, relationships must be maintained and serviced. if they are not in a satisfactory state, then one will not derive any value from them. munzel et al. (2014) further observe that human nature is defined by the notion of reciprocity, which maintains that certain actions are contingent on our expectations for rewards from others. hence, whenever people give something to others, they expect something in return, which implies that all relations with others are usually guided by the norm of reciprocity. in simple terms, lin (1999) stated that having many social relations that one can activate when one needs help is not different from having large sums of money in different banks that one can access every time one needs help. norris (2003) identifies civic spaces of collaboration in society as important sites for social capital accumulation and points out how such connections are invaluable for the production of goods and services. such relationships are governed through norms and tacit rules, which in turn define the obligations and responsibilities of those connected. with these norms, understandings and rules, people can easily work together for the betterment of their lives and society in general (julien 2015). ferreira and pantidi (2018) introduced the concept of community resilience, stating that this can only be attained when people self-organise and use available resources to creatively help each other to adapt and be resourceful to achieve individual as well as community well-being. when people act in a common interest to achieve set objectives, they acquire social capital, which is both an outcome and a precursor to collective action (mandarano et al. 2011). through community togetherness, which julien (2015) calls communitarianism, community members can participate in both private and public spheres of life, which include churches, workplaces, places of residence and public gathering spaces. these affiliations and associations are important for individuals to gain access to resources, which are essential for everyday living. as portes (1998) argued, the solidarity that emerges amongst people is important for generating a sense of belonging. furthermore, as asserted by mandarano et al. (2011), social capital “facilitates sharing of information, sharing to arrive at mutual understanding, leading to conflict resolution, more decision making, more efficient co-ordination, and increased capacity to respond to future challenges enables the creation of new relationships”. 54 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer the nature of social capital derived from social networks is dependent on network size, relationship strength, and the nature of the resources that are available in the network (ellison et al. 2014a; ellison et al. 2014b; lin 1999). hence, people who have a bigger network, stronger ties and better-resourced networks are more likely to have more social capital, which in turn affects the level of success personally, and even as a community. putnam (2002) distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital. bonding social capital is the type of social capital that happens between people who are like one another in the most important respects, while bridging social capital occurs between those that are fundamentally different in social characteristics (ibid.). even in similar groups, bridging connections exist, which is called internal bridging, while connections could exist between groups, which is referred to as external bridging. in this distinction, greys and mudock (2010) emphasise that groups must be seen as merely a set of individuals who may have come together voluntarily or involuntarily. this means that when people form groups, whether for a specific aim or not, they constitute a group and in that group connections emerge inside and with other groups. this serves an important social function because trust, norms and values develop. this is the social capital that will become invaluable to members of groups. social capital and young people as pointed out by boeck (2011), literature on the social capital of the youth as a social group remains scant. this generally creates a gap wherein measures that have been used to assess social capital amongst adults and communities are applied to this age group, which might render their social capital invisible. this is problematic given that in the face of new technologies and problems, such as unemployment, political apathy and social development challenges, which this group face, researchers are unable to see how they are adapting their lives to these new conditions. leonard (2008) writes that “[t]heir own ability to develop stocks of social capital is underplayed. what these approaches have in common is a tendency to see young people as human becomings rather than human beings.” this points to the hazards of overlooking the nature and types of relationships that the youth develop and can harness in their everyday lives. chawla and malone (2002) state that the greatest weakness of the few available studies is that they focus on how young people access and generate social capital, which means that the thrust is on social justice and inclusion in a society dominated by the old. the inclusion of the youth in nation-building is a priority of many governments; hence, the importance of understanding how the youth’s connections between themselves and the community generate social capital. in other words, it is imperative to understand how the youth develop, shape and are shared by the networks, which are by and large made and strengthened in the digital realm. social media and social capital the pervasiveness of social media has implications for all facets of social life and how people have become social (castells 2005). with hundreds of millions of young 54 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital people connected through several popular social media platforms, it means these technologies provide new ways of connecting them as friends, neighbours, colleagues, and citizens. such ties, as argued by norris (2003), allow young people to collaborate, co-ordinate and co-operate to produce social capital. the ubiquity of these social networks has generated an abundance of research as people seek to understand how these technologies are being exploited for generating social capital. norris (2003:1) asked the same question that researchers are grappling with today, namely “[c]an online communities become substitutes for traditional forms of collegiality and social interaction based on traditional face to face contact in families, firms and local communities … can trust be engendered online, in the absence of all the usual contextual cues derived from social relationships?”. several studies have been undertaken to ascertain whether social media platforms have enabled people to acquire more social capital (ellison et al. 2014b; liu et al. 2016; ha et al. 2016). most of these studies have concluded that there is a positive correlation between social media use and social capital acquisition. as pointed out earlier, connecting with others is now cheaper, decentralised and faster, and participation in those groups easier; something that has made social capital generation much easier (mandarano et al. 2017). these social technologies have facilitated resource mobilisation and relationship maintenance and creation. julien (2015: 358) writes that digital technologies make it easier for people to acquire social capital, but decries that there is not much research into “how interactions of digital inhabitants, who invest themselves online and subsequently have a stock of capital that exists and is exchanged online, have been overlooked and misunderstood”. since information is one of the key resources of social media, it is commonly agreed that in a networked society information has become abundant and sharing knowledge has become easier, which make it much easier for people to work with others to generate mutually beneficial goods and services. apart from information access, liu et al. (2016) also state that social media usage has enabled self-disclosure, relationship maintenance and grooming, and online friendship initiation. writing about facebook, ellison et al. (2014a) assert that the platform has opened new channels of communicating in a meaningful way, and that even where relationships already existed, these social ties have been strengthened. thus, social media platforms can assist in making weak ties stronger. presti (2014) introduces the capability approach to the study of social capital and points out that social networks have enhanced people’s capabilities, which enable them to achieve and exercise well-being. the argument which is proffered by presti (2014) is that even if capital is available, be it relational or economic, there are sets of capabilities required for their effective exploitation. therefore, social media platforms have specific affordances that enable people to generate and exploit social capital to achieve specific objectives. several studies on the use of social media platforms (ellison et al. 2014a; ellison et al. 2014b; zhang & lin 2018) found that social capital enhancing activities, such as consuming news, discussions and user-generated content, have made collective action and social capital accumulation much easier. generally, social media platforms generate weak ties, which are often disparate; for 76 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer this reason, they are important in helping users to acquire bridging social capital. liu et al. (2016) also state that gender and other cultural differences impact on the social capital generated from social networks. women obtain more social capital from these platforms because they tend to have more “friends”/connections than their male counterparts. besides, western cultures tend to generate more bridging social capital, while collectivist societies in asia and africa are more likely to promote bonding social capital. in another study, phua et al. (2017) compared the various social media platforms and their ability to generate bridging social capital and concluded that twitter was most important, followed by instagram, facebook and snapchat. however, snapchat was the highest where bonding social capital was considered. research design this study used a mixed-methods research design. this design was used as it provides important insights on the uses, reasons and perceptions of research participants (cresswell & cresswell 2018). since the design is underpinned by pragmatism, it enables the creative use of methods, the synthesis of theories, and research outcomes. to obtain quantifiable results that enable generalisation, a quantitative survey was conducted. this entailed the distribution of self-administered questionnaires to 174 high school students, while another 173 were distributed to students at walter sisulu university and ksd tvet college, the two public tertiary institutions in mthatha. the participants were selected using the multi-stage cluster sampling procedure. qualitative data was gathered using focus group discussions. six focus groups were conducted: two from selected schools, two from ksd tvet, and two from walter sisulu university. the participants were selected using the convenience sampling technique. each focus group was an hour long (on average), and the groups included between six and eight participants. participation was voluntary and confidentiality wasguaranteed. results and analysis the primary reasons why young people use social media, according to the study, is that these platforms allow them to grow their networks so that they can gain social capital. this capital is important for community empowerment or to provide access to individual opportunities for personal development; it is usually generated in the course of self-activity. the study also sought to understand how civic engagement enacted through social media could bring about personal and community benefits. the findings indicated that young people used social media to grow these social networks so that they could address the personal and social needs they encountered. social groups and individuals are appropriating social media to acquire social capital, and civic life is the vehicle through which social capital is acquired. moreover, young people work with each other to assist one another to achieve their own “community” aims. social media, education and social capital universities and high schools are communities in their own right, and these communities’ need to co-exist and support each other is immense. as argued by liu et al. 76 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital (2016), survival in such institutions is also dependent on the networks that one can create. research has been undertaken to understand the role of social media platforms in learning, and since co-operation between members of the same community is essential, it is essential to show how social ties help in learning. the participants in this study maintained that social networks have communities within the social media spaces; thus, enabling members to foster a sense of mutual concern. one of the participants from a tertiary institution commented as follows: the people i interact with are the most important people in my life. they are my community. i rarely go to my rural home anymore that place is no longer important. when we belong to groups, i feel like it’s more real. if one of us has a problem, we try to find ways of assisting. without these groups, i will be very lonely. other participants added that to them, their home neighbourhoods now play a less significant role in their lives. one of the participants from a high school said: my classmates, teachers and a few of my friends are now my community. you see, i spend most of my time here. i come here even on saturday and we are studying on sundays. my home now is just a place to go and sleep. that is life. and these are the people i keep in touch with and i do not see myself playing an active role at home. from here, i will go to university and that’s it. this means that the theatre of understanding social capital accumulation is now the spaces of tertiary institutions and high schools. social connectivity in these spaces then becomes social capital, since it adds value to one’s life while at these learning spaces. this makes social networks indispensable tools for learning. when asked about the value of communicating with other learners, the respondents in this study responded as follows: 38.53% agreed; 35.78% strongly agreed; 2.45% strongly disagreed; 8.26% disagreed; and 14.98% were neutral. it means that 74.31% of the respondents believe that social media applications are valuable for academic purposes. as argued by liu et al. (2016) and ellison et al. (2014a), social media platforms are important because they allow for resource mobilisation, self-discourse, information access, relationship repair, building and initiation among others. in the educational setting, interactions amongst students, and also with lecturers and university administrators are important for the success of learning. social networks enable regular and cheaper communication (ellison 2014a). these sentiments were echoed by results from the focus groups where a participant highlighted the following: one cannot afford not to be on social media. i have to be on whatsapp as that is where we get information about classes, tests and announcements mainly because it is cheaper. we also share tips or even resources there. another participant added that as they add their statuses and pictures (self-disclosure) on applications, such as instagram and facebook, they acquire new acquaintances at their institutions, as well as strengthen existing relationships (ha et al. 2016). one of the participants stated that: 98 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer when we arrived here we barely knew each other. as time went on, we started sharing information and later by following each other on social networks, i think i now know most of my classmates and i would agree that this relationship has been strengthened by social networks especially whatsapp, facebook and instagram. however, unlike the findings by phua et al. (2017) and ellison et al. (2014a), who concluded that social networks mostly help for the cultivation of bridging social capital, this study revealed that initially it is bridging social capital that is generated, but as cohesion in an educational setting improves and identities coalesce, it is mostly bonding social capital that predominates such contexts. social networks are vital in enhancing cohesion and the development of collective identities in educational spaces, which facilitates the cultivation of bonding social capital. social media, information access and social capital one of the most important developments brought about by social networks has been that they have made information abundant, easily accessible, cheap, and available in different formats (boyd & ellison 2007; fuchs 2015). unlike in the past when information provision was dominated by corporations, now users are also able to generate, disseminate and curate information. this decentralised communication system means that users can communicate horizontally without the influence of political and economic elites (fuchs 2016; kaplan & heinlein 2012; steenkamp & hyde-clarke 2012). information availability is an important resource for transforming social capital into other forms of capital, such as favours and money. this study confirmed that social capital was important for various reasons, especially for this targeted group, namely that they can hear about opportunities, such as bursaries, jobs and voluntary work opportunities, and even other forms of assistance. as the population under study is from a poverty-stricken area, concerns over higher education funding are ever-present. the ability to access funding opportunities is therefore important to this target group. figure 1 shows that most participants use social media to gain access to funding opportunities. 98 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital figure 1: social capital for accessing scholarship opportunities from figure 1 it is clear that 32.33% and 44.11% of the respondents respectively strongly agreed and agreed that social media platforms are an important source of information for opportunities to fund their studies. this use of information as a social capital resource was also echoed by some of the participants in the focus groups. one of the participants said:   2.72 6.04 14.8 44.11 32.33 strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree figure 1: social capital for accessing scholarship opportunities from figure 1 it is clear that 32.33% and 44.11% of the respondents respectively strongly agreed and agreed that social media platforms are an important source of information for opportunities to fund their studies. this use of information as a social capital resource was also echoed by some of the participants in the focus groups. one of the participants said: i always check my networks whether there are opportunities. i come from a poor background and even though i get nsfas, it is not enough. i want to get additional support. if i can get a scholarship, i may also get a job after completing my studies. many opportunities are shared on facebook, twitter and whatsapp and we apply. being on social networks and having many contact helps a lot. other participants said that for nsfas (national student financial aid scheme), information on when to apply, and the requirements are often circulated on facebook and whatsapp. in other cases, social networks are important for enabling students to find work and voluntary opportunities, as well as understand job trends. voluntary and work opportunities are important as they allow young people to gain work experience in order to secure employment. even though the culture of voluntarism is not well established in south africa, the results obtained in this study show that young people scan for a job and voluntary opportunities on social media. 1110 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer figure 2: using social media to get voluntary opportunities as   44.82 21.65 15.56 6.71 11.29 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 agree neutral disagree strongly disagree strongly agree pe rc en ts responses figure 2: using social media to get voluntary opportunities as seen in figure 2 above, 44.82% of the respondents agreed with the statement, while another 11.29% strongly agreed. this means that over half of the respondents look to assist people voluntarily. given the unemployment challenges faced by graduates, these results also show the necessity of encouraging students to start early to look for opportunities that will enable them to gain work experience. in the focus groups, some of the respondents noted that they have since stopped looking for these opportunities as some of the posts on facebook and twitter were merely for people to get followers. one of the respondents said: for me i no longer check for these things on social media. on twitter they always say dm me but when you do so there is no response. i now believe that people do that merely to get more followers and some of them are scams anyway. it is a waste of time. i will look for a job after finishing my studies. others acknowledged that, especially for campus jobs, they always find information on social networks: the tutorship position i have, i saw it on social media. it was circulated on whatsapp and i went to see my lecturer. now i check for these opportunities always because i need to survive here on campus and also i need work experience. these findings indicate that information availability and access is mediated by social networks and many young people are thus able to access information important for their growth and future professional lives. 1110 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital social media, altruism and social capital social networks are also important sites for people who are experiencing difficult circumstances to ask for assistance from their social connections. on many social networks, people look for assistance, either in kind or for money. crowd-funding platforms, such as gofundme.com, fundly.com, and doublethedonation.com, have social media accounts where they publicise appeals for help from individuals and organisations. for this study, when the participants were asked whether they think their online acquaintances will assist them, 74.44% of the respondents said that their connections will assist them. figure 1: social assistance and comfort as shown   2.72 6.04 14.8 44.11 32.33 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree percent re sp o n se s figure 3: social assistance and comfort as shown in figure 3, almost 41% of the respondents are either neutral or they do not view social media in that manner. these findings are in line with the observations by ellison et al. (2014a), who stated that social media tools enable iterative communications, trust and intimacy, which enable others to help when the need arises. the usefulness of social network connections was also echoed by a response from the focus group discussions. one of the high school participants said that when her teachers at her rural school realised about her financial challenges, they appealed on facebook for assistance, and they managed to secure full tuition fees and accommodation. she said: i think social media friends help a lot. if it was not that appeal on social media by my teachers, i would have dropped out of school. i know other people who have also been helped. recently on twitter someone wanted r10.00 of electricity and many people helped and they say, she got three years supply of electricity. 1312 matenda, naidoo & rugbeer the participants from the two tertiary institutions also supported these views, saying that people who go public about their circumstances are usually genuine. these findings confirm that social media tools are important sources of social capital, which can be activated and transformed into other forms of capital (liu et al. 2016; lin 1999). social media use for entertainment and dating young people also use social media for entertainment, dating and widening their social ties. tong and walther (2011) as well as ellison et al. (2014a) observe that social media tools are use for nurturing, maintaining and initiating relationships, including dates. many people also use social media for entertainment. figure 4: social media for entertainment and dating as shown in figure 4, 22.66% of the respondents strongly agree with the statement, while 34.14  11% 11% 21% 23% 34% strongly disagree disagree neutral strongly agree agree figure 4: social media for entertainment and dating as shown in figure 4, 22.66% of the respondents strongly agree with the statement, while 34.14% agree. these results show that although young people prioritise entertainment, they use social networks for more productive purposes as well. conclusion and recommendations social capital is a necessity if societies are to ensure that youth involvement and development is attained. this study found that social network usage is an important way of cultivating social capital among young people. through social media, young people are able to work together with their connections to achieve common good, as well as to attain individual well-being. in line with presti’s (2014) observations, social media applications enable young people to enhance their capabilities to achieve their own goals, such as education, social support and entertainment. this means that 1312 a study of young people’s use of social media for social capital those with better capabilities of harnessing social capital online are in a better position to achieve personal and community development. from a policy perspective, this calls for society to prioritise digital literacy, which will enable young people to harness this digital capital. in addition, this study highlights the agency of young people in determining what they use social media for and to what ends. they are indeed not human becomings (leonard 2007) but human beings who use social media in specific ways to gain social capital. unlike technological determinists, it has been concluded that young people use social media tools in their everyday self-activity, implying that young people’s social acquisition processes must be derived from their own perspectives. it is important to develop policies that ensure inclusivity and break down those factors, which hinder young people from acquiring social capital, such as the digital divide, gender differences and others. references adler, s.p. & kwon, s. 2002. social capital: prospects for a new concept. academy of management review 27(1): 17-40. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2002.5922314 ahmad, k. & sheikh, s.k. 2013. social media and youth participatory politics: a study of university students. research journal of south east asia 28(2): 353-360. bennet, w.l. 2008. changing citizenship in the digital age. 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without blinkers communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 213 216 anton fisher* * anton fisher, director of strategic communication at the university of the free state, wrote this opinion piece in his personal capacity. meo iudicio in the first half of 2008, two catastrophic events highlighted the need for all south africans to remove our blinkers and face up to our collective denial about racism, sexism, xenophobia and intolerance. the events are of course the racist reitz video and the brutal xenophobic attacks on african immigrants that erupted in the alexandra township and elsewhere. after the anger and horror of the images we witnessed have subsided, we need to engage incisively about the real meaning of these events if we are going to have an impact on the nature and quality of the post-apartheid society we are trying to build. this is especially true for the higher education sector, not only because one of the incidents took place at a university (the university of the free state), but because we always claim as a sector to be shaping the future leaders of the country. at the university of the free state the impact of the video was devastating and continues to reverberate throughout the institution. it shows how such an incident has divided us: because we understand racism differently, and have experienced racism differently. but despite this polarisation, there was a heartening sign of an emerging white and black solidarity against racism on the campus of the ufs with white and black staff protesting against the incident. this is clearly something to build on in future – a true coalition for change. on the other hand though, there were also completely unacceptable signs of racist behaviour in reaction to the video, particularly from some black students, who targeted white staff and students with threats and intimidation. quite correctly, the ufs also condemned these actions, as it condemned the racist and sexist actions of the four white students who made the video. one should also point out that, just a week before the reitz video exploded onto the scene, some black and white students vandalised the university in a highly co-ordinated overnight raid. this was done in protest against what they regarded as management’s intransigence. ironically, there may be an emerging white and black solidarity here too among student ranks, though misguided in my view (misguided because one of the student demands was that management back down on its human rights approach). 214 learning to lead without blinkers but the fundamental questions posed by the video remain: is this a microcosm of the challenges still being faced by higher education and south african society? what has happened to the rainbow nation? did it ever exist? what is the state of race relations 14 years after apartheid? did we get the balance right between reconciliation and transformation? what is happening at our universities – are they transforming? what kind of young leaders are we producing as a country? how do we really free white and black from the legacy of colonialism and apartheid that still pervades our society? but then it got worse. in mid-may of 2008, south africa and the whole world were horrified by the brutal xenophobic attacks on immigrants from african countries in ghettoes like alexandra. this time the images were bloody and murderous. a man being set alight and engulfed in flames, surrounded by a cheering crowd; mobs armed with all manner of weapons going from house to house evicting the inhabitants and looting property. what made the situation even worse was the government’s lack of firm and decisive leadership and action. furthermore, it seemed as if no one could explain (least of all government ministers) why this was happening. so many reasons were proposed: from criminal elements, to tribalism, to corruption, to unmet expectations, poverty and unemployment, and of course the so-called third force. but once again we were forced to admit that as a society we are failing to deal with our prejudices, our intolerance: this time towards our fellow africans. so what does reitz really have to do with alexandra? why is it so tempting – almost unavoidable – to link them? precisely because they show that we south africans are in the grip of a leadership vacuum at all levels of our society and affecting so many institutions. furthermore the two incidents show that a new concept of leadership needs to be developed which is truly rooted in our african condition, and which can become our national ethos. in other words all south africans still have much to learn and unlearn about: • valuing difference and diversity; • how to deal with conflict; • the futility of violence; • finding solutions; • the rule of law; • owning up to our past; • believing in the future; • taking responsibility for our actions; • our self-worth as individuals; 215 learning to lead without blinkers • the need for community; and • co-existence. this is what the reitz video and the xenophobic attacks have exposed about south africans – the need to learn new values, attitudes and behaviours and the need to unlearn the old ones, and in this way beginning to develop a new leadership concept and cadre. this is precisely where the university of the free state and other universities in south africa must play their role as places of learning and unlearning, places that can begin to develop a new kind of young leader who can provide hope and vision at the ufs, in alex, in south africa. the young students who enter our campuses must learn tolerance and unlearn racism; they must learn respect and unlearn hatred; they must learn to embrace peace and unlearn violence. these are rather deep-seated values, attitudes and behaviours that must change (and i am mentioning only a few). the interventions that are required to change them don’t just revolve around respecting difference or diversity – they go way beyond that – they imply a rewiring of the individual and of the national psyche. universities are well-placed for such leadership development. they provide a platform for academic debate and intellectual inquiry in the classroom. they can create an environment where the search for knowledge becomes a shared experience for white and black. they can support research and publish findings on these matters of individual attitudes and macro-social trends (although this is something universities have been criticised for not doing enough of). universities can draw on international networks and resources. they can work in partnership with other organisations, whether from the public or private sector, or from civil society. this is a critical feature which is absolutely necessary if we also want to extend this programme to rewire our communities. after all, well-considered community interventions are going to be decisive to overcome the damage that has been done in alexandra and elsewhere and to prevent such episodes in future. at the university of the free state, the proposal for some kind of institute for diversity and transformation leadership is to be welcomed. such an institute can help to coordinate, energise and give impetus to developing a new generation of leader, who can espouse a new style of leadership as well. but not only universities should seek to produce this new cadre of critical citizen. all institutions in our country (government, the private sector, civil society) must help to develop this new leadership – we need a national effort to turn our country into a leadership academy – that is the scale of the challenge we face. other institutions, especially the faith-based institutions, have a vital role to play. in the past decades, they produced hundreds if not thousands of young leaders who were recruited into other spheres of leadership, including the anti-apartheid struggle. wherever we can, we must create an environment where this new leadership can flourish. 216 learning to lead without blinkers some say our society is leaderless and rudderless. some say we are ungovernable and ungoverned. clearly there has been a huge failure of the conventional political leadership that used to give direction to black communities in south africa, prepolokwane and post-polokwane. but other communities and institutions have been sailing blindly too, leaderless and rudderless, happy with the status quo and not realising the pressures that were building up from so many different quarters for real transformation. to move beyond this rather bleak scenario will require a new cadre of critical citizen with vision and imagination. we need people with imagination who can re-imagine a future for the country, because the post 1994 “new south africa” is not so new anymore and not so attractive – not to its own inhabitants and least of all to african immigrants right now. for sure, the rainbow nation is dead. perhaps it died a long time ago – and what we have witnessed so far in 2008 is not its death, but the traumatic and bloody birth of something that will take its place. the pessimists are saying that it is the birth of a new age of barbarism. but perhaps we should hope for something more beautiful. that is the beauty we have to re-imagine. 1. melissa steyn 19 reflections on promoting open discussion forums at university communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 19 31 j.c. van der merwe* abstract the department of philosophy at the university of the free state recently presented an open discussion forum on the following topic: imagine a truly south african university. many people reacted with scepticism towards this initiative, suspecting that there had to be some party-political agenda behind it. the idea that one may, and even should, address political issues relating to the nature and functioning of the university in an intellectual and academic fashion seemed somehow inconceivable to many. at first it seemed as if these reactions were merely the result of a weak political culture on campus, but it became evident that it was in fact the lack of a culture of dialogue that constituted the major obstacle in the way of genuine interactive communication. this article will explore some of the possible reasons for this state of affairs. the first part of the article focuses on the possible detrimental effect that certain paradigms of higher education with their one-sided focus on vocationalism have on critical thinking. in the second part, the communicative dynamics of the forum will be analysed as a theme of interest in itself. in conclusion, the importance of cultivating an appropriate attitude that meets the ethos of constructive communication for such discussion forums will be emphasised. * j.c. van der merwe lectures in the department of philosophy at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction it all started with an idea: imagine a university that is truly south african. in true socratic spirit a variety of questions followed: are south africans becoming globally connected and locally disconnected?1 what is meant by responsible citizenship? is there a one-sided focus on democracy and not enough focus on deconstructing the essentially eurocentric university in order to grow educational institutions with their roots in african soil? the intriguing nature of these questions has recently led to the first of a series of open discussion forums, the purpose of which is to stimulate a discourse in which the dream of a truly south african university can be contemplated in a creative manner. after the first forum was held, it became clear that it was going to be quite a challenging task to ensure that this stays an unfettered intellectual, but politically conscious project.2 many people reacted with scepticism towards this initiative, suspecting that there had to be some party-political agenda behind it. some did not participate at all since they did not want to get involved in “anything that has to do with politics”, while others limited their contributions to familiar party-political rhetoric. the idea that one may, and even should, address political issues relating to the nature and functioning of the university in an intellectual and academic fashion seemed somehow inconceivable to many. another idea that was rejected as being too idealistic was the possibility of having a meaningful discussion between people who hold different, even sometimes opposing, views. at first it seemed as if these reactions were merely the result of a weak political culture on campus. however, feedback pertaining to the first forum pointed to other factors besides the lack of a political culture as being responsible for the sceptical and even negative reaction towards the forum, especially from students.3 in fact, it was the lack of a culture of dialogue that constituted the major obstacle in the way of genuine interactive communication. so, while the initial focus was on the content of the debate, it was actually the communicative form of the debate that was problematic in the first place. the aim of this article is to reflect on certain factors that may have an influence on the success of open discussion forums regarding the nature of a truly south african university. the approach followed may be methodologically contextualised against the background of an assortment of analytical tools that have been developed over the years in the philosophy department (e.g. ideology theory, metaphor analysis and worldviewinterpretation), in this case specifically a meta-communicative model. the first part of the article focuses on the possible detrimental effect that certain paradigms of higher education — with their one-sided focus on vocationalism — have on critical thinking. in the second part, the communicative dynamics of the forum will be analysed as a theme of interest in itself. in conclusion, the importance of cultivating an appropriate attitude that meets the ethos of constructive communication for such discussion forums will be emphasised. 20 the influence of higher education on the nature of discussion forums given the fact that the university is supposed to be characterised by vigorous intellectual discourse, it is quite ironic that many of the people who constitute the university community, and who are supposed to be experts on the idea of the university, were reluctant and/or unable to engage in an intellectual discussion regarding the nature of the university. martha nussbaum wrote in her book cultivating humanity that it would be catastrophic to become a nation of technically competent people who have lost the ability to think critically, to examine themselves, and to respect the humanity and diversity of others (nussbaum 1998a: 300). could it be that, both in a national and international context, this point has already been reached? listening to some of the comments made prior, during and after the forum, it surely felt like it. thus, we need to ask ourselves to what extent this state of affairs can be attributed to the direction in which higher education has been moving the last few years. many students nowadays attend university with the sole purpose of becoming educated and trained for a specific career, so that they can “go out into the world and make money”. it is not surprising then that they are not interested in getting involved in talks about the nature of the university, or any socio-political issue for that matter. however, what is surprising is that the partner they found in this quest for the best possible qualification in the shortest possible time and packaged in a curriculum consisting of the bare essentials is none other than the outcome-based higher education system currently being promoted at universities. some academics are becoming more and more skeptical about the status of higher education as an independent academic discipline. maybe brandon (1984: 1) was right when he stated — in the 1980s — that this field is “a creature of teacher-training education”. another alarming development is the way in which higher education is becoming an all too powerful role player in organising the academic life and work of faculty members. aronowitz (in trifonas & peters 2005: 116) rightly warns against the dangers of what he calls the formation of a distinct administrative class whose economic and ideological interests are tied to the corporate order, and of an increasingly intrusive state in everyday academic affairs, especially abrogating faculty’s control over hiring, tenure and promotion, curricular matters, and its own production of knowledge. the ease with which some educationalists dismiss “the unconstrained acquiring of knowledge as a value in itself” as one of the core functions of the university, is of great concern (visagie 2005: 225). so too is the suspicion with which they view the relevance of the humanities for vocational training and their attempt to reduce its role to narrow pre-professional studies. the following remark of johnson (2006: 394) captures the author’s viewpoint regarding current higher education practice at the university: those of us in higher education are struggling to think about what we do in the classroom in a way amenable to the social-scientific methods of “learning 21 outcomes” and assessment rubrics that are being urged upon us by the ever-more assertive accrediting agencies. but it is hard to describe the marvelous and mysterious growth of a young mind, over the course of a semester no less than over the full four years of college experience, in rigorous and mathematically quantifiable terms; hard to think of students as consumers; to regard liberal education as a product or commodity to be marketed like any other, or to think of deans in their traditional capacity as faculty advocates as “vice-presidents”. the influence of vocationalism the creation of a corporate university is a worldwide phenomenon and the humanities are usually one of the first casualties of an education policy in which vocationalism is the primary focus4.thus, when the corporatisation of the university in south africa is being debated, cognisance should be taken of the changes introduced in the british university system during the administration of margaret thatcher when “the humanities felt under pressure to justify their existence to government bureaucrats by showing that a classical training (for example) produces useful managers for industry” (nussbaum 2006: 2). henry giroux could just as well been describing the south african context when he states that in the usa the university is gradually being transformed into a training ground for the corporate workforce, rendering obsolete any notion of higher education as a crucial public sphere in which critical citizens and democratic agents are formed (giroux 2005:61). today, higher education at university level is characterised by an overemphasis on technical, professional and vocational education which results in careerism and vocationalism being the driving force behind education. rice (2006: 11) argues that in order to succeed in the era of globalisation, graduates will need to be “intellectually resilient, cross-culturally literate, technologically adept, and fully prepared for a future of continuous and cross-disciplinary learning”. one of the dangers of the vocational trend in education that is being propagated is that many students will graduate without most of these abilities. while some educationalists see no need for an education that goes beyond job training, they seemingly fail to realise the value that, for instance, communication skills, critical thinking and sound ethical reasoning will add to the students’ professional qualifications. this is quite ironic, as the following example shows: if you simply don’t know how to distinguish a utilitarian from a kantian argument, there are issues that you may easily miss – as a doctor, as a juror. you might think for example that respecting a patient’s choice and promoting the patient’s interest are the same thing and you might just assume that your own judgement about the patient’s interests is the only thing that needs considering – as many doctors are all too inclined, paternalistically, to do (nussbaum 2006: 3). but, more importantly, critical reasoning and communication skills will also shape the way in which people participate in public life as citizens — not to mention the influence 22 it may have on their private lives. having said that, can it be expected of students to imagine a university that is truly south african when their education is limited to technical knowledge and on-the-job-skills? when the famous linguist, activist and philosopher noam chomsky was asked what qualities he looks for in a student he replied: independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new directions. there are plenty of people like that, but school tends to discourage those characteristics (chomsky 2005: 175). how applicable is this remark of chomsky to higher education in south africa? to what extent do lecturers encourage creativity and imagination in critical thinking? surely, the university has a responsibility to cultivate the humanity of its students so that they do not merely excel as professionals in their respective fields, but also practice responsible citizenship. three core values of liberal education although career preparation and training form an integral part of education and should rightly be viewed as a priority, it should not be promoted at the cost of what is generally regarded as a liberal education.5 nussbaum (1998a: 9-11) identifies three core values of liberal education that should accompany scientific understanding. the first value is that of critical self-examination, inspired by socrates’ idea that self knowledge is necessary for “taking care of the self”, which is characterised by “the capacity to reason logically, to test what one reads or says for consistency of reasoning, accuracy of fact, and, finally, of judgement”. secondly, she proposes the ideal of world citizenship — to see ourselves “not simply as citizens of some local region or group but also, and above all, as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern”. thirdly, narrative imagination is the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have (nussbaum 1998a: 11). the humanities have always been the vehicle for promoting these values. for example: philosophy can teach general argumentation and ethical reasoning skills, while communication and media studies can teach communication skills. the departments of literature and the arts can best cultivate narrative imagination, while history, sociology and political studies can illuminate the different facets of world citizenship. when these values are combined with what visagie (2005: 235) describes as the inner core of university culture, namely “the value placed on uncompromised knowledge, as well as the academic freedom to participate in this culture”, students might leave university not only vocationally well prepared, but also enthusiastic about their responsibilities as citizens of the country. however, one should resist the temptation to conveniently blame the enforcers of higher education policies for the current state of affairs. members of faculty should take most of the blame — mainly because of their reluctance to fulfil the very purpose of 23 being an academic: challenging the one-sided focus on vocationalism and resisting the reduction of the humanities to narrow pre-professional studies. while many faculty members talk twaddle about accommodating liberal and vocational education – by which they mean to “accommodate” liberal education all the way outside the city limits where it won’t bother anyone – we liberal educators too often make no response or, worse, make small, meek noises that suggest we will be content with any mouldy corner in the university as long as we can, please heaven, just have that corner. i cannot remember the last time i heard any liberal educator bluntly and emphatically challenge the presumptions behind preprofessional rhetoric of narrow utilitarianism, which always paints itself as simply being realistic (a rhetorical strategy that condescendingly marks liberal educators as people with no proper grasp of reality) (gregory 2003: 2). if members of faculty refrain from raising their objections regarding certain aspects of higher education policy and refuse to enter into dialogue with the educationalists — then they have failed their students and subsequently, cannot expect from them to imagine a university that is truly south african. cultivating a communicative attitude towards discussion forums as mentioned earlier, the purpose of the open discussion forum referred to was to get the university community involved in imagining a truly south african university. as kessels et al. (2004:16) argue: “reflection on and critical examination of our words and reasoning can best take place in colloquium with others.” therefore, in the abovementioned case, all students, members of faculty and management as well as other interested parties were invited to participate, in order to ensure that the forum was as open and inclusive as possible. the forum was structured in accordance with the basic rules that habermas identified for “the ideal speech situation”. rossouw en van vuuren (2004:97) explains it as follows: in a simplified way it could be portrayed as that situation in where all the participants in the discourse are treated as if they are truly equal and in which all forms of coercion or force have been removed. the only force allowed in this situation is the force of the best rational argument. the success of the forum depended on a number of factors, for instance, the intellectual quality of the discourse, the quality of the communication and the attitude with which each participant joined the discussion. on reflection, it became clear that the forum achieved the goal of creating a space where people could voice their opinion. however, it was less successful in getting the participants engaged in dialogue in such a way that they could leave the forum with a better understanding of the other’s opinion. the main reason for this was not the structure of the dialogue as such, but the lack of good communication skills. 24 the attitudes with which participants voice their opinions as well as the attitude with which participants listen to the opinions of others are of critical importance for constructive dialogue. kessels et al. (2004: 16) argue that we need to create a specific atmosphere, “free space”, in which such dialogue can take place. the attitude needed from participants is described as follows: crucial here is the ability to suspend our own ideas and judgements, to be receptive to the thinking of others, to be open to their frames of references and their understanding of meanings… it does not only mean that you consider your dialogue partners as equals or that you acknowledge the other’s otherness. it implies much more: that you empathise with ideas that aren’t yours, that you are prepared to consider points of view that prima facie you would be inclined to reject (kessels et al. 2004:16;39). unfortunately, these characteristics were not always reflected in the contributions of some of the participants, which consequently led to an atmosphere that was, at times, not conducive to communicative discourse at all. different communication games the different ways in which people voice their opinion say a lot about their attitude. visagie (1998: 135-138) identifies the following “communication games” in which people can engage, namely contention, consensus, compromise and co-optation. in the contention game, people supporting opposing views will each concentrate on deploying successful arguments in defence of their own approach and attempt to exploit weaknesses in the opponent’s viewpoints. when people enter into the consensus game, the focus is not on defending a theory but on getting an agreement — however long it takes — on which is the better argument. the compromise model is the result of a new interpretation that is born out of the communicative interaction between two parties, while co-optation as a form of communication happens when “we let our [favourite] theory partially comply with the critical demands of another theory: we add certain elements, or disregard parts or significantly modify some aspects” (visagie 1998: 138). a fifth communication game can be added to these four, namely that of conversation.6 whereas the other four models focus on communication with the purpose of getting some kind of a general agreement amongst participants, conversation is about explaining different points of views just for the sake of understanding and clarification. the meaning ascribed to conversation in this sense is partially captured by the following quote from appiah: conversations across boundaries of identity – whether national, religious, or something else – begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. so i’m using the word “conversation” not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and the ideas of others. and i stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. conversation doesn’t have to lead to 25 consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another (appiah 2006: 85). from the outset it was clearly stated that the goal of the first few forums is not to reach some kind of formal agreement on the nature of a truly south african university. the challenge is to formulate and then critically analyse one’s own opinion regarding the nature of the university and try to make sense of the other differing opinions. interesting enough, all of these argumentation games (contention, compromise, consensus, cooptation and conversation) were represented in some or other form at the first open discussion forum.7 given the fact that the nature of the forum was that of imaginative contemplation, one would therefore presume that conversation would have been the obvious choice of communication mode. however, this was not the case and the communication games that proved to be most popular were that of contention and compromise. the contention game was preferred by especially the student participants and this combative style of argumentation dominated their attitude towards the forum. unfortunately, given the nature of the contention game, it proved to be the least conducive for the kind of imaginative contemplation the organisers had in mind with the forum. although the compromise model allows for a more open discussion than the contention approach, it still detracts from the intended communicative spirit of the forum to some extent. in general, people tend to play the compromise game as an exercise where you decide beforehand which principles are non-negotiable for you — no matter what. such an attitude brings some negativity to the table that might hinder the participants’ ability to be prepared to listen to opposing views, genuinely try to understand them, and freely imagine a truly south african university. the consensus model is probably the most idealised form of communication, but at times there is some confusion regarding its rules and usually one needs to qualify what specific meaning is being attached to the concept of consensus.8 again it should be mentioned that the purpose of the mentioned forums, especially the first few, is not necessary to reach consensus and it was quite a challenging task to convince our audience of this. some participants just could not understand our real intention and perhaps this was why the co-optation game was not really considered as an option. playing the co-optation game successfully depends on a good understanding of all the opinions presented around the table. this requires a lot of discursive creativity and would probably be more useful at a later stage in the series of forums. as one could have predicted, the conversation game must have seemed like a waste of time for many and was therefore just as unpopular. hypothetically one can imagine the series of forums develop for instance as follows: the first round would ideally be characterised by the conversation game, since the participants just want to get clarification on all the opinions represented. in the second round contention, consensus and compromise will take centre stage: respectively to analyse, criticise, and evaluate opinions in order to eliminate the unconvincing ones and 26 identify the strongest arguments. in the last phase, the co-optation game can be employed to play around with the arguments identified in the previous round, and maybe come up with some generally agreeable suggestions. each of these argumentation games has its strong points as well as weaknesses. the idea is not to rank them in terms of which one is the best, but rather to know which one will be best suited for a specific situation. in a sense the conversation game is fundamental to all the other communication games, but can also be played on its own. for instance, in a specific situation where the goal is to reach consensus regarding an issue, different participants might use different communication games to get the debate going. what is important is that people should be honest and open about the specific games that they play and be willing to adopt different games for different circumstances. it is of crucial importance that the participants buy into this ethos, because the success of the forums depends on the communicative attitude of each participant. conclusion at the forum, andré zaaiman emphasised the fact that the peaceful manner in which south africa’s formal transition to democracy has occurred was not a miracle, but a deliberate effort instigated by people committed to the cause. this freedom pleads for an ethical attitude that embodies the acknowledgement of the high price at which this freedom came, recognises that this freedom is fragile and accepts the responsibility to nurture it. the university as an institution of higher education has a crucial role to play in nurturing and promulgating such an attitude. this was the point of departure from which the open discussion forum was launched, and although many sceptics view it as a too idealistic an idea, one may take comfort in and be encouraged by the following remark from martha nussbaum (1998b: 45): we need citizens who have this education, reamed when they’re still quite young, before their imagination is shackled by the weight of daily duties and self-interested money-making schemes. we produce all too many citizens whose imaginations never step out of the counting house. but we have the opportunity to do better, producing socratic citizens, capable of thinking for themselves, arguing with their traditions, and understanding with sympathy the conditions of lives different from their own. that, i think, is not political correctness. that is the cultivation of humanity. the south african society, as reflected through the media, is characterised by antiintellectualism and sensationalism, and this lack of sophisticated argumentation in the public sphere was also reflected in the forum. the future of the forum depends largely on the attitude and communication skills of the participants. having great ideas but not being able to convey them, accompanied by an unwillingness to listen to the ideas of others will signify the premature end of such open discussion forums. 27 the normative consequences of all this for a “round table” discussion on the nature of a truly south african university is that one needs to leave one’s cultural, party-political, and even religious agenda at the door. of course, all people belong to variouslycoloured cultures and institutions simultaneously — all with their own unique calls to truth and integrity. however, around the table, you must learn the ethics of trying to imagine how it is to stand in the shoes of the other — and the same goes for him/her. this implies that an attitude of tolerance, although virtuous, is not sufficient, since it depicts a minimalistic reading of one’s responsibility towards the other. instead, the participants’ attitude should be one of embracing diversity rather than fearing it. finally, every interlocutor’s first loyalty should be to rationality and sound argumentation — because at a university this is the concrete means of reaching out to the other as we reach out to ourselves. this love and respect is sought in the name of academic integrity and the pursuit of scientific truth. the university needs to ensure that the whole institutional community reflects the values and skills necessary for constructive dialogue — not just for the sake of being true to its nature, but for the sake of creating and maintaining critical dialogues in society. incorporating the values of critical self-examination, world citizenship and narrative imagination in vocational and professional education might be a good place to start. endnotes 1 i want to thank johann visagie, tania van der merwe and johann de wet for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2 the open discussion forums are organized by the philosophy department of the ufs which sets and manages the agenda. the first forum was held on march 9th 2007 on the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state. achille mbembe, a senior researcher at the wits institute of social and economic research and andré zaaiman, who has been involved in various democracy initiatives in africa, were the main speakers at the forum. andré zaaiman is a senior government official but attended the forum in his private capacity. 3 overall, the forum was welcomed and positively received by the majority of the people who attended. however, this article focuses primarily on some of the issues that might obstruct the continuation of the series of open discussion forums, and on the views that seem to be held by many of the non-participants. 4 the debate between rosseel and visagie, an educationalist and a philosopher respectively, illustrates the paradigm differences that exist between advocates of this brand of higher education and academics in the humanities. rosseel wrote an article on outward-bound entrepreneurship in the human sciences to which visagie responded with an analysis of the ideological complex that is “steering” higher education. the result of this is what the latter calls “the colonization of the university” (a term coined by habermas) which is driven by the goals of techno-economic progress, bureaucratic-administrative pressures and the economic market-modeling of university teaching. the reply that rosseel then wrote, demonstrates in my view the inability and/or unwillingness of some 28 educationalists to respond to critical remarks voiced against the ideological nature of some aspects of higher education policies. see rosseel (2004; 2005) and visagie (2005) in this regard. 5 nussbaum explains her understanding of liberal education as follows “we are drawing on socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life’, on aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on greek and roman stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from the bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world” (nussbaum 1998a:8). 6 conversation is used as a technical term in this context and will be indicated as such by the use of the italics font. 7 basic argumentation logic is fundamental to all of these communication models. this includes the ability to distinguish between a good and a bad argument on the following grounds: the structure of the argument (logical consistency), the presence or absence of informal fallacies (misuse of emotional appeal) and the correctness and relevance of facts. on a more sophisticated level, people should also show awareness for ideological pitfalls and demonstrate the virtue of moral sensitivity, that is, be able to resist the temptation of voicing your opinion when you know beforehand that it is not the best possible argument that one can offer in the specific context. yet again, i want to argue that this should be part of any university education, whether it is a vocational, professional or a general formative qualification. 8 habermas gives a good account of the consensus game in the “ideal speech situation” that he proposes. but, as i have argued elsewhere, one needs to be careful not to overemphasize the importance of consensus at all cost. consensus at the expense of ethical/and moral sensitivity, for instance, is not what communicative action entails. see van der merwe (2006). 29 references appiah, k. a. 2006. cosmopolitanism. ethics in a world of strangers. new york: penguin, allen lane. aronowitz, s. 2005. higher education and everyday life. in trifonas, p. & peters, m. a. 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[accessed on 20/06/2007]. johnson, p. f. 2006. preserving our values: habermas, hospital ethics, and the business of health care. midwest quarterly 47(4): 393-411. kessels, j., boers, e. & mostert, p. 2004. free space. philosophy in organizations. amsterdam: boom. nussbaum, m. c. 1998a. cultivating humanity. a classical defense of reform in liberal education. cambridge: harvard university press. nussbaum, m. c. 1998b. cultivating humanity. liberal education 84(2): 38-45. nussbaum, m. c. 2006. an overhyped harvard? [online]. available at: http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25351-2266728,00.html [accessed on 20/06/2007]. rice, e. 2006. from athens and berlin to la, faculty work and the new academy. liberal education (fall): 6-13. rosseel, p. 2004. implementing outward-bound academic entrepreneurship in the human sciences. acta academica 37(3): 111-139. rosseel, p. 2005. how deconstruction can be constructive: inwardand outward-bound academic entrepreneurship in the human sciences. acta academica 37(2): 212-264. rossouw, d. & van vuuren, l. 2004. business ethics. cape town: oxford university press. trifonas, p. & peters, m. a. (eds.) 2005. deconstructing derrida. tasks for the new humanities. new york: palgrave macmillan. 30 van der merwe, j.c. 2006. ethical decision-making: how twenty years of philosophy changed my life. journal for christian scholarship special edition: 175-188. visagie, j. 1998. the games theorists play: ideology between discourse and domination. society in transition 29 (3-4): 130-140. visagie, j. 2005. deconstructing the discourse of community service and academic entrepreneurship: the ideological colonization of the university. acta academica 37(1): 31 199198 199198 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse in south africa abstract this article examines organisational transparency discourse in south african banking from 2008 to 2018. the financial crisis of 2008-2009 upset the global economy and resulted in general mistrust of banks and the global financial system. in addition to poor governance standards, inadequate transparency was identified as a key issue to be addressed in order to prevent future crises. the nature and consequences of banking transparency became a matter of worldwide debate and brought changes in banking regulation. while the extant literature focuses mainly on banking transparency in the context of accounting, this study examines transparency as a dynamic social and organisational phenomenon that is constituted through and reflected in organisational discourse, with both symbolic and practical implications. the study entails the analysis of 76 documents generated by the key actors in the institutional field of banking during the period from 2008 to 2018 in south africa. the data analysis identifies two main discursive strands: one focused on market conduct transparency, and the other, which addresses the importance of banks’ transparency in maintaining stability in the financial system. keywords: organisational transparency; corporate transparency; organisational discourse; organisational field; institutional fields; corporate governance; south african banking; discourse analysis introduction organisational transparency and openness have become ubiquitous terms expressing the expected standard of organisational behaviour. as the global economic crisis of 2008-2009 revealed, inadequate transparency in banking had a particularly far-reaching effect on society and its various systems. the calls for corporate transparency in banking can be observed in academic, professional and political quarters, in particular after the role of excessive dr anna oksiutycz department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : aoksiutycz@ uj.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-7236-0924 prof. george angelopulo department of communication science, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email : georgeangelopulo@ unisacommscience.co.za orcid: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-0244-3003 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v26.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2021 26: 198-215 date submitted: 30 july 2021 date accepted: 03 november 2021 date published: 31 december 2021 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:aoksiutycz@uj.ac.za mailto:aoksiutycz@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7236-0924 mailto:georgeangelopulo@unisacommscience.co.za mailto:georgeangelopulo@unisacommscience.co.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0244-3003 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v26.12 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 199198 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse 199198 lending by the banks worldwide has been identified as one of the main causes of the global economic recession of which the effects were felt in many parts of the world for many years thereafter. although the south african banking system was not severely affected by the financial crisis, south african banks have been accused of collusion, discrimination and unfair practices. south african banks are also under scrutiny due to their importance to the local economy, their historical legacy, and the expectations of social contribution to the country’s developing economy and transformation of society. in this context of global and national pressure, there are increased calls for improved standards of corporate transparency in banking in south africa. research on transparency mainly focuses on financial transparency (andries et al. 2017; barth & schipper 2008; bushman et al. 2004; saad & jarboui 2015), and the legal dimension of corporate transparency in banking (bartlett 2012; brescia & steinway 2013; staikouras 2011). studies on non-financial transparency are less common and relate organisational transparency to ethical dimensions of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (atkins et al. 2015; dingwerth & eichinger 2010; wehmeier & raaz 2012). this study refers to both financial and nonfinancial transparency. this article views transparency as a social practice, which requires a “collective effort of reconfiguration through a continual process” (lawrence et al. 2009). the primary arena for reconfiguration is an institutional field discourse, where the normative standards and regulatory processes that influence the meaning of transparency in any particular field are formed. the study demonstrates how the transparency discourse within the institutional field of banking in south africa has shaped the understanding of what is normal and expected in terms of banking transparency during the time of unprecedented regulatory changes in banking during the decade after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. the primary objective of this study is to establish how discourse in the institutional field of banking after the financial crisis of 2008-2009 represents the meaning of organisational transparency in south african banking. the study addresses two research questions: rq1: how has transparency been discursively constructed in the organisational field discourse in south africa since the financial crisis of 2008-2009? rq2: how has transparency in banking been legitimised in the organisational field discourse in south africa? institutional context of banking in south africa south africa has an internationally recognised banking system that is based on the british banking tradition. the industry is dominated by the so-called “big five” banks, absa, capitec, first national, the nedbank group and standard bank, which hold 90% of banking assets (businesstech 2020). while south african banks managed to avoid the worst effects of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, like elsewhere, the crisis highlighted systemic problems and failures of governance in the banking system. in 201200 oksiutycz & angelopulo addition to the problems caused by the interconnectedness of the global system, the south african banking system has had its unique challenges, including high industry concentration and the legacy of apartheid, which for decades resulted in the exclusion of a large part of the population from participation in the financial system. in 2006, the competition commission of south africa launched an enquiry into banking conduct, which resulted in the publication of a report that highlighted the shortcomings in consumer transparency (competition commission 2008). following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, discourse in the field of banking pointed to the need for sector-wide change. the issue of banking transparency was framed as one of the leading causes of the crisis. subsequent policy changes, as outlined by the national treasury and in the adoption of the basel iii rules in south africa as of 2013, led to changes in rules, laws and regulations, including those related to transparency. the codes of corporate governance in king iii (iodsa 2012) and king iv (iodsa 2016) also influenced banking related regulations and transparency discourse during the period after the financial crisis. at the same time, broader debates on the role of banks in the transformation of the south african economy, with issues of social justice, suitability and corporate citizenship, also shaped the meaning of banking transparency. theoretical framework institutional theory the institutional theory serves as the theoretical foundation of this study. the theory is concerned with institutions and institutionalisation processes. according to lawrence and suddaby (2006: 216), institutions are “patterns of interactions supported by specific mechanisms of control”. in term of this definition, organisational transparency can be considered a social institution; institutions can be formal and informal. formal institutions are supported by rules, laws and contracts, while informal institutions are socially enforced. formal institutions and informal institutions influence and change each other. moreover, institutions are historically contingent and change over time (thornton et al. 2012). institutions can be observed at the level of individual organisations, institutional (organisational) fields, and society. this study focuses on the institutional field level discourses. the concept of institutional field partially overlaps with concepts such as sector or industry. an institutional field comprises organisations that interact with each other, engage in a similar activity, and face similar constraints (fredriksson et al. 2013). an institutional field may also include other actors such as suppliers, regulators and industry associations. institutional fields are dynamic and can be affected by critical events in the environment (marinova et al. 2012), such as crises, which can challenge the traditional way of doing things. institutional fields influence organisational structures and values, and provide shared cognitive frameworks, meaning and guiding principles for action (fredriksson et al. 2013; ocasio et al. 2015). every field has a set of vocabularies, narratives and theories, which are produced by the field actors. they are products of interactions, discourse and sense making by the actors within the field. 201200 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse the regulatory dimension plays an important role in organisational fields. regulations define conformity through the establishment of rules, instruments and sanctions that enforce adherence to the regulatory framework (wicks 2001). once established, such regulatory frameworks are difficult to ignore or reverse. mohr and neely (2009) argue that at the level of the institutional field, actors (such as the state) use their power strategically in order to establish organisational rules and structures with the aim of constituting and controlling the field. the regulative elements of institutions cannot, however, be separated from other dimensions. regulations reflect the broader societal context and sense-making schemas, interlinked with the normative pillar of institutionalisation. the normative dimension of institutions rests on social values and norms. the norms “introduce a prescriptive, evaluative and obligatory dimension into social life” (scott 2014: 64), which define social roles and activities. norms are the basis of a stable social order (scott 2014). normative and regulatory elements can constrain and regulate organisational behaviour by imposing legal, moral and social restrictions in terms of what is acceptable and what is not. the degree of conformity with these boundaries is used as an assessment of the social legitimacy of the actions of an organisation (suddaby & greenwood 2005). institutional theorists have been interested in the processes behind institutional change, including how some ideas take hold in organisations and become acceptable or desirable practices. el driftar (2016) states that the ideas that are considered legitimate, thus, they adhere to the norms and standards accepted in society, are likely to be implemented. the use of specific arguments, words or rhetorical arguments facilitates the acceptance of new concepts and leads to the emergence of new practices (munir 2005). the new practices are adopted through the process of collective interpretations and collective sense-making (suddaby et al. 2013). legitimacy assumptions in an organisational setting are shaped by communication and the use of language (harmon et al. 2015; hossfeld 2018). various rhetorical strategies, such as rational, emotional and authority-based arguments, are used to legitimise changing ideas, processes and practices (erkama & vaara 2010). organisational transparency organisational transparency is a construct applicable to various societal institutions, and the subject of debate in numerous disciplines, including organisational studies, law, economics, politics, environmental protection, social reporting and sociology (gawley 2008; glenn 2014). each of these fields considers transparency from a different perspective, and yet there are many similarities in the interpretation of the concept. although definitions of transparency are numerous and varied in the extent to which they are specific or general, most revolve around the provision of information. rawlins (2009: 75) defines transparency as “the deliberate attempt to make available all legally reasonable information – whether positive or negative in nature – in a manner that is accurate, timely, balanced, and unequivocal, to enhance the reasoning ability of publics and hold organisations accountable for their actions, policies and practices”. bushman et al. (2004: 207) see transparency as the “availability of firms’ specific 203202 oksiutycz & angelopulo information to those outside […] firms”. the framing of the provision of information as transparency dominates finance and governance literature (bidabad et al. 2017; manganaris et al. 2017). forsbeack and oxelheim (2015) state that the pervasive existence of information asymmetry makes the case for greater transparency. with organisational decisions based on public and private information, the absence or presence of information leads to a reduction or increase in uncertainly, with an impact on decisions and consequently their outcomes. the view of transparency as information disclosure reveals taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of information and a superficial approach to message construction, transmission and exchange (lammers 2011). conceptually, transparency as the purposeful sharing of impartial information by rational senders is solely linked to the sender’s intent (rawlins 2009; schnackenberg & tomlinson 2016), where outcomes are expected to correspond with the presumed intentions of the senders of the messages (cornelissen et al. 2015). in contrast, some researchers argue that organisational transparency is a process of managing the choices of what and how to present information about an organisation. these choices may be discretionary or guided by regulations. transparency is a social process of managing what is visible and invisible, which produces multiple and “extensive kinds of control” (flyverbom et al. 2015: 392). albu (2014) labels the deliberate effort of selecting and presenting information by organisations a performative dimension of transparency. the organisational choices are influenced by interpretations of what constitutes right and wrong organisational actions. these perceptions are the results of the sense-making and sense-giving processes where various actors within the institutional field mobilise symbolic resources and shape the meaning of corporate transparency through methods, such as theorising, advocacy, defining, routinising, and even mythologising (heath et al. 2010; lawrence & suddaby 2006; mumby 2013). methodology discourse analysis is the research strategy of this study. alvesson and karreman (2000), while acknowledging the interrelatedness of discourses, distinguish between levels of organisational discourse. from local, micro-level discourse centred on specific texts and without paying much attention to the context, discourse may extend to generic, universal “epochal”, mega-discourse – a historically developed system of ideas with a capital “d”. in between, they identify meso-level discourse, which is relatively attuned to language and its context, and attentive to broader patterns, as opposed to grand organisational discourse that refers to “more or less standardised ways of referring to/constituting a certain type of phenomenon” (alvesson & karreman 2000). this study concentrates on the analysis of discourse at meso-level. discourse analysis does not privilege any specific method of analysis. in fact, chouliaraki and fairclough (2010: 1217) argue, “protocols for analysis should be left deliberately contingent and porous”. in this study, the researchers have utilised the discourse-historical approach (dha) (reisigl & wodak 2016; rheindorf & 203202 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse wodak 2018). in the dha, discourse is regarded as a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within specific fields of social action and linked to the argumentation on the validity claims of key social actors. the focus of this study is on the sub-themes of the discourse or topical threads within discourse called discursive strands (rheindorf & wodak 2018). discursive strands have the following characteristics: topic continuity, strong intertextual links between different texts, relative temporal proximity, and initiating event or events that are topically or temporally bound (rheindorf & wodak 2018). in line with the dha approach, the study paid attention to the connection of transparency discourse to other discourses (interdiscursivity), and the links and overlaps between the studied texts (intertextuality), as they provide the evidence of changes in the discourse over time (wodak & fairclough 2010). within the discursive strands, the analysis of argumentative devices used in the legitimisation of issues has been also conducted, due to their importance to institutional processes (furnari 2018). data sources were purposefully based on their relevance to the study. a source was considered relevant to this study if it contributed to the discourse on bank transparency in south africa at the organisational field level. in this research, the following key organisational field players were considered: the south african reserve bank, the bank registrar, the national credit regulator, the national treasury, the financial sector conduct authority (fsca) and the ombudsman for banking services. the banks’ perspective was represented in documents and publications of the banking association of south africa. the final sample comprised 76 documents that included regulatory acts, codes of corporate conduct, king iii (iodsa 2012) and king iv (iodsa 2016), the code of banking practice (basa 2012), basel iii (bcbs 2011), nine industry reports and policy documents, and 54 articles published in the banking association journal banker sa between 2012 and 2018. the analysis of texts in this study consisted of several streams of data condensation (coding), data restructuring (grouping codes into categories and themes), data display (quoted text, tables), and conclusion drawing (miles et al. 2014; collis & hussey 2009). the analysis was performed with the aid of atlas.ti 8 software. in the first stage of analysis, the auto-coding function of atlas.ti 8 was used to identify the passages (quotations), which included the word transparency, as well as the related terms identified from the literature: information, disclosure and communication. after the initial reading of the documents, reporting was added as a relevant term (table 1). a quotation in atlas.ti 8 refers to a segment of text selected by the analyst with the aim of coding. the initial selection of quotations was reread and the irrelevant quotations, such as those generated from content lists, headings and references within the documents, were removed. during the process of coding, constitutive elements of frames, such as catchphrases, problem definitions, statements of cause and effect, solutions, appeals and rhetorical devices (litrico & david 2017), were sought. the identified codes were grouped into larger categories and themes. 205204 oksiutycz & angelopulo table 1: number of quotations generated through atlas. ti 8. key word number of quotations (n) transparency 247 communication 43 information 113 disclosure 164 reporting 190 total 757 results in this section, two overlapping but distinctive discursive strands in banking transparency discourse in south africa are discussed first, namely transparency as a factor in achieving financial stability (transparency for financial system stability) and consumer transparency (transparency in market conduct). then the researchers discuss how transparency in south african banking is legitimised using market-related and ethical arguments. discursive strand 1: transparency for financial system stability the characteristics concerning discursive strand 1 are summarised in table 2. table 2: transparency for financial sector stability discursive strand 1: transparency for financial system stability topic continuity financial stability of the system is mentioned throughout the studied period in the analysed documents. examples of intertextual links the texts refer to or respond to other significant texts: national treasury policy mentions basel iii the regulations of 2012 echo the king iii principles of corporate conduct sarb 2013 explicitly refers to basel iii relative temporal proximity 2007 to 2018 an initiating event financial crisis 2008-2009 the studied policy documents (in particular those from the first few years after the crisis) explicitly mention the financial crisis as the main reason for the need to introduce 205204 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse changes related to transparency in banking globally and in south africa. for instance, a safer financial sector to serve south africa better (national treasury 2011), which outlined policy direction after the financial crisis, explicitly refers to “lessons” from the financial crisis: “one of the key lessons from the financial crisis is the need to assess risks to the system as a whole” (national treasury 2011: 26). several documents (bcbs 2011; national treasury 2011; national treasury 2013; sarb 2017) state that the main objective of these new policies and subsequent regulations is to achieve financial stability. the sarb definition provides the following explanation of financial stability, namely, “a financial system that is resilient to systemic shocks, facilitates efficient financial intermediation and mitigates the macroeconomic costs of disruptions in such a way that confidence in the system is maintained” (sarb 2017). the issue of preserving financial stability is a recurring theme, not only in the immediate period after the crisis, but also in later documents. in the foreword to implementing the twin peaks model of financial regulation, the national treasury (2013) motivates increased regulation by highlighting the weaknesses of “light touch” regulations prior to the crisis. financial stability was to be achieved by introducing new laws, regulations, and the creation of new regulatory bodies. basel iii regulations, which were adopted by south africa in 2013, emphasise three areas for improvement – governance, risk management and transparency – in order to prevent the next global financial meltdown. generally, the notion that banking transparency needs to be enhanced has been consistently emphasised by different actors in the banking field, including the industry body, the banking association of south africa. the purpose of increased transparency is to improve the effectiveness of monitoring the performance and behaviour of banks as a way of preventing financial crises. basel iii states that the goal of new disclosure requirements is “to improve the usefulness and relevance of financial reporting for stakeholders, including prudential regulators” (bcbs 2011: 6). to achieve the aim of monitoring the banking system better, the financial disclosure dimensions that are uniquely applicable to banks were introduced. specific information that banks are required to disclose to the regulators and the public include regulatory capital, a countercyclical capital buffer, leverage ratio, and the liquidity coverage ratio (brits 2012). discussion on these financial disclosure dimensions exceeds the scope of the study. the most important point is that these new requirements significantly increased the scope and details of financial information provided to the stakeholders by the banks. new regulations affecting the disclosure by banks in south africa, in line with basel iii standards, were implemented in 2013. the national treasury shifted from microprudential supervision of banks (focusing on the financial condition of the individual financial organisations) to macro-prudential supervision, which aimed to maintain the stability of the whole system (national treasury 2011). according to ernst and young (2017: 12), with the shift towards macro-prudential supervision, “additional reporting and emphasis on macro-prudential indicators is likely to result in additional metrics, focused on maintaining financial stability”. 207206 oksiutycz & angelopulo one specific area in the discourse on banking transparency is risk transparency. this dimension of banking transparency is identifiable in the discourse on identifying and managing specific risks faced by banks. basel iii (bcbs 2011) and the banking regulations (2012), for example, highlight the necessity of managing risks through processes of risk monitoring, awareness and disclosure. discursive strand 2: transparency in market conduct the second discursive strand focuses on the transparency of banks towards consumers. in the organisational field of banking, transparency in market conduct denotes issues related to consumer transparency. as with the transparency for banking system stability discursive strand, both the implications of inadequate transparency and the effects of improved transparency are present in the texts. although overlapping with the transparency for financial system stability discursive strand, the transparency in market conduct discursive strand has some distinctive characteristics that define it as a separate discursive strand (table 3). table 3: transparency in market conduct discursive strand 2: transparency in market conduct topic continuity the need for changes to how banks treat customers is often mentioned in the analysed documents. examples of intertextual links the texts refer to or respond to other significant texts: the national treasury (2011), the national treasury (2014) to the competition commission report (2008) the banking regulations of 2012 echo the king iii report’s principles the code of banking practice (basa 2012) refers to the competition commission report (2008) temporal proximity 2008 to 2018 an initiating event the competition commission banking enquiry 2006-2008 the competition commission banking enquiry 2006-2008 became a discursive event that initiated this discursive strand. an outcome of a two-year-long enquiry into banking practices in south africa was a report published in 2008, which highlighted the negative bank practices affecting south african consumers. referring to the findings of the competition commission, as expressed in the banking enquiry report (2008), a safer financial sector to serve south africa better (national treasury 2011) policy document outlined the new direction in terms of bank consumer practices, including consumer transparency. consumer treatment issues were discussed in treating customers fairly in the financial sector (national treasury 2014) in a framework modelled on a similar document in the uk. one of the outcomes of the new government policy, influenced by international trends, was the introduction of the twin peaks model of banking 207206 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse supervision. the financial sector conduct authority was established as a separate body overseeing market conduct, in addition to a prudential supervisory body located within the sarb, the prudential authority. the twin peaks approach is regarded as the optimal means of ensuring that transparency, market integrity, and consumer protection receive sufficient priority, and given south africa’s historical neglect of market conduct regulation, a dedicated regulator responsible for consumer protection, and not automatically presumed to be subservient to prudential concerns, is probably the most appropriate way to address this issue (national treasury 2011: 29). consequently, in treating customers fairly in the financial sector (national treasury 2014), transparency is highlighted as an important measure in consumer protection: the new regulatory powers proposed in the fsr bill are an important development towards enabling the fsca to achieve the comprehensive consumer protection framework described in this document. to complement these strengthened regulatory powers, the various accountability measures proposed for the fsca in the fsr bill – including measures relating to parliamentary and national treasury reporting, transparency and consultation, and appeals and reviews – provide important checks and balances (national treasury 2014: 37). the banking enquiry report (competition commission 2008) specifically identified the lack of transparency towards consumers as a factor that perpetuates the imbalance of power between consumers and banks as an issue requiring intervention. among the issues identified as requiring resolution through increased transparency in the market conduct of banks are various aspects of product and service transparency, opacity of fees and charges, interest rate calculations and credit-related information, and the complexity of language used in terms and conditions. the complexity of products and prices (combined with inadequate transparency and disclosure), the cost and difficulty for consumers in switching banks, and the reluctance of the major banks to engage in vigorous price competition with each other that could ‘spoil’ the market for them in the long term – all contribute to producing a situation where the prices charged to consumers for transactional accounts and payment services are probably (although with some exceptions) well above the level that effective competition would allow (competition commission 2008: 18). a lack of transparency in banking products is presented as an economic factor that limits competition, while the confusing product information prevents consumers from making informed financial decisions. in addition, inadequate and confounding information provided to consumers limits consumer choices by, for example, discouraging customers from switching accounts or banks. in response to the competition commission report (2008), the banking association introduced the new code of banking practice (basa 2012), which pledged the provision of better information to consumers. the code of banking practice (basa 2012) states that banking transparency needs to be enhanced to improve the relationship between banks and their consumers and to build trust in the banking system as a whole. trust or confidence in the system is the desired outcome of transparency as stipulated in several documents. 209208 oksiutycz & angelopulo this code has been developed to: […] 2.2 increase transparency so that you can have a better understanding of what you can reasonably expect of the products and services; 2.3 promote a fair and open relationship between you and your bank; and 2.4 foster confidence in the banking system (basa 2012: 4). however, given the regulators’ overarching transparency principle, non-disclosure should be the exception rather than the rule, so that the deterrent factor of enforcement is not blunted. the reputational consequences of public disclosure should be an effective deterrent to unfair customer treatment (national treasury 2013: 71). the nature and effectiveness of bank transparency towards consumers remain ongoing themes in the transparency discourse. while in the initial period following the release of the competition commission report (2008), transparency was presented as the panacea for the unjust treatment of bank customers, in later years it was suggested that transparency towards consumers, as currently practised, is insufficient to ensure fair consumer treatment. the south african reserve bank, in vision 2025 (sarb 2018) suggests that transparency alone, without deeper changes in banking, is not a sufficient condition to change the market conduct of banks. legitimisation of banking transparency previous studies have shown that discourses are used to frame issues and phenomena in certain ways within organisational fields (furnari 2018). developing connections between cause and effect within an organisational field, after high-impact events, legitimises new ideas, according to munir (2005). as discussed above, the connection between financial stability and transparency is indicated frequently in the analysed documents, where it is argued that inadequate transparency in banking was one of the causes of the financial crisis. market-related arguments for more transparency transparency, according to the analysed texts, leads to more efficient financial markets, more competition, market discipline, and better integrity in the industry. stability, efficiency, resilience and strength in the financial system are presented frequently in the discourse as dominant outcomes of transparency. the ensuing stability of the system is also portrayed as a means to achieve other outcomes, for example, the economic growth of the country, as illustrated in the quote from the sarb report: “information transparency is aimed at eliminating inefficiencies and decreasing risks across the industry” (sarb 2018: 9). furthermore, the appeal to a greater social good such as the effect on the economy and public finances is given as a reason for further regulation, alongside the argument of improving the financial system as a whole. the new ethical standards for bank conduct emerged from the discourse, highlighting their role in maintaining the sound financial system and thus “protecting” the country’s economy: “a financial crisis can impose considerable economic costs in lost output and through a substantial deterioration in public finances” (national treasury 2013: 27). 209208 legitimisation of banking transparency in the institutional field discourse similar views aligned with market logic are expressed in the sarb’s document vision 2025 (sarb 2018). naturally, arguments used in discourses are not removed from the ideological stance represented by those who participate in the discourse (bennett 2015). hence, arguments associated with market logic such as industry innovation, efficiency, risk reduction, increased competition and market efficiency appear in the texts along with the concept of transparency. “the goals that guide the vision tend to focus on high-level issues such as competition, innovation, transparency, preparing for future changes in the economy, and system stability” (sarb 2018: 5). ethics and social justice-related arguments transparency in the organisational field of banking discourse is often framed in terms of broader socio-economic outcomes, such as social development, growth of social and economic capital, and improved social wellbeing for everyone. this is perhaps a sign of a shift from a pure market perspective on the role of banks towards an ethical perspective, which focuses on banks as socially responsible contributors to society as a whole. specific issues related to the dominant social discourse in south africa, such as poverty and inequality, are highlighted in the transparency discourse. for instance, a banker sa (zwane 2013) article states the following about the effects of banking transparency: “it is expected that south africans will be better equipped to improve their lives, through investing and creating wealth, and avoiding poverty traps” (zwane 2013: 12). transparency, especially in the transparency in market conduct discursive strand, has also been positioned in a social justice frame, and particularly with a reference to the consumer-bank relationship. transparency is framed as an antidote to information asymmetry. “asymmetry of information between financial services consumers and financial institutions makes consumers vulnerable to exploitation” (national treasury 2013: 47). information asymmetry is a phenomenon that implies power inequality, and as such is defined as undesirable. consequently, transparency is seen as an instrument for the enforcement of corporate governance and the ethical conduct of banks. although emotional appeals are rare in the organisational field of banking discourse, occasionally direct language is evident in the documents. references to exploitation and market abuses link the absence of transparency to unethical business behaviour and highlight the negative connotations of inequality and injustice. “[t]here is a need to develop rigorous market conduct regulations for the financial sector in order to deal with possible market abuses and ensure adequate consumer/investor protection” (national treasury 2013: 15). the implications of financial inclusion go beyond the impact on individual consumers. financial inclusion is presented as consequential to society as a whole. the national treasury (2011: 7) states, for example, “sustainable and inclusive economic growth and development will be aided by improving access to financial services for the poor, vulnerable and those in rural communities”. a further element identifiable in the texts is the responsibility of banks to consumer education, and ultimately as an essential element in the transformation of the south african financial sector. the financial 211210 oksiutycz & angelopulo sector code makes it incumbent on banks to engage in consumer education with the aim of “empowering consumers with the knowledge to enable them to make more informed decisions about their finances and lifestyles” (dti 2012: 122). discussion and conclusion researchers have previously highlighted the important role of organisational field-level discourse in shaping organisational practice (furnari 2018; hardy & marguire 2010). most significantly, organisational field-level discourse facilitates a broad intersubjective agreement on concepts and phenomena, as in the case of organisational transparency in banking. while arguments change as social and historical contexts change, even if the meaning ensuing from the discourse is subject to further contestation, generally field-level discourses lead to the emergence of institutional practices, especially if they are enforced by legislation. the two discursive strands identified in this study had different structuring events or structuring moments, during which the “social construction of shared meanings was accelerated” (bartlett et al. 2007: 286). previously, financial transparency focused on short-term organisational performance and a limited stakeholder audience of mostly shareholders and investors, but the financial crisis highlighted the severe limitation of such an approach. furthermore, financial transparency discourse predominantly reflected and served the interests of banks as individual business organisations (gawley 2008), while after the crisis the interest shifted towards transparency that benefits the industry as a whole. furthermore, the discourse suggests causal relationships between inadequate transparency and the risks to the financial system. the competition commission enquiry into banking concluded at the same time as the onset of the crisis, in 2008, and was the initiating event for changes with respect to transparency in market conduct. furthermore, the transparency in market conduct discursive strand in south africa has its roots in the country’s unique historical and economic circumstances. this strand of the banking transparency discourse represents a significant change in the normative perceptions of what bank disclosure to consumers ought to be in the south african context, where many consumers are poor and vulnerable. the studied texts portray transparency as one of the factors contributing to the widening of financial inclusion – a concept with positive ethical connotations of fairness and social justice. successful changes in an organisational field require that the messages within the field be linked to other relevant societal discourses (erkama & vaara 2010). the goals of financial system stability and financial inclusion are present in the discursive spaces where corporate transparency discourse overlaps with the discourses of corporate governance and transformation in south africa’s economy and society. broadly speaking, there is social consensus in the discourse that banking transparency adds positive value to society at various levels. this social agreement has resulted in the introduction of supporting legislation, rules, regulations and laws that require that banks provide specific information, in particular ways, to stipulated 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township industries abstract south africa faces many socioeconomic ills which government cannot address on its own. various stakeholders need to come together to address the issues of unemployment, poverty and inequality. multi-stakeholder partnerships (msps) are broadly defined as participatory and collaborative forms of decision-making structures involving key stakeholders willing to cooperate with one another to attain set objectives. the united nations’ sustainable development goal 17 (sdg 17) emphasises the importance of partnerships for achieving socioeconomic development. these partnerships cannot be successful without effective strategic communication. thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the role of msps (sdg 17) in the revitalisation of job-creating industries in south african townships (sdg 9). many industrial areas are forlorn and stranded following the withdrawal of the decentralised industrial policy. a generic qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted in south africa’s limpopo province. twelve respondents participated and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. the study found that despite the withdrawal of incentives and subsidies, township industries’ occupancy rate is high, yet with little impact on job creation. the findings may assist policymakers in reviewing township industrial policies. keywords: multi-stakeholder partnerships, strategic communication management, decentralised industrial policy, sustainable development goals, generic qualitative research, township economy introduction one of the biggest challenges faced by the south african government is the creation of sustainable employment and growing the economy. high unemployment remains a challenge in the country despite the government’s continued dr olebogeng selebi department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email : olebogeng.selebi@ up.ac.za (corresponding author) orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-9934-8538 sandy oupa mhlongo department of business management, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa email : odzopa1972@gmail. com orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-5696-4293 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v27.10 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2022 27: 139-158 date submitted: 19 january 2022 date accepted: 28 september 2022 date published: 8 december 2022 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:olebogeng.selebi@up.ac.za mailto:olebogeng.selebi@up.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9934-8538 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9934-8538 mailto:odzopa1972@gmail.com mailto:odzopa1972@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5696-4293 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5696-4293 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.10 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v27.10 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 141140 selebi & mhlongo efforts to turn the tide. the united nations (un) aims to address such socioeconomic issues through the sustainable development goals (sdgs). two of the 17 goals will form the focus of this study, namely goal 9 (investments in industry, innovation and infrastructure) and goal 17 (revitalising partnerships). south africa is a country facing many socioeconomic ills, including unemployment and slow economic growth. industrialisation is an important solution to these issues. industries in the former homelands/townships are currently in a dilapidated state due to the withdrawal of the “decentralisation industrial policy” and incentive schemes post-1994 (phalatse 2000: 161). the decentralised industrial policy consisted of various packages and incentives, including providing infrastructure and subsidising labour costs, tax concessions, and low factory rentals (naudé & mccoskey 2000). many factories closed due to the withdrawal of these incentives. furthermore, phalatse (2000: 161) maintains that industries in the former homelands or “bantustans” were designed as sources of employment creation to eliminate poverty. in outlining the industrial development policy, mosiane (2020: 2) highlighted how funding was made available to lure investors into building factories in and around south african townships and former homelands. the withdrawal of the decentralised industrial policy from homelands spelt the collapse of industries and lost jobs (phalatse 2000: 161). to underscore the point above, mosiane (2020: 2) illustrated how the rosslyn and babelegi industrial zones, which served areas like ga-rankuwa, winterveldt and mabopane, were directly impacted by the rearrangement and review of the industrial incentives by the 1994 democratic government on their residents and the beneficiaries of industries that had to ultimately shut down their operations. mosiane (2020: 3) argues that the termination of government-sponsored industries had a devastating effect on the employment levels in these areas. restoring these industries requires the collaboration of various stakeholders who communicate in a way, which will facilitate the goal of reindustrialisation. gaining multistakeholder support through strategic communication is necessary for the achievement of socioeconomic development (selebi 2019: 1). public relations (also referred to as communication management) is described as “the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisations’ leaders and implementing a planned programme of action, which will serve both the organisation and the public interest” (skinner et al. 2013: 3). more importantly public relations is “a strategic communication process that builds mutually-beneficial relationships between organisations and other publics” (skinner et al. 2013: 4). this statement emphasises the importance of effective strategic communication in the management of the multistakeholder partnerships (msps) that would be necessary for the re-industrialisation of south african townships. in his 2021 budget speech, the former minister of finance, tito mboweni, “allocated r4 billion over the medium term to the township and rural enterprises, including blended initiatives”, compared to r694 million in the previous financial year through the township and rural entrepreneurship programme (daniel 2021). the sa township and rural 141140 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 entrepreneurship programme (trep) was established in 2020 to financially boost the informal economy through the small enterprise development agency (seda) and the small enterprise finance agency (sefa) (daniel 2021). this was viewed by some as an acknowledgement by the government that there was a dire need for reinvestment in townships whose businesses were estimated to account “for at least a third of total turnover generated by the country’s formal business sector” (daniel 2021). thus, the purpose of this qualitative research was to determine the role of strategic msps (sdg 17) in fostering the reindustrialisation of south african townships (sdg 9). strategic msps cannot function effectively without strategic communication. compared to the industrial development zones (idzs), the former homelands/townships have been neglected when it comes to issues like job creation, poverty alleviation and addressing inequality (department of trade and industry 2000). the qualitative study used 12 semi-structured interviews involving participants from two public institutions in limpopo – the municipality and a state-owned enterprise (soe). the main research question the study sought to answer was, “how can strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships (msps) serve as a tool to revive dilapidated industrial parks surrounding townships in south africa?”. the following sub-questions were devised: ♦ why is the use of strategic msps important in fostering the development of industries around townships in south africa? ♦ what is the role of msps in revitalising industrial zones in townships? ♦ how does strategic communication facilitate the achievement of msps? ♦ why is strategic communication important for reviving industrial zones in townships? literature review an overview of industrial development in and around townships prior to 1994, south africa’s spatial development was configured into four provinces and ten homelands or “bantustan” systems (south african history online 2021). the bantustans or homelands systems came into existence in 1959 through the promulgation of the apartheid parliamentary act, act no. 46 of 1959, the promotion of bantu self-government (jensen & zenker 2015: 937-938). a township is an area that was designated for non-whites and designed without the modern town planning principles of proper land-use plans laid out for residential, commercial, or industrial developments without adequate infrastructure for basic services and amenities largely situated away from major economic hubs (desai & alex 2012: 790). in total, there were ten homelands that were designated for blacks, four of which were the so-called “independent states” and six were self-governing territories. these were (alexander 2018): ♦ transkei (gained independence in 1976) 143142 selebi & mhlongo ♦ bophuthatswana (gained independence in 1977) ♦ venda (gained independence in 1979) ♦ ciskei (gained independence in 1981) ♦ gazankulu (self-governing territory) ♦ kangwane (self-governing territory) ♦ kwandebele (self-governing territory) ♦ kwazulu (self-governing territory) ♦ lebowa (self-governing territory) ♦ qwaqwa (self-governing territory) according to jeffrey et al. (1978) homelands were configured along the following ethnic and tribal lines: ♦ gazankulu for the xitsonga people ♦ venda for the venda people ♦ lebowa for the pedi and northern ndebele groups ♦ bophuthatswana for the tswana people ♦ ciskei and transkei for the xhosa-speaking group according to south african activist steve biko (1978: 95), homelands or townships should not have been created at all because “these tribal cocoons called homelands are nothing else but sophisticated concentration camps where black people are allowed to suffer peacefully”. essentially, to restrict the mobility of people from townships, a decentralised industrial policy was designed and introduced to undergird south africa’s economy (naudé & mccoskey 2000). the decentralised industrial policy the genesis of the decentralisation industrial policy can be traced back to the 1930s, but it was introduced in earnest around the 1970s within the former homelands and further revised around 1982 to attract more industrial investors (wellings & black 1986: 2). according to naudé and mccoskey (2000), a critical component of south africa’s economy was the decentralised industrial policy that was adopted to develop the homelands and townships by ensuring that industries had direct access to township or rural labour without workers having to relocate to urban centres. the decentralised industrial strategy was used as the instrument to spur and attract investors, which comprised of various incentives such as the provision of infrastructure, the subsidisation of labour costs, “tax concessions, provision of complete factories with low rentals, concessions on railway rates, establishment of fully planned industrial townships, assistance in provision of housing for white personnel” and lower wages (beck 1968). 143142 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 naudé and mccoskey (2000) further argue that “since the withdrawal of these incentives, there has been extensive disinvestment from the south african township industries”. this view is supported by phalatse (2000: 161), who states that the withdrawal of the decentralisation industrial policy and incentives schemes post-1994 resulted in negative socio-economic maladies. although each homeland or township had its unique ethnographic profile, one common denominator underpins all of them now – the collapse and disintegration of the industries (phalatse 2000: 161). however, not everyone supports the above views. according to wellings and black (1986: 2), the decentralised industrial policy was specifically “conceived as a means for stabilising the state’s system of influx control providing alternatives to metropolitan employment within the bantustan sub-economies”. it is argued that the original intent of creating industries in townships through this policy had the racial intent of separating blacks from whites – thus, confining blacks to the homelands and townships away from economic centres (south african history online 2021). it appears that the unintended consequences of the decentralised industrial policy had some positive spin-offs in some townships, such as improved infrastructure, job opportunities and financial freedom, especially for previously unemployed women (phalatse 2000: 161). bhorat and hodge (1999: 155) write that “between 1970 and 1995, formal employment increased by 18.6% or from about 7.5 million employees to 8.9 million”. in a period of 25 years, from 1970 to 1995, people eligible to work (economically active population) grew by 57% from 8.1 million to 12.7 million (bhorat & hodge 1999). according to statistics south africa’s (2011) october household surveys of between 1995 and 1998, “the total employment in the formal sector declined from 10.1 million to 9.4 million”, which was a loss of approximately 700 000 jobs in two years. national industrial policy framework (nipf) the department of trade and industry (2007) promulgated the national industrial policy framework (nipf) policy intervention to accelerate industrial development in south africa. the nipf provides strategic direction regarding matters relating to industrial development whose key objectives are the following (dti 2007): ♦ to expedite and enlarge south africa’s trading portfolio into non-conventional commodities in both export and import markets; ♦ to fast-track industrialisation through migration into the knowledge economy; and ♦ to accelerate job creation through intensive labour-absorption and industrial mechanisms. the nipf has a much wider mandate than the decentralised industrial policy whose focus was homeland based through the provisioning of incentives to lure investors into creating jobs and stimulating township economies (naudé & mccoskey 2000). while one of the nipf aims is to identify and solve constraints that hamstring economic 145144 selebi & mhlongo development on national level, township and rural economies continue to lag behind urban and metropolitan areas. the role of msps in the re-industrialisation of townships stakeholders “are the individuals, groups, and organisations that can affect the firm’s vision and mission, and are affected by the strategic outcomes achieved, and have enforceable claims on the firm’s performance” (kenny 2012: 44). msps are defined as “voluntary and collaborative relationships between various parties, both state and nonstate, in which all participants agree to work together to achieve a common purpose or undertake a specific task and to share risks, responsibilities, resources, competencies and benefits” (united nations general assembly 2003). resuscitating township industries requires msps anchored in trust, transparency and commitment to a course. msps are the focus of sdg 17, as socioeconomic development (including township reindustrialisation) cannot be achieved without the input of various stakeholders. in addition, it will require a clear definition of the common purpose, roles, responsibilities, and accountability of each stakeholder. if msps represent the broader society it becomes easier for them to gain social legitimacy (mulder 2016). strategic msps are increasingly becoming critical platforms for consideration in the sustainable developmental success of many companies, organisations, and communities (united nations general assembly 2003). in addition, trust is cited as one attribute that forms the basis for strategic msps – trust creates social legitimacy (marr & walker 2002: 6; mulder 2016). stakeholders must trust each other to communicate in a way that achieves the goals of the partnership. therefore, communication management becomes a critical component for the development of trusting relationships (grunig et al. 2002). not only do organisations build relationships for their sake, but they should also strive for quality relationships with strategic constituencies (grunig et al. 2002: 97), which become necessary in reviving industries in the former townships given the potential resistance that might arise from some quarters. selebi (2019: 7) writes that involving key stakeholders from the beginning of any plan takes the diverse expectations and needs of these stakeholders into account – thereby creating alignment and trust. knowing your stakeholders and creating alignment between them will ensure that effective communication follows (selebi 2019: 343-355). partnerships and the sustainable development goals (sdgs) the sdgs are premised on the principle of “leaving no one behind”, by assembling msps consisting of government agencies, communities, businesses, the media, institutions of higher education, influential individuals, and local non-governmental organisations (ngos) to ameliorate the livelihoods of the people in their respective countries by the year 2030 (united nations development programme 2021). these sdgs are interlinked because success in one goal may have a domino effect on other goals. for example, revitalising the industries in the townships (sdg 9) may provide opportunities for employment creation and spur economic growth, which would alleviate inequality and poverty (sdg 10 and 1). 145144 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 sdg 17 represents “global partnership for sustainable development”, which acknowledges strategic msps critical for galvanising power to champion any sustainable development course to the benefit of affected communities (undp 2021). pillay (2000) argues that the government is increasingly becoming aware of its shortcomings and the weaknesses of its policy interventions. the need for strategic msps to forge collaboration among various stakeholders for the successful implementation of development objectives is becoming more evident. former un secretary-general kofi annan said, “…by now we know that peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving governments, international organisations, the business community and civil society” (united nations general assembly 2003). therefore, the revitalisation of township industries may not be equally achieved without creating strategic msps. botan and hazelton (2006: 7) share the co-creational perspective that underscores the importance of relationships in co-creating meaning. this co-creational theory “sees publics as co-creators of meaning and communication as what makes it possible to agree on the shared meanings, interpretations and goals” (botan & hazelton 2006: 13). thus, without partnerships, common purpose and shared meaning among various stakeholders for value co-creation, nothing can be achieved. communication theories in the context of msps at the core of strategic msps are stakeholders with varying interests. to understand one another, they need to share a common purpose, exchange information and ideas, and agree on roles and responsibilities using communication. without effective communication, msps are bound to collapse. hill (1996) asserts that “at the root of many organisation and management problems are simple communication breakdowns”. success in public policy development and implementation requires multi-stakeholder co-operation and partnerships (pillay 2000). this lends itself to the excellence theory of pr. to ensure the success of strategic msps (according to the excellence theory), these theoretical propositions need to be considered by the lead stakeholder (botan & hazelton 2006: 7): ♦ create a participative rather than an authoritative culture to ensure a multiplicity of views; ♦ create a symmetrical system of communication where everyone receives information equally; ♦ create organic rather than mechanical structures to ensure flexibility; and ♦ create programmes to ensure equality and equity among stakeholders. in line with the above, mitchell et al. (1997: 853) conceptualised the idea of the stakeholder salience theory, which is based on the attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency. this assists with stakeholder identification and salience amid various competing needs. freeman (1984) and drucker (1999) popularised the idea of stakeholder engagement during the 1980s and 1990s. in their view, stakeholder 147146 selebi & mhlongo engagement can be defined as the systematic identification, analysis, planning, and implementation of actions designed to influence stakeholders (drucker 1999; freeman 1984). there is essentially no difference between the two perspectives, save for underscoring that before any msps can be constituted there is a need to identify, analyse, map and understand the role of each stakeholder. thus, msps can benefit from considering some of the principles of stakeholder theory as proposed by freeman (2004: 230-231). in addition, power and legitimacy attributes underpinning stakeholder salience theory coupled with social intelligence are worth considering for the successful formation of msps. methodology the purpose of the study was to explore how strategic msps could be used for the revitalisation of industries in townships to achieve sustainable development. in doing this, a generic qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews was deployed to explore insights and perspectives from the selected participants (merriam 2009: 22). this design was the best strategy for answering the research questions and soliciting information-rich data regarding the participants’ perceptions and experiences (plano clark & creswell 2015: 289). the chosen geographical area for this study was south africa’s limpopo province as it is home to three of the ten former homelands, namely gazankulu, lebowa and venda, which had factories within their jurisdiction (alexander 2018). all three former homelands have merged into the limpopo province. two townships with industries were sampled, namely seshego and nkowankowa. seshego is a township north-west of polokwane in the polokwane local municipality, as part of the capricorn district municipality. until 1974, seshego was the capital of the non-independent former homeland of lebowa (mckenna 2021). according to frith (2021b), seshego has a population of 83 863 (statistics south africa 2011) and it has 76 factories. nkowankowa is a small township in the greater tzaneen local municipality, as part of the mopani district municipality. according to frith (2021a), the township has a population of 24 484. it boasts 91 industrial factories manufacturing a range of goods from manikins and buses to electric bulbs, school furniture, and steel. twelve participants were interviewed. a stratified purposive sampling technique, with a homogeneous strategy, was chosen (creswell 2012: 206-209; polit & beck 2012: 517-520). table 1 below outlines the profiles of the individual participants: 147146 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 table 1: profiles of individual participants pseudonym designation gender industry duration of the interview (minutes) p1 acting chief marketing officer and spokesperson male state-owned enterprise 76 p2 district manager: business development advisory female state-owned enterprise 54 p3 local economic development specialist male local authorities 42 p4 local economic development investment officer male local authorities 28 p5 local economic development manager male local authorities 32 p6 regional manager: land and commercial properties male state-owned enterprise 55 p7 branch manager – training and development male state-owned enterprise 52 p8 former municipal manager turned entrepreneur male services 32 p9 manager: business development and training manager female state-owned enterprise 42 p10 regional manager: commercial properties male state-owned enterprise 46 p11 district manager: training & development female state-owned enterprise 41 p12 former trainer, supervisor, manager turned entrepreneur male manufacturing 74 average: 48 mins 149148 selebi & mhlongo semi-structured interviews were conducted with all 12 participants. three of the interviews were conducted face-to-face on the insistence of the participants in strict observance of covid-19 protocols. the remaining respondents were interviewed through virtual platforms, such as ms teams and google meets. the interviews’ duration ranged from 28 minutes to 76 minutes, with the average being 48 minutes. consent forms were sent with the discussion guide for participants’ signatures prior to the scheduled interviews. the final part of the interview was generally preceded by expressing gratitude to the participants and establishing whether there was anything else they felt should have been added, as well as their overall impression of the study (braun & clarke 2013: 81-85). recordings were saved, transcribed and cross referenced with the participants for additional clarity and final comments (louw 2014: 265-266). the otter application was used to transcribe the recorded interviews. thematic analysis was used for this study. according to braun and clarke (2012), thematic analysis (ta) is a systematic approach and method for “identifying, organising and offering insight into patterns of meaning (themes) across a data set”. creswell (2012: 238) writes that although ta is systematic and methodical, it is an “iterative” and “non-linear process” of frequently cross-checking and referencing information during coding to “connect the dots” in order to form an overall picture of participants’ collective experience. atlas.ti software was used to assist with coding and categorising the themes and sub-themes. furthermore, a comprehensive master list was generated to provide more detail on the themes. discussion of findings five main themes with related sub-themes were constructed (see table 2 below): industrial policy, msps, the importance of communication, industrial revitalisation, and sustainability. table 2: summary of themes and sub-themes theme 1: industrial policy theme 2: msps theme 3: communication importance theme 4: industrial revitalisation theme 5: sustainability subthemes knowledge of topic and industry knowledge of policy policy decisions stakeholder engagement and involvement stakeholder identification collaboration and partnerships role of communication project communication job creation separate development influx control incentives and subsidies drive investment sdgs industrial parks revitalisation programme 149148 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 industrial policy this theme focuses on the historical context of south africa’s decentralised industrial policy and establishes whether the participants are familiar with the policy. in addition, the authors explore if it was a prudent policy decision to withdraw the decentralised industrial policy. knowledge of the topic and industry nine of the 12 respondents have knowledge of the decentralised industrial policy. this is largely because their average combined years of experience was over 20 years. knowledge of the policy on the knowledge and familiarity of the decentralised industrial policy, similar sentiments have been expressed by eight of the 12 participants on awareness: … the industrialisation of the homelands began when… the government decided to decentralise the industries and the gazankulu homeland was also picked as one of the areas that the decentralisation was going to take place ... – p12 most of the participants were aware that the industries started in the 1970s to early 1980s. this is supported by wellings and black (1986: 2) that the decentralisation industrial policy can be traced back to the 1930s, but it was introduced in earnest around the 1970s within the former homelands and further revised around 1982 to attract more industrial investors. policy decision concerning the termination of the policy, eight out of 12 participants disagree with the government’s decision to withdraw the policy. two expressed mixed feelings and two supported the complete withdrawal of the policy: for me it definitely not… it had its negatives and it had its positive side… it was supposed to be revised... and strengthened… – p9 although there is no agreement in the literature on this view, there is consensus among the majority of the participants that the decision was not well-considered, with a proviso leaning more towards policy revision. msps the key finding revealed that all the participants agreed on the critical role msps play in revitalising the township industries. however, they differed slightly in their proposed approaches. stakeholder engagement and involvement all the participants acknowledged that stakeholders not only have to be engaged, but they must also be involved in any project that directly or indirectly impacts them. 151150 selebi & mhlongo when you engage the multi-stakeholders you are … bringing them into the process that they own the exercise – p4 one of the key findings on stakeholder engagement and involvement is that the revitalisation of township industries, without an effort to solicit the input of all stakeholders, would yield undesirable results. stakeholder identification stakeholder identification and mapping are key elements in msps and the stakeholder salience theory. six out of the 12 participants agreed that stakeholder identification, as well as outlining clear roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder, is paramount: i think it should start with the national government department of trade and industry coordinated with the provincial departments, then it comes down to the municipalities … to the soes … so, it cannot be a municipality thing alone, it cannot be provincial alone – p10 mitchell et al. (1997: 853) validate this idea of stakeholder salience, which concerns itself with stakeholder identification. collaboration and partnerships this sub-theme responds to the role msps can play in reviving township industries. collaboration is the cornerstone of msps. this requires that time is invested in building and nurturing sound relationships with the core stakeholders. in addition, openness and transparency are at the core of relationship-building coupled with a collaborative approach that can create value and improve relationships to earn trust and minimise uncertainty and disruptions to any project (pillay 2000): … in terms of the multi-stakeholders, what needs to be done is to come up with a terms of reference that will outline role clarification because you can’t be a stakeholder without a role. your role must be defined in the terms of reference… if one of the stakeholders’ role is to recruit, let it be and be clearly outlined... if one of the stakeholder’s role is to market, let it be clear… – p5 all the participants agreed that collaboration and partnerships are essential to success in any public policy development and implementation, which requires multi-stakeholder co-operation and partnerships (pillay 2000). importance of communication strategic communication is essential for successful msps. the sub-themes give insight into why this is the case (within the context of township industry revitalisation). role of communication all the participants agreed that communication plays a key role in all sectors of society, especially within msps: 151150 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 …communication is very key because… every project collapsed because it was not communicated properly… with all the elements the intentions can be good, but if communication was not properly done across the project, people may not support it… – p1 at the core of this statement is the trust attribute that can be earned within msps using communication. this is validated by literature on the excellence theory of communication where pr becomes a critical vehicle used by stakeholders to foster trust (grunig et al. 2002). project communication this sub-theme emanates from one participant who sees industrial revitalisation as a project. the study revealed that most of the participants are aware of the revitalisation of industrial parks: … project communication is also about the benefits to society at large because what you do in limpopo province might be replicated in kzn for instance… it is communicating about this particular project clearing exactly what the intentions of the project and the values… the sustainability aspect… into the future – p1 industrial revitalisation this theme examined how township industrial development can improve socioeconomic development. the majority of the participants (eight out of the 12) were of the view that it was purely for employment creation, whereas four argued that it was motivated by the need for employment creation and to address the racial divide. job creation most of the participants (eight of the 12) asserted that industrial revitalisation leads to job creation and the improvement of people’s livelihoods: … these industrial parks… created a lot of jobs to those localities based on… their respective homelands. people were working, but so far when you check because of this new dispensation – no more jobs; industrial parks lie forlorn, dilapidated. that’s the challenge we’re having – p5 in addition, most of the participants indicated that when you compare job creation now to the past, these industries, even though they have high occupancy rates, do not generate jobs: but majority of the space that we have in the townships, most has been occupied for now. and then, with regards to employment. i’ve noticed that majority of our black township businesses, they don’t generate adequate job opportunities – p2 the total unaudited number of employed people as of 30 september 2021 in the seshego industrial parks amounted to 1036 individuals (996 blacks and 40 whites), which included 320 youth (including 35 people living with disabilities), 215 females and 501 males (information provided via email by one of the participants). 153152 selebi & mhlongo meanwhile, in the early 1980s, as part of further enhancing the decentralised industrial programme, babelegi in bophuthatswana was viewed as one of “the most successful of the growth points in the independent bantustans with 14 500 workers” (wellings & black 1986: 6). separate development four of the 12 participants highlighted the racial motive, plus job creation, as the force behind establishing industries in the townships: …so it was a political strategy from the apartheid regime. then the second part … it was to make it a point that economic development, though black people will then be confined in their respective areas – p6 four participants agreed that the creation of industries in townships was not a benevolent motive of job creation, but rather to restrict movement and interracial mix. to justify this goal, masked as job creation, they had to build firms adjacent to blacks. thus, to restrict the mobility of people from townships, a decentralised industrial policy was designed and introduced to undergird south eafrica’s economy (naudé & mccoskey 2000). influx control again, four of the 12 participants highlighted the apartheid policy, plus job creation, as the driver: i still remember in our area it was in the early 80s to mid 80s… nkowankowa industrial area was developed … i think it was obviously part of the whole apartheid ideology of separate development, keeping africans in the townships…so they don’t go to stay in towns and cities – p8 the participants’ views were corroborated by wellings and black (1986: 2) who asserted that the decentralised industrial policy was specifically “conceived as a means for stabilising the state’s system of influx control providing alternatives to metropolitan employment within the bantustan sub-economies”. incentives and subsidies all 12 participants agreed that incentives and subsidies must be reconsidered to attract industrialists and investors. they differ, however, regarding the quantum of subsidies and incentives to be provided: no. they were supposed to continue with the incentive because you can’t say because this was apartheid this is bad. it’s not everything bad under apartheid. jobs is jobs. poverty is poverty… they were supposed to have used the current system making sure that the people are employed… – p5 the findings indicate that the reason the government is not reintroducing subsidies in the township industries is due to the high demand for space with low rent, as demonstrated by the high occupancy rate: 153152 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 the average occupancy is between 80% and 90% – p10 the seshego industries’ occupancy rate as of 30 september 2021 was 76% at r20/m2 rental rate, whereas nkowankowa factories’ occupancy rate was 80% at r21/m2 respectively (p1 and p10 email responses). meanwhile, in the suburb of midrand commercial property average monthly rental for a-grade office space is r100/m2, while b-grade space costs about r80/m2, and c-grade costs r75/m2 (rawson properties 2021). sustainability for this theme and related sub-themes, the participants spoke on their perspectives on the attainment of the sdgs by 2030, in relation to sustainable township development. sustainable development goals (sdgs) altogether, the participants refute that the sdgs will be attained by 2030: … i don’t see those noble goals being achieved. if we still have people losing their jobs on a daily basis by 2030, it will be a disaster. i don’t see us meeting the goals in 2030 – p2 to validate the sentiment above, south africa’s president cyril ramaphosa alluded to a severe setback to south africa’s ability to realise the sdgs (ramaphosa 2020). industrial parks revitalisation programme contrary to the assumption that has been made about the stranded and disused industries around south african townships, the government through the department of trade, industry and competition (dtic) and the development bank of southern africa (dbsa) launched a programme in 2016, dubbed the dti industrial parks revitalisation programme (development bank of southern africa 2021): … even the new government realised that they can’t do without those industrial parks… this was convened by the dti and then they also invited the dbsa so that we can brainstorm as to how can we revitalise the industrial parks in the country so that they can create more jobs … the discussion yielded the funding from the dbsa… first thing …was to fence the industrial area, put cameras and also start with the revitalisation. brand it and market it … to be attractive for investors to come and occupy them – p5 additionally, the government launched the industrial parks revitalisation programme, which bears all the hallmarks of the decentralised industrial policy, except that it does not provide subsidies and incentives. according to solomons (2016), the industrial parks revitalisation programme aims to promote industrialisation, lure investments, encourage local manufacturing, job creation, and economic growth. the dbsa found that ten of the industrial parks in seven provinces, except for the northern cape and western cape, needed to be repaired and refurbished (development bank of southern africa 2021). 155154 selebi & mhlongo another major finding is that although the dtic has launched the revitalisation programme and most of the industries are occupied, they are not generating enough jobs to make any dent in township socio-economic development and livelihoods. conclusion this study revealed a few core findings. these relate to strategic msps, communication, industrial parks revitalisation, sustainability (as it relates particularly to job creation), and the revision of industrial policy. the findings indicate that strategic msps and communication were unanimously supported by the participants as key drivers of success in the revitalising of township industries. first, all the participants unanimously found strategic msps to be key drivers in township industrial revitalisation. no individual government entity is the driver of industrial policy. the participants highlighted that operating in silos among government entities is the main issue hampering policy implementation (pillay 2000). relevant stakeholder identification, the definition of roles and responsibilities in the form of terms of references, as well as partnership and collaboration were cited as key considerations for msps to revive township industries (mitchell et al. 1997). communication had been fully endorsed as critical to msps because through communication people articulate the purpose of a project, exchange valuable information, remove barriers to msps, and co-create value (botan & hazelton 2006: 13). despite the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic, which drove people to explore various technological forms of communication, the participants emphasised the importance of traditional channels of communication in information sharing. while they acknowledged the increased role of social media (especially amongst the youth), they cited, among others, public participation, radio stations, loud hailing, churches and community-based structures as important vehicles through which msps could communicate initiatives such as township industrial revitalisation. the government, through the dti, has launched the industrial parks revitalisation programme with the development bank of southern africa (dbsa) as its implementing agent (development bank of southern africa 2021). that was confirmed by six of the participants who were responsible for land and commercial property portfolios in various districts of limpopo. however, they acknowledged that most industries had been vandalised and have been lying forlorn for a period of time. there are two phases to the programme. phase one includes the provisioning of security and fencing. phase two is focused on the overall refurbishment of the factories’ physical structures. however, unlike the decentralised industrial policy, incentives and subsidies have been withdrawn. nkowankowa and seshego had already received their first batch of phase one allocations for security upgrades. most of the participants indicated that unless subsidies and incentives were reintroduced, the industrial areas would not attract major investors, despite their competitive low rental rates. one of the disappointing findings was that the current industrial zones in townships were not correspondingly generating enough jobs to make a large socio-economic 155154 strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for achieving sdg 9 impact, despite the high occupancy rates. the participants revealed that part of the reason industries were not generating jobs was because most of them have deviated from their former manufacturing or processing mandates. the current occupants of these industrial zones are more service-oriented (mortuaries, hair salons, churches, schools, etc.). according to the respondents, this did not bode well for large-scale sustainable job creation. most of the participants recommended that the reintroduction of subsidies and incentives could lure foreign investors into these areas. it was recommended that the government not make rentals available for a high occupancy rate and that it should rather focus on businesses with a high rate of intensive labour absorption. the final key finding focused on the revision of industrial policy. most of the participants conceded that the remnants of the decentralised industrial policy, particularly incentives and subsidies, could lure both domestic and foreign investors into considering setting up their manufacturing base if the government made it attractive. they proposed either the 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[online]. available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdinaction [accessed on 5 may 2021]. united nations general assembly. 2003. enhanced cooperation between the un and all relevant partners, in particular the private sector, 18 august. report of the secretarygeneral. wellings, p. & black, a. 1986. industrial decentralization under apartheid: the relocation of industry to the south african periphery. world development 14(1): 1-38. https://doi. org/10.1016/0305-750x(86)90094-x https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdinaction https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750x(86)90094-x https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750x(86)90094-x 1pb fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story abstract relating the phenomenon to the south african context, this article investigates current debates about fake news – especially american (us) insights that covered the rise of donald trump. in taking this route, the article provides an exploratory overview of current debates on fake news and the variations that have emerged in south africa. the article does not aim to provide a detailed content analysis of fake or spoof websites. rather, the aim is to draw from insights that have emerged from the international debates, and use what is relevant to understand a very specific set of socio-political circumstances. within this framework, and in the aftermath of misinformation scandals such as the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the anc war room and the bell-pottinger smear campaign, the question that is asked is what implications the current debates on fake news have for south africa. how do we understand these insights in the context of histories of conflict and high inequality? the article concludes that the prominence of fake news could serve to demonstrate mainstream media’s service to a particular ideological position at the expense of others in transitional societies with multiple viewpoints. keywords: fake news; donald trump; echo chambers; posttruth; war room; gupta leaks; covid-19; pandemic introduction the covid-19 pandemic has again brought the issue of fake news to the fore. big tech companies such as google and facebook have implemented measures to curb its spread and governments, including south africa, have criminalised the act of misinformation. with the world going into lockdown in march 2020, fake news and conspiracy theories became ubiquitous. unwittingly or otherwise, people have shared false information on social media to such an extent that the phenomenon has re-emerged in global headlines and made health authorities concerned about its effects on the management on the virus (grobler 2020). with some arguing that the scourge is due to stupidity and criminality, if not both, dr mvuzo ponono department of communication science, faculty of the humanities, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa email: pononom@ufs. ac.za orcid: https://orcid. org/0000-0002-5101-1426 doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.18820/24150525/ comm.v25.12 issn 2415-0525 (online) communitas 2020 25: 1-15 date submitted: 15 may 2020 date accepted: 04 september 2020 date published: 29 december 2020 © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:pononom@ufs.ac.za mailto:pononom@ufs.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-7248%0d https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.12 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150525/comm.v25.12 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 32 ponono others have taken a more nuanced view. to this end, eaton (2020) argues that whether appalled or deeply disappointed by the wave of fake news during the crisis, what must be kept in mind is that these conspiracies and false claims are emotional support for frightened people during a time of uncertainty. what people are saying is that they are extremely anxious about the future, where they could become sick or lose their livelihoods, as social systems grind to a halt. so, to ease that anxiety, they take solace in telling themselves that villains made the coronavirus to harm the innocent, and that the old systems will soon run as normal (eaton 2020). eaton’s observations help this article narrow its focus to concentrate on the sociopolitical consequences of misinformation. this narrowing of focus is important because critics have argued that due to its currency, the term “fake news” has become a “magical, all-encompassing phrase to describe a range of things: from patently false clickbait websites to legitimate news publications” (basson 2016). as such, there has been a call from media observers for practitioners to refrain from referring to misinformation, fabricated facts and erroneous online content and messages as “fake news”. the backlash against the term was best captured by the oft-repeated take from the former editor and director of the sa press council, joe thloloe: “if it’s fake, it’s not news” (basson 2016). according to this perspective, genuine news is based on “factual occurrences, trends or developments that meet certain criteria” (ibid.). in accordance with the above hierarchy of news, wardle (2017) argues that fake news does not help explain the issues it tries to encapsulate. as such, wardle (2017) says it is important to distinguish between several variations of disinformation, which include 1) satire or parody; materials which have “no intention to cause harm but have the potential to fool”; 2) imposter content, or the impersonation of genuine sources in comedic material or publications that deceive audiences by pretending to speak on behalf of a real source; 3) fabricated content, classically defined as “fake news”, is content that is patently false, and is designed to deceive and harm; and 4) misleading content that portrays information in a skewed and biased manner. this material is carried by publications with strong ideological biases that often publish stories that suit their agendas, confirm their prejudices, or serve as echo chambers. therefore, in this “spectrum of wrongfulness”, fake news is used to refer to fabricated reports rather than partisan publications or satire (rousseau 2017). however, despite the stress on nuance and harmful media, wasserman (2017) contends that the notion of fake news has taken on pejorative meanings that are used to disavow ideological differences. instead of denouncing fictional accounts, wasserman (2017) goes on to argue that the current backlash against fake news encompasses a perceived deviance of marginal outlets from dominant norms. in a rapidly changing media environment, fake news is increasingly associated not only with fabricated content, but also with perceptions of social menace. as such, wasserman (2017) maintains that fake news has become an object of the mainstream media’s moral indignation. critical media observers assert that in an age of online and social media, where it is harder for mainstream media outlets to control the flow of news, the power of traditional media houses to determine what is credible has been challenged (stephens 2017; 32 fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story carpini 2018). the age of the internet and technological innovation has diminished the control enjoyed by traditional sources who presented themselves as go-to places for “credible news” (stephens 2017). the previous order has been upended by “disintermediating” social media technologies, which have reduced the role of the media as the intermediary between social institutions and the public (stephens 2017; carpini 2018). these social changes and the disruption of the traditional mainstream media’s gatekeeping model have been accompanied by a growing sense that social media has made it easier for unverified sources to publish information and thus easier for fake news stories to spread (lapowsky 2017; ha 2017). wasserman (2017: 2) argues that the stated concerns about fake news can be seen as linked to “pre-existing moral panic about the effects of digital media on democratic politics”. the massive data caches held by online companies, which detail the lives of many, have raised fears of abuse (o’hagan 2018). digital companies – as the facebook/cambridge analytica scandal shows – have been criticised for selling user information to political communicators who use it to target specific audiences with tailored messages (wong 2018). in contravention of the idea of a marketplace of ideas, the danger of the strategy is that the wide berth between population groups, especially online, means that political communication is not posted communally for the public to see. political operatives have taken advantage of these divisions, using sites such as facebook to either malign a certain group or broadcast messages that make promises to one group of voters, while simultaneously promising the opposite to a different group (wong 2018). furthermore, the panic about new media technology includes the perception that online news media has a tendency to create “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles” (wasserman 2017). the fear is that social media facilitates a space where people are not exposed to alternative viewpoints. this tunnel vision is caused by the fact that associations online tend to be between people who share similar traits or interests. this means that most online networks largely consist of people who share a broad demographic profile: education level, income, location, ethnic and cultural background, and age (knight 2018). algorithms employed by online media companies to organise news feeds narrow associations to people whose worldview align. with an orientation to show less of the content that a person might disagree with, algorithms facilitate the omission of dissenting views and produce agreement between like-minded people. this bias in curatorship has led many to believe that it is easy for social media, in particular, to fuel unverified reports, rumours and dubious content because of the uniformity of views in echo chambers and an absence of fact-checking mechanisms or editorial filters (allcott & gentzkow 2017: 2). although digital media is seen to amplify the phenomenon of “confirmation bias”, bakir and mcstay (2017: 8) argue that this tendency for people to “interpret, notice, recall and believe information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs” has long been associated with traditional news media. in this regard, knight (2018) contends that this is the way in which mainstream news media organisations have been operating for some time. using a gatekeeping model to filter what journalists and editors assume to be what the audience wants to read, mainstream media organisations have relied on subjectivities to determine what 54 ponono people are interested in (knight 2018). by doing so, they have narrowed the exposure people have to alternative viewpoints and a variety of news. coincidentally, one of the talking points that emerged from insights following the 2016 us elections and the brexit vote in britain is that mainstream media has itself become an echo chamber (frank 2016). after the 2016 presidential election, us media commentators reported that mainstream media were taken aback by donald trump’s victory because their left-leaning bias disallowed them from seeing beyond their own prism (schow 2017). an example of this partiality is that almost all the major news publication in america, including the new york times, barely engaged with the republican constituency, sharply rejected the prospects of a trump presidency, and formally endorsed democratic candidate hillary clinton (schow 2017). furthermore, wikileaks revealed that a number of journalists from leading media outlets further insulated themselves by coordinating with the clinton campaign and attended private parties with her campaign staff (greenwald & fang 2016). due to such close ties, mainstream media propped up clinton’s candidacy, with her receiving disproportionately biased coverage in the primaries and general election (sainato 2017). in addition to overtly favouring clinton, mainstream media’s election coverage stands accused of delegitimising bernie sanders’ campaign, and obsessing over the illegitimacy of donald trump (sainato 2017). although most of this coverage was negative, news organisations reported that trump received about $2 billion in free media coverage, nearly six times more than bernie sanders (calderone 2016). critics maintained that the goal of most of the coverage trump received was to prop up an unfavourable or “weak” general election opponent for clinton to face, and subsequently to beat her (sainato 2017). judging from the standpoint of trump’s victory, this strategy ultimately backfired. reports reflect that the mainstream media’s negative coverage of trump fueled resentment toward traditional powers – a structure in which corporateowned mainstream media is seen as an “establishment arm used to protect the power of the top 1% rather than challenge it” (sainato 2017). maines (2017) argues that trump won precisely because he characterised the media as being part of a “corrupt establishment”. furthermore, maines (2017) posits that after decades of peddling the “soft bias” of american-style liberalism, the mainstream media positively invited pushback from a far-right and right-of-centre media. the mutual disdain between the left and right wing in the 2016 presidential election campaign manifested itself in an anti and pro-trump bias that flouted journalistic convention. schow (2017) argues that during this time, any negative story about trump was published with minimal vetting on the left, and the same applied for positive stories on the right. as such, the consistent efforts by the mainstream media to manufacture outrage against trump, and failure to thoroughly assess clinton’s weaknesses, effectively desensitised millions of americans from criticisms of trump (sainato 2017). in this regard, maines (2017) contends, “the media turned itself into the opposition and trump won because he cast the media as opposition, or opposed to conservative values and, accordingly, it was voted down”. as an oppositional force, the assumption that the mainstream media is beyond fault was brought into question. although trump and his advisors have often been exposed as liars, their labelling of the mainstream 54 fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story media as hypocrites stuck. mitrovica (2016) asserts that the 2016 debate reminded the mainstream media that it played an undisputed role in selling calamitous wars, which have caused much death and suffering. much has been written about how the washington post, the new york times and other leading mainstream media outlets served as aggressive propagandists in favour of the iraq war (sainato 2017). mitrovica (2016) writes, “not so long ago, this apparently lie-allergic media titans sold a war armed with the ‘facts’”, which were in essence based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction and iraq”. the argument presented makes reference to the academic critique, which maintains that despite the front of credibility presented by mainstream sources, the sector has often been found guilty of slavishly following an elite, neoliberal, and in the case of black audiences, western and capitalist agenda (friedman 2011). as such, the mainstream media has been criticised for favouring the upper classes and big business at the expense of ordinary people and the poor. it has been well documented that trump’s presidential campaign rested, not just on race baiting, but also on an appeal to economic anxiety. although on opposite ends, in the south african case, this sentiment of the mainstream media’s elitism is best captured by the politician julius malema who in 2018 accused the private broadcaster, enca, “of perpetuating and defending white privilege” and being a platform that “perpetuates white supremacy”. gopnik (2017) opines that what populist politicians are doing is challenging a whole regime of truth as we have come to know it. critical observers have noted that the mainstream panic over fake news is not limited to its ability to create an echo chamber (wasserman 2017). when scrutinised, the critique has to be broadened to include the potential of fake news to challenge established conventions. astute media commentators in the us have said that the spread of misinformation could be a deliberate challenge to traditional power sources. taking trump as an example, gopnik (2017) argues that more than ideological differences, the american president poses a challenge to mainstream sensibilities. instead of euphemisms, as lies in politics have always been packaged, what has changed about the nature of lies in the “post truth” world is that the disregard for truth is offered “without even the sugarfaçade of sweetness of temper or equableness or entertainment” (gopnik 2017). therefore, what seems to have been destroyed in the brexit/trump post-truth campaigns is the veil that lies or differences will be purported in an acceptable manner (mitrovica 2016). with the challenge to euphemism, oremus (2017) asserts that we have entered an age where the “gloves are off”. well-mannered ideological disagreements and “sensible” bending of the truth have been replaced by the crudest form of falsehoods. mckaiser (2017) argues that trump does not fear being exposed for peddling lies because “he, quite literally, peddles bullshit, where bullshit is aimed to create a buffet of nonsense so long as it brings certain outcomes the bullshitter wants”. the significant change that has therefore taken place in the current era of post-truth and fake news is that misinformation is employed blatantly to disrupt the dominant discourse, making it difficult to reel the conversation back to mainstream sensibilities (gopnik 2017). 76 ponono for this purpose, trump has demonstrated that insults and lies can be highly effective because they bulldoze current or popular sentiment. oremus (2017) argues that when trump repeats claims about illegal voters, or the size of his inauguration crowd, he does not care if he is believed because that is not the purpose. the real purpose is intimidation. gopnik (2017) opines that trump’s lies and misinformation tactics are not postmodern traps; “they are primitive schoolyard taunts and threats”. any good insult, oremus (2017) further argues, is carefully selected to inflict maximum damage on its target. this is the case with mainstream media because trump has been jabbing at the credibility of the sector, and has been hitting the industry where it hurts (oremus 2017). at a time when major publications and broadcasters are struggling to distinguish themselves from a flurry of online competitors on the strength of their reporting and editorial standards, the attacks on mainstream media are greatly damaging (oremus 2017). in his ongoing duel with mainstream news organisations, trump’s guile has been the appropriation of the label “fake news”, which was originally used to describe dubious websites that intentionally deceive, to describe organisations with long histories of “credible” journalism (ha 2017). making use of historical flaws and a tendency to be skewed in favour of neoliberal policies, populist leaders such as trump have branded mainstream media as fake news in order to deliver a certain message to their constituencies (mitrovica, 2016). oremus (2017) thus argues that when sean spicer calls cnn “fake news”, he is changing the subject from trump’s credibility to the media’s. with his cries of “fake news” (and, conversely, kellyanne conway’s defense of lies as “alternative facts”), trump and his subordinates are giving americans a simple message, one that he has repeated a number of times: “believe me – not the media” (ha 2017). social, cultural and political context considering the long history of misinformation, it is worth bearing in mind that a sociopolitical take on “fake news” presents the argument that application of the term in liberal, conservative or radical circles might be ways to dismiss differing positions without fully engaging them (rousseau 2017). at its worst, fake news is often used as a lazy shorthand for anything differing groups do not like about each other. however, as wasserman (2017) points out, as good as politicians might be at throwing punches at the mainstream media, the general uptake of fake news is not surprising because, just as the oft maligned tabloids, fake news might offer readers something missing from mainstream media (wasserman 2017). similar to tabloids, a news genre that is heavily denigrated by mainstream interlocutors, fake news accounts are known to include far-fetched and fictional stories that are popular among their target audience. therefore, however vilified these sources of media are, they are often trusted by their readers to provide them with information and resources that are of benefit to their daily lives. wasserman (2017) argues that this is so because popular culture in general, which is often considered lowly by elites, whether television series, film, soap operas or popular music, has long been seen as a space for alternative political information and education. 76 fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story mainstream journalism’s doubts notwithstanding, it is important to investigate the social implications of fake news in instances and contexts of conflict and inequality. wasserman (2017) argues that for this reason, the phenomenon of “fake news”, the discourses that surround it, and the responses by audiences and the journalistic community have to be understood within particular social, cultural and political contexts. this is to say that news – whether “fake” or “real” – should not be understood outside of the social contexts of production and consumption. as willems and mano (2017) argue, the experiences of african audiences and the engagement of users with media are always grounded in particular contexts, worldviews and knowledge systems. this article seeks to locate the latest expression of “fake news” within the south african social and media landscape. in other words, the phenomenon of fake news will be used to understand how journalistic discourses operate within particular environments and how they produce particular responses that relate directly to specific social and political forces at a given historical juncture. contestation in divided societies before the current wave of outrage against pandemic-inspired fake news, the author’s interest in the manifestation of fake news in south africa was sparked by an incident involving the scandal prone ruling african national congress (anc). the year 2017 began with a bombshell disclosure that the anc planned to spend r50 million on a covert campaign targeting opposition parties in the 2016 local government elections. it was alleged that a covert team, dubbed the “war room”, intended to use a “black ops” operation to derail the electoral campaigns of two leading political parties, the democratic alliance (da) and the economic freedom fighters (eff), and to set a pro-anc agenda (comrie 2017). the campaign included setting up a partisan news site and a chat show, employing the services of social media “influencers”, as well as printing fake opposition party posters (thamm 2017). although south africa has a long history of misinformation, from apartheid era propaganda to newspeak by then president jacob zuma, whose spin machine turned unconstitutional expenditure on his private residence to security upgrades, the big splash made by the headlines gave south africa its first taste of the current iteration of the phenomenon. with the gates flung open, revelations of the use of misinformation have become a staple feature of the media sphere. in the ensuing maelstrom, british pr firm bell-pottinger was forced to abandon a lucrative contract, and to issue an apology to the nation, after accusations that the company was dabbling in fake news. the apology was in response to a complaint filed by the da, with two professional pr bodies, which accused bell-pottinger of “promoting racial hatred in south africa” in order to protect the interests of its politically connected clients, the gupta family (thamm 2017). critics accused bell-pottinger of exploiting racial tensions by disseminating the counter-narrative of “white monopoly capital”; designed to shield the corrupt activities of black elites in power. the dogged pursuit of the bell-pottinger story in mainstream media circles resulted in a massive “dump” of a trove of emails that was termed #guptaleaks. the dump gave south africans a greater purview of not only the extent of the looting of public 98 ponono entities, but also the extensive use of disinformation by those in power to hide their skulduggery. given the sheer scope of operations, as confirmed by the #guptaleaks, from fake twitter accounts and partisan websites, to paid protestors and twitter influencers, it would seem that south africa was in the throes of an all-out propaganda war. therefore, the choice of moniker used by the anc-affiliated “war room” was interesting considering that it has been argued that the dominant discourse in the south african mainstream public sphere is characterised by war (rodny-gumede 2015). it is also not surprising that this theme of conflict runs through the anc’s (2017) discussion documents on communication, combatively titled “battle of ideas”. in these documents, the anc charged that a consolidated media hegemony in south africa holds an adversarial editorial position against the governing party, and overtly favours the political opposition, who are given space to dominate multiple platforms (anc 2017). the point made by the anc is that the media, as a collection of large conglomerates who are historically tied to dominant capital, is not a passive observer but a big player with a stake in the fight. media scholars have produced research that supports this supposition, arguing that mainstream media “are capable of enacting and performing conflicts as well as reporting and representing them” (cottle 2006: 9). the emphasis here is on the complex ways in which the media are often implicated in the conflicts they disseminate, and thus cannot be considered as neutral middle ground, or mere reflective surface (cottle 2006). the 2012 marikana massacre, where 34 protesting miners were gunned down by the police, is often used as an example of the proximity of the south african news media to the middle class and economic elite. the dominant theme of reportage in the aftermath of the massacre, as argued by duncan (2013) in her seminal analysis of the coverage, was mostly concerned with the impact of the strike on the financial viability of the mining sector. analysis of the news coverage revealed that the most visible sources of news coverage were business, risk assessment firms, and the specialist banking and financial services groups, who were concerned with the impact of the strikes on investor confidence (duncan 2013). instead of an attempt by the miners to secure a living wage (given that the formal bargaining structures had failed them), the strike was framed as a violent inter-union rivalry that was damaging an “already struggling economy” (chauke & strydom 2012). although more critical reporting would follow, according to duncan (2013: 19), the early marikana coverage was an example of embedded journalism, or journalism acting as “mouthpieces of the rich and powerful”. the mainstream representation of the conflict was clearly and unashamedly biased towards business, and pushed a narrative that delegitimised the legitimate, but legally unprotected, actions taken by the miners (duncan 2013). what was constantly reinforced was the latent theme of miners being inherently violent, with the coverage creating a sense that protests comprised of unruly mobs (rodny-gumede 2015). in sensationalising the violence, the coverage of the marikana massacre fits another criticism that has been levelled against news media. the coverage illustrated a welldocumented slant towards the sensational, with a clear emphasis on the disruption of business (rodny-gumede 2015). as a result, insufficient attention was given to the underlying social issues, which were at the heart of the miners’ discontent. the simple 98 fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story idea that the protesting was “wildcat”, “violent”, and “frenzied”, instead of a peaceful gathering threatened by the police, was misleading and showed that there was clear bias and adherence to a neoliberal ideology, which emphasises the stability of market relations (duncan 2013). in addition to the capitalistic slant, studies in the area of peace journalism have established that there is an overwhelming emphasis on war and conflict in news media. according to galtung (1986), war journalism has a value bias towards violence and violent groups, which usually leads audiences to overvalue violent responses to conflict and ignore non-violent alternatives (rodny-gumede 2015). as such, mainstream media has been criticised for paying more attention to violent conflict than peaceful solutions. this is understood to be the result of well-documented news reporting conventions that focus only on the differences between parties, rather than similarities and progress on common issues. as evidenced by the marikana massacre reportage, south african mainstream news displays an overemphasis on violence, which is coupled with a lack of context and a disregard for the underlying causes of the conflict (duncan 2013). in centralising the conflictual nature of social relations, and the assumption that resolution can only be reached when one loses, this type of war journalism focuses on the here and now, ignoring causes and outcomes. friedman (2011) has argued that the media tends to avoid reporting on the underlying causes and motivations that drive protests in south africa and how they relate to a broader disillusionment with the socio-economic dispensation in the country. writing on scandal, renowned media scholar j.b. thompson (2000) argues that media representation is not an occurrence on the surface of political life, but is “linked to and symptomatic of some of the most important structural features of modern societies”. similarly, critics have observed that when it comes to recent phenomena, such as the rise of a political outsider like donald trump, we need to focus less on the personal and more on the social issues that have enabled him (heer 2017). it has been argued that the support garnered by trump and other populist leaders is the product not just of a freak election or a racist backlash, but inequalities inherent in neoliberal capitalism. south african historians have noted that apartheid was the outcome of colonialism of a “special type”, where the colonial ruling class, with its white support base on the one hand, and the oppressed colonial majority on the other, fought for the control of resources within a single territory (o’malley 1987). due to this history of struggle between different factions of capital, apartheid has been described as inhouse “racial capitalism”, which legitimised particular economic, political and social management in racial-ethnic terms (saul & gelb 1981). as a result, two distinct and competing nationalisms developed, claiming ownership of land and natural resources; exclusive afrikaner nationalism, which worked in tandem with british colonialism to uphold a white supremacy, while african nationalism (as represented by the anc) was envisioned to be inclusive of all races (muiu 2008). critics have said that these two strands of nationalism have manifested in the clashing ideological positions that have emerged, which have informed the major debates concerning post-apartheid south africa (prinsloo 2014). 1110 ponono due to the colonial social policies that encouraged the development of separate racial groups to facilitate oppression, south africa, like many other african states, has been left straddled with bifurcated societies that are home to both the oppressor and marginal groups (mudimbe 1988). furthermore, mamdani’s (1996) work has been applied to understand the phenomenon of elite continuity in african contexts, which answers the question of why, instead of reversing a legacy of apartheid spatial planning that deprived many south africans of stable family lives and access to amenities and employment opportunities, the black post-apartheid government replicated the social policies that had led to the protection of the interests of the wealthy. mamdani (1996) argues that after independence, african postcolonial states deracialised social institutions but failed to decolonise. as a result, the overthrow of the apartheid regime has meant that there has been the accommodation of a growing black elite into preestablished iniquities (wasserman & garman 2012). the other consequence of this development is that south africa continues to display qualities of a manichean world (fanon 1963). thabo mbeki (1998), south africa’s second post-apartheid president, characterised the south african economy as consisting of two entities. mbeki (1998) opined that the economy on one side is a modern one with all the trappings of wealth, while on the other side the poor are illiterate, without skills, and have scant access to basic services like clean water. because a relative minority of the population are able to participate in the economy, postcolonial scholars have argued it is not surprising to find the existence of parallel universes with different realities in south african society. subaltern studies, for example, have postulated that differences in capital and lived experience result in separate domains between the elite and “the people”; creating dual political realities that result in social policy being understood differently in different geographical spaces (paton 2016). in the wake of what was an unexpected trump presidency, and a state of heightened social anxiety due to the spread of the coronavirus, such insight seems useful. observers have pointed out that the media failed to envisage the election results because of the disconnect between the mainstream media and those residing outside metropolitan areas (ingram 2016). according to ingram (20166), “much of the east coast-based media establishment is arguably out of touch with the largely rural population that voted for trump, the disenfranchised voters who looked past his cheesy exterior and his penchant for half-truths and heard a message of hope”. thus, what has to register in the media sphere going forward is that due to social differences in an unequal and changing society, the discursive positions offered by various actors are not neutral positions, but viewpoints that are underpinned by assumptions of truth, and are always contested by other views (prinsloo 2014). as such, african scholars have insisted on the perspective that incidents of social conflict present an opportunity to examine the kinds of ideological and epistemological contradictions that come with living in a postcolonial/apartheid state (mbembe 2001). instead of the insistence on the truth of one public sphere, postcolonial scholars have posited that we have to be open to the fact that there are multiple spheres, and that post-conflict societies are multi-layered. from this perspective, it seems good advice that when grappling with anti-establishment and populist leaders such as donald 1110 fake news, alternative facts, fiction, faction – contesting the ‘true’ story trump, modern scholarship cannot be mis-categorised as other, but must be seen as a perfectly legitimate political reality that represents an alternate way of being. in such a paradigm, the nature of reality is not as some commentators have intimated an open question in the age of trump; it is an open question in postmodern and postcolonial societies. therefore, questions such as what is real and how do we reach consensus on the truth, as asked by commentators such as jeet heer (2018), have to be abandoned in favour of accepting the complications of modern life. although wary of the fact that identity gaps between groups might be exploited by individuals for personal benefit, this article’s broader aims are shaped less by technical definitions of fake news and the pedagogic impulse of warning against it, and more by understanding the reason some people chose to accept a version of truth over another. the story relayed earlier about the #guptaleaks is a case in point. in response to claims that the controversial gupta family was looting state coffers, the family planned a paid twitter offensive to defend their interests by offering a counter narrative. the pr campaign designed by bell-pottinger presented an alternate version of reality where white monopoly capital was the bigger social threat. thus, when presented with two versions of the world, it is interesting to ask why people would choose to believe either. warning about pseudoscience in healthy eating, wilson (2017) contends that to understand how clean eating took hold with tenacity, it is necessary to consider the terror food has become for millions of people. as such, wilson (2017) argues that the interesting question is not whether clean eating is a fad, but why so many intelligent people decided to put their faith in it. the broad answer is that any perspective, no matter how bogus it seems, has the ability to speak a certain kind of truth to a particular set of people. conclusion having reviewed the literature, what this article landed upon is the fact that fake news has in equal measure to do with social divides and disinformation. instead of seeing fake news as a threat to the health of the news media, the less media-centric and social perspective allowed us to view it as conflict, which is rooted in economic contradictions and political structures, and within differences in social attitudes or cultural outlooks. one of the big takeaways presented is the fact that this current era of misinformation speaks to longstanding social divisions, which are essentially struggles between opposing interests and outlooks driven by economic anxiety and new technologies. if these longstanding social conflicts, made more apparent by fake news, are a reflection of society, this article’s angle on fake news has been to investigate the social conditions that make it optimal for disinformation to prosper. the conclusion reached is that fake news speaks to social fractures, where the disconnect between sections of the population are manifest in parallel communication channels. therefore, this article invested time in investigating how fake news is more about the social context than the propaganda, and the ways in which we could use the recently instituted “disinformation era” to learn about the nature of contemporary social relations. when analysed closely, this perspective has been a major theme of critical commentary, which has emerged post the 2016 american presidential elections. 1312 ponono in criticising the failure of the democratic party to address the anti-establishment sentiment that dominated the polls, pundits have pointed out that in making sense of the social forces that drove donald trump to the white house, we need to be highly critical of the social abnormalities developed by power and capital (frank 2016). in this regard, the american mainstream media has been criticised for its feeble analysis of the fractures in society. commentators have pointed out that the mischaracterisation of trump supporters, as driven by racism instead of economic anxiety or a mixture of the two, has allowed insufficient analysis of the greater problems faced by that group, and thus a misreading of their discontent (frank 2016). furthermore, critics have highlighted that there was a tendency to demonise republican supporters, which meant that not enough attention was paid to frayed social relations. in the end, what has become evident through a review of the available literature is that fake news becomes prominent in a context where divisions have widened. thus, this article has been an attempt to understand fake news better through these fractured relations. in this attempt to understand the relationship between the media and society, the article has shown critical attention on the fact that it is impossible to talk of peace or consensus in situations where the media ignore underlying social issues that breed conflict. in foregrounding context before technicality, this article advocates for the recognition that in order to make any meaningful social 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(castells 2001; fuchs & horak 2008; norris 2001; peter & valkenburg 2006; van dijk & hacker 2003; van dijk 2006; wilson iii 2004). as south africa has strong industry research, our situation allows us to examine three of the most feasible current accounts of the digital divide: (a) that the digital divide will simply disappear; (b) that old inequalities will persist and even grow because of the internet; and (c) that new social advantages and disadvantages will result from the internet (van dijk & hacker 2003). this study, while it cannot finally arbitrate between these complex and no doubt not completely exclusive possibilities, tends to support the persistence and growth model, particularly as articulated by bonfadelli in his study of the “knowledge gap” in switzerland. he found that, despite internet access increasing steadily across demographical groups of the population, the gaps between these groups continued to increase as access increased (bonfadelli 2002). south african growth in internet access from 2002-2008 statistics from the south african advertising research foundation (saarf) (2008) on the frequency of internet access among adult south africans provide the basis for an analysis of internet access in south africa. according to saarf’s amps (all media and products survey) from 2002-2008, frequency of internet access has grown according to three measures of frequency of access. this thesis draws on three research questions from saarf’s amps internet usage survey to investigate frequency of internet access, namely: • have you personally accessed the internet/world wide web in the past four weeks? • have you personally accessed the internet/world wide web in the past seven days? • did you personally access the internet/world wide web yesterday? respondents were required to answer either “yes” or “no” in sequential order. if respondents answered “no” to either of the first two questions, they were told to skip ahead to the following section. the cumulative effect of these three questions is that users who said they had accessed the internet “yesterday” were automatically included in the tally of users who had accessed the internet in the “past seven days” and “past four weeks”. similarly, users who had only accessed the internet in the “past seven days” were also included in the tally of those who had accessed the internet in the “past four weeks”. this means that each successive group consists of a sum of different kinds of internet users, and is not a reflection of “only” those users who had used the internet within a certain period. these three categories can reasonably be described as high, moderate and low internet users assuming that frequency of use indicates user behaviour. the following graph depicts the saarf statistics gathered over a six-year period as the basis for an investigation into internet access in south africa. internet access in south 18 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage africa, as measured by frequency of access, is shown by the total numbers of adult south africans who fitted into each category, extrapolated from the numbers who responded “yes” to each question (figure 1). the figures take into account changes recorded by saarf in the country’s population over this time. figure 1: adult south africans who accessed internet “yesterday”, in the “past seven days” and in the “past four weeks” (saarf 2008) the first thing to note is that a profound digital divide still exists in south africa – in 2008 fewer than three million adult south africans said they had accessed the internet in the “past four weeks”, and even fewer adult south africans reported accessing the internet more frequently than that. thus while internet access increases, it is in a small segment of the population. over a six-year period the number of people who reported accessing the internet in the “past four weeks” has doubled; the number of people who reported accessing the internet in the “past seven days” has increased almost 2.5 times; and the number of people who reported accessing the internet “yesterday” had nearly tripled. this appears to support theorists arguing that there is a disappearing digital divide with a steady increase in internet access over time. however, it remains to be seen if the other element of the disappearing digital divide model, particularly that “once access gaps are bridged, there will be homogenous internet use patterns” (peter & valkenburg 2006), can be proven. while the disappearing digital divide model is thus to some extent correct in describing internet access in south africa since 2002, it appears to oversimplify what would 19 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage otherwise be a concerning trend of low levels of internet access in south africa. over a long-enough period, the digital divide in south africa may disappear, but that does not account for new differences of usage that are emerging or will emerge or the effects the inequalities of access may have. further interrogation of these statistics reveals significant trends already developing, particularly when the saarf figures for each category of frequency of use are isolated. this reworking helps understand what kind of internet access has grown the most over the sample period. by separating the growth of internet usage among the three groups of frequent, moderate and low users, we can see if bonfadelli’s “knowledge gap” approach (2002) holds in south africa as well. in his study, bonfadelli attempted to track the differences between groups of the swiss population with access to the internet over time. bonfadelli found that not only did access across demographical groupings increase over time, but that significant differences between these groups’ access to the internet did as well (ibid.: 75). to see if significant differences between kinds of usage was emerging, the saarf aggregate figures were broken down into three categories by subtracting the percentage of people who had accessed the internet “yesterday” from those who had accessed it in the “past seven days” (which included those who accessed it “yesterday”) and doing the same for the “past seven days” and “past four weeks” categories as well. the results – a measure of those who had accessed the internet in the “past four weeks” (but not in the “past seven days” or “yesterday”), the “past seven days” (but not “yesterday”) and “yesterday” – are recorded in table 1: table 1: revealing the cumulative effect *saarf universe: adult population in ’000 (saarf 2008) 20 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage this chart has thus broken down aggregate figures into three groups of users and allowed us to track the growth of each of these groups over the period. according to these figures, the percentage of south africans who have accessed the internet “yesterday” – the group defined as heavy users – has grown sharply, from 2% to 5.2%, or by some 260%, over the last six years. the percentage of south africans who have accessed the internet in the “past seven days” – the moderate users – has grown from 1.5% to 2.5% or by some 67%, while the infrequent user group has grown only from 1.1% to 1.4% or by some 27%. while it may thus initially appear that internet access is improving uniformly in south africa, this further drilling down into the groups reveals an uneven growth across kinds of users. in figure 2, we show how the three groups have changed as percentages of the total sample over the period. figure 2 demonstrates how, out of every 100 internet users in 2002, 24% of internet users were likely to be infrequent internet users (“past four weeks”), 33% were likely to be moderate internet users (“past seven days”) and 43% were likely to be frequent internet users. by 2008, that distribution had changed to 15%, 27% and 58% respectively. what this means for those who had not yet accessed the internet at all by 2008 is that the “typical” internet user is far more likely to be accessing the internet frequently than in 2002, and thus the gap between internet users and non-users as measured by frequency of the internet user’s access is increasing. put another way, non internet users need to access the internet far more frequently in 2008 than in 2002 in order for them to become a “typical” internet user in south africa. the required change in behaviour – from non-user to frequent user – is far greater than in 2002. in figure 3, we take into account changes in population growth, to reach real numbers of internet users in the different categories during this period. as this graph shows, the numbers of south africans using the internet frequently has climbed sharply, while those only accessing it infrequently actually dropped for the period 2004–2006 and has grown far more slowly. in 2002, the distribution of infrequent, moderate and frequent internet users was far more even than in 2008. for example, in 2006, around 800 000 more people had accessed the internet “yesterday”, according to saarf, than the infrequent user group that had accessed the internet in the “past four weeks”. by 2007, that figure had risen to over one million, and by 2008 that figure was close to 1.2 million. in contrast, in 2006 some 300 000 more people had accessed the internet in the “past seven days” than had accessed the internet in the “past four weeks” and by 2008 that difference was still below 400 000. there is not a steady growth in all user groups but a trend towards regular use as the norm. 21 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage figure 2: proportion of “yesterday”, “past seven days” and “past four weeks” of internet users (saarf 2008) figure 3: number of people accessing internet “yesterday”, in the “past seven days” and “past four weeks” 22 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage what conclusions can we reach from these trends? industry observers during this period commented on the shift of internet users in south africa to more frequent access. in december 2005, a world wide worx report (goldstuck 2007) stated that: despite great expectations, growth in internet access among the south african public has slowed to a crawl, with the dial-up market experiencing no growth in subscribers for the first time since the industry was launched in 1993…while the arrival of broadband or high-speed internet access has transformed the internet access landscape in terms of technology choice, its impact has been felt far more strongly in existing users migrating from dial-up usage than in new users coming on line. by 2007, further world wide worx research revealed that this trend continued. world wide worx managing director, arthur goldstuck (2007), noted: the harsh reality is that broadband has not yet made a major impact on overall connectivity numbers, even while dramatically increasing the usage of those who are already connected. the majority of broadband users are simply migrating up the connectivity food chain, from dial-up to broadband. so, while the haves get more, the have-nots remain locked out. goldstuck attributes this blockage to the high cost of landline internet connectivity and the monopolistic environment brought on by the state-owned telkom. goldstuck also notes that up to a third of broadband subscribers also have access to “another form of connectivity”, suggesting that the “haves” enjoy a choice and range of internet activities. the differences between dial-up and broadband internet use help contextualise different frequencies of internet use. studies show (assael 2005; chaudhuri, flamm, & horrigan 2005; firth & mellor 2005; fox 2005; horrigan 2009; papacharissi & zaks 2006) that frequency and particulars of internet use correlate directly to the kind of internet access available. while the overall increase in users who had accessed the internet “yesterday” rather than over the past four weeks cannot be attributed to broadband adoption alone, this privileged form of access clearly played a major role. and, as goldstuck’s comments suggest, this trend provides more support for the persistence and growth or knowledge gap models (in which the real-world rich become digitally richer) or, alternatively, the emerging digital differentiation model, rather than the more utopian disappearing digital divide hypothesis. goldstuck’s argument relies on the assumption that there is a steady migration from dial-up to broadband, from low or moderate to heavy use, without a general increase across all groups. the saarf figures support this argument rather than suggesting that all groups of internet users have increased their frequency of access steadily over time. a perfect model for random or widespread growth would be a steady increase across all groups. 23 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage while it is thus impossible to describe with certainty what is fuelling the varying growths in these three groups of internet users, it is clear that the number of infrequent (“past four weeks”) and moderate (“past seven days”) internet users – whoever they may be – is not growing at anywhere near the same pace as frequent (“yesterday”) internet users. considering that internet access is still fairly new in south africa and, as it has already been demonstrated, that it is enjoyed by a small minority of south africans, it seems likely that the more rapid growth in frequent internet access was in those able to access the internet frequently because of their household earnings or education levels, in other words those able to use their existing social advantages in new ways. this group form part of castells’ network society as opposed to those who have fallen into his dystopian black holes of informational capitalism (castells 1996; castells, muller, cloete, & badat 2001). a further consideration is that many of the frequent users are using the internet at work because they are in the formal, skilled economy, where applications such as e-mail are indispensable. for them, frequent internet usage may not be so much a matter of social choice as of economic necessity. conclusion this interrogation of saarf internet access figures, which at first sight present a picture of steady growth in internet usage, and thus of a disappearing digital divide, has revealed more complex trends and disturbed any notion of steady growth among the public at large. the disappearing digital divide model has some cogency but the relatively low numbers of internet users in south africa as a whole, combined with the time it may take for these numbers to increase, render this model insufficient. the trends described give support to the persistence and growth model (the internet users would tend to be overwhelmingly white, affluent, formerly privileged) or the emerging digital divide model (where, possibly, a new younger, educated urban elite would benefit at the expense of those, of whatever racial group, who were older, less educated, rural) or perhaps some combination of these. more qualitative research is necessary to investigate the factors driving these patterns and changes. this investigation can not yet shed light on what these factors may be, but it has suggested that broadband adoption in south africa is one likely factor. in undertaking this research, we are aware that we have neglected the extent of cell phone access to the internet in south africa – something which many industry observers and researchers suggest may complicate any south african model considerably. nonetheless, it should be observed that while cell phone access may give a rapid boost to digital access and thus to the disappearing digital divide model, the clear socio-economic and perhaps age divide between those having broadband and those accessing the internet through phones, in many cases in a fairly rudimentary form like mxit, is likely to mean that important differences between the groups remain and 24 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage create new forms of social and cultural capital. the saarf figures, in ignoring younger users of the internet, may not be able to predict whether a major drive for internet adoption in schools may lead to a sudden surge in adult usage, and thus to a rapid increase in internet access more broadly, but these figures may also underestimate the number of privileged younger users with access in households. our findings about computer access to the internet thus allow a more nuanced understanding of the leading theories of the digital divide and their relevance in south africa. they suggest that the disappearing digital divide model is inadequate, and while it is impossible to test the persistence and growth model or the emerging digital differentiation model without more information on who south african internet users are and what they 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analysis of the determinants of internet access. telecommunications policy 29(9-10): 731-755. firth, l. & mellor, d. 2005. broadband: benefits and problems. telecommunications policy 29: 223-236. fox, s. 2005. digital divisions: there are clear differences among those with broadband connections, dial-up connections, and no connections at all to the internet [online]. available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/pip_digital_divisions_oct_5_2005.pdf fuchs, c. & horak, e. 2008. africa and the digital divide. telematics and informatics 25(2): 99-116. goldstuck, a. 2007. sa internet access grows, but only for the haves [online]. available at http://www.cbn.co.za/pressoffice/spaceacre/fullstory/291.htm horrigan, j. 2009. home broadband adoption 2009 [online]. available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/2009/10-home-broadband-adoption-2009.aspx norris, p. 2001. digital divide: civic engagement, information poverty, and the internet worldwide. cambridge: cambridge university press. 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[online]. available at: www.saarf.co.za van dijk, j. & hacker, k. 2003. the digital divide as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. information society 19(4): 315. van dijk, j. a. g. m. 2006. digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. poetics 34(4-5): 221-235. wilson iii, e. j. 2004. the information revolution and developing countries. cambridge, ma: mit press. 26 the digital divide and the knowledge gap in south african internet usage untitled 21 in search of the daily sun's recipe for success communitas issn 1023-0556 2006 11: 21 35 j.d. froneman* abstract one of the most significant media events of the past decade has been the founding of the daily sun, a tabloid aimed at the low-income black market. this newspaper has become the nation's best-selling daily within a year. through a qualitative analysis of the newspaper, it was found that it concentrates on soccer, sex, horror, personal tragedies and traditional african beliefs (including witchcraft). however, the daily sun is not a tabloid in the british sun tradition: it does not publish pin-up pictures of girls or celebrity scandals. it also carries substantial news and columns which can be described as self-help or “developmental”. the daily sun has thus, to some extent, adapted the tabloid genre, which in the past has been equated with one-dimensional scandal journalism. it is argued that although aspects of the daily sun may not live up to the ethical expectations of traditional western journalism, its success in reaching a new market of readers who did not read a newspaper previously must be acknowledged. as such it has created a new public sphere where a section of the population has found a place where some exchange of information and views can take place. * professor johannes froneman lectures in the school of communication studies at the north-west university in potchefstroom. introduction in the years prior to 1990, south africa’s media landscape was to a large extent determined by the constraints and needs of the old order locked in an ideological conflict (cf. hachten & giffard 1884; tomaselli, tomaselli & muller 1987; burns 1990; beukes 1992; grogan & barker 1993). this also inhibited what south africans thought possible and necessary media-wise. post-apartheid changes, more specifically those dictated by economic imperatives and the anc government-driven transformation of the media, have subsequently resulted in sweeping changes to ownership and editorial composition (cf. berger 2001; teer-tomaselli & tomaselli 2001; froneman 1995; froneman 1997; froneman 2006). while the jury is still out on the question of content changes, any cursory glance through most papers reveal any number of changes. market forces also came to the fore much stronger, as was the case world-wide, resulting in some “dumbing-down” in order to attract readers, viewers and listeners in an increasingly competitive industry. one of the most significant recent events in south africa’s media industry has been the founding of the daily sun, a daily tabloid aimed at the lower-income (lsm4-6) black market (cf. moodie 2005). this newspaper has — with its innovative diet of homebrewed populism and developmental material — become the nation’s best-selling daily within a year and has shot up to a circulation approaching 500 000. in the process it has eschewed traditional news agendas and arguably redefined the genre of tabloid journalism. it has certainly given the south african media landscape an added african flavour. while much have been written about the new wave of tabloid journalism in south africa, it has been overshadowed by ethical, professional and commercial arguments (cf. coetzee 2004; davis 2004; malan 2004; sarie 2004; beeld 2005; du plessis 2005; shevel 2005; van der westhuizen 2005; moodie 2005; froneman 2005). this has contributed to some understanding of tabloid journalism, but has shed little light on the content and editorial feel of the big success story, the daily sun. to get more insight into the daily sun’s recipe for success, the following contextual and content-specific questions are addressed in this article: first, what media trends prevailed in pre-democratic south africa? as this was the context from which the daily sun emerged, it is important to briefly explore. second, what convinced the publishers to start a new chapter in south africa’s newspaper market? a clear-cut answer may be difficult to find, but we could find some pointers. third, what are the general characteristics of “tabloid” newspapers? this forms the theoretical framework for the attempt to answer the main research question: what are the unique ingredients of the daily sun? in answering the latter question, we could get more insight into the innovative, sometimes provocative but commercially very successful journalism of publisher deon du plessis and his team. media trends in pre-democratic south africa prior to the first fully democratic elections in 1994, south africa was a conflict-ridden country. this was particularly so in the two decades prior to the unbanning of the anc and its leaders in 1990 (cf. giliomee 2003:578-625). the media landscape reflected the 22 nature of this divided, authoritarian society: ownership and control lay predominantly with the state (broadcast media) and four white-controlled groups (print media); editorial leadership rested, with few exceptions, with white males; and the content reflected, to a significant extent, apartheid structures and patterns, even though many of the white-owned media were very critical of the apartheid regime (cf. tomaselli, tomaselli & muller 1987; louw 1993). an important exception was the so-called alternative press, which was non-commercial and activist by nature. although these publications pushed the boundaries of what was possible in terms of strict media laws and regulations, the media in general had no choice but to exercise self-censorship and tread a very fine line (cf. tyson 1993). this was reflected, inter alia, in the small, front-page plugs employed by many englishlanguage newspapers stating that the content of the publication was restricted in terms of the emergency regulations and other laws (cf. grogan & barker 1993:229-248; diederichs & de beer 1989:104-105). these restrictions specifically inhibited reporting and comment on the conflict which beset the country. on 2 february 1990 the then state president, f.w. de klerk, lifted the emergency regulations. although many laws stayed on the statute book for some time (and some even up to this day), the mist lifted overnight and a climate of freedom of speech emerged. this opened the door to free political debate and a general free-for-all media situation. sex magazines that were banned up till then flooded the market and the political alternative press soon disappeared (cf. diederichs & de beer 1989:132133). a new era had dawned with new challenges and possibilities, but not without a new set of ideological rules and government-enforced objectives. this, however, placed no limitation on media companies to explore new markets with a single-minded profitdriven motif. however, initially only one media house grasped the potential of a new, populist daily aimed at the working-class black population who had particular needs but no media champion. a new market for tabloid journalism? south africa does not have a strong history of populist newspapers bent on exclusively publishing trivial, sensational news — yellow-press newspapers which could be called, for want of a better term, tabloids. certainly there have been racy, down-market weeklies through the years, e.g. post/weekendpost, a paper aimed at the indian population and still going strong after 50 years. its present editor, brijlall ramguthee (2006), describes its early days as follows: back in the mid-fifties, post was launched as a racy read, spiced with a great deal of sex, soccer, and robust news reports that left very little to the imagination. the immorality act, particularly, with its ‘cop-in-the-boot’ stories which revealed explicit evidence of the forbidden love-across-the-colour-line shenanigans of whites and blacks (indians included) was given top priority. and the tabloid sold like the proverbial ‘hot bhajia’, an indian delicacy. 23 at the same time the post was founded, the afrikaans weekly landstem (later incorporated into dagbreek) found a niche as a populist paper (in broadsheet format), while the bantu world found a populist market in the townships of the 1950s, although not quite in the daily sun’s mould (thale 2002; harber 2006). in all instances the papers had a narrow, ethnically defined market, supporting the view that scandals tend not to travel well over cultural barriers (thomlinson 1997:71). the country’s dominant sunday papers (e.g. the sunday times and rapport) include tabloid-style reporting in every issue, although they offer a mixed bag of more serious journalism as well to cater for a very diverse readership (naudé & froneman 2002), but the success of the tabloid-style sunday sun was important. it was not entirely groundbreaking, but its editor, phalane motale, has claimed with some justification that the sunday sun was the mother of the new-generation tabloids (berger 2005). but the country had never seen a tabloid-style daily. this changed when naspers (through its subsidiary media24) launched the daily sun on 1 july 2002, eleven months after the successful launch of its tabloid stable mate, the sunday sun. the driving force behind both papers, deon du plessis, claims that they (the publishers) were innovative in the sense that they caught the right time (to launch the daily sun), when people were less political. we sensed that the market had moved on and we were talking to the sons and daughters of the revolution in a sense. they were off the barricades and into improving their lives (barron 2004). elsewhere du plessis argued: “previously nobody cared much for this section of the market.” (media24 news, april 2004) so perhaps it was a newly evolved market or simply one waiting to be exploited. a sunny, non-political approach was espoused right from the first issue of the daily sun. in an editorial the paper stated: “like you, we are optimistic… our newspaper is bright, optimistic, cheerful and positive” (daily sun, 1 july 2002). in an editorial on its third birthday, the sunday sun elaborated on this, predicating its views on the fact that the sunday sun, daily sun and the new afrikaans weekly tabloid, son, all have “an unmistakable tabloid attitude” (sunday sun, 1 august 2004). hereby the sunday sun correctly implied that tabloid journalism was more about “attitude” than the a3 format. after all, many serious newspapers world-wide have for years been published in a3 or “tabloid” format; many more are changing to smaller (compact) formats at the moment (whelan 2005). the journalistic objective was thus to reach a new market of working people, readers whose interests had purportedly not been served in the past, by offering something different. the daily sun and other tabloids have become an important segment. while there was some debate, e.g. at the annual general meeting of the south african national editors’ forum (sanef), about the place of tabloids, a media release by sanef described the 24 tabloids as “a vibrant element of the changing media landscape” (berger 2005). the market had spoken, although not all journalists were convinced tabloid journalism: a universal but diverse phenomenon much is written about tabloid journalism, but there is some diversity in opinion on what it entails. to place the discussion of the daily sun within some journalistic context, a few general remarks are offered followed by some features drawn from mostly british tabloid newspapers. this will demarcate the field to some extent, but also emphasise the fact that not all tabloids are the same, as alluded to by the daily sun’s publisher when he referred to a few specific differences between his paper and the british sun (barron 2004). tabloids clearly do not refer to all newspapers published in tabloid format (a3); it refers to journalism with a populist, i.e. broad or mass appeal, published mostly in a3 (or similar) or magazine format. this form of journalism is commercial to the extreme and “often overemphasizes immediate-reward types of information in order to sell” (hiebert, ungurait & bohn 1991:417). they add: crime and violence almost always outweigh and outdraw stories of good deed, constructive action, peaceful progress, and orderly dissent. the aberrations of society — the odd, the unusual, the unique — are more often the subject of news than the normal events. tabloid journalism lends itself to this kind of selectivity. one can argue that most journalism tends to focus on the unusual, but tabloid journalism takes this to the extreme, concentrating almost exclusively on the weird, bizarre and personal, particularly if it concerns “celebrities” (cf. rayner, wall & kruger 2001:223) it sensationalises the trivial and ignores the really “important” news, i.e. the news regarded by serious mainstream papers as important (cf. bennett, slater & wall 2006:156). but these overtly commercial newspapers touch the masses and provide easily-digestible information and entertainment. mcquail (1994:16) surmises that commercialization has resulted in: a new kind of paper: lighter and more entertaining, emphasizing human interest, more sensational in its attention to crime, violence, scandals and entertainment, and having a very large readership in which lower-income and lower-education groups are overrepresented. rayner, wall & kruger (2001:223) suggest that we describe a tabloid as: a compact newspaper… designed to appeal to a mass audience. ta b l o i d s , particularly at the lower end of the market, are associated with sensationalising the trivial event rather than with comprehensive coverage of national and international news. in order to discuss the content of the daily sun within the context of “tabloid journalism”, it is useful to list some of the most salient features. it is important to distinguish from the outset between outright “downmarket” tabloids (i.e. “red tops” such as the sun and the daily mirror), and the somewhat more sophisticated daily 25 mail and daily express (rayner, wall & kruger 2001: 23). these papers have different target audiences, resulting in tabloids with a different feel, style, tone and emphasis. (in south africa one would have to distinguish between the daily sun, sowetan and arguably the citizen.) some features of the tabloids are: strong visuals. tabloids typically use visually strong lay-out, i.e. big, bold headlines (often in upper case) and strong use of pictures and illustrations (cf. bennett, slater & wall 2006:177; rayner, wall & kruger 2001: 223). given the smaller format of the newspapers, the headlines and pictures appear even larger. snappy headlines. the downmarket british tabloid press is known for its snappy emotive headlines, invariably with an intended pun (e.g. bisch! bash! bosh!) (daily mirror, 4 november 2005; bennett, slater & wall 2006:178). exclamation marks are often used to heighten the impact. sex and sensation. tabloid journalism aims at entertaining the lowest common denominator, more often with exclusive disclosures of celebrities’ trivial trials and tribulations (cf. rayner, wall & kruger 2001:223). to secure exclusives, some tabloids have huge resources available to pay for informers and/or interviews (cf. bbc news 2001). scandals involving the pillars of society are regarded as prime material (sarie 2004), but sports, tv and other show business celebrities provide a steady stream of scandal, with headlines and sub headlines such as cruel kerry. star confesses stealing best pal’s lover – then taunts her over phone (news of the world, 19 february 2006). this is a very personal type of journalism, even intrusive. low-grade tabloids typically run unconfirmed stories and peddle in half-truths. stories with sexual innuendos is often used blatantly to sell papers, but not all low-brow tabloids follow the sun’s recipe of topless page-three girls (cf. the sun, 26 october 2005; (e.g. daily mirror, 4 november 2005; froneman 2004). sport and tv. sport and tv provide diversion to the masses and get huge coverage in all tabloids (chippendale & horrie 2005:38). this provides subeditors with countless opportunities to write eye-catching headlines such as you’re a cheat, drogba (the mail on sunday, 5 march 2006) and agony! smith fights for his career after horror injuries… (news of the world, 19 february 2006). informal, easy to read text. tabloids prefer shorter stories with short sentences and short paragraphs. slang understood by their working-class readers is often used (cf. bennett, slater & wall 2006:177-178). populist politics. tabloid newspapers often shun hard politics, except when a political figure is involved in some real or fabricated scandal. but tabloids can give a voice to the “ordinary people” (through letter pages) and by creating moral outrage and panic (e.g. the daily express with its front-page headline on 12 january 2006: how many perverts are in our schools? and the sun’s splash coverage of money spent on art: £9 enough to give you an art attack [26 october 2005] ). rayner, wall & kruger (2001: 223) suggest that tabloids often “pander to populist opinion, e.g. by encouraging xenophobic attitudes to foreign countries and their people”. 26 tabloids can indeed be very patriotic. austria’s highly popular k ronen zeitung combines “bare-breasted pimps, lowbrow cartoons, and opinion in rhyme” with an almost dadaist collage of stories fanning fears that vienna is being swamped by undesirable refugees, editorials tinged with anti-semitic innuendo, and articles trivializing the holocaust (wise 2002). in britain the daily express and daily mail are both politically and socially conservative, but eschew the sex-scandal fare of, e.g., the sun (cf. glover 2005; chippendale & horrie 2005:28-29). notably the daily express launched a television advertisement campaign highlighting its stand on “real values” regarding tradition, progress, good manners and its stand against anti-social behaviour (daily express, 12 january 2006). tips on getting on with life. populist tabloids are geared to improving readers’ lives and provide tips on topics such as dieting (daily mirror, 4 november 2005), abortion (daily mail, 17 february 2006), careers (daily mail, 19 january 2006), and relationships (daily express, 12 january 2006). from the above we can conclude that tabloids indeed differ in execution, but they are, broadly speaking, newspapers with populist appeal and a certain style and content. the question remains: what are the unique ingredients of the south african daily sun, if any? research method in order to ascertain what the unique content of the daily sun is and how it compares with the above generalised characteristics of the tabloid press, two weeks’ issues of the daily sun were qualitatively analysed, i.e. ten consecutive issues (19 july 2004 to 30 july 2004). this was done in order to provide a valid sample of the journalism produced by the daily sun’s editorial staff, which could be analysed and described contextually with reference to the broad framework discussed above. the analysis of the papers is supplemented by comments offered by other analysts. as the main objective was to get a feel for the editorial mix, not every item is described or analysed. given the exploratory nature of this project, the analysis was done to specifically determine: • if the front-page reflected a tabloid-style, populist news agenda; • how it was presented (size and nature of headlines as well as photos); • if and to what extent the inside pages were an extension of the front-page agenda; • what prominence was given to sports and tv; • if the text was written in an easy, punchy style; and • if the paper provided self-help advice and/or services to readers. 27 the daily sun’s formula for success media analyst anton harber (2004) has described the daily sun as a “raunchy, crude tabloid, filled with stories of two-headed babies, people falling into pit latrines and very little politics”. but he added that there are some “surprising things about it”. this impression supports publisher du plessis’ claim that the daily sun is a “carefully planned mix of so-called sensation and an effort to compensate for what our readers missed out on in their school years” (beeld 2005). the following analysis will give an indication if these impressions and claims are accurate. from the analysis the following front-page lead stories emerged (headlines written in upper case or lower case as in the paper): • another soccer shocker! (19 july) allegations of theft against a top soccer official were reported. this reflected the importance of working-class black south africans’ favourite sport. next to the lead was a photo of a (black) south african who had won the miss deaf world 2004 competition. • bitten to death in sex orgy! (20 july) two men and a woman beat up the victim after a “group-sex orgy”. he was also throttled and bitten by the woman – which explains the somewhat erroneous headline. the front-page also carried a story on an alleged bid to unseat the ceo of the professional soccer league. • knoza: don’t blame me (21 july) this was another soccer story, a follow-up on the previous day’s second lead. • high voltage horror! (22 july) ten security men “cruelly burned” after a steel scaffold hit power lines. • the story that should shame sa! (23 july) a 17-year old boy alleged that he killed his younger brother to save him from having to go days without food. the intro stated: “anger and concern swept the country…” over the killing. • have they no shame? (26 july) “thugs have vandalised a cemetery, destroying the tombstones of family ancestors,” the intro stated. • soccer uproar! (27 july) several stories, including two concerning money, were rolled into one for the lead. 28 • whose wife are you? (28 july) the subheadings warned: check up! you could be married to an alien. the latter referred to foreigners who were fraudulently married to south african women without their knowledge. • granny dies of sorrow (29 july) the intro stated: “granny’s body trembled in a last terrible dance of death as the rope slowly strangled her.” the granny hanged herself, but the report added that she “also died of sadness…”, opening the door for the somewhat misleading headline. • sick! (30 july) this was a hard news story on what was labelled south africa’s “healthcare crisis”. subheadings added: doctors and nurses quitting; non-private patients lose out (i.e. ordinary people who have to make use of state health services); water and power cuts loom; waiting time getting longer; more hiv and tb infections. three of the ten headlines thus focussed on soccer, while sex and personal tragedies made up the bulk of the other headlines. this is typical of low-grade tabloids, particularly the half-truths of the headlines bitten to death in sex orgy! and the very personal granny dies of sorrow. the dimension of horror came to the fore in the story headlined high voltage horror! note in many instances the use of an exclamation mark, in step with the over-the-top approach adopted by tabloids. but the daily sun shuns the clever puns associated with british tabloids. the story on marriage fraud got an typical tabloid treatment: whose wife are you? thereby female readers were drawn into a hard-news story in a very personal way. likewise the headline sick! drew the reader into a hard-news story (on the crisis in heath services). these two stories indicate that the daily sun was not shy of running with some hard news, but they treated it in a way which probably made it more interesting for their particular readership. it is clearly populist and aimed at creating moral outrage. a few graphic pictures of dead or mutilated people were published (e.g. front page, 26 july), in step with some tabloids’ focus on the gruesome. each issue had approximately six inside news pages, including one devoted to african and world news. prominent news stories included: drunks drive residents mad (19 july); massive tavern shut-down (20 july); baby dies at crèche (23 july); family left with nothing (23 july); jailbird ex guns down mom-to-be (26 july); and task team to probe corruption (30 july). the daily sun also carries a pull-out sports section which concentrates very strongly on the major sports supported by the black working class: soccer, as well as horseracing. cultural and tv news is catered for in another pull-out called the sunbuzz, while a weekly motoring page, a lively readers’ letters page, horoscope, crosswords puzzle, lotto news and diverse other features make up the package. the newspaper carried no daily opinion-editorial page, but occasionally published a brief daily sun says 29 comment piece (e.g. 27 july). unlike its older sister, the sunday sun, no page-three pinup girl is published, in step with du plessis claim that the daily sun was “far more conservative in some areas (than british tabloids) and far less in others” (barron 2004). the paper can thus be described as a very lively mix of news and features, all specifically selected to fulfil the mostly unintellectual information/entertainment needs of its chosen target market, namely “the (black) guy in the blue overall” (du plessis 2005). bloom (2006) describes this (successful) focus on the neglected black worker as follows: this focus on an individual, on a particular south african who for centuries has been nameless and ignored, is way more than metaphorical. the daily sun editorial charter is driven by a long and growing list of things that matter to this person. and if there is one secret to the paper’s record-smashing sales growth, that’s probably it. the focus on the individual has a very personal dimension in the form of advice columns as well as other items which can be placed under the general rubric of developmental journalism, i.e. journalism aimed at the political, social, cultural and economic upliftment of the general population. the paper’s appeal has been enhanced by regional editions with local news. publisher deon du plessis rightly insists that the daily sun is not a replica of the british tabloid press. a less conservative aspect of the daily sun includes its frequent references to witchcraft. “the sun in brittain would poke fun at that. we wouldn’t because that’s part of the society we serve” (barron 2004). a number of items were identified in the ten issues supporting du plessis’ remarks, e.g.: witch axed to death (19 july); evil fire follows family (20 july); the witch is back, and she wants her snake! (20 july); and murder suspect: she was a witch (30 july). while attention is given to witchcraft and the paranormal, the paper carries a daily verse from the bible and devoted a page to this question posed by a reader: how can i be born again? (22 july). the paper also awarded a prize to a letter arguing: sex is worth waiting for (22 july). this is a conservative dimension not usually associated with tabloids, but not without precedent. articles helping readers to get more from life (i.e. “developmental” news) do get frequent space. stories such as don’t be mean, be clean (21 july) and what the raf (road accident fund) can do for you (22 july); go for prostate cancer test (23 july); and kids jabbed for polio (27 july) are supplemented by the sun solutions, sundefender 30 and other columns. these items correlate with those found in some (but not all) british tabloids and is part of a very calculated recipe (coetzer 2004). as du plessis points out, many of the daily sun’s detractors, when talking about its high content of sex, violence and, at times, the bizarre, are only looking at the front section of the paper – not the bulk of the newspaper, which is devoted to what can loosely be termed life skills, usable information and more. this section of the paper could also be described as useful “get-on-with-life information for an emerging lower-middle class” (harber 2004). the daily sun thus provides its readers with a very comprehensive package, excluding longer reportage and opinion pieces. serious political reporting and anything with a party-political flavour are shunned, although it could rightly be argued that it focuses on real problems at grassroots level. as harber (2006) opined: if you look at the daily sun, it has no conventional politics, in the sense of party or parliamentary activity. it is not filled with the pronouncements of politicians and officials. it is filled, however, with the pictures and voices of ordinary township folk who are not often represented in our media. whatever criticism may be levelled at the daily sun, the above analysis (and harber’s comments) contradicts the remark by davis (2004) that “… (south african) tabloids offer very little useful news or information”. the daily sun’s news coverage may be biased against major news as perceived by other more serious dailies, but it does give a brief overview of major news. however, in many other instances the daily sun is typically tabloid: its focus on gruesome, sometimes bizarre news, its shocking headlines; the shunning of important news in favour of the trivial; the punchy, personal style aimed at drawing the reader into the story on an emotional level; the very strong emphasis on sports of interest to black working class readers (soccer and horseracing); and the recurrent references to witches and the evil aims the paper squarely at the lower end of the black market. most importantly the english used is simple and devoid of jargon which would not easily be understood by its readers. conclusions the daily sun provides an easy, even entertaining read for readers with a low literacy level. as such they are expanding the readership base of south african newspapers. after the first five to seven news pages, which can be termed lowbrow but not without any substance, the paper surprises with its useful content. the newspaper is visually bright and the style racy, but chooses to be relatively conservative in some respects, e.g. the lack of pin-up girls. the paper also chooses to highlight constructive letters, particularly those that take a strong moral stand. most sentences and items are short, keeping the readers’ literacy in mind. it is indeed a paper for “the (black) guy in the blue overall”, as emphasised by du plessis (2005). 31 by ignoring formal politics to a large extent, it turns away from past conflict politics and looks at the future — a future which demands that each individual must make the best of life. it is not overawed by the glamour and riches of the new (black) ruling elite and focuses on ordinary (black) people who have yet to experience the fruits of the political liberation. as such the daily sun caters for people who are not quite in the mainstream. they inhabit a world in which traditional african beliefs regarding witches, evil spirits and demons are very real. while serious ethical questions can be addressed at certain aspects of the daily sun recipe, its circulation figures and huge personal response by readers indicate that it has become a media home to a group of people at the fringes of society. the daily sun is in many respects a typical populist tabloid, but it deviates to some extent from the recipe employed by other tabloid publishers. the daily sun has thus given a new dimension to tabloid journalism, thereby challenging us to revisit preconceived views of this genre. more importantly, it has created a new public sphere where a section of the population has found a place where the “exchange of information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion can be formed”, as dahlgren (2002:195) summarises habermas. this places a heavy responsibility on the publishers. 32 references barron, c. 2004. so many questions. sunday times, 27 june 2004. bbc news, 2004. profile: piers morgan. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3713857.stm. accessed on 28 march 2006. bbc news. 2001. max clifford. behind the headlines. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1485789.stm. accessed on 28 march 2006. beeld, 15 april 2005. bennett, p., slater, j. & wall, p. 2006. a2 media studies: the essential introduction. london: routledge. berger, g. 2001. deracialisation, democracy and development: transformation of the south african media. in tomaselli, k. & dunn, r. 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(ed.) mcquail’s reader in mass communication theory. london: sage. daily mail, 17 february 2006. daily mail, 19 january 2006. daily mirror, 4 november 2005. daily sun, 1 july 2002. daily sun, 19-30 july 2004. daily express, 12 january 2006. davis, a. 2004. a titillating trend. the media, september. 33 diederichs, p. & de beer, a.s. 1989. newspapers. the fourth estate: a cornerstone of democracy. in de beer, a.s. (ed.) mass media. towards the millennium. pretoria: van schaik. du plessis, d. 2005. speech delivered at the annual conference of the sa communication association, pretoria, september 2005. du plessis, t. 2005. om die ponies te ry of nie. rapport, 24 april 2005. froneman, j. d. 1995. mediatransformasie: ons almal se kans. word & action, summer 1995. froneman, j. d. 1997. mediatransformasie dek tafel vir nuwe joernalistiek. literator, 18(3). froneman, j. d. 2004. son sak oor moraliteit en gehalte. die kerkbode, 10 september: 13. froneman, j.d. 2005. die geel gevaar. beeld, 21 april 2005. froneman, j.d. 2006. expanding the zones of free public discourse in post-apartheid south africa,1990-2005. unpublished paper to be presented at conference “modern mass media and public sphere: new challenges and opportunities for democracy”, moscow, russia, june 13–16. giliomee, h. 2003. the afrikaners. london: hurst & company. glover, s. 2005. desmond’s golden goose could easily become a dead duck. media weekly, the independent, 24 october 2005. grogan, j. & barker, g.1993. media law. to tread cautiously on different beats. in de beer, a.s. (ed.) mass media for the nineties. pretoria: van schaik. hachten, w.a. & giffard, c.a. 1984. the press and apartheid – repression and propaganda in south africa. university of wisconsin press: wisconsin. harber, a. 2004. vibrant media 10 years into freedom. sunday times, 22 february 2004. harber, a. 2006. of rags and riches. the harbinger, 11 march 2006. http://www.big.co.za/wordpress/2006/03/11/of-rags-and-riches. accessed on 27 march 2006. hiebert, r.e., ungurait, d.f. & bohn, t.w.1991. mass media vi. new york: longman. http://www.sociologie.be/tijdschrift/jrg/abs/abs2002-34-5.htm. accessed on 27 march 2006. louw, p.e. 1993. south african media policy. bellville: anthropos. malan, p. 2004. die geel pers is hier! rapport, 31 october 2004. mcquail, d. 1994. mass communication theory. london: sage. 34 media24 news. 2004. …and the sun titles sizzle. april 2004. moodie, g. 2005. tabloid war. sunday times business times, 17 july 2005. naudé, a.m.e. & froneman, j.d. 2003. trends in news agenda setting by the sunday times and rapport during 2000. ecquid novi, 24(1):84-98. news of the world, 19 february 2006. ramguthee, b. 2006. letter from the editor. http://www.thepost.co.za/index.php?fsectionid=729&fsetid=355. accessed on 26 march 2006. rayner, p., wall, p. & kruger, s. 2001. media studies: the essential introduction. london: routledge. sarie, 2004. ponie-pers & paparazzi. november. shevel, a. 2005. the more sex and scandal the better, say sa readers. sunday times business times, 1 may 2005. sunday sun, 1 august 2004. teer-tomaselli, r. & tomaselli, k. 2001. transformation, nation-building and the south african media. in tomaselli, k. & dunn r. (eds.) media, democracy and renewal in southern africa. denver: international academic publishers. thale, t. 2002. south africa’s biggest daily gets facelift. http://www.joburg.org.za/march2002/sowetan.stm. accessed on 27 march 2006. the sun, 26 october 2006. the mail on sunday, 5 march 2006. thomlinson, j. 1997. and beside, the wench is dead. in lull, j. & hinerman, s. (eds.) media scandals. cambridge: polity press. tomaselli, k., tomaselli, r. & muller, j. 1987. narrating the crisis. johannesburg: richard lyon and co. tyson, h. 1993. editors under fire. sandton: random house. van der westhuizen, g. 2005. bome bly in slag vir skinderstories. beeld, 13 october 2005. whelan, c. 2005. tabloid fever. sowetan, 3 june 2005. wise, m.z. 2002. international: a u s t r i a ’s troubling tabloid. c j r , january/february 2002. 35 september 2006 213 the current state of research in the social sciences communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 213 218 thoko mayekiso* * professor thoko mayekiso is deputy vice-chancellor of research, technology and planning at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. meo iudicio there is a lingering academic disdain for the social sciences which needs countering: namely that they are imprecise, esoteric, and are in the main common sense festooned with jargon, and have the dubious distinction of making what is patently clear, manifestly obscure (deutsch, platt & senghaas 1971). this view of the obsession with the “superiority” of the pure sciences over social sciences, as well as the unquenchable thirst for measurement, found further elaboration by guthrie (1976) in a book with the interesting title even the rat was white: a historical view of psychology. starting with these observations which may arguably be regarded as dated, the reality is that four decades later not much has changed. the mantra: “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it” still holds sway to this day. further evidence for the sleight of hand in favour of the pure sciences is seen in the south african funding formula where more money is received for research in science, engineering and technology, and much less for the social sciences. pure sciences continue to receive the bulk of the attention, and the bigger slice in the current funding formula in higher education. when it comes to budget allocations, the humanities continue to hold the proverbial short end of the stick. davidson and tolich (2003), in an extensive coverage of social science research in new zealand, lament the unequal treatment meted out to the social sciences. at the heart of this introduction is the view, and contention that will be made throughout this opinion piece that the social sciences cannot be left to play second fiddle to the pure sciences for one major reason: they are there to develop and address matters germane to being human. and no pure science, medicine, economics, technology and the whole frontiers of knowledge can advance when the social sciences are neglected and ignored. there must be a balance between “the high tech and the high touch”. more telling a blow, though, is when the labour market neglects to hire social sciences graduates, and focus on those with degrees in accounting, economics, and the natural and pure sciences, and in doing so, missing out on the skill of lateral thinking, which 214 the current state of research in the social sciences graduates of the social sciences acquire. it is hypocritical to celebrate the seminal role that lateral thinking can play à la de bono, yet deprive social sciences graduates employment opportunities. the truth is: neglect, disregard, under-resourcing, and “inferiorization” of the social sciences can continue only at the peril of the precarious world, and to the detriment of humanity. social science research will pale into insignificance if no conscious effort is made to claim a stake and a rightful place alongside all the sciences. epistemic justice vs scientific rigour knowledge acquisition is a contested terrain and is a function of a gallimaufry of factors: among them language (anglophone, francophone or lusophone), geography (where in the world are the scholars located), the schooling process and the role models that were noticeable. the relevance of this observation becomes evident when the contribution of female social scientists and aic (african, indian and coloured) social scientists is considered. diversity observation is therefore key if social science research is to survive and thrive. neglect of “half the sky”, and disregard of researchers of a darker hue, will continue to add to the role of “less than” when social sciences are juxtaposed with the pure and natural sciences. no civilization holds propriety over truth, and indigenous knowledge systems – long suffering neglect – should feature on the radar screen. with globalisation and the ability of researchers to track down the contribution of each continent to world science (cf. mouton 2009), levelling the playing field becomes seminal. the recent hosting of the fifa soccer world cup tournament for the first time on african soil since fifa’s inception in 1904, provides ample evidence that africa now has no place to hide. africa has to conform to the same rigours of excellence, her historical trajectory notwithstanding. it can no longer be “different strokes for different folks”. there is a sense in which such an expectation is unfair. yet with partners who are prepared to assist and support, like fifa, africa is capable of rising to the occasion. countries more resourced in terms of funding, technology and research expertise can help lift the status of social science research in south africa, and the whole continent. they must just muster the political will to do so. the ethnicity trap rasmussen (2007) considers ethnicity as one of the key pillars in the strife to equalise opportunities for all groups. consistent with the advent of ethnic sensitivity and awareness, is the recent appearance of a book titled it’s our turn to eat: the story of a kenyan whistleblower by michela wrong (2009). the relevance of her book strikes to the heart of the matter: if social scientists do not produce research that transcends ethnic allegiances, it is then when the president and his/her cabinet will take care of their kith and kin, and amass huge resources at the expense of the country. kenya fell into this trap, and is now reaping the whirlwind of this ethnic myopia. 215 the current state of research in the social sciences quoting from t. e. lawrence’s the seven pillars of wisdom, wrong (2009: preface) asserts: we lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. the parallel is here: a paradigm shift, to take a fresh look at the social sciences and their impact, will invariably be thwarted by those still wedded to the past, those who propound monolithic perspectives. this trend of celebrating excellence informed by ethnic allegiance has been an albatross around the neck of african universities. the late professor bob leshoai, after producing the first ph.d. in english at the university of dar es salaam, would often be reminded: “when are you going home, make way for the ‘son of the soil’”. (the thinking then did not accommodate “the daughters of the soil”.) the cross-cutting nature of the social sciences when the american economy hit rock bottom in 2008/2009, at the helm of banking institutions were accountants, statisticians, mbas and other people who studied outside the social sciences. they were taught the nitty-gritty of their disciplines, but nothing on morality and ethics – a gap social sciences would have filled very ably. the world is the poorer for focusing on disciplines that are methodologically impeccable in their approaches, but humanly vapid. economics assume a new meaning when it is humanised by the social sciences. medicine makes more sense when the arteries of human ignorance on matters medical are de-clogged by the social sciences. a telling article titled the effects of television advertisements for junk food versus nutritious food on children’s food attitudes and preferences (dixon, scully, wakefield, white & crawford 2007) exemplifies how medical knowledge becomes accessible through social science research output. the point needs making that education bereft of social science knowledge is deficient. engineers get to know more about global warming and its negative impact, not from the hard science of engineering, but from reading about the incalculable human cost of carbon emission from contributions of social science research. we make bold to say: social sciences have, as their raison d’être the humanisation of knowledge; knowledge in service of the human condition. an illustration may be helpful: an accountant who has mastered the art and science of wealth accumulation, and has an inside track of how the trillions of rands in the johannesburg stock exchange (jse) are generated, if sensitised to ethics and morality by the social sciences, would find ways to share and distribute the profits, as she sees grinding and abject poverty all around her. contrarily, the one who revels at seeing numbers soar in profit will be oblivious to j. f. kennedy’s advice and admonition: “if we do not take care of the many that are poor, we cannot protect the few who are rich.” multi-disciplinary approaches since the advent of the global recession, there is a growing recognition and awareness that education must be more holistic. it no longer suffices to specialise in certain disciplines. social scientists must reciprocally be aware of economics, pure science trends, and the influence of technology. this simple, yet effective story makes the point: a botanist, geologist and zoologist took a walk up a koppie. they were tasked to observe as much as possible around the koppie they were charged to survey. at the end of an hour of observations, they were asked the question: what did you see? the botanist saw plants, the geologist the various stones and the zoologist, who was entomologist by training, saw insects. our training and orientation colour our perceptions. it is indeed true that “all looks yellow to a jaundiced eye”. multi-disciplinary education and training is the ultra-violet light that removes the jaundice of the mind. students in the social sciences, indeed even research in this realm should celebrate inter-disciplinary approaches and multidisciplinary ones. the training of social scientists the training of social scientists, whilst to be informed by the relevance to the context, should also be sensitive to the fact that south africa, indeed africa as a whole, is part of the globe. therefore navel-gazing will be counter-productive. mouton (2009: 8) observes that: the isi-journals have a distinct anglophone bias which leads to poor coverage of francophone and (to a lesser extent) lusophone countries in sub-saharan africa. in addition the isi’s coverage of small journals in developing countries is not good. the latter is the result of the policy of the isi to include only the highest impact journals in the world which means that many journals in the developing countries (which have small circulation lists and hence restricted readerships) are thereby automatically excluded. all this means that a significant proportion of african social science is simply not visible in international indices. with the greater exposure of african social science research in african journals online (ajol), 340 journals could be indexed. the point being made here is that there are still factors which militate against a fair exposure and perusal of the impact of social sciences in south africa, and africa. the agenda social science research in south africa should speak to, and address the issues of the day, inter alia the following: ! the eradication of poverty; ! ways to create jobs; ! techniques to allow for rapid resolution of labour disputes; ! shifting hiv and aids from awareness to safe sex practices; 216 the current state of research in the social sciences ! public accountability; ! safe handling of state resources; ! values, ethics and morality; ! the negative sequelae of crass materialism; ! saying no to the abuse of women and children; and ! service delivery at local government level. the foregoing, whilst suggestive, is not exhaustive. the strategies the following strategies can assist social science research to inch forward: ! acquiring generous funding; ! getting female researchers on board; ! recruiting and training more aic researchers in the social sciences; and ! revisiting the funding formula in higher education. conclusion shift of mindset is one of the hardest things to do. habits formed are refractory to modulation. the disregard for the social sciences has a long history, and moving to be more well-disposed towards them remains tricky. however, the importance of social sciences to our times and for our needs, calls for a new search for paradigms that were largely ignored. there is a call here to inject a new lease of life into the social sciences. an urgent hearkening to this call is warranted especially because the current path trodden vis-à-vis the social sciences has proven counter-productive. it would be calamitous to continue to neglect them. 217 the current state of research in the social sciences references davidson, c. and tolich, m. 2003. social science research in new zealand: many paths to understanding. otago: university of otago press deutsch, k., platt, j. and senghaas, d. 1971. behavior: social science impact. science 171: 450-459. dixon, h. g., scully, m. l., wakefield, m. a., white, v. m. and crawford, d. a. 2007. the effects of television advertisements for junk food versus nutritious food children’s food attitudes and preferences. social sciences and medicine 65(7): 1311-1323. guthrie, r. v. 1976. even the rat was white: a historical view of psychology. new york: harper & row. mouton , j. 2009. the state of social science in sub-saharan africa. centre for research on science and technology. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. rasmussen, t. 2007. diversity mosaic. san francisco: pfeiffer wrong, m. 2009. it’s our turn to eat: the story of a kenyan whistleblower. london: harper collins. 218 the current state of research in the social sciences 1. melissa steyn 175 existence, communication, violence and a mainly kierkegaardian existential approach to communication on hiv/aids communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 175 187 colin chasi and gideon de wet* abstract from an existential perspective, it is observed that communication is expressive of the embodiment of the individual in the world. communication is above all else expressive of people's modes of existence. the dimensions of the seer and seen are acknowledged as they relate to the embodied individual. they permit an understanding of how the individual fails to contend with the thou; how it is that the individual is always doomed to live a life that has the structure of bad faith, where one hides the truth from oneself. with reference to all of the above, it is noted that communication is violent. but in this violent character of communication, the eternal source of art is observed. from and in response to these observations an existential approach to hiv/aids is enunciated in which special attention is given to some ideas of søren kierkegaard. the idea is to illustrate that people have the possibility to apply a tactful art of communication to overcome the limiting violence of communication. * dr colin chasi lectures in the department of communication at the university of johannesburg. professor gideon de wet is chairperson of the department of communication at the university of johannesburg. introduction this article follows a mainly kierkegaardian existential approach to communication on hiv/aids. in this approach communication is regarded as violent in a way that demands tactful existential expression of the arts of communication. it is argued that communication is expressive of the embodiment of the individual in the world. communication is above all else expressive of people’s modes of existence. the dimensions of the seer and seen are acknowledged as they relate to the embodied individual. they permit an understanding of how the individual fails to contend with the thou; how it is that the individual is always doomed to live a life that has the structure of bad faith, where one hides the truth from oneself. the idea in the article is to illustrate that people have the possibility to apply a tactful art of communication to overcome the limiting violence of communication. an existential approach to communication focusing on the individual in an attempt to understand communication is justifiable when it is given that the individual embodies possibilities and limitations. the possibilities and limitations of the individual are identified as the basis for the limitations and possibilities of communication when, as for søren kierkegaard, communication is recognised as not merely an exercise in persuasion or manipulation, but first and foremost, a mode of existence (jansen & steinberg 1991: 20; van schoor 1980: 33). this is also to say that communication expresses “the way in which humans experience reality and it is an ontological concept of man’s being, ideal-typically aimed at achieving existential meaning or well-being” (roelofse 1980: 44). communication understood as an expression of the individual’s mode of existence cannot be understood without recognising the choice and freedom of the individual, based on which meaning is given to the reality which is met or (as phenomenologists say) intended. existential approaches to communication can take in the notion of the “object meant” (cf. spiegelberg 1965: 105) which is recognised in an empty intention that “targets something that is not there, something absent, something not present to the one who intends” (sokolowski 2000: 33). one form of “object meant” is intended in the idea of the untruth. [kierkegaard has said] my own untruth is something i can discover only by myself, since it is only when i have discovered it that it is discovered, even if the whole world knew it before.’ but when it is discovered, my untruth becomes, at least in the immediate, my truth (sartre 1972: 145). for the individual, the world exists within what a phenomenological analysis can reveal as possibilities of his or her intending. in each instance of giving meaning to the world, a truth is established by the individual, even if that truth is an untruth. this observation 176 reminds the reader of a warning to be born in mind by all existential-phenomenological approaches, in terms of which the “one who wants to attain the truth must be willing to make the necessary effort, and, reversely, where there no serious effort is made, there is no question of seeking the truth but only self-seeking” (strasser 1963: 296). this warning does not detract, however, from the point that the truths, including untruths, which speak of the intending of people need to be taken seriously. for example, and accordingly, the experiences of the people need to be taken into consideration in developing a meaningful approach to hiv/aids. the intersubjective possibilities of language cannot overcome the fact that the individual to whom a message on hiv/aids is communicated must nevertheless still, through an act of choice and in freedom, give that message his or her own meaning. to the extent that one holds to an existential view of communication, the role of the communicator who aims at stemming the hiv/aids pandemic can at best be that of facilitating that the choices of the embedded individual be made in a way that expresses authentic being. the authentic person, in sartrean terms (see gordon 1995: 19), recognises him or herself as embedded being. he or she recognises the uniqueness of his or her own perspective from a standpoint in the world. an authentic individual recognises that his or her unique perspective can be seen from other perspectives are also in the world. the three dimensions of embodiment speak of the possibilities and limitations of the individual who communicates. these dimensions are sometimes referred to as dimensions of the seer and of the seen (see gordon 1995: 19) in that they permit insight into how one individual can experience or be experienced by another (cf. heron 1970). given the great importance placed on visual imagery in the western tradition of thought and expression (see r. poole 1997: 114; mcluhan 1994: 42), reference by western thinkers’ to the seer and the seen can be regarded metaphorical of how human embodiment in the world is expressive of communication. the dimensions of the seer and the seen illustrate how individuals are always alienated in and through the fact of the objectivity of the self, which must be accepted if the other is to be recognised. “other can exist for us in two forms: if i experience him with evidence, i fail to know him; if i know him, if i act upon him, i only reach his beingas-object and his probable existence in the midst of the world” (sartre 1956: 400). in other words, “the it is the eternal chrysalis, the thou the eternal butterfly — except that situations do not always follow one another in clear succession” (buber 1987: 17-18). the dimensions of the seer and of the seen are therefore important instruments in gaining understanding of how the individual fails to grasp the thou. the individual is always doomed to live a life which has the structure of bad faith in appearance, where one hides the truth from oneself (sartre 1956: 89). schutz (1971) has shown that to live the practical life, it is necessary for the individual to somehow forsake the subjective for the objective. practical necessity demands that the individual hide from the self the implications of knowing that in objectifying reality, the thou is crushed into the it. yet even so, in all real living the i exists in meeting the thou (cf. buber 1987: 11). 177 reframing the three perspectives of embodiment in the sequential order in which they are noted by gordon (1995: 19), the following can be said: (1) the individual whose embodiment is expressed in communication, as seer, must consider the limitations and possibilities of existing from a standpoint in the world. (2) the individual whose embodiment is expressed in communication, as seer, must consider the limitations and possibilities of being seen from other standpoints in the world. (3) and, the individual whose embodiment is expressed in communication, as seer, must consider the limitations and possibilities of always being aware of being seen by others. the seer needs to consider the violence of objectively denying him or herself through taking up the identity of “communicator”. similarly, the seen must acknowledge the violence of objectively denying him or herself by adopting the identity of “the communicated to”. the ongoing discussion focuses on the idea of communication as violent, with selected reference to the three dimensions of embodiment. communication is violent communication is violent and being human is expressed in communication. communication is of the embodied individual who can only exist in meeting. the embodied individual exists in both seeing and being seen. this characterisation of embodied being is an affirmation of the social character of human being (cf. adler 1949). the claims of those who would make the human being a law unto him or herself, and the claims of those who would make the human being a variable in the stream of life events are cast aside. in this there is violence. “regardless of the perceived justice or injustice of the matter, regardless of the place of power in the matter, as long as someone is losing something that he currently has and wants to keep, there is violence” (gordon 1996: 304-5). that communication is violent and that human being is expressed in communication does not make human existence inherently fatalistic. this is because existential conceptualisation of communication as violent is tantamount to a rejection of approaches which hold onto the manichaean misanthropy of a “communicator” and a “communicated to”. this is significantly because “the other is indispensable to my own existence, as well as my knowledge about myself” (sartre 1985: 38). human experience is in the intersubjective realm of meeting which constitutes an essence to which the individual can appeal for a universal condition of being human. another way of saying this is that the existence of the human individual is inherently social, it speaks of an underlying commonness that can be described as objective but its configuration has no conception outside of the subjective or lived experience of the individual (cf. sartre 1985: 38). 178 the various social techniques available for communication can be discussed as intended for manipulation (roelofse 1983: 6). persuasion constitutes violence to the extent that it involves taking away the choice and freedom of the individual. the point to be made is that to communicate, to be intersubjectively related, suggests the need to deny the self’s and the other’s unique biographically determined situations in a way that makes a set of common abstractions or standardisations possible (schutz 1971: 316, 323). in terms of the human being who is embodied as seer and seen, the violence of communication can also be discussed with reference to the ideas of sadism and masochism. “sadism is the effort to evade the sight of others” (gordon 1995: 19). in other words, sadism is the effort to evade recognising the other as a communicating being. to evade being aware of the self being seen from other perspectives in the world, or to deny that one is a perspective which is seen from other standpoints in the world, which sadism entails, is also to deny the self as a perspective from a standpoint in the world. gordon (1995: 20) notes that this denial of the possibilities and limitations of others is an effort by the sadist to claim a mastery that can only be of god. in this way the sadist is once again in self-denial. the misanthropy of the sadist is such that the form of communication he or she seeks is between an i and an it. the sadist is not involved in real living to the extent that he or she is thus unable to be in relationship with the thou. the masochist attempts to become a “being-for-the-sight-of-others” (gordon 1995: 20). the masochist attempts to become the-communicated-to who does not simultaneously communicate. this, then, is another form of self-denial. the masochist attempts to make others gods who situationally condition him or her. this is to say that the masochist attempts to limit his or her possibilities to what conditions supposedly dictate. but for human beings, meaning can only be granted when the person chooses in freedom how to situationally interpret a context and its options. even, and especially, in the desperate situation of hiv/aids, where the need to communicate about the dangers of not engaging in safe sex are apparent, the individual who refuses to acknowledge his or her own perspective is a masochist. again, even and especially in this time of hiv/aids, the one who denies the perspectives of others as relevant is a sadist. both exhibit forms of inauthentic, misanthropic existence. both sadism and masochism evidence an attack on sociality. the social becomes possible when the individual with a perspective meets the perspective of others through the intersubjective medium of language. recognition of the intersubjective possibilities and limitations of the individual is crucial for theorising about communication in a way that takes the existential being into account. theorising on communication becomes an occasion to see how we can affirm or deny the self and the other. one does not avoid speaking about the essential because communication is violent. olivier (2004: 79) reflects upon how the “aporia that confronts the reader of ulysses, namely that a counter-signature to the text is possible as a novel event and is 179 simultaneously not possible as such, faces participants in communication: communication is and is not possible”. ironically success is garnered to the extent that there is failure in the effort to violently grab hold of meaning and informationally transfer it, one to another. in many ways, the limitations and possibilities of communication are the source of majesty, beauty and power accorded to communication. they are for buber (1987: 910) “the eternal source of art” in that “a man (sic) is faced by a form which desires to be made through him (sic) into a work… if he (sic) speaks the primary word out of his (sic) being to the form which appears, then the effective power streams out, and the work arises…” in the above, two main considerations have been noted. first, communication is expressive of the embodiment of the individual in the world. it is a mode of existence (jansen & steinberg 1991: 20; van schoor 1980: 33). second, it has been noted that communication is violent. in this violent character of communication, “the eternal source of art” was observed (buber 1987: 9-10). the next section advances a mainly kierkegaardian expression of the tactful art of communication on the existential question of hiv/aids. arts of communication on the existential question of hiv/aids one ought not to avoid speaking about hiv/aids because communication has been found to be violent. hiv/aids appears to the individual. it needs to be communicated about. seeking ways to communicate tactfully on hiv/aids speaks of seeking arts of communication even as one realises one’s limitations and possibilities to communicate about the existential questions concerned. for much the same reasons that no lover, for example, is justified by the banality of words to not tell the beloved that he or she is so loved, the communicator on hiv/aids seeks to speak without betraying the intention of setting the other free to choose in freedom to avoid high risk hiv/aids behaviour (cf. smith 1998: 369.) kierkegaard argued that existential tact is required to communicate on existential concerns which are essential to the human being’s existence (see cummings 1955: 84). hiv/aids is an existential issue in the way it presents questions concerning life, death and how to live. existential tact is therefore required on the occasion of communication concerning hiv/aids. the inward or subjective experience of hiv/aids is the meaningful starting point in the search for truth as it concerns how people should live and die in the time of hiv/aids. the challenge is to begin with the subjectivity of the embedded individual while at the same time and dialectically raising the question of truth objectively (cf. merleau-ponty 1962: 57). this article does not delve in much depth into the ethical questions that may emerge, but it is noted that behaviour choices of the individual are no longer morally justifiable with reference to the material fact of one’s living conditions. one’s 180 behaviour, or communication, becomes the expression of one’s radical self. the individual is recognised as choosing a way of life. the individual’s choices are recognised as choices for all (cf. sartre 1985: 17). in this, the individual’s choice of a way of life, with its ensemble of acts, speaks of a universal way in which life should be lived. in other words, it speaks of a universal ethics. tact, as the basis for establishing modes of how people should live, allows trust or ontological security to be sustained in relationships (giddens 1986: 75). what the communicator on the existential can offer is a relationship within which the thou can be authentic. to arrive, through choice and freedom, at a stage of freedom where one is as one communicates; to facilitate one to become authentic, that was kierkegaard’s goal in communication. this goal is much the same as rogers’ (1967: 56) goal in the existentially conceived clinical relationship, where one may find “the essential core of a process by which we might facilitate the production of, through our educational system, of persons who will be adaptive and creative, able to make responsible choices, open to the kaleidoscopic changes in their world, worthy citizens of a fantastically expanding universe”. such citizens would arguably have been facilitated to deal with the choice situations presented by hiv/aids in creative and responsible ways. as at all other times, in the time of hiv/aids, authenticity requires that the individual communicates in a manner which is not reliant on denying the consequences of one’s actions. wishing to communicate that which is truth and which cannot yet be communicated, the communicator in a process of replication (as with kierkegaard and socrates denying their roles as teachers) has to withdraw his/her authority and present the communication as a puzzle (van schoor 1980: 34-5; kierkegaard 1978: 32-3). accepting this and still being willing to invest oneself in trying to engage an other in conversation about existential matters demands a leap of faith. the “communicator” is forced to recognise and respect the other and that other’s radical (rooted) reality. because existential tact can be learnt, it can be considered an art. this relationship between art and learning can be observed in plato’s (1956) meno, where socrates was forced to acknowledge that there is a discernible relationship between art and learning. but it does remain, as socrates realised, that the only real teacher of existence is existence itself. to teach suggests to be on the side of finality and to thence have results to communicate (manheimer 1977: 170). the teacher cannot lead individuals to some existential wisdom known only to the teacher, unless the teacher is god (cf. buber 1987: 136). socrates teaches that the role of the teacher is to facilitate that the student can know the truth regarding his or her life, this entails demanding that the student learn to question. kierkegaard developed socrates’ meiotic method into the indirect method for communication concerning existential matter (d. poole 1993). in terms of this method, the communicator in a process of replication has to withdraw and present the communication as a puzzle (kierkegaard 1978: 32-3). the indirect approach to 181 communication is an art, as kierkegaard’s pseudonym climacus says, to give “a piece of information to the effect that everything… is so to be understood that it is to be revoked” (kern 1970: 93). communication thus conceptualised occurs in the irony of non-communication. the listener must now act upon the communication (sjursen 1974: 164). the communicator has served the role of midwife to enable the would-be student to take the responsibility of reading and acting in the world. kierkegaard describes the use of metaphorical language in which the speaker or helper “not only conveys a meaning but conveys speaker and recipient to a meeting or event” where truth is disclosed in a way that “reveals the nature of the power in which the helper takes his stand… between the i and the thou” (manheimer 1977: 185). reading the world is not complete until it is acted upon (freire & marcedo 1987). education on hiv/aids can then be seen as a political activity that is not merely about regurgitation of learned abcs. education can only be achieved when the existential being is able to, in critical consciousness, act from the perspective of being liberated (freire 1973). by appealing to the individual, in a leap of faith, to read his or her reality and to act authentically, the statistical incident and the psychological drives that otherwise seem to determine the occurrence of high risk hiv/aids behaviour lose their efficacy in the face of the encompassing possibilities of the individual. the bio-medical model which forecasts continued infections becomes redundant, unable to predict the individual’s possibilities, in the face of individual freedom and choice. to be sure, limits remain in the face of situations such as rape that limit one’s options. each day, each moment of time requires that the individual choose in freedom and in a new leap of faith. the kierkegaardian concept of time, critically complimented by heidegger’s concept of augenblick, exposes the individual as existing and communicating or behaving in a moment unlike the aristotelian model of time as consisting of objective instances which come to pass (sjursen 1974: 85-6). in the augenblick, the living moment of time, the individual can be seen most clearly as “open to whatever possibilities are met in the situation”. observations with reference to sartre on kierkegaard sartre (1972) has brilliantly regarded “kierkegaard: the singular universal” in a way that lends itself to fashioning a set of almost summative observations before concluding this article. kierkegaard encounters the problem of how to get to know christianity. in the instance of hiv/aids, the problem is how to get to know hiv/aids. to the extent that that which is addressed is an existential matter as both questions of christianity and hiv/aids are, the search for this knowledge raises the question of history: “can history act as the point of departure for an eternal certitude?” (cf. sartre 1972: 142). kierkegaard proposed a start that is in flux, that is conditioned and is conditioning, whose foundation approximates to what merleau-ponty called envelopment. we are enveloped: being is behind us and in front of us. he-who-sees is visible, and sees 182 only by virtue of his visibility. ‘my body’, said merleau-ponty, ‘is caught in the fabric of the world, but the world is made from the stuff of my body’ (sartre 1972: 154). addressing the aporia differently, one can say that each living moment is characterised by a vertical intentionality that builds its own continuous identity and a transverse intentionality that makes its objects to be given over time (sokolowski 2000: 139). over time, the human being’s encounter with knowledge of the existential, such as of hiv/aids, entails both building its own identity and making the objects given. starting with the individual is starting with the possibility of possibility. one can only know that which one meets. there is no possibility of knowing what one does not know. yet, in meeting that which one can know, one has the possibility to relate to it in different ways that are expressed in the manner that one behaves to the phenomenon one meets. for the individual who has come upon knowledge relating to hiv/aids this knowledge has meaning only to the extent that the individual gives it meaning. human beings display, to themselves and to others, the way things are. there are no “mere” appearances even as one recognises that this rigour-demanding approach to human choice and freedom demands acknowledgment that being is in a manifold. “each manifold is different, each is proper to its identity, and the identities are different in kind. ‘manifold of appearance’ and ‘identity’ are analogous terms” (sokolowski 2000: 31). the significance of starting with the human being is that it is the perspective of the individual which preserves the intentionally encountered and uniqueness of each manifold. to start with the individual is to start with an affirmation of the fact that people are makers and destroyers of worlds (cf. christians 1997: 13). it is, for example, to start with affirmation that people express an embodied agency according to which they can change how life is lived in this time of hiv/aids. if one is to hope for ameliorating the negative consequences of hiv/aids, one has to accept both violent and at once also emancipatory possibilities of human beings as makers and destroyers of worlds. human existence is anchored to time but this situation does not have meaning except the meaning that the individual chooses. “kierkegaard testified to a double universality. the revolution consisted in the fact that historical man, by his anchorage, turned this universality into a particular situation and this common necessity into an irreducible contingency” (sartre 1972: 156). in this way, the individual is a maker of worlds. people choose, for example, to live as though this is the time of hiv/aids or they choose not to do so. for human beings, truth only exists subjectively, as something other than knowledge. so subjective truth exists. it is not knowledge (savoir) but self-determination; it can be defined neither as an extrinsic relation of knowledge (connaissance) to being; nor as the internal imprint of the correspondence, nor as the indissoluble unity of a system. ‘truth’ [kierkegaard] said, ‘is the act of freedom.’ i would not know how to 183 be my own truth even if its premises were given to me in advance: to reveal it means to produce it or to produce myself as i am; to be for myself what i have to be. what kierkegaard highlighted was the fact that the opposition between nonknowledge and knowledge is an opposition between two ontological structures (sartre 1972:147). the challenge of communicating knowledge of hiv/aids must recognise the need for a leap of faith that violates the dominance of the object in recognising that the choice and freedom of the self and of the other, the subjectivity of the other is the only meaningful starting point. in fact — and kierkegaard was aware of this — the experience which turns back upon itself, after the leap, comprehends itself more than it knows itself. in other words, it sustains itself in the milieu of the presuppositions that are its foundation, without succeeding in elucidating them. hence a beginning that is a dogma (sartre 1972: 155). in the instance of hiv/aids the arguments of this article cannot deny being birthed in the dogma of human choice and freedom. the aim is not to suggest that the content of knowledge (in this case of hiv/aids) is illegitimate but to point to the impossibility for human beings of direct knowledge of this content (cf. sartre 1972: 144). faced with the need to communicate about that which cannot be communicated about, kierkegaard has shown that through the art of tactful use of irony, humour, myth and non-signifying sentences indirect communication can enable the other to encounter the intended object of the “communicator”. continued work on the relevance of kierkegaard’s indirect communication for hiv/aids communication is planned for discussion in ongoing work (see also chasi & de wet 2002). for now, a brief conclusion to the current article is presented. conclusion it has been argued that communication is expressive of the existential being. it speaks of the being’s embodiment in the world. but communication is violent. it is not possible to communicate to another about existential issues as they relate to the embedded individual. from speaking of communication as violence, a tactful art of communication has been identified which announces the possibility for real living, in which the i and thou meet. this possibility heralds the possibility for tactful communication, especially on the existential, that facilitates the emergence of people who can take responsibility for their actions and who can act therefore with creativity to ameliorate and to also produce future conditions of interaction that enable growth. giddens (1986: 64) has offered that this tact is what is required to re-establish productive interaction. 184 this article can be read as a reminder to communication theorists and practitioners not to forget to begin with possibilities and limitations of the individual when initiating necessary communication programmes. in occasions such as hiv/aids, theorising and acting in which the existential underpinnings of communication are not recognised, begs grave questions from the critically conscious reader. further studies are encouraged to critically focus on aspects of how language, meaning, sensemaking (cf. weick 1995), the indirect communication of kierkegaard, etc. can be theorised in a way that allows for communication on hiv/aids that recognises the individual to greater extents than has otherwise been possible. 185 references adler, f. 1949. the social thought of jean-paul sartre. the american journal of sociology (55)3: 284-294. buber, m. 1987. i and thou. translated by ronald gregor smith. new york: collier. chasi, c.t. & de wet, g. 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argues that failure on the part of journalists to be culture-aware results in inaccurate journalism that is loaded with journalists’ own cultural baggage and bias. using cultural framing as a theoretical basis, the article shows how ignorance of african culture by journalists reporting on indigenous african communities has manifested itself. it is argued that journalistic misrepresentation of africans perpetuates the colonial project of the dehumanisation of africans of projecting them as inferior beings – mentally, spiritually and physically. journalists educated about diverse cultures are more likely to link and create common understanding among culturally diverse communities than journalists who are ignorant of others’ cultural norms. * simphiwe sesanti lectures in the department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch. introduction two events gave birth to the idea of writing this article. the first event was the firing of south african weekly (sunday times) newspaper columnist, david bullard, by the newspaper’s editor, mondli makhanya, for writing an article that suggested that “black people are indolent savages” (makhanya 2008: 18). the second event was the stellenbosch university’s department of journalism conference celebrating its 30 years of existence in october 2008. among the topics covered by the conference was the “africanisation of the curriculum of journalism education”. this topic was discussed amid observations by some african scholars of journalism education that most journalism ethical codes adopted on the african continent “are heavily inspired by western codes or western-derived international codes” that “dwell on ethical issues of relevance to western concerns in the main” (nyamnjoh 2005: 87). in his hypothetical article, bullard (2008a: 1) wrote that had white people not come to south africa, black people would have had no cars, no roads and no television. in cases where children died, a black “family would mourn for a week or so and then have another child”. he contended that the various tribes of south africa would live happy and peaceful lives, “only occasionally indulging in a bit of ethnic cleansing”. he further pointed out that african people’s “praying to the ancestors is no help because they are just as clueless”. bullard’s article drew strong reactions from black africans who felt that they and their culture were insulted by a white racist journalist of british origin. this article examines some implications of bullard’s article. the author asserts that journalists have a responsibility of reflecting fairly on the culture of people they write about. failure to do so contributes to readers being ill-informed about their fellow human beings, especially those who live in distant lands either visiting the country written about or reading about it on the internet. because much of what we write locally is accessible globally, our local journalism is simultaneously global journalism. as such, the images that we project locally are also projected globally. the dominance of western paradigms at the expense of other world-views in journalism education in africa has contributed to journalists’ insensitivity when dealing with african cultures. bullard’s article is a case in point. his article is a distortion and misrepresentation of african cultures, a factor which is psychologically and spiritually damaging to africans. the misrepresentation of african cultural practices has, in the eyes of its practitioners, devaluated african beliefs. prah (1995: 54) argues that this devaluation through the media has established strong feelings of inferiority and a denudation of cultural confidence amongst africans. it has contributed to a situation where, as biko (2005: 44) observes, africans find it difficult “to talk with authority on anything to do with african culture”. the right of africans to speak with authority on african culture was usurped by colonial christian missionaries and scholars. they did this through the act of “colonis(ing) world scholarship, especially the writing of history” (mzamane 1999: 173). in doing so, the missionary colonialists and scholars were aided by colonial education and colonial media (rukuni 2007: 146; biko 2005: 76). 126 a case for african culture in journalism curricula mass media was used to create a wrong and negative image of the african continent and its people through a “sustained negative campaign of presenting africans as being culturally and mentally inferior” (mbennah, hooyberg & mersham 1998: 20). this was done by elevating christian civilisation and denigrating african belief systems as “savagery and darkness” (ainslie 1966: 30). african culture was labelled by colonial historians and missionaries as “pagan” and african dress and languages declared “uncivilised” (pityana 1999: 137). the result was that african “cultural systems and values were subordinated and marginalised in the land of their birth” (pityana 1999: 143). this condemnation and marginalisation of african belief systems, argues pityana, gave birth to “the dehumanisation of the conquered african subjects”. long after colonialism was dismantled and africans gained independence, african belief systems continue to be on the receiving end, as evidenced by bullard’s article. against this background, nhlapho (2000: 143) observes that “with the possible exception of a few scholars to whom a deep understanding of the african value system seems to be important, much of the condemnation appears to come from people with little real understanding of african culture and, sadly, with no intention of attaining such understanding”. in this article it is argued that including african culture in the curricula of journalism schools in africa could help to liberate journalists writing about africa and african values. it will help journalists covering africa and africans do their job with a sense of cultural sensitivity. cultural sensitivity refers to “familiarity with the historical and cultural context of another society and implies not only awareness but also respect, if not empathy, for other ways of life” (starck & villanueva 1993: 19). by referring to works of established journalists the author will demonstrate that journalists have perpetuated colonial prejudice, albeit inadvertently. this they have done through cultural framing, which will be defined below. e-mail interviews were conducted with the heads of departments or co-ordinators of african institutions that offer journalism courses. the enquiry was about whether or not african culture as a module was offered to their journalism students. the institutions consulted were the cape peninsula university of technology (south africa); makerere university (uganda); rhodes university (south africa); tshwane university of technology (south africa) and the university of nairobi (kenya). cultural framing and journalism education having noted that “culture” is one of those concepts that has become “notoriously difficult to define” starck and villanueva (1993: 6) refer to culture as encompassing language, social act, history, art, religion, ritual, knowledge, experience, technology, etc. framing involves persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, selection, emphasis and exclusion (starck & villanueva 1993: 7). cultural framing, therefore, refers to the extent to which journalists, consciously or unconsciously, present news to their audiences in a manner determined by their own frame of reference. 127 a case for african culture in journalism curricula during the course of starck and villanueva’s (1993: 23) research, which included interviews with several foreign correspondents, the respondents “criticised journalism education for neglecting to include in the curriculum courses that deal with cultural sensitivity”. one of the respondents emphasised the need to teach such courses at colleges. in the absence of cultural education about the countries in and on which foreign correspondents report, there is a risk that journalists may give a skewed picture since they construct a “window on the world” (louw 2004). cultural education for foreign correspondents is crucial because, as starck and villanueva (1993: 9) observe, “foreign correspondents ... are not merely communicators of news but interpreters of other cultures”. when they enter into foreign environments, they misread situations of those places because, as louw (2004: 154) notes, “journalists carry their cultural biases with them when reporting on foreign contexts”. exchange programmes should enable journalism students from outside the african continent to study african cultures in journalism departments. that is because, as hawk (2002: 163) notes, with deadlines, travel and technological obstacles, foreign correspondents in africa have little time for studying culture or reflecting on the consequences of their work. if journalists were culturally educated, more specifically on the environments about which they report, harm could be avoided or minimised. advocating the importance of cultural education for journalists, claassen (2001: 10) notes that a common problem for the media when dealing with the public is the fact that journalists today are compelled to work in cultural environments where their cultural framework of reference lacks certain absolute necessities to be able to report news. the reporting on african cultural issues by white south african journalists is a case in point. specifically addressing a south african case, claassen observes that one of the lacunae for white journalists in south africa has been their general inability to speak indigenous african languages. the other, which is relevant for this article, is their ignorance of african cultural practices. it is for this reason that white south african journalism students need to be exposed to african cultural education in journalism. but this education should not be limited to white south african journalism students. black south african journalism students need this education just as much as their white counterparts do. that is because, as dandala (1996: 77) observes, “africans themselves have, on a large scale, become alienated from their own roots”: many have chosen to look down on their unique heritage in their quest to be integrated in western patterns. but to be fair, some have not had an opportunity to acquaint themselves with their roots, even if they wanted to; others were frightened off their heritage by apartheid and the corrupted interpretations of african heritage that were meant to deny africans a right to share in the global innovations of human development (dandala 1996: 77). a critical goal of journalism education is to instil in students a sense of social responsibility for all groups that make up the society (bramlett-solomon 1989: 26). if 128 a case for african culture in journalism curricula this goal is to be realised, bramlett-solomon points out that journalism students should be exposed to reporting approaches that recognise the experiences of all racial groups in societies. cultural education is crucial for all journalists whether they operate on an intercultural or intra-cultural level. that is because journalists are “human bridges” (kexiong, as cited in starck &villanueva 1993: 12). being a “human bridge” for a journalist means “to enable the traffic of thought and ideas to cross barriers and circulate both ways”. in a significant observation made by sims (1981: 6), who taught a course called “reporting cultures” at the university of massachusetts, he noted that “cultural reporting, as opposed to feature writing, stresses the participant’s interpretations of events rather than the reporter’s”. in the massachusetts course, students were taught the importance of not relying on their own observations about social groups, but to doublecheck the validity of those impressions with the people they interviewed. that is because, as eason (1981: 48), who taught cultural reporting at the university of wisconsin, noted, “it is quite easy to interpret (other people’s) culture in terms of what one expects to find, one’s own stereotypes, than in terms of the way the social actors reveal and understand their culture”. to prevent that, students at massachusetts were taught the value of overcoming the “sense of self-assurance by which we assume we know all about other cultures” (sims 1981: 47). africa inherited journalism and journalism ethics from the west (mwaura 1994: 95). the journalism and journalism ethics bequeathed to africa was not value-neutral. as kasoma (1994: 29) observes, “the journalism ethical values that europeans and americans brought to africa were embedded in their long cultural history and tradition”. in adopting journalism from the west, kasoma (1994: xv) notes that little was done to adapt journalism to the african situation. instead “many african journalists (sought to) emulate western journalists” (mwaura 1994: 95). mogekwu (2005: 15) has also observed that a “cursory look at the different curricula of various media programmes on the continent gives the impression that many african institutions are striving to produce clones of american or western journalists in most parts of africa”. in their responses to the enquiry on whether african culture is taught as a stand-alone course in journalism, all five the institutions said that they do not offer african culture as a separate module though issues pertaining to african identities are addressed in their curricula (diederichs 2008; johaar 2008; lugalambi 2008; strelitz 2008; kiai 2008). the school of journalism and mass communication at the university of nairobi in kenya and the department of mass communication at makerere university in uganda indicated that they were, in 2008, engaged in a review of their curricula and intended to strengthen and emphasise the component of african culture in journalism studies (lugalambi 2008; kiai 2008). as mentioned earlier, the need for journalists to be taught to understand other cultures is particularly significant for journalists who cover the african continent. that is 129 a case for african culture in journalism curricula because, for example, they would appreciate the names which africans use for their rituals and beliefs and not use names that are offensive such as “animism” or “ancestor worship” whose connotations distort african cultural practices, as will be discussed below. “animism” and “ancestor worship” as cultural frame a number of commentators who reflected on bullard’s article echoed one sentiment: they asserted that his article exhibited racism towards black people (harber 2008: 11; malala 2008: 29; mangcu 2008: 7). echoing the racist charge, the then minister of arts and culture in south africa, dr pallo jordan, noted that he “was quite alarmed for a very long time that bullard could write like that in a newspaper edited by an african” (ngalwa 2008: 1). to his credit, following his firing and criticism levelled against him, bullard (2008b: 9) wrote an opinion piece in the business day newspaper in which he expressed his “sincere and heartfelt apologies to those who were offended”. in particular, bullard apologised for what his critics referred to as his “cavalier disregard for ancestor worship”. while offering this sincere apology, bullard committed another offence, that is, referring to african traditional religion as “ancestor worship”. but bullard should not be blamed for the usage of this word. remnants of colonial education should be held responsible. it was the colonial missionaries who distorted the africans’ world view by inventing the term “ancestor worship” (ntuli 1999: 191). prior to their encounter with the universal religions, namely christianity and islam, africans “have always believed in one and only one god whose many aspects are seen in the many aspects of nature…” (kamalu 1990: 9). they worshipped god, not their ancestors. africans believed that things and beings were created out of water by the one “who was not created, who has neither father nor mother” (diop 1991: 310). africans knew that departed ancestors were not worshipped and that they could scold their ancestor-spirits when perceived not to be doing right and praised when doing well (ntuli 1999: 192). missionaries confused “ancestor reverence” with “ancestor worship” (mqhayi 1981: 64; williams 1987: 231). the former concept means that africans performed rituals in honour of their departed ancestors, and also spoke to them to intercede on their behalf to god, whilst the latter means worshipping god. williams (1987: 230) explains: when food was periodically placed at the graves, nobody expected the ancestral spirits to eat it (only fools outside africa allege that they did). what they were doing was a demonstration that the communal spirit of sharing was being maintained. furthermore, if the ancestors approved their behaviour, they were in a position to intercede on their behalf with the deities in times of crisis. these explanations by african scholars have, regrettably, been outlived by colonial legacy and remain alive in journalistic discourse. in his book the shackled continent, robert guest, a british journalist, and the africa editor of the economist, notes that nigeria is “split between muslims in the north and 130 a case for african culture in journalism curricula christians and animists (this author’s italics) in the south” (2004: 18). unlike many foreign correspondents who could be dismissed as “parachute journalists” in africa, guest lived on the continent for three years while reporting on political issues. yet, he used the word “animism” to refer to african traditional religion. according to ntuli (1999: 191) animism is one of the terms invented by colonial missionaries, which implies that africans “worship nature” in the same way that african traditional religion is misrepresented as “ancestor worship”. mutwa (1996: 13) observes that in the africa of old, africans did not regard themselves as “superior to animals, the trees, and the fishes and the birds” but as “part of all these living things”. far from believing that human beings were superior, mutwa (1996: ibid.) says africans believed that humans “were the weakest of the creatures that god created. this feeling of weakness instilled in our souls a deep dependence upon the living nature around us. africans believed that human beings could not exist without animals, birds and fishes, or the greenery that whispers all around us.” rukuni (2007:117) observes, “african wisdom tells us that all god’s creations are intelligent and therefore are sacred”. it is against this background that kamalu (1990: 25) notes that it is “unfortunate that foreign writers through great ignorance have failed to understand this great religious insight of our peoples, and have often ridiculed it or naively presented it as ‘nature worship’ or ‘animism’”. but it is not just foreign correspondents who get it wrong – so do journalists born and bred in africa. allister sparks, born and educated in the eastern cape province, employs the term “animism” in reference to african traditional religion. in his book beyond the miracle – inside the new south africa, sparks (2003: 50), speaking of “animism,” describes it as an activity “in which people of the same tribe, or from the same village, can bond together and find solace through the intercession of their ancestors buried back home”. reading through both guest’s and sparks’ books, one did not get a sense of hostility or contempt towards african traditional religion. in fact, both writers express admiration about african families’ networks. paying tribute to these networks, sparks (2003: 50) observes that people “stand by one another, help one another, share what little they have”. for his part, guest (2004: 98) notes that not even aids can break the extended african family. the observation on sparks’ and guest’s books applies to mark gevisser’s biography of former south african president thabo mbeki’s biography, thabo mbeki: the dream deferred. while one cannot fail to notice gevisser’s great effort and keenness to learn about african traditional practices, to the extent of using isixhosa words to describe them, albeit with misspellings, gevisser (2007: 51) falls into the trap of using the term “animism” to refer to african traditional religion: “in mpukane to the south and mangoloaneng to the north, virtually the entire community had become christian during the eras of skelewu mbeki and jacane moerane. at mbewuleni, however, most remained tied to traditional authority and animist (this author’s italics) religion.” 131 a case for african culture in journalism curricula the problem here is that even though sparks, guest and gevisser write admiringly about africans’ social systems, their cultural framing has the unintended effect of damaging the african image. to argue that guest could be excused on the basis of being british, and sparks and gevisser on the basis of basis of being white south africans only partly explains the problem. in a recent sunday times news report (mahlangu, mkhabela & harper 2007: 10) authored by one white and two black south african journalists, former gauteng premier mathole motshekga was profiled as an “outspoken animist”. conclusion this article sought to argue that some african cultural practices are misrepresented both abroad and in africa, this being done by both foreign correspondents covering africa and african journalists themselves. reference to journalistic accounts in the forms of books and newspaper reporting were cited to illustrate this point. it was established that the works referred to in this article were examples of the ignorance demonstrated by the journalists covering africa. the author argued that the inaccurate representation of africans was not only a result of malice in some cases, but that of genuine ignorance. but genuine as this ignorance might have been, it betrayed – even if unintended – journalism’s ethical values. for journalists to have a sense of right and wrong about different cultures they need to be exposed to the kind of journalism education that would enable them to meet the requirements of ethical journalism: accuracy, fairness, balance and promoting understanding. this article recommends that african schools of journalism should address this gap as a matter of urgency. 132 a case for african culture in journalism curricula references ainslie, r. 1966. the press in africa – communications past and present. london: victor gollancz. biko, s. 2005. i write what i like. johannesburg: picador africa. bramlett-solomon, s. 1989. bring cultural sensitivity into reporting classrooms. the journalism educator 44: 26-28, 74. bullard, d. 2008a. uncolonised africa wouldn’t know what it was missing. business times. supplement to sunday times. 6 april: 1. bullard, d. 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daar is geen verduideliking of argumentasie nie, wat vreemd opval, maar dan tog ook nie. ’n dokument soos hierdie 204 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid kan nie bekostig om te deursigtig te kommunikeer nie en ten einde afdwingbaar te wees, moet dit so opaak as moontlik wees. die bedoeling kan dan eindeloos uitgestel of verskuif word na gelang van die omstandighede wat skool, plek, leerder, onderwyser en openbare mening sou kon insluit. die opsteller kan as’t ware by konfrontasie die moraliteitskaart speel of in die afwesigheid daarvan bloot die leerder druip. laasgenoemde sanksie is spesifiek uitgestip, maar presies wanneer ’n onderwerp die taboe-kantelpunt bereik, weet net die moderator alleen. dit wil lyk dan of skoolkuns iets anders is as kontemporêre kuns. en ook die boodskap is anders. skoolkuns, beweer efland (in jeffers & parth 1996: 31) het eerder te doen met propaganda om die skyn van ’n humanistiese opleiding te versterk of die dodelike roetine van skoolgaan te verlewendig. kunsonderwysers is skynbaar ook nie voorbereid om die omstrede aard van sommige kontemporêre kuns met hul studente te bespreek nie, in teenstelling met taalonderwysers wat veel beter toegerus is om met omstrede literatuur te handel (jeffers & parth 1996: 25). nahm (1947: 275) het reeds 60 jaar gelede daarop gewys dat die teorie van estetika “… has failed to develop the potentialities of art for communication”. die belangrikste rede hiervoor is dat daar vir baie lank gefokus is op die “formele skoonheid” van die kunswerk, d.w.s. hoe “mooi” dit is. vir ’n kunswerk om te kan kommunikeer, sê nahm (1947: 277), moet die gevoelens van die kunstenaar in die werk versinnebeeld word. definisies van kuns as kuns dan nie noodwendig mooi is nie en iets kommunikeer, wat presies is dit, en is dit op skool iets anders? behoort die definisie van kuns en skoolkuns te verskil? op die oog af is die antwoord “nee”, maar as jy sekere onderwerpe by skoolkuns sensor, kan dit tog nie dieselfde wees nie. daar is konsensus dat ’n of enige definisie van kuns vandag nie haalbaar is of selfs nodig is nie. my standpunt is dat definisies van kuns bloot die tydsgees reflekteer waarin dit geskep is. byvoorbeeld die onnodigheid van definisies is weer ’n postmodernistiese siening wat eweneens sy glans sal verloor. definisies van kuns gekonstateer deur delsarte tot zola, soos aangehaal deur brownell in 1917, was heel toepaslik in hul eie tyd ( brownell 1917: 306-307). trouens, die meeste klink nou nog waar. delsarte sê byvoorbeeld: “art is emotion passed through thought and fixed in form.” ’n meer onlangse definisie (gebaseer op kreiner 1993: 9) kan soos volg lui: “kuns is ’n menslike aktiwiteit waardeur vaardigheid en verbeelding doel(self)bewus ingespan word om ’n spesifieke aksie of ervaring se universele kwaliteite te kommunikeer en daardeur ’n belewing by die kyker op te wek.” ongelukkig ondervang hierdie definisie nie alles nie en moet daar rekening gehou word met smaak, geletterdheid en ook die tydsgewrig. daar is uiteindelik ook die onsigbare x-faktor… die sublieme, wat die argument oor die definisie van kuns sal laat voortdraal lank nadat hierdie essay afgehandel is. 205 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid met skoolkuns sal so ’n definisie dalk anders klink en is die bedoeling dalk eerder om ’n definisie te vind wat vir ’n bepaalde skool of onderwysdepartement aanvaarbaar sal wees: “kuns is wat die moderator sê dit is.” die skoolomgewing is meer geregimenteerd as die groter sosiale ruimte, die kunsleerders is almal omtrent ewe oud en hul vlak van geletterdheid is besig om te ontwikkel en in ’n postmoderne konteks poog studente om sin te maak van hul bestaan deur kuns te skep uit stukkies en brokkies van stories en massamedia-beelde en objekte rondom hulle (duncum 1997: 75). die blootstelling wat leerders aan “kontroversiële” kontemporêre kuns is beperk, hoewel dit van onderwyser tot skool mag verskil. die hoërskool sentraal in bloemfontein behandel byvoorbeeld die omstrede werk van die suid-afrikaanse kunstenaar diane victor. kontemporêre kuns: inspirasie of abominasie? die omstrede aard van kontemporêre kuns plaas kunsonderwysers in ’n onbenydenswaardige posisie omdat skoolomgewings tradisioneel konserwatief is. in suid-afrika is die situasie meer kompleks omdat onderwyshoofde dikwels ook kultureel geskei is van leerders en/onderwysers: although contemporary art frequently arises in a world of provocative, new processes and postmodern controversy, school art tends to arise in a more conservative world of familiar materials, routines and rituals. much contemporary art is conceptual, sometimes inaccesible to the public, and often surrounded by controversy and/or censorship issues (jeffers & parth 1996: 21). in ’n amerikaanse studie is bevind dat verskeie onderwysers sensuur toepas om hul leerders teen skadelike invloede wat kunsverwant is te beskerm (jeffers & parth 1996: 26). daar is ook gevind dat sommige onderwysers onbekend is met die heersende teorieë en sienings in die kontemporêre kunswêreld en dit dus vermy. deur die gesensureerde temas binne die konteks van kontemporêre kuns te ondersoek kan dit dalk vir die onderwyser moontlik wees om hierdie temas met verantwoordelikheid en integriteit in die skoolkurrikulum te integreer. leerders gebruik dikwels temas soos hierdie as ’n wapen of selfs ’n vorm van venyn om hul misnoeë, agressie, obsessies of vooroordele te kommunikeer (henley1997: 44). voordat ons daarby kom moet die inhoud van die omsendbrief kortliks beskou word. die omsendbrief die brief stel die volgende onderwerpe wat leerders nie in hul praktiese opdragte mag aansny nie: ! bloeddorstige monsters; ! wesens uit die buitenste ruimte (aliens); ! reggae-kleure; ! daggablare; ! weerstandsverwante (resistance) kuns omdat hierdie onderwerp “leeggemyn” is; ! animasie; ! plagiaat uit tydskrifte, mediese teksboeke, ens.; en ! leerders moet die voorgestelde onderwerpe in die departementele handleiding volg en skoolhoofde word gemaan om te verhoed dat leerders enige sweem van ’n verwysing na die middeleeue en veral die gotiek in hul opdragte laat verskyn. daar is geen spesifieke patroon hier nie, maar dit wil op die oog af voorkom asof enigiets weg van die geykte hier gelys is. seks en stillewes skitter in hul afwesigheid, maar ’n mens moet aanvaar dat die kreatiewe impuls hier nog binne die norme van aanvaarbaarheid beweeg. die lys lyk na die soort van sondes van die jeug van die dag. maar sal die verbied van die simptome die oorsprong daarvan laat verdwyn? drie van hierdie temas sal bespreek word: monsters, vreemde wesens en animasie. die alledaagse en buitengewone as kuns die “verbode” onderwerpe openbaar of weerspieël, reg of verkeerd, die obsessies, vrese en tydverdryf van die kunstenaars. deur drie van die onderwerpe te ondersoek sal aangetoon kan word dat die uitsluit van temas dalk die jong kunstenaar van gulde geleenthede ontneem. deur op ’n verantwoordelike wyse op die inhoud en betekenis van hierdie kunswerke te konsentreer eerder as net op die sigbare vorm, kan vrugbare skeppende werk gedoen word. nie alleen op ’n suiwer kunsvlak nie, maar kan dit selfs ook ’n psigies-helende uitwerking op die kunstenaar hê. ‘here be monsters’ hierdie frase is deur kartograwe gebruik om ongekarteerde gebiede op navigasiekaarte te eien. die stryd teen die kwaad of dan in die fisieke inkarnasie daarvan, die monster, is so oud soos die mensdom self. in christopher booker se magistrale werk the seven basic plots (2004: 21) begin hy deur te verwys na die epiese verhaal van gilgamesj, die oudste geskrewe verhaal bekend aan die mens. die verhaal vertel hoe die koninryk van uruk bedreig word deur ’n misterieuse boosheid waarvan die oorsprong nagespeur kan word na die monsteragtige figuur humbaba. om die koninryk te red, moet gilgamesj die monster doodmaak, wat hy ná ’n titaniese en heroïese stryd vermag. hy keer triomfantelik as held terug huis toe. presies dieselfde verhaal speel af in dr no, die james bond-rolprent van 1962. dr. no is ’n misvormde en kranksinnige wetenskaplike wat die westerse beskawing bedreig. om die westerse beskawing te red, moet james bond die monster doodmaak, wat hy ná ’n titaniese en heroïese stryd vermag. hy keer triomfantelik as held terug huis toe. die rekenaargebaseerde spel resident evil het al in verskillende mediavorms verskyn. die storie bly eeue oud: daar is onsigbare bedreigings (t-virus), zombies (lewende dooies wat teer op ons vrees vir die dood), korrupte wetenskaplikes wat as magtige korporasies (umbrella) planne smee om die wêreld oor te neem, en so aan (ign staff n.d.: aanlyn). woorde wat bykans universeel in verband met die voorkoms of aard van die monster gebruik word, sluit in: dodelik, moorddadig, giftig, demonies en natuurlik bloeddorstig, 206 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid kortom almal kenmerke en karaktertrekke wat by die mens gevind word, maar besonder bedreigend raak wanneer jy aan die ontvangkant van hierdie boosheid staan. ’n kunstenaar wat ’n internasionale reputasie op die teken van monsters gevestig het, is die japannees takashi murakami. murakami het ’n doktorsgraad in die skone kunste en beoefen ’n kunsvorm wat hy “superflat” noem en wat poog om die verskil tussen sogenaamde “hoë” kuns en populêre kultuur te oorbrug. hy was as tiener deel van die sogenaamde otaku-subkultuur. hierdie bleeksiele is versot op anime (animasie-flieks) en manga (strokiesprentboeke). veral verhale waarin atoombomme ontplof en die greinerige werklikheid van die kontemporêre japan uitgebeeld word, is baie gewild. die versamel van bedkasfiguurtjies is ook gewild, veral dié van skamelgeklede jong meisies wat as bishojo bekend staan. op wit rakke in sy spartaanse slaapkamer sluit murakami se plastiekfiguurversameling ondermeer afbeeldings in van die drogfigure in die werk van die middeleeuse kunstenaar hieroniemus bosch, ’n groen blob-monster en ’n sagte pornografie diensmeisie-figuur (thornton 2009: 201; darling 2001: 82). murakami argumenteer dat die kulturele en algemene sosiale omstandighede in japan nie deur kuns in die verhewe sin van die woord verbeeld word nie, maar deur animasierolprente en strokiesprente. dit is hier waar die mees traumatiese gebeure in die japannese psige herleef word: verblindende flitse, ruimteskepe wat herinner aan die amerikaanse b-29-bomwerpers, plante wat onnatuurlik vinnig groei en die “vermonstering” van dinge as gevolg van kernbestraling (thornton 2009: 205). die “oorwinning oor die monster”, sê booker (2004: 21), is inderdaad onderliggend aan die onderbou van alle stories, en is ’n kunstenaar nie maar ook net ’n storieverteller nie? ‘when dealing with aliens, try to be polite, but firm’ die ruimtewese of “alien” het al so deel van mense se verwysingsraamwerk geword dat as jy sou gevra word om een te beskryf, daar waarskynlik heelwat ooreenkomste sou wees met dié van ander mense. die ekstraterrestriaal is ’n soort subkategorie van die monstergenre. oor die algemeen is hierdie wesens daarop uit om die wêreld oor te neem op soek na een of ander grondstof, suurstof of selfs katkos. bloedige gevegte breek uit. jules verne se war of the worlds het paniek onder die publiek gesaai toe dit oor die radio uitgesaai is. om nie te praat van ridley scott se alien (1979) nie. hierdie gevaarte was absoluut gedetermineerd om saam terug te gaan aarde toe… die detail van die gedierte kan opsigself as meesterstukke van tegniek en verbeelding beskou word. meer onlangs het minstens twee rolprente die lot van die “alien” en hul volksgenote benut om ’n spieël vir die mens op te hou. in james cameron se avatar word ’n vreemde planeet wat mooier as die aarde is deur koloniste van die aarde ingeneem op soek na ’n skaars mineraal. in die proses word die harmonieuse en idilliese lewe van die vredeliewende blou reuse op pandora bedreig. die toekouer word oorrompel deur ’n grondige gevoel van hartseer en verlies en kan nie anders as om die nare mensdom te haat nie… 207 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid in district nine van neill blomkamp word die idee van die “alien” binne die suidafrikaanse konteks aan apartheid en xenofobie gekoppel. die rolprent se trefkrag lê daarin dat hierdie temas universeel is: ons hou ten ene male nie van l’etranger, die buitestaander nie. veral nie as hy anders lyk, ’n ander godsdiens beoefen of op een of ander wyse verhewe is bo ons nie (du toit 2009). en selfs nou en dan wonderwerke verrig nie. daar is, moet ’n mens erken, waarskynlik nie veel kunstenaars wat hulself ernstig met die uitbeelding van ruimtewesens besig hou nie. rod dickinson is ’n britse kunstenaar wat inspirasie vir sy kuns put uit historiese gebeure. hy sit die “werk” voort van die kunstenaars doug bower en dave chorley, albei nou in hul sewentigs, wat die bekende “crop circles” in die britse landboulandskap gemaak het. hierdie is die verwantskap tussen wetenskap en kuns. die sirkels in die graan moet, anders as normale kunswerke, klandestien geskep word. om as paranormaal beskou te word, moet die outeurs van hierdie verskynsels onbekend wees. dickinson teken en skilder sy werk só dat dit moeilik is om te bepaal of die werk binne of buite die mens se verbeelding ’n oorsprong het (cresswell 1996: aanlyn). dalk is die verskyning van karakters soos superman tog ook in hierdie kategorie, want hulle is streng gesproke op, maar nie van die aarde nie. die suid-afrikaanse kunstenaar braam kruger het ’n aantal pittige werke geproduseer wat tydgenootlike politieke en sosiale kommentaar lewer via batman en ander helde. oor die suid-afrikaanse kunstenaar judith mason mag ek niks sê nie. ons is almal vreemdelinge, vervremend, vreemd en vreemdsoortig… ‘what’s up, doc?’ tekenprente (cartoons) word dikwels geassosieer met kindervermaak – wie ken nie die bekende gesegde van die animasie-karakter bugs bunny hierbo nie. animasiefilms is vandag ’n gerekende kunsvorm, hoewel dit nie in almal se smaak val nie: where do people go for alternative animation? i don’t know, and i am concerned... animation still isn’t properly appreciated as an art in galleries and museums. if you mention it to curators, they do not seem to be truly interested (mancia 1997: aanlyn). vergelyk ook bakshi (2010: aanlyn) se aanhaling: “cartooning at its best is a fine art.” daar is ’n hele groep kunstenaars wat eksperimentele animasiefilms maak, en dit is veral die japannese wat hier uitblink, hoewel ek nie juis dink dat hierdie soort animasie gewild is onder die jeug van suid-afrika nie. dit val vreemd op as ’n mens in ag neem dat suid-afrika se bekendste lewende kunstenaar, william kentridge, die 2010-kiotoprys vir kuns en filosofie in november in japan ontvang het. kentridge is veral vanweë sy werk as animasie-kunstenaar bekend (die burger 2010:12). dalk is die animasie waarna in die omsendbrief verwys word eerder rolprente van strokiesverhale soos batman, spider-man, ironman en so aan. of dalk rekenaar speletjies wat lank reeds nie meer kindervermaak is nie. met titels soos doom, halflife, boonga-boonga, bioshock en gears of war moet ’n mens seker die ergste verwag. 208 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid dan is daar die moderne strokiesverhale met fantasiewêrelde en karakters. heelwat tyd word deur kinders en tieners hieraan afgestaan, heel moontlik omdat dit ’n ontsnapping bied van die sleur van skool, die besef dat vir baie die toekomsvooruitsigte swak is of dié wat onder moeilike sosiaal-maatskaplike toestande gebuk gaan. toe die rolprent avatar vertoon is, het sommige tieners depressief geword omdat die aarde so vaal is teenoor die paradys wat die planeet pandora is (butler 2010: 1). vir baie jong kunstenaars is hierdie verbeeldingswêreld die wêreld wat hulle die beste ken en dit is seker nie so vreemd dat elemente hiervan in hulle sketse gevind word nie. die werklike probleme lê dalk elders. kinders het vandag te min werklike lewenservarings en miskien kan die oormatige blootstelling aan rekenaarspeletjies hul tyd in beslag neem wat eerder bestee kon word aan byvoorbeeld die bou van verhoudings. kuns word vandag dikwels ook via foto’s geskep en die plein air-benadering waar daar van die werklikheid geskets en geskilder word is nie meer gewild nie. ons almal se leefwêrelde het (veral in suid-afrika) inwaarts gekeer met ’n obsessie vir privaatheid (en veiligheid). ons persepsie van ons omgewing het as gevolg van die tv hoofsaaklik visueel geword en sensasies soos reuk, hitte en koue, tekstuur en ruimtelike belewing is erg verskraal. hoekom is ons verbaas dat ons kinders teken wat hulle teken? kuns as skoolvak: is herbesinning nodig? my standpunt is dus dat in plaas daarvan dat onderwerpe verbied word, daar eerder na ander strategieë gekyk moet word: ! wat is daar wat in enige van die verbode onderwerpe gevaarlik kan wees? vervelig, dalk. afstootlik en uitdagend, miskien. ek dink die uitnemende sy van kontemporêre kuns ondervang hierdie argument. ! die beleidmakers en moderators sal meer moet weet van wat aangaan. dit geld vir die filosofie van die tyd en wie dopgehou moet word in (minstens) die kontemporêre kunswêreld in suid-afrika. ! studente sal moet begryp dat om te skep ’n reg is, maar om uit te stal ’n voorreg is. dus kan sensuur plaaslik toegepas word en leerders aangemoedig word om dieselfde tema op ’n meer verantwoordelike wyse te ondersoek. so word die student se sin vir waardeoordeel volwasse. ! die afwys van temas, as dit moet plaasvind, moet eerder benut word om rigting en bemagtiging te bewerkstellig. ! wat is die resultaat of uitkoms waarna die beleidmakers streef? dit lyk hier na mooi prentjies van enige iets wat nie op die lys van verbode items is nie. ! eksperimentering behoort juis op skool gekoester te word en skoolkuns moet nie bloot die moderator se siening napraat nie. ! kuns, soos godsdiens, kan net gepenaliseer word as dit oneerlik is. 209 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid ! kunsopleiding van die hand tot by die gewrig is net so nutteloos as kuns van die brein tot by die gewrig. ! die temas in die omsendbrief hou almal verband met dieselfde idee, naamlik die ongeduld met wat dit wat “anders” is. kreatiewe denke is al wat ons jeug het om in hierdie land ’n verskil te kan maak. dit is die terapie vir kulturele rekonsiliasie en wedersydse begrip, al is dit deur die bril van populêre surrogate en simbole. om hierdie proses te probeer kniehalter, sal die gevolglike middelmatigheid die polarisasie tussen groepe en kulture in stand hou. 210 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid verwysings bakshi, r. 2010. kommentaar op animasie. 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[aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://asubtleknife.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/science-fictionin-the-ghetto-loving-the-alien/ [besoek op 27/07/2010]. duncum, p. 1997. art education for new times. studies in art education 38(2): 69-79. henley, d. 1997. art of disturbation: provocation and censorship in art education. art education 50(4): 39-45. ign staff. 2004. resident evil series profile. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://cube.ign.com [besoek op 13/07/2010]. jeffers, c. s. and parth, p. 1996. relating controversial art and school art: a problem-position. studies in art education 38(1): 21-23. kreiner, l. e. 1993. toward a definition of art. art education 46(3): 7-11. leboufillier, c. g. 1943. art is communication. journal of aesthetics and art criticism 2(8): 83-84. lilviolet36. 2008. how does art influence communication? [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081101150639aavnybw [besoek op 22/07/2010]. mancia, a. 1997. aanhaling oor animasie. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://mypage.direct.ca [besoek op 27/07/2010]. nahm, m. c. 1947. the functions of art and fine art in communication. the journal of aesthetics and art criticism (5)4: 273-280. 211 kuns en die kommunikasie van andersheid communitas omslag nov 2008 135 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 135 148 chitja twala* abstract the new democratic political dispensation has posed numerous challenges and opportunities to both the government communication system and government communicators specifically. the democratic breakthrough of 1994 signaled, among other matters, an anc government commitment to create space for members of the public to participate in building the new democratic south african state. communication has thus been viewed as a strategic element of service delivery. government has created a number of opportunities and structures to pursue the commitment that this accountability and interaction takes place. these include the presidential izimbizo and exco meets the people (sometimes referred to as the provincial izimbizo). for the purpose of this article, the concept of exco meets the people is used interchangeably as meaning a communication method by the free state anc government as well as referring to a provincial gathering organised by the directorate of policy unit in the office of the premier. the article uses field research as the main historical research methodology. this method was helpful to ascertain the impact of exco meets the people to the targeted communities, and to determine the views of such communities with regard to this communication method. * chitja twala lectures in the department of history at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction the current context of government communication takes cue from the constitutional imperative of freedom of information founded on the objectives to make a visible shift from the apartheid state to a democratic state. the free flow of information, open dialogue, openness and accountability and media freedom are all fundamental tenets of a thriving democracy. this compels government to ensure that it maintains a continued interaction with the citizenry. this communication guarantees an informed and appropriate response to people’s needs in order to enable all south africans to become active and conscious participants in the process of social transformation. it also ensures that government is sensitive to the needs of the people. in the free state, when the anc-led government came into power in 1994, political leaders in the province expressed concern that government achievements were receiving limited media coverage. the leaders alleged that, although there was media coverage, it was viewed as inadequate as it mainly concentrated on the existing factionalism, which was dubbed the “north” and the “south” divide of the ruling party in the free state. they argued that misunderstanding between these two groups was given media coverage at the expense of service delivery that was taking place in the province. in 1998, the provincial government implemented exco meets the people (executive council meets the people) as a method to advance its course of communicating with citizens on the planning, implementation and successes of its programmes. although it was pioneered by the anc-led government, one would have expected this communication method to be apolitical. however, it is evident in this article that it turned out to be more political rather than consultative as it was made to appear. exco meets the people was introduced in view of the reality that, since the free state is one of the poorest provinces in south africa, a large group of its inhabitants could not access the limited government information through mass media forms such as radio and television. one is of an opinion that it is from this adage that the free state government decided on the implementation of this method of communication. the article attempts to analyse the impact the exco meets the people communication method had on the livelihood of the free state communities. the author argues that although the initial attempt of implementing exco meets the people was welcomed by the free state communities, it is clear that it is a controversial issue in the province. exco meets the people is not only used to provide a platform for the provincial government’s senior officials to consult their communities on difficult issues and to jointly make proposals on how to resolve them, but also for other political motives such as to mobilise followers for political objectives and to justify political actions of the ruling party. the article further argues that, if this method was effective in the province, violent protests in the townships like intabazwe (harrismith), ezenzeleni (warden), thembalihle (vrede), and petsana (reitz) could have been avoided. this is an indication that there is a communication gap between government agencies and communities with regard to the dissemination of information about the activities of the 136 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? government. this communication enables the pressure groups in the above-mentioned townships to organise, publicise and mobilise more effectively against the leadership of the anc government in the province. the presidential izimbizo vs exco meets the people imbizo (plural izimbizo) is a zulu concept for a traditional community gathering held to solve pertinent community issues. jeffrey mabelebele of the university of limpopo argues that the word imbizo has variants in many african languages, such as pitso in sepedi and kgotla in setswana and sesotho (mabelebele 2006: 104). in indigenous african communities, the practice of imbizo is used to resolve pertinent community challenges through honest engagement between the communities and leadership. imbizo can be interpreted as an indigenous folk medium, which allows people to use theatrical forms of communication to express their views on development plans, something which radio, film, television and print have not yet effectively achieved (mabelebele 2005: 1). ngaike blakenberg, a graduate of carleton university, argues that in traditional african village structures, the concerns, ideas and opinions of all the people are able to occupy real space in any public discussion. for effective participation to occur there must be a commitment to freedom of expression. people must be free to speak out and represent their own interests, without fear of repercussions even if their voices are dissenting (blakenberg 1999: 44-46). blakenberg’s sentiments were echoed by pieter duvenage in his article habermas, the public sphere and beyond that the public sphere plays and important role in advancing forward the interests of the communities (duvenage 2005: 3-7). imbizo, in its traditional form, has constituted an important aspect of the african political system for many centuries, including south africa. it was only during the presidential term of thabo mbeki that the concept was revived to a position of importance in the contemporary lexicon and formal governance setting. as a result, in october 2001, cabinet decided that – following the president’s state of the nation address – it will engage in the izimbizo as a communication method, using the same approach as in traditional izimbizo. as a folk medium, imbizo is rooted within the cultural milieu of the people who participate in it. netshitomboni argues in his thesis, managing participatory development communication: the case for the government communication and information system (gcis), that this traditional approach was adopted by the anc government because it was viewed as the best practice regarding consultative governance (netshitomboni 2007: 126). long before the introduction and implementation of the presidential izimbizo, the free state provincial government had embarked on the exco meets the people communication method – as early as 1998. the main aim of exco meets the people was to provide a platform for communities to raise their problems and concerns with senior government officials like the premier, mayors, and the members of the executive council (mecs). different provinces adopted different names for such a 137 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? communication method with the communities – in the northern cape this communication method is known as the cabinet meets the people (diamond fields advertiser 2003: 16). in the eastern cape, it is known as masithethisane (come, let’s talk together). exco meets the people as a method of communication became the forerunner of the presidential izimbizo based on the same principles. izimbizo are conducted on two levels, namely the presidential izimbizo and the national izimbizo. the presidential izimbizo are designed to allow the president of the country to interact with communities. on the other hand, the national izimbizo allow ministers, premiers, mecs and local councillors to listen and respond to the problems raised by the communities. unlike izimbizo, exco meets the people is a forum spearheaded by the premier to enhance dialogue and interaction between senior provincial government executives and communities. interaction through this method provides an opportunity for the provincial government to communicate its action programme and the progress being made directly to the people. both the presidential izimbizo and exco meets the people communication methods require planning that involves extensive communication with the people in the area to be visited. in the free state province, this communication method was initiated towards the end of ivy matsepe-casaburri’s term in office (1998), but was only fully deployed during the period of winkie direko’s term as premier (1999-2004). to date, exco meets the people is still used in the free state province. necessity of using exco meets the people while the constitution of south africa amply provides for the right to access information, and the related promotion of access to information act 2000 is recognised as among the best in the world, there are drawbacks that negatively affect access. firstly, the difficult procedure in accessing information and the prescribed fees certainly hinder access to poor people. secondly, the exemption in the act which hinges upon national security becomes a convenient loophole for the government to exploit when it does not want to release information which may have nothing or little to do with government security. thirdly, the blanket exclusion of all cabinet records is a reprehensible exemption and seriously undermines public openness, transparency and access. section 40 of the act inappropriately allows the government to be secretive about details in the policy-making process. this is the most contradictory aspect of the act because it restricts access to what is arguably the most important area of government transparency and accountability to the public. arguments such as these provided the impetus for the free state provincial government to introduce the exco meets the people to interact with the communities. although interaction with the communities was deemed important, exco meets the people required, inter alia, that the anc provincial government firmly entrench its hegemony in all sectors of the provincial community. it had to maintain close contact with the community members who in the majority voted it into power. this was echoed 138 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? by de villiers (2003:1), quoting joel netshitenzhe, head of the policy co-ordination and advisory services (pcas): “the participation of citizens in formulating decisions that affect them is most desirable. it is desirable to bring government to the man in the street.” however, the realisation of this goal would depend on the success of the communication methods used. in the free state, for example, exco meets the people focus weeks are held whereby the premier, mayors, mecs, and local councillors interact directly with communities at grassroots level. one of the key objectives of the premier’s visits is to see for himself/herself some of the challenges that ordinary citizens are grappling with, including the conditions under which ordinary people live. according to alec moemi, chief director in the office of the premier, there are five core issues of importance of exco meets the people, namely to highlight the following: government programme of action; achievements and progress being made by government; challenges facing government; clarifying government’s position on various transverse matters; and highlighting government expectations on envisaged partnerships with communities in development work (personal interview with m.e. moemi,16 august 2007). such a forum gives communities an opportunity to raise their concerns and suggestions directly with the premier in the presence of mecs, mayors and others. in this way, ordinary people are able to hold the three spheres of government accountable and to a certain extent influence governance and service delivery. exco meets the people gatherings are held regularly in order to ensure that community problems are addressed as they emerge. while still serving as premier of the free state, winkie direko started off with formally explaining the importance of developing the participatory character of communication within the provincial government. according to direko, the provincial government had to speed up a method of communicating with the communities face to face. she argued that this would highlight the need for active participation and critical assessment of service delivery by communities within a democratic framework (personal interview with i.w. direko, 5 june 2003). strom, in research conducted by the institute for democracy in south africa (idasa), later echoed the same sentiments by stating that: “when democracy is conceived too narrowly, as simply the work of government, citizens become marginalised and democracy seems to revolve around politicians. when citizens are placed at the centre, everything looks different” (strom 2004: 1). addressing the community of luckhoff and bethulie in the xhariep district from 10-11 october 2002, direko had the following to say about the exco meets the people: driven by strong principles of interactive governance and the resolve to take government to the people, my executive council took the decision to engage in an intensive programme to interact with the different communities of the free state. our president, mr thabo mbeki, has encouraged us to work towards effective, transparent and cooperative government that is inclusive and that ensures efficient service delivery. the exco meets the people campaign has taken us across the five 139 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? districts of our province. we have been able to visit different towns in these districts. the comments, questions and concerns that we have received through this campaign have enabled us to be more considerate and strategic when planning on socioeconomic development issues (direko 2002: 1). it is clear from this statement that the provincial government wanted to achieve popular control over decision-makers that would ultimately end poverty, minimize unemployment and homelessness, and restore human dignity to the free state communities. exco meets the people makes it possible to create a distinction between four levels of information, generated at the community engagements. the first includes issues of a more general nature relating to provincial and national policy issues, for example the question of unemployment where opinions expressed forms part of the general policy conversation. the second level of information relates to individual issues such as an individual’s experience with reporting crime, or problems surrounding access to social grants. the third level of information involves the status policy implementation such as the rate at which houses are built, or access to basic needs like clean water. the fourth level of information is feedback and evaluation on whether government initiatives are achieving what the communities expect. from the above description of the programme setting, as well as the actual event, it is clear that participation by various levels of government, including community members, becomes a central activity to which many can contribute and listen. one may argue that at face value, exco meets the people is presented by the free state provincial government as a communication method to deepen participatory democracy and public participation, especially for the poor. it is clear from this campaign that the anc-led provincial government is able to popularise and give practical meaning to its long-held ideological positions. direko argued that, through the use of this communication method, the anc government intended to keep its ideologies alive in the consciousness of the communities in the province (direko 2003). this author argues that although this communication method plays a significant role in promoting communication between government structures and the communities, in the free state this method goes far beyond being a mere method of communication. it also entails gathering a rich body of information that can be used to inform future policy decision-making processes and to improve the management of implementation. one notable fact is that it appears that this method is used to strengthen the ideological positions of government and the ruling party amongst the masses. this however qualifies as a rapid and cost effective way of policy evaluation that could potentially lead to policy change, cancellation thereof or even the introduction of new items on the policy agenda. it has all the potential to qualify as effective method for instilling people-centred governance and making people understand how a democratic government works. 140 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? in the free state, the success of this communication method contributed towards the drafting of the free state development plan (fsdp). this three-year plan identifies five key areas that the provincial government focuses on in order to better the lives of all free state citizens. these areas include: economic development and job creation; providing sustainable infrastructure development; investing in people development; ensuring a safe and secure environment; and effective co-operative governance. through exco meets the people, the fsdp was promoted amongst the communities. communities were encouraged to become involved in the implementation of this plan through various projects and programmes outlined in it (free state government news 2002: 4). another notable factor about this communication method is that the actual day on which the exco meets the people takes place is usually regarded as a day of large scale community interaction with the premier. this could be anything from visiting schools for educational purposes, to attending events such as empowerment projects. during the official exco meets the people gathering, the premier, as well as mecs and preferably also councillors of specific local governments, are present to assist resolving issues raised by community members and following up on undertakings given during the meeting. these arrangements facilitate communication across language barriers and assist in giving confidence to any member of the public to pose questions in his/her home language to the government officials, or explain issues that they deem to be important. one advantage of using this communication method is that it is not orchestrated, and that any local community member present is free to take part. after a set of questions have been asked or comments have been made, the premier requests the mecs to assist or comment on specific cases. if issues cannot be dealt with, they are taken up after the meeting on a formal basis by the office of the premier. issues which require attention are therefore dealt with, and followed up. relevant individuals and/or affiliated stakeholders are contacted afterwards in order to clarify or understand the specified issue. another important factor is that, during these gatherings, neither the premier nor the mecs make formal political speeches (personal interview with oupa khoabane, 9 july 2007). netshitomboni argues that language usage is one of the determining factors for the success or failure of a particular communication project or campaign. in pre-1994 south africa, government communication was largely conducted in either english or afrikaans, at the expense of other african languages. the dawn of democracy necessitated a paradigm shift from the exclusive use of english and afrikaans to the recognition and use african languages (netshitomboni 2007: 166). although the south african constitution recognizes the previously marginalised african languages there is still a bias towards the use of english in government communication. this author has noted that, in many of the exco meets the people campaigns held around the free state, african languages were predominantly used, except at business 141 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? gatherings, which are mostly held in the evenings with the business communities. it is against this background that the use of language in government communication methods like the exco meets the people should take into consideration the fact that languages carry with it the pride of its speakers because they are able to best articulate their feelings and needs in their own languages. it is important therefore to note that, in order to reach all people, it is necessary to communicate with them using the language they understand. the importance and the preference of the language used is illustrated by the fact that, during direko’s premiership in the free state, in most of the exco meets the people she attended, she would spread the hiv/aids awareness campaign to the communities through her popular warning to girls that: “banana le seke la iketsa dimatras” (city press 2003: 2). with this slogan, direko warned girls not to engage in sexual activities and she likened such girls to mattresses. through the use of the exco meets the people campaigns, the provincial government is able to uncover corruption and listen to some of the problems affecting people. during one such gathering held in memel in the thabo mofutsanyana district in 2003, direko discovered that some councillors and teachers were living in rdp houses. some people had even managed to secure more than one rdp house. it was through such a gathering that she also discovered that people in memel were still grappling with the bucket system and a shortage of water, despite these services having been budgeted for by the provincial government (city press 2003: 2). challenges posed by exco meets the people following the local government elections in december 2005, the anc government acknowledged the weaknesses in local government, which were addressed through the implementation of project consolidate, integrated development plans (idps) and the provincial growth and development plans (pgdps). in most municipalities there were communication gaps between councillors and the community, which often resulted in public discourse expressing mass dissatisfaction about non-delivery of services. this situation led to political instability in the approach to local service delivery. this had a detrimental effect on public confidence in local government with regard to capacity to deliver, thus posing the following challenges: dealing with negative perceptions of local government; increasing the profile around the objectives of project consolidate; projecting all spheres and programmes of government in an integrated manner; and positively profiling municipalities which are facing service delivery challenges, and those that are performing better. the implementation of a communication method such as exco meets the people therefore provided the provincial government with an opportunity to meet the people and listen to them. in view of the fact that this method was initially intended to open communication channels between government and the communities, it is important to note that political developments have affected the functioning of exco meets the people and its role in community engagement in the free state. in some parts of the province where traditional leadership is still in existence, the emergence of the elected local 142 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? government leaders is seen as a threat amongst other traditional leaders – hence, in some instances this method is perceived as an anc provincial rally by such leaders (personal interview with e. tsebela, 22 september 2007). it is therefore imperative for this communication campaign to take into consideration the cultural paradigms of a community within which such a gathering is to take place. although a needs analysis is conducted through pre-visits, this analysis focuses only on the political needs of the people without taking their cultural background into account. such a needs analysis would help to prevent situations in which irrelevant solutions are provided to a particular community, or solutions are provided where a community does not have any serious problems. it is sometimes through gatherings of this nature that certain members hold the anc government ransom by threatening not to vote for the anc if their demands are not met. this dissatisfaction in the province led to the mushrooming of the so-called “concerned groups” who accused the provincial government of not providing adequate services to their communities. these “concerned groups” voiced their dissatisfaction through a series of violent protests in some of the province’s townships. this author is of an opinion that only black communities are targeted by exco meets the people. this was disputed by oupa khoabane, deputy director in the office of the premier, when he indicated during an interview that all the community members in the target area are invited, irrespective of racial classification. he further argued that exco meets the people gatherings are usually preceded by road-shows to schools and project site visits before heading to the venue. in most cases, huge tents are erected to accommodate members of the community (khoabane 2007). although one acknowledges the importance of having pre-visits before that actual exco meets the people gathering takes place, this allows a subtle power play and domination by the ruling party in shaping consensus and consent in the target group. in most cases, the government officials come to such gatherings with pre-conceived ideas of the expectations of the communities. therefore the initial aim of interaction between the provincial government officials and the communities targeted disappears, reducing this communication method to one-way communication rather that an intended interaction. this approach therefore creates the impression that this communication method is not about the partnership between the provincial government and the communities, but about government and what it wants to communicate. consequently, some people have claimed that the exco meets the people communication method is nothing but a “window dressing exercise” by the provincial government. mabelebele (2006: 9) argues that, just like izimbizo, the exco meets the people is also time-bound. it takes the form of a one-time event during which all the participants exchange views and perspectives on issues affecting them as a community. secondly, it is based on an agreed programme and rules of engagement. thirdly, it has a defined place and occasion for delivery and regularity (mabelebele 2006: 9). another visible shortcoming of using this communication method is the problem of effective 143 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? management. sometimes coordinators become biased when setting the agenda in the exco meets the people planning phase. at some point, these gatherings are then reduced to platforms for demands and complaints to government officials. this was evident during the exco meets the people gathering held in the thembalihle township at vrede in 2003, during which community members held placards reading: “we need water and houses”; “we don’t need any more meetings”. another aspect that frustrated the attendees of such gatherings was the responses given by provincial government officials when asked questions by the public. in thembalihle, for example, one student from the local high school asked the mec for education about the lack of learning support materials (lsms) in schools. instead of addressing that problem, the mec humiliated that student by telling him that during the apartheid era they were not complaining about learning materials, and that students are taking advantage of the anc government. he further stated that the purpose of learners to attend school is to get educated, rather than to complain. such a response is an indication that, although the intention of exco meets the people is to interact with the communities, sometimes this interaction is compromised by the same government officials who initiated it (personal interview with m. ncongwane, 9 december 2006). the problem with exco meets the people is that the decisions on the intended outcomes of this communication method are taken with little or no input from the beneficiaries. this is largely because what is finally communicated is informed by government’s national communication strategy. although this communication method implies that senior provincial government officials are expected to obtain first-hand information about the lives of the people they lead, collate the findings during the visits to the communities and thereafter devise forms of intervention to address the problems that they have identified, this is not happening in reality. another noted problem of exco meets the people in the free state is limited time provided for question and answer sessions. this compromises the ability of those in attendance to thoroughly discuss the issues that they may want to raise with the premier or mecs. this could be because the communication messages are finalised long before the actual exco meets the people takes place. this strategy leaves no room for issues that are beyond the designated scope to be considered. however, this was disputed by m.e. mosala, former deputy director in the office of the premier. mosala stated that the fact-finding missions were carried out in order to brief the premier and other senior provincial government officials regarding the needs issues of the community targeted for the gathering. the intention was to inform these officials so that they could prepare themselves thoroughly and each provincial department could have a representative present to answer the community members’ questions on behalf of his department. fact-finding missions were conducted along these lines. sometimes government departments consider the magnitude of an issue and make relevant referrals. this means that delays with regard to such referrals and a lack of commitment from other departments are perceived as incompetence on the part of the premier’s office in addressing the problems (interview with m.e. mosala, 8 june 2007). 144 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? one would expect that, after a fact-finding mission has been completed, this should be reflected in the communication strategy of the provincial government. it could be argued that most communication between the representatives of the government and the communities should take place once the fact-finding mission has been completed. the purpose of this communication would be to inform the people of what would be done about the issues discussed with senior government officials during the exco meets the people gathering. extensive publicity-generating communication currently takes place before the exco meets the people gathering, but not much is communicated with regard to the issues identified as requiring attention from the provincial government. even if little or no progress is made with the issues raised during the exco meets the people gatherings, it is still important to communicate the situation to the communities, as this could help to build a culture of trust. otherwise, this reduces exco meets the people to a top-down communication approach. although the purpose of exco meets the people is to provide an opportunity for the majority of the people to speak, the venues arranged for these gatherings are often not large enough to accommodate the people. sometimes these venues are filled by the youth section of the population. this may be attributable to the fact that older people are at work when such meetings are held. in most cases, such meetings are held during the day. the fact that the venues are too small to accommodate a large group makes it practically difficult to thoroughly elaborate on some issues raised, and for the government representatives to adequately respond to such issues. sometimes people with genuine community concerns cannot be accommodated inside these venues due to the inadequate size. in some cases, questions posed to the government officials are not fully addressed due to time constraints. this shortcoming is sometimes interpreted by the community as an attempt by the government to play a cat and mouse game. this author has witnessed community members asking questions dragging on endlessly, so that they are actually making speeches instead of asking questions. some people who are asking questions tend to elaborate on personal issues that are often of no concern to the community. one community leader interviewed at thembalihle acknowledged the commitment of the mecs in solving their problems, but lamented the fact that no time-frames were set in that regard: “having the exco meets the people campaigns is a marvelous thing, but we keep on getting promises after the campaigns and nothing is done about the issues raised. it seems as if the government is willing to assist, but it does not have the necessary tools on how to assist. i think there should be time-frames set on the resolution of the issues raised. that will help the community not to engage in violent activities, as we saw in 2005. most people in our township think that these gatherings are just ‘window dressing’ activities from the government. although there are recordings done on the issues raised, it is clear to us that nobody cares to make a followup thereafter” (personal interview with m.d. tsotetsi, 9 december 2006). one tends to agree with the observation made above by tsotetsi that a speedy response from government in addressing issues requiring urgent attention could erase the 145 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? perceptions of communities about the exco meets the people communication method, namely that it is just a public relations exercise. the lives of members of a targeted community should improve after an exco meets the people gathering. it is ironic that the so-called “concerned groups” who lamented the lack of services started in the townships where such gatherings were held. although the visit achieved the broad objective of the exco meets the people, at thembalihle it had many dimensions. as some residents noted, there were disappointments when the tight programme did not allow the premier to meet all who wanted to do so, to feast with them and to enjoy their performances. this is due to the fact that the campaign can be taxing to the politicians, who have to travel vast distances to meet the people. during her budget speech in june 2004, the premier of the free state, beatrice marshoff, called for the intensification of the exco meets the people campaign. in her speech she indicated the following: the executive council has endorsed the governance and administration cluster’s programme of action for the current financial year. one of the key result areas that is envisaged includes a review of the exco meets the people campaign, including the name, as well as the integration of national izimbizo with provincial izimbizo. the technical cluster will be further charged with the responsibility to re-organize the campaign in such a way that research is undertaken on a variety of government services prior to campaigns. the research must cover areas such as housing, payout points, social grants, hospitals and other government centres where services are rendered. exco meets the people campaigns must have mechanisms in place to determine the impact of dialogue with communities (marshoff 2004). this statement by marshoff shows that there was a need to put into perspective what the government wanted to achieve with the exco meets the people. conclusion there is no doubt that the communication method of exco meets the people is a noble idea if the end product could be properly monitored. participation at community level should be necessitated by the fact that there is a need to consolidate democracy. in order to build and consolidate democracy at both national and provincial government level, it is important for the communities to engage in communication methods such as exco meets the people. looking at this method as adopted by the free state provincial government, it is evident that the communities are generally not involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation thereof to allow a certain measure of improvement. this lack of effective public participation compromises the democratic principles that underlie democracy. one may argue that, in order to sustain democracy, communities should understand the nature of their participation and how they should participate. this author’s observation is that, at many of the exco meets the people gatherings, the issues raised are predictable. unemployment, poverty, roads, land and housing are but 146 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? a few of them. if the issues are known, why is the provincial government embarking on such campaigns? as indicated in this article, it can be argued that holding such gatherings helps the provincial government meet the people and hear their concerns. it can also be argued that this is in line with government accountability and participatory democracy. it is well and good for political leaders to account to the people, but it remains to be seen if these gatherings are helping the people who need service delivery more than merely providing a sympathetic ear. one needs to establish whether exco meets the people gatherings are not actually anc rallies in disguise. 147 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? references blakenberg, n. 1999. in search of a real freedom: ubuntu and the media. critical arts 13(2): 44-45. city press, 31 august 2003. de villiers, s. a people’s government. the people’s voice: a review of public participation in the law and policy-making process in south africa. parliamentary support programme. diamond fields advertiser, 1 october 2003. direko, i.w. 2002. speaking notes. exco campaign, luckhoff and bethulie. direko, iw. 2003. personal interview. bloemfontein, 5 june. duvenage, p. 2005. habermas, the public sphere and beyond. communicatio 31(1): 3-7. free state government news, 2002. khoabane, o. 2007. personal interview. bloemfontein, 9 july. mabelebele, j.m. 2005. appropriating imbizo as a model of communication and governance in south africa. unpublished master’s dissertation. university of limpopo. mabelebele, j.m. 2006. imbizo and politics in south africa: a ‘zulu nation’ imbizo of 2005 as a political mobilization strategy. southern african journal for folklore studies 16(2): 8-19. mabelebele, jm. 2006. ideological objectives underpinning imbizo as a model of communication and governance. communicare 25(2): 103-125. marshoff, f.b. 2004. budget speech. bloemfontein, june. moemi, m.e. 2007. personal interview. bloemfontein, 16 august. mosala, m.e. 2007. personal interview. bloemfontein, 8 june. ncongwane, m. 2006. personal interview. vrede, 9 december. netshitomboni, l.r. 2007. managing participatory development communication: the case for the government communication and information system (gcis). unpublished ph.d. thesis. university of pretoria. strom, m. 2004. ‘diverse voices in conversation’: roundtable proceedings of the lessons from the field: a decade of democracy in south africa. cape town: idasa. tsebela, e. 2007. personal interview. qwaqwa, 22 september. tsotetsi, m.d. 2006. personal interview. vrede, 9 december. 148 exco meets the people in the free state: a window dressing exercise? 1. paul schutte 43 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 43 56 j. c. van der merwe* abstract institutions of higher education have an important contribution to make towards the south african project, and residence life gives a university a unique opportunity to make a significant contribution towards nation building. in this article, the author will briefly discuss some of the challenges that he faced as head of a male residence at the university of the free state (ufs) in the post-reitz era. in the first part of the article the focus will be on the challenge of cultivating a post-apartheid citizenship amongst first-year students, as well as on the transformation process in the residences. then the views of the university as a business and a residence as a house will be discussed. throughout the article the influence of different ideologies will be critiqued, through the identification of specific “hyper-norms” that dominate other norms and values, and also lead to relations of domination between social groups. some of the metaphors that are central in this whole process will be explored in terms of what each metaphor “highlights” and what it and its possible deconstruction “hides”. * j. c. van der merwe is the chairperson of the department of philosophy at the university of the free state and head of karee male residence on the bloemfontein campus. introduction south africa belongs to all those who live in it. the realisation of this ideal, as described in the freedom charter and then accepted as the backbone of the constitution of post-apartheid south africa, has been a continuous struggle. the inability of many south africans to embrace and promote this idea may rightly be viewed as the single biggest stumbling block in the way of creating a truly south african democracy. the process of nation building, which started with the unbanning of the anc and subsequent release of nelson mandela in 1990, gained momentum with the first democratic elections in 1994. many south africans put their faith in mandela to unite the nation, and the extraordinary contribution he made in this regard is well documented. however, the passive posture that many of these expectant south africans assumed resulted in what some have referred to as the “mandelarisation” of south africa. this culminated in him wearing the no. 6 rugby jersey at the 1995 rugby world cup final, which was largely a symbolic gesture, albeit one of the most powerful symbolic gestures possible. contrary to popular belief, the winning of the rugby world cup in 1995 (and again in 2007) did not “unite” the people of south africa. granted, winning the cup ignited wide-spread celebrations and created a sense of goodwill amongst many south africans. but once the euphoria had passed, the people simply returned to their everyday lives and south africans remain divided. the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission (trc) was intended to stimulate the growth of our young democracy. however, this author agrees with prominent afrikaans author antjie krog’s assessment that although the trc was highly successful in creating a forum for victims and relatively successful in establishing “truth”, it failed, to a large extent, in the spheres of reparation, amnesty and reconciliation (krog 2002: 289-290). this is by no means the fault of the commission itself, but may rather be ascribed to a collective apathy of the citizens, especially amongst many white south africans, towards the ultimate purpose of the trc. in the late 1990s, thabo mbeki’s famous “i am an african” speech (1998), accompanied by his african renaissance initiative, were further attempts to not only unite the people of south africa in their commitment to the country, but also to the continent. however, it seems as if the african renaissance movement has lost most of its momentum, and in the first few years of the new millennium, south africans have witnessed how desmond tutu’s rainbow nation has begun to fade into a black and white version of a once colourful symbol. the establishment of the native club and the emergence of what may be called the neo-afrikaner protest movement (nap) are cause for great concern regarding the possible resurgence of black and white nationalism. the purpose of the former is to unite the black intelligentsia under the umbrella of africanist philosophies, while the latter attempts to mobilise white afrikaners under the banner of the “fight for the survival of the afrikaans language”.1 if south africans have learnt one thing from their painful past, it is that this kind of ideological grouping should be avoided at all costs. 44 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state mbembe (2006: 5) affirms this when he argues that “[w]e have therefore entered a very dangerous moment. but south africa is still a democracy. there is still room to manoeuvre and there are still choices to be made. what is alarming for many is that the scope for choice is gradually being eroded by those intent to re-segregate the public sphere and to constrict what it means to be south african and african in today’s world.” during the second half of 2007, the university of the free state (ufs) became aware of the “dangerous moment” mbembe refers to, when the decision was taken that ufs residences could no longer be segregated along racial lines. this decision was met with fierce protest by many of the white students and their parents, as well as some staff members. driven by the conviction that the transformation of residence life, more than a decade after the birth of the new south africa, was a moral imperative, i accepted the post of a residence head in february 2008. two weeks later the “dangerous moment” became a reality when two incidents shook the ufs community: the violent strike of the residence committees which resulted in millions of rands of damage to property, and the existence of the infamous reitz video that came to light a few days later. in this article i will briefly discuss some of the challenges that i face as head of a ufs male residence in the post-reitz era. the theoretical framework of my discussion will be our departmental model of ideology theory as well as a more familiar model of metaphor theory (largely developed by george lakoff and co-workers). throughout the article the influence of different ideologies will be critiqued through the identification of specific “hyper-norms” that dominate other norms and values, and also lead to relations of domination between social groups. some of the metaphors that are central in this whole process will be explored in terms of what each metaphor “highlights” and what it and its possible deconstruction “hides” (lakoff 2008). in the first part of the article the focus will be on the challenge of cultivating a post-apartheid citizenship amongst first-year students, as well as on the transformation process in the residences. then the views of the university as a business and a residence as a house will be discussed. the challenge of post-apartheid citizenship the events mentioned in the introduction of this article, are the events that shaped the first 18 years of the lives of the students entering residences on the campuses of the ufs.2 these were indeed extraordinary years in more than one way – and few generations have experienced similar radical changes in such a relatively short time. first-year students are generally at an age where they are dealing with issues of identity – one of which is their identity as post-apartheid citizens. they were not actively involved in the struggle against apartheid, nor in the enforcement of the apartheid ideology; yet on entering the ufs they walk into an institution shaped by the apartheid ideology. jonathan jansen (2009: 51) observes that the surprising factor is not that the postapartheid students have knowledge of the past, but the fact that they hold this 45 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state knowledge “firmly, personally, and emotionally”. and he rightly asks “[h]ow does one explain the powerful knowledge held by post-apartheid children about events they did not witness themselves and about experiences they never directly had?” (jansen 2009: 53). many students argue that they had nothing to do with apartheid, and therefore should not be branded in this sense, yet it is as if they were all born with the birthmark of apartheid. this is what jansen (2009: 114-144) refers to as “bitter knowledge”. to complicate these students’ transition from school to university even further, they are also exposed to various ideologies that dominate society. so while they are trying to understand their place in post-apartheid south africa, students are also exposed to the influence of ideologies such as neo-liberalism and the neo-afrikaner protest movement, to name but two. the term “neo-afrikaner protest movement” was coined by johann visagie referring to mostly white afrikaner intellectuals and performing artists still trapped, in spite of their denial, in the ideology of ethno-nationalism, thus opposing the necessary relativisation of a former dominant culture in a multi-ethnological state. in apartheid south africa the ideology of ethno-nationalism (“volksideologie”) was characterised by the overriding goal (hyper-norm) of the preservation of the “volkskultuur” (also for the “benefit” of other cultures). although the term neo-afrikaner protest movement itself is not entirely unproblematic, its main critical suggestion is that there are underlying ties between this discourse and that of the “volksideologie” of the former apartheids era.3 the protest is mobilised under the banner of especially language activism, but to such an extent that language becomes merely a euphemism for race (in its strongest form) or the desire for a cultural “distance” (in a more subtle form). it is the latter that clearly has conceptual ties with the ethnic hyper-norm of “volkskultuur”. on the other hand, students are also caught up in neo-liberalism that has had a worldwide influence for some years. this ideology is driven by the goals of economic wealth and personal achievements. brown (2003: 3) describes the neo-liberal citizen as follows: the model neo-liberal citizen is one who strategizes for her/himself among various social, political and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these options. a fully realized neo-liberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded, indeed it would barely exist as a public. the body politic ceases to be a body but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers. neo-liberalism is thus characterised by political complacency with historical ties going back to classic liberalism (hyper-normative possessive individualism) – something that the new south africa project can ill afford. the way in which first-year students react towards the integration of residences is characterised by elements of both ideologies. while they demonstrate a political apathy towards nation building, they become extremely political when the afrikaner culture of the residences comes under discussion. 46 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state what makes this generation’s search for identity unique, is that those who are supposed to guide them “have had no experience of themselves as citizens of a modern, nonracial democracy on their home ground” (ramphele 2008: 15). most ufs staff members are themselves adapting to what it means to live in a democracy – since they have lived for most of their lives in a country that did not have a human rights declaration in its constitution. they too are influenced by the ideologies of our time and the influence of neo-liberalism, for example, is not limited to students. before i became head of the residence, like many of my colleagues, i too was reluctant to get involved in issues outside of the classroom. as a department we have always been critical of the way in which institutional matters have been addressed, but were also guilty of easily brushing aside issues of conflict as a matter between management and students. this trend, where people retreat from the public domain into the private sphere, is typical of a society being dominated by neo-liberalism. in an article titled beyond the ivory tower: the public role of the intellectual today benda hofmeyr argues that “neo-liberalism radically attenuates the individual’s capacity to enter the public sphere”, which leads to “the inevitable depoliticisation of intellectual labour through the increasing individualization of the self, on the one hand, and the rampant privatization of the public, on the other hand” (hofmeyr 2008: 74-75). another complicating factor is that the ufs is currently grappling to come to terms with its identity as a post-apartheid institution of higher education. it is therefore understandable why the transformation of residences poses such a challenge for students and staff at the ufs. the reitz video forced the ufs to reconsider questions such as: is the role of campus to produce citizens with a capacity to critically examine their own lives as well as traditions in a self-critical way? can campus be seen as one of society’s important public spaces wherein public communication on the common good is nurtured? (boman, gustavsson & nussbaum 2002: 306). ramphele (2008: 196) makes the point that “in any society, higher education is the platform for the practice of high-level human and intellectual work and the training of future generations of professionals, scientists and technological experts”. it may therefore be argued that the cultivation of responsible citizenship amongst the youth is one of the responsibilities that the ufs should take on during the process of the transformation of the south african society. the challenge that the ufs has to deal with is “how to foster a genuine commitment to the democratic premise that common men and woman have something valuable to contribute to the formation of public opinion” (mbembe 2006: 5). in terms of philosophical analysis, we must distinguish between ethnicity, citizenship and political culture. the fact that we are dealing with the lifeworld of the university, means that it is primarily through academic education that students can be taught that they belong to a specific ethnic group, while simultaneously being a citizen of south africa – which is a political concept and a political context.4 47 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state this citizenship ties in with the idea of the state and with the idea of a political culture. the latter clearly has nothing to do with ethnicity as such, and students must be taught that culture is not synonymous with the concept of “a people”. an advanced political culture centres in the idea of a fully developed democracy. students must learn that they have to care deeply about both their ethnic culture (although this might entail them turning their backs on elements of this culture that, for whatever reason, they no longer wish to continue) and their political culture. and ultimately they must be taught that the political culture of the country (symbolically grounded in the constitution) is to be conceptually separated from the majority ethnic culture. indeed, the political culture must sometimes intervene in the free expression of majority ethnic culture(s) – when such expression is problematic regarding the general public interest. these are imperative distinctions for students and staff to learn, but it has to be in a nonpoliticised university context, marked by the typical academic culture of the university. part of the academic culture of the university is its communicative infrastructure: communication inside and outside of classrooms, between students, between students and lecturers, between management and faculties, etc. from the university in its metaphorical positioning outside society (not discounting its being part of society) this ultra-necessary debate must be protected beyond the university, in letters to newspapers, arranged discussion forums where the general public is welcome to attend, in televised and radio interviews. these are possible ways to connect a student’s room in a residence with the great public sphere “out there”. the challenge of transformation residence life gives the university a unique opportunity to play a facilitating role during the important transitional phase in the lives of students during their first few years on campus. the impact of the residence culture of a specific residence on an individual’s quest for identity, whether positive or negative, must therefore be critically examined. in order to open up such a discourse, the ufs community needs to reflect on the nature and purpose of residences.5 any discussion on the nature of a residence should be informed by one’s definition of a university. there is general consensus that research, teaching and community service are the main characteristics of a university which distinguish it from other societal institutions.6 however, in defining the ufs as a university, the fact that the ufs is situated on the african continent and that it practices research and teaching in the postapartheid era, have to be taken into consideration. since these realities have a significant impact on the way in which the ufs functions as an institution, it follows logically then, that it should be reflected in the way in which residence life is organised. until 2008, residence life at the ufs did not reflect the above-mentioned realities. at that stage the ufs had been engaged in a process of transformation, although for various reasons residence life was not yet a priority. at the beginning of 2008, the 48 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state process of transforming the ufs into a truly south african university reached the stage where the re-imagination of what exactly residence life should constitute in a postapartheid south africa, became a priority. however, at that stage the ufs community was already suffering from “transformation fatigue” not as a result of continuous effort to transform, but rather as a result of continuous effort to resist transformation. the integration of residences was framed in a very specific manner by the opponents of transformation. for instance, during the src election of 2007, the freedom front plus campaigned against what they called “forced integration” and argued that it is equivalent to discrimination. the party argued that it was wrong to force people from different cultural backgrounds to share a residence. what was implied, but not said, was in fact that they favoured a policy of forced separation. another argument put forward was that the ufs was trying to “verswart” (literally: blacken) the residences. again, what was not said, was that they (the opponents of transformation) wanted to keep the residences white (to use their terminology). the debate was thus framed as if the ufs expected students to do something unnatural, while in fact the promotion of the segregation of residences in a post-apartheid south africa was the unnatural thing to do. another popular argument against integration was that the ufs should not get involved in facilitating students in adapting to living in post-apartheid south africa, since such a project does not form part of its core business. the premise was that the ufs should focus exclusively on the main characteristics of a university such as research and teaching. this is quite ironic, since those who were arguing along those lines were conveniently ignoring the fact that the ufs has had a long history of cultivating a specific brand of citizenship in service of the apartheid regime. the history of the ufs shows that the national party regime used the ufs to advance its ideology. this is illustrated in the way in which residence life was organised in the pre-1990 period. residences are ideally suited for such endeavours, since “[i]t is a culture-specific model that assumes homogeneity and a shared value system, and customs that have been handed down from generation to generation” (ramphele 2008: 217). the architecture of the residence, the traditions and symbols were all directed towards the establishment of a strong afrikaner nationalist tradition. a specific brand of afrikaner culture and conservative christianity worked very effective towards producing law-abiding, noncritical nationalists – to be employed in the state apparatus. so, in reality, the opponents of transformation were not opposed to the idea that the ufs cultivates citizenship, but they were against the kind of citizenship being cultivated, namely a citizenship based on constitutional values grounded in human dignity. the main challenges that faced me as a residence head in this transformation process were three-fold: firstly, since the ufs is a university, residence life should be characterised by a vigorous academic culture. secondly, since we live in a postapartheid south africa, and given the fact that the ufs is a public (and not a private) institution, residences should be integrated. thirdly, residences should be spaces where 49 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state respect for humanity and human dignity are cultivated. but, since the biggest challenge in terms of nation building is the fact that race is still an issue, the transformation of residences became exclusively an issue of race. most south africans still struggle with the idea that there is only one race. the visible distinctions in terms of external appearances have conditioned us to ignore scientific evidence that there is but one race. we must find ways of de-conditioning ourselves from the deep-seated need for categories. we must de-link political patronage from racial categories as we succeed in our transformation process. we need to set ourselves a target date by when we will throw away the crutch of racial categories and become simply south africans (ramphele 2008: 309). the transformation of residences into living/learning communities, which has obviously nothing to do with race, was opposed on the grounds that it was another attack on the afrikaner and his/her culture. the same line of attack was followed with the transformation of residences where a human rights culture was to be nourished. ramphele (2008: 137) rightly asks, “what kind of free society is it that gives permission to some to physically violate the rights of others in order to assert theirs?” this is exactly what happened in residences under the name of seniority and was defended as part of tradition. it is evident that students “seem to be torn between the values of our human-rights-based constitution and traditional practices that violate some of those rights” (ramphele 2008: 75). so when illegal and inhumane practices (such as initiation) were banned by the ufs the motives behind the decision were questioned. yet again it was perceived as an attack on the afrikaner culture in the sense of “they are taking away another aspect of our culture” instead of seeing it for what it is, namely that residences should be living spaces wherein the dignity of every person is valued and respected. one of the biggest challenges that the ufs has encountered in the process of transformation is how to move from formulating policies towards implementing them. most of the policies were already in place, but little transformation took place. the ufs was in a position where the institutional framework was the most developed, but the values framework was the least developed. in july 2008 the council of the ufs appointed the igubu agency to facilitate the transformation process in the residences. in the igubu model, rhythm and rootedness are seen as the foundational characteristics of african communities, which find expression in the relational engagement of different life tasks of communities and individuals, namely establishing dialogue, engaging identity, creating community, finding meaning and activating movement” (igubu agency 2009)7. the question of how to achieve change in an institutional culture can be addressed from different points of departure. one approach is to argue that one first needs to change the thinking and then the behaviour will change. another approach would be to argue that one needs to first change the behaviour and then the thinking will change. the igubu agency favours the latter approach. first identify shared values, and while working 50 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state from within a shared value system one can then attempt the changes needed in behaviour which will eventually lead to a change in thinking. both approaches are legitimate, but the choice of when the one should take precedence over the other depends on the specific situation and people involved. what should be avoided is a situation where the one is promoted at the cost of the other.8 we need to reframe the debate on transformation. instead of making it a diversity issue, or a colour issue, we should view it in the broader spectrum of what steve biko called a process in which we as people living on the african continent give our country, continent and indeed the world, a more human face. framing transformation in such a way will put the focus on our shared humanity and the high value we place on the dignity of all human beings. challenging the view that the university is a business more and more students view themselves exclusively as clients of some sort of business, rather than as students of a university community. the implication is that students act as “clients” and not as shareholders and do not take interest in engaging in university issues, but rather sit back and demand. however, they apply the (unconscious) client metaphor selectively, so when it comes to issues of transformation, they demand to have a direct input in the process. the role of students in shaping policy becomes problematic. ramphele (2008: 214-215) explains that while on the one hand universities have “the extraordinary responsibility to think beyond the needs of present generations”, students on the other hand “disregard the fact that they were short-term leaders of a transient student community within institutions that by their nature must have a long-term focus”. how to balance the long-term interests of the university with the short term interests of students has indeed become one of the biggest challenges for the ufs. being a client means that you do not have direct involvement in the products provided as well as the way in which the business is run. the business has the responsibility to ensure that the clients are satisfied with the product as well as the way they are being treated. but in the end it is the business that is in charge of decisions regarding the future direction of the business. this is something students have difficulty to grasp within the pervasive ideology of consumerism. for example, the university has the right and the responsibility to decide how they want their first-year students to be treated in residences. the students in turn may then decide for themselves whether they want to enrol at that specific institution or not. visagie (2005: 230) warns against the danger that the client metaphor holds for students: “the institutional structure of the university binds teachers and students into the social totality of a lifeworld – where both are members of the same social structure, which has an inherent and unique form of guidance coupled to institutional authority. in real client relationships this is of course totally lacking. comically (or tragically) enough, the more students become ‘clients’, the more they will be deprived of what the university really has ‘to offer’ them”. in deconstructing the ideological misuse of the 51 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state client metaphor, one detects the fissures and fault lines that underlie its apparent unity and identity, which in turn shows how the metaphor is at odds with itself. the deep structure metaphor underlying “the university is a business” metaphor is thus in tension with itself. challenging the view that the residence is a house many people think of the nature of a residence (res) in terms of that of a family. for example: past and present students of a res often refer to the house as one big family. each first-year student gets chosen by a senior to enter into a father/son relationship. every res has a house committee who are elected by the house. regular house meetings form an integral part of residence life. one of the greatest fears expressed by students is that the res will be changed from being a house into being a block of flats. but what kind of family does a res represent? the traditional ufs afrikaner men’s residence of the 1980s can be analysed according to the two ideal versions of the family, namely the strict father family and the nurturing parent family that george lakoff (2008) identifies in his analysis of the nation-asfamily metaphor. some of the characteristics of a typical 80s residence were: an unconditional loyalty to the residence kept alive by a culture of seniority, characterised by absolute authority and intolerance for non-conformity; a place of safety; a strong sense of belonging; and a shared identity. these are all characteristics of the strict father model. this should come as no surprise, since for example, the average afrikaner family, the dutch reformed church, the national party and indeed the ufs itself were all lifeworlds functioning on the foundation of this very model in the 1980s. nowadays students are rebelling against the ideological forcing of a strict father model upon them (the “student as client” metaphor obviously contributes to this). an analysis of the complaints listed by the house committees when they went on strike in 2008, clearly shows that the underlying issue was that they felt that the ufs management acted as a strict father and they were being treated as children; not being acknowledged in the decision-making process. but despite this development, it may be argued that the strict father model is still the dominant one within many of the men’s residences. given the challenges we are facing, it is necessary to consider incorporating both models in a complementary relationship in our understanding of residence life. for instance, students might be more easily convinced to adopt a mentorship programme in the residence when it is explained against the backdrop of a nurturing parent model. by arguing against an ideological positioning of the strict father model at the expense of the nurturing parent model, one should be careful not to make the mistake of advocating the nurturing model at all cost. both models have their strong and weak points and they differ in terms of what is brought to presence and what is absent. however, whether one favours the strict father or nurturing parent model, one should always keep in mind that the residence is not literally a family. we use certain parts of the concept of a “family” to understand certain qualities of a “residence”, but the family 52 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state and the residence are two uniquely different societal structures. therefore one cannot even argue that the residence is an extension of the home, as some have argued in the past. what this metaphor does highlight is a unique sense of belonging that is cultivated in a residence. the challenge is how to transform residence life into living/learning communities that are in line with our human rights-based constitution, without compromising the sense of belonging inherent in the metaphor. one might argue that the idea of ubuntu is the underlying ethic and that it therefore needs to be explored. however, the over-use and exploitation of the word ubuntu makes it nearly unusable and krog (2008:355) chooses to translate it as “interconnectedness-towardswholeness” describing it as follows: interconnectedness-towards-wholeness is more than just a theoretical knowledge that all things in the world are linked, it means both a mental and physical awareness that one can only ‘become’ who one is, or could be, through fullness of that which is around one – both physical and metaphysical. ...wholeness is thus not a passive state of nirvana, but a process of becoming in which everybody and everything is moving towards its fullest self, building itself; one can only reach that fullest self, through and with others which include ancestors and universe. when students from different cultural and/or religious backgrounds share the same living space, it is important to keep in mind that there are limits to people’s ability to understand each other. boman et al. (2002: 308) rightly argues that there is “an ethical responsibility to let someone else go beyond my understanding of him or her”. such an ethical attitude requires a moral sensitivity that needs to be cultivated in residences. boman et al. (2002: 309), however, argues that we should be careful “not to assume, without trying the utmost, that people distant to ourselves are not possible to understand”. residence life provides a unique opportunity in this regard, and the editor of the irawa (the official student newspaper) aptly captures this: “until we move from merely tolerating one another to a sincere form of regard; until we stop objectifying ourselves by referring to the idea of living together as ‘integration’; until we stop pointing fingers and begin evaluating ourselves; and until we stop living by the standards of our respective groups and begin living by the code of humanity, then there will be no solution for this campus, and no solution for this country” (turkington 2009: 8). conclusion one thing that south africans hopefully have realised after 15 years of democracy, is that no one personality or any achievement by a national sports team will unite the people of this country – regardless of the fact that it will certainly contribute to the process. instead, what is needed is the creation of a nation in which all individuals take their responsibilities as citizens seriously as defined by the constitution. only then will the idea that south africa belongs to all those who live in it be realised. “we now need to live and work as citizens of a democracy willing to explore the challenges of our new identity as a democratic state inhabited by people with a diversity of identities, yet sharing a common national identity as south africans” (ramphele 2008: 296). 53 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state it is indeed disappointing that we as a nation have lost some of the momentum gained in the early 1990s with regard to nation building. institutions of higher education in general and the ufs in particular have an important contribution to make towards the south african project. residence life gives the university a unique opportunity to make a significant contribution in this regard. in order to achieve this, the ufs need to reestablish its identity as a public (not private) institution that it is situated in africa (not europe) and that it is a university in the true sense of the word (not a business corporation). only then will the ufs be able to support students in their academic endeavour that will determine not only their vocational future, but also establish their identity as citizens of south africa. ramphele (2008: 127-128) illuminates this as follows: “the challenge facing our young democracy is for its citizens to go beyond the symbols of citizenship, be they the flag or national anthem, to defending our core constitutional values... civic-mindedness means we have to go beyond doing no harm to doing good”. this is the ultimate challenge of being “philosopher in residence”. endnotes 1 at this stage, the possible ideological aspect (in the negative sense of the term) of these two movements is not at issue. note that i will be using the term “ideology” throughout this article in its negative sense. 2 this article focuses specifically on the experience of white afrikaner male students. 3 it is important to note that new afrikaner protest movement is not a homogenous phenomenon. in the work of melissa steyn (2001), for instance, one finds different typical narratives of how whites see themselves in a changing south africa. 4 the core of this argument benefitted from a series of critical discussions with my colleague, johann visagie. 5 the positive contribution that residence life can make towards first-year students’ learning and academic success is a topic of research worldwide. see zeller (2005); brandon, hirt and cameron (2008); lewis, forsythe, sweeney, bartone, bullis and snook (2005). 6 an in-depth discussion of the nature of a university falls outside the scope of this article. see visagie (2005), stewart (2007) and waghid (2008) in this regard. 7 for more information on the igubu agency visit their website at www.igubu.co.za. 8 being a philosopher who follows a rational, systematic approach (strongly influenced by the stoics) the first approach comes naturally for me. however, i soon realised that while this approach might be successful in the classroom, it has limited success in engaging with the students when it comes to residence life. being confronted with an approach that does not come naturally to me, has not only enabled me to communicate in a more meaningful way with the students in the residence but has also enriched the way in which i lecture in the classroom. 54 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state references boman, y., gustavsson, b. & nussbaum, m. 2002. a discussion with martha nussbaum on “education for citizenship in an era of global connection”. studies in philosophy and education 21: 305-311. brandon, a., hirt, j. b. & cameron, t. 2008. where you live influences who you know: differences in student interaction based on residence hall design. the journal of college and university student housing 35(2): 63-79. brown, w. 2003. neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. theory and event 7(1): 1-29. hofmeyr, a. b. 2008. beyond the ivory tower: the public role of the intellectual today. phronimon 9(2): 73-91. igubu agency. 2009. leadership model. [online]. available at: www.igubu.ac.za [accessed on 02/08/2009]. jansen, j. d. 2009. knowledge in the blood. confronting race and the apartheid past. cape town: uct press. krog, a. 2002. country of my skull. johannesburg: random house. krog, a. 2008. ‘this thing called reconciliation…’ forgiveness as part of an interconnectedness-towards-wholeness. south african journal of philosophy 27(4): 353-366. lakoff, g. 2008. the political mind. why you can’t understand 21st century american politics with an 18th century brain. new york: viking. lewis, p., forsythe, g. b., sweeney, p., bartone, b., bullis, c., snook, s. 2005. identity development during the college years: findings from the west point longitudinal study. journal of college student development 46(4): 357-373. mbeki, t. 1998. i am an african. in: africa: the time has come. selected speeches. cape town: tafelberg & johannesburg: mafube. mbembe, a. 2006. south africa’s second coming: the nongqawuse syndrome. [online]. available at:http://www.opendemocracy.net [accessed on 23/06/2009]. ramphele, m. 2008. laying ghosts to rest. dilemmas of the transformation in south africa. cape town: tafelberg. stewart, p. 2007. re-envisioning the academic profession in the shadow of corporate managerialism. jhea/resa 5(1): 131-147. steyn, m. 2001. whiteness just isn’t what it used to be. white identity in a changing south africa. albany: state university of new york press. turkington, j-r. 2009. of war and peace. irawa 13 august: 8. 55 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state visagie, j. 2005. deconstructing the discourse of community service and academic entrepreneurship: the ideological colonization of the university. acta academica 37(1): 222-237. waghid, y. 2008. the public role of the university reconsidered. perspectives in education 26(1): 19-24. zeller, w. j. 2005. first-year student living environments. in: upcraft, m. l., gardner, j. n., barefoot, b. o. (eds). challenging and supporting the first-year student. san francisco: jossey-bass. 56 communicative-philosophical challenges of managing a male residence at the university of the free state 1. melissa steyn 69 communication interventions for diversity management in a new company – lessons from kwazulu-natal communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 69 91 gary mersham* abstract this article explores a south african/australian corporate joint venture whose corporate culture is bi-national, multiracial and multi-ethnic in character, synthesising a variety of elements including modern first world corporate culture, traditional cultures, and the emerging culture of the “new” south africa. it is based on a project carried out for ticor sa, a mineral sands mining and processing facility, sixty percent owned by kumba resources ltd, a publicly listed south african company, and forty percent owned by ticor ltd, a publicly listed australian company and manager of the project. this study employs a case study / participant observer methodology and a theoretical methodology. the author was actively involved in the strategic planning and workshop interventions. * professor gary mersham lectures in the school of information and social sciences at the open polytechnic of new zealand in lower hutt, new zealand. introduction this work is derived from experiences and issues that arose from a three year, “hands on” culture establishment project for an australian / south african joint mining venture in kwazulu natal, south africa.1 the author was a member of a team2 that developed and facilitated the organisational culture establishment programme from 2004 to 2006. 97% of the workforce (650 employees at all levels) participated in the workshops. the australian management team soon realised the complexity of south african intercultural relationships, the changing face of the south african “identity” and how organisational culture differed between the two countries (wickham 2003/2004).3 globalisation and changes in south africa’s political and economic environment in the last decade and its re-admittance into the international arena have had clear consequences for south africa’s international business practice. in common with all business people who work in environments other than their own, it has become as important to establish sound interpersonal relationships, as it has to acquire professional and technical competence (herbig & kramer 1991; rhinesmith 1996; waisfisz 1994). an understanding of international business communication has become imperative for the business to succeed in the international marketplace (de wilde 1991; martin & chaney 1992; moran & richard 1991). a review of the literature of the past few decades suggests that intercultural communication training of managers has rarely been carried out based on a sound assessment of needs (baker 1984; earley 1987; lee & larwood 1984; li 1992; mendenhall, dunbar & oddou 1987; steyn 1994). in addition, there is little to indicate that existing intercultural business communication training meets the unique needs of joint ventures in multinational and multicultural contexts. this article offers a tentative theoretical framework for addressing these issues. while the research deals with the intercultural business communication needs of ticor sa, the findings suggest an approach towards intercultural business communication training programmes for the increasing number of joint ventures taking place throughout the world. the first part of this article sketches the key themes of diversity management and organisational culture. communication is shown to be vital to the development of the organisation and it is posited that culture formation is a consequence of intercultural communication. a specific definition is given of the latter, which gives recognition to individual as well as a broadened view of cultural differences. the work then proceeds to question the notion of “ownership” of organisational culture and touches upon the value of generational theory in this context. it refers to the importance of values in the formation of organisational culture establishment programmes. a values-based approach is suggested with regard to strategic planning. the final sections of the work examine the basic propositions and conditions necessary for facilitation of cultural change processes and suggest a person-centred approach. the value of using the myers-briggs type indicator (mbti) to contribute to understanding 70 how people individually differ in the way that they behave is discussed. finally, some concerns around cultural bias in intercultural communication are explored. the problem statement south african business organisations, particularly mining operations, are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to manage the need for global competitiveness while managing diversity against a backdrop of rapid social change. the complex and everchanging world of international management requires not only cultural awareness and sensitivity, but also the ability to change, develop, and improve on-the-job performance. in response to this challenge, most multinational corporations (mncs) have pursued diversity management training programmes in one form or another. carnevale and stone (1994: 24) argue that creating conditions by which organisations will enjoy a competitive advantage requires an environment receptive to diversity where workers are empowered to use their full capacity and economic forces. in other words, the organisational culture must recognise and adapt to that diversity (kandola & fullerton 1994). kandola and fullerton (1994) and carnevale and stone (1994) have demonstrated the importance of cross-cultural understanding of how differences can be turned into a competitive advantage for the organisation by recognising the potential contributions of individuals from diverse backgrounds. meyer (1999: 23) warns that “diversity training [is] not helpful when cultural and other differences are presented in so much detail that they contribute to further stereotyping and generalisations based on difference”. while it is obvious that cultural differences exist in a multicultural society, each individual is a unique product of many possible variables and influences. how then do we link the needs of global competitiveness and its cultural requirements with those of diversity management? key themes in diversity management according to kandola and fullerton (1994), managing diversity acknowledges that the workforce consists of a diverse population of people. the diversity comprises of visible and non-visible differences that include factors such as sex, age, background, race, disability, personality, and work style. “it is founded on the premise that harnessing these differences will create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, where their talents are being fully utilised and in which organisational goals are met” (kandola & fullerton 1994: 47). carnavale and stone (1994) suggest that organisations should welcome heterogeneity by developing a variety of initiatives aimed at building managerial and leadership capacity. according to griggs and louw (1995), valuing diversity occurs at the personal, interpersonal and organisational levels. hence the need to accommodate individual differences at each level in order to build positive relationships. diversity includes the spectrum of mannerisms in which people differ, and does not necessarily focus on gender, ethnicity and disability only. “to be successful, management interventions must maximise the potential of the total workforce in all its diversity” (griggs & louw 1995: 21). 71 they contend further that the challenge of diversity is not restricted to affirmative action or equal employment opportunity issues, but should also focus on intercultural awareness in a rapidly changing multicultural society. madi (1995: 16) remarks that “the issue is not that there should be an africanisation of the corporate culture in south africa but, rather that there should be south africanisation of the corporate culture”. according to human and bowmaker-falconer (1992: 27), “managing diversity is about creating an environment where people from diverse backgrounds can express themselves, grow, develop and be promoted on merit”. one widely used activity in diversity training is the use of workshops as a platform to raise awareness and sensitivity about diversity issues. the primary diversity-training approach postulated by carnevale and stone (1994: 30) is appropriate for this article as it merits attention in the context of the south african setting. according to carnevale and stone (1994), when people from diverse cultures interact, they tend to respond according to their cultural conditioning about acceptable behaviour. such responses are spontaneous and are usually based on the assumption of the individual’s own value system. hence it works to achieve its long-range goals of improving morale, productivity and creativity, thereby contributing to the organisation’s competitive position. in a knowledge-based economy, the model is designed to increase employee knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity and creates appropriate attitudes and assumptions to eliminate stereotyping. carnevale and stone (1994) focus on the cognitive features of diversity training with the aim of heightening awareness, and providing information, tools and techniques linking development imperatives to diversity training. from the above discussion the key role that communication, culture, values, cognitive processes and the recognition of individual differences play in diversity management is clear. these themes recur and are elaborated upon in the course of this article. organisational culture buzz concepts abound, but business culture or its broader synonym organisational culture has withstood numerous business management fashions and trends. it surfaced in the united states in the 1930s (bjerke 1999: 1) but burst on to the intellectual landscape of business in earnest in the early 1980s. since then it has captured the interests of academics, journalists and business people alike (hofstede 1984; peters & waterman 1984; schein 1985; deal & kennedy 1982). much of the interest in the concept was due to growth of much larger organisations, the expansion of international markets, and the advance of transnational corporations. by the early 1990s, the term was firmly entrenched. it is now a major foundation block of the view of the corporation as a universally dominant culture. an informative discussion of organisational culture usually begins by looking at the concept of “culture” that has deep roots in the discipline of social anthropology and the general field of socio-political analysis. there are numerous classifications and 72 definitions of the concept but this author has chosen two for the purposes of this research. according to trompenaars (1994: 5), culture is divided into two layers, the explicit and implicit layer. the explicit layer is about external manifestations, such as languages, cuisine, clothing, etc. the implicit layer consists of norms and values. norms refer to the mutual sense as a group of what is right and wrong and how things should be done. values, on the other hand, determine understandings about what is good and bad and are shared by the group. the author looks in more detail at the importance of values later in this article. the american heritage dictionary defines culture as “the totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population”. for the communication scientist, this gets to the heart of the matter. it recognises that culture cannot form without communication. the relationship between culture and communication is important to many different disciplines. as a result, many terms have been used to describe the various ways that culture and communication intersect, including cross-cultural communication, intracultural communication, interethnic communication, interracial communication and international communication. for the purpose of this article, the author takes the position of lustig and koester (1993) that culture formation is a consequence of intercultural communication: the term intercultural denotes the presence of at least two individuals, who are culturally different from each other on such important attributes as their value orientations, preferred communication codes, role expectations, and perceived rules of social relationships (lustig and koester 1993: 59). in comparative national management studies, “anthropological culture” has usually been considered to be a background factor (almost synonymous with ethnic group) within the broad framework of management principles which are held to be universal (ajiferuke & boddewyn 1970: 153; bjerke 1999: 71; oden 1997: 71). the dominant role of western corporate culture in mediating our encounters with the everyday world is “self-evident” (deeks 1993: 1). “the pre-eminent form today (of culture), at least in the industrialised centers of euro-american culture, is corporate enterprise” (frederick 1995: 79). from this perspective, “organisational culture” is a “business culture” and business practices and values are expected to dominate the material, intellectual and spiritual life of the entire community. does this suggest that the corporate form is a foreordained outcome of evolutionary process or that its appearance and prominence at this point in time represents a superiority over alternative ways of organising business operations? critics would argue that they remain ostensibly western cultural constructs, distanced from the wider “intercultural culture” that is increasingly manifesting itself in new definitions of nationhood and membership in geo-political communities. 73 in many developing countries likes south africa, one finds a greater emphasis on collectivities, rather than the individual. western management from the developed countries has often encountered and underestimated it. the advice of most business consultants has been “adapt or die”.4 the importance of cultural collectivities must be acknowledged as a key value during the organisational culture establishment programme. in developing countries, other business forms, individual proprietorships and partnerships are numerically predominant. historically the corporate form is relatively recent. long before the corporation, there was bartering of several varieties: simple trading; face-to-face exchanges; family-, tribal-, clanand village-based trading practices; and a great diversity of other economic activities recorded by anthropologists and economic historians. in fact, these are still the most common forms to be found in africa. yet most often we assume that it is corporate culture that defines the world, and spend little time considering the way the cultural environment defines the corporation. ‘our’ organisational culture? in the south african context, the question of “our” culture is a vexed one. south africa is characterised by numerous collective identities and a new emerging sense of nationhood. the country’s sense of nation and of culture are in a stage of transformation. hofstede (1980) argues that people carry “mental programmes” that are developed and reinforced through their experience, and that these “mental programmes” contain a component of national culture. after analysing the data from more than 40 countries, hofstede (1980) concludes that these mental programmes denote the existence of four underlying value dimensions along which countries could be positioned into culture areas (hofstede 1980). these four dimensions are (hofstede 1980; 1983; 1984; 1985): • power distance, i.e. the extent of power inequality among members of a society; • uncertainty avoidance, i.e. the extent to which members of society feel threatened by and try to avoid future uncertainty or ambiguous situations; • individualism and collectivism, which describes the relationship between the individual and the collectivity that is reflected in the way people live together; and • masculinity and femininity, i.e. the extent of roles division between sexes to which people in a society put different emphasis on work goals and assertiveness as opposed to personal goals and nurturance. it has been argued that these dimensions are important for considering the effects of cultural differences on management and organisation (sui pheng & shi yuquan 2002). many of the recent political changes in south africa have had far-reaching effects on these dimensions. individuals who were formerly excluded from opportunities have 74 increasing and expanding possibilities. as a result there is alteration of organisational practices, cultural norms, and a growing sense of national identity. fadiman (2000: 79) cautions western companies doing business in africa that the environment “will seem so westernised that you will assume you can work with the firm in western ways. this may prove unexpectedly difficult.” one of the biggest challenges that business people face in a multicultural environment is the process of decision-making. fadiman (2000: 84), for example, describes three african management tools as timelessness, consultation and consensus. all three of these clash with the management expectations of global business culture. the latter prefers fixed deadlines and individual decisions; it rejects consensus building as too slow. it strives for speed (which we call “timeliness”) and admires swift decisions, praising those who “wing it” or “think on their feet”. africans prefer decisions to be reached through consultation and consensus, without reference to fixed times. although african managers can make snap judgments as rapidly as anyone else, they remain aware of ancestral obligations regarding the need for consultation. by acting alone they flout their group’s collective wisdom; by consulting, they honour it. the zulu call the consensus-building process ndaba. to ndaba is to assemble, consult, and thereby build consensus. in kwazulu-natal (where, in the case of ticor sa, convincing traditional leadership was key to obtaining mining rights), the first business visit and initial business dealings are approached as a leisurely process of “getting to know each other” as is the way in traditional zulu culture. conversation may not get around to business for several days, weeks, even months and it is considered rude for the visiting businessman to press the issue, to show impatience or to fail to respond to social preliminaries (fakazi 2003). one might posit a similar need for the consultative process in the new zealand context. the maori proverb “he huihuinga taangata he pukenga whakaaro” (a meeting of people; a wellspring of ideas) captures the idea. marae protocol “is part of maori identity countrywide” (gates 2004: 62). generational theory most business leaders would acknowledge that changes in workers attitudes and expectations towards the workplace are manifested most strongly in an organisation’s younger employees. this aspect needs to be recognised in the organisational culture programme. one of the most frequently asked questions about generational theory is whether it applies to non-western cultures, especially to people living in developing countries (codrington 2005). many question its applicability in china, the middle east and eastern europe. in south africa, diversity management tends increasingly to take into account generation differences. a human capital satisfaction survey in 2003 (http://www.kelly.co.za/kelly_frame.htm) sampled 2000 employees from more than 250 companies. it used the four standard “western” generations that are frequently 75 measured internationally: matures born pre-1945; baby boomers born 1945-1965; generation x born 1966-1980; generation y born after 1980. older generations display many similar characteristics across different countries, consistent with the predictions of generational theory. in black cultures in africa, for instance, the older generations are very traditional and conservative. they expect to be respected simply because of their age and social position, and prefer hierarchical structures of control. conversely, younger generations often take value positions in contradiction to these, questioning traditional cultural norms and aspiring to a broader, global sense of mobility (trend youth 2: 2004). the flight of younger people from new zealand in search of work experience overseas tends to support this thesis (collins 2005). the younger a person is, the more likely that generational characteristics will fit, regardless of their culture or country. it should be noted that generation differences also have implications for levels of formal education, lifestyle preferences, length of tenure and several other factors, but it is beyond the scope of this article to develop these aspects further here. it is clear that generational differences add another dimension to the work of the culture establishment consultant who must take these dynamic forces of diversity into account in the development of the organisational culture. values as the bedrock of culture william frederick, in his book values, nature and culture in the american corporation (1995), argues for a deeper appreciation of the normative power of values that goes far beyond the often-facile statement of corporate values. a deeper layer of business consciousness is brought to light, one that harbors the fundamentals of business commitment, business ideology, and business philosophy. the culture, the core of any organisation, is the sum of the values, beliefs, and assumptions of its people. he contends that values are the fundamental source of workplace motives, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour. the substance of that deep lying stratum — its active content that comes to the surface of everyday business life as behaviour — consists of values. all people in business — whether executives or employees, competitors or suppliers, investors or speculators, customers or salespeople, accountants or marketers have values. those values constantly come into play as decisions are made, policies are formulated, new markets are entered, weaker firms decline and die, and as new products pour out of factories, laboratories, and software design centres. simply put, values can be more readily understood as standing at the centre of business theory rather than at the margin. the many reasons cited for the failure of organisational behaviour change efforts can be reduced to one sentence: the culture of the organisation remained unchanged or was never clearly formulated as a consensus in the first place. any attempt to introduce management practices or organisational behaviour changes that are radically different from the existing culture will almost certainly fail if these changes are incompatible 76 with the existing culture. the culture, that sum of values, beliefs, and assumptions that is the core of any organisation, must support the new initiatives if these behavioural changes are to take hold. without an understanding of the bedrock of consensual culture of the company, no new set of skills or work processes will bring about the kind of reform that is needed. values, for instance, can appear or be hidden at various levels of depth. at the conscious level, or close to it, they may appear as behavioural norms. such norms are written or unwritten rules of the game. the author’s role as consultant is to “expose” the values, build consensus on which values are shared, and suggest respect for those that are the subject of different values throughout the organisation. for example, the south african black executive’s managerial behaviour is heavily influenced by the structure of the society outside his firm and by the values, norms and expectations of his people. one consequence of this is that the male black manager sees himself as a father figure and the female black manager as a mother figure. similarly, black culture tends to suppress individual initiative and often tames the spirit of the most resourceful factory floor workers who are not accorded either formal traditional cultural status or corporate status. norms, values and other aspects of culture are generally developed over time. in anthropological definitions of culture, a group must have been together for a period of time for its members to develop a mutual social understanding. the same goes for an organisational or business culture. in a new organisation or company, it is possible to devise means to encourage people to associate and develop common social mechanisms of integration and avoid the situation where even when an organisation has existed for a long time, members may have associated in smaller units within the whole group and developed different subcultures within the organisation, resulting in a lack of overall cohesiveness of organisational culture. values and strategic planning strategic planning is currently one of the preoccupations of south african corporates. when planning strategy, we are imagining the future, and through analysis and finetuning the detail, the plan takes on a view of commercial success in and of itself, ultimately the end goal in which positions and not people count the most. when this happens, organisations forget that success has little to do with planning and a whole lot more to do with “doing”. defining strategy, as difficult as it may seem, is the easy part. by far the hardest part is making strategy happen. the brutal truth is that the difference between companies that are successful and those that are not is their ability to execute, and execution depends on willing and able people. an imperative for south african companies is to gain sustainable competitive advantage by unleashing extraordinary performance from “ordinary” people. this challenge goes broader and deeper than just training. we need to question our philosophies, how we craft strategies, structure our organisations and design 77 management processes, our cultural beliefs, our prejudices and preconceptions, our values and our style of leadership and management. the result of this questioning should be an alternative approach to developing organisational strategy, and therefore culture establishment. what must we “do” in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage? every organisation, public or private, small, medium or large, must seek answers to this question if it is to survive and grow. the typical approach to finding answers is to conduct research, analyse the research and apply a variety of synthesising methods and processes of logic which distill thinking into a strategic plan. the plan is prioritised, tactically arranged and allocated to chunks of time. the organisation then attempts to align around the plan and hopefully, flowing from this, appropriate action is taken that finally bears fruit and produces the expected performance. one can depict this approach in figure 1. figure 1: common approach to strategic planning 78 strategy functional strategies critical success factors organisational alignment senior management’s role what business are we in? how will we compete? marketing, production, finance, hr, etc. what critical tasks must be done in order to execute strategy? design practices and systems (recruitment, selection, performance management, training and development) monitor alignment and compliance within this approach, senior management’s role is to monitor alignment and ensure compliance — in other words command and control is the underlying belief. harvard business school guru sumantra ghoshal (ghoshal & barlett 1997) argues the need to rescue management practice from the blind alleys that it has run into by recasting management theory from the ground up. he sees today’s disillusion with companies and managers as the fault of management theory — in particular the narrowly economic assumptions about human nature. today’s management theory, he suggests, is “undersocialised and one-dimensional, a parody of the human condition more appropriate to a prison or a madhouse than an organisation which seeks to be ‘world-class’ ”. the fatal flaw in this strategy-structure-systems approach lies hidden in its objective: to create a management system that could minimise the idiosyncrasies of human behaviour and individual differences and the need for honest and authentic communication. system based theory suggests that if the three elements of strategy, structure and systems were “properly” designed and “effectively implemented”, large, complex organisations could run with people as replaceable parts. the “idiosyncrasies of human behaviour” that the traditional approach inherently seeks to control are unfortunately very familiar to all of us and based on the following negative assumptions we tend to make about people: • people are effort averse; • management and employee interests are not aligned; • people are opportunistic, self-interest seeking and dishonest; • managers need to design incentives to overcome these difficulties; • high-powered incentives (i.e., money) are better than low-powered incentives; and • people work for money and will only comply with management to obtain it. for any strategic plan to work in the long term, we need to accept assumptions that people: • are capable of making decisions; • need to engage in communication about the business and their role in it; • are responsible and willing to be held accountable for their actions; • like challenges and learning new things; • are motivated by good intention; • desire to make a positive contribution and be recognised for it through good communication practice; and • want to be recognised as unique and don’t like to be treated like machines. 79 from this starting point the strategy process for senior management becomes: • define the core values; • develop and build the culture based on these norms; • craft business strategies that leverage these capabilities; and • ensure organisational alignment and consistency of strategy and human resources practices. figure 2 illustrates the process. figure 2: values and culture approach to strategic planning 80 establish consensual values and culture design management practices that embody organisational values use management practices to build core capabilities invent added values strategy consistent with values and uses capabilities to compete in new and innovative way senior management’s role what are our basic principles? what do we believe in? what policies and practices are consistent with these values? what are our core capabilities and what can we do for customers better than our competitors? how can we deliver value to customers in a way that competitors cannot easily imitate? senior management “manages” the culture through example and communication basic propositions and conditions for facilitation professor lovemore mbigi (1977: 39) emphasises that “fundamental transformation cannot be driven exclusively by in-house facilitators: an outside facilitator as an impartial observer and commentator is crucial”. the limitations of the internal approach is that insiders have to conform to internal politics and power relations and, through omission, have to avoid confrontation with real issues and key influential members of the organisation. the external facilitator must “have the courage to say the unsayable”. if in-house facilitators develop the courage to say the unsayable, they are rarely forgiven. typically, organisational culture interventions involve only senior management and union leaders in half-hearted efforts to short circuit broad based organisational transformation. as mbigi (1977: 39) points out, they rarely succeed because the whole organisation has to understand and identify with the transformation agenda. what is required is an inclusive, multi-levelled, multiracial and cross-functional forum. these need to be held away from the workplace, lasting three to five days to allow for bonding. they must run around the core themes in the organisation, but be flexible so that participants can raise burning issues, collective fears and historical and current grievances with a view to developing high levels of trust. this requires an external, credible facilitator. secondly, the intervention should deal establish a shared agenda of high performance and survival that will initiate the long and difficult road of developing a sense of shared vision and destiny. ultimately a team of in-house change facilitators must be trained and licensed to run the process for a further two years. their attributes are credibility, a lack of historical baggage, dissatisfaction with the status quo and the passion to make a personal difference. in the author’s experience, a scapegoat is required to project the burden of the past. in south african organisations the legacy of apartheid, problems in the marketplace and government policies have proved popular scapegoats. story-telling and humour can be used to ease the tension and collective pain. once a decision has been made to move forward, leadership must continually affirm their commitment to transformation and project confidence regarding the future. transformation initiatives must be implemented to their final conclusion regardless of the problems encountered during transformation. what is the theoretical requirement for how a facilitator can engage others in a culture establishment programme or a change management programme? carl rogers, the psychologist best known for his “client-centred” approach, provides the answer: individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behaviour; these resources can be tapped if a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided (rogers 1980: 115). 81 therefore, to create the necessary climate for the development of a credible culture establishment programme, we must start with the individual, as argued earlier in this paper. “the best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of reference of the individual himself” (rogers 1987: 494). one of the challenges the ticor sa project was to introduce a methodology where individual differences could be recognised to be as important as cultural differences in the wider context of acknowledging diversity. the tool used to generate this awareness was the myers-briggs psychological profiling method. the myers-briggs type indicator (mbti) was used to contribute to understanding how people individually differ in the way that they behave. mbti is based on c. g. jung’s theory of psychological types, which suggests that differences in people’s communication behaviour are caused by differences in the way that they prefer to use their minds. the profile identified for each individual indicates the function or approach preferred and thus used most often. through exercising the different preferences each person develops a unique way of dealing with life, interacting with people and reaching conclusions. such variations in individual preferences and how they are used and developed result in fundamental differences and predictable patterns in human behaviour.5 there are many threats to individuals who come from diverse backgrounds to participate in groups — in this case often including fellow team members and team leaders with large variations in age, experience, education and training and cultural background. there is, however, from a theoretical perspective an answer to this problem in terms of facilitation. according to rogers (1987: 517): under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of any threat to the self-structure, experiences that are inconsistent with it may be perceived, and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences. the conditions for such an examination are a workshop climate in which participants are accepted unconditionally, without judgement or condemnation. the facilitator, under these conditions, must first coax each individual to explore and present their “symbolised self” and consider the positions of others through a communicative process. clearly, good intentions are not enough. it requires skill and empathy to inculcate a sense of trust, a plainly spelt out guarantee of the preservation of self-dignity whatever position is taken by the participant. in other words a clear statement that “there are no wrong opinions, attitudes or answers in this workshop” is required. participants should not only not feel threatened, but must feel that they are being accepted totally. the process of change when there is no stress or threat to the self, what changes can occur? since people are unique, it must be stressed that no real predictions can be made. the facilitator cannot 82 set goals for the participant, as only the participant can decide in what way and how he/she will change their outlook towards the organisational culture. however, the key is to provide the “symbolic” platform from which the participant may view the terrain for change: psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the self (rogers 1987: 513). this proposition recognises the importance of certain situations, including the group situation. according to this proposition, group members will be able to deal with the group situation if it is in agreement with their own perspectives and reconstruction of the self. this emphasises the importance of the maintenance objectives in the group, in other words the objectives that members of the group can identify as relevant to them. as far as the task objectives are concerned, the group is precisely one of those places where people can share their experiences — both positive and negative — in a safe environment and atmosphere, where they can symbolise their experiences and consequently make them more acceptable to the self. for instance, it may be possible when a group of people symbolise their problem that they will search more consciously for solutions as they see them. because the group may be regarded as a support group, the proposed solutions will be sincere and creative. for example, a group of operators from the tap room floor, a particularly dangerous, noisy and labour intensive area of the ticor sa smelter, identified a common problem. they all had to have matriculation in mathematics and science at the advanced level as a condition of employment. yet they experienced a “glass ceiling” in terms of opportunities for advancement and movement to elsewhere in the plant, which was aberrant in a country where such academic achievement in these subjects is scarce. given the lack of interest by other operators in this area of the plant to the tap floor, it was difficult to replace tap room floor operators by transference from other sections. the supervisors and top management had tacitly consented to this situation. the group formulated a suggestion in which the requirement for advanced mathematics and science be dropped in the recruitment process, and the facilitator helped them address this matter to management in the form of a formal, written report and, when later in day the ceo visited the workshop, the matter was also put directly to him. as a result, posts were eventually filled providing improved career pathing for the existing incumbents. a person-centred perspective on culture the person-centred approach, well known in the field of psychology, was developed by carl rogers (1987). his theoretical ideas are formulated in his now famous nineteen propositions. these propositions about what motivates people on various levels of consciousness provide tentative guidelines for facilitators in their efforts to understand, think about and make sense of what we can observe of others. 83 we can describe culture as being person-centred, existing in the minds of people, their feelings, meanings, values and behaviour. culture is individual, distinguishes us from others and shifts the focus from the problem to the person and also determines our understanding of other’s behaviour. “every individual exists in a continually changing world of experience of which he is the centre” (rogers 1987:483). this statement also implies that culture is also seen as always in flux; it is forever changing and adapting to new information. the notion of a south african “rainbow” culture, discussed in this article, is a good example. we need to add that it is equally important to recognise that no two people share exactly the same cultural world (du toit et al. 1998: 200). although people may come from the same ethnic group, you may still have different perspectives. authors such as le croy (1992) and egan (1994) take this approach so seriously that they see working interculturally as not only as working with people from other cultures. le croy (1992: 215), for example, mentions differences such as gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic, cultural and racial differences. these may influence each person. according to egan (1994: 52), every person can be seen as coming from a different cultural background. any two-way conversation — even one between two identical twins — is in a very real sense an intercultural event, because each person is a different individual with differences in terms of personal assumptions, beliefs, values, norms and patterns of behaviour. this implies that the facilitator should be sensitive towards each person, sharing perspectives with each person, group or community. apart from individual culture, every group and community also has its own “culture” or frame of reference that is part of their decisions and behaviour (du toit et al. 1998: 200). intercultural communication and the facilitator it goes without saying that if facilitators feel relatively good about themselves and their own value systems, they might be in a position to be more open and not be threatened by the different value system of the person from another culture (or even the same culture). they can be more accepting and open to listen to the person / group / community in front of them, without having the need to change (or confront) their value system. the author, as facilitator, is not a position to comment on this. the theory (thinking / perception), values and skills (action) when working interculturally are exactly the same as with working people from one’s own cultural group. empathy is empathy — a “way of being”, regardless of the people we are in contact with. intercultural work sometimes offers the advantage that the facilitator is aware that he / she does not know what meanings the client attaches to particular situations. the facilitator then explores these meanings with the client. when the facilitator and the client come from the same culture, the facilitator is inclined to presume that he / she knows which meanings the people attach to the situation and therefore does not necessarily always explore them. the facilitator makes assumptions that have not been validated by the client. for example, in one session an afrikaans-speaking employee 84 who formerly worked on a mine in the north west province, indicated that travelling to a venue “only” 200 km away from the mine was “close”. in the author’s mind, 1020 km is “close”. conversely, a young, black empowerment employee said that although he lived only 20 km away from “town” (empangeni) the lack of reliable public transport meant that it took considerable organisation to get to this “close” town. distance in the context of south africa is different from distance in say new zealand or the united kingdom. facilitators in the south african context know for example that amongst the indian population hindus will not eat beef whereas muslims will insist on halaal food. african south africans will often be unhappy unless meat is served at lunch (“inyama”). on the other hand, younger people in their twenties from the “rainbow” group often will prefer “take away” type food that includes “french fries” or the south african variant slap chips (literally “sloppy chips”). as is required in working with people in the same culture, intercultural work requires that the facilitator attempt to determine what his / her prejudices or stereotyping in respect of other cultures are and why he / she differs from them or feels threatened by them. okun (1992: 245) points out that the facilitator is often not even aware of his / her prejudices or discomfort unless he / she actively monitors it in the workshop situation. rogers first proposition is that people’s experiential world is private and known only to them, unless shared with others in some way or another. the contexts of communication are important here. commonly, communication authors describe a number of contexts of communication that are important in encountering and relating with people, including intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, public and mass communication contexts, all of which have their own unique dynamics (for example mersham & skinner 1999). we might argue that good communication is measured by what degree we engage in the recognition of the other as an individual. this applies equally in the small group, but opportunities to do this are more limited than in a face to face dyad (konopka 1972: 126-127). as a result, the facilitator has to work methodically to interact with everyone, but in what appears to be a natural way. structured interaction sessions can assist. here the facilitator goes round the table and elicits responses on a theme or topic. good corporate culture facilitators use these sessions to ask participants to describe themselves as individuals. this can be “where are you from, what do you do at work and why are you good at it?” questions that ask for a personal view are helpful. for example “who is the leader in your life who stands out? what were their leadership traits that you admired?” once completed, to engage the dialogue, the facilitator can then ask each of the participants if that is the way they treat their work colleagues and in the case of leaders, members of their teams — or family members. this process of “holding up the mirror” is an effective communication trigger and sets off numerous debates about values. 85 from this base, the participants can be broken up into smaller groups to establish common values that all members support. as a facilitator it is often useful to make the composition of each group as diverse as practically possible with regards to ethnicity, race, gender and age. in this researcher’s experience, when groups report back on their values exercise, no matter what the composition of the various groups, there is exceptional commonality and consistency in the expression of such values. there will also inevitably be differences. this is important because it offers opportunities for growth and clarification. as rogers (1987:522) puts it: as the individual perceives and accepts into his self-structure more of his organic experiences, he finds that he is replacing his present value system – based largely upon introjections which have been distortedly symbolised – with a continuing organismic valuing process. given the context, the facilitator needs to engage in situations that take into account intercultural communication, conflict resolution and the autobiographical “self” of the communicator. as du toit et al. (1998: 3) put it: “all humans have unique experiences, on a conscious as well as an unconscious level” and this informs how people perceive themselves and their workplace. the experiential world is knowable only to the individual, which means that outsiders can only form an idea of an experience if the individual tells them about it. the facilitator’s biggest challenge is to encourage individuals to communicate and explore their own, and others’, experiential worlds in an authentic and meaningful way. conclusion organisation culture establishment and diversity management in joint ventures of a binational, multiracial and multi-ethnic nature require broader definitions of diversity that take into account factors such as generational differences and emerging, reconstituted definitions of nationhood. a values approach, focusing on a wider definition of diversity, should be used as a base upon which to build organisational culture. communication across and through all levels is necessary to implement the process of culture formation. organisational culture establishment is a complex, multi-faceted process that must necessarily synthesise elements of modern, first world global culture with elements of an older, traditional definition of “anthropological culture”. endnotes 1 ticor south africa is a mineral sand mining and processing facility near the port of richards bay in the kwazulu-natal province of south africa. sixty percent of the project is owned by kumba resources ltd, a publicly listed south african company. the other forty percent owned by ticor ltd, a publicly listed australian company. ticor ltd (australia) manages the project. the project is based on three high-grade mineral sands deposits with reserves of more than 16 million tonnes of ilmenite, rutile and zircon and leucoxene heavy minerals. a smelter upgrades the ilmenite to titania slag. the value of the project is r2.6 billion (approx us$ 372 million). the commodities business in general, 86 and mineral sands mining in particular, are characterised by similar technologies, products and services. management realised from the start that only the quality of the workforce, driven by authentic corporate values, could ensure competitiveness in such and environment. 2 the author wishes to acknowledge the expertise, knowledge and assistance of consultant paul cheshire of business improvement australia in the development stages of the ticor sa programme our business, our future and the following team members: koos davel, chief learning officer, ticor sa, who partnered the author in every workshop over the two year period and gave freely of his keen insights into the personalities and structures of the company; thami msubo, director of human resources, ticor sa, who unstintingly attended many sessions representing the company as a member of exco; elaine palmer, hr practitioner, ticor sa, for initially guiding and supporting me through the mbti administration process; and steve wickham, the irrepressible ceo of ticor sa who “lived” the company values through action and deed, and whose total “hands on” involvement and commitment to the programme makes him an exception to the norm in interventions of this nature. finally, a vote of thanks to the 650 ticor people whose enthusiasm and participation in the workshops were the most important inputs of all. 3 the question of differences in organisational culture between australian and south african mining management teams attracted extensive media attention during the merger of bhp, australia’s largest corporation, with billiton, the british/south african minerals giant, in 2001 to create the largest diversified mining group in the world. the key challenges facing bhp and billiton were to create a new management culture by blending billiton’s aggressive acquisition policy with the more calculating and methodical corporate governance systems of the larger australian company. the merger was conditional on south african brian gilbertson, former deputy ceo of billiton, taking over as chief executive once the integration was complete. after only six months in the seat, gilbertson resigned with an a$30 million “golden handshake”. company media releases cited “irreconcilable” differences in culture and approach (between gilbertson and the bhp billiton board) that could not be resolved, signalling that the first attempt at cultural engineering at the senior management level failed. differences in organisational culture between australian and south african companies have been reported by australian mining recruitment agencies when recruiting south african senior professionals for posts in australia. according to tony turton, an australian based mining recruitment specialist, south african middle management “are used to working with a workforce that is not quite as sophisticated as the workforce in australia… a lot of people from sa are used to ‘having feedback systems and management control systems – try and do it here and people say back off’ ” (cited in fraser 2004:12). 4 an expression from a speech by former president p.w. botha, the ‘iron fist’ of the apartheid era, often aired because of its illustrative ironic lesson. 5 in deciding whether the mbti is appropriate for clients from collectivist cultures, practitioners need to assess degrees of acculturation. this presupposes cultural sensitivity on behalf of the facilitator in countries such as south africa and new zealand where there is a legacy of distrust concerning “western” individualism and where values related to communalism are strongly in evidence. clients whose primary cultural reference is their collectivist culture may find taking the mbti unhelpful, 87 while those who are bicultural or whose primary reference is the majority culture are less likely to experience such difficulties. for example, colin hopkirk (cited in kirby & barger 1998: 369-70) reports on using the mbti with new zealand maori: “they perceive and experience themselves first as a part of the whole creation, second as part of the hapu (tribe) of which they are the product, third as part of the whanau (extended family) from which they descend, and only last as a distinct individual personality.” in spite of these difficulties, hopkirk states that, in his experience, maori who are bicultural “seem to accept the mbti and often find it sensible and useful”. likewise, de beer makes the following observation about using the mbti with south african whites, afrikaners, and blacks: “we have not really had major problems with people responding to the indicator. ...we have been surprised at how easily most cultures seem to understand the items” (cited in kirby & barger 1998: 370). this is the also the experience of the author. the preferred way to do this is to engage multicultural groups during workshops about how they each experience and express their type preferences within their culture. evidence from interviews with people of different types in a 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(journalism) student at the university of stellenbosch, and a media and communications co-ordinator at edward nathan sonnenbergs, a law firm in cape town. professor lizette rabe is head of the department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch. introduction the study field of microhistory is not well-known in south africa, although some projects carry all the elements of this branch of historiography. a simplistic definition of microhistory is that it is a branch of the study of history. first developed in the 1970s, microhistory is the study of the past on a very small scale. the most common type of microhistory is the study of a small town or village. other common studies include looking at individuals of minor importance. [….] microhistory is an important component of the “new history” that has emerged since the 1960s. it is usually done in close collaboration with the social sciences, such as anthropology of sociology1 (wikipedia 2007). some well-known exponents of microhistory are ginzburg, hunt and magnusson, the latter being the chair of the chair of the centre for microhistorical research at the reykjavik academy in iceland. microhistory is described as one of the “most interesting and innovative” (magnusson, s.a.) approaches to history, especially cultural and social history. magnusson writes that microhistory came about, according to the german-us historian georg g. iggers in his summary of the development of modern historical practice, historiography in the twentieth century, not because the microhistorians considered that the traditional methodology of the social sciences “is not possible or desirable but that social scientists have made generalisations that do not hold up when tested against the concrete reality of the small-scale life they claim to explain”. microhistory can thus be used as a means of typically recording the life and times of someone such as the topic of this article: the person behind a hugely successful community newspaper, within the contexts of the development of media in our country. historians are unavoidably influenced by personal background and social experiences, and mainstream history was until recently “the fragile expressions of the limited perspectives of white, male historians” (sochen, in van der vyver 1985:35). there is thus a need to rewrite history, also, as it has been phrased: to rewrite history and write “herstory”. microhistory therefore is useful in recording the contribution in various fields by those who are “other” than male or white. microhistory, in other words, can unlock the plethora of “herstories” that still need to be recorded. south african media started out as community or local media when the first attempt at a sustainable – and free – press was made in colonial times. it seems our media’s history is mainly the legacy of british colonialism (wigston 2001: 34-37). the cape saw the first publication of what can be called a newspaper in 1800 (diederichs & de beer 1998: 87), after 150 years of no press freedom. this was followed by an expansion of local media, thanks to the 1820 settlers, who brought with them both technology and expertise (diederichs & de beer 1998: 90), as by the end of the nineteenth century “there was hardly a town of any size without its own newspaper, the proprietor and editor often being one and the same person”. 58 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium today, one can distinguish between commercial community newspapers that have a cover price and that belong to major media companies, knock ’n drops or freebies, also called vfd (verified free distribution) papers, the majority also belonging to major media companies, and grassroots community newspapers, also known as start-ups, some financed through the newly established mdda 2. according to one source, there are 340 newspapers in south africa targeting local communities. those in urban areas tend to be vfd, with bigger circulations, while those in rural areas have a cover price and smaller circulations (sa media facts 2006). the subject of this study, heather brenner, founded one of cape town’s largest urban community papers 21 years ago. it became so successful that it is today the property of the international independent newspaper group, published by its cape community newspapers division, from newspaper house in cape town. table talk 3 was founded in february 1987, and its success led to unicorn publishing buying it barely one year later in june 1988, and amalgamating table talk with milnerton mail. the combined title was called table talk & mail. in 1991, unicorn was bought by the argus group4. in the mid-1990s, the newspaper reverted to its original name of tabletalk (now written as one word). the unicorn community newspapers, serving “white” suburbs, moved into the argus building (now newspaper house) in st george’s mall in 1996, having amalgamated with the argus community newspapers, serving “coloured” suburbs, to become cape community newspapers (ccn) (brenner 2006). shortly thereafter, independent newspapers bought out the argus group. david hill took over as editor of ccn in february 1997, retiring at the end of 2007. brenner remained the newspaper’s sole journalist from the first edition in may 1987 until the end of december 2005, when she retired at the age of 66 to become a politician. tabletalk, a vfd newspaper, was originally published monthly and later fortnightly. tabletalk’s current circulation is 50 920 (vale 2006). the free distribution newspaper is delivered every wednesday to homes in cape town’s ever-burgeoning and diverse west coast suburbs. tabletalk is one of ccn’s biggest titles in terms of distribution figures (vale 2006), surpassed only by athlone news (55 120), vukani in khayelitsha (75 000) and plainsman in mitchells plain (80 000). it was not possible to establish the paper’s current advertising revenue (young 2006) 5, but it is a telling fact that the newspaper’s advertising rates are of the highest of the 14 titles in the group (vale 2006). in addition, tabletalk is one of the biggest community newspapers due to its advertising pull – it often reaches 40 pages at the end of the month (holmes 2006). tabletalk has long been a major contributor to ccn’s revenue, thus playing an important role in sustaining independent newspapers cape – a far cry from brenner’s little eight-page monthly publication in 1987. this study examines the reasons for the growth and success of brenner’s newspaper. it also considers the question of what makes a successful community journalist. 59 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium heather brenner, the persona by rights, brenner should not have become a reporter. all the odds were stacked against this unemployed 46-year-old widow who did not even know how to type. but brenner believed that she could do anything she wanted to do. coupled with this attitude was the fact that she had never been trained in journalism – and thus never exposed to the hierarchy of the south african journalism world. and so, not realising (or caring) that only men were “investigative reporters” at that stage, she went out and became one herself – after single-handedly starting a newspaper (brenner 2006). although brenner is a legend in tabletalk’s distribution area 6, hardly anyone outside this region has heard of her. beyond the greater blaauwberg area of the cape west coast, she is an unheard voice. sadly, this lack of recognition is often the case with community journalists. yet for all 20 years of tabletalk’s existence, brenner was tabletalk. this is the story of her life, and, simultaneously, that of tabletalk. when the first author of this article joined ccn in 2000, she was told of brenner’s reputation for being fearless. soon afterwards, brenner became annoyed with her medical aid scheme, so she decided to occupy the medical aid’s offices. brenner sat down on the floor in the middle of their office space and refused to move. eventually the medical aid gave in and paid her the claim. this tenacity is brenner personified. today, brenner is nearly 69 years old. she left tabletalk in december 2005 and joined a political party, which she represents as councillor for her area. she notes that she is doing exactly the same thing she was doing when she was a journalist, only now she’s not writing about it (brenner 2006). tabletalk: the early years the story of tabletalk is the story of brenner’s life. she was born in birmingham, england, in 1939 and spent her formative years there. in 1952, the family settled in south africa, in what was then known as the transvaal, and in 1961 she moved to cape town to help open a dance studio. there she met and married her late husband, and the couple settled in milnerton. she admits that it was not a happy marriage (brenner 2006), but she kept herself busy looking after their two small children, giving ballroom dancing classes, coaching drum majorettes, organising fêtes and directing plays and church pantomimes. she had never had what her father would have called a “proper job”: “i never ‘trained’ in anything except dancing. if i enjoy the prospect of something, i just go ahead and do it” (brenner 2006). in the early 1980s, table view was a “cinderella suburb” without many municipal services – the roads were not surfaced and sewage disposal was dependent on septic tanks. brenner’s best friend was isobel hutchinson, chairperson of the table view ratepayers’ association, which was fighting for services for the area. hutchinson believed a “real” newspaper would be a catalyst for improvements, as opposed to the little quarterly bulletin (put out by the association) that came and went in fits and starts (brenner 2006). brenner remembers hutchinson asking: “why don’t you start a 60 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium newspaper? you don’t have anything better to do!” but brenner retorted that she knew nothing of newspapers and couldn’t even type. in 1984, brenner’s husband died. three years went by, and out of the blue, one morning in february 1987, brenner woke up and thought: “oh, what the hell, i’m going to start that newspaper for isobel!” (brenner 2006) brenner knew that she would need advertising, so she walked around table view, creating a map that listed the names of all the businesses in the area. most pledged their “undying support” and everyone was wildly enthusiastic (brenner 2006). she then approached a printer who explained what she would need to do. the printer (operating from his garage) gave her a mock-up of the paper – a four-page black and white tabloid with a spot of colour – “a little bit of blue” – on the front and back pages. armed with this, she set out to sell advertising and once again went footslogging through table view. brenner (2006) recalls her immediate success: by lunchtime that day, i had r1 500 worth of advertising. the owner of seeff properties in table view wanted to be on the front page permanently. so i took a lunch break and said to myself: “i’m going to be a tycoon!” she never became a tycoon, but three months from the date when she decided to start the newspaper, she published the first edition of tabletalk on 25 may 1987. the initial outlay had cost her absolutely nothing as she raised enough advertising revenue to cover the costs of the printer, photo lithographer and typesetter for the first edition, and they only billed her after 30 days. a number of dignitaries attended the launch of the newspaper. brenner (2006) was amazed at her success: i couldn’t believe it was all happening. it was fun and i didn’t take it seriously. not many people enter journalism at the age of 46. i was the oldest cub reporter ever! brenner started an editorial column with a “friendly photograph” of herself. the tone of her column was relaxed, as if writing for friends and family. and she did indeed know many of the people for whom she was writing. as time went by, her column became funnier and funnier as she made herself the object of laughter. her former colleague, cathy stagg (now assistant editor at ccn), remembers with delight a column brenner wrote about looking for a suitable bathing costume (stagg 2006). table view was small and insular and thus the paper was initially largely “parish pump” (stagg 2006). an example of a lead story in 1988 was the anticipated return of a young table view man who had been doing national service in the army (table talk 1988-0614:1). brenner believed that if her readers saw her as an “aunty”, they would send her their news. she wanted people to relate to her (brenner 2006). 61 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium in the beginning, brenner did almost everything – and everything was hands-on. she would write all her articles by hand and have them typed by a company which also designed her advertisements. they would provide her with the stories typed into columns and ready for plates to be made. brenner would cut and paste the copies of the adverts and the stories onto a page grid. this would go to a backyard photo lithographer, who would cut and paste the originals professionally according to brenner’s proofs. he would also add her photographs (which he had processed). from these he made the plates, which brenner would take to the printer. besides writing the editorial, booking the advertising and taking the material to the printer, brenner also went door to door, delivering many copies of table talk personally. around 5 000 copies of the newspaper were published monthly, with 4 000 copies being delivered to homes by a distribution company. brenner (2006) remembers how she distributed many of the remaining 1000 copies by hand to approximately 200 businesses, as well as municipalities and libraries: i walked around table view, with the newspapers under my arm. when i delivered them, the businesses would pay for their adverts in cash and immediately book their adverts for the next edition. […] in retrospect, my advertising costs were far too low. but i commandeered all the available advertising spend in table view. i knew every business owner, their granny and their children. avril dumont, a long distance runner from table view, hand delivered the papers to the nearby industrial area of montague gardens (brenner 2006). in the early days, table talk had about 60 regular advertisers, with a ratio of 65% advertising and 35% editorial. within half a year, geila wills, the advertising representative for the adjacent suburb’s milnerton mail, began to struggle to get advertising because everyone was advertising in table talk instead (brenner 2006). meanwhile, brenner was unaware that she was making inroads into their advertising. after a year, she received a phone call from the owner of unicorn publishing (and milnerton mail). he invited her to lunch, admitting that she had them with their backs against the wall – they couldn’t even get “a sniff of advertising” (brenner 2006). he offered to buy table talk, but brenner hesitated. she knew nothing about business and did not want to give up her “child”. however, brenner’s then life partner, andy macpherson, encouraged her to do a deal in which unicorn would buy her as part of the package (brenner 2006). when brenner went to sign the deal, the editorial director of unicorn put a computer in her hands and she “nearly fainted with shock” (brenner 2006). macpherson assured her that “any fool could type”, saying that she could dictate her stories and he would type them. because of his bad spelling, brenner had to work on the articles afterwards, correcting the spelling and thereby learning to type (brenner 2006). brenner negotiated her contract to work from home and take her work in once a fortnight for typesetting and pasting up (brenner 2006): 62 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium the unicorn office was typical of a newspaper workplace: crowded, desks piled high with newspaper junk and heaps of newspapers lying over the floor. there was no place for me to work from. after a few weeks, geila wills (my former competitor on the advertising beat) generously offered to share her rather large desk with me. […] just sitting across from [her] i learned a lot about keeping things and keeping them accurately filed. i did a bit of leaning over the shoulder of unicorn’s editor of southern suburbs tatler, trish bam, who was generous with her advice and friendly […]. everyone at unicorn seemed so experienced and educated in journalism. i always felt a bit of an outcast, but i wasn’t going to let it get me down. everything had been hands-on when brenner was running a one-woman show, but now she was part of the unicorn structures in protea house, adderley street, cape town, which included typesetters and experts who oversaw the page make-up. around 18 000 copies of table talk & mail were distributed twice a month. it was just after the merger that unicorn employed lynn holmes, a table view resident who had been selling advertising for cape times. brenner and holmes soon became a winning team, working very closely together. holmes still sells advertising for tabletalk 20 years later. in the final edition of her eight-page table talk before it was bought out, brenner wrote in her editor’s letter (1988-06-14:2): a great thing has happened to table talk, and likewise to me. we have amalgamated with milnerton mail, which is part of unicorn publications, to give you a bigger, better, more frequent updating of news and views […]. the new paper will be called table talk & mail and i will remain as editor. [….] i’m sure in time we will both settle down to the original basic concept of table talk – that of service to the community. a detailed reading of this edition reveals a paper that was still largely “light” in both subject matter and approach, but there are indications that brenner was beginning to explore more serious issues. on one hand, there was a column by brenner’s friend, isobel hutchinson of the table view ratepayers’ association, and an article on drug abuse, but, on the other hand, much of the paper was filled with news of schools, clubs, theatre and sport. an examination of the first edition of the 16-page table talk & mail (1988-07-07) reveals smooth continuity, with brenner’s style and approach very much in evidence. the paper was a little bit more colourful – yet still restricted to a few red, yellow and blue adverts. (colour photographs were only introduced in the mid-1990s.) with her customary informal, chatty tone, brenner introduced herself to her new readers in her editor’s letter (table talk & mail, 1988-07-07:2). the lead story in this inaugural edition was about the lions club of milnerton (“pride of lions”, table talk & mail, 1988-07-07:1). other articles included the history of table view, legal advice, schools news and a wedding photo. sports news, including tennis, canoeing and surfing, was 63 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium scattered throughout the paper and there were no separate sports pages. there were also columns by the ratepayers’ associations from the various areas. despite the soft family flavour and the lack of substantial “hard news” in this one-yearold newspaper, the presence of ratepayers’ issues in the newspaper was an early sign that brenner was soon to start tackling meatier topics. in addition, brenner’s statement in “table view ratepayers first to announce candidates” (table talk & mail, 1988-0707:5) that councillors “are answerable to no-one but you the people” is also indicative of this. perhaps it was brenner’s growing confidence in her own writing, perhaps it was the backing of unicorn publishing which meant that she no longer had to spend time selling advertising and hand delivering the newspaper, or perhaps it was the fact that the merged paper brought her a new and more complex readership with more varying and challenging issues. whatever the reasons, brenner entered a new phase of local investigative journalism. the newspaper grew in size and she increasingly filled it with issues of greater and wider significance, particularly relating to service delivery and the community’s plight in what was then frontier territory in cape town. yet brenner never forgot the importance of local news. she found space for all sorts of news – from the toughest matters involving local government down to little girls performing in their first ballet concerts. she understood her readership and was not afraid to take on the big issues, but she was equally unafraid to include stories that might seem insignificant to those outside the area. it was a winning combination and the newspaper continued to grow. as time went by, brenner grew in stature and so did the paper (stagg 2006). possible reasons for brenner’s success at the outset, it is crucial to define community journalists. they are generally multitalented and multi-skilled individuals who are required to report on all aspects of community life – and take photographs. this is in contrast to reporters at daily papers, who are given well-defined beats to cover.7 thus community journalists quickly develop in-depth knowledge about everything that happens in their area. because they tend to live in the community they write about, they have to be fearless in reporting. indeed, they know they will often encounter the subjects of their articles when they visit the local shops. community journalism gives a voice to people whose concerns and situations are largely ignored by daily newspapers and various authorities. from experience, many community journalists see their work as the purest form of journalism. brenner’s success as a journalist is hardly known or recognised outside her own community. even in the journalism world, she is generally unknown outside independent newspapers’ cape town office. this could well be because she consistently refused to enter community press awards, despite the pleadings of her editor and colleagues, who were convinced that she would have won many categories. 64 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium yet brenner (2006) neither needed nor desired awards, praise or recognition. from interviews with brenner and her colleagues, six reasons for brenner’s success as a community journalist were identified: • a positive attitude; • a passion for the community; • fearless investigation; • the ability to be adaptable; • knowledge in many spheres; and • teamwork with advertising representatives. these reasons will be expounded in the section that follows. positive attitude brenner has experienced a great deal of tragedy in her life. after a “terribly insecure and unhappy marriage” (brenner 2006), she was widowed with two children at the age of 43. she experienced more heartache when her son passed away in 2002. despite this, brenner (2006) remains positive: people are often thrown off balance by dramatic change. every time my situation changed, my positive attitude was most important. i look forward to each change in my life as another chance to start over. her marriage taught her how important it is for women to take control. her approach of being optimistic and in control naturally extends to her professional life. brenner believes it is important for women to have careers and interests because this enables them to be independent (brenner 2006). when she was bought out by unicorn, she saw that many of the other community newspapers’ reporters were experienced, young, “with-it” women. they laughed when brenner told them that she would make tabletalk the flagship of unicorn (brenner 2006): it took me 10 years, but i did it. by its 10th birthday, tabletalk had the biggest distribution of all the unicorn papers. […] and it had the biggest pagination. it was a revelation to me that i could do this from nothing. brenner’s non-judgmental attitude towards gender, race, age and disability made a huge impression on stagg (2006), who notes that although one of brenner’s hands was deformed from birth, she speaks about it openly, doesn’t try to hide it and doesn’t let it affect her writing or photographic work. stagg (2006) also notes how brenner was able to do things differently and break the rules of reporting because she had never been trained in journalism. for example, brenner wrote about her medical aid sit-in in tabletalk, despite the journalistic rule that reporters should not place themselves in the news. 65 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium passion for her community brenner was always “in tune” with the inhabitants of the tabletalk area (stagg 2006). brenner laughed with her readers and she cried with them. she lived in the area, her children went to school there and she was on the milnerton players’ executive for 40 years, directing and acting in plays. she taught ballroom dancing, coached drum majorettes and organised fêtes. when brenner knew she would be retiring, she started searching for a person whom she felt would look after her “baby” and serve the community as she had done. brenner (2006) notes that she handpicked and trained her successor, pam fourie, who took over in january 2006. it is significant that brenner handed over her newspaper when it was 18 years old, much as an 18-year-old child comes of age and goes out into the world. fearless investigator brenner really came into her own as a fearless investigator when david hill was appointed as editor of ccn in 1997. for the first time, she had the total support of her editor and this gave her the freedom and confidence to write without fear of repercussions. hill notes how the growth of the paper coincided with tremendous growth in the area and he is full of praise for brenner (2006). although hill’s support was indeed crucial, brenner’s penchant for investigative reporting had developed before she started working with him. she had long been a crusading journalist with a strong sense of right and wrong (stagg 2006). brian josselowitz (2006), who was brenner’s news editor at ccn, describes her as tenacious and someone who wouldn’t take no for an answer. stagg (2006) recalls how secure brenner was in herself and how this aided her in her investigative reporting. what made brenner stand out as a white community journalist, particularly in the 1980s, was the fact that she went into the townships and reported on the black community’s issues. for example, brenner was the first person to investigate the lives of the black grooms from the milnerton race course who were not allowed to have their wives and children living with them (stagg 2006): the grooms and their families were eventually allowed to settle in what have now become the large townships of dunoon and joe slovo park in milnerton. heather has known people there for 20 years and they have relationships of friendship and trust. tabletalk’s advertising representative, holmes (2006), was also always struck by brenner’s passion for the underprivileged and fourie (2006), new to tabletalk, is well aware of brenner’s reputation for covering news across race and language barriers. although many people encountered brenner’s tough side, she cared deeply about people and it was this dual nature that made her a successful community journalist. brenner “saw people and not just stories” (stagg 2006). 66 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium adaptability despite being the oldest journalist in the newsroom, brenner always relished change and moved with the times, whether it was mastering e-mail, adapting to the style of a new publishing group or getting to know a community that had been added to tabletalk’s distribution area. whenever she encountered change, she realised she was very lucky to have another chance to do something different (brenner 2006). stagg (2006) was always struck by the extent to which brenner embraced change and was flexible. few women enter journalism at the age of 46 – although mer, the first professional afrikaans female reporter, was appointed as die burger’s “women’s editor” at the age of 46 in 1922 (rabe 2001). even fewer women enter politics at the age of 66. (there are a number of interesting similarities between brenner and mer, who, as a social worker, also changed careers and moved into serving her community after her stint in journalism. she was also an independent woman, who divorced her husband in 1905, when she was 30, and raised her son and daughter as a single mother at a time when divorce was frowned upon.) extensive knowledge stagg (2006) is not surprised that brenner went into politics because she has such a vast amount of knowledge about her area and local government: she didn’t just write stories – she also fixed things. she liked networking and putting people in touch with each other. people would phone her to ask for advice. it was like a free citizens’ advice bureau – she knew who to phone to get things done. fourie (2006) concurs that brenner has enormous knowledge of how the city and its sub-councils work: she had insights into local government, municipalities, developments and even the koeberg nuclear power station. she would investigate every angle of a story and her articles were never one-sided. they were always well-planned and wellstructured. although she did not have any tertiary education, brenner had been at the “university of life” for 46 years when she entered journalism (brenner 2006): for a long time, i felt subordinate to anyone with journalism training. i felt out of my depth when writing because i had no training. then i did various courses and it was a revelation to me that i didn’t need them! i enjoyed them, but i learnt nothing from them in the main. i had been doing the right things all along – operating from sheer gut feeling. brenner (2006) says she learnt that life skills and experience matter most in community journalism. she is saddened when, for example, young journalists who have never had a bond or paid rates are expected to write intelligent pieces on these topics. 67 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium teamwork journalists and advertising representatives often completely ignore one another. this situation mostly stems from the journalists’ idealistic belief that news should be free from the influence of business, advertising and money. brenner, who had no journalism training and was four years away from 50 when she ventured into the journalism world, was not constrained by this attitude. she managed to maintain her editorial integrity and simultaneously work closely and harmoniously with her advertising representative, holmes, who joined tabletalk in 1988 and is still there today. the success of tabletalk came from the fact that both the journalist and the advertising representative lived in the area and cared deeply about their own community. in addition, they understood where the other was coming from and communicated very closely (holmes 2006). stagg (2006) tells how brenner had very strong and definite views about the controversial advertising versus editorial debate: the “what’s on” notices were for churches, charities, non-profit organisations and service clubs. each was allowed only one notice per month. businesses tried to get in, but she made them advertise. heather’s partner, andy, has a son who owns a garden centre. the local bonsai club meets at this centre – and heather refused to name the centre when she advertised the bonsai club! she went to extreme lengths – but i admired that about her. she had a strong sense of ethics. stagg (2006) acknowledges that part of the reason tabletalk grew to become the biggest and most profitable newspaper in ccn’s northern group was brenner’s very workable relationship with holmes. a matter of marginalisation? brenner entered journalism at a time when men still dominated south african newsrooms and when many a young female journalist was intimidated by overbearing male editors, as is clear from numerous studies on media and gender (cf. goga 2000; lowe morna 2001; gmbs 2003, sanef glass ceiling audit 2006). it certainly helped that brenner was already 47 when her newspaper was bought out by unicorn publishing and she went from having a one-woman show to working with a team and male editors. but it was especially her confident approach that saw her withstand sexist attitudes. it is, of course, unfair to look at male/female dynamics in the 1980s from a 21st century perspective and it must be borne in mind that even brenner was, to a certain extent, inevitably part of the social gender constructs of the time. indeed, in her article entitled “drama drama” (table talk, 1988-06-14:6), she refers to the mayor of milnerton and his wife as “mr and mrs geo mellett” and the ex-mayor of bellville and his wife as “mr and mrs tinus meyer”. at the time, this was fully acceptable language. it is, however, clear that brenner believed in equality. stagg (2006) notes that at a time when it was not socially acceptable for a woman to cross-examine (for example) the male chairperson of the local council, brenner did so fearlessly. 68 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium yet despite brenner’s attitude that enabled her to become an influential woman in her community, it must be questioned whether she was marginalised in the male-dominated world of journalism. despite her success over the course of 18 years in journalism, brenner says she did not receive a single promotion or job offer from another newspaper over the years (2006). could this have been because she was a woman, and an older woman at that? one cannot assume that sexism was at the heart of the matter, because brenner (2006) openly admits that she is territorial and loves her community. and it is certain that she rightly believed that her community newspaper was better than argus and cape times. however, it is significant that, when asked to provide advice for young reporters, brenner (2006) says that they should see ccn as an excellent stepping-stone and nursery, as well as a place for journalists who are at the end of their careers and not going anywhere. perhaps this is an indication that brenner would have liked to work at a large national newspaper if she had entered journalism 25 years earlier than she did, although that would have been at a time when female reporters faced far greater challenges. yet somehow it is impossible to imagine brenner at a newspaper other than tabletalk. despite this, brenner would have made an excellent editor, particularly because of her incisive judgment, her organisational skills and her ability to mentor her fellow journalists. brenner, meanwhile, says she never experienced outright sexism because she never regarded herself as inferior, and she simply never allowed people to be sexist towards her (brenner 2006). discussion brenner went against the grain in many ways, both as a journalist and as a woman. for example, many of the pioneering female journalists would have been tempted to buy into the [male] journalistic culture of heavy drinking, but not brenner (2006). she came up against much opposition (both overt and subtle) and perhaps even marginalisation over the years, although she never termed it sexism. there is no doubt that it was her strong character that enabled her to succeed as a pioneering female journalist in an everchanging community (and country) and in male-dominated newsrooms. she boldly broke the rules and redefined the boundaries for female community reporters. she never saw herself as a victim of anything – she just went out and did the job without any fuss or fanfare. she investigated, found the truth and wrote about it, not caring about the inevitable criticism. brenner’s readers often saw her as a fearless journalist, yet this is not strictly true. she did indeed have fears, but she bravely faced and fought these fears, often on behalf of her readers. in so doing, she became a strong and successful role model, inspiring and encouraging ccn’s female journalists. 69 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium brenner recalls her favourite book as a child was about a scottish girl who lived in the gorbals, a poor part of glasgow (2006). the little girl went on an outing to the countryside and wandered into a field, coming face to face with a huge cow. she was terrified, but remembered that someone had told her to always face up to things and look them in the eye. “there are a lot of fearful things in journalism, but you have to get on with it, have a bash and do your best” (brenner 2006). outside the broader blaauwberg area, brenner is an unheard voice. for her tabletalk readers, she remains a legend – and in terms of microhistory, a worthy subject for a more extensive study as part of ongoing microhistorical projects on community media. having researched the (micro)history and growth of brenner’s tabletalk, it has become clear that there are certain attributes and characteristics which excellent community journalists should have. the passion for one’s community should exclude any favouritism. in order to understand what is locally relevant, and to grasp the history and issues of an area, one should ideally live in the paper’s distribution area. this is not without its difficulties, as one is often required to withstand the pressure of particular groups and their agendas. natural curiosity and the resultant in-depth knowledge about all aspects of community life, particularly local government, are essential, as this enables reporters to write about what really matters to their readers. good community reporters should remain true to the tenets of journalism, namely to be fearless seekers of the truth. they should work as a team with advertising representatives, while at the same time not compromising on editorial integrity and independence. they should also be hard-working, embracing technology, welcoming change and always aiming to improve their skills. being well-organised, self-motivated and flexible is crucial, as is having a “can do” attitude and intentionally acquiring vital life skills. community reporters should be multi-talented and multi-skilled – both in terms of their field of work (writing/photography/editing/layout) and in terms of their beats (anything and everything). recommendations a study of this nature is not exhaustive enough to do justice to the subject matter. as an explorative study in terms of microhistory and its subject, this article serves as an example for other such studies. there are many other community newspapers that would benefit greatly from an in-depth analysis of their content, growth and reporters. indeed, the writers of media history often sideline community journalism. it would be particularly fitting if media conglomerates were to provide funding and support for research into community titles in order to promote critical self-examination and introspection. history is soon forgotten if it is not written down. microhistory is a vehicle through which the “historians in a hurry” – as journalists have been called – of our community media can be recorded as contributors and participants in the “first draft of history” – as journalism has been described. since community journalists are often women, it 70 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium would be essential for female voices to number prominently among those who are tasked with writing these collective microhistories, adding “herstories” to history. endnotes 1 a definition from wikipedia. although the authors realise that this online encyclopedia is generally regarded with suspicion, and not recommended for use in the social sciences, the authors deemed this definition as succinct and useful as it describes microhistory in a nutshell, and can stand the test if verified against other sources such as iggers (1997), ginzburg (1993) and magnusson (s.a.), who will not be dealt with here because of space constraints. 2 media development and diversity agency, established to support, amongst others, grassroots media. 3 the first author of this article read the tabletalk (part of cape community newspapers and owned by independent newspapers) every week while she was a sub-editor at cape community newspapers from april 2000 to april 2004. in addition, she was closely involved as sports editor for tabletalk and cape community newspapers’ other titles from may 2004 to february 2005. 4 when referring to a specific time in tabletalk’s history, it is referred to it by its name at that time, in other words, table talk, table talk & mail or tabletalk. when making generic references to the publication, it will be referred to by its current title, tabletalk. 5 ccn’s retail area manager, pat young (2006), did not want to divulge tabletalk’s advertising revenue. 6 experience of the first author of this article, gillian turner, as a community journalist working for ccn. 7 definition as per own experience of the authors of this article. 71 a 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[accessed 06/04/2007]. young, p. retail area manager, cape community newspapers, including tabletalk. telephonic interview. 30 june 2006. cape town. 73 a microhistorical record of “micromedia”: a community media journalist and her medium 74 1. paul schutte 71 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 71 88 veena rawjee and danie jordaan* abstract this research emerges within the context of the rapidly raising levels of human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) infections amongst young adults and the escalation of deaths from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids). higher education institutions represent an area where there is a congregation of young adults – the high risk age group. based on this, this study sets out to explore how hiv/aids campaigns are planned and managed at selected higher education institutions in south africa. the study maintains that much can be learnt about the challenges of the planning and management process of hiv/aids campaigns if their components are explored from a process perspective. based on the findings, the study offers recommendations for improving future hiv/aids campaign planning and management at higher education institutions. it further proposes a process model for campaign planning and management at higher education institutions. * dr veena rawjee lectures in the department of marketing, retail and public relations at the durban university of technology. this article is based on dr rawjee’s doctoral thesis. professor danie jordaan of the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth was the promoter. introduction this research emerges within the context of the rapidly rising hiv infection amongst young adults and the escalation of deaths from aids. higher education institutions represent an area where there is a congregation of young adults – the high risk age group. the post-apartheid context has allowed institutions of higher education to redefine their vision and mission statements to align themselves to operate and face challenges within a democratic south africa. one such challenge is the high prevalence of hiv and aids. south africa’s first nationally coordinated programme known as higher education against hiv/aids (heaids) was launched in november 2001. an audit drawn up by heaids known as the hiv and aids audit: interventions in south african higher education 2003-2004 reports that according to the 2003 hsrc/hrd review, 25% of university of technology students and 20% of university students have contracted hiv (2004: preface). based on this, heaids maintains that a stronger strategic framework with clearer indicators was necessary in order to better manage the programme over the longer term. a results-based framework with indicators was therefore co-developed with higher education institutions and was formally adopted in 2004. the hiv and aids audit: interventions in south african higher education 2003-2004 audit provides feedback on various indicators, but notes that the findings of the indicator for effective marketing or advocacy of hiv/aids programmes and services at higher education institutions is not captured in the audit. the absence of data regarding this indicator in the report raises the critical question, namely how hiv/aids campaigns are planned and managed at higher education institutions. this article therefore sets out to explore how institutional hiv/aids communication campaigns are planned and managed at higher education institutions in south africa. communication campaigns: a tool to curb the spread of hiv/aids in the absence of a cure the sharp role of communication focussing on hiv/aids prevention has increasingly been recognised as the centre-piece in helping to curb the spread of this disease (airhihenbuwa & obregon 2000; feddes 2006; dalrymple 1995; epstein 1997; lynch, loyd & fimbres 1993; parker 1994; parker, dalrymple & durden 2000; uys, martin, ichharam, alexander, els & eiselen 2002). uys et al. (2002: 10) further maintains that an analysis and understanding of the various planning interventions aimed at addressing hiv/aids is vital to curb the spread of the disease. in this regard coffman (2004: 1) notes that “communications activities must add up to more than a series of isolated events. being strategic means being more deliberate, innovative, savvy and less reactive in communications practice”. implicit in this is that effective prevention, care and treatment associated with curbing the spread of hiv/aids imply strategic planning and management of communication interventions. 72 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective however, research (aids foundation of south africa 2000; kelly, parker & oyosi 2001) has shown that although national media-based campaigns, for example, beyond awareness, soul city, and the lovelife campaign, are critical tools in the larger effort to redress hiv/aids, campaigns such as these are not very effective in facilitating the scope and rate of the behaviour change required to counter the hiv/aids epidemic effectively in south africa. although a number of recent baseline evaluations (department of health 2004; kelly & parker 2000; kelly, parker & oyosi 2001; pettifor, rees, steffenson, hlonwa-madikizela, macphail, vermaak & kleinschmidt 2004; shisana 2002; soul city 2000 & 2001) suggest that south africa’s national hiv/aids media-based campaigns have some effect on increasing knowledge and changing the beliefs, others (jennings, mulaudzi, everatt, richter & heywood 2002; pettifor et al. 2004; shisana 2002) show that there is limited success in changing the behaviours. so why then are campaigns not successful? swanepoel’s study (2003) contends that the reason for not being able to answer in depth “why south african campaigns are not effective” is because there is a lack of process evaluations of south african hiv/aids campaigns. work by several researchers (coulson 2002; kelly & parker 2000; kramer 2004; swanepoel 2003; yun, govender & mody 2001) also maintain that most problems associated with campaigns relate to the various stages and activities of the design process. the concerns raised above call for an insight into the processes of campaign planning and management. when reviewing the literature on the commonly used theories (health belief model; diffusion of innovation; social marketing; theory of reasoned action and cognitive dissonance theory) that underpin hiv/aids campaigns, it becomes apparent that much of the literature governing hiv/aids campaigns has been borrowed from social psychologists. furthermore these key theories are linear and individualistic and give little credence to the importance of societal processes that underlie the emergence and maintenance of norms. although these theories do help in the structuring of campaigns they do not, for example, tell us how to segment audiences, position products, frame messages, select channels, implement communication strategies and so forth. guidance for answering questions such as these comes from campaign process models. campaign process models explain the processes involved in designing and supervising the communication components of a campaign. although there is a call for communication practitioners to evaluate campaign success based on behavioural change, there is also a critical need to gauge why campaigns fail or succeed based on the various design stages of the campaign. the commonly used process models (the communication by objectives model; the prisa model; the marketing model; the interactive model of communication) reveal the following common design stages of a campaign: • rational and objectives; • resources and ethics; 73 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective • formative research/audience analysis and segmentation; • strategy, implementation; and • tracking and evaluation of the campaign. using the common design stages identified above, an empirical study was conducted to explore how several institutional hiv/aids communication campaigns were planned and managed at selected south african higher education institutions. methodology in this study the population consisted of all (24) higher education institutions in south africa. hiv/aids campaign co-ordinators within higher education institutions in south africa who dealt with hiv/aids preventative campaigns were contacted by telephone. following this a further telephone call was made to secure appointments for personal interviews. of the 24 higher education institutions a total of 16 hiv/aids campaign coordinators agreed to participate in the study. interviews were conducted using an interview schedule. data was analysed using content analysis. findings and recommendations below are the conclusions and recommendations based on the empirical study. these are presented based on the key planning phases of a campaign. based on this an hiv/aids campaign model is devised for the future planning and management of hiv/aids campaigns at higher education institutions. the campaign and its policy links this study concluded that, although most higher education institutions have an hiv/aids policy in place, there is a need to link hiv/aids institutional interventions to these policies. it is, therefore, recommended that all institutional hiv/aids campaigns are linked to the institution’s hiv/aids policy. based on this recommendation, it is further recommended that one of the first steps in developing an institutional campaign is to determine clearly how it fits into or how it is linked to the overall hiv/aids policy of the institution. it is also recommended that higher education’s hiv/aids policies are planned using the country’s national hiv/aids plan. this study also recommends that existing hiv/aids policies at south african institutions of higher education are carefully examined and critiqued by the various institution communities so that the policy is comprehensive and inclusive. planning of objectives; resources and ethics of the campaign overall, the objectives of most campaigns were not explicitly stated as they were expressed in general un-testable terms (e.g. “promotion of vct”, “impart knowledge about hiv/aids”, “to bring about attitude and behaviour change”). in addition, even when the objectives were specified, they were not presented in a measurable (quantifiable) format that lent itself to evaluation. in fact, none of the campaigns reported objectives in a measurable format. furthermore, in most instances, objectives 74 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective were taken from a review of literature, not a data-based evaluation of specific needs and concerns of target audiences (e.g. “first year students are especially vulnerable when the switch from school to university is made”, “most of our new students are away from home”). in some cases, objectives were “borrowed” from other campaigns handed down by funding sources, or even line heads (e.g. “there was a directive from the dean of student affairs”). the concept of measurable objectives was seldom applied at the higher education institutions. it is, therefore, recommended that campaign objectives should be stated in measurable terms so that the effects of the campaign can be objectively assessed. furthermore, campaign objectives should be formulated based on the needs of the target audience. based on the findings, it can be concluded that one of the main challenges being faced by campaign planners is the shortage of human, financial and organisational resources. moreover, there is a dire shortage of resources that are being allocated towards tracking and evaluation. most campaigns (68.2%) did not allocate any resources towards tracking and evaluating. thus, it is recommended that financial and organisational support, at the highest levels, be sought to ensure campaign continuity and a critical mass of resources to make a significant, consistent and lasting difference. formative research: audience analysis and segmentation the basic tenet of most campaigns is that an understanding of one’s audience requires an original needs assessment or an analysis of existing data concerning the targeted communities’ practices, values and beliefs. most higher education institutions did not conduct any formative audience analysis and audience segmentation because the target audience was simply seen as a homogeneous group of students. since audience segmentation received limited attention and use, it can be concluded that this principle is not seen as a priority during campaign planning and management. campaigns were, therefore, not designed for specific subgroups that cater for specific needs. even though most campaign planners reported that they considered contexts, very few described efforts to modify their messages and strategies to reflect life circumstances of their audiences. segmentation based on principles of context was only found in 25% of campaigns and can, therefore, be seen as uncommon practice. it is, therefore, recommended that segmentation of target audiences needs to be made more explicit. in particular, cultural influences on relevant behaviours need to be routinely investigated on the planning process of campaigns. it is further recommended that campaigns should clearly identify a target audience and, at the same time, address those groups at highest risk within the institution. formative research analysis, to help with audience analysis and audience segmentation, should be a priority during campaign planning and management. it is, therefore, recommended that hiv/aidsspecific campaigns be developed to address hiv/aids-specific priority audiences and issues. furthermore, to ensure that appropriate response messages are developed, messages should be pre-tested with the range of audiences that were identified during the audience segmentation process. pre-testing of messages should, therefore, be formalised and incorporated into existing campaign models. 75 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective campaign strategy messages and how they are disseminated are key components of any campaign strategy. it is, therefore, crucial to understand the target audience’s preferences for communication strategies, spokespersons and other message features. even when the basic ideas may be the same for all audiences – e.g. know your status, change your behaviour, live positively – the message needs to be designed and positioned differently for various groups. in most of the campaigns explored, this was not done. communication channels that were used by the various institutions were varied with most of them using multiple channels. although multiple media channels were used, they did not coincide with the media preferences of youth. the typical practice reported was the usage of posters compared to media such as radio, drama and other interpersonal media. furthermore, planning research on the media preferences of audiences was almost always lacking. based on the findings, it is recommended that campaigns be designed and implemented by ensuring that messages are pre-tested; audiences are segmented and that multiple channels of communication are used. it is further recommended that media channels should be appropriate for the target audience and linked to the audience segmentation process. a channel’s reach specificity and degree of involvement must be considered carefully with respect to the target audience. campaign planners need to consider how well the chosen media channel reaches the target audience. it is further recommended that campaign planners need to consider media relations as an integral part of any campaign and that they are trained in this regard. campaign managers need to understand how to select communication media, the reason why the media is selected, who the media reaches and the costs involved relative to the number of people being reached. it is also recommended that the message content must be creative to meet the challenge of dealing with subjects that are private and even taboo. therefore, audience participation should be facilitated at the planning, implementation and evaluation phases of the campaign. tracking of the campaign there is little evidence that tracking has routinely been incorporated into hiv/aids campaigns at higher education institutions. overall, the tracking of the campaign during the implementation phase was not considered a priority and, therefore, no appropriate modifications were made to the campaign. it is recommended that more attention be given to tracking the effects of campaign activities during the communication process and that tracking is considered a priority. enough time must be allowed to track and test the delivery of campaign messages, and campaign effects need to be tracked as a matter of routine. this will allow modifications to campaign strategy based on the feedback received. to this end, an appropriate tracking tool that ensures that tracking of the campaign is monitored from inception right through until completion or reimplementation of the campaign, should be developed for each campaign. 76 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective evaluation there is acknowledgement of the need to shift from campaigns that focus only on individual attitudinal and behavioural change to influencing the social norms in relation to hiv/aids preventative behaviour. furthermore, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of campaigns because of the lack of standardised measures. the most commonly used evaluation strategy was a questionnaire. it is recommended that other methods of evaluation such as formative, process, outcome and impact evaluations of hiv/aids campaigns are also used. the results of the evaluation should be recorded and stored for future reference. general recommendations based on the above findings, the study recommends that more attention should be paid to setting realistic, specific and measurable objectives for communication campaigns. subsequent campaign activities should be consistent with these goals and objectives, as well as with desired outcomes. campaign concepts should become more central to campaigns; although respondents often mentioned these frameworks, they were not integrated throughout the campaign. behavioural theories should also be more actively applied to design campaigns. audience segmentation and research should be more central to the planning of campaigns. better definitions of audiences’ contexts, such as culture and language, should be present. communication strategies should be formulated based on better information about target audiences’ communication patterns. better understanding of message design decisions and appropriateness should be included. more importantly, a major shift in the thrust of hiv/aids institutional campaigns at higher education institutions should occur in that campaigns should not focus exclusively on awareness, information and individual attitudinal and behavioural change, to campaigns aimed at influencing social norms in relation to hiv/aids preventative behaviour. in this way, campaigns will assist in achieving institutional change as opposed to only individual change. the overall study concludes that institutional hiv/aids prevention campaigns at higher education institutions would benefit from: • better reporting of campaign components; • more systematic evaluation; • greater integration of theory; and • increased attention to linking campaigns to the institution’s overall hiv/aids policy. 77 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective proposed model the following model for campaign planning and management at higher education institutions is proposed: institutional hiv/aids campaign planning and management model for higher education institutions. mody’s (1991: 55) audience participationbased message design model focuses on national transformation in third world settings. her model is applicable across various public service areas and national development sectors. although mody’s model confirms the conclusions arrived at in this study, it should be noted that the researcher only became aware of the model subsequent to the designing of the institutional hiv/aids campaign planning and management model for higher education institutions recommended in this study. the model in this study was designed based on the literature review and evidence from the empirical study. whilst mody’s work was not consulted during the actual study it is encouraging to note that her model validates this study’s proposed findings and model. this model is broken down into seven phases. these phases are outlined in the table below and are then further explained. table 1: proposed model for campaign planning and monitoring stage 1 determine the link between the campaign and the institution’s hiv/aids policy how does the campaign fit into the hiv/aids policy? how is this campaign inter-related to other campaigns being run at the institution? what synergies does this campaign share with other efforts? stage 2 conduct research conduct research to: identify the key people; establish the resources; review existing information; review and understand the context; determine baseline awareness and behaviours; consult with relevant target audiences; identify appropriate communications channels; and identify and recruit campaign partners. 78 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective stage 3 using the research to plan the objectives campaign objectives should be realistic, specific and stated in measurable terms. objectives should be formulated on the basis of the needs of research target audiences identified in step 2. design an overall campaign evaluation strategy based on the overall objectives of the campaign. stage 4 campaign strategy decide on a theory of change. decide on the communication strategies systematically. decide on the channel selection systematically. evaluate the campaign strategy to ensure that the campaign is modified, adjusted and improved to address weaknesses and deficiencies in this stage. stage 5: develop and pre-test messages develop messages: keep it simple; consider contexts; consider creativity; make communications personally relevant; address perceptions and outcomes; design messages for maximum understanding; and pre-test messages. evaluate to ensure that the campaign is modified and adjusted to address weaknesses and deficiencies based on the pre-testing of the messages. stage 6: implementation and tracking of the campaign campaign activities and effects are tracked and monitored using the tracking tool. evaluate the campaign during implementation. based on the results, modify the campaign during implementation to ensure that the campaign is adjusted and improved to address the weaknesses/deficiencies identified during this phase. 79 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective stage 7: evaluate evaluate the collective campaign to determine whether campaign objectives have been achieved through the following methods of evaluation: formative evaluation; process evaluation; outcome evaluation; and impact evaluation. explanation of stages stage 1: determine the link between the campaign and the institution’s hiv/aids policy one of the first steps in developing an institutional hiv/aids campaign is to determine clearly how it fits into or how it is linked to the overall hiv/aids policy of the institution. the communication planners should have a thorough understanding of the institutions hiv/aids policy and the role of the hiv/aids centre. all hiv/aids campaigns should echo the institution’s hiv/aids policy and should be planned in relation to this policy. furthermore, all campaigns planned within the hiv/aids centre should be interrelated and should share synergies and complement each other’s efforts as well as those efforts by academic/administration departments. this inter-relatedness will ensure linkage with the various structures, i.e. academic departments, management and administration support. stage 2: conduct research basic research will help create more effective communication campaigns, with messages that resonate with the target audience. large-scale communication efforts may require marketing and social science research methods: surveys, focus groups, formal or informal interviews. it is best to conduct separate research at the various stages of programme development at the front end (to determine the target audience’s needs or attitudes toward hiv/aids or to select messages and to test programme materials); during programme implementation (to monitor and refine communication tactics); and at the completion of a campaign (as part of an overall evaluation of impacts) (egan and brown 2001). research – whether rapid or extensive, formal or informal – helps determine the starting place for communication. research should guide programme development. campaign planning and management could benefit from conducting research around the following campaign elements/components: identify the key people involved in the planning and management of the communications efforts. 80 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective establish the resources (financial, time and human) for the campaign to ensure that these will be adequate to accomplish campaign objectives and campaign activities. if resources are limited, objectives will be difficult to achieve. financial and organisational support at the highest levels should be sought to ensure campaign continuity to make a significant, consistent and lasting difference. remember if resources are limited, overall campaign objectives are compromised as they will have to be adjusted to fit the resources. review existing information on campaigns (if there is any). were past campaigns linked to the institutional hiv/aids policy, and how? what were success rates of past campaigns? what were the strengths, weaknesses and lessons learnt from previous campaigns at the institution? review and understand the context in which the campaign will be run. this process will ensure that one understands the environment and its barriers sufficiently to be able to set the campaign’s objectives. in particular, contextual influences, such as culture and language, on relevant behaviours need to be routinely investigated in the planning process of campaigns. it is also necessary to understand context barriers in order to choose communication tactics and channels. determine which context barriers stand in the way of effective communication – for example, specific contexts such as culture, language, level of study and resources. at this stage, the campaign planner should clearly identify potential target audience/s. prioritise the primary audiences, and conduct formative research to allow for segmentation if needed. audiences should be prioritised based on programme goals and objectives, and a brief profile of each group should be created based on the formative research conducted. determine baseline awareness and behaviours through performing or reviewing quantitative/quantitative research. seek out representative comments and viewpoints from all potential stakeholders including academic, administrative and management staff. consult with relevant target audience. consultation ensures that communication tools and key messages are appropriate for target audiences; increases the likelihood that messages will be understood; ensures that potential barriers are identified early on and can be managed accordingly; and it builds relationships with useful contacts, which, in turn, can help during the implementation phase. consultation with the target audience could take place by: • giving the target audience the opportunity to be involved in making decisions about actions that will affect them (through means such as stakeholder focus groups; being part of the planning and management of the campaign; and designing messages); • informing the target audience accurately about realities, problems, and reasons for decisions; 81 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective • giving the target audience the authority to decide on the most effective way in which to participate (through such means as stakeholder focus groups); • recognising the target audience for their contributions to the programme (through acknowledgments in various media); • showing true interest and commitment (through supporting policies and training for implementers and relevant higher authorities); and • giving the target audience incentives and rewards (through prizes and acknowledgements). identify appropriate communications channels, i.e. where do the target audiences get information from and which sources they trust most. this information will inform the campaign planner about the target audience’s media consumption patterns. it will further influence how information is packaged and distributed cost effectively. identify and recruit campaign partners. communication programmes work well when they involve multiple stakeholders. it is useful to identify who else might benefit from the programme’s efforts and which organisations can help carry campaign messages. possible messengers for hiv/aids programmes include: the student representative council; non-governmental organisations; management; youth clubs; student societies; and academic staff. it is often helpful to go back to the programme’s needs assessment to verify the communication channels that target groups use to get information. it is useful to plan on sharing printed materials, messages, website content, and other information. academic departments, the src and institutional clubs and societies are especially effective “ambassadors” for a programme because their relationships with students may be stronger, more consistent, or better trusted. stage 3: use this research to plan the objectives the research study should inform the objectives of the campaign. campaign planners must decide how to define success, and set goals to accomplish that success. therefore, campaign objectives should be realistic, specific and stated in measurable terms so that the effects of the campaign can be objectively assessed. furthermore, campaign objectives should be formulated on the basis of original or secondary data analysis descriptive of the target audience’s needs. once objectives have been set, the campaign planner should immediately plan the overall campaign evaluation strategy in relation to these objectives. this plan will ensure that the campaign planner has set realistic and measurable goals as the evaluation strategy will be able to predict whether the objectives can be measured or not. very often, because campaign evaluation happens at the end, the evaluation strategy is omitted and, therefore, at times, very little attention is paid to the overall evaluation of the campaign and its importance is often underestimated. 82 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective stage 4: campaign strategy research has shown that there is no set cause-and-effect progression from knowledge and awareness of an issue like hiv/aids to attitude and behaviour change. thus, campaign designers must pay attention and link traditional media and behaviourchange strategies with on-the-ground community action to make the social and policy environment supportive of the desired campaign results. a “theory of change” will help campaign planners to lay out the pathway by which they expect change to occur (coffman 2003). therefore, one should decide on a theory of change that one will apply to the campaign. thereafter, communication strategies and the channel selection should be systematically formulated. media relations should be an integral part of any campaign, and the campaign planner should be trained in this regard. the campaign strategy should be evaluated, modified, adjusted and improved so that weaknesses and deficiencies in this stage are addressed. media channels should be appropriate for the target audience and linked to the audience segmentation process. a channel’s reach specificity and degree of involvement must be considered carefully with respect to the target audience. campaign planners need to consider how well the choice of media channel reaches the target audience. “to maximize their chances of success, campaigns usually coordinate media efforts with a mix of other interpersonal and community-based communications channels” (coffman 2002). some have called this mix of communication channels “air and ground strategies”; the air strategy refers to public media campaigns typically implemented through advertising, and the ground strategy refers to community-based communications or grassroots organising, often implemented through public relations and events (coffman 2002). the campaign planner would use more ground strategies for an institutional hiv/aids campaign. most of the ground strategies would consist of public relations tactics, events and activities. research from stage 2 should already indicate which communication strategies and channels could be used to best achieve campaign goals and objectives. in some cases, it is best that multiple channels of communication are used. channels might include the following: • internal communications; • presentations; • brochures; • community workshops and outreach activities; • websites; • media outreach/public relations; • training workshops; • displays and promotions; • advertising; and • oramedia/folkmedia/traditional media. 83 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective the most effective communication campaigns use a variety of channels. the primary channels should reach the target audience at an appropriate time and in the right place. secondary channels should help develop the infrastructure for a broad communication campaign. these tactics could include a website or hotlines. messages should be consistent among all strategies, for each target audience identified. after the initial stages of introducing a programme, a communication campaign can take anywhere from three months to three years to reach and begin influencing the target audience. a campaign should be developed in stages with enough lead time to work with distribution channels. campaign planners must sustain communication over the long term and raise and allocate appropriate resources to communication efforts. programmes aimed at influencing attitudes and changing behaviour require long-term information and marketing strategies. stage 5: develop and pre-test messages having completed the previous steps, implementers now have enough information to develop messages to communicate about their programme. research from stage 2 will already have indicated the target audience(s), their needs and how the information will be packaged. using this information, it is recommended that the campaign planner systematically construct the campaign messages. the basic principles applicable to campaign messages are discussed below: keep it simple messages should be as simple as possible, relevant to the audience(s), and focused on benefits. messages should make the desired behaviour attractive and easy and demonstrate benefits. campaign planners should not make the mistake of developing complicated or highly technical text, graphs, charts, or other communications. messages should be factual enough to be compelling but also user friendly. it is important to know the audience and design messages that are appropriate to it. consider creativity it is also recommended that the message content must be creative to meet the challenge of dealing with subjects that are private and even taboo. this requirement can be achieved by consulting with the target audience to determine culturally creative messages. consider contexts messages must be compatible with cultural norms; i.e. messages must make sociocultural sense. campaign planners should be mindful to verify expected cultural attitudes through research, and create messages that work best for the target audience. another important context is the languages spoken by the target audience. in south africa, materials aimed at the youth generally benefit from familiar language, and culturally appropriate messages. communication materials may have to be translated into multiple languages. 84 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective make communications personally relevant beyond primary messages, communications can be most effective if they convey how efficient choices are personally relevant to the target audience. messages should tie into motivations of target audiences and, if possible, make an emotional connection. address perceptions and outcomes cognitive dissonance theory is formulated around the premise that important determinants of behaviour are attitudes and beliefs about consequences. the more the target audience believes that engaging in reckless behaviour will lead to negative consequences, the more positive his or her attitude will be. a wide variety of motivators and messages may be effective. design messages for maximum understanding the message is a powerful communication tool, so its design is an important element of the programme’s communications strategy. the message must be visually striking and convey information quickly and intuitively. in some instances, messages contain hidden cultural meanings. the communication planner should attempt to understand these meanings by researching the content of the message. to ensure that messages are appropriate and designed for the benefit and convenience of the target audience, messages should be pre-tested with the range of audiences that were identified during the audience segmentation process. pre-testing often means presenting the campaign items to a subset of the target audience such as a focus group composed of members from the target audience. pre-testing often has unexpected results, revealing whether the information presented is clear and effective. finally, evaluate the campaign to ensure that it is modified and adjusted to address weaknesses and deficiencies based on the pre-testing of the messages. stage 6: implement and track the campaign campaign activities and effects need to be tracked and monitored to refine communication strategies during the implementation of the campaign. enough time should be allowed to track and test the delivery of campaign messages. campaign effects also need to be tracked and monitored as a matter of routine and modifications to campaign strategy made on the feedback received. the final stage of this phase calls for an evaluation of the campaign during implementation. based on the results, the campaign should be modified / adjusted during implementation to ensure that the campaign addresses the weaknesses / deficiencies identified during this phase. stage 7: evaluate the overall campaign the evaluation process starts at the initial stages of planning. as research is conducted on various aspects to determine initial awareness, context, and behaviours, a type of evaluation is already in progress. the baseline data and context information collected beforehand will help measure changes attributable to the communication campaign. it is important to design an overall evaluation strategy at the beginning of the 85 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective 86 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective communication campaign. depending on resources available and information needs, the evaluation can use any or all of the following strategies identified by coffman (2004): formative evaluation usually takes place ahead of time, collecting information to help shape the campaign’s activities. for a public-will campaign, this evaluation might involve measuring awareness through public polling or testing of messages and materials in focus groups, either formally or informally. sometimes, a “meta-survey” or summary analysis of existing polling data can serve the same purpose. process evaluation examines the campaign’s implementation or the way activities unfold. process evaluation might count the number of materials distributed, the development and dissemination of messages and materials, and the number of efforts to work with the media. outcome evaluation examines the campaign’s results, which usually means its effects on its target audience(s). evaluators often use surveys, polling, or other qualitative means of gathering this type of information. impact evaluation examines effects at the community, state, national, or international level, or a campaign’s long-term outcomes (including the effects of behaviour or policy change). impact evaluation can also attempt to determine causation, i.e. whether the campaign caused observed impact(s). this assessment typically requires rigorous evaluation design methodology, such as experimental or quasi-experimental techniques. conclusion the purpose of this study was to explore how hiv/aids communication campaigns are planned and managed at higher education institutions. sixteen higher education institutions in south africa were used for this study. it can be concluded that institutional hiv/aids prevention campaigns at higher education institutions will benefit from the better reporting of campaign components; more systematic evaluation; greater integration of theory; and increased attention to linking campaigns to the institution’s overall hiv/aids policy. 87 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective references aids foundation of south africa. 2000. aids in south africa. [online]. available at: http://www.aids.org.za/aids_in_south_africa.htm [accessed on 08/11/2006]. airhihenbuwa, c. o. and obregon, r. 2000. a critical assessment of theories/models used in health communication for hiv and aids. journal of health communication 5: 5-10. coffman, j. 2002. public communication campaign evaluation: an environmental scan of challenges, criticism, practice and opportunities. cambridge, ma: harvard family research project, prepared for the communications consortium media centre. coffman, j. 2003. lessons in evaluating communication campaigns. five case studies. cambridge, ma: harvard family research project, prepared for the communications consortium media centre. coffman, j. 2004. strategies communication audit. cambridge, ma: harvard family research project, prepared for the communications consortium media centre. dalrymple, l. 1995. the evaluation of a drama approach to aids education. durban: university of natal. department of health. 2004. moving the nation to act. a research report on the khomanani campaign 2002-2004. [online]. available at: http://www.aidsinfo.co.za [accessed on 08/11/2006]. epstein, e. 1997. sex news: aids education media development in south africa. durban: university of natal. feddes, r. 2006. an experimental study of external stigma as a side effect of fear appeals in hiv/aids education text messages among black adolescents and adults with a lower socio-economic status in south africa. nijmegen: radboud universiteit nijmegen. hiv and aids audit: interventions in south african higher education 2003-2004. 2004. pretoria: higher education hiv/aids programme (heaids). jennings, r., mulaudzi, j., everatt, d., richter, m., and heywood, m. 2002. discrimination & hiv/aids.[online]. available at: http://www.alp.org.za [accessed on 15/10/2005]. kelly, k. and parker, w. 2000. communities of practice. contextual mediators of youth response to hiv/aids sentinel site monitoring and evaluation project stage two. report commissioned by the beyond awareness campaign hiv/aids and std directorate department of health. south africa: centre for aids development, research and evaluation. kelly, k., parker w. and oyosi, s. 2001. pathways to action. hiv/aids prevention. children and young people in south africa. a literature review. south africa: centre for aids development, research and evaluation. lynch, v. j., lloyd, g. a. and fimbres, m. f. 1993. the changing face of aids. implications for social work practice. westport (usa): greenwood publishing. mody, b. 1991. designing messages for development communication. new delhi: sage. parker, w. 1994. the development of community-based media for aids education and prevention in south africa: towards an action-based participatory model. durban: university of natal. parker, w., dalrymple, l. and durden, e. 2000. communicating beyond aids awareness. a manual for south africa. aukland park, south africa: beyond awareness consortium. pettifor, a. e., rees, h. v., steffenson, a., hlongwa-madikizela, l., macphail, c., vermaak, k. and kleinschmidt, i. 2004. hiv and sexual behaviour among young south africans: a national survey of 15-24 year olds. johannesburg: reproductive health research unit, university of witwatersrand. shisana, o. 2002. nelson mandela/hsrc study of hiv/aids. south african national hiv prevalence, behavioural risks and mass media household survey 2002. [online]. available at: http://www.cadre.org [accessed on 05/10/2005]. soul city. 2000. soul city: heartbeat of the nation. series 4 – audience reception – aids. houghton: soul city institute for health and development communication. soul city. 2001. soul city 4. impact evaluation: aids. [online]. available at: http:www.soulcity.org.za [accessed on 05/10/2005]. swanepoel, p. 2003. stemming the hiv/aids epidemic in south africa: are our hiv/aids campaigns failing us?. south africa: department of afrikaans and theory of literature, university of south africa. uys, t., martin, l., ichharam, m., alexander p., els, r. and eiselen, r. 2002. hiv/aids and students at rau final report centre for sociological research. johannesburg: rand afrikaans university. yun, h., govender, k. and mody, b. 2001. factoring poverty and culture into hiv/aids campaigns. gazette 63(1): 73-95. 88 hiv/aids campaigns: a process model perspective communitas omslag nov 2008 17 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 17 33 d.f.m. strauss* abstract most modern linguists emphasise the fact that, as de saussure states it, the “bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary”. although this emphasis may prompt one to fathom that language use as such is com¬pletely arbitrary, there are diverse considerations supporting the view that language is also co-determined by an underlying, constant framework. the latter reveals the two basic dimensions of human experience, reflected within language in the presence of verbs, nouns (and property terms; attributes). verbs and property terms are made possible by the multiple functional domains of our experience related to the how of things and not to their concrete what. these aspectual (ontic) domains actually serve as points of entry to our experience of and reflection upon things and events within reality, expressed in linguistic patterns. as constant cadres (frameworks) these points of entry make possible (co-condition) the rich variability found in different languages. de saussure already had to concede, in an almost contradictory fashion, that there is both an element of mutability and immutability attached to language. it will be argued that the horizon of the functional conditions of language ultimately underlies meaningful communication and that acknowledging it enables a new approach both to translation and the learning of new languages. in conclusion a remark about methodology is made. * d.f.m. strauss is professor in the dean's office, faculty of the humanities at the university of the free state. introduction the metaphor of the “modal grid” employed in the title of this article aims at giving an account of indispensable ontonomic conditions for language and communication. scholars within the field of the communication sciences may find the metaphor modal grid and the term ontonomic as unfamiliar.1 we start by explaining the meaning of the term ontonomic. in a later context we shall give an account of the metaphor modal grid. “on” is the greek word for what exist, what is – and “nomos” is the greek word for “law” in the broad sense of the term (not restricted to its jural meaning). the most familiar word derived from the root “on” is the philosophical study of what is, namely ontology. whereas the term ontology acquired an encompassing scope applicable to whatever there is, its equivalent cosmology appeared to be restricted to the limited perspective of a physical account of the origin and genesis of the (physical) world. traditionally ontology is therefore related to “being” – intending to capture the concrete existence of whatever there may be. since aristotle the discipline within which ontological questions are raised bears the name metaphysics and a contemporary author such as loux refers to things that are – and immediately relates them to the question what the categories are in terms of which we think about what is real, about reality (loux 2002:16). the moment categories enter the scene we are confronted with the basic human ability to understand and to conceive, to acquire concepts and on that basis to be able to classify. the first question that will turn out to be of crucial importance for an understanding of language, communication and translation is: what is entailed in acts of classification and categorisation? think of our first experiences as human beings. as we begin to explore our selfconsciousness we realise that we live within a family and that there are sleeping rooms in the house. the normal daily routine of going to bed in the evening and getting up again the next morning presupposes our cognitive ability to identify the bed and to distinguish it from other furniture in the bedroom. without knowing what a bed is and without realising that a chair is not a bed, one may find one’s pants in the bed and oneself hanging over the chair. identifying and distinguishing this bed from the chair over there presupposes an understanding of the general (universal) attributes of chairs and beds, enabling us to conceptualise the categories of chairs and beds.2 in other words, observing a bed as a bed rests on the concept of a bed (implying, amongst others, the property: “something to sleep on”). likewise, noticing a chair as a chair depends on the prior concept of a chair (implying, amongst others, the property: “something to sit on”). in these minimal indications, enough is found to highlight the fact that classifying this chair and that bed into the categories of chairs and beds, requires both similarities and differences. both chairs and beds are cultural artifacts, in our comparison captured by the anonymous reference to “something” – the moment of similarity between them, for they are things in an ontic sense. but although we are referring in both instances to “something,” the two “things” are different, for the one is a chair and the other a bed. 18 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language categorising and discerning similarities are normally reflected in language, in the designation of what has been subsumed under a particular category and on that basis it can be communicated to (shared with or even translated for) others. it seems natural to assume that things (i.e. natural and social entities) exist out there, i.e. that they have an ontic nature. stones, clouds, planets, galaxies, flowers, trees, dogs, cats, human beings, artifacts, and societal collectivities are all concretely existing things displaying an ontic nature. however, conceding that there are concretely existing things (and processes) does not settle the subsequent issue: what is the status of these categories themselves? are they merely inventions of the human mind, constructions of our understanding, or do they have an ontic existence too? in the tradition of the early greek thinker parmenides we find categories such as unity, truth, beauty and goodness in the thought of plato. aristotle, in turn, commences his work categoriae by postulating the existence of a primary substance that is purely individual and supposedly lies at the basis of all the accidental categories – namely essence, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, activity and passivity.3 during the middle ages this platonic and aristotelian legacies were continued until a radical reorientation emerged since the 14th century. descartes (1596-1650), for instance, claims that number and all universals are mere modes of thought (principles of philosophy, part i, lviii – see descartes 1965a:187). this conviction holds that only concrete entities are real but that their properties are human constructions. in spite of this switch an essential element of the classical greek legacy remained in force. plato started by assuming a transcendent world of static being populated by immutable ontic forms (eidè) copied in the world of becoming (genesis). during the early middle ages neoplatonism mediated the transformation of these static eidè into the original designs present in the divine intellect according to which visible things were formed. with the transition to the renaissance and the rise of modern humanism these ideas (universal forms) in the divine mind became immanent to the human mind – known as idea innate (innate ideas). descartes adhered to the apriori nature of these innate ideas, supposedly present in human understanding prior to any experience. language acquisition – an apriori human faculty: chomsky the view that language represents an apriori human faculty derives from a revival of the notion of idea innate during the 20th century in the thought of the linguist noam chomsky. stegmüller employs a neat comparison in order to explain chomsky’s understanding of this issue. he compares acquiring/mastering a language with the complexities involved in studying differential geometry and quantum physics.4 whereas it would seem to be far-fetched to believe that a two-year old boy is mastering the said disciplines, no one considers it strange to hear that such a boy is mastering his mother tongue. the remarkable element in this story is that chomsky advanced a number of empirical arguments supporting his conviction that learning an ordinary language cannot be accounted for merely in terms of an empirical process. what is at stake is the mastery 19 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language of a grammatical structure and linguistic rules from an apparently insufficient amount of linguistic data and to this chomsky adds that even a child can generate more sentences than there are seconds in the life of any average person. keeping in mind the comparison between mastering a complex scientific theory and learning a language, one should imagine that differences in intelligence would be significant in the former case, but strangely enough the same does not apply to language acquisition, for large differences in intelligence result in negligible differences in linguistic competence. furthermore, the linguistic experience to which the child is exposed is not only limited but also largely degenerate, and notwithstanding this the child masters the principles and rules governing the formation of meaningful sentences and the interpretation of linguistic utterances. perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that language is learned during a stage in which the child is not capable of achieving anything comparable. the absence of any direct instruction and above all the fact that many children succeed in learning to speak without actively participating in talking activities ought to be mentioned as well. besides, once the basic linguistic competency is mastered the child can creatively generate meaningful sentences never heard before – ruling out any idea that language merely emerges through acts of imitating what is heard. all-in-all these considerations are used by chomsky in support of his claim to that an apriori element is inherent to the faculty of language-acquisition. in order to appreciate this claim properly we need to investigate the idea of an ontic apriori dimension of human experience. an ontic apriori dimension: the modal grid of reality de saussure is particularly known for his view that language is an arbitrary construction and that the bond between the signifier and the signified is equally arbitrary. consequently, according to him also the “linguistic sign is arbitrary”. he holds the view that the word “symbol” is not appropriate as a designation of the “linguistic sign” because [o]ne characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. the symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot (de saussure 1966:68). in a letter to j. gallois (by the end of 1672), leibniz pursued the tradition of aristotle and boethius when he used the term “symbol” as synonymous with “nota”. as an arbitrary sign, it serves as a genus concept for linguistic expressions and written signs, including mathematical signs. the epistemology of the 18th century combined this view of an arbitrary sign with the theory of symbolical knowledge (cognitio symbolica). meier-oeser mentions the “organon” of lambert (1764) in which an ambivalence can be observed regarding the purely arbitrary nature of the sign on the one hand and its codetermination by relations or analogies (sensory image and symbolic knowledge) on the other. he also refers to kant, who conceived the symbol as “a sign of signs” – although 20 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language kant opened up another avenue by associating a symbol with allegory and metaphor (see the meier-oeser 1998: 718-720).5 of course there are also other thinkers in the 20th century who used the term symbol in the sense of freely chosen signs. some of them are of the opinion that language is the particular characteristic that distinguishes humankind from animals. by means of language humanity owns and utilises a consciousness of the past and the future, a consciousness including the knowledge of the individual person’s limited lifespan.6 animal communication does not refer to the past or the future. it refers to the vital here and now. for this reason, animal signs strictly have one content only for every single sign. cassirer (cf. 1944) introduces the well-known distinction between signals and symbols. the former belongs to the physical world of being and the latter is a part of the human world of meaning, the world of human culture. von bertalanffy says that symbolism “if you will, is the divine spark distinguishing the most perfectly adapted animal from the poorest specimen of the human race” (von bertalanffy 1968: 20). in order to identify symbols, he uses three criteria: • symbols are representative, i.e., the symbol stands in one way or the other for th thing symbolised; • symbols are transmitted by tradition, i.e., by the learning processes of the individual in contrast to innate instincts; and • symbols are freely created (von bertalanffy 1968: 15; cf. 1968a: 134). language positions itself in-between the grasp of the hand and the purview of the eye – the eye as the “organ of making-something-immediately-present”. thus, in various respects, the hand and the eye become dispensable (cf. hofer & altner 1972: 203; plessner 1975: 378). animal communication, according to plessner, does not know a “mediation through objects” (plessner 1975: 380; cf.379). surely, this phenomenon is particularly remarkable, since, in the domain of human sensitivity, the sense of seeing and the sense of touching dominate that of smelling (cf. haeffner 1982: 16). plessner also points out that animals are not interested in an object as such and likewise not in information as such (plessner 1975: 377). yet in spite of the emphasis one can lay on the idea of an arbitrary sign, human language is nonetheless constantly embedded in a horizon of possibilities that provide the overall framework within which the relativity of arbitrary sign-creation is positioned. if language is constituted by the use of signs then it is inevitable that anyone using language ought to use signs – in other words, in order to be involved in language at all it is necessary (and not arbitrary) to employ signs. the element of arbitrariness only concerns the creation or choice of alternative signs. moreover, since language embraces the multi-aspectual universe it also cannot “escape” from the functional possibilities conditioning the world. for example, every language contains words designating the multiple shapes and forms in which our (numerical) awareness of the 21 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language one and the many manifests itself. every language has its own words, but none of them can ever escape from having quantitative terms. the inevitability of having numerals (number terms) is constant, what is variable is the alternative (“arbitrary”) ways in which numerals are designated in different languages. the same applies to spatial relations. not only is there no single language that does not signify spatial relations, such as different kinds of extension (e.g. distance as onedimensional extension, surface as two-dimensional extension and volume as threedimensional extension), for in addition to this our spatial awareness of size (e.g. large and small) is found in the use by diminutives (see jenkinson 1986). clearly, the numerical and spatial aspects are not the product of language for they underlie and make possible what language can achieve by exploring (in a lingual way) the possibilities offered by them. similarly, every language captures the intimate connection between what is enduring and what is altered. within the disciplines of mathematics and logic this connection is designated with the words “constants” and “variables”. the reality underlying these terms concerns the issue of constancy and change – where our awareness of constancy primarily relates to the kinematic aspect of pure (uniform) motion and our awareness of change first of all concerns the operation of energy in a physical sense (when energy operates it causes changes – the source of our awareness of causality). once again: these two aspects also condition – in the sense of making possible – our experience of persistence (constancy) and change (variability), an experience that is distinctly articulated by every unique language. at this point we may pause for a moment in order to explore this issue from a different angle. geckeler (1971: 242) points out – in connection with synonyms and antonyms – that the following question poses an unsolved problem for the discipline of linguistics: what is the reason why for certain lexical units there are contrary opposites (antonyms) immediately available – such as “old” / “young” while it is impossible for others (e.g. “book” / “?”)? w.j. de klerk (1978: 114) in addition remarks that most adjectives appear in dichotomy pairs, for example short/long, poor/rich, small/wide, ill/healthy, and so on. in a different context j. lyons (1969: 469) holds the following view: “the existence of large numbers of antonyms and complementary terms in the vocabulary of natural languages would seem to be related to a general human tendency to ‘polarize’ experience and judgment – to ‘think in opposites’.” various distinctions are needed in order to resolve these issues. let us begin with that between modes of existence and the multi-modal existence of (natural and social) entities and events. from the latin root the term mode designates a functional way of being, the manner in which something operates or functions. distinguishing between the numerical, spatial, kinematic or physical function of entities is made possible by the fact that these facets belong to a unique dimension of reality, the dimension of (universal and constant) modal aspects. they condition the existence of concrete entities and processes in the sense that all of them have typical functions within every aspect. whereas the dimension of modal functions relates to the how of reality, the 22 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language dimension of entities relates to its concrete what. the important point is that once an entity is identified, in response to the question what it is, subsequently statements can be made concerning its how. for example, after having identified this book one can continue by saying something about its weight (mass – physical manner of existence), its price (economic mode of existence), its size (spatial function), and so on. within each modal aspect functional oppositions are natural – such as large or small within the spatial mode, strong or weak within the physical, healthy or ill within the biotic, cheap or expensive within the economic, beautiful or ugly within the aesthetic. a proper understanding of the dimension of modal functions therefore immediately resolves the problems raised by geckeler, de klerk and lyons. it seems as if logical thinking – exploring amongst other things the relation between a subject and a predicate – and language – structuring sentences on the basis of verbs/adjectives and nouns – are both formally determined by die dimension of modes (reflected in predicate and verbs/adjectives) and entities (reflected in the subject of a statement and in the use of nouns). the qualification formal accounts for the fact that modal properties may be the subject of a statement or utterance while entities then take on the role of a predicate, verb or adjective. it is noteworthy to refer in this connection to the fact that some languages reveal a tendency to be structured by “substantives” (e.g. persian), whereas others (e.g. old greek and german) tend to be governed by a verb structuring.7 one may use the metaphor of the modal grid of reality in order to capture the foundational role of the dimension of modal aspects with regard to logical thinking and the use of language. in the absence of a diversity of aspects logical analysis – identification and distinguishing – would collapse. as points of entry to reality the modal aspects enable meaning classifications, e.g. by distinguishing between different kinds of entities, such as physical things (“matter”), living entities (plants, animals and human beings), sentient creatures (animals and humans), cultural objects [differentiated in multiple categories, such as analytical objects (test tubes), lingual objects (books), social objects (furniture), economic objects (money), aesthetic objects (works of art), jural objects (jails), ethical objects (engagement rings, wedding rings), and so on]. the ultimate issue is therefore whether or not we are willing to acknowledge the foundational role of the dimensions of aspects and entities. the metaphor of the modal grid of reality focuses on whether or not there are, prior to any human intervention or construction, a given (ontic) multiplicity of aspects, modes or functions of reality. furthermore, since these modal aspects co-condition the existence of concrete entities functioning within them, language and communication are bound to reflect this functional diversity. the significance of this insight for an understanding of language and communication is dependent upon another important distinction, namely that between concept and word. scholars tend to confuse or even identify concept and word (see for example rossouw 2003:17 ff.). a concept has its (logical) content and a word has its (lingual) meaning. 23 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language words may designate whatever there are – aspects, entities and processes and even concepts. but a word is not a concept. a concept unties a multiplicity of universal features (and it is “blind” for what is unique and individual). consider the concept human being or the concept triangle. the universality of the features constituting a human being makes it possible to recognise (identify) a human being wherever one encounters one. likewise, when the terms line, angle, (closed) surface and three are combined in the unity of the concept triangle the universality of these traits makes it possible to recognise a triangle wherever and whenever it is encountered. a concept in this sense transcends every word and every language. for that reason a concept cannot be translated. one understands the concept of a triangle or one does not understand it – irrespective of the lingual sign employed to designate it. the english word triangle can be translated into other languages, for example into afrikaans (driehoek), german (dreieck), and so on. there are multiple words for this concept, but the universality of the concept precludes the idea of its “translation”. a number of years ago the claim was made at an international conference in vienna (on the comparison of chinese medicine and western medicine) that the chinese do not have the concept culture. during discussion time i asked the speaker if the chinese language does have translations for words such as power, formation, control, and fantasy and a phrase such as the free formative fantasy of human beings – to which the answer was affirmative. yet all these words are in some respect synonymous to the english word culture, indicating that the chinese do have a concept of culture but merely lack a translational equivalent for the english word culture! the lingual ability to signify presupposes the analytical ability to identify and distinguish – and identifying something amounts to nothing but acquiring a concept of it. lingual communication explores this foundational relationship in various ways, first of all through direct conceptually based interaction. yet the inherent ambiguity of all language does not warrant a straight-forward claim to literal language or the simple distinction between literal and metaphorical language use. by its very nature linguistic expression is ambiguous and requires interpretation. a well-known case may illustrate this point. as an example of an allegedly literal sentence the following one was presented: “the cat is on the mat.” the fact that this apparently “literal” sentence still required interpretation was underscored by the following reaction: “oh, i know exactly what it means: the poor hippy is once again in the office of the boss!” what is striking about this example is that both sentences contain words making an appeal to familiar concepts. there is no doubt about what the concept cat or the concept mat is all about, just as there is no doubt about what the concept of a (military) general or a lion entails. yet, the moment language is at stake the conceptual level is transcended, making possible an expression such as the lion of western transvaal (general de la rey). in a purely logical sense it is contradictory to affirm that a human being is a lion, but within the context of language it is perfectly permissible to generate expressions such as these.8 24 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language within ordinary language words reflecting modal qualities (properties) are always embedded in a context where concrete things and events are discussed. to this extent all language and communication, in spite of the richness in variation owing to the operation of the free formative fantasy of human beings, is bound to the horizon of modal (aspectual) possibilities. this does not merely imply terms derived from the core (primitive) 9 meaning of particular aspects, but also interconnections between various aspects, evinced in partial similarities and partial differences (known as analogies).10 many composite phrases capture inter-modal analogies – such as emotional life (an analogy of the biotic meaning of life within the sensitive mode of feeling), social distance (spatial analogy within the social mode), economic trust (a fiduciary analogy within the economic aspect), aesthetic integrity (a moral analogy within the aesthetic facet), energy constancy (a kinematic analogy within the physical mode), and so on. what might have seemed, at first sight, to be mere arbitrary constructions of human language, in fact turns out to be instances of analogical linkages underlying similar composite phrases found in all languages, once more underscoring the conditioning role of the modal grid of reality regarding language and communication. let us consider a sentence chosen at random: “does life in the united states actually show signs of moral and cultural crisis, or does a closer look reveal the continuing resilience of the world’s most successful and self-renewing democracy?”11 in terms of the modal grid that conditions what is said, we can identify the following words presupposing different modal aspects: life (the biotic mode – here taken as an analogy within human interaction – social life); show (sensitive aspect); signs (lingual mode); moral (the ethical aspect); cultural (the cultural-historical mode); continuing resilience (the equivalent of the intimate connection between constancy and change – derived from the kinematic and physical aspects); closer (reflecting the spatial meaning of nearby as opposed to far away); look (the metaphorical use of an observational term derived from the sensitive mode); most (derived from the quantitative meaning of more and less); successful (effective – figuratively derived from the physical cause-effect relation); and self-renewing (reflecting the interconnection between persistence and change found in thermodynamically open systems).12 in addition there are of course entitary-directed words present in the sentence – such as “united states,” “world,” and “democracy” – also reflecting a distinct dimension of reality, namely the dimension of (natural and social) entities, events and processes. the misleading impression of the unconditioned creative powers of language and communication is particularly enhanced by contemporary views on the nature and role of metaphors. yet also in this case it should be pointed out that ultimately metaphors explore possibilities provided by the interconnections between the dimensions of aspects and entities (see the sketch below). they explore analogies (1) between different entities (e–e: “the nose of the car”); (2) between entities and functional aspects (e–a: such as the “web of belief”); and (3) between aspects and entities (a–e: a widespread example is found in evolutionary biology, where the biotic facet – with life as its core functional meaning – is treated as if it is an entity, for example when 25 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language biologists speak of the “origin of life” instead of the genesis of living entities; (another example is when we speak of the “social glue” of society). metaphors falling within categories 1, 2, and 3 may be replaced by totally different ones. but modal functional (inter-aspectual) analogies cannot be replaced – at most they can be substituted with synonyms (for example when continuous extension – the core meaning of the spatial aspect – is “synonymised” by words and phrases such as being connected, coherent or even the expression the whole-parts relation). figure 1: possibilities between the dimensions of aspects and entities implications for translation as inter-lingual communication acknowledging the co-conditioning role of the modal grid of reality for language use and communication does have practical implications for translation and for supporting the development of a linguistic competence within another language. in order to master a new language a number of skills are needed, amongst them the required vocabulary, specifically directed to the names of the diversity of things populating the universe. but in addition to this (abstracting for a moment from the implied grammar) a working knowledge is required regarding the “point-of-entry-terms” derived from the modal grid of reality. suppose an english speaking person chooses to learn german. of course there is a close link between these two languages owing to the fact that both are germanic languages. this shared background, for example, will be particularly supportive in mastering many similar words, such as (english/german): house / haus; school / schule; knee / knie; nature / natur; philosophy / philosophie; state / staat; investment / investierung. once a sufficient number of familiar nouns (and some others not so similar) is known the possibility to talk about things is dependent upon the employment of what we have called “point-of-entry-terms,” i.e. terms derived from the different modal aspects in which concrete entities function. since every concrete entity and process in principle functions within each modal aspect,13 knowledge of aspectual terms provides access to the possibility of speaking about all entities and processes. 26 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language generally speaking, in learning a new language it is therefore crucial to obtain modal functional terms (and their analogies within other modes) in order to be able to master this element of a lingual competency within the language that is learned. a few examples will suffice. the one and the many (in german: einheit and vielheit) is found in many related quantitative terms, such as more, less, few, little, some and so on. likewise the awareness of spatial continuity comes to expression in (the above mentioned) related terms such as coherence, connectedness, and the whole-parts relation. furthermore, persistence, on-going, uniformity (uniform flow), and so on reveal the core meaning of kinematic constancy, just as energy-operation, cause and effect (causality), functioning and so on reveal the irreducible meaning of the physical mode of reality. once this is realised, namely that we need knowledge of such modal terms and the skill (linguistic competence) to employ such terms in actual speech, the task of learning a new language obtained a huge advance. suppose i need to speak of the fact that within human life things are constantly changing, then i need to have at my disposal the required german terms for on-going (namely “konstant,” “ständig” and “immer”) – and then it is easy to employ one of them (for example by saying “das die sachen sich ständig ändern”). the method implied by this insight, regarding the learning of a new language, is to obtain a “modal thesaurus” specifying the alternative and related modal terms found within each aspect of reality, for once they are known the learner of the new language has the freedom to employ them in a way fitting the lingual context. acknowledging the modal grid of reality amounts to an exploration of a new kind of thesaurus, one constituted by the original meaning of a modal aspect and other modal aspects in which we find analogies of the original aspect. a few examples will illustrate what is intended with such a modal thesaurus. it is clear that our awareness of the one and the many brings to expression the core meaning of quantity, captured in ordinary questions about how many? it is natural to count any multiplicity of entities, events, thoughts or whatever is distinct. for that reason mathematicians coined the practice to refer to the numbers employed in acts of counting as the natural numbers. suppose we switch to the spatial aspect. within this aspect of reality there are multiple analogies of the original meaning of number to be found. whereas it is clear that one can extend the succession of natural numbers (1, 2, 3, …) beyond all finite limits (there are always more to come), this “beyond limits” of the literally without-an-end (infinite) is turned inwards by space, for any extended spatial continuum could be divided, once again sub-divided, and so on indefinitely. this amounts to the infinitely divisibility of spatial continuity. although an infinite succession is original within the numerical aspect, the spatial reality of infinite divisibility analogically reflects this original numerical meaning within the aspect of space. furthermore, the mere concept of spatial distance also reflects the coherence between space and number, because distance is always specified by a number. yet the number specifying the distance (say of a line-stretch) has a spatial meaning, merely pointing 27 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language back to the original meaning of number as the measure of spatial extension distance (as numerical analogy) is not identical to spatial extension. for that reason a line is not the shortest distance between two points – it is at most the shortest connection. since spatial extension embraces different dimensions (a line is an instance of onedimensional extension, a surface of two-dimensional extension, volume threedimensional, and so on), it is once again striking that these different orders of extension cannot be specified except on the basis of “borrowing” the numbers one, two, three and so on (1, 2, 3, …) from the quantitative mode. therefore, within the aspect of space numerical analogies appear that are “coloured” by the meaning of continuous extension – such as dimension, distance – subdivided in specified terms such a length (1dimensional extension), surface (2-dimensional extension), and volume (3-dimensional extension). within the next aspect of reality, the kinematic (movement) aspect we also discern numerical analogies, intimately cohering with spatial analogies. the (relative) speed of a moving body is expressed by a number on the basis of assessing the mutual dependence of distance and time (if one travels 100 km in two hours the average speed was 50 km per hour). perhaps the most important instance of a numerical analogy within the kinematic aspect is highlighted in einstein’s theory of relativity where the velocity of light (in a vacuum) is postulated as a constant (300 000 km per second). the physical concept of mass (compare the amount or quantity of energy) reveals a numerical analogy within the physical aspect, while the mere concept of organic life entails the inter-dependent functioning of a multiplicity of organs, demonstrating the inevitable presence of a numerical analogy within the biotic aspect. enough to illustrate the general point regarding a “modal thesaurus” – within every post-arithmetical aspect one encounters a different domain of numerical analogies. that there are so many different words and languages indeed displays an element of arbitrariness, of lingual freedom in the formation of a specific language. yet what crystallised within each particular language is always co-conditioned by the modal grid of reality and the web of interconnections found between the aspects present within this dimension of reality (analogical references). since these conditions are constant and universal they are necessary in the sense that without them language as such becomes impossible. for that reason we have argued that the modal grid of reality underlies language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language (inter-lingual communication). remark on methodology normally methodological considerations disregard the fact that scientific knowledge merely deepens and discloses our non-scientific experience of reality in its diversity. for that reason prior to the development of a method in service of the investigation of reality every special scientist must already have a non-scientific insight into the nature of his/her field of inquiry. the designed method could never provide or substitute this presupposed knowledge. the unique nature of whatever is investigated determines every method aimed at acquiring knowledge about it. 28 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language neopositivism assigns to the “scientific method” a privileged status. the assumed “exactness” of this “scientific method” (observation, formulating hypotheses and testing them in order to obtain confirmed hypotheses or theories) is accredited with the capacity to serve as the only gateway to all scientific knowledge. however, as the frankfurt school clearly realised, even the “most exact” methods may be misleading: to be sure, even the most rigorous methods can lead to false or meaningless results, if they are applied to problems for which they are not adequate or which they deal with in a distorting manner (adorno & horkheimer 1973: 122; cf. van niekerk 1986: 39). the basic question is simply: does the method determine what we want to know scientifically, or is the method itself dependent upon the nature of that what we want to know? only a complete denial of the given orderliness in reality could give priority to scientific methods. neeman is astutely aware of the shortcomings in the “method primacy” of positivism. according to him, the positivistic philosophy of science starts with a basic assumption analogous to the gospel of st john: “in the beginning was the method” (neeman 1986: 70). with reference to popper’s falsificationism as a reaction to positivism neeman states: the new ontology therefore was not a consequence of this method. much rather, this method emerged in the first place as a result of new ontological assumptions (neeman 1986: 72). according to him, it was exactly this dogma of the primacy of method that precluded the emergence of a useful natural scientific praxis, “it led to one-sided criteria of rationality accompanied by the mistaken position of positing its own starting points as absolute while denouncing those of the opponent as irrational” (neeman 1986: 70-71). instead of trying to reduce everything within reality to fit the requirements of a specific method, we first have to find out along which lines we can get to an understanding of the given order diversity within creation. this is exactly the aim of what should be designated as the transcendental-empirical method explored in the current article. the appeal to the ontic status of the various modal aspects of reality implies that one has to establish what ultimately makes possible our experience of numerical relationships, spatial relationships, and so on. and we argued that language, communication and translation are made possible (in the sense of being co-conditioned) by these foundational modes of experience. the word transcendental is employed in order to capture this underlying role of the aspects of reality. since they make possible what we can experience within the diversity of reality, they serve as the foundation coconditioning our empirical world – explaining why we designate this method as the transcendental-empirical method. scientific reflection is always confronted with the orderliness (or: disorderliness) of reality. accepting this ontically given datum of experience, the transcendentalempirical method “retroduces” back to the presupposed order for our experience. our 29 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language guiding theoretical hypothesis therefore conjectures an irreducible but mutually coherent multiplicity of modal aspects encompassing the functional conditions for all things, events and societal collectivities. endnotes 1 it is found within certain contexts related to the discipline of theology, but the meaning here intended is completely different from those meaning-nuances. 2 plessner mentions that the overarching ordering found in collective names used by human beings is absent in the case of animals. this follows from the fact that animals do not dispose over the mediating medium of distance, the mediated immediacy of language to things. for that reason they lack an interest in information (plessner 1975: 380). [“dine im sinne eines sammelnamens, wie wir ihn überordnend gebrauchen, kennen sie al solche nicht. es fehlt ihnen dazu das vermittlnde medium der distanz, die vermittelte unmittelbarkeit der sprahe zur sache. daher das mangelnde interesse an information.”] 3 see mckeon 2001: 195 (topics, 103 b 21-23; see also mckeon 2001:10, i.e. categories, 2 b 1517). however, this entire scheme is embedded in the primordial and ultimate dualism between form and matter in his thought. the effect of this dualism is that he distinguishes between accidentia related to matter (such as quantity) and others related to form (such as quality). 4 the explanation in the text is derived from the account given by stegmüller (1969: 530-533). 5 roelofse points out that symbolism differs from ordinary connotative meanings as well as from myths “in that it allows only for [a] specific interpretation. … it is, one may say, totally culturally determined” (roelofse 1982: 89). 6 the neodarwinian evolutionist dobzhansky considers the awareness of death as typifying the distinctive characteristic of human beings. some thinkers are even of the opinion that the ability to commit suicide is typical of the unique nature of being human. 7 with multiple stipulations and derivations on the basis of their verbs (see coseriu 1978: 43). 8 although everyone senses that the concept of a square circle is contradictory, we accept the lingual expression of a boxing ring (that is actually “square”). 9 the core meaning of an aspect brings to expression its irreducibility, which is reflected in its indefinability, explaining why it is also designated as primitive. korzybski underscores that one cannot define ad infinitum: “we thus see that all linguistic schemes, if analysed far enough, would depend on a set of ‘undefined terms’. if we enquire about the ‘meaning’ of a word, we find that it depends on the ‘meaning’ of other words used in defining it, and that the eventual new relations posited between them ultimately depend on the … meanings of the undefined terms, which, at a given period, cannot be elucidated any further” (korzybski 1948:21). 10 when the difference is shown in what is similar, we encounter an analogy. language and communication explores different kinds of analogies. 11 quoted from skillen (1994: 14). 30 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language 12 in the early thirties of the 20th century ludwig von bertalanffy recognised the shortcomings in the prevalent physical understanding of closed systems by realising that both certain physical processes (such as a fire, glacier or an idling car) and biotic phenomena (like growth and staying alive) cannot be accounted for in terms of a theory of closed systems. he introduced the notion of open systems, designated by him with the german term fliessgleichgewicht (a flowing, dynamic equilibrium, in english designated as the steady state – see von bertalanffy 1973: 165). 13 physical entities are subjects within the first four aspects of reality (number, space, the kinematic and the physical). living entities are also subjects in the biotic aspect. sentient creatures in addition have a subject function within the sensitive mode and only human beings have subject functions within the normative aspects (the logical, cultural-historical, sign mode, social, economic, aesthetic, jural, moral and certitudinal). material things (i.e. physical entities) have object functions in all the post-physical aspects, plants in all the post-biotic aspects and animals in all the post-sensitive modes. cultural objects also have object functions within all the normative aspects, i.e. those aspects in which accountable human beings function, either in conformity with or in violation of underlying principles. 31 the “modal grid” underlying language, communication, translation and the learning of a new language references adorno, t.w. and horkheimer, m. 1973. aspects of sociology by the frankfurt institute for social research. london: heinemann. cassirer, e. 1944. an essay on man. new haven, connecticut: yale university press. coseriu, e. 1978: einführung in die strukturelle betrachtung des wortschatzes. in geckeler, h. 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(red.) 1986. sosiale wetenskap, maatskappy en mag. pretoria: hsrc. von bertalanffy, l. 1968. organismic psychology and systems theory. massachusetts: clarke university press. von bertalanffy, l. 1968a. symbolismus und anthropogenese. in rensch, b. & schultz, a.h. (eds.) 1968. handgebrauch und verständigung bei affen und frühmenschen. symposium der werner-reimers-stiftung für anthropogenetische forschung. bern: huber. von bertalanffy, l. 1973. general system theory 34 september 2006 57 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 57 71 arlene archer* abstract this article explores the visual nature of academic discourse within higher education in south africa. it provides insight into the increasing influence of the visual in academic writing – arguing that the materiality and visuality of writing be considered alongside cognitive dimensions. the visual design of writing includes considering aspects such as spelling, typography, emphasis and layout. the article also considers the affordances of images and writing, the function of the visual, and the relations between images and writing. the aim is to create awareness in order to assist students in becoming conscious and active designers of meaning in a multimodal environment. * dr arlene archer is the coordinator of the writing centre at the university of cape town in south africa. she teaches in applied language studies, higher education studies, film and media, as well as in an engineering foundation programme. introduction this article explores the increasing incorporation of the visual into academic writing, including the visual design of written text. in doing so, the aim is to think about what academic discourse looks like in a multimodal environment in order to enable student access to this specialised discourse. new technologies are an important contributor to multimodal texts in academia. these technologies enable a range of possibilities for individuals creating documents, including layout, image, colour, typeface, and sound. flexible, interactive and relatively fluid hypertexts offer the ability to redefine reader, author and text relations… this suggests that new ways are needed to think about forms of literacy, new skills of linking, decomposing and reorganizing elements in a text (jewitt 2006: 9). the challenge for those involved in writing pedagogy is to utilise new technologies effectively and to remain equipped to deal with the changing nature of assignments as a result of these new technologies. according to luke (1996, in jewitt 2006: 9), in a “symbol saturated environment”, it is important to be able to “construct, control, and manipulate visual texts and symbols”. these include developing material for presentation on different technologies and “familiarity with the kinds of icons and the signs evident in computers like the word for windows package, with all its combinations of signs, symbols, boundaries, pictures, words, texts, images” (street 2004: 11). if we focus on reading and writing practices as only one part of what people have to learn in order to be “literate” this could lead to a shift from thinking about literacy as a euphemism for “competence” to thinking about literacy as “design” (see author 2006 for a discussion on the term “literacy”). according to kress (2003: 180), the notion of design starts from “the interest and the intent of the designer to act in a specific way in a specific environment, to act with a set of available resources, and to act with an understanding of what the task at hand is, in relation to a specific audience”. in order to assist students in becoming conscious and active designers of meaning in a multimodal environment, it is worth exploring what form academic discourse takes in this environment. academic discourse in multimodal texts academic discourse is a semiotic practice which has evolved to do specialised kinds of theoretical and practical work. at universities in western societies academic discourse is a socially valued practice, conferring prestige on its users. it often functions within a framework of binaries, privileging one subsystem of binaries: logic over emotion; academic “truth” over personal experience; linearity over circularity; certainty over uncertainty; and formality over informality (lillis 2001: 81). knowledge is often produced through negation and opposition, through “argument” which involves positing a thesis, an antithesis and some new kind of synthesis. it would be interesting 58 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education to explore how argument proceeds in visual texts (through single images or sequences of images) and multimodal texts. here it would be necessary to look at the relationship between different modes in terms of reinforcement of or opposition against a proposition (andrews 2009). academic discourse functions on a hierarchy of epistemologies, creating a disjuncture between the systematised knowledge of the discipline and everyday commonsense knowledge. academic discourse “sets up a pervasive and false opposition between a world of objective, authoritative, impersonal, humourless scientific fact and the ordinary, personal world of human uncertainties, judgements, values and interests” (lemke 1990: 129-130). these different domains of practice (the “scientific” and the everyday) can sometimes be realised in different modes, allowing different orientations to reality to coexist in a single text (author 2006). in a multimodal text like a poster, for instance, the choice of images, colour and other features on the poster could correspond closely to everyday perceptions of the world, whereas the written text could be more impersonal and objective. this is one of the many possible ways to use writing and image in academic discourse. academic discourse is realised in the written mode through lexical choice and particular grammatical constructions such as nominalisation. in the visual mode, academic discourse is realised through diagrammatic representation, the use of vectors, naming and labelling represented components and organising information into analytical hierarchies. in both written and visual modes, the degrees of authorial distance from and degrees of engagement with the subject matter are important in constructing academic discourse. kress and van leeuwen (2006) suggest that we can apply “grammatical” analyses to different modes or semiotic systems in a way similar to those applied to language in its more traditional sense. by grammar they do not mean rules, but rather the ways in which people, places and things depicted in images are combined into meaningful wholes. one important grammatical aspect to look at in academic discourse is modality. modality as used by kress and van leeuwen (2006) refers to the produced shared truth value or credibility of a representation. in academic discourse in the written mode, tentative modality is often the norm and is used in statements such as “it could be argued that”. when looking at modality in a visual text, one looks at how the truth value is established within a particular “coding orientation”. coding orientation is defined as resources being repeatedly used in certain ways, establishing expectations which are habitualised over time (kress & van leeuwen 2006: 170). in science, for instance, abstract and decontextualised representations often convey a truth within an abstract coding orientation, rather than a naturalistic coding orientation. colour can be used as a marker of truth and reality in the visual mode, and colour meanings are developed within the conventions and constraints of particular disciplines. here the markers of modality are colour saturation, colour differentiation, colour modulation, contextualisation, depth, and brightness (kress & van leeuwen 2002). 59 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education in thinking of how the visual and the verbal modes realise academic discourse, it is useful to bear in mind the different affordances of these modes. a key affordance of images is to articulate attitude, including affect, judgement and appreciation (martin 2000). in terms of design logics, written language has a linear sequential logic (where font type, font size and consistent headings follow a linear path) and images tend to have a non-linear logic of space (where different pathways are established through the text). in syntagmatic logic meaning is derived from the sequence of and connection between elements in a linear text. the sentence or written line is a perfect example of syntagmatic logic where the words as signs only have meaning in relation to each other. on the other hand, in paradigmatic logic, more of the meaning is placed in the individual elements of the composition, for example, a visual that represents the characteristics of a particular group. thus, generally speaking, language tends to realise sequential relations better than images which realise spatial relations. although, harris (1995: 45) would complicate these categories by arguing that the underlying logic of writing is spatial, as illustrated by the functioning of braille. written text as visual entity it is often overlooked that writing itself is a visual form of communication. a conventional view of writing is that “the nature of a text lies in its linguistic content and structure, not its layout or its materiality (the physical form, such as ink on a paper page)” (sharples 1999: 129). however, learning to write partly means learning how to produce well-designed print and digital texts, and becoming aware of how the design of the page can contribute to readability and persuasion. images and layout have not always been regarded as separate to the writing, but became divorced from the process of writing during the nineteenth century. before that, in medieval times, a writer would have regarded them as indissoluble parts of the text. in the nineteenth century, two events led to separation of written text from its visual form. the first was the mechanisation of publishing, including mechanical typesetting. the second event was “the promotion of the densely written page as a symbol of literacy” (sharples 1999: 130). the notion of image and layout as separate to the written text has persisted well into the twentieth century, but it is now disappearing as a result of computer-based publishing. the modal resource of writing has undergone a transformation within electronic textual environments. writing remains a dominant mode within environments such as the computer or mobile phone, and is, of course, still the most valued in academic environments. a textual feature typically associated with academic writing is citation. it is a resource used in the design of meanings in socially shaped and regular ways. it would be fascinating to look at the visual cues for citation and how these perform a rhetorical function through the form and layout of the text. for instance, the claims that are made about the authority of a written piece when there are many large blocks of indented quotes or when the piece is littered with references in a way suggesting insecurity of authorial voice. 60 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education the notion of writing as “design” suggests we consider both the materiality and visuality of writing alongside its cognitive dimensions. according to sharples (1999: 131), “the language, visual appearance and physical form of a text together constitute the writer’s communication with the reader. they embody, or encode, assumptions about the nature of that communication”. he gives the example of instructions which are texts designed to be clear. the layout of the instructions complements the writing but does not intrude on it. however, there are also written texts whose visual designs are intended to be beautiful or intriguing, but not necessarily clearly legible. here, the “presentation forms a large part of the appeal of the text” (sharples 1999: 131). written texts where clarity gives way to visual appeal include calligraphy and concrete poetry, where the shape of the writing on the page forms part of the meaning. the idea of concrete poetry in the post-war years was the search for a universal or international poetry, a poetry that would unite and combine languages. interesting examples of south african concrete poetry are willem boshoff’s poems published in kykafrikaans in 1979 (reproduced in vladislavic 2005). these poems were produced on an old-fashioned typewriter and boshoff characterizes kykafrikaans as a homage as well as a farewell to the typewriter. he approached the page the way an artist would approach a canvas, using the typewriter as a “drawing instrument” (vladislavic 2005: 26). for instance, in the poem entitled entrenched revelation, boshoff typed the biblical text of revelations onto a sheet of paper, then reinserted the sheet and typed the second page on top of the first, and the third on top of the second. the result is a text that is more of an obfuscation than a revelation: the reader trying to retrieve meaning from this layered chaos is compelled to relive the moment of its disappearance. it must have been clear to start with, when one layer of words filled the page, marching ahead in orderly rows; but with the superimposition of the second layer, the page would have moved out of range of its producer, as obscurity settled slowly over it. an inversion of the creation’s moment of illumination: not light, but darkness (vladislavic 2005: 26). in this kind of poetry, there is a constant interplay between reading and words and looking at the image. concrete poetry is obviously an extreme example of a text where meaning and form are inextricably linked: “the more word approximates image, the more text becomes texture, the less it qualifies as a verbal message” (vladislavic 2005: 26). when thinking of “writing as design” in more conventional written academic genres, the article will now focus on spelling, typography, visual emphasis and the use of white space. spelling and e-language goodman (1996) highlights the different connotations of differently spelt words, which change the visual nature of the word. she uses the examples “hello”, “hallo” and “hullo” to illustrate degrees of informality. perhaps the only time that conventionalised spelling is altered in academic writing is when a particular (new) concept is framed (such as derrida’s “difference”). another visual marker of new concepts can be the use 61 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education of hyphens within words, like “in-side”, or brackets, like “(re)construct”. the hyphens or the brackets indicate the multiple meanings embedded in the word. this kind of play with the visual nature of the word is acceptable in certain kinds of academic writing. another representational choice that academics writing in english need to make about spelling is whether to use british or american spelling and the effect that this choice might have on their intended audience (for example, “colour” or “color”, “centre” or “center”). in contexts outside of academia, differently spelt words can sometimes index a “cool visual dialect” (author 2005), such as the written language of mobile telephones which include homophones and emoticons. a sentence like the following creates what goodman (1996: 51) calls “visual typographic puns”: “u guys r askin me 2 much. i already got enuff catchin’ up 2 do”. the utterance mixes representational media, namely numbers and letters. the visual cue for “too”/ “to” has been changed to “2” which produces an auditory effect similar to the conventional spelling, but also suggests the intonation of a dialect. in terms of academic discourse, spelling is a potent visual indicator to the reader of the academic status of the text. traces of a “cool visual dialect” or e-language conventions tend to lower the credibility of most standard academic texts. however, increasingly in academic environments, students are being required to get involved in computer mediated communication as part of their course work, and often this work gets assessed (even if simply for “participation”). often students continue to use the language conventions of these media even in the more formal task-based pedagogical context. the following is a student posting in a course-based on-line simultaneous discussion forum: my report proposes the following: it proposes someway of improvement of housing situation in rural area. but from what i got from the expert’s reply... i think i just gonna start my report all over again... (and we got test this week,,, and tha next week,,, yeah we got tha whole time in the world, all right?) anyway, i’ll go got sum info. from what tha x-pert suggested... ciao in the extract, we can see how the student uses paralinguistic cues, auditory and visual effects in order to show some kind of resistance to standard academic discourse (author 2005). lack of capital letters and punctuation and poor spelling are visual markers of the “ensemble” that is e-language. she uses ellipsis and three commas to slow down the pace of her text: “and we got test this week,,,and tha next week,,,yeah we got tha whole time in the world, all right?” here she alludes to her perception of the relative unimportance of this course, compared to the others. this is a kind of hip-hop dialect in which the most common formulations include “yo” for “your”, “tha” for “the”, “wuz” for “was”. other features of an african american accent are the dropped endings on words (don’ and sumthin’). she refers to “tha x-pert” (someone knowledgeable in the field of development brought into the online discussion) in subversive ways, using capital letters in the same way one might use inverted commas, as a visual signal of 62 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education subversion in order to question the authority of the expert. the use of capital letters shows a mock respect, whilst the “x” resonates as a rich visual symbol, a “supercharged typographic icon” (goodman 1996: 51) with connotations of transgression, taboo (as in x-rated) and identity (as in malcolm x). the above example demonstrates how new technologies and new assessment environments may open up a space for “play” with language (including exploiting its visual dimensions) in a way that the formal standard assessed assignments do not. elanguage often bleeds into academic genres. yet, as mentioned earlier, it does constitute “academic writing” in a sense because online discussions have become part of the teaching and learning environment and are often assessed. also, it is becoming more common to quote from and reference personal communications such as e-mails in academic writing. typography writing and visual communication form an inseparable unit through typography (van leeuwen 2005b: 138). letter forms as graphic shapes have distinct characters. these are partly based on association and partly on “intrinsic” form and shape. “the printed word has two levels of meaning, the ‘word image’, the idea represented by the word itself, constructed from a string of letters, and the ‘typographic image’, the ‘holistic visual impression’” (van leeuwen 2005b: 138). a font such as ariel is often used in academic writing. sans-serif typefaces such as ariel are open and unadorned and thus suggest “modernity” as well as objectivity. these fonts are also easier to read at small sizes and so are often used within tables or diagrams. serif typefaces, such as times new roman or garamond, have short decorative strokes on each character, which suggest classical elegance. these are also commonly used in academic writing. perhaps a font like times new roman points to a sense of antiquity in the academic project – alluding to manuscripts of old. the typeface of a text can “convey a mood, signal cues as to content or even suggest a point of view” (goodman 1996: 45). look at the following example of the use of different fonts and sizes in an e-mail: hello again my furry friend it was/is my friend bernice’s birthday party…. i drunk…er drank champers…. in the sun…. <fuzzy grin> i can’t breathe. if i don’t quite smokin’ i will keel over and croak my last. you may call me….. type-master…. t. the master of layout and kiss my (;) design. 63 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education the changes of type here are used to show a change in idea. the can also be used to imply multiple voices in a text, as well as turn-taking and intonation. word-processed assignments that change fonts at random generally have lesser academic credibility. commonly, font size is used to indicate hierarchy in headings and smaller fonts are often used for footnotes or tables. more worryingly, change in fonts or font sizes can sometimes indicate “cut and paste” in student writing. van leeuwen (2005b: 142) maintains that since word processors, typographic expression has become accessible to all and he therefore argues that teaching “typographic literacy” should become an integral part of teaching writing at all levels, including academic writing, to enable writers to use “typographic expression effectively and discerningly”. emphasis this article has argued that increasingly a writer is becoming a visual designer. mention was made of spelling and typography, but there are other aspects of visual design, including emphasis and use of white space that are equally important. each choice writers make in laying out text and images on the page generates multiple meanings for its readers, for instance, underlining a piece of writing. the line signifies that those words are significant and in doing so, it “pre-interprets” the text on behalf of the reader (sharples 1999: 137). according to sharples, underlining: suggests the ground: it places the phrase on a firm foundation. the image is also intrusive, it breaks up the white space between the lines … using bold or italics provides emphasis without intruding on the space needed for a reader to scan text a line at a time (1999: 137). in addition, underlining now usually indexes a hyperlink and has become more unavailable as a design resource to indicate emphasis. the underlining of text could be medium-specific. in hand-written drafts or exams it is acceptable, but in wordprocessed documents it indicates a “clickable” hyperlink. in this sense, underlining has come to signify a different medium. there are different kinds of emphasis or what bezemer and kress (2008) call “highlighting”, including font size, use of bold, boxes around text, white space, bullet points, and so on. these all guide the reader through the macro-structure of the text. bold face type and italics are often used as signifiers of affect or degrees of authorial engagement. however, it is uncommon in academic writing to overtly signal affect through emphasis, such as “it is extremely rare to encounter…” emphasis is generally expressed through words rather than visually: “in fact, it is acknowledged that …” would be more common than “it is acknowledged that …”. emphasis can be used to highlight contrast when making an academic argument, for instance: “it is generally acknowledged that there are no works of pure factuality any more than of pure fictitiousness.” it can be used to make a distinction between two different things of a similar class: “it is this type of syntactic pattern that is problematic.” also, when 64 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education quoting from a source, a writer can choose to emphasise a part of the quote that is pertinent to the larger argument. french or latin terminology in english text is often written in italics (like vis-à-vis). this use of italics does not signal emphasis, but is more akin to putting the word in quotation marks. similarly, in scientific writing, some terminology is written in italics. layout and use of white space the layout of a text is achieved through the use of white space. white space is “created within a character and between characters, sentences, lines, paragraphs and columns” (sharples 1999: 139). a page can be spaced both vertically (space between lines and paragraphs, space at the head and foot of the page) and horizontally (spaces between letters and words). in terms of vertical spacing, the academic writer has the choice of signalling paragraphs through line breaks or through indentation of the first line. with horizontal spacing, a writer can group text into meaningful components by, for example, tabulating items or right justification. white space can be varied for effect, and is utilised differently in different genres. if the aim of the writer is to draw the reader into a narrative, then the spacing is more uniform, with little to distract the eye. in a novel, for instance, the “writer holds the reader’s attention by punctuation, dividing the text into sentences and paragraphs that create rhythms of prose” (sharples 1999: 140). due to the generic conventions of a novel, the reader reads the text in a linear way from start to end. for an instructional or a reference genre, the contract between the reader and writer is different. here, the writer employs visual design to reveal the overall structure of the text and to guide the eye towards the more appropriate information. to return to the earlier example of concrete poetry, the closing up of spaces between words is one of the major techniques boshoff uses to make reading difficult or impossible. when the breathing spaces between words are eliminated, when their edges are allowed to bump up against one another, they lose their distinctness and start bleeding into one another or packing together into substance. language as a system of differences collapses (vladislavic 2005: 28). good use of white space can help a reader to see redundancies in the text and thus read faster, see more easily which parts are relevant, see the structure of the document as a whole (hartley 1994). a writer can signal the macro-structure of a text to a reader by combining the use of white space to indicate breaks in meaning with appropriate headings to describe the content. writing and image both exploit the same basic resource, namely “spatial relations” (harris 1995: 48). thibault (2007: 144) argues that, like image, writing has properties such a spatial orientation and continuity of direction. “a line of writing on a page is itself a vector which specifies a particular direction for the purposes of optical scanning… this property therefore provides a basis for the integration of the line to 65 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education action and movement vectors, which belong to the grammar of depiction.” he argues that because both writing and image make use of the same fundamental visual-spatial resources, this constitutes the basis for their integration. multimodal student assignments in higher education this article has attempted to demonstrate the visual nature of written academic texts. students are also, however, required to produce texts which combine the visual and the verbal modes. in these assignments, images are used in conjunction with the written mode to provide context, illustrate a point, make an argument, furnish evidence, or organise data. there are also a range of examples of academic genres that require the use of numerical graphical representations, such as needs analyses, impact assessments, or cost benefit analyses. in multimodal texts, it is important to note the conventions surrounding the type of image, the function of the image, the choice of particular image and the visual-verbal linkages. in terms of the function an image is performing in a text, the image can serve as an illustration, it can be used as evidence in an argument, or it can be a part of an argument. in prince and author (2008), it is argued that numerical graphical representations in texts often function rhetorically. these types of representation tend to have high modality or truth value in academic texts as the assumptions underlying the numbers are generally hidden and numerical representations are often regarded as more factual and objective than other kinds of evidence. the type of image chosen for a particular purpose is important. a photograph may be better suited to emphasise a building in its surrounding context, whereas a more abstract drawing of a plan of a building could emphasise certain structural aspects better than a photograph could. in a scientific coding orientation, a cross-section diagram, perspective drawing or simplified two-dimensional drawing may be more appropriate than a more realistic drawing or photograph. finally, the relations between image and writing need to be explored in multimodal texts. many multimodality theorists have thought about visual-verbal relations and attempted to systematically describe resources for meaning-making at the intersection of image and writing (martinec & salway 2005; unsworth 2006; royce 2002). most of these analyses draw on a social semiotic metafunctional view of communication, specifically using concepts from systemic functional linguistics (halliday & hasan 1989). although they classify and describe the visual-verbal relations differently, there are some underlying trends that emerge: similarity relations, opposition relations, complementary relations, and whole-part paradigmatic relations. in terms of similarity relations, one could look at how one mode exemplifies the other, and interestingly in terms of writing as a visual mode, look at how two different modes co-occur in one spatially bounded homogeneous entity in what lim (2004, in unsworth 2006) calls the phenomenon of “homospatiality”. an example of this is where the smoke from a campfire spells a smoky “hot”. in complementary relationships, what is represented in images and what is represented in writing may be different, but complementary. here it is useful to bear modal specialisation in mind. as mentioned previously, language 66 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education tends to realise sequential relations better than images which realise spatial relations, and images tend to articulate affect and emotion in more direct ways than in writing. these similarity, opposition and complementary relations are close to halliday’s concept of “extension”: the verbal and visual modes provide different, but semantically related information. according to van leeuwen (2005a), barthes’ (1977) concept of anchorage is close to halliday’s concept of “elaboration”. it is a kind of specification as the words pick out one of the possible meanings of the image. the visual-verbal relationships of elaboration and extension are summarized in table 1 below. this is a fairly simplified view of the possible relationships, but is sufficient for the purposes of this article. table 1: overview of visual-verbal linking elaboration specification the image makes the written text more specific (illustration) the written text makes the image more specific (‘anchorage’) explanation / exposition the written text paraphrases the image, or vice versa extension similarity (exemplification, the content of the written text homospatiality) is similar to that of the image opposition the content of the written text contrasts with that of the image complement / enhancement the content of the image extends that of the written text, and vice versa (‘relay’) look at figure 1 as an example of visual-verbal linkages. this is taken from a first-year essay in architecture which requires students to look at the influence of renaissance features on a contemporary shopping and living centre, century city, in cape town. 67 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education figure 1: example of visual-verbal linkages in a firstyear student essay aerial photograph of century city. it is evident that this ‘city’ does not seem to fit in with the context of its surroundings. century city is quite clearly a demarked area of its own. (http://maps.google.com) this image appears at the beginning of the essay and its function is to locate century city in its urban context. the aerial photograph gleaned from google maps is appropriate for this function. the caption is an example of elaboration, and more specifically “specification” or “anchorage” in barthes’ (1977) terms. the words focus the reading of the image (onto some of the social and contextual circumstances of century city) and constrain the number of possible readings one could generate. however, the caption assumes that the offered interpretation for the image is selfevident: “it is evident that this ‘city’ does not seem to fit in with the context of its surroundings.” a substantial amount of contextual knowledge is needed in order to generate this reading. it would be necessary, for instance, to know that century city is constructed in an area previously designated not for whites, under the apartheid regime. the student puts quotation marks around the word ‘city’ in order to question the notion of century city being a city which would include public facilities which were not solely aimed at financial gain, like schools and libraries. it is for these reasons that the opulence and consumerism of century city fit somewhat uncomfortably in the surrounding city. the caption claims that “century city is quite clearly a demarcated area of its own”. again, this assumes prior knowledge and century city is not indicated in any way on the image through the use of a different colour or through the use of a 68 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education border. so, although this caption serves to elaborate on the image and to specify one particular way of looking at it, it does assume a large amount of prior knowledge on the part of the reader. the image and the caption both form part of the larger argument that the student is making about the artificial and commercial nature of century city. conclusion the choice of how to represent data presents complex choices about conjunctions of meaning and form in multimodal composition. when creating texts, people bring together and connect the available form that is most apt to express their meaning at a given time. a writer who selects one visual effect where another is possible creates a motivated conjunction of meaning and form (kress & van leeuwen 2006). the writer selects particular design features to be significant at a particular point, in a particular context. in this article, the author has attempted to show how “all writing creates a web not only of textual meaning, but also of visual connotation” (sharples 1999: 137). it is important to note that both the regularities of modes and the interests of people are socially shaped to realise convention and this takes on a particular form in the academic environment. this author would thus advocate opening up access to texts for students through making explicit how textual conventions work. finally, by seeing students as “designers” of texts we see them as actively engaged in meaning-making. we become interested in the representational choices they make, and the agency they have within the constraints of convention in the discourses of academia. acknowledgements i am grateful to jeff bezemer for an early reading of this paper. this research is based upon work supported by the national research foundation (nrf) in south africa. any opinions, findings or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the nrf does not accept any liability in regard thereto. 69 visual dimensions of academic discourse in higher education references andrews, r. 2009. the importance of argument in education. inaugural professorial lecture. london: institute of education, university of london. author, a. 2005. access and resistance: challenges of using on-line environments to teach academic discursive practices. education as change 9(2): 74-95. author, a. 2006. a multimodal approach to academic ‘literacies’: problematizing the visual/verbal divide. language and education 20(6): 449462. barthes, r. 1977. image-music-text. london: fontana. bezemer, j. and kress, g. 2008. writing in multimodal texts. a social semiotic account of designs for learning. written communication 25(2): 166-195. goodman, s. 1996. visual english. in: goodman, s. and graddol, d. 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(joernalistiek) aan die tshwane universiteit vir tegnologie in pretoria. sy promotors was professore johan van niekerk en leopold scholtz. inleiding die groot vraag in die gedrukte koerantwêreld vandag is: hoe oorleef dié medium in ’n voortdurend veranderende mediawêreld? die dood van die koerant is telkemale in die verlede voorspel: eers met die koms van radio, toe televisie en in die onlangse verlede die internet. tog is die koerantbedryf, veral in die ontwikkelende wêreld, besig om te groei (balding 2007). dit is egter ’n feit dat kommer bestaan oor die toekomsvooruitsigte van die gedrukte koerant in die ontwikkelde wêreld (harris poll 2007). oor die bestek van bykans ’n eeu het koerante hulself steeds relatief goed bly handhaaf en die doemprofete is elke keer verkeerd, of minstens gedeeltelik verkeerd, bewys. die gedrukte media het deurgaans met inhoudsaanpassings en revolusionêre ontwikkelings in die drukkersbedryf in die inligtingsera bygebly. in suid-afrika is dalende of hoogstens statiese sirkulasiesyfers oor twee dekades teen die einde van die vorige eeu die getuienis van ’n bedryf onder druk. perhaps the most in your face fact is that in this span of time so little has really changed. there are a few new names, like daily sun, kaapse son, city press, business day and isolezwe, to mention a few, but then there are also lost and forgotten old ones — oosterlig, friend, vaderland and transvaler are all casualties. the sundays generally sell no more than they used to, despite the population exploding over the last quarter of a century. and the dailies individually sell a whack less than they used to — in many cases a deliberate move to concentrate circulation and reduce distribution costs (herber 2004). midde-in, en deel van hierdie algemeen wêreldwye verwikkelinge en realiteite, staan die afrikaanse koerant in sy eie unieke milieu van multikulture, meertalige en plaaslike ekonomiese omstandighede. in hierdie studie is die volgende omskrywing gegee: “afrikaanse nismark: die identifisering van ’n spesifieke afsetgebied (mark) vir afrikaanse koerante, gedefinieer as ’n ‘afrikaanse nismark’, skakel ten nouste met die uitkomste, en verwagte uitkomste, van die kulturele en ekonomiese vennootskap soos in die wit en bruin afrikaanse samelewing ontwikkel het. dit sluit dus aan by: ‘...what specialists in media gap analysis call an open niche: the place where a clearly identifiable segment of the consumer market has unfulfilled potential, and hence a gap to fill with expendable income’” (addison 2002). daar is verskillende uitdagings waarmee hierdie nismark deeglik rekening sal moet hou — een daarvan is die invloed van engels wat plaaslik en wêreldwyd al meer as nieamptelike lingua franca gebruik word. sal die hoofstroom-afrikaanse koeranttitels — rapport, die burger, beeld en volksblad — kan oorleef? teoretiese agtergrond die ontstaan, voortbestaan, ontwikkeling en groei van koerante is nou verweef met die ideale, voorspoed en betrokkenheid van die lesersgemeenskap wat hulle bedien. indien 116 daar nie identifisering en meelewing met ’n publikasie is nie, is daar nie ontwikkeling en groei nie (oosthuizen 2000). die geboorte van die eerste volwaardige afrikaanse koerante in die vroeë jare van die twintigste eeu was juis ’n manifestering van hierdie behoeftes. afrikaners was polities verslaan en ekonomies verarm ná die kolonialisering van die land en het gesmag na bevryding. daarvoor moes politieke agendas en politieke doelstellingskanale gevind word en die boodskapper moes ’n eie pers wees. skerp klem is op selfbeskikking met ’n afrikaner-identiteit geplaas en die erkenning van taalen ander kultuurregte sou ’n integrale deel van hierdie media vorm (muller 1990; diederichs, in de beer 2002; barnard & stemmet 2004). in die linguistiek het bolinger en sears (1981: 17-18) reeds taal en veranderende werklikhede as ’n onafwendbare eenheid gesien: “the changes in language and the mutations in genetics serve a similar purpose: to outwit the random changes in society and in nature.” taal is ook die benoemer van verantwoordelikhede, ideologieë, nuwe wetenskap en veranderende strukture (chomsky 1979). die instelling van die nuwe politieke bedeling in suid-afrika in 1994 en die verloop daarvan het die afrikaanse medialandskap sterk beïnvloed. die afrikaner het binne ’n eeu weer polities die spit afgebyt, maar ekonomies dié keer sterk gestaan. die hoofstroom-afrikaanse koerante as gevestigde verteenwoordigers van hierdie nisgemeenskap in ’n land met tien ander amptelike tale is by ’n kruispad — gesien teen die agtergrond van waar hulle vandaan kom en waarheen hulle op pad is. oorkoepelend oor alle plaaslike veranderlikes heen strek die reikwydte van die internet, ’n tegnologiese platform vir die inligtingsera wat teoreties enige plek op aarde nuus onmiddellik in die verbruiker se huis kan bring. hoewel tans nog op die horison wat die meeste suid-afrikaners betref, maar gegewe die lewenstandaardmeting (lsm) van die gemiddelde afrikaanse leser (naspersnavorsing 2007) is môre eintlik al hier. die verskeidenheid mediaplatforms waarin, waarop en waarlangs nuus versprei word en na verwagting in die toekoms al meer versprei gaan word, stel uitdagings aan die tradisionele koerantplatform en word bondelmedia (convergence media) wêreldwyd gesien as die media se weg vir toekomstige relevansie en sukses. debatte oor hoe dié tegnologiese veranderinge ook die wese van die joernalistiek en joernalis/leserverhoudinge raak, is intens en algemeen. verbruikerstendense wat mediagebruik raak en lewenstylveranderinge, soos die kommerwekkende agteruitgang van ’n leeskultuur onder veral jong mense, word noukeurig nagevors en gemonitor om sinvolle strategiese beplanning te kan doen. “faltering advertising, rising overheads and the failure of young people to turn to newspapers as their main source of information are but a few of the problems. circulation declines in many metropolitan markets have some industry observers predicting that the (print) industry is headed toward irrelevance or doom” (carey 2005). doelwitformulering die afrikaanse koerantwese is met behulp van kwalitatiewe navorsing ondersoek en daar is gekyk na spesifieke tendense in die bedryf soos vergestalt in sy geskiedenis, sy 117 ekonomiese en taalmonopolie, ’n digitale medialandskap met al sy implikasies en die opkoms van ’n nuwe “ou” genre (skandpers/ skinderpers/tabloidism) om sodoende dié tendense se invloed op ’n moontlike toekomstige eindproduk in ’n meertalige omgewing te probeer bepaal. interpretasies en gevolgtrekkings rondom hoe die koerante by verskillende ideologiese, sosiaal-maatskaplike, ekonomiese en tegnologiese omstandighede aangepas het, en waar hulle nou staan met betrekking tot byvoorbeeld sosiale, ekonomiese en demografiese tendense wat in die toekoms ’n rol mag speel, kon daarvolgens nuwe perspektiewe op hierdie onderwerp lewer. probleemstelling op makroen mikrovlak kyk hierdie studie na kwessies soos papierkoerante wat verdwyn en sirkulasies wat krimp. hierdie wêreldwye tendens, veral in die eerste wêreld-lande, bly ’n bron van kommer vir koeranteienaars. die koms van die “nuwe media” saam met internettoegang het die medialandskap verander. “in recent years, newspapers have come under attack from a variety of other news media sources and have lost readership” (weisbart 2005). die nuutste inligting oor die stand van die gedrukte media klink egter meer positief (balding 2007) en daar kan nog wins gemaak word, al is die bedryf onder beleg. in ontwikkelende lande soos suid-afrika is ook nuwe markte ontdek wat duidelik aandui dat groei nie onmoontlik is nie. hoewel daar voorbeelde bestaan van mislukte toetredes tot die suid-afrikaanse koerantmark oor die afgelope dekade (this day; nova; die wêreld) en sirkulasiegetalle staties tot negatief neig (abc), is die algemene vooruitsigte vir die suid-afrikaanse koerantbedryf oor die kort termyn nie te rampspoedig nie. oor ’n tydperk van drie jaar geneem, het john bowles, besturende direkteur van die koerantadvertensieburo (nab) gesê: “newspapers aren’t in trouble, it’s just a changing landscape. there’s been a lot of bad press about press, but as far as we can see, the future doesn’t look quite as disastrous for newspapers as some are making it out to be. over the last 10 years amps shows that the illiterate segment of the population in south africa has declined by over 30% and newspaper readership is up by over 40% for the population over the same period” (bowles 2005). hoe die internasionale mediatendense ook al verloop, dit vind eweneens neerslag in suid-afrika (du plessis 2006a). só word daar ná tien jaar steeds gepoog om antwoorde te vind oor hoe om volhoubare inkomste uit die nuwe elektroniese wonderwerke / geleenthede te genereer; hoe die toeganklikheid tot nuus / inligting via verskeie mediakanale die tradisionele rol van die joernalis as alleenverskaffer onder die loep geplaas het; wat inderdaad as “nuus” beskou word; en watter tegnologie die platform gaan verskaf wat lesers / mediagebruikers as gebruikersvriendelik ervaar. dié tendense sal onteenseglik die afrikaanse koerant se voortbestaan raak. die ou suid-afrikaanse koerantresep van ’n produk om alle lesers met hul verskillende agtergronde tevrede te probeer stel, werk nie meer nie. tot 20 jaar gelede was daar minstens agt afrikaanse dagblaaie (de beer 2002). in 2003 was drie oor. drie prominente sondagkoerante in die 1970’s, drie dagblaaie in die 1980’s, twee dagblaaie 118 en een alternatiewe weekblad in die 1990’s het gesneuwel, hoewel daar in hierdie tydperk twee nuwe sondagkoerante, ’n dagblad en ’n weekblad begin is. hierdie verwikkelinge kan grootliks toegeskryf word aan ekonomiese kragte en die ontluiking van die nuwe politieke bestel wat die land sou tref. ingo capraro, redakteur van son, wys daarop dat aanpassings in die suid-afrikaanse mark op inhoud sal moet konsentreer. dit behoort ’n hupstoot aan die suid-afrikaanse koerantmark te gee en stem in elk geval ooreen met die internasionale tendens. ná 1994 was daar duidelik net een rolspeler in die afrikaanse koerantwese — nasionale pers (ná 1997 bekend as naspers). die monopolie in die afrikaanse koerantmark deur hierdie mediareus is ’n gegewe en van ekonomiese opposisie was daar weinig sprake. dit het ’n nuweling in die sondagmark in 2005 — die wêreld — vinnig agtergekom deur net so vinnig te verdwyn as wat dit verskyn het. monopolisties ekonomiese modelle is egter nie gewild in demokratiese politieke stelsels nie (chomsky 2002) en vanuit ’n suid-afrikaanse politieke oogpunt is dit ’n aspek waarvan deeglik kennis geneem behoort te word vir toekomstige strategieë — tesame met aspekte soos gelykberegtiging, regstellende aksie en swart ekonomiese bemagtiging (seb). nog ’n uitdaging op ekonomiese front is die al groter wordende kommer oor die mediahuise se klaarblyklike winsbejagbenadering eerder as ’n joernalistiek-georiënteerde en inhoudgedrewe benadering, veral sover dit die nuusmedia raak. dit is egter op die taalfront waar die sterkste gevaarligte vir die afrikaanse koerante begin flikker het. dit het gaandeweg al duideliker geword dat die voorkeurbehandeling van afrikaans, saam met engels as een van net twee amptelike landstale deur die jare, onder druk was. sy gemaksone as enigste alternatief vir engels het verander in ’n ongemaksone in ’n omgewing van elf erkende landstale. hewige debatte rondom die handhawing en voortbestaan van afrikaans in ’n groter wordende engelse lingua franca-taalomgewing is die afgelope dekade op die spits gedryf. veral kommerwekkend uit ’n lesersmarkoogpunt was die negatiewe politieke uitsprake oor, en die fokus op, die afskaal van afrikaans as onderrigtaal op skool en tersiêre vlak. minder jong taalgebruikers voorspel net één waarheid: minder lesers uiteindelik. in die studie is ruim verwysings verskaf ter ondersteuning van die tendens. ’n proses wat tans, en in die toekoms, direkte invloed op die stand van die afrikaanse koerant gaan uitoefen, is globalisering. hoewel relatief afgesonder as ’n ontwikkelende land, is suid-afrika se wêreldprofiel op politieke en ekonomiese gebiede veel hoër as ooit tevore en dit sal die uiteindelike mediapakket inheems beïnvloed. globalisering is een van die redes waarom honderdduisende afrikaanssprekendes land-uit is; dermate dat daar al van die afrikaanse / afrikaner-diaspora gepraat word (du toit 2003). afrikaanse webkoerante is die logiese opvolgers om die ontwikkelende mark te ontgin. dit sluit aan by die kwessie rondom die wêreldwye debat oor die oorlewing van die koerant soos ons dit ken teenoor die soeke na die “koerant van die toekoms”. so ’n “toekoms-koerant” bestaan nie noodwendig net op papier nie. toegang tot inligting op multimedia-nuusplatforms is reeds ’n werklikheid en die projeksie is ’n al groter wordende werklikheid vir ’n meer gesofistikeerde afrikaanse nismark. 119 die suksesstorie van ’n nuwe weekblad (en sedert die studie begin is, ook ’n dagblad in die wesen suidoos-kaap) uit die naspersstal, son, het nuwe geleenthede vir afrikaanse koerante geskep. waar die hoofstroompers jare lank geswoeg het om sirkulasie te behou en te laat groei, het son (met ’n sirkulasie van 100 000+ volgends die abc) binne twee jaar bewys daar is steeds nuwe afrikaanse lesers wat bereik kan word. hierdeur is ’n duidelike boodskap aan die gevestigde afrikaanse koerante gestuur: doen deeglike self-ontleding as julle jul sirkulasie wil laat groei. as een van die voorlopers sedert 2003 in die onverwagse opbloei en leserstalgroei van die poniekoerantgenre (tabloid), het son rekords verbeter ten opsigte van snelle sirkulasiegroei en lesers (abc). soveel so dat dit teen april 2005 dagbladstatus in die wes-kaapse verspreidingsgebied bereik het. teen junie 2006 is dié status uitgebrei na die suidoos-kaap en die tuinroetegebied (capraro 2006). maar sukses kom teen ’n prys wat nie oral byval vind nie en hewige debatte in koeranten akademiese kringe het rondom die etiese wenslikheid van dié publikasie losgebars (berger 2005; froneman 2005; rabe 2005). dit is opmerklik dat die nuweling sondag nie met dieselfde kritiek en teenstand in mei 2007 begroet is nie. dit stuur ’n duidelike boodskap uit dat die poniepers as ’n nuwe hoofspeler erken en aanvaar word. navorsingsvrae navorsingsvrae in dié studie het die volgende behels: (1) uit watter sosiale, politieke, ekonomiese en kulturele agtergrond het die afrikaanse koerant ontstaan en ontwikkel deur die loop van die vorige eeu? (2) in hoe ’n mate beïnvloed ’n monopolisties ekonomiese en kulturele nismarkomgewing die voorspoed of teenspoed van die afrikaanse koerant? (3) raak die snelveranderende en ontwikkelende kommunikasietegnologie die voortgesette bestaan van die tradisionele afrikaanse koerant negatief of positief? teoretiese en metodologiese begronding navorsing word beskryf as ’n sistematiese proses om inligting of data in te samel of te ontleed ten einde groter begrip vir ’n fenomeen te bekom (cilliers 1970; sax 1979; du plooy 1995; leedy 1985). babbie en mouton (2001: 20) beskou die positivisme, fenomenologie en die kritiese teorie as die drie invloedrykste meta-teoretiese tradisies omdat hulle maklik met die metodologiese benaderings in die sosiale wetenskappe, naamlik, kwantitatiewe navorsing, kwalitatiewe navorsing en deelnemende aksiebenaderings, verbind kan word. hierdie studie val binne die raamwerk van kwalitatiewe navorsing en deelnemende aksiebenadering en is gedoen vanuit ’n filosofiese denkraam wat breedweg versoenbaar is met die kritiese teorie (fourie 2001: 241; mcquail 2000: 221). die koerant en spesifiek vir doeleindes van hierdie navorsing, die afrikaanse koerant, se posisie binne die sosiale samelewing waarbinne die verskynsels vernuwing en verandering hulle manifesteer, is in die studie ontleed om sodoende die interaksie 120 tussen die omgewing en die media te bespreek. die media in ’n tegnologies veranderende wêreld kan as onafhanklike dog interafhanklike samelewingsvorm ontleed word. die navorsingsprobleem die navorsingsprobleem is as volg gestel: hoe kan die afrikaanse koerant steeds relevant bly en deur verbruikers verkies word in ’n media-omgewing waar toeganklikheid tot ’n verskeidenheid inligting op ’n al wyer wordende platform mediakanale aangebied word? hierdie gegewe word baie belangrik in ’n meertalige omgewing soos in suid-afrika waar ’n afrikaanse leser maklike toegang tot ’n groot verskeidenheid mediaprodukte het. die posisie van die afrikaanse koerant uit ’n geskiedkundige oogpunt, die huidige situasie en ’n moontlike toekomsscenario is hiervolgens beskryf. navorsingsontwerp hierdie studie val in die domein van empiriese navorsing waar primêre en sekondêre data ingesamel is ten einde spesifieke inligting oor die verhouding tussen die afrikaanse koerant en sy media-omgewing te bekom. die bronne is afkomstig uit ’n literatuurstudie (koerantberigte, artikels in vaktydskrifte, boeke en die internet) en transkripsies van persoonlike onderhoude en korrespondensie met die voorsitter van die naspers-mediagroep, die redakteurs van die gekose publikasies en ander betrokkenes. ’n kombinasie van verkennende en beskrywende vrae lei hierdie navorsing (babbie & mouton 2001: 76-81). die doelwit hiermee is om aan te dui hoe sekere mediateorieë ooreenkomste en raakpunte toon met die afrikaanse koerant as ’n model (of soort) in ’n spesifieke sosiale omgewing. aangesien werklikhede veranderlik is, veral ten opsigte van die media as vertolker in ’n veranderende omgewing, is aksienavorsing (white 2005: 108-111) as ’n kernvertrekpunt gebruik. metodologiese fundering ’n kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetode is gevolg ten opsigte van versamelde inligting wat gebruik word. die kwalitatiewe navorser bestudeer mense in konteks met hul verlede, hul huidige situasie en verwagte toekoms. die navorser is nie noodwendig op soek na “waarhede” of “onveranderlikes” nie, maar eerder ’n omvattende verstaan van ander se perspektiewe (de beer 2004). in dié opsig word dit dus duidelik waarom die simbiose, soos ontwikkel oor ’n tydperk ten opsigte van die leser én die produk, deeglik in konteks beskou moet word. die bedoeling is om gebeure en veranderlikes te verstaan, te verduidelik en te beskryf en om dit dan binne die breë raamwerk van die afrikaanse koerantmark in konteks te plaas. die ongestruktureerde onderhoude wat in hierdie studie met nege senior verteenwoordigers (soos aan redaksionele en bestuurskant) in die afrikaanse koerantwêreld gevoer is, het geskied volgens bepaalde prosedures. eerstens is ’n lys met vrae waarop antwoorde verstrek moes word, opgestel. die vraelyste het ooreenstemmende vrae gehad, maar daar was wel spesifieke vrae aan spesifieke 121 bronne. tweedens is die deelnemers telefonies oor die vraelys ingelig, asook die aard en doel van die navorsing. derdens is die vrae per e-pos onder ’n dekbrief aan die lede gestuur wat dit beantwoord en aan die navorser teruggestuur het. vierdens is opvolgonderhoude met die meeste van die betrokkenes gevoer en die onderhoude is op band vasgelê. die onderhoude is getranskribeer. aangesien onderhoude met die universum van die afrikaanse koerantredakteurs gevoer is en toepaslike inligting volgens bogenoemde kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetodes in die studiestuk uiteengesit en toegepas word, word aanvaar dat die trek van steekproewe en die gebruik van inferensiële statistiese metodes hier oorbodig is. algemene bevindings word dus gegrond op die totale verteenwoordiging in die ondersoekveld. die studie is in die tipiese aksienavorsingomgewing gedoen. aspekte soos nuwe rolspelers, veranderende konteks, jongste nuus op die internet, nuutste debatte in vaktydskrifte, besprekings op seminare en finansiële implikasies het die navorsing voortdurend beïnvloed en aanpassings is gemaak. dít is die tipiese omgewing van aksienavorsing. “action research is a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social practices, and the situations in which these practices are carried out” (white 2005: 108). die soeke na antwoorde en riglyne in die nismarkomgewing van die afrikaanse koerant val in dié kategorie. dit is juis die ontleding en selfreflektering van die huidige situasie, gesien teen die geskiedenis van die produk, wat tot sekere gevolgtrekkings en insigte kon lei. die sinvolheid van hierdie navorsing is dat dit as vertrekpunt kan dien om verdere ontwikkelinge in die mediabedryf te monitor en te definieer. dit sluit duidelik aan by die crasp-teorie van zuber-skerritt (soos aangehaal in white 2005: 111) oor aksienavorsing. daarvolgens is dit ’n kritiese (critical) ondersoek deur ontledende (reflective) deelnemers wat aanspreeklikheid (accountability) aanvaar en hul bevindinge openbaar maak, terwyl hulle selfevaluerend (self-evaluating) na hul toepassing kyk en deelnemend (participative) inskakel in probleemoplossing en deurlopende veranderinge /ontwikkelinge in die bedryf. die inligting wat op bogenoemde wyse bekom is, word onder meer aangewend om verskillende navorsingsperspektiewe toe te lig gegrond op “...’n omvattende verstaan van ander se perspektiewe” (de beer 2004) via teorieë soos die gebruiksen bevredigingsteorie (mills 1963; fiske 1990; wimmer & dominick 2003), spesifiek met ontwikkelinge rondom aksienavorsing (vettehen 1998; renckstorf et al. 2004; white 2005), die normatiewe teorie (ang 1998; brants, hermes & van zoonen 1998; mcquail 2000); en die sosiaal-verantwoordelike teorie (merrill 1974; mcquail 2000; hachten 1999). in hierdie studie is ’n belangrike vertrekpunt die siening dat daar ’n interafhanklikheid tussen massakommunikasie en die samelewing is. de beer (2002: 6-12) se standpunt dat die massakommunikasie nie los van die individu of sy gemeenskap kan staan nie, word deur voorste navorsers soos mcquail (2000: 58-64) se makrobenadering tot die klassifisering van die samelewing en ook price (1993: 11-17) se verskillende teorieë oor die samelewing onderskryf. dit alles is aansluitend tot die sogenaamde tradisionele 122 siening van die vier kontekstuele hoekstene wat die verhouding tussen die media en die samelewing bepaal: kultuur, politiek, ekonomie en tegnologie — iets waaraan die afrikaanse koerantwese nommerpas voldoen. ook karsten, renckstorf en mcquail se vertrekpunt rondom nuwe denke ten opsigte van aksienavorsing in mediagebruik (renckstorf et al. 2004:1) sluit hierby aan: “however, as students of mass media effects soon came to recognize, audiences were made up of real people, surrounded by and imbedded in social groups, which can be characterized as networks of interpersonal relationships through which media effects are mediated.” die verstaan van mediamateriaal deur gebruikers vind in ’n spesifieke konteks plaas en die mediamateriaal is mediawerkers se produkte. weens die kompleksiteit rondom hierdie interafhanklikheid het verskillende mediateorieë telkens tekort geskiet om die nuwe sosiale omgewings waarin die media oorleef wetenskaplik te beskryf. so word die gewilde gebruiksen bevredigingsteorie steeds gebruik, maar is daar te veel veranderlikes ter sprake om klinkklare antwoorde op byvoorbeeld mediagebruikspatrone te verskaf (mcquail 2004: 39-43). mcquail stel voor dat daar eerder vereenvoudig moet word en dat mediagebruik verdeel moet word in verskillende momente (“moments”) in ’n deurlopende verslag oor mediavoorkeure, media-aandag en mediareaksie. die beloningsbenadering hang moontlik saam met keusemomente. hy verwys dan na vier momente: a) smaak en lewenstyl (taste and lifestyle); b) mediakeuse; c) betrokkenheid in media-ervaring en mediagebruik; en d) nadenke en evaluasie (reflection and evaluation). hy waarsku dat dit duidelik te veel stof vir enige sinvolle navorsing oor mediavoorkeure en -gebruik bied. daarom stel hy voor dat daar eerder geprioritiseer moet word om spesifieke vrae ten opsigte van spesifieke momente beantwoord te kry en om toepaslike modelle daarvoor te ontwerp. “one of the failings of earlier research was the attempt to do too much; too many variables, too many levels of analysis, too much data collected” (in renckstorf et al. 2004: 44-45). die studie het na aanleiding van die momente-benadering, soos dit opgeneem is in die kontemporêre aksie-teoretiese benadering, wat op sy beurt, breedweg gestel, gesien kan word as ’n verfyning van die gebruiksen bevredigingsteorie, sodanige “momente” in die breë koerantbedryf en die afrikaanse koerantomgewing geïdentifiseer en omskryf. mcquail se drie modelle ten opsigte van genoemde mediabeloningprosesse word hieronder beskryf, asook hoe dit op die afrikaanse koerantomgewing toegepas is. daarna word ’n “suid-afrikaanse” model as ’n vierde variant aan die hand gedoen. figuur 1: variasie 1 — die “tradisionele” mediabehoefte; die beloningsmodel 123 affektief > kognitief > konatief (wil/strewe) dit reflekteer die proses waar begin word met ’n behoefte, ’n gevoel of ’n emosie wat op een of ander manier problematies is. daarna word een of ander gemotiveerde, rasionele en ingeligte keuse tussen beskikbare middels (mediagebruik ingesluit) gemaak om dié probleem mee op te los. dan volg die aktiewe keuse: waarvoor en hoe om dit te gebruik. waar die studie verwys na die momente in die afrikaanse koerantgeskiedenis, is dié variant duidelik funksioneel. die affektiewe is die behoefte aan ’n “nasionale pers”, ’n politieke stem, ’n behoefte aan afrikaner-identiteit. volgens hierdie affektiewe proses word produkte dan geskep (aanvanklik baie beperk rondom die afrikaanse media) en kies die verbruikers dít wat beskikbaar is om probleme mee op te los — die kognitiewe aksie. laastens word ’n wilsbesluit uitgeoefen deur hierdie produkte in te span om ’n doel te bereik. waar in die studie verwys word na “die derde taalbeweging” as die behoefte om afrikaans te beveilig, word die kognitiewe keuse van organisasies om die saak te bevorder aangedui. ’n wilsbesluit volg om aksieplanne deur organisasies en die media in werking te stel om die nodige resultaat te bewerkstellig. figuur 2: variasie 2 — die omstandigheidsmodel vir mediagebruik hier het die verbruiker te doen met gewoontes of iets wat per geleentheid gebeur. hy reageer eers konatief ten opsigte van die gebeure en verseker dat die geleentheid, sê byvoorbeeld ’n politieke voorval of aankondiging, verband hou of selfs ooreenstem met sy belangstelling. volgens sy siening, hetsy positief of negatief, reageer hy dan affektief deur gevoel of emosie ten opsigte van die inligting te toon. daarna is dit die kognitiewe ervaring waar leer of betekenis plaasvind op grond van ervaring en oorweging (reflection). hier vind die aansluiting plaas by byvoorbeeld die weergee van politieke nuus of politieke aspirasies wat in die afrikaanse koerante weerklank gevind het. deur hulle met die saak te identifiseer (strewe), het die gebruikers affektief betrokke geraak en uiteindelik inligting verwerk (geleer) soos in die beriggewing weerspieël. ook waar die ekonomiese groei van die afrikaner bespreek word, vind hierby aansluiting aangesien daar gestreef word om geldelik te groei, goed te voel of minstens emosioneel te wees oor vordering of terugslag en dan weer die kognitiewe ervaring van besluit en uitvoer deur te maak. die “nuwe tendense” pas by hierdie omstandigheidsmodel in. globalisering verplig die mediabedryf en gebruikers om aan te pas (tegnologiese ontwikkeling dwing aanpassing af) of deur groepsdruk te verander (die verbruiker wil op die hoogte wees soos sy eweknieë). daardeur ontstaan die strewe om meer te wete te kom oor die nuwe tegnologie, wat lei tot bevrediging (emosie) by die verbruiker as hy deel word van die proses en daardeur kan hy kognitief keuses uitoefen om ingelig te word. 124 konatief > affektief > kognitief figuur 3: variasie 3 — die rasionele verbuikersmodel vir selektiewe mediagebruik hier het die verbruiker nou ’n kennis van die verskillende media (kognitief). hy strewe daarna om dit ten volle te benut (konatief) en kan dan, met sy verworwe kennis, evaluerend optree deur ’n keuse uit te oefen ten opsigte van inhoudsalternatiewe soos sy behoeftes en voorkeure bepaal. mediagebruik word dan ’n ingeligte keuse (of handeling) wat gewoonlik gepaard gaan met, of volg op, die evaluering van ’n bron met gevolglike handeling. hierdie variasie val in die nismarkveld. mcquail (2004: 45): sê: “...apply to cultural content in the case of the well organized and selective audience member and where ‘cultural’ content fits into a familiar and ordered set of categories”. hier verwys “cultural” na die enersheid, die samehorigheid van belangstellings soos in die tipiese nismark of spesialismedium gevind kan word. hierdie variant kan van toepassing wees op die “nuwe koerant”-kategorie en op die skandblad-tendens. daar word doelbewus tussen ander moontlike produkte gekies nadat besluit is oor wat “ek” wil lees, byvoorbeeld die prys van die produk (soos son) pas in by die verbruiker se strewe om nie te veel te betaal nie of in die geval van die “nuwe koerant” privaat te kan wees as hy op sy rekenaar in sy eie tyd wil lees. daarna evalueer hy die inhoud en selfs die formaat (papier of skerm) en as hy dit geniet, word hy op al drie vlakke “beloon”. maar steeds bly die vertrekpunt: “any single model (or pure type) is likely to be inappropriate” (mcquail, in renckstorf et al. 2004: 47-48). variasie 3 kan in die post-1994 suid-afrikaanse medialandskap toegepas word. hier kan moontlik nog ’n keusebepaler ingebou word om die unieke omgewing van die afrikaanse mediagebruiker verder te verfyn. dit sou die verskeidenheid van produkte (in alle tale, maar op die tydstip hoofsaaklik engels) as ’n belangrike bepaler uitlig in die handeling of keuse-aksie wat die afrikaanse gebruiker moet uitoefen. dit laat ruimte vir die beskrywing van ’n suid-afrikaanse mediamodel wat as variasie 4 beskryf kan word. figuur 4: variasie 4 — die suid-afrikaanse nismark verbruikersmodel 125 kognitief > konatief > evaluerendevaluerend verskeidenheid > kognitief > konatief > evaluerend die kern van hierdie variasie lê opgesluit in die verskeidenheid wat vir die verbruiker in die suid-afrikaanse mediamark beskikbaar is. daarom sal enige model wat rondom hierdie variasie oorweeg word, dit as eerste gegewe in gedagte moet hou. in suidafrika het die verskeidenheid mediaprodukte oor die afgelope dekade fenomenaal toegeneem. in die drukmedia het die mark van 2001 tot 2006 met 40% toegeneem (marketingweb 2006) en die internetmark is aan die groei. dit alles het ’n uitwerking op die koerantlesermark. die ander drie elemente is meer stabiel en kan redelik voorspel word, maar suid-afrika se groeiende ekonomie (waar die mark in die afrikaanse kultuurgroep in die hoër inkomstegroepe val) en die snelle tegnologiese ontwikkelinge rondom toeganklikheid tot nuusmateriaal gaan die verskeidenheid voortdurend beïnvloed. teen die agtergrond van bogenoemde veranderlikes kan die tipiese verbruikersgedragmodel, soos beskryf deur ben van der westhuyzen (1997: 67), steeds toegepas word op die afrikaanse koerant se verbruikersmark. die model verwys na individuele determinante (motivering, houding, persepsie, lewenstyl en persoonlikheid), groepsen ekonomiese determinante waar ’n kulturele groep, soos die afrikaner, gewillig sal wees om ’n sekere produk, soos die afrikaanse koerant, te koop. die afrikaanse mark is reaktief ten opsigte van demografiese gegewens soos bevolkingsgetal, verspreiding, die taal en ouderdom van lesers, opvoedkundige vlak, inkomstegroepe en tegnologiese gevorderdheid van die verbruiker. wanneer ’n verbruiker oor ’n produk besluit, sal hy die alternatiewe oorweeg voordat hy sy keuse uitoefen (van der westhuyzen 1997: 69). net so sal die mediagebruiker alle alternatiewe mediabronne gebruik en moet die mediaprodusent dus al bogenoemde faktore in ag neem om die geskikte produk vir die spesifieke mark aan te bied. selfs nadat die keuse uitgeoefen is, verwag die verbruiker om bevredig gelaat te word. in die nuwe media-omgewing sal hierdie tevredenheid aangevul moet word deur byvoorbeeld onmiddellike interaksie beskikbaar te hê deur e-pos of aanlyn-joernale (blogs). hierdie interaksie se aanvaarbaarheid (van der westhuyzen 1997: 72) sal deur die verbruiker getoets word alvorens besluit word of die keuse ’n sukses is. gevolgtrekkings die studie loop wyd oor die verlede, die hede en die verwagte toekoms van die afrikaane koerant. internasionale tendense soos bondelmedia met implikasies vir die onmiddellikheid van nuus, multimedia-aanbiedingsvorme, produksieplatforms, interaktiwiteit van leser en produk, die debatte rondom tradisionele joernalistieke waardes, aanpassings van nuuspakette, maatskappywinsmotiewe, monopolieë, die herlewing van die ponieformaat (tabloid), impak van gratis (strooi-) koerante, die lok van jonger lesers — al hierdie fenomene figureer in die studie met verwysings na of toepassings op suid-afrikaanse omstandighede. hier word slegs na sommige van die gevolgtrekkings waartoe gekom is, verwys: • die afrikaanse koerant se voortbestaan, in watter vorm ook al, blyk vir die afsienbare toekoms veilig te wees, en die bestaande titels word teen ’n wins bedryf. 126 • die huidige redakteurs, son uitgesluit, is nie optimisties oor groeiende sirkulasiegetalle nie. • die afrikaanse nuusgebruikers is vir die afsienbare toekoms op die hibriede nuusmodel van ’n gekombineerde produk tussen papierkoerant en webkoerant aangewese. • die dilemma vir mediamaatskappye lê daarin dat bondelmedia nie sonder meer die tradisionele media, en by name die koerant, kan vervang nie. • versekering is deur bestuur en redakteurs gegee dat die winsmotief nie ten koste van goeie joernalistiek nagejaag word nie. • die monopolie wat naspers in die afrikaanse koerantmark het, is vanuit ’n ekonomiese oogpunt ’n pluspunt ten opsigte van die kanse op oorlewing van die afrikaanse koerant. ekonomiese vooruitgang alleen is egter nie ’n waarborg daarvoor nie. • talle mediakundiges spreek vrese uit rondom moontlike manipulasie en verskraling van nuus deur alleenspelers — vrese wat deur uitsprake van senior rolspelers in naspers besweer word. • redakteurs beskou die welstand van afrikaans as noodsaaklik vir die voortbestaan van hul koerante. “maar die werklikheid uit die leser se oogpunt is dat afrikaans die heel belangrikste rede is waarom koerante soos beeld, die burger en rapport gekoop word” (kruger 2006). • al die redakteurs stem saam dat inhoud die belangrikste bestanddeel vir ’n suksesresep is. • redakteurs is bekommerd dat die koerante nie in die politieke arena gereken word nie en selfs as irrelevant beskou word. • die afrikaanse koerante het ’n beduidende rol gespeel in die transformasie na ’n nuwe suid-afrika. die ou afrikaner-identiteit moes plek maak vir die nuwe kultuur van ’n reënboognasie en ’n demokratiese suid-afrikanerskap. • al die redakteurs ondersteun en bevorder suid-afrikanerskap en die wese van die grondwet soos gevind in ’n demokratiese politieke bestel. maar: “nooit, nooit weer mag toegelaat word dat die regering die media manipuleer of koöpteer nie” (die burger 1996). • redakteurs plaas ’n hoë premie op redaksionele onafhanklikheid en dit word ondersteun deur die naspers-bestuur. “ons waak jaloers teen die gedagte dat die top dikteer en almal moet spring. selfstandigheid van titels en afdelings is die eerste prys” (vosloo 2006). • redakteurs se jaarlikse geldelike bonus word volgens winsprestasie en regstellende aksie-vordering bepaal. 127 • daar is rede tot kommer oor die afskaling van afrikaans op skool en op tersiêre vlak sover dit toekomstige leserskap kan beïnvloed. • die apatie onder veral jong afrikaanssprekendes is kommerwekkend vir die oorlewing van die afrikaanse media. • die gemiddelde ouderdom van lesers is ongesond hoog en planne word deurlopend beraam om jonger lesers te lok. • al die redakteurs sal afrikaans binne die toets van nuuswaardigheid bevorder, met rapport wat die sterkste standpunt vir afrikaans inneem. son stel nie in ’n taalstryd belang nie. • “naspers is ‘van huis uit afrikaans’ en ons bly getrou daaraan” (vosloo 2006). • son se sukses is onder meer te danke aan afrikaans-wees, ’n loslit-taalgebruik, prys, vars nuustemas, sy ponieformaat, tv-gids, plakkate en gemeenskapsveldtogte. • hoewel son baie meer informeel as die ander dagblaaie deur sy lesers beskou word, word dit beslis nie as ’n laerklas-koerant beskou nie. • sportnuus word in die sondagmark beskou as deurslaggewend vir sukses. • een van die nuutste oplossings in die najaag van lesersgetalle word klaarblyklik gesoek in die stig van nóg ’n nuwe koerant — nié die hervorming of “wedergeboorte” van die bestaande produk(te) nié. “kannibaliseer eerder jouself as om deur ander opgevreet te word. rapport is reeds ’n magtige teenwoordigheid in die mark; sondag gaan aanvullend wees” (vink 2007). • die wêreld het onder meer misluk weens swak redaksionele leiding, onvoldoende tegniese voorbereiding, onvoldoende fondse, geen strategiese beplanning nie, geen wetenskaplike marknavorsing nie en regse politieke persepsies (potgieter 2005). • “ons verwelkom die toetrede van ander rolspelers tot die mediabedryf, en insonderheid afrikaans. ons kan egter nie vader staan vir die mislukking van onderdeurdagte of prul produkte nie” (vosloo 2006). • rapport se redaksionele inhoud en sirkulasie het gebaat met die koms van die wêreld. “niks doen ’n redaksie so goed soos kompetisie nie” (du plessis 2006b). • net voor albei sou sluit om in 1970 rapport te word, was dagbreek se sirkulasiesyfer 368 637 en die beeld s’n 355 820. sáám dus byna 740 000. in 2007 kon rapport nie die helfte van daardie syfer haal nie. • op die dagbladmark kon gesamentlike sirkulasiesyfers van die transvaler, beeld, vaderland, hoofstad en oggendblad in die tagtigerjare nog nie weer in die ou transvaalse sirkulasiegebied behaal word nie. beeld en die transvaler se syfers in 1989 (150 800 – abc jul-des, 1989) was byna 50% meer as dié van beeld se 2005syfer (abc; sa jaarboeke). 128 • daar is duidelik nog baie potensiële lesers met 13,4% van die suid-afrikaanse bevolking wat afrikaans is. • van die 4 miljoen bruin mense is 80% afrikaanssprekend. • afrikaans is die derde grootste taal (naas zulu en xhosa), met engels in die sesde plek. “elf amptelike tale, maar al wat jy hoor, is engels” (greyling 2000). • afrikaanssprekendes verteenwoordig 35% huishoudings met ’n jaarlikse inkomste van r14 000+. • ’n verskeidenheid nuusverbruikers moet gelok word deur die tegnologie (aanlynjoernale, pod-uitsendings, video-uitsendings, selfoontoeganklikheid), die aanbieding en die inhoud. • daar is bevind dat naspers deeglik voorberei op ’n mark waarin verskeie veranderlikes en prosesse teenwoordig is wat die voortbestaan van die afrikaanse koerante kan beïnvloed. • miljoene rande word bewillig vir die inkoop van kundigheid om die naspersbondelmediaprodukte binne tien jaar of vroeër winsgewend te kry. • die klem op toeganklikheid, interaktiwiteit, nisnuus en inhoudpakkette, identifisering met vertroude nuusprodukte en die feit dat drie van die vyf gewildste webwerwe in suid-afrika (media24, mweb en fin24) aan naspers gekoppel is (opa 2006), voorspel dat die afrikaanse koerante goed geposisioneer is om te oorleef. ten slotte kan gestel word dat die studie daarop dui dat die sukses van die simbiose tussen produk en taal uiteindelik van kardinale belang sal wees vir die behoud, voorspoed en relevansie van die afrikaanse koerant. 129 verwysings abc. 1965-2006. sirkulasieverslae van die audit bureau of 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[aanlyn]. herwin van: www.futurethemedia.org [besoek op 30/05/2005]. white, c. j. 2005. research: a practical guide. pretoria: ithuthuko. wimmer, r. d. d. & dominick, j.r. 2003. mass media research. an introduction. belmont: wadsworth. 132 communitas omslag nov 2008 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13:171 189 dalmé mulder* abstract south africa has a somewhat unique environment within which businesses have to function. the fact that south africa has eleven official languages and a mosaic of cultures are only some of the factors that contribute towards the complexity of the south african organisational environment. cultural awareness is vital for effective communication, because different cultures communicate in different ways. while the universal objectives of marketing communication are to inform and more specifically to persuade, the way in which ethnic groups come in contact with information and are persuaded to act on information, varies widely. this article addresses the abovementioned issues, but its overall aim is to provide a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture in order to enhance an organisation's efficacy in multicultural societies. the mitroff model for problem solving in systems thinking is used as a guideline. * dr dalmé mulder lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. 171 introduction contemporary societies in many parts of the world are increasingly characterised by a multicultural population composition. this could potentially affect the quality of communication (and organisational communication) as communication is, in many respects, linked to culture. in order to address integrated communication (ic) (and subsequently organisational communication) quality and effectiveness, one needs to analyse and give prominence to the important role that culture plays in these processes. the south african landscape is regarded as a heterogeneous and complex composition of individuals. communicating effectively in such an environment could be a daunting challenge. however, werner (2007) is of the opinion that it is essential for organisations to move away from perceiving diversity as a process of managing numbers, to a process where diversity is recognised and utilised as a competitive advantage. the aim of this article is to formulate a model to establish an internal organisational culture conducive and complementary to implementing ic. research process and methodology the grand theory of this study is that of systems theory driven by systems thinking. systems theory represents the organisation as a complex set of interdependent parts that interact to a constantly changing environment in order to achieve its goals, suggests kreps (1990: 94). a logical application of systems thinking, according to kreps (1990), is in describing the development, structure, and maintenance of human organisations. this argument highlights this theory’s relevance to this study. systems thinking enables a dynamic, holistic examination of an organisation and is regarded as the application of the systems theory within the organisational context. to address the goal of this study, the mitroff model for problem solving in systems thinking (mitroff, betz, pondi & sagasti 1974) was used. this model guides the researcher through the process of studying a phenomenon in science from a holistic or systems point of view. the mitroff model is relevant in studies were problem solving and the formulation of a model applies. it defines the scope of the research, provides guidance in structuring the research and identifies the processes and stages to follow. as the grand theory of this study is the systems theory, this further informed the choice of the mitroff model, as this model is based on the systems perspective. mitroff et al. (1974: 46) argue that certain aspects of science can only be studied from a whole systems perspective and that anything less than a holistic view of science will fail to pick up certain of science’s most essential characteristics. the graphic illustration in figure 1 represents mitroff’s whole systems view of the activity of problem solving. the model consists of four elements and six paths. in the figure the four circles represents the four elements (i, ii, iii, iv) and essence of the model. these elements are “reality problem solving”, “conceptual model”, “scientific model”, and “solving”. closely related to these elements are the six paths. the paths or activities are conceptualisation, modelling, model solving, implementation, feedback and validation. viewed from a systems perspective, there is 172 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture no simple “starting” or “ending” points in this model. the process can begin at any point in the diagram. mitroff et al. (1974: 47) state that the arrow or path from the circle labelled “conceptual model” is meant to indicate that the “first phase” of problem solving consists of formulating a conceptual model of the problem situation. the conceptual model set up the definition of the problem that has to be solved. the field variables that are used to define the nature of the problem are specified, as well as the level at which the variables are treated. according to the mitroff model the second phase entails the formulation of a scientific model (circle iii). the third phase concerns the performance of activity 3 to derive a solution from the scientific model. niemann (2005: 15) argues that the aim of social science is to provide a solution to a specified problem. the implementation or utilisation of the solution to the problem area in practice (activity 4) gives feedback of the solution to the original problem stated and entails activity 5 in the model. validation is the last phase. here the degree of correspondence between reality and the developed scientific model is evaluated. the comparison between the scientific model and reality may take place repeatedly until the scientific model is refined to reflect the necessary aspects of reality (mitroff et al. 1974: 51; niemann 2005: 16). figure 1: mitroff’s systems view of problem solving (mitroff et al. 1974:47, adapted by niemann 2005:14) 173 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture as the mitroff model implies that legitimate research need not address all the activities and elements in the model (niemann 2005: 16), the scope of this study will only cover the first two circles of the model (reality problem solving & conceptual model) and the path (conceptualisation) that connects it. circle i include phases 1 (literature review of corporate culture) and phase 2 (a review of the conceptual analysis of definitions of ic) of the research methodology of this study. phase 3, namely the integration of key components of an excellent or strong corporate culture with the basic ic principles, materialises in circle ii. from this, an integrated communication model, submerged with elements of an excellent corporate culture, which is conducive to multi-cultural interactions, emerges. within the scope of this article, the developed model will be conceptual in nature and will not have been validated in order to resume to circle iii (scientific model). the highlights from phase 1, the review on the literature on corporate culture, follow in the next section. the growing importance of intercultural communication awareness culture gives an individual identity and is the code of conduct that a person lives by. it influences the very existence of an individual. jandt (2004) describes intercultural communication as fundamentally about individuals communicating with other individuals with whom past experiences have not been shared. moulder (1992: 19) supports this notion and adds to this description by highlighting five claims about culture. these claims are firstly that everyone’s culture has been created for them, and largely by people who are older than they are and who began to shape their behaviour, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and values from the moment that they were born. secondly, everyone’s culture is always changing, because they are always adapting to new groups of people and to new social, political and economic situations. thirdly, none of the members of a cultural group is totally homogeneous; that is why new groups are always coming into existence and going out of existence. fourthly, no cultural group is totally unique; this is why some individuals from extremely different backgrounds and with extremely different life experiences manage to form alliances and to co-operate with each other. finally, it is difficult to change the culture that one inherits because it has taught one how to behave, as well as what to believe, to feel and to value. to this saee (2005) adds the fact that culture is ethnocentric, an obstacle to intercultural communication as it reflects a tendency for one group of people to regard their culture as superior to others. for all these reasons, it is obvious why it is not easy to communicate effectively in a multi-cultural environment. marketers have to take cognisance of the impact culture can have on their success. the study of culture as it relates to business has emerged as a distinct field of study (freyridgway 1997). marketing, communication and marketing communication endeavours that were successful ten years ago will not necessarily have the same successful impact today. cultural sensitivity has to be central to organisational operations (gudykunst 1983). a management study of successful australian national and multinational organisations revealed the centrality of intercultural communication (saee 1998). to 174 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture manage a culturally diverse organisation effectively, each individual has to be encouraged to reach his/her full potential in pursuit of the organisation’s objectives (jenner 1994, in saee 2005). according to this author, that means developing a corporate culture that fundamentally fosters and values cultural diversity. when considering de wet’s (2005: 54) view of culture as the values, activities and products of a relatively large human group through which it responds to its conditions of existence, the corporate culture of an organisation could be an effective vehicle to address multi-culturism in an organisation. van der wal and ramotsehoa (2001) are in favour of this argument and state that diversity in organisations can only be managed effectively when the organisational culture is appreciative of diversity. corporate / organisational culture defined corporate or organisational cultures are unique and provide a stimulus for employees behaving in ways unique to the organisation. werner (2007: 2) states that most definitions of organisational culture agree that it refers to a system of shared assumptions held by members, which distinguishes one organisation from others. according to de chernatony (2001) organisational culture acts as the “glue” uniting staff in different locations to act in a similar manner. informally it is referred to as “the way we do things around here” (jandt 2004: 419). jandt (2004) also describes it as the set of values, goals, and priorities that is encouraged through the policies and procedures of the organisation. saee (2005: 274) supports this notion and adds that managers should take responsibility for institutionalising cultural diversity as the main ethos and guiding principles within their organisation so that organisational processes, policies and practices reflect cultural diversity in every conceivable way. two theories that address these three factors are peters and waterman’s “excellent culture” theory (1982), and deal and kennedy’s “strong theory”. peters and waterman’s (1982) “excellent culture” theory highlights several themes (reflecting organisational processes) related to excellent organisations. these themes are: excellent organisations gear decisions and actions to the needs of customers. the importance of people, e.g. “a close relationship with the customer” and “productivity through people” are important themes; • excellent organisations react quickly and do not spend excess time planning and analysing; • excellent organisations encourage employees to take risks in the development of new ideas; • excellent organisations encourage positive and respectful relationships among management and employees; • excellent organisations have employees and managers who share the same core value of productivity and performance; • excellent organisations stay focused on what they do best and avoid radical diversification; 175 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture • excellent organisations avoid complex structures and divisions of labour; and • excellent organisations exhibit both unity of purpose and the diversity necessary for innovation. deal and kennedy (1982) focus more on the policies and practices of organisational culture. they argue that a “strong” culture enhances organisational success. these authors are of the opinion that if an organisation has the components of a strong culture, it will be a better place for individuals to work and will improve both individual and organisational performance. deal and kennedy (1982) identify four key components of a strong culture, namely values, heroes, rites and rituals and cultural network, which refers to the communication system through which cultural values are instituted and reinforced. the more deeply entrenched an organisational culture, the more difficult it is to change it. deeply entrenched cultures are referred to as strong culture (werner 2007: 27). in such an organisational culture the group members share the same values, beliefs and attitudes. they can easily communicate with each other and can depend on one another in meeting individual needs. according the strong theory of culture formulated by deal and kennedy (1982), an organisation with a strong culture is being described as having: • a strong, unifying corporate philosophy and mission; • trusted and trusting leaders; • open communication channels and access to top management; • an emphasis on the importance of people and productivity relationship; • a general sense of accomplishment and belonging by all; • commonly shared rites, rituals, and ceremonies; • an uplifting general feeing about employees’ work, the place, and the future; and • satisfaction with rewards, performance and efforts (saee 2005: 142). saee (2005:140) is in communion with the above points of view. he suggests that corporate culture reflects shared values, beliefs, norms, expectations, and assumptions that bind people and systems together. this author suggests that, like an iceberg, corporate culture has both visible and invisible elements. the observable aspects include the physical setting, language, stories, legends, myths, heroes and heroines, ceremonies, behaviours and dress. the visible aspects are indicative of the underlying dimensions, that is, the values, assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings of members as well as unwritten rules about the environment, time space, relationships, and activities (weiss in saee 2005: 140; werner 2007: 4). there are some common characteristics in the various ways organisational culture is seen. organisational culture defines a boundary in creating distinctions between one organisation and another. in other words, each organisation projects its uniqueness in terms of who it is and what it stands for (saee 2005: 141). organisational culture 176 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture conveys a sense of identity for organisational members. organisational culture facilitates the generation of commitment to something larger than interest in one’s self (mead, in saee 2005: 141). organisational culture provides the necessary standard that an employee recognises and is willing to honour. it is the organisational ethos. management relies on its organisational culture (or ethos) as the driving force behind the successful operation of an organisation rather than the formal, traditional structures of control (peters & waterman 1982; ivancevich, olekans & matteson 1997). against this background, it is clear that an organisation’s culture creates a corporate identity that distinguishes one organisation from another. as a result, it also gives members of the organisation an identity. subsequently, identifying with the organisation creates greater commitment to organisational goals and objectives (werner 2007: 1). background on organisational cultures one of the most renowned researchers in the field of culture and cultural differences is hofstede (1980; 1997; 2001). hofstede identified five “value” dimensions that explain differences in culture. collectivism vs. individualism is the first dimension. people in collective societies learn to place a high value on solidarity, cooperation, and concern for others. they prefer to work in groups (werner 2007). in these cultures a person’s identity is closely tied to her/her membership in important referent groups. their communication tends to be guided and constrained by concerns about hurting the other person’s feelings, minimising impositions placed on the other person, and avoiding negative evaluations of the other person. in contrast, individualistic people learn to value competition and independence from other people or groups. according to werner (2007) individualistic people prefer to make their own decisions and stay emotionally independent of others. conrad and poole (2005) suggest that these people like communication that is clear, efficient, and effective, and they adapt their own communication to correspond to those guidelines. power distance, the second dimension, indicates how power is distributed in an organisation. it refers to the amount of power supervisors can acceptably exercise over their subordinates (conrad & poole 2005). werner (2007) suggests that a high power distance is reflected in more levels of hierarchy, a narrow span of control and centralised decision making. employees are expected to submit to authority and demonstrate respect. low power distance is reflected in organisations that emphasise networking and collaboration. in this cultural type employees would probably call managers by their first names and freely communicate with them. male/female orientation refers to the extent to which the culture values the stereotypically masculine traits of assertiveness, competitiveness and materialism (werner 2007), or the stereotypically feminine attributes of cooperativeness, nurturing, quality of relationships, supportiveness and interdependence (conrad & poole 2005; werner 2007). the degree to which people are uncomfortable with ambiguity and risk, and prefer to work with long-term acquaintances or friends rather than with strangers, 177 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture is seen as uncertainty avoidance (conrad & poole 2005). organisations with high uncertainty avoidance rely on formal rules and procedures to control events and create security. such organisations avoid taking risks (werner 2007). those cultures high on uncertainty avoidance tend to show their emotions more freely than members of cultures on the opposite avoidance extreme (van staden, marx & erasmus-kritzinger 2007). confucian dynamism differentiates cultures in which people learn to take a short-term orientation (low confucian) from cultures where a long-term one is preferred (conrad & poole 2005). hall (in conrad & poole 2005: 388) added the low/high culture dimension to the already developed culture types identified by hofstede. in low-context cultures, people focus their attention on the explicit content of a message. in high-context cultures, much of the meaning is extracted from the context in which the message is uttered, and the message itself is much more ambiguous (van staden, marx & erasmus-kritzinger 2007). according to conrad and poole (2005:388) the result is that the messages constructed by people from low-context cultures seem to be blunt and excessively detailed to people from high-context cultures; messages from high-context cultures seem to be excessively vague, confusing, or noncommittal to people from low-context cultures. however, most authors on organisational culture agree that it is impossible to characterise an organisation as having a single culture. organisations are seen by these scholars as a multitude of subcultures that “co-exist in harmony, conflict or indifference to each other” (miller 2005: 102). these sub-cultures exist at different sites in the organisation. louis (in frost, moore, louis, lundberg & martin 1985) identified “vertical slice”, “horizontal slice”, or a specific work group as different sites. each subgroup could have its own culture. other aspects of organisational culture worth mentioning are that it is not unitary and often ambiguous. martin (in miller 2005) state that there is not always a clear picture of the organisation’s culture. there may be various manifestations of culture, which make it difficult to interpret. this phenomenon is known as the fragmentation perspective of culture. the preceding discussion demonstrates the complexity of organisational culture. apart from being a highly complex phenomenon (miller 2006), organisational culture is also emergent. interaction between organisational members creates culture. this idea is central to a communication perspective on culture in which culture is not merely transmitted through communication, but in which communication is “constitutive of culture” (eisenberg & riley, in miller 2005: 101). putman (in miller 2005: 101) argues that, “social reality is a symbolic process created through ongoing actions and intersubjective meanings attributed to those actions”. the communication process, which creates culture, is seen as very important in the emergence thereof. the core components of integrated communication (ic) niemann (2005:99) defines integrated communication (ic) as “the strategic management process of organisationally controlling or influencing all messages and 178 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture encouraging purposeful, data-driven dialogue to create and nourish long-term, profitable relationships with stakeholders”. according to mulder (2007) the scrutinising of a theoretical sample of imc and ic definitions found between 1989 and 2006 through conceptual analysis resulted in the emerging of the primary values and philosophy of the ic phenomenon. it is important to note that the position taken in this article is that ic emerged from imc (niemann 2005; mulder 2007). the values or basic principles of ic identified by mulder (2007) are: • holistic business approach; • brand integration; • stakeholder-centric; • stakeholder-conscious employees; • contact synergy; • message consistency; • use of technology; • financial accountability; • stakeholder segmentation; and • sustainable success in 1997 duncan and moriarty identified criteria that successful companies use to integrate their marketing communication activities. the criteria proposed by duncan and moriarty (1997) offered a valuable theoretical framework consisting of ten drivers. mulder (2007) elaborated on this model and included the above-mentioned principles to offer a more inclusive approach to the integration of communication into an organisation’s activities. in this model each one of the drivers (as duncan and moriarty called them) or principles falls into one of three integration categories. the first category, corporate focus, includes seven drivers: (1) holistic business approach, (2) relationship management, (3) brand integration, (4) stakeholder centricity, (5) the maintenance of strategic consistency, (6) stakeholder focus, and (7) sustainable success. the second category, institutional processes, includes six drivers: (1) marketing the corporate mission, (2) customer-conscious employees, (3) message consistency, (4) contact synergy, (5) generation of purposeful dialogue, and (6) financial accountability. the third category, infrastructure, includes four drivers: (1) cross-functional planning; (2) the development of core competencies; (3) database management; and (4) the use of an integrated agency. (each one of the categories will be discussed in detail later in the article.) figure 2 illustrates this model. 179 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture figure 2: elaborated ic driver model (mulder 2007, adapted from duncan & moriarty 1997) this elaborated ic driver model (mulder 2007) underwrites the strategic approach that should be followed, the operational process that must be employed and the infrastructure that should be available to facilitate effective ic practices in an organisation. according to duncan and moriarty (1997) the integration that results from the implementation of these drivers includes customer retention; interactional, ongoing communication; the expansion of marketing beyond the marketing department to the whole organisation; and improved brand equity. the elaborated ic model highlights several aspects and principles that can contribute towards the implementation of more effective integrated communication strategies. still, this model only addresses the basic integrated communication applications. as almost all marketing and communication in the south african environment, and across the world, takes place within a multi-cultural setting, it is essential to take notice of this dimension. not doing so is courting failure. the next section incorporates corporate culture components (that reflect excellence) with the identified principles of integrated communication (mulder 2007) in an attempt to address this shortcoming. merging corporate culture and ic principles table 1 presents a comparison between the basic principles of ic and the organisational culture components discussed earlier. it is of note that the majority of corporate culture components and ic principles show significant resemblance. the additional principles (no. 7, 9, 10, 12 & 13) and components (no. 17) are also listed and will be conversed on in the discussion following the table. 180 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture table 1: comparison between ic principles and corporate culture components (ccc) 181 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture table 1 illustrates a comparison between the ic principles and key components of an excellent corporate culture. in the following discussion, the three categories in the model (figure 2) are elaborated on, and the position of the corporate culture components (ccc) is reflected on to illustrate the task it performs in ic. a strong and excellent corporate culture to lodge ic organisational structures are formal systems created to enable organisational members to achieve organisational goals. the corporate focus level entails approaches, processes and activities that aim to create an environment in which an organisation can develop to maximise its long-run ability to create value (jones & george 2003). the second category consists of institutional processes implemented to take advantage of opportunities and compete effectively in the marketplace. the principle responsibility on this level is to establish processes and procedures to execute the strategies of the organisation by developing annual objectives and short-term strategies. the infrastructure category suggests the different resources and means necessary to support the processes level activities to reach the corporate level focus. category one: corporate focus viewing ic as a holistic business approach or “business process”, as suggested by schultz and schultz (1998), means communication is no longer a peripheral function. it focuses on integrated business strategies that promote organisational growth (wiscombe 2005). niemann (2005) opines that the strategic intent of the organisation as a whole should drive all the communication of the organisation. if ic is not part of the core decision making processes of a company, the true value thereof cannot be realised and it will not be able to make a real contribution to an organisation’s bottomline (kitchen 2005; hutton & mulhern 2002). an important ccc that underscores this approach is that corporate culture (ethos) is the driving force behind the successful operations of the organisation. within this context, brand communication is more than a name, term, sign, symbol, or any other feature. a brand is the promise of an experience (moriarty et al. 1995). according to schultz and barnes (1999: 44) “the brand has become a part of the relationship management process between the organisation and the stakeholders”. a powerful brand enhances awareness, 182 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture differentiates the organisation and commands a premium in today’s highly competitive marketplace, just as a strong corporate culture projects an organisation’s uniqueness and differentiates it from other organisations. the brand should be entrenched in all organisational activities and strategic consistency and ethos should be maintained. satisfied stakeholders are the ultimate determinant of product or company success. stakeholder-centricity therefore also forms part of this category. the concept of integrated communication begins with the people impacting on the organisation (schultz 1998; burnett & moriarty 1998; shimp 2000; hansted & hemanth 1999/2000). stakeholders are increasingly viewed as assets, with tangible equity (blattberg & deighton 1996) and lifetime value (pitt, ewing & berthon 2000). a strong corporate culture recognises that close relationships with the stakeholders are essential. a stakeholder-centric approach in ic necessitates the mention of two closely related and important aspects, namely dialogue or two-way communication, and the consequent building of long-term relationships. in ic all stakeholder contacts take on the role of communicating the brand’s marketing message to them. according to harbison (1997) stakeholder intimacy is one of the key components of ic, and involves the managing of all stakeholder moments. positive and respectful relationships are encouraged. stakeholder segmentation is a very important concept in ic (reich 1998). in essence, stakeholder segmentation entails the identification and formulation of meaningful and profitable niches and includes all stakeholders of the organisations. kliatchko (2005) describes ic as audience-focused. the use of the term audience rather than consumer is deliberate as it gives prominence to the fact that ic programmes are not directed solely to consumers, but to all relevant publics of an organisation (kliatchko 2005: 26). to be audienceor stakeholder-focused means ic programmes are directed at the multiple markets that have a direct or indirect impact on the business of an organisation (moore & thorson 1996), internal as well as external (kliatchko 2005; burnett & moriarty 1998). the main idea behind this criterion is that gaining the support of key stakeholders in the short term generates greater long-term profits for investors. duncan and moriarty (1997) underline that brand equity is determined by the number and quality of relationships that a company has, not only with customers, but with all its stakeholders. an excellent corporate culture acknowledges that people are important. in the ic paradigm communication is goal directed because of the stressed importance of efficiency (burnett & moriarty 1998), financial accountability (rensburg & cant 2003), and ultimately sustainable success. the communication strategy must have an objective that can be interpreted as the achievement of a substantive goal. the ultimate goal of the integrated communication strategy is to help sell the product or service to keep the company in business (burnett & moriarty 1998). a ccc that links up with this viewpoint is that employees and managers share the same core value of productivity and performance. 183 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture category two: institutional processes it is suggested that a company with a strong and excellent corporate culture demonstrates a strong and unifying philosophy and mission. duncan and moriarty’s (1997) proposed mission marketing relates to this and links up with sustainable success in the corporate focus category. a mission creates an integrity platform and helps define a company. one of the benefits thereof is that it keeps employees focused on the company’s fundamental objective of growing profitable relationships. mission marketing is a long-term corporate activity that requires companywide buy-in. an aspect that goes hand in hand with the changes in the internal environment is the growing importance of employees. the internal marketing process in ic is of the utmost importance to establish an effective base from which a company can operate, i.e. a strong corporate culture. the experience each customer has when buying and using a company’s product or service and interfacing with its employees is an integral part of his/her perceived value. brand equity starts with attracting employees who have an affinity for the product and are themselves satisfied and loyal (robinette & brand 2000). studies show that employee satisfaction correlates with customer satisfaction (feig 1997; freemantle 1998; maddock & fulton 1996). this indicates the importance of an integrated internal communication programme in any organisation that wants to be successful (mcgoon 1998/99) and fosters stakeholder-conscious employees. they should enhance the brand experience and include purposeful dialogue. the importance of internal marketing is also reflected in the discussion on contact synergy. an organisation should strive to direct each contact point between the organisation and its stakeholders. the significance of this concept is the notion that every contact between a company and the stakeholders should be managed in such a manner that synergy is created (egan 2007). from a corporate culture perspective, this will enhance the distinction between organisations. the bottom line of contact synergy is that many marketing and communication techniques should be combined to present a unified and consistent message with a feedback mechanism built into the process to make the communication a two-way flow of information. the more the brand’s position is strategically integrated into all the brand messages, the more consistent and distinct the company’s identity and reputation will be (duncan & moriarty 1997). these areas demonstrate corporate integrity and provide a platform for integrated communication. one of the biggest problems facing marketing and communication managers is the fact that they are under more and more pressure to be accountable for the money they spend (duncan, caywood & newsom 1993; thornson & moore 1996; shimp 2000). a simple argument for ic is that “there are financial, competitive and effectiveness benefits to be achieved through the synergy afforded by the process of integration” (pickton & hartley 1998:458). ic should be results driven, suggests kliatchko (2005). this author considers financial measurement as a pillar of ic. in the initial duncan and moriarty (1997) model it became apparent that zero-based planning addresses the financial approach and management aspect in ic. however, to allow for a broader application of financial planning, zero-based planning was replaced with financial accountability in the process domain. 184 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture category three: infrastructure according to duncan and moriarty (1997) core competencies are another important ic driver. as ccc it encourages employees to stay focused on what they do best and avoid radical diversification. this criterion supports the notion that marketing and communication managers must have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the major marketing communication functions or techniques. they must objectively evaluate and respect these strengths and weaknesses and apply them in a mix that maximises the cost-effectiveness of each function (duncan & moriarty 1997). a crossfunctional management system should be in place in an organisation to coordinate all efforts (duncan 2002). in an organisation with a strong corporate culture, complex structures and division of labour are avoided. technology has a profound impact on the marketplace (mcgoon 1998/99; duncan & moriarty 1997; kitchen 2005; dewhirst & davis 2005). as reich (1998: 28) suggests, “a multi-faceted relational database-driven approach packs a far more potent wallop than any single advertising component in terms of positioning, brand building/product awareness, and cementing that all important bond – customer loyalty”. however, this same author maintains that a mix of traditional marketing communication techniques and interactive programmes should blend to yield a more powerful ic programme. the infrastructure category accommodates database management. the essence of the arguments presented on the use of technology is captured in this concept. it also encapsulates the importance of being able to react quickly and not spend excess time on planning and analysing. conclusion all customer touch points affect the brand and brand equity of an organisation. when the individuals touched by the company are from different cultures, their experiences of the touch will vary – making it very difficult for the organisation to manage these experiences and perceptions effectively. the challenge each organisation face, is to gain cultural competency by developing an understanding of how individuals perceive and react to their different cultural rules. it is important to acknowledge that differences are not deficiencies, state conrad and poole (2005). the examined literature point towards the fact that an organisational culture that is sensitive to cultural diversity could contribute towards the organisation’s cultural competence. an organisation should have a strong and excellent corporate culture, which implies among other things that the organisation will foster sensitivity towards diversity and the competitive edge it can provide. this article recognises the growing importance of cultivating an organisational culture that is accommodating to diversity. most modern organisations in south africa and around the world are faced by cultural diversity. through integrating the basic principles of integrated communication and the intercultural communication competence indicators, guidelines are provided to use as practical tools to address aspects of integrated communication in a multi-cultural marketplace. although these guidelines do not presume to be a quick fix to intercultural challenges, it will create an awareness of the importance thereof to deal with intercultural aspects. 185 a conceptual model for integrating communication and corporate culture references blattberg, r. & deighton, j. 1996. manage marketing by the customer equity test. harvard business review 74(4): 5-14. burnett, j. & moriarty, s.e. 1998. marketing communication: an integrated approach. new jersey: prentice hall. conrad, c. & poole, m.s. 2005. strategic organisational communication in a global economy. belmont: thomson wadsworth. de chernatony, l. 2001. from brand vision to brand evaluation. oxford: butterworth heinemann. deal, t. & kennedy, a. 1982. corporate cultures: the rites and rituals of corporate life. unpublished master’s dissertation. reading, addison-wesley. de wet, j.c. 2005. meeting on the “narrow ridge” in intercultural communication with specific reference to the ufs. communitas 10: 53-65. dewhirst, t. & davis, b. 2005. brand strategy and integrated marketing communication (imc). journal of advertising 34(4): 81-92. duncan, t.r. 2002. imc: using advertising and promotion to build brands. burr ridge, il.: mcgraw-hill/irwin. duncan, t.r.; 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newspapers — and not family, friends or doctors — as their primary source of information about hiv/aids. a particularly alarming fact is the extreme vulnerability of the youth — by the age of 23, one south african youth in five is hiv positive. a prominent section of the youth is present on the many university campuses. in this context, campus radio stations constitute one possible vehicle for communicating important health-related messages to this target group. this article aims to make recommendations for successful health communication through campus radio. the article first describes the role of campus radio by interrogating its social and civic role, and its active and participatory role. it goes on to identify specific challenges of hiv/aids broadcasting pertaining to campus radio stations, and then makes suggestions on how to meet such challenges head-on. * nadia van der merwe1 lectures in the department of communication at the university of johannesburg. introduction and orientation broadcast media have tremendous reach and influence, particularly with young people, who represent the future and who are the key to any successful fight against hiv/aids. we must seek to engage these powerful organizations as full partners in the fight to halt hiv/aids through awareness, prevention, and education. – kofi annan, former united nations secretary general education is currently reputed to be a vaccine against hiv/aids (vandemoortele & delamonica 2007). many aids campaigns are based on the cognitive behaviour model according to which behavioural change is the result of rational, individual decisionmaking based on acquired knowledge (francis & rimensberger 2005: 87). analyses of prevention interventions have consistently found that such programmes reduce the frequency of sexual risk behaviour. behavioural change programmes typically include basic information about the virus, counselling and skills development, e.g. negotiating safe sex (unaids 2006). undoubtedly, mass media has enormous influence in educating and empowering individuals and numerous examples can be cited of media interventions that have effected positive changes in society. in one such instance, an indian village rejected the dowry system after listening communally to a radio soap opera broadcast (unaids 2004). in january 2004, the then secretary general of the united nations, kofi annan, first called upon media companies to join the global effort against hiv and aids on the occasion of a special meeting of media leaders at the un headquarters in new york. here the global media aids initiative (gmai) was established. the role of the media specifically in combating hiv and aids was emphasised when national surveys conducted in the us revealed that 72% of americans had identified television, radio and newspapers – not family, friends and doctors – as their primary sources of information about hiv and aids (unaids 2004). in response to the gmai, the african broadcast media partnership against hiv/aids (abmp) was launched in 2006. at this meeting it was concluded that “the broadcast media in africa is pivotal to the effort to stem the tide of the hiv/aids epidemic on the continent”. the aim of this initiative was thus to increase substantially the amount of hiv/aids-related programming by african broadcasters. this research was initially sparked by a tagline on an act up 2 poster (1990) that read: aids is everybody’s business. the research was further sparked by alarming statistics about the pandemic. according to the south africa survey 2004/2005 (kane-berman & tempest 2006), deaths from causes other than hiv and aids increase in accordance with increases in population size, and are predicted to increase by 3.6% between 2000 and 2010. conversely, deaths as a result of hiv and aids are predicted to increase by 150.3%. a particularly alarming fact is the extreme vulnerability of the youth: whereas the estimated prevalence among the general population is about 11%, the prevalence in the population aged between 15 and 49 is estimated at about 19%. another source (ndaki 2004), states that, by the age of 23, one south african youth in five is hiv 94 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature positive. in lieu of the above, there is consensus that young people need expanded information, skills, and services concerning sexual and reproductive health. some would argue that successful communication can only take place by means of interpersonal, face-to-face communication, preferably in the context of the home. however, the fact is that parents do not communicate with their children about sexuality, let alone hiv and aids, hence necessitating the identification of other means of communicating about hiv and aids. effective communication strategies for addressing sexual health issues can be provided by the media whose role it is to open channels of communication and to foster discussion. yet, according to singhal (2003: 7), “the world has underestimated the role communication can play in reducing hiv infection in developing countries”. radio as a communication tool it is a long-established fact that television and radio campaigns have generated interest in the use of the popular media as channels for dealing with both social and personal problems, including sexual health and relationships (bentley, blank & van haveren 2001: 186). in developing countries beset by social problems such as the hiv and aids pandemic, addressing such issues has become a key function of the popular media (vaughan, rogers & singhal 2000: 82). and even though social change is not always brought about through mass media campaigns, the latter can lead to broader discourses on development and health. radio in particular is regarded to be an effective tool. it can play many different roles and is considered to be a good agent of development (mckinley & jensen 2003: 182). as radio is a low-cost medium with broad coverage, it has the ability to exert influence on lifestyles; it entertains, informs, empowers, socialises and befriends (macfarland 1997: 32). all of these make it a gratifying and useful medium. the post 1994 broadcasting environment in south africa gave rise to a continuously evolving and somewhat varied community radio sector. van zyl (2003: 11, 20, 29-30) identifies the following reasons why community radio, especially, has been very successful in education programming: • it generates high levels of audience loyalty; • it fosters trust in the presenters and in the station; • the accessibility of the station makes it easy to phone in or even walk in if more information is needed; • it is possible to adopt programming to local needs and language requirements; • it provides opportunities for enriching learning though linkages with other programmes and campaigns; 95 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature • it encourages dialogue in the community and between communities; • it can build citizens by encouraging individuals in various communities to debate the true nature of a good society, and to discuss the kind of world in which they would like to live; and • it can create an atmosphere of tolerance by removing the restrictions brought about by stereotypes. yet it is also important to note the drawbacks of using radio to communicate about health issues. because radio is a transitory medium, information is not always retained by listeners who cannot ask for clarification; radio is a one-way medium offering no immediate opportunity for interaction; not all people have access to electricity, and batteries can be expensive; radio can be used for the wrong reasons (communicating divergent messages) and can heighten people’s fears and prejudices; some also believe that radio on its own cannot have an educational impact (adam & harford 1998: 4), while others suggest a multimedia approach to health education (storey, boulay, karki, heckert & karmacharya 1999: 288). according to mody (1991: 24), the focus of attention should, however, not be on what media to employ, but on how to incorporate audience research into message design so as to enhance effective communication and educational impact through a locally available, low-cost medium that is accessible to the majority. a prominent section of the youth is present on the many university campuses throughout the country. in this context campus radio stations constitute one possible vehicle for communicating important health-related messages to this target group. on some university campuses in south africa there are licensed community radio stations catering for the specific yet varied needs of the student communities they serve. these stations are granted a special-interest community broadcasting licence by the independent broadcasting authority of south africa (icasa 2005). campus radio targets a diverse audience of both school and university students, thereby providing a direct link to this, the most vulnerable of groups in respect of hiv and aids. specific characteristics of campus radio make it an effective medium for hiv and aids communication: • information is communicated by peers; • the programming reflects the culture and aspirations of student life on the campus, and is made up of talk (25-40%) and music (60-75%). it includes features such as traffic reports, weather reports, etc.; • it has a youthful character and is entertaining, which lends itself to employing an education-entertainment strategy in respect of hiv and aids education; 96 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature • anonymous participation is possible; • though ownership is not in the community, these stations are managed by the student community. campus radio is therefore produced by the students for the students; and • campus radio, being on a university campus, provides distinct opportunities for research partnerships and programme development opportunities with academic staff. aim and methodology against this background, this article aims to make recommendations for successful health communication through campus radio. the article first describes the role of campus radio by means of various station managers’ perceptions. it goes on to identify specific challenges of hiv/aids broadcasting pertaining to campus radio stations, and then makes suggestions for dealing with such challenges. these recommendations and suggestions for meeting the day-to-day challenges head-on could empower campus stations to join more aggressively and more effectively in the fight against hiv/aids. apart from a literature review of the topic, which informed the identification of challenges and suggestions to overcome the challenges, it was also necessary to gain insight into the perceptions of selected station managers of campus radio stations regarding their role in general, and, more specifically, in communicating to their listeners (aged 16-28) about hiv and aids. the oneworld radio/exchange brainstorming meeting in june 2004 emphasised the importance of “opening up opportunities for broadcasters themselves to get into dialogue about the practice of hiv/aids broadcasting” (exchange 2004). geographical constraints guided the selection of electronic open-ended questionnaires to gather the data from campus radio stations. the questionnaires were completed by the station managers of tuksfm (university of pretoria), mfm (university of stellenbosch) and kovsie fm (university of the free state). these stations were chosen on the basis of experience in years (five to nine) of the managers. other factors influencing the selection process were the stations’ diverse geographical locations and the fact that all target diverse audience groups. a profile of the radio stations the following table provides a comparison of the three campus radios in terms of a number of characteristics. table 1: a comparison of three campus radio stations3 97 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature (the media connection 2005) from the above table it is clear that apart from the specific area served, the stations have much in common, e.g. the programming content. what does vary in this respect is the time allocation in respect of talk and music, with kovsie fm – in contrast to the other two – devoting much more time to music than to talking. another significant difference is in respect of the lsm group targeted, with mfm’s target group being significantly lower than either of the other two stations. however, what is noteworthy about kovsie fm is the fact that it broadcasts in three of the most important languages of the region, though only a scant 10% is devoted to sesotho broadcasting. 98 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature the role of campus radio: station managers’ perceptions more than a decade after the advent of democracy in south africa, the debate is still on regarding the role of the media in south africa as a developing country. this trend is echoed in respect of the role of community radio vis-à-vis education and development. according to van zyl (2005: 8-9), the necessary work of establishing a community radio sector has been accomplished. the next goal is to develop a new function for community radio, which should include: • a social and civic role: a positive, post-liberation role that originates from the original mandate; • an active and participatory role: where community radio acts in strengthening civil society structures; and • a guiding and reflecting role: where, as one of its important functions, community radio reflects the opinions of the citizens of its community. when asked about the role of community radio and campus radio in particular, the three station managers all agreed that campus radio should act as a vehicle for students to obtain knowledge of broadcasting and actual broadcasting skills in the industry. one respondent even regarded the in-service training function of campus radio to be the primary role of this form of community media. a second important function highlighted by the respondents was that of fulfilling the role of an information and entertainment medium for the learners and students of the community served. more specifically, certain sub-functions of campus radio were identified by the respondents. the first couple of functions are generic and general, and they correlate with one of the new functions for community radio as explicated by van zyl (2005: 8-9), namely the social and civic role: • presenting its target audience with a high-quality, professional radio service; • supporting the development of music and musicians from within the immediate community and also those from other areas of south africa; • providing an impartial, fair and immediate local, national and international news service, with a marked emphasis on local coverage; and • raising funds to ensure the continued successful functioning of the station. a last sub-function to be identified by the respondents, namely that of “developing a culture of critical thinking and constructive debate and ensuring that all sectors of the community have the opportunity to state their views or concerns on air”, is in agreement with the guiding and reflective role identified by van zyl (2005: 8-9). respondents also agreed that the role of campus radio does not really differ from that of other community radio stations, except in the sense that all community stations cater for their specific communities and for the needs of their specific communities. 99 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature the social and civic role: serving the community’s needs tuksfm attempts to address the listeners’ needs “through effective, intelligent programming”. the station manager identified the needs of his listeners as being financial-, entertainmentand social responsibility-orientated. he selected two social issues – employment and hiv/aids – as being important social issues with tuksfm listeners. the kovsie fm station manager perceived his listeners’ needs to be “entertainment, arts and culture and factual, educational programmes”. the station attempts to address these needs by providing entertainment through music and presenters. five times a day it provides community and events news coverage on cultural and community activities. in conjunction with the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state, the station also produces programmes dealing with factual, educational issues. the mfm station manager described the listeners of this campus radio station as being young, upwardly mobile, socially conscious and dynamic. according to him the needs of the listeners boil down to entertainment, information and education. mfm tries to include these facets in the programming, the music, the planning and the projects. social issues considered to be important to the listeners are hiv/aids, sexual issues, education and career planning, and crime and security. mfm has established certain partnerships to ensure that the listeners’ needs are met. the active and participatory role: serving listeners’ hiv and aids needs in an illuminating article on the role of education in combating the aids pandemic, vandemoortele and delamonica (2007) state that research has shown that the more educated, mobile and affluent members of society seem to be the most vulnerable to hiv infection during its initial stages. conversely, with increased information, knowledge and awareness this group’s behaviour to reduce the risk of contracting hiv changes faster than that of illiterate and poor people. this emphasises the importance of communicating the necessary information to the youth as the most vulnerable group. yet in many countries open and frank communication about hiv transmission does not occur at home, in school or in public. according to these authors, “a wall of silence … surrounds the disease”. they identify four so-called allies that make hiv so prevalent in many developing countries, namely silence, shame, stigma and superstition. these four allies thrive in “a climate of ignorance and illiteracy. education is key to defeating this deadly alliance.” pinpointing the precise role of campus radio in communicating about hiv and aids is challenging. several factors complicate the production of radio about hiv and aids, such as the nature and severity of the illness, its broad impact, and various cultural sensitivities about discussing human sexuality (mclellan 2006). ideally, it should comprise awareness raising, educating the public about the disease, changing a person’s or group’s attitudes about the disease, changing individual behaviour to prevent or control a disease, and creating social norms that favour healthy living. broadcasters 100 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature must further bear in mind that the link between public health issues and significant behaviour change is not yet fully understood (adam & harford 1999: 4). the station manager of tuksfm was clear about the role that campus radio should play in respect of hiv and aids, and maintained that campus radio stations should “provide information about the pandemic”. this information should “communicate the message of complete abstinence or safe[r] sex and provide information on what causes hiv and how hiv is transmitted”. tuksfm has only one programme focusing on hiv/aids, and this is usually requested and produced by a community-based organisation. the station has sponsorship for the programme and the university is not involved. student involvement is generated via telephone, sms and e-mail. tuksfm is not involved in any other hiv/aids-related projects or campaigns, but does run public service announcements. its efforts are not evaluated. kovsie fm’s station manager likewise recognised the need for radio stations to “create awareness about the dangers of hiv/aids, as well as to address all issues related to the virus”. he took a stronger position in stating that more than just running public service announcements, campus radio stations should be actively involved in both hiv/aids campaigns and with the work of ngos. kovsie fm runs various hiv/aids-focused programmes. the programming amounts to a total of 90 minutes a week. interviews, mini-dramas and a live show that answers listeners’ questions are part of the campaign. two of the programmes are sponsored by the department of communication and information studies, and another by the university’s life skills and wellness centre. the station manager of mfm felt that campus radio stations should primarily play a preventive role, while its secondary role should be one of building tolerance and acceptance. this station does not have specific hiv/aids-related programmes, but includes the issue in some of its mainstream shows. this will happen anything from twice to five times a month. partnerships exist with stellenbosch aids action, the university’s aids coordinator and its department of communications. in the manager’s opinion, people living with hiv/aids had to be made part of producing and presenting hiv/aids-related programmes. he suggested incorporating the human element to raise awareness. the following can be deduced from the station managers’ responses: although respondents had definite ideas about their respective stations’ roles in the fight against hiv/aids, they had little or no hiv/aids-related communication campaigns. however, some partnerships had been formed. their comments regarding their role in general seemed almost forced, sounding somewhat like applications to icasa for a licence. the impression gained was that they were going through the motions, that they thought that it was expected of them to make some attempt at hiv/aids communication, but that they themselves were not sure as to how this was to be approached. 101 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature according to the respondents, the biggest challenge to be faced in respect of hiv/aids programming was that of maintaining the level of audience interest. kovsie fm’s station manager recommended that interviews should last no longer than seven minutes so as to contain only the gist of a message. they also feared that the topic would be too serious and that they would consequently either alienate or lose their audiences. this is a real concern in a media-saturated society in which people are continuously bombarded with messages about what and what not to do. while behavioural change programmes aimed at informing high-risk groups are among the most cost-effective prevention interventions available (unaids 2006), some studies have found that the incidence of high-risk behaviour did not change much, despite the fact that people had a reasonably accurate knowledge of hiv and aids, and of prevention measures. not only does this cast some doubt on the efficacy of the cognitive behaviour model, but it also points to fatigue in respect of the topic as a consequence of having been exposed to much information in this regard (francis & rimensberger 2005). herein lies the challenge, according to solly mokoetle, chair of the african broadcast media partnership against hiv/aids (abmp), namely to turn the awareness about the disease into sustained behaviour change that would then result in reduced hiv/aids rates (kaiser family foundation 2006). a further challenge pointed out by the respondents was the difficulty of persuading people living with hiv or aids to be interviewed, for fear of having their anonymity compromised. in general there is a lack of formal research on audience needs and on the monitoring and evaluation of the impact of communication initiatives. in the past, the approach to hiv communication was often rather haphazard. this provides the rationale for exploring ways of achieving successful health communication specifically through campus radio. the second part of this article is devoted to identifying the specific challenges of hiv/aids broadcasting pertaining to campus radio stations, and then ways of meeting such challenges head-on are suggested. communicating about hiv/aids according to bernhardt (2004: 2052), public health communication is “the scientific development, strategic dissemination, and critical evaluation of relevant, accurate, accessible, and understandable health information communicated to and from intended audiences to advance the health of the public”. freimuth, linnan and potter (2000: 11) argue that the essential elements of the communication process – audience, message, source and channel – must be taken into account when disseminating health information. in order for campus radio stations to develop and/or disseminate and/or evaluate hiv/aids information, these elements of the communication process need to be considered and addressed. 102 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature the audience an understanding of the intended audience is very important. part of understanding the audience is using audience segmentation. the criteria for segmentation include demographics, behaviour and psychographic characteristics. yet when it comes to communicating about hiv/aids, it might be more appropriate to group the audience according to the precise nature of their sexual activity. according to hughes and mccauley (1998: 240), three groupings of people emerge: • group 1: adolescents who have not yet begun having intercourse; • group 2: adolescents who have engaged in intercourse and have experienced no unhealthy consequences; and • group 3: adolescents who have engaged in intercourse and have experienced unhealthy consequences. in order to communicate about hiv/aids, some knowledge regarding the status of adolescent sexuality must be acquired: their knowledge, perceptions and behaviour concerning hiv/aids; their misconceptions and fears; the current societal taboos and prejudices in respect of hiv/aids; adolescents’ perceptions of personal risk; the nature of sexual practice among adolescents; the reasons for indulging in high-risk sex; the attitudes of adolescents towards adolescent sexuality; youths living with hiv/aids; and adolescents’ preferred sources of information on hiv/aids (hughes & mccauley 1998: 240). broadcasters would thus do well to consult the south african national hiv prevalence, hiv incidence, behaviour and communication survey, 2005.5 the audience’s knowledge about hiv/aids can be determined by asking four basic questions: • what do you think are the causes of hiv/aids? • how do you know if you have hiv? • how do you/can you prevent hiv? • how would you relate to a person with hiv? here radio stations can partner with their universities’ research centres or academic departments to develop and disseminate a questionnaire to students. alternatively, an online survey can be made available on the official website of the radio station. the message mody (1991: 147-148) cautions the broadcaster to develop audience-responsive content. content choices should thus be guided by the demarcated audience, e.g. the three groups mentioned above demarcated according to the nature of their sexual activity. however, campus radio stations’ ability to do this is questionable, given their perceived functions as discussed earlier. in general, though, broadcasters could run with certain topics as part of the hiv/aids communication. care should be taken that 103 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature broadcasts adhere to the following overarching criteria for communicating health information, namely that the content must be useful, timely, appropriate and simple and not contain too much technical information (mclellan 2005; mody 1991: 147-148). the following topics are adapted from a list provided by adam and harford (1999: 35-36): • how people contract hiv; • the connection between hiv and aids; • hiv prevention; • the experience of living with hiv/aids; • the marked vulnerability of young women to hiv infection; • the rights of women to negotiate safer sex, and the nature of safer sex; • hiv/aids support groups – how people living with hiv/aids are working to address their own problems; and • aids treatment, and the costs involved. mclellan (2005) maintains that merely providing information about hiv/aids is not enough. the broadcaster needs to be conscious of the problems closely related to the aids epidemic in africa, ranging from those problems closely associated with high levels of poverty, low-level educational attainment, apathy, myths and misconceptions about hiv/aids, to those linked with emotional/behavioural and human factors (umerah-udezulu & williams 2001: 35). in light of understanding the broader context of hiv/aids, the role that broadcasters can play is thus not limited to the dissemination of prevention messages but they can also play a role with regard to advocacy and mobilisation. adam and harford (1998: 30) stress the important proviso that messages must provide alternative narratives – more than just doom and gloom. as a result of the circumstances in which many people live, they have a limited ability to imagine either other circumstances or options. the message that one can indeed live positively with hiv can be included in the key messages when communicating about hiv/aids. in order to adhere to these criteria, special care must be taken with regard to language.6 language usage must be straightforward and non-judgmental. adam and harford (1991: 26) make some useful suggestions. try to say: hiv positive, to have aids, to be living with aids, to become infected with hiv/aids. try not to say: aids sufferers, aids victims/innocent victims, catching aids, and, to die from aids. 104 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature message design can be complicated – especially when one takes into account that broadcasters must communicate on the individual, interpersonal or community level. mclellan (2005) suggests consulting copies of socio-behavioural studies. gaining insights on what is actually going on regarding risky sexual behaviour among the youth helps towards ensuring that the broadcast reflects what actually transpires. deciding what the key messages are should be based on discussions with the specialists and asking the people to whom you are broadcasting. source finding a person who will be a credible bearer/carrier of the message is an important aspect of the process. kreuter and mcclure (2004: 443) identify two primary dimensions of credibility: expertise and trustworthiness. credibility might possibly also be enhanced by being regarded as socially attractive, especially when the channel is video or audio, or when the message being communicated is unpleasant. highly technical messages should be communicated by expert sources, while a message advocating behaviour change necessitates trustworthiness (freimuth 1995: 84). local voices are just as important as local programming. local voices not only heighten the identification with listeners, but also reaffirm the identities of the people listening so that they can see themselves reflected in the programme. mclellan (2005) suggests including people living with hiv/aids in the broadcast – wherever possible – and even getting them to present the programmes. the channel if the message does not reach the intended audience, the attempt at communication will fail. the channel, or means by which the message is sent, is as important as the message. it is advised that channels be combined. “mass media channels are most effective for increasing awareness and knowledge, but interpersonal channels work better in changing attitudes and behaviour” (rogers as quoted by freimuth et al. 2000: 4). storey et al. (1999: 287) concur that hiv communication through more than one medium increases the breadth and sustainability of the impact. mass media channels: radio programming adam and harford (1999: 39-48) have identified some of the most successful formats for health programmes, namely spots, mini-dialogues, mini-dramas, songs, interviews, slogans, magazine, stories, oral testimony, phone-ins and soap operas. however, not all of these are either applicable or feasible for campus radio. the following table gives the broadcaster an indication of the positive and negative aspects of some of the applicable programme formats. 105 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature table 2: positive and negative aspects of selected radio programme formats (adapted from nduati & kiai 197: 85-86; singhal & rogers 2003: 382) appropriate scheduling is equally important to ensure that messages are heard by the target audience. the broadcaster must remember that the message that unsafe sex can be extremely dangerous is not always a welcome one. the programmes must moreover be entertaining yet sensitive. adam and harford (1999: 69) suggest that key messages need also to be repeated in different programme formats so as not to bore the audience. broadcasters must be sure to vary the times of day, and days of the week when airing radio spots. interpersonal channels galavotti and pappas-deluca (2001: 1602-1608) support the idea that the use of media to communicate about hiv/aids must be combined with interpersonal reinforcement through community-level support. these authors suggest “the involvement of the credible members of the affected community and mobilising them to endorse and support behaviour changes among members of their own peer, family and social networks”. 106 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature the following are possible means of ensuring interpersonal reinforcement of the broadcaster’s message: support groups and partnerships with the student counselling services and offices dealing specifically with hiv and aids; road shows, thereby taking the shows out of the studio to focus on the issues a community considers important; and selecting community promoters able to establish listening groups to discuss issues pertaining to the broadcast (mckinley & jensen 2003: 192). applying these guidelines for hiv/aids communication might sound simple enough, yet applying them in practice is an altogether different matter. i thus want to take the exercise a step further by also identifying challenges in respect of hiv/aids communication and then making some suggestions for dealing with such challenges. communicating about hiv and aids: identifying and overcoming challenges the main challenges in communicating about hiv and aids pertain to resources, content and implementation. due to space constraints the challenges and suggestions to overcome these challenges will be summarised in table 3 below. table 3: overview of hiv and aids communication challenges and solutions 107 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature 108 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature 109 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature (adapted from bentley, blank & van haveren 2001: 186; adam and harford 1998: 2328, 29, 33, 55-56, 94, 104; howard, kievman & moore 1994: 171-172; macfarland 1997: 59; exchange 2004; mckinley & jensen 2003: 182-183) conclusion communicating to adolescents is challenging, and even more so when it comes to a sensitive and potentially controversial issue such as hiv/aids. alarming statistics regarding hiv/aids-related deaths and infection rates, especially among the youth in south africa, call for an aggressive communication campaign. this study has proposed the use of campus radio to reach the youth. the perceptions of tuksfm, mfm and kovsie fm regarding their role in communicating to their listeners about hiv/aids were assessed. although their community licence requirements do not stipulate the role campus radio should play in communicating about hiv/aids, the managements of these stations do feel that they have a part to play. the three stations are attempting to fulfil both their listeners’ needs and their own specific developmental needs. there does however seem to be a lack of initial research, of the resources required to sustain hiv/aids communication, and of audience participation. there seem to be both ignorance and apathy on the part of management. existing hiv/aids communication might also be done for the wrong reasons, e.g. to obtain sponsorships, to acquire broadcasting licences, or to please stakeholders and community partners. 110 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature four elements of the communication process – audience, message, source and channel – need to be taken into account when communicating about hiv/aids. an understanding of the audience for which the message is intended is very important. in order to communicate about hiv/aids, some knowledge regarding the nature of adolescent sexuality must be acquired by the broadcaster. the message must be useful, timely, appropriate and simple. it is crucial that the information be transmitted by a credible source. selecting the appropriate channel, or in this context, the appropriate programme format needs careful deliberation. both the talk and the music format seem to be equally appropriate for hiv/aids communication. researchers agree that combining interpersonal and mass-media channels to communicate about hiv/aids is a good idea. interpersonal reinforcement of a broadcaster’s message can be effected through support groups and partnerships with the student counselling services. campus radio stations face some daunting challenges when it comes to hiv/aids communication. these include challenges in respect of resources and content, and other challenges related to community and audience participation and involvement, and the evaluation of programming. these challenges can be overcome, inter alia, by investigating every avenue for possible partnerships, by assessing staff development needs, by selecting the appropriate message, and by keeping programming entertaining and professional. campus radio management must start thinking about hiv/aids communication. they must be aware of the fact that their listeners are in some way affected by the disease. they must be open to discussing it among themselves and with their audience. they must not include public service announcements simply to please stakeholders, but be diligent in evaluating the messages by using the criteria as discussed in this article. they must start thinking creatively about including hiv/aids communication in their broadcasts. they can, for example, ask a local artist to write an hiv/aids song for world aids day, or set up a panel to debate the effectiveness of the lovelife campaign. they can also see to it that the hiv/aids-related information makes their news agenda. endnotes 1 the author would like to thank engela pretorius for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 aids coalition to unleash power 3 note that the data presented in the table relates to 2005 when the then station managers completed the questionnaire. 4 station’s own survey of audience numbers. 5 full report available at http://www.hsrcpress.co.za/advanced_search_results.asp 6 see eu-india media on hiv/aids, 2007 http://www.aidsandmedia.net/manual07.htm#english 7 see http://www.aidsandmedia.net/music.htm to download songs that have been developed by the thomson foundation on issues related to hiv/aids. 111 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature 8 see rogers, e.m., vaughan, p.w., swalehe, r.m.a., rao, n., svenkerud, p. & sood, a. 1999. effects of entertainment-education soap opera on family-planning behaviour in tanzania. studies in family planning 30(3). where a university has a drama department, creative collaborations can be made, e.g. providing a platform for the creative work of such students and obtaining sponsors to support such programmes. 112 communicating to adolescents about hiv and aids through campus radio: suggestions from the literature references adam, g. & harford, n. 1999. radio and hiv/aids: making a difference. a guide for radio practitioners, health workers and donors. unaids. bernhardt, j.m. 2004. communication at the core of effective health communication. american journal of public health 94(12): 2051-2054. bentley, k., blank, w. & van haveren, r.a. 2001. “lafeneline”: promoting sexual health through college radio. journal of college counselling 4(2): 186-190. exchange. 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[online]. available at: www.sahims.net/regional/aids/arc_combating_the_hiv.pdf [accessed on 15/03/2005]. unaids. 2004. the media and hiv/aids: making a difference. [online]. available at: www.unaids.org [accessed on 06/06/2007]. unaids. 2006. uniting the world against aids. report on the global aids epidemic 2006. [online]. available at: www.unaids.org [accessed on 25/06/2007]. vandemoortele, j. & delamonica, e. 2007. the “education vaccine” against hiv. [online]. available at: www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/arc [accessed on 22/06/2007]. van zyl, j. 2003. community radio. the people’s voice. johannesburg: sharp media. van zyl, j. 2005. a sense of belonging. community radio and civil society. johannesburg: abc ulwazi. vaughan, p.w., rogers, e.m., singhal, a. and r. m. swalahe, 2000. entertainmenteducation and hiv/aids prevention: a field experiment in tanzania. journal of health communication 5 (supplement): 81-100. 114 1. paul schutte 151 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 151 167 ben-piet venter and johann van der merwe* abstract the last two years have seen top south african and international companies being accused or criticised for activities that do not serve the interests of their stakeholders. a sad result of this and other organisational philandering is that the name of public relations – already tainted – is sullied even more. the ethics of organisational management, the ethical impacts of public relations, and the ethics of public relations practitioners are addressed in this article. in deliberating the sticky ethics issue, the current role of public relations in the organisation as well as public relations education in south africa are also discussed. it is suggested that the value chain can be used to assist public relations in overcoming its uncertain position in the ethics debacle by firstly placing it firmly in the organisation’s value chain as a support activity alongside those of human resources, firm infrastructure, and technology development; secondly that the placement of public relations as support function in the value chain is a good argument for the allocation to public relations of its rightful place in the organisation’s formal chain of command; and thirdly, given the acceptance that public relations is a support function not only to marketing and sales, but also to inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, and service, it becomes necessary to revise the educational curriculum of public relations students. * ben-piet venter lectures at the solbridge international school of business in daejeon, south korea. dr johann van der merwe is head of the department of public relations management at the cape peninsula university of technology in cape town. introduction the product recalls on a massive scale during the first months of 2007, followed by an apology to the chinese government by toy manufacturer mattel has, more than any other single event, brought the issue of ethics in business into sharp focus. following in the wake of a number of preceding “misdemeanours” by organisations such as enron, worldcom and others, this event has one unique consequence – mattel was sued by its shareholders for its sloppy handling of the matter. in all other respects, the toy recall echoes to a greater or lesser extent the “typical” behaviour of an organisation when caught, as it were, with its pants down. the following sequence of events seems to unfold with monotonous regularity: • accusation; • denial; • guilty verdict; • rationalisation; and • assurances of future holiness. of course, the real “golden thread” running through all of this is the invisible hand of the “spin doctor” manipulating opinion, ensuring everyone stays on message, selecting the right media moments, writing and re-writing media releases for best persuasive effect, and all the other little tricks up the sleeve of the “engineer of consent” – a phrase that bernays coined. do organisations like these stop for a minute to ponder the hypocrisy of what they are doing? one will be forgiven for asking – surely an organisation cannot be innocent one day, and guilty the next, and free of blame the day after? if it were true, in the reported words of p. t. barnum, that a fool is born every minute, even the most obtuse business manager will realise that – this time in the words of the great abraham lincoln – you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. this is becoming apparent in a time when both media and consumers – not to mention governments and regulators – are looking at ways in which to hamstring organisations trying to ensure “proper” conduct in future. business managers will be quick to point out that legislation and regulation are burdensome and costly, harming the consumers’ pockets in the long run. this may be true, but using this form of rationalisation does not absolve the errant company. a sad result of this organisational philandering is that the name of public relations – already tainted – is sullied even more. another result of course is that consumers are becoming ever more wary of promises of good service and superior product performance, and thus more reluctant to part with their hard-earned money. against a background such as this, public relations itself is questioning whether – and how – to go forward. ranging from bestsellers such as the fall of advertising and the rise of pr by al and laura ries to the publication of serious reports like the professional bond – 152 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? public relations and the practice by judy vanslyke turk, publications querying the future of the profession abound. what lies ahead for public relations? answering this question requires firstly that the current landscape be surveyed. current state of public relations that public relations is unsure of its own role in the organisation is apparent from a number of books and journals consulted. in south africa, much debate centres on the position that public relations should occupy in organisational management. in this case, it seems as if some new theoretical guidance should be developed to help position public relations not only in the organisation, but also in relation to other management functions. there are challenges in public relations education that need to be met. most authors on the subject of public relations education provide some guidance to the content of the curricula, as well as what should and should not be included in public relations education. the implication of a re-alignment of the role of public relations is that curricula need to be revised. the ethics of organisational management, the ethical impacts of public relations, and the ethics of public relations practitioners themselves need attention, since our discipline is coming under increasing fire for being perceived as unethical. these three themes, briefly introduced above, guide the literature review discussed below. the role of public relations in the organisation one of the major causes of concern for public relations practitioners is the fact that public relations in the organisation is seemingly not taken seriously, and that public relations is not used to its full strategic potential, but merely as a tool to be used to “save” the organisation from unsavoury public comment. furthermore, public relations practitioners are unsure about their role in the organisation – as are other departments. in the words of rensburg and cant (2003: 46): “[t]he role of public relations should be clarified in the organisational dynamics to prevent it from overlapping with other functions, causing confusion and ineffectiveness.” this confusion manifests itself in a number of ways, one of which is the two-fold role of technician and strategist. current literature distinguishes between the technician and strategist roles of public relations practitioners (steyn & puth 2000; skinner, von essen & mersham 2004: 6; cutlip, center, broom & du plessis 2000: 8). as technicians, public relations practitioners are used as communication specialists who use techniques such as publicity, seminars, open days, and product launches – to name a few – in order to obtain a favourable impression of the brand or product. as strategists, public relations practitioners will strive to obtain a favourable image for the organisation among its various stakeholder groups, thereby building the organisation’s reputation, which in turn will positively affect the performance of the 153 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? marketing activities. rensburg and cant (2003: 53) reinforce the fact that the position of public relations in the organisation is a matter of debate, but also take care to make the point that public relations should play a more encompassing role in the organisation. they point out that it shares a characteristic with advertising in that public relations is sometimes a function that is outsourced to public relations consultancies. a question that needs to be asked – and answered – is whether it is at all advisable to outsource the public relations function. support for the role of public relations as strategic function is coming from a number of sources. indeed, the notion that public relations should be seen as “more” than a “mere” technical function of the organisation is supported by a number of texts, including skinner et al. (2004: 6) and cutlip et al. (2000: 76). for heath and coombs (2006: 27-30) the strategic role of public relations is clear-cut. using public relations, the organisation will seek to build and maintain relationships with stakeholders that are of strategic significance to the organisation. their focus, however, does not fall as much on the stakeholder (or public), as it does on the relationship. to them, this is also what distinguishes public relations from marketing – the focus on relationship-building with groups other than customers. the focus on relations as identified above by heath and coombs is reflected in the definition of public relations adopted by the public relations institute of southern africa (prisa) (skinner et al. 2004: 4): “public relations is the management, through communication, of the perceptions and strategic relationships between an organisation and its internal and external stakeholders.” interestingly, some marketers (cf. kotler & armstrong 2006: 447) agree that the role of public relations is to build and maintain relationships with a number of stakeholder groups. of course, a focus on relationships does lend gravity to the excitement with which public relations practitioners in south african welcomed the focus of the king ii report on stakeholders and relationships with stakeholders. the relationship-building role of public relations, as advocated by a number of authors, and as implied by the prisa definition, is used by practitioners and academics to justify the strategic nature of their role. the reputation of the organisation, long held to be a primary responsibility of public relations, is therefore the result of what an organisation says and does. grunig (2006: 3) also draws a link between the organisation’s relationships and its reputation. the point is that “[t]he essential objective of corporate communication should be to make the organisation more effective through mutually beneficial communication between the organisation and all its stakeholders” (steyn & puth 2000: 3). this focus on stakeholders, seen in a number of definitions of public relations, paves the way for investigating the use of porter’s value chain analysis. kotler and armstrong (2006: 42) describe the value chain as the “series of departments that carry out valuecreating activities to design, produce, market, deliver, and support a firm’s products”. significantly, public relations is not positioned in this value chain – only marketing is. 154 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? however, understanding of the value chain implies that relationships (the focus of the prisa definition) need to be formed, maintained and managed. this leaves much room for public relations to come into its own. the literature reviewed for this section in order to establish how public relations sees its role in the organisation makes for fascinating reading in the sense that there is currently no clear and unambiguous guideline for the role of this function: • it is either in-house or outsourced. • it either reports to marketing or it does not. • it is either corporate affairs, or public affairs, or corporate communication, etc. • it deals in a number of activities, but it does not know exactly which. • it recruits from a variety of fields, such as journalism, languages, and communication. one quaint solution to the dilemma faced by public relations (regarding its bad name, as well as confusion about its role) is proposed as a simple name change. authors like steyn and puth (2000), who strongly advocate a name-change, also argue that public relations today plays a wider role than in the past, and should therefore be named differently. however, a name-change in itself will not result in a “new, improved” view of public relations (or corporate communication; reputation management and suchlike) if practitioners themselves kept on practicing “old” ways. if it remains “business as usual”, the name-change would simply result in a form of spin-control – an activity of the “spin doctoring” discipline itself. in stark contrast to the name-change school stand the views of vanslyke turk (2006), who identifies challenges for public relations not as a name-change issue, but rather one of re-training, re-examining, and restructuring the practice of, and education in, public relations. her argument is that the discipline will only benefit if it reinvents itself as a responsible academic discipline firmly rooted in the business and communication sciences. public relations education a research survey conducted in 2004 in south africa found that public relations practitioners are confused about their role in the organisation. one contributor to this confusion is the fact that public relations practitioners “have educational backgrounds that sometimes do not include formal training in public relations” (venter 2004: 165). the research survey did not prod respondents on their particular backgrounds, and it may provide interesting insights were these backgrounds to be discovered. newsom, turk and kruckeberg (2004: 13) do, however, point out that: public relations functions have been delegated to people from other fields: lawyers without any background in public relations or even communications; former media 155 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? personnel who have been on the receiving end of public relations material but have no theoretical background; management-trained executives whose business school education did not include any courses in public relations; or marketing experts who have no knowledge of the overall communications components. the educational background of current public relations practitioners may in part explain why there is indeed confusion about the role of public relations in the organisation, and this background will need to be established through further research. however, the problem in public relations education is wider than that of practitioners studying in fields other than public relations. the content of the body of knowledge needs to be revised from time to time to keep up with the dynamic changes taking place in the world surrounding public relations. there is also a recognised need for “reflexivity in public relations theory and practice … continuously reflecting and overturning the theories in the field”, as holtzhausen (2002: 36) points out. apart from the content of the subject (public relations) itself, the curriculum also will need to be revised from time to time. a lack of sufficient education and training in areas such as marketing, business management, and strategic planning among current practitioners of public relations may partly explain why porter and kramer (2006: 80) say that “the prevailing approaches to csr (corporate social responsibility) are so fragmented and so disconnected from business and strategy as to obscure many of the greatest opportunities from companies to benefit society”. vanslyke (2006: 85) reports on the state of public relations education and training by stating: “[t]he need for public relations education is escalating rapidly, surfacing new issues that must be addressed and resolved.” however, while the report focuses the need for public relations training and makes suggestions for curricula, it fails to refer adequately to the broader context – strategy, management, and marketing to name but three – within which public relations operates. currently, this is precisely where public relations training (especially in south africa) is most at a loss. the point is simple: in order for public relations to play a strategic role in organisations, and in order for this function to contribute its fullest potential to organisational effectiveness, a broadening of the existing body of knowledge along with an adaptation of existing public relations curricula at tertiary institutions is required. a current cited lack of theory and training among public relations practitioners contributes to the confusion identified earlier in this section. ethics in spite of the best intentions of lawmakers, regulators, and – lately – boards of companies, ethics is still persistently observed more in the breach than in the observance. simply, it is not easy to behave ethically under all circumstances. as micklethwait and wooldridge (1997: 201-202) put it: “[t]here is a yawning gap 156 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? between what people say and what they do”, while at the same time no single company or person is “against ethics” per se. the problem seems compounded by the fact that the pressures of financial gain – created mainly by shareholders – lead to situations where management teams yield to the temptation of making unethical decisions. in the words of kane (2003: 11): [t]he fundamental dilemma of corporate and public governance is that, at the margin and over short periods, it often pays to hide adverse information. the result is that an ethician could say that outside stakeholders deserve more complete accountability than can be fashioned from the ethical standards that insiders set and the gaps in the information flows outsiders receive. hiding information, one of the most visible – though by no means only – ethical breaches, seems as rampant today as it was in the past, along with a number of other ethical transgressions. in order to understand the ethical transgressions at play in the modern world, it is necessary to understand what is meant by “unethical conduct”. malan and smit (2001: 25) outline a number of behaviours that they term “general ethical transgressions”, such as high executive pay, creative accounting, built-in obsolescence and forcing customers to buy more than they need. marketing itself does not escape the breach of ethical behaviours. smith and quelch (1993: 4) cite “pricefixing, bribery, deceptive advertising, unsafe products” as some examples of unethical marketing practices, while arguing that unethical marketing practices would render the organisation morally bankrupt. they describe marketing ethics as “the application of ethical considerations to marketing decision making” (smith & quelch 1993: 10), and argue fairly extensively that marketing should not be seen as a business function that is value-neutral. using the 4 ps of marketing as a departure, they identify a number of ethical issues in marketing: table 1: major ethical issues in marketing 157 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? (smith & quelch 1993: 13) evidence of this kind of behaviour is to be found abundantly in the south african marketplace. in three different industries – motor vehicle manufacturing, banking, and food production – some of south africa’s biggest companies have found lacking in ethical behaviour in recent years: • some of south africa’s top motor vehicle companies, including volkswagen, general motors, daimlerchrysler, subaru, nissan, and citroen, paid penalties to the competition commission ranging from r8 million to r31 million after being found guilty of “price-fixing and anti-competitive trading conditions” (business.iafrica.com 2006: online). of course, these companies first denied charges of improper behaviour. • south africa’s top four banks have not escaped criticism. in the words of whitfield (2006: 10) “if you’re a client of a south african bank looking for a better deal when it comes to bank charges, we have bad news for you. not only does it remain practically impossible for an ordinary person to make like-for-like comparisons of the charges levied by sa’s different banking groups, but most of the big banks have also actually upped their charges over the past year.” • tiger brands (a foods and pharmaceutical giant) has been accused of colluding with competitors premier foods and pioneer foods to fix the price of bread. they roundly denied this accusation in a statement released to the press (crotty 2007: online). however, in november 2007, tiger brands was ordered to pay a penalty of r98.7 million after admitting to price fixing (mail & guardian 2007: online). of course in their promotional materials, companies like these claim that they are not transgressing ethical rules and are operating within the confines of the law. regarding the enquiry into banking practices, nedbank – one of south africa’s four biggest banks – has used its website to proclaim its whole-hearted cooperation with an enquiry into banking practices in south africa (nedbank.co.za 2007: online): 158 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? nedbank welcomes the competition commission enquiry bringing banking issues into public debate. we are committed to understanding and meeting the banking needs and aspirations of all south africans. we at nedbank have already been hard at building great products and reducing banking fees for our clients. absa (another one of the four biggest banks in south africa), for their part, stated the following: responsiveness, efficiency and quality are among the high goals that we set for ourselves, together with integrity and transparency in all our dealings. we value our people and invest in them to ensure the delivery of these goals, while constantly working to better our knowledge and service standards (absa.co.za 2007: online). however, in spite of their protestations to ensuring that “banking needs” are met, and that “responsiveness, efficiency and quality” are primary goals, these banks (among others) have been found lacking. in a third annual review of bank charges in south africa, finweek (whitfield 2007: 12-14) found the following: • there are “pockets of change in the structure and composition of bank charges”, but “they are few and far between”. • a number of banks have actually increased the cost of banking. • not much is being done to implement “better disclosure and simpler pricing structures”. • branches and head offices experience a “disconnect” regarding the “understanding of bank charges”. • south african consumers do not have a “single, reliable source of information … should they wish to conduct a comparative study of their own into the bank charges they pay”. • bank staff do not focus on consumer needs, but are “trained to offer a specific package”. on the whole, the investigation led by finweek, and conducted by horwath forensics, is rather damning: “while banks grapple with increased consumerism and the threat of state intervention, they find themselves having to balance the demands of their clients with the needs of profit-hungry shareholders. so far, the shareholders are winning” (whitfield 2007: 12). after being penalised by the competition commission, tiger brands ceo nick dennis said that the price fixing actions “ran counter to the ethical standards for which we are known and respected” and promised to take disciplinary action. he added that “[w]e do not tolerate anti-competitive behaviour in any of our businesses. it is deeply regrettable that this has occurred” (mail & guardian 2007: online). 159 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? a pattern seems to emerge: • companies promise their customers good service and products of high standards; • companies are accused of ethical contraventions; • companies use public relations techniques (like media releases) to deny their culpability; • companies are found guilty of ethical malpractice; and • companies ask forgiveness, again using public relations techniques. this raises the issue of who it is that tells the lie. it becomes obvious from the few examples cited above that one of two statements made via the companies’ public relations departments is patently false. they are either guilty or not. denying wrongdoing before paying penalties and then issuing a shame-faced mea culpa smacks of downright lying. it is actions like these that breach the trust that exists between customer and company. the question that must be asked, however, is whether it is the public relations department or agency that decides to lie, or are they ordered to issue these lies by someone higher up in the organisation? this needs to be established empirically, although it may be inferred from the literature covered that public relations, when acting as a technician, may just be free of guilt in the decision to lie. it is inconceivable that the ceo of a company will allow technicians to lie when he/she wants to protect the organisation’s reputation. it may be accepted that no organisation sets out to be unethical or consciously attempts to erode customer trust. however, the actions by these organisations – intentional or otherwise – serve to create in the customer’s mind a doubt whether they are getting their fair share of the ethical cake. south african organisations like these face a dilemma. on the one hand, the public believes that these companies behave unethically, and at the other hand these companies protest that they wish to treat their customers ethically. legislation and regulation are used to guide organisations in the minimum ethical behaviour, which to an extent limits the organisation’s goal of maximising profit. implementing regulations contained in legislation may be costly and cumbersome, as harvard business review reported in an article dealing with the effects of the sarbanesoxley act of 2002: “smaller companies in particular complained about the monopolization of executives’ time and costs running into the millions of dollars” (wagner & dittmar 2006: 133). costly and time-consuming activities may be seen as running contrary to the imperative of profit. the unethical organisation may try to find loopholes in the regulations to avoid paying money, or spending time, in complying with those very rules and regulations that may help the organisation behave in a more ethical manner. legislation, it seems, has some effect on forcing companies to comply with consumerprotecting measures, but owing to the fact that it can be costly and time-consuming, may have the effect that companies find ways and means to completely circumvent such legislation. if organisations that are serious about maintaining ethical standards are 160 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? taking steps to circumvent legislation aimed at ensuring more “proper” conduct, it is an open question what less ethical organisations may do to also avoid the costs of compliance. while actions such as these are not to be condoned, they do underline the long-held belief that the law is, at best, a blunt instrument. surely there are other ways in which organisations can – and in fact should – protect the interests of the consumer and the society in which it operates? the tension between profit, consumer value, ethics, and the interests of the community are grouped under the so-called “societal marketing concept” coined by kotler and keller (2006: 22): “the societal marketing concept holds that the organization’s task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well-being.” this concept indicates the importance of ethics in marketing in the organisation. south african companies face a specific dilemma against the background of this concept of marketing. they are increasingly perceived as being unethical, while clearly not wishing to be unethical. they are, on the one hand, guided by legislation and regulation in minimum ethical standards, while on the other hand developing and executing strategies designed to deliver profit. in doing so, they must balance the interests of all of their stakeholders – including customers – in such a way that they do not earn a bad reputation and consequently lose sales. in order to become more ethical, organisations – at least, until recently – have relied on legislation and regulation to guide them in decision-making, hoping that such legally sound and regulatory compliant decisions will be enough to guarantee safe conduct in and uncertain world. however, as the examples cited so far indicate, companies have not always been successful in doing this. briefly put, in the words of porter and kramer (2007: 91): “the focus must move away from an emphasis on image to an emphasis on substance.” ethics and ethical conduct cannot be guaranteed solely by legislation or regulation, nor can it rely on codes of conduct, as the examples given earlier indicate. a number of companies found in breach of ethical conduct claim to have codes of conduct governing their decisions. ethics therefore should be more than compliance with minimum requirements of laws and regulations – it should be the result of a concerted effort by the organisation as a whole. hill and jones (2004: 396) emphasise that: “to foster awareness that strategic decisions have an ethical dimension, a company must establish an organizational climate that emphasizes the importance of ethics.” the creation of a climate conducive to ethics seems to be of primary importance in an ethical company. however, fostering such a climate is difficult when it is not even clear what “ethics” means. according to kotler and armstrong (2006: 644-645), for example, it is not easy for organisations to discover what ethics is: “the best thing to do is often unclear.” 161 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? marketing may have failed in its application of the societal marketing concept by assisting the organisation in cutting corners through questionable marketing practices, or by hiding the truth from shareholders. in most cases, marketing communication tools – including public relations – have been used in cynical attempts to manipulate public opinion to drum up support for the morally questionable actions of organisations pandering solely to the financial bottom line. this has led to the perception that organisations are unethical, thereby eroding brand trust. building trust, being seen to be ethical, therefore starts with the organisation’s reputation among all stakeholders who deal with it. and reputation, as was already seen, is the domain of the public relations practitioner. “corporate image is the net result of the interaction of all experiences, impressions, beliefs, feelings, and knowledge people have about a company” is how skinner et al. (2004: 8) describe the image or reputation of an organisation. if an organisation has a positive corporate image, it will become a competitive advantage for that organisation. pirsch, gupta and grau (2007: 125) identify the corporate social responsibility programme as one of the organisation’s sources of competitive advantage. sagar, singh and agrawal (2006: 72) argue that consumers today expect marketing managers to make ethically acceptable decisions. they further argue that trust, an essential element of the exchange of value, is embodied in a brand, which in turn is seen as a valuable asset. they make the distinction between ethically correct products and brands, stating that the product may be ethically correct, while a brand may not. they further state that “[a] brand position is ethical if it is sensitive to various concerns, such as consumer satisfaction, environment protection or even … price sensitivity” (sagar et al. 2006: 73). davies, chun, vinhas da silva and roper (2003: 79) are of the view that “[i]ndeed a brand is often preferred to an unbranded item due to its implied warranty of consistent quality” (italics in original text). this assertion on the value of branding – consumer preference – to the organisation contains two key elements. the first element is that of the warranty (implied or directly stated). this implied warranty is communicated to customers by using the promotion element of the marketing mix. in the words of klopper, berndt, chipp, ismail, roberts-lombard, subramani, wakeham, petzer, hern, saunders and myers-smith (2006: 288) marketing communication “is the voice of the brand”. the second element is that of the views that the consumer has about the brand, and the extent to which they are consistent with the delivery (or nondelivery) of the brand promise. that public relations can indeed play a role in helping to forge and communicate brand identity is not under dispute. in fact, it is one of the areas in which marketers and public relations practitioners seem to be in agreement. while skinner et al. (2004: 50) endeavour to explain the role of public relations vis-à-vis that of marketing by pointing to the role public relations can play in “positioning” the product in the minds of consumers, they are actually talking about branding. more direct reference to the branding role of public relations is found in heath and coombs (2006: 370 – 374), who describe the contribution public relations can make to forging brand equity for the organisation and brand loyalty to the product/service. rensburg and cant (2003: 173-203) discuss in detail the role of internal branding and public relations. balgin and fulgitini (2005: 156) agree that branding should 162 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? increasingly be the responsibility of public relations. the major findings of the literature review may be summarised in table format as follows: table 2: summary of literature review findings 163 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? conclusion porter (2004: 33) explains that the organisation’s competitive advantage “stems from the many discrete activities a firm performs in designing, producing, marketing, delivering, and supporting its product”. he advocates that the organisation examines all of its activities by looking at their contribution to customer value (profit), and distinguishes between what he calls primary and secondary activities. tellingly, marketing and sales are seen as primary activities, while public relations receives no mention. while porter’s value chain has been embraced by many as a planning tool, public relations practitioners may be forgiven for being less than enthusiastic about it, for being left “in the cold” by a concept that so fully excludes a function that sees itself as strategically significant. it may, however, be possible that the role of public relations be investigated using the value chain as a point of departure, and to add to the work already done by porter and others to understand how to “work closely with managers of other functions to develop a system of functional plans under which the different departments can work together to accomplish the company’s overall strategic objectives” (kotler & armstrong 2006: 43). it is hypothesised that, with a re-investigation into the role of public relations in the organisation, and with training (or at least re-training) of public relations practitioners, this function can fulfil a more useful role in contributing to marketing – and therefore organisational – ethics. in what ways can the value chain be used to assist public relations in overcoming its current crisis? firstly, it is suggested that public relations be firmly placed in the organisation’s value chain as a support activity alongside those of human resources, firm infrastructure, and technology development. the reason for this is simple: in every facet of the value chain (and even the extended supply chain), relationships are of importance to the organisation. a number of authors indicate that the competitive advantage of the organisation is at least in part built on the quality of relationships in its chain of activities designed to deliver value to the customer. given the importance attached to the ability of public relations to build relationships, it seems natural for a function such as this to act as a support activity to the primary activities identified by porter. however, the willingness of public relations practitioners to accept such a situation needs to be tested empirically. secondly, it is suggested that the placement of public relations as a support function in the value chain is a good argument for the allocation to public relations of its rightful place in the organisation’s formal chain of command. to this end, public relations should re-examine its tendency to operate outside the organisation as an outsourced function. this might draw ire and resistance from public relations consultancies, but it will certainly benefit the way public relations is seen and practiced in the organisation. again, the willingness of public relations practitioners to consider “in-sourcing” rather than outsourcing public relations needs to be tested empirically. 164 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? thirdly, given acceptance that public relations is a support function not only to marketing and sales, but also to inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, and service, it becomes necessary to revise the educational curriculum of public relations students. fundamentally, this implies that the public relations curriculum be structured in such a way that students are given at least a basic introduction to these functions and are provided with a good understanding of their contribution to the organisation’s operation. naturally, the likelihood of this happening also has to be tested empirically. 165 can public relations put the trust back in organisations? references absa.co.za. 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! low-literate, for an individual who cannot read a text with understanding or write a short text in a significant national language, but who can recognise words on signs and documents in everyday contexts, or perform such specific tasks as signing her/his name or recognising the meaning of common public signs, ! moderate-literate, for an individual who can, with some difficulty (i.e. making numerous errors), read a text with understanding and write a short text in a significant national language, and ! high-literate, for an individual who can, with little difficulty (i.e. making few errors), read a text with understanding and write a short text in a significant national language. a fast and in most cases sufficiently accurate way of establishing the literacy level of a given community is to use the number of years of formal schooling as the main indicator. the standard approach is that in a low-literate target group, the majority of members received six or less years of formal schooling. this means that the term “lowliterate”, as used in this article, does not necessarily refer to a homogenous group, where every single individual is either low-literate or non-literate, but only indicates the state of affairs for the group taken as a whole. further, a positive correlation between verbal and visual literacy levels in a particular community is not a foregone conclusion. visual literacy broadly refers to the ability to understand and use images, including the ability to think, learn and express oneself in terms of visual images (braden 1996: 13). visual literacy is typically measured using the number of years of training in an imagerelated discipline as the most important indicator, which may include formal or informal training in areas such as art history, painting, photography, film studies or graphic design, for example. that is not to say that print media community communication materials which contain a substantial amount of written information should not be utilised in a low-literate target group, nor that material replete with pictorial illustrations is unsuitable for a target group with a low level of visual literacy. this is because community members 168 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group seldom live in isolation, and a low-literate individual often has easy access to a highliterate individual, possibly in the same household, who is prepared to read written information out loud and explain the contents. similarly, an individual with a low level of visual literacy, who is not familiar with the pictorial conventions used in a given visual illustration, may obtain guidance about the intended meaning of the illustration from someone who is visually literate. at any rate, visual images are rarely employed in community communication in order to convey exactly the same information as the written texts does, in the hope that the moderateto high-literate individuals read the writing and ignore the images and the nonor low-literate individuals study the images and pay no attention to the caption or any other written text. for example, most instructional materials, such as a pamphlet illustrating how to set up a worm bin for compost, or a health education poster on a clinic wall, contain visual and verbal components that are inextricably linked. in this type of material, the visual images primarily perform a phatic function, i.e. they attract and retain attention and interest (peters 1978: 58; watson & hill 1993: 139), but may also play an important role as mnemonic devices, in addition to other less prominent communicative functions and roles as outlined by sachs-hombach (2006: 262). this article discusses the process of developing a nutrition education calendar illustrated with a substantial amount of visual information meant for an elderly (mean age 71.7 years), pre-dominantly sesotho-speaking (84.7%) and primarily female (87.1%), low-literate target group in sharpeville. the aim is to illustrate strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning, or narrowing the latitude of interpretation, of visual images in this type of community communication setting. the first part of the article deals with the notion of indeterminacy – or vagueness – as applied to pictorial signs. the second part of the article covers (a) an overview of an ex post evaluation conducted in order to identify communicative defects, or readability barriers, in the existing nutrition education material that the target group had been exposed to before the commencement of the project, (b) the pretesting of a sample of semantic units drawn from a draft version of the nutrition education calendar, and (c) a final data collection procedure at the end of the project carried out to check whether the target group would like to move away from the illustration approach used in the calendar approximately one year after it was disseminated free of charge in the community. the indeterminacy of pictorial signs for the purpose of this article, indeterminacy, or vagueness, as applied to the visual component of community communication materials, is defined in a piercian sense. as pointed out by brock (1981: 133-134; cf. bergman 2009: 265): it is important to note that pierce’s concepts of indeterminacy were initially defined and interpreted relative to a given universe of discourse and a given state of information. this relativity is presupposed by the later pragmatic analysis of indeterminacy and determinacy. according to this analysis, a term is indeterminate 169 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group if it allows a latitude of interpretation or further determination relative to the purpose(s) of a given discourse or inquiry and is determinate if it does not. in the case of pictorial signs, the latitude of interpretation which a sign allows for is usually primarily based on the nature of the referent-sign relationship, as discussed in influential and often-cited publications such as sonesson (1989), groupe μ (1992) and saint-martin (1990). in this regard, blanke (1998: 229; cf. halawa 2008) points out that over and above the main limitations of the notion of resemblance as a basis for iconicity, icons in general and pictorial signs in particular ultimately have to be interpreted by someone, implying that an in-depth understanding of how pictorial signs operate involves engaging equally with issues of referent-sign resemblance, or the lack thereof, as well as culture-based contingencies and contextual determinants. a closer examination of the broader context of a particular pictorial signification process may be undertaken with reference to habermas’ work in the area of discourse ethics, where universalisation is a dominant principle. universalisation requires the acceptance (zustimmung) of the communicative norms at play by all concerned without coercion, implying both agreement (einverständnis) and a contract (vereinbarung). according to habermas (1998): only those norms can claim validity that could meet with the acceptance of all concerned in a practical discourse. ... [a] norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and valueorientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. this implies that the latitude of interpretation associated with a specific pictorial sign in a particular target group depends on the type of agreement reached, as well as the stability of that agreement, regarding the communicative norms at play. stated differently, the latitude of interpretation depends on the contract concluded by the parties of the pictorial signification process concerning the properties of the pictorial signs to be included in the discourse, and the manner in which they are employed. it therefore seems fair to assume that the vagueness, or indeterminacy, of a pictorial sign, or an aggregate of pictorial signs for that matter, will decrease as the level of acceptance and/or agreement concerning their use increases, especially in an instructional communication setting, where the aim is to ensure a sufficiently narrow latitude of interpretation in order to prevent the dissemination of unintended, possibly confusing messages. the notion of indeterminacy also features prominently in a framework by pauwels (2005) which describes the visual representational latitude (vrl) of pictorial information. according to pauwels (2005: 6), vrl refers to “coping with controlled and uncontrolled variations in the depicted and the depiction”. the concept of vrl describes (a) an inability, or difficulty, to express visually the degree of variation of the depicted referent, or the variation of the depicted, and (b) vagueness about the motivation behind, as well as the meaning or status of the chosen forms and visual elements, or variation relating to the process of depiction (ibid.). 170 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group the concept of vrl primarily plays itself out in two dimensions. in the production dimension, vrl is determined, among others, by the strengths and limitations inherent to the medium used to convey variations in the phenomenon or process depicted, as well as the manner in which the medium is utilised, i.e. the “room to maneuver” (pauwels 2005:6) that the given medium allows. one of the examples which pauwels uses to illustrate the challenge of depicting variations of the referent visually is that it is reasonably uncomplicated to explain verbally that a certain bird species has three to seven spots, presumably of identical size, shape and so on, on each of its wings. a visual representation of that particular bird species would, however, typically not convey that the number of spots varies within the range of three to seven. five different birds may be drawn, for instance, each with a different number of spots per wing, in the hope, firstly, that the viewer notices that the number of spots varies between birds, and, secondly, that the viewer correctly concludes on seeing the images of five different birds that only three to seven spots are possible, i.e. that a bird of the given species with two and less, or eight and more spots, does not exist. in the production dimension, vrl thus primarily refers to how variation in the depicted phenomenon was conveyed visually, i.e. whether appropriate levels of iconicity and abstraction were chosen, as well as the manner in which the given medium, or combination of media, was used to achieve this (pauwels 2005: 6). in the reception dimension, vrl is mainly determined by the extent to which the target group, or aggregate of individuals, considers what is depicted to be “necessarily so” on the one hand or “just one way of putting it” on the other hand (pauwels 2005: 6). in other words, a visual text with a wide vrl leaves the viewer uncertain about the meaning and status of the visual elements of which it is comprised, and how these visual elements relate to actual variance in the phenomena depicted. in contrast, a visual text with a narrow vrl conveys the extent and nature of variance in the referent in such a manner that the members of the target group consider the choice of visual elements contained therein as motivated, i.e. as selected with a view to convey variance visually within the capabilities of the chosen medium of dissemination. pauwels refers to the example of an illustration of a phenomenon from physics, where a core is depicted with 23 identical particles revolving around this core, presumably in a random fashion. such an image may give rise to uncertainty as to whether the number of particles is always fixed, or whether the illustration aims to convey nothing more than that a large number of particles revolve around the core. this type of uncertainty is typically dispelled by means of an accompanying verbal code, such as an extended legend or written narrative, or oral clarification in the case of a low-literate target group that defines the “representational claims” (pauwels 2005: 7) that are being made. the comprehension of the various representational claims a visual text contains can be assessed on three distinct semiotic levels: the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels 171 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group of comprehension. these terms derive from a theoretical framework by goldsmith (1984), based on terminology used in earlier work by morris (1938). according to goldsmith’s framework, syntactic comprehension involves the ability to perceive depth, figure-ground relationships and colour, but does not include the recognition of objects. it thus refers to a basic perceptual competence on the part of the viewer, as opposed to an interpretational competence, i.e. to recognise and attach significance to the image contents, which is measured on the semantic and pragmatic levels. the semantic level of comprehension concerns the ability to recognise depicted objects, and to identify what they denote, in contrast to pragmatic comprehension, which may be defined as the ability to interpret a visual message beyond its literal meaning, implying an ability to comprehend figurative meanings and a familiarity with artistic manipulation and/or cultural conventions (goldsmith 1984: 124). this means that issues and concerns relating to variance in the referent and the manner in which the extent of the variance in the referent is conveyed pictorially primarily belong on the semantic and pragmatic levels of comprehension, bearing in mind that syntactic comprehension based on perceptual competence may be regarded as a pre-requisite or “stepping stone” for semantic and pragmatic comprehension to occur in a meaningful way. design and methods some of the above described theoretical concepts guided the three phases of data collection at a care centre for the elderly in sharpeville. the centre is located in the vaal region of the gauteng province, parts of which are characterised by high levels of unemployment, verbal illiteracy (see slabbert 2004) and low living standards measure (lsm) scores as benchmarked by the south african advertising research foundation (saarf 2006). the nutrition education programme at the care centre for the elderly is based on the nationally standardised food based dietary guidelines (fbdg) of south africa and aims, within the context of sustainable community development, to promote improved food procurement as well as food consumption patterns, and to contribute towards addressing malnutrition and household food insecurity in affected communities. as 58.2% of the community members who regularly attend activities at the care centre for the elderly reported that they have received seven or less years of formal schooling (18.8% indicated having received no formal schooling at all), one of the components of the nutrition education programme involves communicating nutrition education messages visually, i.e. by means of visual illustrations, where the reliance on the accompanying verbal code or “text anchor” is minimal. the comprehensibility and overall suitability of the pamphlets and posters that the target group had been exposed to before the commencement of the project was, however, not known. in the light thereof, the first step was to conduct an ex post evaluation of their readability and overall appropriateness. 172 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group the data collection procedure involved a ten to fifteen minute session conducted in the home language of the respondent during which a field worker completed a questionnaire about the visual communication component of the nutrition education materials in the presence of the respondent. by limiting the duration of the session, fatigue–related data collection issues were minimised. sampling occurred in two phases. firstly, a sample of ten semantic units of the existing community communication material was randomly chosen for the purpose of measuring object recognition. three semantic units were randomly selected in order to assess the comprehension of pictorial conventions. this sample of 13 semantic units represented approximately ten percent of the total number of visual semantic units in the pamphlets and posters. for example, an image of a food plate with a butternut, a drumstick and porridge on it was seen as consisting of several separate semantic units, i.e. the image as a whole was one semantic unit, the image of the butternut was one semantic unit, the image of the porridge was one semantic unit and so on. secondly, the total number of community members who regularly attend activities at the care centre for the elderly, and for whom accurate data regarding their nutritional status has been collected, was 170. of these, a sample of 140 community members (i.e. 82.3%) voluntarily participated in the evaluation of the visual material on a first come first serve and anonymous basis (anonymous in the sense that their name or other personal particulars were not recorded on the questionnaire). in the first part of the questionnaire, the respondent was asked to identify the objects depicted in the ten randomly chosen semantic units. depending on the answer received, a score of one point (correct or envisaged answer), half a point (borderline answer) or zero points (incorrect answer) was allocated and the ten responses were used to calculate an object recognition score on a scale ranging from zero to ten points. for instance, an image of an orange was pointed out to the respondent by the field worker and the respondent was requested to identify the object depicted. the respondents were also asked to declare on a three-point scale whether the size of the images made object recognition difficult, in line with the recommendations by nitzke, shaw, pingree and voichick (1986) and townsend and kaiser (2005: 176), among others, that a limited number of response options should be used for low-literacy audiences. where the respondent reported that object recognition was impeded due to an inappropriate image size, a score of one point was allocated. in cases where a different image size would have made object recognition only slightly or partially easier, a score of two points was awarded, and in instances where the respondent replied that the size of an image made no difference to object recognition at all, this was indicated with a score of three points. in the second part of the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to describe the meaning of the pictorial conventions used in three different semantic units. the answers were recorded as a score of one point (correct or envisaged answer), half a point (borderline answer) or zero points (incorrect answer). from the responses to these three questions, a comprehension of pictorial convention score was calculated on a scale 173 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group ranging from zero to three points. for example, the respondents were presented with an illustration of a box of matches depicted next to an image of a slice of cheese of exactly the same image size. the respondents were asked what meanings they attach to the illustration in order to measure to what extent their answers conform to the envisaged meaning that one serving of cheese should correspond to the size of a flat box of matches. further, the respondent was asked to indicate whether the visual-verbal balance in the educational material is appropriate. the answers were recorded in three categories, i.e. (a) more images would have been better, to which a score of 1 was assigned, (b) the balance between images and writing is just right (associated with a score of 2), or (c) more writing would have been better (associated with a score of 3). each session was preceded by a brief orientation about the nature of the project as well as ethical issues (voluntary participation, anonymity, handling of responses etc.). each session ended with the field worker giving the respondent the opportunity to explain how the nutrition education pamphlets and posters used at the care centre for the elderly could be improved in general terms and, thereafter, thanking the respondent for participating. the questionnaire was piloted in an initial group of 30 respondents to check that the session duration fell within the envisaged ten to fifteen minutes and to ensure that all the questions were clearly formulated. only minor adjustments to the questionnaire were needed before the main data collection process commenced. the second step was to design and then pre-test a draft version of a calendar, which comprised the 12 most important nutrition education guidelines (one guideline per month, written in three languages). each of these guidelines was accompanied with one pictorial illustration compiled according to the lessons learned during the first step. similar to the first step, only a sample of the total number of semantic units contained in the draft version of the calendar were presented to the target group for comment, ensuring that the duration of each session did not exceed ten to fifteen minutes. a total of 102 community members participated on a voluntary basis during the second phase of data collection. using essentially the same data collection approach as during the first step, the respondents indicated their preferred option among a range of different pictorial signs and illustration approaches, explaining their choice during a voluntary personal discussion conducted in the respondent’s home language with a research assistant, who completed the questionnaire in the presence of the participant. for example, three different versions of an illustration depicting two hands being washed under a flowing tap in order to illustrate a personal hygiene-related message were presented to the respondent for comment. the three versions differed with regard to: ! the level of pictorial abstraction. the respondents were presented with a range, or continuum, of options ranging from a highly abstracted version consisting only of basic pictorial information, i.e. only the outlines of the hands, the tap and the flowing water, to a version where some additional details, such as the outline of 174 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group finger nails on the hands, were added, to a version with a considerable amount of pictorial detail, including lines and creases on the surface of the hands and fingernails, details on the handle of the tap, details on the soap between the hands with the word »soap« written on it etc.; ! the level of colour shading. the respondents were presented with a continuum of options ranging from a black and white line drawing with no colour fill at all, to partial colour fill (for example, only the hands were shaded a light brown colour and some of the water drops were shaded a blue colour), to an illustration were all the pictorial elements had a colour fill; ! the overall illustrative style. the respondents were presented with a variety of options ranging from illustrations that were produced in a pictorial style similar to the clip art found on standard illustration software, to illustrations done in a style associated with children’s storybooks, to a pictorial style where the emphasis is on photo-realistic rendering; and ! the visual-verbal relationship. the respondents were asked to comment about the relationship between the pictorial illustration and accompanying written information, which the field worker read out loud to the respondent in the respondent’s home language. the questionnaire for the second phase of data collection also contained several items where a pictorial illustration was presented to the respondent together with the simple question: “what does this image show?” these questions aimed to obtain valuable information about the level of vagueness, or latitude of interpretation, of a particular pictorial sign in the target group. for example, an abstract, clip-art style illustration of a salt cellar was shown to the respondents accompanied by the question: “what does this image show?” on the strength of these questionnaire responses, an illustrated a1-size nutrition education calendar was produced and disseminated in the target group free of charge. each regular attendee at the care centre received a calendar for her/his home, and several calendars were displayed at community hall where the activities take place on a weekly basis. the nutrition education messages contained in the calendar were also reinforced verbally throughout the year during the nutrition education programme activities offered at the centre. the third step of data collection involved follow-up questionnaires (n=106) approximately one year after the calendar was disseminated in the target group. this third questionnaire did not deviate from the general data collection approach of the first two steps. it aimed to measure whether the target group wanted to move away from the previously agreed on pictorial signs and consensus-based pictorial illustration approach, by asking the target group to comment on additional pictorial illustration options. the emphasis of the third questionnaire was on illustration preferences, rather than on the basic building blocks of visual communication, which are object recognition and familiarity with the pictorial conventions employed. specifically, the third questionnaire introduced pictorial illustrations produced in a style associated with 175 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group the signs typically used at international airports, or pictograms, primarily based on examples in abdullah and hübner (2006). the third questionnaire covered: ! placing two versions of a pictorial illustration next to each other and asking the respondent to indicate the preferred option, as well as reasons for the choice. for example, a hand-drawn and sparingly shaded illustration of a lollipop sweet, used in the calendar in order to illustrate the nutrition guideline “use sugar sparingly” was placed next to a similar pictogram-style version of the same lollipop sweet; ! showing pictogram-style illustrations both with white lines on a black background and with black lines on a white background and asking the respondent to comment on which of the two is clearer, linking with boehm’s notion of “iconic difference” (boehm 1994; cf. halawa 2008: 129); and ! presenting the respondent, similar to the approach in the second questionnaire, with a range of versions that differ with regard to the level of pictorial abstraction, asking the respondent to indicate the preferred option, as well as reasons for the choice. as was the case in the second questionnaire, the third questionnaire also contained several items where a pictorial sign was presented to the respondent together with the simple question: “what does this image show?” the answers to these questions pointed towards the level of vagueness, or latitude of interpretation, especially regarding pictograms as a unique type of pictorial sign. for example, a pictogram of tablets, or medication pills, drawn in white lines on a solid black background was shown to the respondent with the question: “what does this image show?” findings the main findings were that (a) several shortcomings relating to object recognition and the logical fit between the caption and the visual image were identified in the first phase, (b) the preferred degree of visual abstraction emerged as the main issue during the pre-testing of the draft nutrition education calendar, and (c) during the third phase the respondents opted to stay with the illustration approach, rejecting the possible introduction of alternative illustration styles. the responses to the first questionnaire suggest that the overall suitability of the pamphlets and posters the target group had been exposed to before the commencement of the project was very low. as table 1 indicates, the average respondent in the sample of 140 participants was only able to recognise 49% of the subject matter depicted (a mean object recognition score of 4.90 on a scale of zero to ten, i.e. 49%). further, the average respondent correctly comprehended less than a third of the pictorial conventions used (a mean score of 0.97 on a scale of zero to three, i.e. 29.1%). 176 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group table 1: overview of questionnaire responses for the first phase of data collection questionnaire item n mean sd object recognition score, i.e. the sum of ten separate responses; the minimum final score possible is zero, the maximum final score possible is ten. 140 4.90 2.17 role of image size, i.e. did the size of the images make object recognition difficult? the minimum score possible is one, the maximum score possible is three. 140 1.81 0.75 comprehension of pictorial convention score, i.e. the sum of three separate responses; the minimum final score possible is zero, the maximum final score possible is three. 140 0.97 1.00 visual–verbal balance, i.e. is the visual-verbal balance in the illustrations appropriate? the minimum score possible is one, the maximum score possible is three. 139 1.65 0.57 the object recognition scores, which represent the sum of ten separate responses, as described earlier, where the minimum final score possible is zero and the maximum final score possible is ten, ranged from zero to ten points in the sample. this contrasts sharply with the “ideal” range of eight to ten points, i.e. the range visual communicators in the context of nutrition education aim for, where there are no significant impediments or barriers to object recognition the target group. the lowest number of correct or envisaged responses was recorded for a clip art image which depicted a tennis ball. this semantic unit was recognised by 29 of the 140 respondents, i.e. by 20.7%. the highest number of correct or envisaged responses was received for a semantic unit depicting a partially peeled banana, which 132 of the 140 respondents, or 94.3%, identified correctly. where a study participant supplied an answer along the lines of “fruit” rather than “banana”, this was recorded as a borderline response (scoring half a point). stated differently, when a respondent was shown a particular semantic unit and asked by the field worker to identify what is depicted, or what the referent is, the correct or envisaged answer was a “necessarily so” type of answer (peeled banana), rather than a “just one way of putting it” type of answer (fruit) (pauwels 2005: 6). this distinction is also relevant to instances where there is a poor logical fit between the caption and the illustration. for example, an image depicting two bananas with the caption “banana” (singular) is needlessly confusing. the caption “bananas” (plural) is clearer. furthermore, according to the data the questionnaire yielded, the size of the images was seen by the respondents as only a minor factor impacting on object recognition. on a scale of one to three points, the mean score in the sample was 1.81. in other words, the majority 177 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group of study participants reported that a different image size would have made object recognition only slightly or partially easier. that is not to say that the respondents found the image size acceptable in general terms. when invited at the end of the session to make general comments or observations about how the nutrition education pamphlets and posters used at the care centre for the elderly could be improved, an answer along the lines of “the images should be bigger” was the most frequently recorded reply, possibly due to poor eyesight common in an elderly target group. as far as the comprehension of pictorial conventions is concerned, the comprehension of pictorial conventions score, which represents the sum of three separate responses, where the minimum final score possible is zero and the maximum final score possible is three, ranged from one point to three points in the sample of respondents, with a mean score of 0.97. the comprehension of pictorial conventions was lowest in a semantic unit which aimed to convey visually that the correct serving size for dry pasta is equivalent to the amount of dry pasta that fits into a cupped hand. of the 140 respondents, 31 respondents, or 22.1%, correctly indicated the preferred or envisaged meaning of the illustration. the comprehension of pictorial conventions was highest in the case of a semantic unit illustrating that the correct serving size for a portion of red meat, chicken or fish is equivalent to the size of a pack of playing cards, where 62 of the 140 respondents (44.3%) supplied the correct or envisaged answer. in other words, the vrl as measured in the context of basic pictorial conventions, in this case primarily involving the associational juxtaposing of visual elements (messaris 1994: 37) was found to be wide. specifically, the data collected suggests that the average respondent was confused and uncertain about the representational claims made on the semantic level of signification in the visual material. lastly, the majority of respondents indicated that the visual-verbal balance of the nutrition education illustrations used during data collection was on the whole appropriate, with a mean score of 1.65 on a scale of one to three points. this score was, however, partially contradicted by the general comments recorded at the end of the session during which some of the respondents stated that there should be “more images” in the nutrition education material used at their centre. taken together, it is probably safe to conclude that the visual-verbal balance of the material was not regarded as a burning issue in the sample of respondents, but in the event that changes or improvements are made to the existing materials, these should preferably involve a shift towards more images. following the outcome of the first questionnaire, a concerted effort was made to avoid similar communicative defects in the draft version of the nutrition education calendar, which was pre-tested in the second phase. it is clear from the results of the second questionnaire that the illustrative style used, which differed strongly from the clip-art type images of the material evaluated during the first phase, was appropriate for the target group. the majority of respondents commented that the images were clear and easy to understand while supplying their preference with regard to levels of abstraction, colour shading and so on. the one outlier was a clip-art style illustration used in the 178 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group second questionnaire that depicted a salt cellar accompanied by the question: “what does this image show?” this image was very poorly understood. only 1% of the respondents supplied the correct, or envisaged, answer. the remainder of the respondents gave a wide range answers along the lines of “it is a hamburger” or “a hat” or “a bangle you but around the upper arm” and so on, indicating a very wide latitude of interpretation. consequently, this type of illustrative style was edited out of the draft calendar and replaced with a less abstract image. based on the responses and an analysis of the comments supplied, the questionnaire data further suggest that: ! decisions surrounding the colour shading of the illustrations are not crucial, but the target group preferred moderate shading in of a line drawing using low colour saturation; ! there was a mild aversion of visual abstraction in the target group; ! the need to see images clearly from a distance was expressed by several respondents, which requires paying attention to image size; and ! text anchors such as the word »soap« written on the image of a bar of soap should be integrated throughout. even though the target group is low-literate, the majority of target group members mentioned that they have access to a literate person who may assist in dispelling any aberrant interpretation of an illustration if needed. the results of the second questionnaire guided the re-working of the draft calendar, and the refined and adjusted version thereof was distributed in the target community a few weeks after the second phase ended. the outcome of the third questionnaire, which was completed roughly one year later, indicate unambiguously that the target group strongly disagreed with the introduction of new pictorial signs and illustration approaches and opted not to deviate from the approach used in “their” nutrition education calendar. even though the focus of the third questionnaire was on illustration preferences, rather than on object recognition and familiarity with the pictorial conventions employed, the result for this phase does contain instances where the visual representational latitude was unacceptably wide. for example, as part of the third questionnaire a pictogram of tablets, or medication pills, drawn in white lines on a solid black background was shown to the respondent with the question: “what does this image show?” all of the respondents were unable to identify correctly what was depicted, giving answers such as “footprints in the sand”, or “the top part of a woodscrew”, or simply “i do not know”. the majority of the respondents indicated that pictograms with black lines on a white background were clearer than pictograms with white lines on a black background, but the usefulness of this information is in question as the respondents strongly disapproved of pictogram-type illustrations to begin with. seen as a whole, the outcome of the third questionnaire was that the target group expressed displeasure with the possible introduction of the new pictorial signs and illustration approaches shown to them for comment. when invited to give general comments about how nutrition education material such as the calendar can be improved, the majority of respondents indicated that the pictograms, or pictorial illustrations produced in a style associated with the public signs used at international 179 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group airports, were less preferable than hand-drawn, sparingly shaded or filled in, photorealistic line drawings. conclusion the sociologist max weber (1854-1920) advocated a clear distinction between facts and values, arguing that values (werte) are associated with prescriptive statements, whereas facts (tatsachen) are associated with descriptive statements (hepfer 2006: 28). as debatable as weber’s thesis is, it would be fair to say that the information which emerged in the course of the above described three phases of data collection deals equally with facts and values. taken together, the three phases of the study illustrate specific strategies for stabilising the notoriously unstable visual communication component of nutrition education materials. these are: ! to collect facts about the target group’s ability to identify correctly the referent of a pictorial illustration, and to re-work those images which have an unacceptably wide visual representational latitude; ! to establish whether the target group is conversant with the pictorial conventions used in the illustrations and to revise these if needed; ! to check that there is a logical fit between images and the captions and/or verbal labels, and to re-work these if needed, either separately or simultaneously, in order to ensure that any vagueness is reduced to a minimum; and ! to encourage a dialogue, even if it is a highly structured dialogue, between the producer of the instructional material and the target community, informed by the values that underpin participative inquiry approaches. the aim of the dialog is to stabilise the meaning of the visual component of the instructional material by reaching agreement without coercion about the properties of the pictorial signs to be included, and the manner in which they are employed. the above listed strategies highlight that narrowing the visual representational latitude, or reducing the vagueness, of pictorial signs and illustration approaches in a particular target community is not necessarily primarily a question of understanding the complex and tenuous relationship between the referent and the pictorial sign, but also about how pictorial meaning may be stabilised, or de-stabilised as a result of a shifting and evolving relationship between the semiotic other and the semiotic self, to use terms from johansen’s semiotic pyramid model (johansen 1993; johansen & larsen 2002). as the above discussed process of developing a nutrition education calendar for an elderly, low-literate target group in sharpeville shows, this constantly evolving relationship invariably involves an equal mix of facts and values. acknowledgements the project was sanpad funded. 180 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group references abdullah, r. and hübner, r. 2006. pictograms, icons & signs. london: thames & hudson. bergman, m. 2009. experience, purpose, and the value of vagueness. on c. s. pierce’s contribution to the philosophy of communication. communication theory 19: 248-277. blanke, b. 1998. modelle des ikonischen zeichens. zeitschrift für semiotik 20(3-4): 285-303. boehm, g. 1994. die wiederkehr der bilder. in: boehm, g. 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[online]. available at: http://www.saarf.co.za [accessed on ] townsend, m. s. and kaiser, l. l. 2005. development of a tool to assess psychological indicators of fruit and vegetable intake for two federal programmes. journal of nutrition education and behaviour 37(4): 170 -184. unesco. 1995. compendium of statistics on illiteracy. no. 35. paris: united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. venezky, r. l., wagner, d. a. and ciliberti, b. 1990. toward defining literacy. newark: international reading association. wagner, d. a. 1993. literacy, culture and development. becoming literate in morocco. cambridge: cambridge university press. watson, j. and hill, a. 1993. a dictionary of communication and media studies. london: edward arnold. 182 strategies for stabilising pictorial meaning in a low-literate target group 1. melissa steyn 51 sex, sexuality and communication: a thematic analysis of the perceptions of young south african adults communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 51 68 christina jordaan* abstract in south africa, educators and parents, to a large extent, rely on educational sexuality programmes to teach adolescents and young adults the relevant aspects of sex and sexuality. it is argued that these programmes do not manage to address the understanding and interpreting of sexual language adequately. most of these programmes focus on the biological, physical and social aspects of sex, paying attention to the “mechanics” of sex, the possible dangers of sex, effective protection against unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections, but are silent on the language of sex and sexuality and also lack clear guidance on the interpretation and conveying of sexual interest. this article explores the perceptions of a sample group of 115 first year students registered for the baccaulareus educationis degree in primary school teaching at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. a qualitative approach was used as research method and the research data was interpreted by means of a thematic analysis. * dr christina jordaan lectures in the faculty of education at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. introduction the ground-breaking kinsey reports (kinsey et al. 1948, 1953) on male and female sexuality were published almost sixty years ago. since then, we have had the worldwide sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. activists for women’s rights have made significant advances in propagating the emancipation of women (politically as well as in terms of giving them “their own voice”, and celebrating their own sexuality). this world-wide trend was also evident in south africa, and now enjoys constitutional recognition and protection through the clauses on alternative sexual orientations and lifestyles, and the recognition, advancement and protection of the rights of the individual. it is, however, debatable whether south african society has in reality been fundamentally transformed in terms of its views on sex and sexuality, and the free expression of it. one view is that women are still suppressed in a so-called sexually liberated society that claims that women are free to express themselves (sexually and otherwise); that expounds the right to freedom of speech, but at the same time, silences that very freedom to speak out, if not by law, then certainly through socio-political realities of our time. perhaps it is significant that the 1982 hit song by the rock band dr hook and the medicine show baby makes her blue jeans talk is being “rediscovered” by contemporary adolescents, more than 20 years after its release. on the surface, it speaks of female sexual liberation, the right of women to openly express their sexuality; in reality, it reduces women to voiceless objects of sexual desire: baby makes her blue jeans, yes she makes her blue jeans talk baby makes her blue jeans, yes she makes her blue jeans talk you know what she’s thinking about and it turns you inside out she don’t say nothing but, baby makes her blue jeans talk (my underlining) who is doing the actual “talking” here? where does the message originate? what is the actual message? is “baby” in fact communicating her sexual availability through her blue jeans, perhaps by the way it clings to her body, by the way that she moves? is she aware of sending out such a message at all, or is it merely a male chauvinistic construct, a way of interpreting her clothing and body language in such a way that it in reality expresses male sexual desire? this brings me to the purpose of this article, namely to determine to what extent a sample of privileged young south african adults are aware of “sexual” communication, can interpret such communication correctly, and express their own sexuality. educators and parents often take it for granted that adolescents and young adults are capable of understanding and interpreting non-verbal language correctly. this presumption is supported by taylor, peplau and sears (2003: 56) who claim that non52 verbal communication is universal and can be understood and interpreted by all people despite differences in gender, culture or background. this sweeping generalisation is based on the darwinian tenet that, in terms of evolutionary theory, “facial expressions convey the same emotional states in all cultures” (ibid). to my mind the general assumption that all people acquire proficiency in non-verbal communication through a process of social “osmoses” that makes training and education in this field redundant, is confirmed by the fact that non-verbal communication is excluded, or features in a very limited way, in current south african life orientation programmes offered at school level. it is also noticeably absent from the majority of sexuality education programmes. the vast majority of these programmes focus on the biological, physical and social aspects of sex, paying attention to the “mechanics” of sex, the possible dangers of sex, effective protection against unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections, but are silent on the language of sex and sexuality. some programmes do pay attention to topics such as sexual abuse and “power” relationships, sexual values and morals, and encourage parents and children to “speak about sex”, but offer very little by way of actually developing the skills to appropriate communicate sex and sexuality. these programmes assume that once we have taught adolescents the facts of sex and sexuality, we have also prepared them for understanding and interpreting the complicated verbal and non-verbal communicative aspects of it. this is, to my mind, a serious deficiency of current sexuality education programmes, and contributes to the continued suppression of women’s sexuality. one could also argue that by not enabling our youth to express their sexuality through appropriate communication, we allow a situation to arise where conflicting messages of sexual liberation without social responsibility collide with socially repressed sexual desire without the possibility of mediating through appropriate, open communication. argued to the extreme, this situation creates fertile soil for the escalation of undesirable sexual behaviour in our society, including sexual harassment and, ultimately, “hard” sexual abuse, including date rape and more violent forms of sexual assault. it is my premise that we, as parents and educators, do not adequately teach our learners how to recognise and correctly interpret the many ways in which humans express their sexuality and convey sexual interest. we do not teach them how to avoid behaviour that might unintentionally convey sexual interest. we do not consciously train them to correctly identify behaviour (including verbal and non-verbal) that may express sexual interest, or worse, constitute sexual harassment. we do not, in fact, train them to avoid potentially harmful situations by correctly interpreting warning signals; we do not even attempt to circumscribe sexual harassment beyond the simplistic definition of it being “an unwanted sexual advance”. many years of working as school social worker and later as lecturer in the specialised field of life orientation, sexuality education and hiv/aids have challenged me with the fact that adolescents and young adults often lack the proper skills to receive and 53 decode the broad spectrum of what constitutes “sexual language” correctly. many interviews with adolescents and young adults who have been sexually harassed, sexually abused and date raped confirm this. the following two aspects feature prominently: (1) most adolescents and young adults have a very limited understanding of the “language” of sexuality and sexual desire; (2) most adolescents and young adults cannot interpret non-verbal sexual cues correctly and, consequently, cannot avoid potentially harmful situations. in this article i will explore the above aspects by linking it to a thematic analysis of the responses of the cohort of 115 first year students registered for the degree baccalaureus educationis in the foundation and intermediate phases in the faculty of education at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. the 115 respondents constitute a convenience sample and yielded a 100% response rate since the questions were put to them as part of a baseline assessment for the module pged 101 child development. the following three questions were put to the respondents, who replied anonymously: • what is your understanding of the term “sexual language”? • what behaviour in another person tells you that he/she is sexually interested in you? • what is the difference between sexual interest and sexual harassment? for the purpose of this article only the first two questions will be analysed, since the third question warrants a paper in itself. before i present the research findings, a brief investigation into the history of sex and sexuality and the meaning of sexual language is necessary to contextualise the study. a brief contextual history of sex sex, it has been said, may not be the most important thing in life, but there is nothing else quite like it. it is one of the several fundamental instincts given to each of us by nature. sex constitutes one of several key elements that define our cultures, gender, religions and values, and as such can be considered a unique touchstone. according to paez (in cerver 2000: 4) it is the source of life, the expression of love, it is physical attraction and beauty, but it is also “an art, a weapon, a tool and a lure; it is poetry and currency”. if we consider a brief history of sex, we become aware of suppression, exploitation, deceit and even disrespect. even if we acknowledge that sex can be a source of great happiness and fulfilment, we must acknowledge that it can also be a source of great emotional trauma and psychological damage. it often becomes an area of uncertainty, frustration and danger in our daily lives. various serious and even life-threatening health risks are transmitted through sex. misconceptions about sexuality, sexual violence and abuse and subtle manipulations of sexuality to suit various unacceptable and even illegal purposes, are doing immeasurable harm to people. 54 the history of sex places emphasis on the physical aspect of sex, and does not sufficiently speak to values, morals and standards. in ancient greece homosexuality in both men and women was tolerated and prostitution and group sex were readily accepted. it is a known fact that rich greek and roman noblemen kept healthy, goodlooking young men as sex slaves. according to walker (1996: 10) sexual promiscuity was also evident in the new world since “the puritan settlers of the 17th and 18th century in new england considered having and talking about sex perfectly normal, and premarital intercourse was positively encouraged as a ‘test drive’ to see if a couple were suited for each other”. the coming of christianity brought about wide-spread condemnation of earlier sexual practices and sexual freedom. “the christian teachings stipulated monogamous relationships, sex for procreative purposes only and a ban on homosexual and other ‘unnatural’ sexual practices” (walker 1996: 10). these church teachings established sex as essentially sinful and “bad’’ in western thinking. in the west, sex was regarded as disgusting and not to be enjoyed, or spoken about, in civilised society of the 19th century. even words referring to sex or sexuality, or which might have sexual connotations were considered rude and improper. although men could find sexual expression in visiting prostitutes, it was assumed that women either did not have spontaneous sexual feelings or if they had, and expressed it, they must have fallen from grace and were “loose women”. it was generally accepted that women might perhaps be gently introduced to sex by their husbands. kitzinger (1987: 18) quotes from one of the bestselling pamphlets of the 19th century: knowledge sullies woman’s innocence. she must simply trust the man who loves her to tell her what to do. happiness cannot be sought and found by a woman for herself. it must be bestowed by a man. with this gift a good man becomes almost, god-like, in the worlds of john milton “he for god only, she for god in him.” during the 19th century it was also a general view that any form of contraception was disgusting and injurious. the only acceptable way to avoid pregnancy was through abstinence. this resulted in the fact that victorian women spent much of their lives in a state of child-bearing, lactation or ill-health following miscarriage. kitzinger (1987: 19) claims: “the frailty which was considered an innate quality of a well-bred woman was to a large extent a consequence of the drain on her health of repeated pregnancies.” sigmund freud’s work in the early 20th century contributed towards a more enlightened view on sex and sexuality, particularly through his conviction that sexuality formed the basis for human personality and relationships. although freud and some of his followers brought sex to the foreground and challenged many perceptions and preoccupations, these theories subscribed to male superiority and suppression of female feelings and sexuality. during the 1920s an era of greater sexual freedom, especially for women, unfolded as birth control became available to more and more women. a remarkable milestone for 55 the 1920s was the opening of the first birth control clinic in 1921 in manchester by marie stopes. while the majority of women at the time were untouched “by the new technology of contraception” (kitzinger 1987: 21), the upper class women of the era had access to contraceptives, and it even became acceptable for women to discuss it, as evidenced by an issue of practitioner in 1923 that claimed that birth control “has now become a commonplace of conversation at women’s clubs and mixed tea-tables” (quoted in kitzinger 1987: 21). the availability of an oral contraceptive (“the pill”) is considered by many to signal the start of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. reliable and discreet contraception that was not dependent on the male, and which in fact could even be used without the male partner being aware of it, represented greater sexual freedom for women. whereas the well-known kinsey report of 1948 reflected on the enormous variations in sexual behaviour and the fact that many sexual practices that were previously thought abnormal occurred widely and were therefore normal, it was the pill that enabled women to participate in sex without the “burden” of possible pregnancy. the sixties are also synonymous with the flower power movement, also known as the counter-cultural revolution. this was the era of the hippies, young people who deliberately turned their backs on contemporary american culture and who came together in emotional and physical communion. it was also the era of drugs, living in communes, and experimentation with a repertoire of bed exercises and party games intended to guarantee and improve orgasm. in the more “liberated” (yet fairly mainstream) american and uk societies “swinging” and wife-swapping offered a new kind of sexual adventure. in their ground-breaking work human sexual response (1966), william masters and virginia johnson concluded that the basic theories of sexual arousal and of orgasm were the same for the female as for the male. the years following the publication of the study heralded new challenges and questions about sexuality. on the purely practical level, sex became possible for millions of women in the ways it always had been for many men. sex was something that you had when you wanted to, because you wanted to, and for its own sake. with legal, effective and readily available contraception, sex for pleasure became possible as a cultural ideal for women. this does not, however, mean that mainstream western society suddenly subscribed to sexual abandon. although sex became the catchword of the seventies and eighties (featuring in advertising promoting anything from farm implements to make-up), conventions on “proper” sexual conduct that would have seemed comforting to late 18th century society persevered on a fairly wide scale. moral persons, specifically moral women, still abstained from sex before marriage. or if they had sex, at least kept quiet about it and married in white. on the whole, women still did not have sex for the sheer fun of it. it thus appears that the main positive spin-off of the sexual revolution was that women, and in particular feminists, started to ask searching questions about the role of sexual 56 relationships in their lives. women were increasingly encouraged to trust their own instincts, thoughts and feelings and to make their own sexual decisions. the 1980s mainly saw two international crises, namely the “teenage pregnancy” crisis and the diagnoses of the first cases of the human immuno-deficiency virus (hiv). the teenage pregnancy crisis was not pregnancy itself, but birth, and not births to young people, but births to young unmarried people. almost one baby out of three was born to unmarried parents. what seemed to be happening was that young people started to believe that marriage was no longer the only choice for both sex and parenthood. this became known as the second sexual revolution: marriage had been dethroned. the 1980s will also be remembered for the renewed popularity of the condom. with the awareness of hiv as a sexually transmittable infection and a potential death threat to everybody, regardless of age, gender, culture, social status or educational background, the spotlight was on the condom as almost the only means to prevent infection. the 1980s became the era of condom variety. variety in makes (durex, first love, rough rider, etc.), variety in colour (red, green, black, yellow), variety in flavour (strawberry, mint, lemon, etc.) and variety in types, e.g. ripped, studded, ultra thin and some very thick and durable. the distribution and availability of condoms also increased and condoms were displayed at almost all thinkable public places — public toilets, airports, clinics, movie-theatres, college and university campuses, etc. the female condom or ‘femedome’’ also gained some acceptance during the 1980s, but never became very popular probable because of the fact that it takes some experience to use and is quite expensive in comparison to the male condom. the female condom also needs to be inserted in the vagina at least a half an hour before sexual intercourse, which often makes it impractical and ineffective. the underlying message of the emphasis on condom use was clearly one of “we will never persuade people to abstain from sex despite hiv and aids, so keep on having sex, just use a condom”. to some extent, however, the hiv/aids pandemic has seen a resurgence of conservatism, or at least an awareness of the need to find meaning in life through the rediscovery of morals and family values as a mainstay of society. attempts to bridle unqualified personal freedom within ethical frameworks have resulted in the mushrooming of courses in ethics, centres for ethics, and consultancies determined to make a buck out of the new “ethics industry”. several campaigns for a “new” sexual morality amongst south african youth have received wide media coverage over the past number of years. the most well known among these have been the highly publicised but controversial lovelife campaigns, and the true love waits pledge, also known as the “silver ring thing”. this pledge was undertaken by thousands of south african christian couples who promised to abstain from sex until they were married. in the south african history of sex, 1996 will be remembered as the year in which the government introduced its new choice of termination of pregnancy act. this act legalises abortion and gives women the right to make choices about their unborn babies. 57 the act became possible in terms of the new constitution, which entrenched human rights for all citizens of south africa, guaranteeing equality regardless of race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion or political affiliations. in 1998 the new curriculum (rncs) was introduced in south african schools and indicative of this curriculum is the inclusion of life orientation and subsequent sexuality education programmes for all learners from grade r. the 21st century is in its infancy, but it is already clear that sex, sexuality and especially social ills linked to it will dominate our lives. current newspaper headlines are indicative of the fact that the personal freedom guaranteed by the bill of rights does not free us of social problems and issues that are associated with sex and sexuality: same sex marriages, school girl pregnancy and maternity leave for them, the increase in violent sex crimes, cell phone pornography in schools, sexual assault among learners in schools… in summary it can be said that sex always was, and probably always will be, a subject that interests all human beings. traditionally sex was singled out as a special area of life that was sacred and not a subject for discussion. today, many champion the idea of sexual freedom, while others agitate for a revival of traditional cultures, each with its own views on sex and sexuality. given the reality of a multicultural, integrated society, we have to find the means to arrive at a workable social “consensus” on sex and sexuality through communication. sexual language generally speaking, sexual language can simply be explained as the way we communicate sexual interest to each other with or without words. walker (1996: 182), writing on sexual attraction and body language, pays particular attention to “the way we communicate with each other without words, by moving and positioning our bodies”. according to him, we are mostly not aware of the messages we are conveying, while we are often very aware of messages conveyed to us. he notes that, within close personal relationships, people often “mirror” each other through body actions. a significant aspect of non-verbal language expressing sexual interest is referred to as “displacement behaviour” such as fidgeting and constant grooming. taylor, peplau and sears (2003: 64) add an interesting dimension to the interpretation of non-verbal sexual communication by differentiating on the basis of gender: …. there are differences in the use of nonverbal behaviour. girls and woman tend to be more expressive, more involved in their interpersonal interactions, and more open in the expression of emotion. they tend to use more nonverbal behaviour in interacting with others, such as touching, eye contact, expressive body movements, smiling and gazing. women are also more accurate interpreters of nonverbal cues than are men. 58 women’s greater awareness of, and use of non-verbal communication may be partially explained by kitzinger’s (1987: 36) feminist perspective on (verbal) language being restrictive to women: language is one important way in which our thinking about sex is socially controlled. language is man-made and expresses men’s views of women’s bodies and sexuality. this means that women’s feelings and experiences remain unspoken, because it is, quite literally, unspeakable. an analysis of the research data generated by the questionnaire sheds some insight on the question whether women are more sensitive than men regarding the non-verbal expression of sex and sexuality. delimitation, research design and methodology this study is exploratory and analyses the perceptions of 115 first year education students at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. the research group is a convenience sample as all the students who are registered for the first year study for the b(ed) degree in foundation phase and intermediate phase studies were included in the study. the broad objective of the research was to understand the various perceptions that south african adolescents and young adults have regarding sex, sexuality and communication. a qualitative research design was used for this research. the research was open and not directed by a prescriptive framework, preconceived ideas or formal hypotheses. it has been the experience of this researcher that designing a research questionnaire with a minimum of questions, phrased in an almost naive way, was more accurate in generating responses intended for a thematic analysis. conventional questionnaires consisting of many questions invariably exhibit inherent themes, and can therefore “prime” respondents to generate these same themes in their responses. the research sample consisted of a diverse, heterogeneous, multi-cultural group of first year students at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. the group consisted of 115 participants, 18 (15.7%) were male and 97 (84.3%) were female. data collection was done by means of questionnaires handed out directly to respondents with the request to complete the questionnaire without prior discussion. the analysis of the data was done by identifying recurring themes and was scored by calculating the frequency of each theme. the following questions were asked: (1) what is your understanding of the term “sexual language”? (2) what behaviour in another person tells you that he/she is sexually interested in you? (3) what is the difference between “sexual interest” and “sexual harassment”? 59 as already indicated, the responses generated by question 3 warrant a paper on its own, therefore these responses will not be analysed in this article. analyses and interpretations of themes question one the first question yielded 180 responses from the survey group of 115 respondents. these responses were analysed and consolidated into 9 sub-themes. some responses were grouped under more than one theme. nine sub-themes were identified, but since five of these represent marginal responses (less than 5% frequency) only the first four sub-themes are discussed. theme 1: non-verbal “language of a sexual nature” based on the number of responses (44.4%), most of the respondents equated “sexual language” to non-verbal language with a sexual meaning, used to signal sexual interest in somebody else. the following verbatim responses typify the theme: making sexually inviting signs, e.g. winking of the eyes, slow licking of the lips, in-and-out movements with the hips, seductive hand gestures, body chemistry, gentle touching, leaning closer, biting the lips, lots of compliments, teasing, laughing, using soft, husky voice, subtle vibes, invading personal space, how people dress. strictly speaking some of the above responses can more accurately categorised as pertaining to haptics, paralanguage, proximity and sexual hints. given that the purpose of the article is not the accurate classification of responses in terms of communication theory, but rather the identification of common perceptions, these responses were grouped under a single theme. 60 theme 2: talking about sexual intercourse this theme scored the second highest number of responses (23.3 %) and the following verbatim responses typify the theme: sharing sexual feelings, asking another person about his/her sexual history, using sexual orientated words when talking to somebody else, talking about sexual experiences and how enjoyable it was, sexual fore-play, things people do and say when they want to be sexually active, making you aroused and in the mood for sex, getting laid, being perverted, screwing. from the responses it is clear that a single theme is addressed, in spite of the variety in responses which range from using language and terms that range from refined to smsstyle and even rude expressions. the term “language” is interpreted narrowly to refer to spoken (verbal) expression. theme 3: doing sexuality education based on the number of responses, a significant number of respondents associate “sexual language” with sexuality education. it yielded a 15.6 % response and the following responses typify the theme: nurses and teachers talking to people about sex topics, discussing the consequences of sex and other issues related to sex, talking about all the cycles of human development, explaining the sexual organs of males and females, talking about menstruation, wet dreams, etc., conferences and seminars about sex. the linking of “sexual language” with sexuality education can be attributed to the fact that the respondents were exposed to speaking about sex and sexuality in sexual education programmes. the conflation of speaking about sex and communicating sexuality or sexual desire is a clear indication that the sexuality education programmes these respondents were exposed to did not clearly address the topic of communicating and interpreting sexuality and sexual desire. theme 4: inappropriate sexual language or behaviour fifteen female respondents and one male respondent gave answers that indicate a negative perception of sexual language. these negative responses represent 13.9% of the overall responses to question one and is a cause for concern since it indicates that a significant number of respondents consider the communication or expression of sexuality and/or desire to be socially unacceptable or even aberrant. this poses a particular challenge to educators and parents, if the negative stigma surrounding sexuality (typical of the 18th century) and sex is to be removed. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: sexual language i think is terms like, “yop you got a lekka butt”, this is usually used by guys or males acting perverts anything that you do that will give the oppisite sex a message of lust. a form of language that is touchy in sexual places. sexual language is language used with the intention of sexual connotations that implies acts of a sexual nature, sexual dominance or sexist sexuality 61 sexual language could be when a guy/girl talks ‘dirty’ to u, makes u feel uncomfortable, scared, nervous when someone makes sexual remarks and uses words that are not appropriate. mense wat seksuele aanmerkings maak wat jou laat ongemaklik voel – kan verbaal of nie-verbaal wees. it is when a person say bad things to someone. as iemand slegte taal gebruik aan ‘n persoon. sexual language in my understanding its when a person talks about private parts of their body also when they are talking about sexual activities and sex toys that is what i understand. it a sertainlanguage people use when they want to get sexual for eg. lets get lade it means lets have sex. subsequently, the responses were categorised as non-verbal only, a combination of nonverbal and verbal communication, and verbal communication only. the analysis of female responses revealed three additional themes: a negative connotation attached to the term “sexual language”, a perception that linked it specifically with sexual intercourse, and a perception that it was a predominantly male activity. these results are represented in figures 1 and 2 below. figure 1: male responses for all themes generated by question 1 62 11% 5% 26% 37% 21% non-verbal communication only combination of non-verbal and verbal communication verbal communication only other (cannot be classified) negative connotation indicates sexual intercourse male activity educational / clinical figure 2: female responses for all themes generated by question 1 question two “what behaviour in another person tells you that he/she is sexually interested in you?” the responses of a total of 115 respondents were analysed. the 97 female respondents yielded 4 well defined themes pertaining to: (1) eye contact – looking (2) touch and physical contact (3) personal space (4) verbal communication. the 18 male respondents yielded only one clear theme, namely touch. two respondents made a clear connection between touching oneself while speaking to another; also touching the person you are speaking to. for the male sample, verbal communication accounted for only 3 responses. on the whole the male respondents seem to be unable to register or interpret sexual interest by another person; perhaps the following two verbatim responses sum it up: today we find that the girl tell the guy if she wants him. i think there is no way to find the mind’s construction by looking in a face so i cannot say that someone is sexually interested to me by just a smile or something else. 63 non-verbal communication only combination of non-verbal and verbal communication verbal communication only other (cannot be classified) negative connotation indicates sexual intercourse male activity educational / clinical 12% 5% 22% 26% 8% 18% 5% 4% the analysis of the male responses to question two indicates limited competency in registering and/or interpreting sexual advances unless such advances are obvious to the point of being blatant. this contradicts the following statement by one of the male respondents: “for males it is easy to see whether a female wants to have sex with you or not, most men will know after the first date.” it also contradicts the claim “you know what she’s thinking about and it turns you inside out” (dr hook, 1982). in comparison to the responses generated by the male respondents the female respondents were far more nuanced regarding the number of themes generated and the subtlety of the behaviours registered. verbal communication as an indicator of sexual interest rated 29.1 %, while non-verbal cues accounted for 70.1 % of the responses. regarding the non-verbal indicators it is significant that 48.8 % of the responses specifically mentioned the sexual gaze or look as evidenced in 63 counts of phrases containing the words “look” (43), “eye”, (17) or “stare” (3). the importance of eye contact as a non-verbal indicator of sexual interest for women is noted by walker (1996: 184) and this study confirms it. touch as an indicator of sexual interest registered a 41.1% response rate, while references to personal space or proximity total 13 counts or 10.1% of the total nonverbal cues. figure 3: female responses to question 2 categorised as verbal and non-verbal communication 64 29% 71% verbal cues non-verbal cues figure 4: non-verbal sub-categories of female responses to question 2 from the above analyses it is clear that the female respondents are well aware of the role of non-verbal communication and are able to differentiate between various modes of non-verbal communication. this however, does not directly translate to a level of sophistication or subtlety in registering, or expressing such behaviour. numerous responses indicate a rudimentary communicative repertoire where much depends on explicit, blatant or even crude signals, as indicated by the following verbatim responses: when this person is keep on talking about sex or ask you why you don’t wanna do it. if they flirt with you or he/she touches you in places that are uncomfortable. the person touches you in inappropriate places e.g. near the breast or bottom. when they touch you physically, always looking at you, makes sexual gestures at you, tells you you look sexy and moves in. well, if they come onto you, are always around u touching u, feeling u up, making sexual remarks, hints, etc. they stare at you and try their luck and try attempt some kind of physical contact. all in the body language. that they are telling you they want to touch you private parts and want to have intercourse with you. 65 41% 49% touch and physical contact personal space eye contact / the gaze 10% as ‘n ou jou aankyk en dis asof hy jou met sy oë uittrek. baie ouens is aspris en as ‘n kuierplek baie vol is sal hulle teen jou verbyskuur en hulle “crotch” teen jou vasdruk. when he is all over your body, looking at your private parts, eg your breasts, your butt, etc. making all these comments about how well your body is and how good looking your bums. as is the case with the male respondent who optimistically asserts “for males it is easy to see whether a female wants to have sex with you or not, most men will know after the first date”, the female respondents are equally sure of their ability to recognise and correctly interpret male behaviour, as exemplified by the following response: “they just give you a certain look and you just know.” negative perceptions as was the case with question one, a significant number of responses to question two indicate a negative perception on sexuality and the expression of sexual desire. no negative perceptions by male respondents were noted, while 15 female respondents’ answers revealed a negative perception regarding behaviour that indicates sexual interest. the following verbatim responses typify a negative perspective on the theme: if they flirt with you or if he/she touches you in places that are uncomfortable if the other person body language is in such a way that it lean someone, and the way the other person looks at you makes you feel nervous and sometimes uncomfortable. when that persons body language makes you nervous, when he/she always does everything close to you. the person might touch you in inappropriate places (eg. near the breast/bottom) well if they come on to you, are always around u, touching you, feeling u up; making sexual remarks, hints etc. that they are telling you they want to touch you private parts and want to have intercourse with you. as ‘n ou jou aankyk en dis asof hy jou met sy oë uittrek. baie ouens is aspris en as ‘n kuier plek baie vol is sal hulle teen jou verby skuur en hulle “crotch” teen jou vasdruk. a person will intimidate you. forcing you to consider his/her alternatives. if he invades my personal space and touches me in an innappropriate way. when he is all over your body, looking at your private parts e.g your breasts, your but etc. making all these comments about how well your body is and how good looking your bums. 66 due to the comparatively small number of respondents making up the male sample, the combination of male and female data regarding question two does not significantly alter the overall response. male responses to question two were therefore not graphically represented, nor consolidated with the female responses. conclusion this study set out to determine what the perceptions of a convenience sample of adolescents and young adults are regarding the nature of sexual language and behaviour that indicates sexual interest. the sample consisted of 115 students aged between 18 and 47, with a mean average of 20.4 years. conclusions about differences in perception between male and female respondents can at most be considered to be preliminary since the sample population comprised of 18 males and 97 females. these provisional results indicating a greater awareness of the role of body language amongst the female respondents are in line with general findings in literature on non-verbal communication. in this regard stewart et al. (1990) maintains that “ …women use more non-verbal signals of liking than do men”, while louw and du plooy-cilliers (2003: 129) assert: “women are as aware of courtship gestures as they are aware of other body gestures, but men are far less perceptive, often being oblivious to them.” it is significant (and a worrying factor) that the majority of responses are based on overt, if not aggressive expression of sexual desire or interest. the respondents’ answers do not indicate that they are aware of, or capable of interpreting more subtle behaviour. from a life orientation perspective this inability to perceive subtle behaviour presents a possible threat, since being in a situation where private parts are touched, rubbed and crotches pressed against you, hardly provides the opportunity to avoid harm through not placing yourself at risk. 67 references cerver, f.a. (ed.). 2000. sexuality. cologne, könemann. dr hook. 1982. “baby makes her blue jeans talk”. players in the dark [cd]. emi music ltd. kinsey, a.c., pomeroy, w.b. martin, c. 1948. sexual behaviour in the human male. philadelphia, w.b. saunders. kinsey, a.c., pomeroy, w. b. martin, c & gebhard, p.h. 1953. sexual behaviour in the human female. philadelphia, w.b. saunders. kitzinger, s. 1987. woman’s experience of sex. johannesburg, flower press. louw, m & du plooy-cilliers, f. 2003. let’s talk about interpersonal communication. 2nd ed. sandton, heinemann. masters, w. h. & johnson, v.e. 1966. human sexual response. london. j&a churchill. taylor, s. e., peplau, l. a. & sears, d.o. 2003. social psychology. 11th ed. usa, prentice hall. walker, r. 1996. sex and relationships. the complete family guide. london, de agostini editions. 68 221 -meo iudicio vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting as transformasiedrywers in ’n maatskappy communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 223-229 jonathan crowther* vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting is demokratiese beginsels wat voortdurend in die spervuur beland, gewoonlik waar dit om die publisering van inligting in die media gaan. hierdie twee beginsels is egter nie net hoekstene van ’n vrye en doeltreffende media nie; dit kan en behoort ook belangrike sluitstene in ’n maatskappy se korporatiewe vesting te wees. net soos vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting ’n gesonde demokrasie, ’n ingeligte burgery en verbeterde besluitneming tot gevolg het, kan hierdie beginsels ’n korporasie en die besigheidswêreld positief transformeer. die filosofie van die meeste korporasies in die verlede was dat die bestuur die besluite neem en die werkerskorps hulle sonder teenspraak uitvoer. kritiek, eie menings en selfs voorstelle op laer vlakke is nie geduld nie en is selfs beskou as ontwrigtend, moeilikheidmakend en sleg vir besigheid. alte dikwels het maatskappye so sterk op die taak na buite en hul mededingers in die veld gefokus dat hulle hul taak na binne – die skep van ’n gesonde, positiewe en kreatiewe werkerskorps – agterweë gelaat het – dikwels tot daardie maatskappye en ondernemings se nadeel. toenemend omhels korporasies egter die nuwe filosofie van groter vryheid van spraak in die werkomgewing en die afwenteling van meer inligting na die werkerskorps. die uitgangspunt is dat hierdie benadering inderdaad vir daardie heilige graal genoem die winsgrens bevorderlik is. andersyds bou ’n maatskappy of besigheid met ’n betrokke en ingeligte werkerskorps makliker en doeltreffender ’n goeie reputasie en beeld na buite. laasgenoemde twee bates * jonathan crowther is ’n voormalige redakteur van volksblad, ’n media24-koerant in bloemfontein. 222 jonathan crowther is wat ’n onderneming van sy mededingers kan onderskei en laat voorloop. ’n onderneming wat dit regkry, word gou gereken as ’n vooruitstrewende en suksesvolle maatskappy waarmee graag sake gedoen word. hoe kry jy jou werkerskorps goed ingelig én hoe hou jy hulle deurlopend op die hoogte? hoe moet jy hulle inspireer? en hoe kan jy toesien dat jy by hulle kreatiwiteit aanwakker wat die maatskappy van jou teenstanders kan onderskei? boeke oor die onderwerp wemel van velerlei voorstelle. hierdie essay fokus egter spesifiek op die besondere bydrae wat die kultuur van vryheid van spraak in die werkplek en die vryer vloei van relevante maatskappy-inligting ondertoe in die hiërargie hiertoe kan lewer. die pluspunt hierin is dat die bestuur terselfdertyd eerstehandse, nuttige inligting van die vloer af terugkry, asook bruikbare voorstelle wat andersins in die korporatiewe sand sou verdwyn het. as jou gewone werkers ook weet wat die maatskappy se doelwitte, prioriteite en strategiese denke is, sal hulle bemagtig word om kliënte beter te kan bedien, moeilike situasies te kan hanteer en om goeie ambassadeurs vir hul maatskappy te wees. deur die regte seine na die werkerskorps deur te stuur, kan die maatskappy die volle potensiaal van daardie werkerskorps ontsluit. ter illustrasie hiervan gebruik ek media24 as gevallestudie van ’n maatskappy waar die instelling van groter vryheid van spraak en toegang tot maatskappyinligting suksesvol toegepas word. media24, soos baie ander maatskappye, is ’n maatskappy in oorgang. enersyds in die aard van sy sakebedrywighede – van ’n tradisionele drukkersmaatskappy na ’n media-maatskappy wat inhoud op verskeie kommunikasieplatforms verskaf – en andersyds in sy posisionering van homself as ’n voorkeurmaatskappy vir sy werkers. wat laasgenoemde betref, het media24 ’n strategie ingestel waardeur hy sy werknemers as ambassadeurs vir die maatskappy wil vestig wat die maatskappy sal bemark as ’n voorkeur-sakevennoot en -werkgewer. media24 het in daardie einste elektroniese mediaplatforms waarmee hy na buite sake doen die geleentheid raakgesien om sy kommunikasie en die vloei van inligting na binne op te skerp. verskeie stappe word in hierdie verband gedoen: ♦ die uitvoerende hoof van die maatskappy het sy uitvoerende bestuur vergroot sodat ander sleutelbestuurders in die maatskappy daarin kan dien: onder meer korporatiewe kommunikasie, korporatiewe aangeleenthede, risikobestuur en menslike hulpbronne; ♦ senior bestuurders het gereelde regstreekse formele vergaderings met die mense wat aan hulle rapporteer; 223 vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting as transformasiedrywers in ’n maatskappy ♦ senior bestuurders word verplig om inligting deur hul lynbestuurders aan die werknemers deur te gee; en ♦ die afdeling korporatiewe kommunikasie word verplig om korporatiewe nuus so te verpak en te versprei dat werknemers dit kan verstaan. verskeie kommunikasiemiddele word gebruik om vryheid van spraak en die vrye vloei van inligting te verseker: ♦ ’n personeelblog is geskep waar personeellede hul mening oor enigiets in die werkplek kan lug – onder meer klagtes, voorstelle, fluitjieblaas, ens. die bydraes kan anoniem gedoen word; daarom is dit waarskynlik die gewildste vorm van kommunikasie en die beste barometer van omstandighede in die werkplek. alle navrae op die blog word na die uitvoerende hoof en sy span vir beantwoording verwys. ♦ media24 het ook ’n facebook-blad vir die personeel geskep, waar werknemers hul persoonlike inligting, profiele en statusopdaterings kan plaas. die maatskappy en sake-eenhede gebruik die blad om inligting oor aktiwiteite en gebeurtenisse van die maatskappy te kommunikeer, soos onder meer personeelkompetisies. die kommunikasie-afdeling bedryf die facebook-blad en skep die geleentheid vir die maatskappy om in baie gevalle pro-aktief te kan optree. ♦ media24 het ook twitter-profiel wat personeellede die geleentheid bied om anoniem boodskappe deur te gee en ook om leierskapseminare en -kongresse van die maatskappy persoonlik te kan volg. ♦ media24 het sy personeelkoerant, my24, herposisioneer. dit word nou deur personeellede vir die personeel opgestel en uitgegee. die publikasie word in seksies ingedeel wat op maatskappynuus, bedryfsnuus, sosiale nuus, nuwe ontwikkelinge, projekte en inisiatiewe en ook groot debatskwessies binne die maatskappy fokus, soos die siekefonds, vergoeding, posgradering, vryskutwerk, herstrukturering, ens. weer eens word vrae en kwessies vir antwoorde en oplossings na die relevante bestuurders verwys. die bespreking van laasgenoemde onderwerpe in ope debat was in die verlede taboe. dis dan te verwagte dat die herposisioneerde publikasie baie gewild onder die personeellede is. die invoer van die nuwe kultuur van ope, eerlike en reguit kommunikasie word gegrond op die geloof dat ’n maatskappy net die beste prestasie en toewyding van sy werknemers kan verwag as die maatskappy ’n omgewing skep waar die werknemers 224 jonathan crowther gehoor en gerespekteer word. dit skep ’n veilige klimaat vir die personeel waarin hulle sonder vrees vir viktimisasie hul sê kan sê. in die lig hiervan is ’n paar inisiatiewe ingestel om werknemers die kans te gee om eerstehands met die uitvoerende hoof te kan kommunikeer. ♦ ’n regstreekse geselssessie per internet met die uitvoerende hoof van media24 word kwartaalliks gehou. in die eerste van hierdie sessies is 2 800 boodskappe geprosesseer – en aan elke kwessie is die nodige aandag gegee. die gevolg hiervan is onder meer die inrig van ’n “chill”vertrek in media24 se hoofkantoor. so ook is talle ander griewe en kwessies suksesvol opgelos. die geloofwaardigheid van hierdie proses is deurslaggewend. die maatskappy het besef hy moet die werknemers oortuig dat werklik na hulle geluister word, dat hul stem gewig dra en dat daadwerklik met die kwessies gewerk word wat hulle opper. dit word gedoen en die geselssessies raak al hoe gewilder. ♦ die uitvoerende hoof en sy bestuurspan onderneem ook kwartaalliks sentrumbesoeke (road shows) oor die land heen. dit gee aan diegene wat nie aan die web-praatsessies kan deelneem nie, die geleentheid om in lewende lywe met die uitvoerende hoof te kan praat oor sake na aan die hart, wat soms moeilike vrae insluit. ♦ die uitvoerende hoof neem ook aan ’n kwartaallikse video-praatjie deel. daarvoor skakel die personeel van 14 sentrums van oor die land per video met hom in kaapstad in. die resultaat is besonder bemoedigend en die impak groot. ♦ ’n nuwe toekenningsprogram is ingestel wat werknemers in staat stel om kollegas vir spesiale pryse te benoem gegrond op daardie kollegas se besondere bydraes tot die besigheid; synde operasioneel, strategies, leierskap, nuwe tegnologie en kostebesparing. die eerste poging het altesame 766 benoemings opgelewer. drie van hulle het elkeen ’n dubbele salaristjek vir die maand ontvang. uiteraard bied vernuwing en transformasie sekere uitdagings binne die maatskappy. nie almal is so entoesiasties oor die nuwe rigting wat ingeslaan is nie. veral sommige van die ouer garde wat aan ’n ander styl van kommunikasiebestuur gewoond was, vind die oper vloei van kommunikasie en inligting soms moeilik om te sluk. hulle is die generasie wat gewoond was aan notas op die aanplakbord, memo’s en briewe by jou salaristjek. baie van hierdie werknemers sien vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting in die werkplek as ’n bedreiging. die jonger garde, daarenteen, verwelkom en benut die nuwe benadering met ope arms. 225 vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting as transformasiedrywers in ’n maatskappy saam met die groter vryheid van spraak het die probleem ontstaan van werknemers wat nie toegerus is om dit sinvol te benut nie. mense is nog nie behoorlik toegerus om ander se menings met die nodige demokratiese uitkyk te duld as dit van hul eie mening verskil nie. ander weer meen vryheid van spraak gee hulle vrypas om te sê wat hulle wil. ook hier lê ’n belangrike opvoedingstaak om mense te leer om op ’n demokratiese manier debat te voer, sonder dreigemente, diskriminasie en vooroordele; dus met die nodige agting vir hul kollegas se regte. belangrik is om te onthou dat die nuwe beleid en inisiatiewe van bo af deur die uitvoerende hoof self gedryf moet word. die mees senior persoon in die maatskappy word steeds as die belangrikste bron van inligting en die geloofwaardigste een beskou. later, wanneer die kultuur van vryheid van spraak en die toegang tot inligting behoorlik gewortel is, sal dit nie meer nodig wees dat die uitvoerende hoof soveel persoonlike dryfkrag daarin hoef te belê nie. hierdie nuwe benadering begin reeds goeie vrugte dra: personeelnavorsing toon dat die meerderheid werknemers daarmee genoeë neem. nuttige voorstelle en bydraes tot die maatskappy se voordeel stroom in, kommunikasiegapings tussen werknemers en bestuurders word oorbrug, ’n nuwe soort leierskap begin posvat wat vrye kommunikasie verwelkom, wat moeilike vrae nie probeer systap nie, maar inderdaad beantwoord en waar geen antwoorde voor die hand lê nie, een gesoek word. ’n werksomgewing word gevestig waarin die personeel begin besef en glo dat hulle ’n stem het waarna geluister word en dat dit reg en aanvaarbaar is om hul sê te sê. media24 is vol vertroue dat hierdie nuwe korporatiewe kultuur tot die maatskappy se voordeel sal strek deurdat dit hom op die nuwe mediaen sosiaal-maatskaplike landskap in staat stel om hom vir groei te posisioneer. wanneer ’n mens so na hierdie gevallestudie kyk, tref dit jou watter parallelle ’n mens tussen die mikrokosmos van hierdie maatskappy en die makrokosmos van die suid-afrikaanse samelewing kan trek: ♦ in albei gevalle het ’n nuwe gees, beleid en strategie van ’n oper, meer demokratiese regeringen bestuurstyl posgevat. daarin speel vryheid van spraak en mense se reg tot toegang van inligting ’n wesenlike rol. dit is met die aanbreek van die nuwe politieke bedeling in 1994 as so belangrik beskou dat dit in die suid-afrikaanse grondwet verskans is. bygesê hierdie lofwaardige beginsels kom op nasionale vlak al hoe meer onder druk weens die anc-regering se toenemende beheptheid met beheer oor die vloei van inligting. nuwe wetgewing word beoog wat ernstige gevare vir die nuusmedia, die vrye vloei van inligting en uiteindelik die demokrasie inhou. 226 jonathan crowther ♦ in albei gevalle open hierdie nuwe vryhede deure van geleentheid wat tot dusver vir die gewone werknemer en die landsburger gesluit was. hulle het nou die reg gekry om hul stem te verhef en kan daarop aandring dat na hulle geluister word. (dis natuurlik ’n ander saak of die huidige bewindhebbers kan of wil luister.) veel anders as in die verlede toe die bestuur én die regering vir almal besluit het en basta. ongelukkig begin dit egter nou lyk asof die regering van die dag nie meer so geneë is om na die stemme van die gemeenskap en die burgery te luister nie, veral nie soos in die nuusmedia verwoord nie. net soos die topbestuur van maatskappye in die nuwe en oper bestuurstyl geskool moet word, moet die regering van die dag oortuig word om self ook die nuwe bedeling te omarm, te aanvaar en dit tot voordeel van die land aan te wend eerder as om dit te probeer doodwurg. ♦ soos maar alte duidelik gesien kan word, is nie almal ewe entoesiasties oor die nuwe bedeling en bestuuren regeringstyl nie, veral nie mense, instansies en ’n regering wat iets het om weg te steek nie. baie sien dit as ’n bedreiging vir hulself, hul instansie of die regering. ♦ mense en instansies is nog onseker presies hoe hulle hierdie nuutgevonde regte sinvol kan en moet benut. sommige misbruik dit vir hul eie agendas en doelwitte, ander is onkundig oor hul regte wat vertrap word. opleiding en bemagtiging is in albei gevalle nodig om die situasie te bereik dat daardie vryhede in ’n gesonde gees deur almal aanvaar en uitgeoefen word. ♦ die regering, soos die uitvoerende hoof van ’n maatskappy, behoort die primêre dryfveer agter hierdie demokratiseringsen vernuwingsproses te wees. ongelukkig dop die regering in die groter maatskappy wat suidafrika is, dikwels hierdie toets deur grondwetlike regte met uitgediende wetgewing te probeer kniehalter. dit gaan van die burgery en burgerlike instellings afhang om die regering te dwing om die grondwet en sy handves van menseregte in die letter en gees toe te pas – totdat ’n gesonde demokrasie met die verantwoordelike gebruik van grondwetlike regte gevestig is. ♦ in albei gevalle bewys die praktyk dat goeie en gesonde vrugte die resultaat van so ’n suksesvolle demokratiseringsproses is. ’n goed ingeligte en verantwoordelike burgery wat hul grondwetlike regte verstaan en uitoefen, kan en gaan ’n veel nuttiger bydrae lewer tot suid-afrika se vooruitgang en sy vestiging as ’n vooruitstrewende en ekonomies suksesvolle land. in ’n snel ontwikkelende en geglobaliseerde wêreld is dit deesdae vir elke land, soos vir ’n maatskappy, ’n vereiste dat hy hom suksesvol herposisioneer, 227 vryheid van spraak en toegang tot inligting as transformasiedrywers in ’n maatskappy hervorm en transformeer om vandag se uitdagings suksesvol te kan hanteer. anders bly jy agter – en agterlik. untitled 207 knowledge management in higher education communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 207 212 mercia coetzee* * mercia coetzee lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. meo iudicio i recently attended a conference in london where delegates discussed the role that knowledge management can play in higher education. knowledge management is no longer only applicable to large companies, but needs to be applied in every organisation and institution. knowledge management as a management tool and research discipline was ignored until the early 1990s and only gained popularity after the influential work of thinkers such as peter senge, thomas davenport and chris argyris (anand & singh 2011: 926; mcneil 2011: 4; sallis & jones 2002: 115). in the current knowledge age the volume of information is increasing at a staggering rate. knowledge management became important because society shifted to knowledge-based jobs and because organisations faced increasingly complex problems that can only be solved if applicable knowledge is immediately available (sallis & jones 2002: xii; mcneil 2011: 4). organisations came to realise the important role knowledge and knowledge management can play in the improvement of their products and services, and managers and leaders realised that the only way they can survive in today’s challenging world of information overload and technological developments is to manage the available information effectively by using knowledge management projects and practices (nejati, shahbudin & amran 2010: 2; kalaiselvi & uma 2010: 1). if “knowledge is power”, as sir francis bacon stated in 1597, managing it makes more sense now than ever before (klein 1998: 86). there are many definitions of knowledge management, but most boil down to the ability to manage both the internal and external information of an organisation in such a way that it can be used to make informed decisions (nurluoz & birol 2011: 203; mcneil 2011: 7; petrides & nodine 2003: 25). managing knowledge means connecting people with the information they need to take action, when they need it. in other words, providing the right information at the right time to the right people (kidwell, van der linde & johnson 2001: 28). knowledge starts as data – raw facts and numbers that must be organised and put into context to become information. information is not knowledge; only when information 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 207 208 knowledge management in higher education is combined with experience and judgement does it become knowledge. knowledge exists in the core functions of an organisation, in its processes, technology, systems and infrastructure, and in the minds of the people working in the organisation. knowledge includes insight, skills and wisdom, and the practices that enable people to use the available information to reach their goals (kidwell, van der linde & johnson 2001: 29; petrides & nodine 2003: 4). there are two main types of knowledge: explicit and tacit. explicit knowledge is knowledge that is articulated, written down and stored in documents and databases. it can therefore be transferred easily. examples of explicit knowledge in organisations are strategies, methodologies, processes, patents, products, and services. tacit knowledge is the knowledge and wisdom of a person and cannot be transferred easily. examples of tacit knowledge are skills, competencies, ideas, experience, relationships with people inside and outside the organisation, as well as individual beliefs and values (kidwell, van der linde & johnson 2001: 29). knowledge management brings together three core organisational resources – people, processes, and technologies. according to nejati, shahbudin and amran (2010: 1), organisations are increasingly seeking competitive advantage in the effective and unique use and development of knowledge. effective knowledge management programmes are used to identify and leverage the know-how (the tacit knowledge) embedded in work processes, with a focus on how it can be transferred into know-that (explicit knowledge) and applied in the organisation (kidwell, van der linde & johnson 2001: 29). tacit knowledge is a valued resource, and using a system that effectively manages tacit knowledge is crucial for an organisation’s survival. according to klein (1998: 90), the informal know-how of organisations is distributed in a “haphazard fashion” across the minds of individuals and in “a plethora of recording media, such as memos, books, voice-mail messages, paper files, and databases”. organisational knowledge can be lost when people leave the organisation and take what they know with them (petrides & nodine 2003: 13). people at all organisational levels must therefore be motivated to share with others what they know, or to document their knowledge in an explicit format. tacit knowledge may also be obtained from business partners, providers, competitors, and clients (arsenijevic 2011: 3169). knowledge management also refers to the mechanisms and processes that are used in the creation, collection, storage, retrieval, dissemination and utilisation of an organisation’s knowledge (nurluoz & birol 2011: 203). information and communication technology (ict) provides the infrastructure to enable and support knowledge management processes and the sharing of information (omona, van der weide & lubega 2010: 83). management must employ foundational technology, such as email, groupware, and discussion groups, but must also use new, innovative technological infrastructures to communicate with staff and stakeholders. although knowledge management can play an important role in higher education, it has not been sufficiently examined to establish its value for higher education institutions 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 208 209 knowledge management in higher education until recently (arsenijevic 2011: 3168; kidwell, van der linde & johnson 2001: 28; kalaiselvi & uma 2010: 1). knowledge management is crucial for higher education practices because of the vast amounts of knowledge, in both academic and administrative contexts, that educational institutions accumulate. education is about the creation and application of knowledge (sallis & jones 2002: xiv), in fact, knowledge is the key asset of academic institutions. educational institutions should therefore be leading the way in making knowledge management a key part of organisational culture (sallis & jones 2002: xv). mcneil (2011: 7) points out that the academic sector world-wide is currently forced towards being economically competitive; they must keep up with various political issues, with technological developments, with ways of finding funding, they must deliver effective marketing efforts, develop entrepreneurial skills, and many other skills not traditionally part of the academic world. it is expected from higher education institutions to teach to a wide demographic proportion of the population, and they must use teaching strategies which can be successfully applied to all student groups. new and innovative student assessment methods in accommodating the diverse student population must also be used (petrides & nodine 2003: 5). managing the available knowledge can provide support to all these processes. higher education institutions are no different from business organisations in the handling of knowledge, and must use effective and efficient procedures to manage the knowledge in academic, administrative and human resources departments. although most of the existing knowledge management frameworks have been developed for business organisations, higher education institutions can successfully apply these frameworks in their own environments (omona, van der weide & lubega 2010: 83). there are two types of knowledge involved in higher educational settings: academic knowledge and organisational knowledge. academic knowledge is the primary purpose of tertiary institutions and within each discipline lays a wealth of existing and undiscovered knowledge that must be managed. knowledge management practices can provide a framework for distributing research outputs, teaching practices and effective procedures to improve educational outcomes (nurluoz & birol 2011: 20). organisational knowledge refers to the knowledge of the overall business of the institution: information about administrative and organisational practices, the management of students, staff and resources, the markets it serves, and the factors critical to the success of the institution (coukos-semmel 2003, in kalaiselvi & uma 2010: 2). each higher education institution is unique in its scope, size, and priorities, with its own business practices and its own unique group of students (mcneil 2011: 10). managing the knowledge of the institution in such a way that it can be available to other higher education institutions can contribute valuable information to government and policy makers to ensure higher standards and quality teaching at all the institutions of a country. 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 209 210 knowledge management in higher education technologies and knowledge management because education becomes more and more technologically empowered, and because of increased interconnectivity with the rapid growth in the development and application of wireless and mobile technology, higher education institutions are under constant pressure to manage information and the flow of knowledge using the technologies available (omona, van der linde & lubega 2010: 83; mcneil 2011: 7; kalaiselvi & uma 2010: 1). using knowledge management technologies effectively can lead to better decision making, more effective curricula development processes, successful research, improved academic and administrative services, and reduced costs. knowledge management technologies must be able to support and facilitate processes such as the capture of knowledge, knowledge storage, data mining, information retrieval, information sharing and collaboration, and the dissemination of knowledge (omona, van der linde & lubega 2010: 83). many educational institutions over the last ten to 15 years have invested heavily in technology in order to generate data that can improve both the knowledge outputs and the success of the organisation. the problem is that technology does not necessarily improve outcomes if the institution does not have the necessary knowledge management systems in place to effectively integrate the technologies into shared decision making processes (petrides & nodine 2003: 7). for example, an intranet is a network that exists exclusively within an organisation and is based on internet technology. it can provide an email system, group collaboration tools, an application sharing system and a company communications’ network. some traditional applications of intranets are access to databases; a forum for discussions; distribution of electronic documentation; and it can be used to provide online training. higher education institutions can participate in text-based conferencing channels through which individuals can share knowledge and information. usenet newsgroups can be used to discuss various topics with colleagues at other universities. chat tools allow people to hold live interactive conversations, while discussion groups can be set up on a variety of topics to enable internal and external knowledge sharing. web 2.0 is currently seen as a driver of the knowledge and network economy. web 2.0 provides the following applications that can effectively be used by higher education: • blogs: online journals that can be used to share knowledge. blogs can also exist internally within an organisation and can act as an alternative to face-to-face meetings; • syndication and rss feeds: technologies that can be used to alert users to new content on the internet. users can initiate the rss button to receive new material as soon as it is posted; • mashups: a way of combining data and applications to make these applications more valuable to the user, and to provide access to applicable information; 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 210 • wikis: web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with access to a web browser. wikis can be used as repositories of knowledge, composition systems, media for discussions, or mailing systems; • online social networks: internet communities where individuals can interact with others in the community through their profiles. the most popular social networking sites include myspace, friendster, facebook and linkedln. social networks are used by many tertiary institutions to communicate educational material with students. facebook recently announced “blackboard sync” – an application that replicates blackboard to enable students to get communication from their lecturers on their facebook profile; • 3-d virtual worlds: computer-simulated online worlds where users interact in real time through “avatars”. second life is used by both the education sector and businesses as a platform to provide training and practical experience; • groupware tools: encourage collaboration and enhance knowledge sharing. groupware tools include collaborative writing and whiteboards, computer-based conferencing, schedule meetings, diary organisers and email systems; • desktop videoconferencing (dtvc): a means for people to see and hear each other from their desktop computers, enabling them to collaborate and share knowledge; • expertise yellow pages: a listing of all the employees in an organisation, with a summary of their knowledge, skills and expertise; • e-learning: the generic term used to describe online learning, computer-based training and web-based training. it is the application of internet technologies to support the delivery and management of learning, skills and knowledge; and • visualisation: a way of storing information that allows users to understand the complexity of information through the use of rich computer graphics. data in an information retrieval system can be represented and modelled in 2-dimensional (2d) or 3-dimensional (3d) scatterplots. all and all, education is about knowledge. applying knowledge management and appropriate technology in higher education will make more information more accessible, will support teaching, research and learning, and will support everyone, from top management down to administration departments with quality, applicable information where they need it, when they need it. 211 knowledge management in higher education 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 211 references anand, a. and singh, m.d. 2011. understanding knowledge management: a literature review. international journal of engineering science and technology 3(2): 926-939. arsenijevic, j. 2011. methodology for assessment of knowledge management in higher education institutions. african journal of business management 5(8): 3168-3178. kalaiselvi, k. and uma, g.v. 2010. integrated knowledge management for academic improvement in ubiquitous computing. international journal of computer applications 11(3): 1-3. kidwell, j.j., van der linde, k.m. and johnson, s.l. 2001. applying corporate knowledge management practices in higher education. educause quarterly 4: 28-33. klein, d.a. 1998. the strategic management of intellectual capital: an introduction. in: klein, d.a. (ed.) the strategic management of intellectual capital. woburn, usa: butterworth-heinemann. mcneil, r. 2011. application of knowledge management for sustainable development in institutions of higher education. dalhousie journal interdisciplinary 7(1). [online]. available at:http://ocs.library.dal.ca/ojs/index.php/djim/article/viewfile/2011 vol7mcneil/91 [accessed on 10/09/2011]. nejati, m., shahbudin, a.s. and amran, a. 2010. sustainable development: a competitive advantage or a threat? business strategy series 11(2): 84-89. nurluoz, ö. and birol, c. 2011. the impact of knowledge management and technology: an analysis of administrative behaviours. the turkish online journal of educational technology 10(1): 202-208. omona, w., van der weide, t. and lubega, j.t. 2010. using ict to enhance knowledge management in higher education: a conceptual framework and research agenda. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology (ijedict) 6(4): 83-101. petrides, l.a. and nodine, t.r. 2003. knowledge management in education: defining the landscape. [online]. available at: http://iskme.path.net/kmeducation.pdf [accessed on 10/09/2011]. sallis, e. and jones, g. 2002. knowledge management in education: enhancing learning and education. london: kogan page. 212 knowledge management in higher education 12. mercia coetzee 11/18/11 4:04 pm page 212 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /warning /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjdffile false /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true /embedjoboptions true 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5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice september 2006 113 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 113 129 sandra pitcher* abstract the way in which culture and society is derived has changed drastically since the expansion of globalisation. the effects garnered by such an expansion have left individual citizens feeling “lost” within a fragmented physical space (holmes 2005). the internet and digital technologies have, however, opened an avenue for the discovery of new social networks and communities. online users have found it possible to navigate the fragmented state of the physical world by engaging with online networks of like-minded users. video sharing sites in particular give users the opportunity to interact with mainstream culture, while simultaneously offering them the chance to broadcast their own renditions of culture. problematically, these videos are often seen as infringing on traditional forms of copyright as video creators often utilise various forms of mainstream mass media, and re-mix them to formulate their own alternative narrative. this article, however, explores the importance that such videos can play in terms of cultural development within postmodern society, while simultaneously advocating the need to re-think copyright practices in order to not stifle the continued development of culture * sandra pitcher is a leap relief lecturer at the department of media and cultural studies at the university of kwazulu-natal in pietermaritzburg. introduction information communication technologies such as the internet have revolutionised the way in which society forms both community and culture. the expansion of telecommunications, with the aid of globalisation, has re-conceptualised the ways in which community is derived (holmes 2005), leading to the creation of an independent online culture which, like typical models of individual societies, has developed its own set of specific social rules and norms (friedman 2006). as one witnesses the shift from analogue media to digitalism, so too is it possible to note a change in the cultural practices of media consumers. digital media requires audiences to produce their own unique individualised content in order to navigate these new online societies, resulting in what some writers have termed a “prosumer” culture (marshall 2004; tapscott & williams 2005). more and more products require audiences to construct and maintain their own unique visual experiences, especially within the realms of cyberspace. internet sites such as youtube epitomise this type of behaviour by “allowing users the opportunity to broadcast their own various forms of digital video ranging from eyewitness quasi-journalistic coverage of real events, through personal videos of family occasions, to purely creative output” (pitcher 2009: 1). the latter, however, is of most interest as users engage with and appropriate a wide array of mainstream popular culture such as television programmes, movies, animations, sound, and photographs in order to create their own personal and alternative renditions of culture. this practice has been lauded by digital enthusiasts as a new creative platform from which media consumers are able to display and broadcast aspects of their creativity and cultural viewpoints (friedman 2006). simultaneously, however, intellectual property rights activists question the validity of such consumption, often citing that it undermines and infringes on laws which aim to protect traditional creative artists (wirtén 2004). this article argues, however, that this type of appropriation is an important aspect of cultural production within postmodern digital society. it will explore how the increased interactivity of digital media has created a new outlet for creative development by utilising various online videos from youtube. in doing so, it will investigate how the appropriation of mainstream media is vital for the continued development of culture, especially in terms of elevating the development of nations such as south africa into the global market, while simultaneously highlighting the shortcomings of traditional thought surrounding intellectual property protection. what is intellectual property? the term intellectual property is generally associated with three main branches: copyright, trademarks and patents. collectively, these concepts are understood as the protection of the application “of ideas and information that are of commercial value” (cornish 1989: 4), and can appear in many different forms, such as inventions, company logos, branding, mathematical formulae and artistic creations. however, while each branch has its own distinct features and definitions this article restricts the 114 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions definition of intellectual property only to refer to copyright as it is the most relevant to visual culture. copyright, as with all intellectual property laws, is territorial in nature, which means that it is under the jurisdiction of individual governments (cornish 1989). as such, it differs accordingly between each nation state and cannot be adequately defined within a global context. this is highly problematic if one considers the global expansion of digital media, especially in regard to the borderless and ubiquitous nature of the internet. however, while copyright law differs from one country to the next, it is always based on the same fundamental principle: to protect the fiscal and moral rights of creative artists (cornish 1989). south africa especially aims to “guard an author’s work from being distorted, mutilated, or modified in any way which could damage their dignity or reputation” (pitcher 2009: 41). this clause works in tandem with the more general understanding that copyrights are put in place to protect an artist’s financial earnings. the guarantee that the work of a creative author is protected from malicious acts of distortion aids in cementing the reputation and value of an artist’s work in the eyes of the public. overall, the main impetus of copyright protection is directed toward allowing an artist a monopoly over their work for a limited period of time in order to create an incentive to encourage further creative output. however, this is only one of the features which underlie the historical formation of copyright. firstly, intellectual property protection was developed during the nineteenth century as way in which creative authors were able to gain some form of independence from both patronage and publishers (wirtén 2004). granting artists a monopoly over their work meant that they were no longer financially dependent on traditional regimes of power, and as such were given more freedom in terms of what they could or could not produce. secondly, and possibly more importantly, copyright was developed as an instrument for progress in order to propagate an informed citizenry (vaidhyanthan 2001). through the creation of incentives, authors are encouraged to develop new innovative ideas which aim to promote the development of knowledge. modern thought, however, appears to have forgotten these important foundations and seemingly concentrates only on the monopolistic control which copyright protection entitles. during the course of the twentieth century, copyright has emerged as a tool which protects the “rights of the publisher first, authors second, and the public a distant third” (vaidhyanthan 2001: 11). consequently, the protection of intellectual property is not enforced to protect creative artists, or to allow them an incentive to produce, but instead it has become “an incentive to bribe publishers to invest in finding authors” (litman 2001: 104). the importance of free knowledge helge rønning (2006: 25) argues that “information needs to circulate easily in a liberal democratic polity in order to facilitate innovation”. in a country like south africa, which is plagued by the inequalities left behind from its apartheid history, it becomes important to develop public knowledge not only to create an informed society, but also to elevate the south african consciousness to global competitive standards. therefore, one can argue that a site such as youtube which encourages the free exchange of ideas 115 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions and creative output assists in creating such a platform, whereby users are given the opportunity to firstly, broadcast their creations, and secondly, gain exposure to global ideas and innovations, thereby promoting the development of the knowledge economy (aufderheide & jaszi 2008). traditionally, the control of knowledge has been dictated by the intellectual and financial elite within society. as such, the protection of intellectual property in modern times has created an environment in which that which has been created is rewarded, and that which is still to be discovered and crafted is limited. academic research for example, is strictly controlled by publishers who allow only a privileged few access to information. christopher merrett (2006) argues that academic publishers worldwide aim to make huge financial gains from research administered by tertiary institutions. these publishers then sell intellectual works back to the public at highly inflated prices, which often leads to extensive problems in terms of knowledge development within poorer nations which are financially unable to access such information – even in institutions of higher learning. global institutions such as the world intellectual property organisation (wipo) have begun to acknowledge this problem, and subsequently have tried to promote special concessions, in terms of intellectual property law, to aid in building the knowledge economy of developing nations (cornish 1989). one such concession proposed that developing nations had the right to decrease the terms of copyright in order “to authorise translation into their national languages; to authorise publishing for educational and cultural purposes and to exclude from the scope of infringement reproduction for teaching, study or research” (cornish 1989: 252). developed nations, however, believe that such concessions open avenues for “legal piracy” to emerge and have attempted to block many allowances created to empower the knowledge economy of developing nations (pitcher 2009). robert ostergard (1999) explains that the action which developed nations are trying to take could be viewed as a breach of human rights. information which is needed to procure the basic conditions set out by the universal declaration of human rights, such as medical care, social services, food and housing should be openly and consistently exchanged and built upon by both developed and developing nations. limiting the scope of information available to developing nations creates even greater dilemmas for global markets, because “as under-developed countries seek constant foreign assistance and investment to sustain their economies, they, in turn, weaken western economies” (pitcher 2009: 57). added to this, the isolation of developing nations from the global intellectual market entrenches western ideology as a dominant global culture, thus undermining many other cultural viewpoints, and inevitably destabilises any prospect of a true global economy. it is understandable that developed nations are reluctant to relinquish the dominance which they have assumed within the global market. however, as ostergard (1999) proposes, global entities need to acknowledge that different forms of intellectual property need to be utilised and protected in varying ways. problematically not all 116 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions intellectual property constitutes the same value in terms of the progression of developmental structures. for example, it can be argued that scientific research is of far greater importance than the latest hollywood blockbuster; subsequently, definite lines need to be drawn by international organisations in order to determine the difference between intellectual property which is needed for developmental advancement, and that which is wanted for personal enjoyment. however, intellectual property utilised for personal enjoyment can generally also be viewed as tools for cultural understanding and development; therefore, it becomes difficult to proclaim that they do not also have a role to play in the development of a society. overall if one was to restrict the use of copyrighted materials within society it could quash an emerging phenomenon full of potential for democratic society (aufderheide & jaszi 2007). re-thinking community and society as the internet expands and the role of new media becomes a more intrinsic element to social discourse, it is inevitable that we become immersed in a technologically extended society. traditionally society is understood as the combination of communities which assist in legitimising the narratives of civic discourse (holmes 2005). however, with the advent of globalisation and an increase in populations, it becomes possible to note that “the so-called ‘dynamic density’ of society [has begun] to change” (holmes 2005: 168). jan van dijk (2006) attributes this to a number of factors which have fragmented the traditional constitutions of community, such as shifting economies, diasporic communities, the decline of the nation state and cultural hybridisation, to name a few. this fragmentation has resulted in what can be termed ideological flux as norms and values constantly change and are re-defined by individuals, thus creating a crisis as to how the individual is integrated into society: “individuals whose roles were once highly defined, must increasingly become more self-forming and self-active, without the programmed and government contexts which might give either ‘instrumental’ or ‘value rational’ kinds of action any kind of solid meaning” (holmes 2005: 171-172). émile durkheim proposed that the formation of a community created a “conscience collective” in which average members of a single society would share a set of common beliefs and sentiments (holmes 2005). however, it can be argued that the rapid and continual changes occurring within the physical world has led to the emergence of a “lost community” (van dijk 2006: 165), whereby the importance of the conscience collective has fallen away to be replaced by a revered sense of individualisation. as such, the use of online networks has become an important social tool through which one is able to re-discover elements of belonging to a collective. while it can be argued that online communities lack the same depth of traditional modern society, it cannot be denied that virtual communities function as a way of forming “communities of interest” (van dijk 2006: 166) in which one is able to extend already existent forms of social capital. it therefore becomes difficult to ignore the importance that online social communities can play within the formation of postmodern society and culture. over the years it has been postulated that online behaviour should be investigated independently of offline social behaviour (baym 2002). the reduction of physical cues 117 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions divorces our bodies from our conscious self, supposedly resulting in a multiplicity of identities which free one from the confines of reality. this, however, is a somewhat naïve approach to take. as digital media become more interactive it becomes harder to differentiate offline/online identity or community. we are wholly defined by our physical and mental environment. even if we choose to reject the baggage which confines us within the physical world our online interactions are still influenced and shaped by our offline persona, standings, and knowledge (van dijk 2006). this relationship is most notable when exploring social networking sites such as facebook and twitter, which concentrate on informing one’s online community to the events of one’s offline day-to-day experiences. even if an individual does not partake in these communities in the intended way and prefer to adopt the role of a quiet observer, they still do so without the complete anonymity provided by older online social communities. based on the profiles which one is required to construct, it is evident that most users create an identity which is parallel to the way in which identity is formulated in face-to-face settings (slater 2002). as with all identity creation, an individual incorporates a multitude of views, values and ideologies into their persona through a variety of daily and lived interactions. most notably, it has been determined that individuals are most influenced by popular culture as the mass media begin to play a larger role within contemporary society (aufderheide & jaszi 2008). this argument leads one to deduce that the construction of an online community is shaped by the identities of those individuals who have chosen to partake within a specific online network. simultaneously, however, one cannot ignore the various structures within virtual communities which have also had an impact on how online culture is constructed. each network, as with any social grouping, will have its own set of rules and regulations which govern the way in which users interact. it is dependent on the user as to whether or not they choose to abide by these norms and combine their individualism within the confines of such a structure. more importantly, however, is the realisation of online users that they have the ability to interact with and make direct comment on the culture with which they are so interwoven. building culture through participatory media online networks create open platforms which users are able to both consume and interact with a variety of media forms. this newly emergent consumer has been termed a “prosumer”, whereby the consumer of new media also has the ability to impact the way in which it is produced (marshall 2004; tapscott & williams 2005). traditional models of communication are broken down as the communication of messages no longer cease after they have been received. instead what emerges, as illustrated in figure 1 below, is a continual cycle of communication, whereby the message is continually deconstructed and reconstructed between sender and receiver. based on the above discussion, one can argue that this type of communication has become an important function within the fragmented world of postmodern society as individuals try to navigate and make sense of the changing nature of culture. this type of participatory media has, however, created a number of problems in terms of copyright 118 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions and copyright protection, especially if one investigates the emergence of online file and video sharing. figure 1: a continual cycle of communication youtube is one such site which has become synonymous with copyright theft as users upload large pieces of mainstream media, as well as utilising and combining these pieces to manufacture their own alternative videos known as video mash-ups. this unique form of participatory media, however, has been defended by many users and writers who claim that this type of production is protected by the doctrine of fair use (tushnet 2007). legally, fair use is an exception clause which allows one to make unauthorised use of a copyrighted work provided that “their work adds new insight into the material to which it refers” (pitcher 2009: 60). at times, it may be difficult to ascertain how video mash-ups do in fact abide by this, but as one explores the examples to be discussed later in this article, it does become evident that they can often provide important insight into culture itself. as already discussed previously, new media technologies give users the opportunity to share and collaborate toward creating an online identity with which to interact. it only stands to reason then that in a world which is defined by the media which we consume, individuals manipulate and collaborate videos in an attempt “to express their own identities through association and transformation” (aufderheide & jaszi 2008: 6). participatory video ultimately allows users the opportunity to express fully who they are by displaying that which has shaped their overall being. therefore one should question how it is possible to copyright, and grant a monopoly, over something that moulds persona, and is so intrinsic to postmodern society. some have argued that participatory communication within the online realm has helped create vast imagined communities with whom individual users are able to interact (howard 2008). by doing so, users are required to find their own unique vernacular with which to navigate this new society. there are a number of different ways in which 119 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions users are contributing to the “multiplicity of voices speaking in the non-institutional discursive spaces of quotidian life” (howard 2008: 493). one of the most evident ways that this is being achieved is through the process of digital mashing, and their display within sites such as youtube. some may argue that these hybrid forms of media are merely gross mutilations of popular culture; however, before one begins to criticise the action of users, one should acknowledge that this type of hybridisation has become a natural occurrence within most aspects of digital life. technology itself has become hybridised (think of the convergence between cellular phones, digital cameras and personal digital assistants to create the blackberry); therefore it only becomes natural that that which digital technology communicates becomes hybridised (bolter 2006). as henry jenkins (2006: 243) explains: convergence does not depend on any specific delivery mechanism. rather, convergence represents a paradigm shift – a move from medium-specific content to content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward even more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture. participatory media should therefore be viewed as a way in which audiences consume and interact with media, positively transforming the structures through which mass media is controlled, rather than maliciously aiming to infringe upon intellectual property rights or undermining the moral rights of creative artists. some, however, may argue that this type of transformation aims to destabilise old systems of regulation and power through a subculture concerned with undermining social order (hills 2009). but this argument is rather redundant if one considers that similar issues were raised when media such as television, film, and printing were introduced into the mass market. it has become commonplace that new forms of media challenge the existing status quo, and that mass culture shifts and re-organises accordingly. a site such as youtube is merely extending this history by providing a platform through which user collaboration is broadcast. can participatory media be culturally significant? as stated earlier, online users have recently begun engaging in what is commonly known as “digital mashing”. this practice is a process whereby media consumers “cut” various pieces of media, such as images and sound, and remix them into a new coherent whole narrative. this is not an entirely new practice confined to the realms of the web and stems from early forms of rap music during that late 1980s and early 1990s. during this period rap artists would often take the melodies of well-known songs and integrate it with their own lyrics, such as vanilla ice’s ice ice baby in which he used the musical soundtrack from queen’s under pressure to underline his lyrics. many critics lauded this practice as a creative “new montage of sound” (vaidhyanthan 2001: 15) and as an important fusion of popular culture never seen or heard before. however, as this newly emergent art form began to gain popularity with audiences it also began to gain notoriety among music corporations and copyright activists. 120 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions at this point in time, music artists were not consulted or paid for the use of their music in these new montages. rightly so such work was deemed to be illegal as rap artists aimed to directly profit from the artistic work of others. this activity has, however, inspired many media consumers to create their own unique renditions of popular media in which they utilise the music from one or more music videos, and then incorporate the lyrics and images from another. it could be argued that this too is copyright theft as users have merely copied two or more established videos and joined them together. like early rap artists they have not compensated original artists in any way, but unlike the rap artists of the early nineties, online users are not aiming to directly profit from their work. as each example below demonstrates users instead try to create intertextual links between various forms of media in order to manufacture their own distinct form of social commentary on various forms of popular culture. one of the best examples of this can be seen in the video smooth buster, in which michael jackson’s smooth criminal video is infused with the melody and a clip from the ghostbusters title track (halostuff1 2007: online). initially, this clip begins with the ghostbusters characters, and the lead singer of the ghostbusters video mimicking aspects from the well-known michael jackson thriller video. this video can be interpreted in a number of distinct ways, any of which could justify the apparent infringement of copyrighted material. firstly, many creators of digital mash-ups are often part of a fan culture who aim to celebrate various performers and aspects of popular culture through digital creations (aufderheide & jaszi 2008). one could argue that defining this video as an example of fan culture is a somewhat tenuous claim to make. after all, just placing a music video online does not make one a fan. however, it could be argued that because the creator of this video chose to incorporate clips which make reference to the michael jackson thriller video, this particular user is in part celebrating the influence that michael jackson has had not only on him as a fan, but on popular culture at large. this is further emphasised by the portion of the clip which shows a young boy emulating jackson’s dance moves, thus demonstrating how jackson has become an inherent cultural figure (pitcher 2009). while it can be claimed that the youtube user who created this video has utilised large portions of well-known established musical works, there are a number of arguments which can be drawn out by the above discussion to justify their doing so, and in turn, undermine the illegality of producing such a video. generally, copyright allows a person to utilise the works of others, provided that they are not in any direct competition with the original artist, or that the use of the newer work does not result in any form of financial loss for the original creator (cornish 1989). aufderheide and jaszi (2007) have found that most youtube users do not place work online unless they are prepared for their work to be shared and copied by other users, thus voiding the argument that digital mash-ups directly compete with established mainstream media. therefore, it could be postulated that this video was created by a user who was celebrating michael jackson as both a performer and artist. 121 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions however, it can be argued that this video has “far more intrinsic value in terms of social commentary than mere fandom” (pitcher 2009: 77). this video was made in 2006, a year after jackson was embroiled in a legal battle regarding child molestation, an accusation that had surfaced before during the mid-90s. it could be theorised therefore, that smooth buster is making direct commentary on these issues. in the smooth criminal video, jackson is seen as adopting the role of the hero. he stands out in a white suit – a colour generally associated in film with the light, pure character of the hero – as he defends the women in the club from the darkly clad mafia-type men. the words of the song seem to reinforce the notion that jackson is the hero, as he describes how an intruder attacks the title female character, and how he proceeds to question the nature of her attack in an attempt to avenge her. therefore, it can be speculated that, in light of the allegations brought against jackson, the creator of the smooth buster video is playing on the irony of jackson being depicted as a vigilante hero. however, it would not be possible to make this assumption without the inclusion of a number of important elements. firstly, by juxtaposing smooth criminal with images and melody from the ghostbusters music video, the creator appears to be highlighting the role that the ghostbusters play, that of catching and detaining evil spirits. consequently, one could assume that by combining these images, the creator is playing on the idea that jackson’s “evil nature” is being “bust” by the authorities. secondly, the character played by jackson in the smooth criminal video cannot be viewed as wholly good, but more as a vigilante-type character with sinister undertones. while jackson is depicted wearing white, it is still in the same style as the other gangster figures depicted in the video, thus indicating that he is still part of the gangster underworld and embroiled with the associated ideologies. finally, the most important element of this video which highlights and reinforces the creator’s notion of jackson’s sinister and corrupt nature, takes place at the beginning of the clip. as already mentioned, as the video cuts from the shot of the ghostbusters to michael jackson the creator has inserted a brief clip taken from jackson’s black and white video, in which a young boy can be seen emulating his dance moves. this could be interpreted as a “direct reference to the molestation charges brought against jackson” (pitcher 2009: 78). this brief cut is situated moments before the introduction of jackson, and it can be argued that the emulation of jackson by the boy is an example of how jackson has infiltrated the psyche of the child, and demonstrates his influence over the boy and the boy’s body. the video informs the audience of jackson’s sinister nature by placing him within a gangster underworld, most commonly associated with prostitution and extortion, and as such, it becomes the role of the ghostbusters to expel jackson’s corrupting spirit from the boy. this example demonstrates how this type of video is able to create an important social comment in regard to one of the most affluent figures within popular culture. in light of this, it “becomes difficult to claim that the protection of copyright is of greater importance than the right of the author to make a creative, but valid contribution to the public sphere of cultural knowledge” (pitcher 2009: 78). ideally, the internet is seen to 122 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions be a forum for pure democratic discussion and debate, and as such should aim to promote free speech amongst its users (stallman 1997). if one was to stifle this type of work, and not allow citizens the opportunity to interact with the knowledge that popular culture provides, it would in effect be an infringement of free speech, thus contradicting that which the internet was originally designed to do. importantly, however, digital mash-ups also provide a platform for commentary on the construction of culture itself. the intertexuality between the smooth buster video and the thriller video has already been demonstrated, but to take this point even further, the thriller video which is parodied within the smooth buster video was a parody itself in regard to the horror movie industry. however, no one would question the legality of “borrowing” these ideas and structuring them around these mainstream videos because, as rosemary coombe (1998) points out, popular culture is based on the understanding of various meta-narratives and intertextual references, without which popular culture would cease to exist as it would lose all meaning. this argument is further supported when examining the video toy story 2 requiem (exorcizedangel 2006: online). toy story 2 was made by the disney digital animation production house pixar, and as such contains the traditional wholesome family values associated with the disney brand. however, it has been matched with dialogue from requiem for a dream, a movie which deals with the effects of various addictions. this immediately undermines the values generally associated with disney movies, which are further destabilised by the specific dialogue chosen by the creator to work in tandem with the visuals. the most obvious way in which this is achieved is by creating the effect that the toy story 2 characters are swearing, thus subverting the wholesome nature of the disney characters. the video begins by taking into account how the various forms of addiction forces each of the characters into a delusional and dream-like world, which ultimately leads to their downfall. because this is a state of mind, and an experience which becomes very difficult to explain through dialogue, the creator of toy story 2 requiem has carefully edited various visuals together in slow-motion, in order to try and create a dream-like atmosphere. many of the clips which have been edited together during this sequence show the characters falling in some way, highlighting their fall from reality. more importantly, however, a central image in the video depicts the character woody falling amongst a number of ace of spades cards. the ace of spades is often referred to as the death card, and as such it can be theorised that “the dream-like state which each character enters leads to death of reality” (pitcher 2009: 89), which in turn results in their own tragic demise. in addition to the connotation of death, cards are also often associated with fragility, as a sudden failure is often compared to a falling house of cards. this metaphor emphasises each character’s fragile state of mind, and how their world crumbles around them as they fall deeper into addiction-fuelled delusions. this seems to make direct commentary on disney ideologies by implying that it is only within the dream-like utopia of disney ideology that one is able to truly “live happily ever after”, and that outside of such dreams the world is a harsh and difficult place. 123 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions it must be noted that the creator will assume that those who consume these videos will have a certain educational level of understanding in terms of popular culture and society, especially in south africa where most users of new media are affluent and well-educated members of society. therefore, creators have the luxury of knowing that most of their audience will have the cultural understanding needed to negotiate the basic principles associated with popular media. so whilst someone who has general knowledge in regard to popular culture has the capacity to understand the subversive nature of this mash-up, it is only those viewers who have intrinsic knowledge of each media format that will understand the preferred interpretation offered by the creator. overall, this helps to emphasise the point that popular culture is shaped by the audiences which engage with it. users who take uniform media products and transform them into new renditions ultimately undermine the traditional dominant readings and institutions that are responsible for the creation of mainstream media (pitcher 2009). consequently, this helps to explain why these institutions are so overzealous in regard to copyright protection – without it they lose control, not only of the media which they produce, but also in regard to the construction of culture, as audiences now have the means to transform it to suit their own needs. the analysis of these videos has shown that media consumers are negotiating the construction of culture through the selfconscious play on established dominant media in order to produce a variety of oppositional readings. this practice could be viewed as the natural progression of postmodern popular culture, in which audiences are continually expected to understand intertextual links between various media forms (poster 2008). therefore, mash-ups of this nature are not infringing on copyright, but are merely aiding in the development of meta-narratives, and re-conceptualising the way in which popular culture is created. copyright and new media in the 21 st century the monumental changes which have emerged in terms of digital interactivity has meant that regular consumers now have the ability to alter any piece of digital information that they have access to. problematically, this has been without the permission or necessary licences needed by individuals to copy or broadcast such works; subsequently many new artists were not able to publish or broadcast their work. youtube, however, has given these artists an open platform through which they are able to share their creations with the greater public. intellectual property activists have cited that video sharing sites such as youtube are promoting a culture of copyright infringement (pitcher 2009). youtube (www.youtube.com/t/terms n.d.: online) claims that it merely provides a service, and that it is not the website’s responsibility to monitor how users choose to use such a service. apart from this argument, youtube also stipulates that users who are reported three times for uploading videos which do not have the correct licences and permissions will have their accounts suspended indefinitely, and have all of their videos, not only the ones to be deemed illegal, blocked from the site. there are two main issues which underline this practice. firstly, youtube relies solely on the reportage by other users of infringing material because, as mentioned, the site 124 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions does not patrol what users choose to upload, because realistically it becomes practically impossible to monitor the millions of users (72 million in 2006, according to weber 2006: online) who use the site. therefore, this creates an environment which does not actively condemn copyright infringement, and so gives the impression that uploading copyrighted material is fair, provided one does not get caught. this leads to the second problem. users who have had their accounts suspended are not prevented from reregistering with the site using a different user name, and re-posting the infringing material. as such, users are never actually punished for their actions, and because they do not look to profit from their work cannot be prosecuted by the state (cornish 1989). interestingly, warner music found that they lost more revenue by not allowing their music to be seen online than if they continued to allow it to be hosted by youtube. subsequently, they have ceased attempting to try and shutdown the use of collaborated videos and instead have entered into agreements with youtube to garner a percentage of the profits taken from in-site advertising which accompany those videos which have appropriated their copyrighted material (van buskirk 2009). conclusion each of the videos discussed have utilised media in a variety of ways, for a number of reasons. however, one common theme which seems to arise is that the creation of these collaborations is driven by two distinct factors. firstly, many videos seem to celebrate the media from which it has been appropriated in some way, often highlighting those scenes which have made the most impact on society, or that which is the most wellremembered by viewers of popular culture. secondly, and possibly more importantly, is that users need to require an in-depth cultural knowledge of that which they are utilising. without such knowledge, each of these videos would not carry the alternate meanings which they demonstrate and therefore could be deemed as copyright theft. however, because the varied interpretations of these videos do in a sense make them new, they themselves are merely contributing to the extension of culture. one could argue that simply creating new meaning for something does not excuse users from taking the creative work of another for their own personal benefit. problematically though, if one gauges media history, one would find that most of that which is found in popular culture has been appropriated from some earlier format. disney, for example, who is one of the most stringent enforcers of copyright, has based many of their characters on old medieval fairytales, such as snow white, cinderella, and sleeping beauty. scrooge mcduck, the uncle of the famed donald duck, is based on the character scrooge, unceremoniously lifted from charles dickens’ classic novel a christmas carol, and even steamboat willie, the cartoon which launched mickey mouse, was “a direct cartoon parody of steamboat bill jr.” (lessig 2004: 22) – the last silent film made by the comic buster keaton. each of these examples demonstrates that disney has maintained many of the same storylines which are associated with these characters, and yet they claim to have authorship and full intellectual property rights over their renditions of these non-original creations. 125 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions no-one can deny that these characters have become intrinsic figures within popular culture, and it therefore stands to reason that creators today should be given the same allowances to manipulate those creations which have shaped their understanding of society. social culture cannot grow without direct interaction by those who inhabit it. this becomes even more relevant in today’s postmodern world in which cultural identities are becoming more fragmented as national boundaries become less relevant and one is influenced more by the values of popular culture. as such, one cannot deem digital mash-ups as the illegal act of copyright infringers, but should rather acknowledge that it is simply a new way in which popular culture is developed and commented upon. the initial argument for the protection of copyright was to grant authors a limited monopoly over their work in order to produce an incentive to create more artistic works. and whilst this worked for many years, it became more of a detriment for artistic creation as companies aimed to extend their monopoly periods, so as not to forfeit control of their industries (woker 2006). however, the idea that artists would not create without some form of incentive seems to have been lost if one examines the massive pool of digital mash-ups within the online realm. most of these videos have been created, not for money or incentives, but merely out of artistic passion. users are more interested in allowing their works to be seen, than being rewarded for them. obviously through the power of the internet, some do gain fame and can make money from their video, but none seem to set out to do this initially. therefore, it becomes possible to argue that the role of copyright has changed from when it was first conceptualised. no longer are artists bound by incentive rules to showcase their work, but instead they have the opportunity to share their work through sites such as youtube. copyright, while not redundant, needs to be thought of in new ways in order to protect artists while simultaneously promoting the development of culture. one needs to recognise that mash-up videos, such as the ones analysed, are not threatening the livelihoods of artists by undermining their financial rewards, or even their moral rights. instead, these creations are providing important commentary on a society which has become deeply indebted to the influence of popular culture. these videos aim to re-conceptualise mainstream media, and in part try to make other users re-think aspects of the world in which they find themselves interacting. copyright has become a law which is so focussed on allowing those in power to maintain control over the development of culture, that one forgets that it was originally formulated to propel culture forward through the advancement of ideas. gaining financial reward was only a small part of the process, and aimed to protect individual authors, not multi-billion dollar corporations. however, what has emerged from modern society is the protection of these giants so that their ideologies and belief systems stay at the forefront of society. the introduction of sites such as youtube, which allow users to question, change, and manipulate these ideals, has led to a contentious hegemonic battle in which dominant culture is being reassessed, and ultimately redeveloped by users. no longer are consumers of media passive in its 126 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions production (marshall 2004). instead, media consumers have become their own producers of content as well; however, one cannot expect any creative depth in production unless internet users are given some leeway in terms of interacting with that which already exists within cultural products. as such, copyright experts and lawmakers need to be made aware of the importance that online user/media collaboration plays in the development of both popular culture, and in societal culture. if internet users are not allowed to utilise that which permeates their everyday existence, it undermines free speech and ultimately creates a totalitarian rulership over the formation of society, culture and identity. 127 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions references aufderheide, p. and jaszi, p. 2007. the good, the bad and the confusing. 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[accessed on 26/06/2008]. 129 copyright issues about prosumer-produced digital visual culture productions september 2006 73 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 73 95 ilse judeel, dalmé mulder and tania beelders* abstract advertising is a huge industry and has a perpetual influence on any economy. although visual communication lies at the core of advertising effectiveness, the power of visual communication does not nearly receive the attention it deserves. one of the more controversial areas of visual communication in advertising is called subliminal advertising. in subliminal advertising, covert visual messages/images are used to communicate with the audience. this type of communication occurs below the threshold of an individual’s awareness. however, the question whether subliminal signs do communicate or persuade has been debated for several decades. in this study, eyetracking research was combined with qualitative research to determine the reaction of individuals when being exposed to print advertisements containing subliminal embeds. the study did not aim to explain if, how or why this subliminal embeds might work or not; only whether they can be seen. according to the results, subliminal embeds in print advertising can only be seen once pointed out to the respondents. however, a large number of respondents’ eye-gaze were fixed on the subliminal embeds, even though they did not report seeing it. * ilse judeel was an honours student at the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. dr dalmé mulder is the director of the programme for communication professions in the same department. tania beelders is a lecturer in the department of computer science and informatics at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction visual imagery has potentially powerful effects on human psychology and physiology, affecting ideas, perceptions, beliefs, feelings, behaviour and health (branthwaite 2002: 164). branthwaite opines that visual imagery plays a central role in most advertising, especially print and television. arens (1999) describes advertising as communication – a special kind of communication that aims to persuade people to act/react in a certain manner, whether it is to acknowledge a product or service, to make use of a product or service, or even to be informed about a product or service. undoubtedly, whether one believes that advertising is a highly persuasive force (according to the strong theory of advertising), or more of a “gentle nudge” (the weak theory of advertising), it has some effect on potential consumers (egan 2009: 384). according to lindstrom (2008: 3) advertising’s effect is mainly based on emotions. emotional appeals target the consumer’s psychological, social, or symbolic needs (arens 1999: 247). it is suggested that activated emotions enhance advertising effectiveness (dahlen, lange & smith 2010: 349). according to lindstrom (2008: 3) emotions are mainly awakened in the subconscious. dahlen et al. (2010: 348) suggest that subliminal perception occurs below the limit of an individual’s conscious awareness. these authors argue that even though an individual’s consciousness does not see it, it still enters the mind and affect the individual. according to haberstroh (1994: 83) subliminal advertising entails a signal or message embedded in another medium designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind’s perception. these messages are unrecognisable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and more importantly, the unconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviour, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems. the term subliminal means “beneath a limen” also known as sensory threshold. this is from the latin words sub, meaning under, and limen, meaning threshold (haberstroh 1994: 83). trappey (1996: 517) argues that subliminal advertising is “a technique of exposing consumers to product pictures, brand names, or other marketing stimuli without the consumers having conscious awareness. once exposed to a subliminal marketing stimulus, the consumer is believed to decode the information and act upon it without being able to acknowledge a communication source.” from this argument it could be gathered that subliminal advertising could play a big, yet unappreciated role in advertising. the fact that some advertising aims to reach consumers’ minds below the level of their consciousness has long been debated. since 1957 when vicary claimed to increase sales in a movie theatre through the tachistoscopic presentation of the phrases “eat popcorn” and “drink coca-cola”, people have been captivated by the concept of the subliminal (lindstrom 2008: 68). researchers conducted studies to see how many people actually believe in subliminal messages, and the results were “…unfortunately most americans!” (haberstroh 1994: 101). furthermore, these studies found that most americans think subliminal advertising can get them to buy products they don’t even want to buy. response analysis found that a considerable number of american adults 74 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising (62%) think subliminal messages are constantly and deliberately embedded in the nation’s adverting (haberstroh 1994: 101). even though advertisers and researchers disagree on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising, with the majority of the opinion that subliminal advertising does not work, rogers and smith (in haberstroh 1994: 83) concluded: …marketers must be concerned about public attitudes toward subliminal advertising. it is not enough for advertising professionals to agree among themselves that subliminal advertising doesn’t work… even if consumers’ beliefs about subliminal advertising are inaccurate, it is nevertheless these beliefs that help shape consumer reactions toward ads and attitudes about the advertising industry. according to zanot, pincus and lamp (1983: 40) people do not act on reality, but rather on their own perceptions of reality. haberstoh (1994: 27) also finds that things pass for what they seem, not for what they are. thus, whether or not the subliminal codes that are embedded in print advertising have an effect on behaviour or not, it might be valuable to determine if, when and how these subliminal codes in print advertising are noticed. this study therefore aimed to determine whether first-year marketing communication students notice subliminal codes in print advertising. a brief history of research on the subliminal in the 1930s and 1940s researchers addressed the question: “can subliminally presented stimuli be discriminated?” studies have indicated that subliminal stimuli could be discriminated and that this ability increased as intensity of the stimulus increased. by the end of 1940 studies attempted to classically condition responses to subliminal stimuli, but multiple methodological problems were raised. during the period 1957 to 1988 over 140 articles have appeared on the topic of subliminal persuasion (pratkanis & greenwald 1988: 338). james vicary, a market researcher who is famous for coining the term subliminal advertising, was the reason for this sudden popular topic (lindstrom 2008: 68). in 1957 he claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. vicary claimed that he flashed the words “drink cocacola” and “eat popcorn” for duration of 1/3000 of a second onscreen every five seconds during the movie picnic. he claimed that it resulted in an 18.1% increase in coca-cola sales and a 57.8% increase in popcorn purchases. wilson bryant key further fuelled the fire with his books claiming that subliminal advertising was indeed manipulating consumer behaviour (o’guinn, allen & semenik 2009: 123). it was later revealed that vicary lied about the experiment and that he had falsified his data (haberstroh 1994: 9). after extensive reviews of the topic, several authors (cf. saegart 1979; moore 1988; haberstroh 1994) concluded that there was no evidence to support the fact that subliminal messages can affect consumers’ motivations, perceptions, or attitudes. nonetheless, this topic touched a nerve in the american public. newsday called the t-scope “the most alarming invention since the atomic bomb!” the new yorker claimed that the minds of 75 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising americans had been “broken and entered”. this evoked interest amongst many researchers (synodinos 1988: 157). in the 2000 bush-gore presidential campaign, the republicans were accused of subliminally implanting the word rats into advertisements to attach the meaning to al gore (belch & belch 2009: 123). according to bullock (2004) subliminal messages are all around, but society is reluctant to acknowledge that its pervasiveness poses a thread and/or is in denial. o’guinn et al. (2009: 89) argue that with regards to “subliminal advertising” research have shown that while subliminal communication is possible, subliminal persuasion in the typical real-world environment remains all but impossible. the interest in and controversy surrounding the topic continues. subliminal embeds as persuasive technique advertisers have to work hard for the attention of viewers; therefore they try to grab a viewer’s attention by provoking an emotional response (hyman & tansey 1990: 106). subliminal advertising aims to provoke emotions. according to trappey (1996: 517) once exposed to a subliminal marketing stimulus, the consumer is believed to decode the information and act upon it without being able to acknowledge a communication source. lindstrom (2008: 76) even stated that subliminal messaging influences how much consumers are willing to pay for a product. hawkins (in beatty & hawkins 1989: 4) supports the view that subliminal advertising is a persuasive advertising technique. his 1970 study is still used as an important source of evidence that subliminal messages can affect behaviour. according to cheskin (1958: 19) communication is not always on a conscious level. he alleges to have enough evidence to claim that most perception is below the threshold of consciousness. according to him, subliminal perception plays a vital role in the distribution of consumer goods, particularly in the advertising field. he highlights brand identity that is built in the consumer’s mind by means of advertising and publicity. the hawkins study (beatty & hawkins 1989: 5) concluded two important findings, namely 1) it appears that individuals do have the ability to perceive stimuli at a subliminal or unconscious level; and 2) physiological drives such as hunger and sex may be aroused by the use of subliminal stimuli. it is clear that this type of communication aims to influence the consumer’s behaviour. it is therefore argued that subliminal techniques are used as a form of persuasive communication. when looking at subliminal advertising an advertiser not only looks at the illustration itself, but is more interested in the effect of the picture, which may be something totally different from one’s logical assumption. “…[p]eople react to images as automatically (and analytically) as a small child to a piece of candy” (baker 1961: 45). this author states that seeing is a state of mind, it is more than the process of receiving messages. a variety of responses accompany recognition of an object. look at the following line: 76 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising most people will agree that this line is going upward. this is because most people are conditioned to read from left to right. we interpret visuals according to what is locked in our subconscious. this is why subliminal advertising is the key to unlocking what lindstrom (2008: 3) calls our “buyology – the subconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires that drive the purchasing decisions we make each and every day of our lives”. to protect the brain from sensory overload, our perceptual defence mechanism distinguishes every perception into figure (foreground and the subject) and ground (the background and environment). we consciously notice the figure, while the ground floats around it unless something there brings it to the foreground (lechnar 1998). the following example is not an absolute example of a subliminal embed, but a perfect illustration of how your focus need to shift from one to the other. you see one thing, yet, while noticing another set of features, you see something else. advertisers take advantage of this to paint subliminal messages into the picture’s background. figure 1: advertising/subliminal (source: lechnar 1998) in the example in figure 1 the brain switches from the word “advertising” to “subliminal”. one sees the word “advertising” in big red letters. once you see the words “subliminal” in the background, you cannot stop noticing them. it is clear that you cannot pay attention to both illusions at the same time. you have to keep shifting your attention back and forth between the two. advertisements are carefully designed to manipulate your attention (and memory) the same way (nelson 2008: 113). according to the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (2005: 1085) “persuasive” is defined as “able to persuade somebody to do something or to believe something”. persuasive communication is therefore any communication which aims to persuade someone to do or believe something. de wet (2010: 3) opines that persuasion predominates in our life-worlds. he considers persuasion as both an art and science. this author considers persuasion an art insofar as it deals with the capability of persuading someone and because probabilities are involved. however, persuasion is also considered a science as it relies on theories to explain why people may be persuaded by a communicator. according to klass (1985: 146) subliminal stimuli is defined as “… messages or forces that can reach into one’s unconscious mind to influence his behavior…”. while numerous studies conclude that subliminal advertising does have an effect on consumer behaviour, many other studies contradict this view. nevertheless, it is still widely discussed as a method of persuasive communication. 77 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising subliminal advertising in print media earlier studies on subliminal advertising embeds have used subliminal presentations below the threshold for perception mostly through the flashing of material on a screen. over the years, however, the definition of subliminal presentation has expanded to include the hiding of pictures and/or words within other visual material (rosen & singh 1992: 158). theus (1994: 282) noted that subliminal codes can be find in media such as print, film, video, and other visual stimuli, but that subliminal visual stimuli appear to have a much higher probability of being cognitively processed by subjects than do auditory stimuli. kelly (1979:20) documented evidence that subliminal stimulation is being carried out through magazine advertising. this technique is known as subliminal embedding where erotic, death and other symbols are hidden in the advertising illustration. rosen and singh (1992: 159) argue that these subliminal embeds are usually clearly visible once pointed out, but otherwise remain unnoticed by those who view the presented material. embeds mean “to fix something firmly into a substance or solid object, to place a sentence inside another sentence” (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary 2005: 476). according to rosen and singh (1992: 159) embeds fall into a no-awareness category, but they are consciously perceivable if pointed out to those observing the presentation. these embeds are presented visually and are often interpreted by viewers as part of a shadow, reflection, or other image common to the pictorial presentation. a single word is well known to be embedded in a print advertisement. rosen and singh (1992:476) argue that embeds are part of the background or setting in an advertisement with one important difference: while other background information is clearly discernable to any attentive viewer, embeds are deliberately hidden in such a way that they can be spotted only when pointed out. how to spot the subliminal in a print advertisement in a study done by kelly (1979: 20) he concluded that people can find these subliminal embeds when told how to see them. if they then believe they see these things, for them they are there. how can one then claim that these images don’t exist? therefore if the claim is made that advertisers are embedding images in order to stimulate our subconscious, it is difficult to disprove. but how are these embeds placed in a print advertisement, and how can one spot them? key (in lechnar 1998) writes: “embeds enhance perceptual experience of the picture… emotionalised, repressed information remains in the memory system for long periods, perhaps for a lifetime.” gable, wilkens, harris and feinberg (1987: 27) describe the procedure of embedding in print as words, symbols or the combination thereof that has being airbrushed into the advertisement. the photographs/pictures in the advertisements have been airbrushed with sexual or other stimuli and embedded in ambiguous portions of the advertisements. krugman (in rosen & singh 1992: 159) refers to the process where the consumer is subliminally involved as “peripheral seeing”. this means seeing without “looking at” and without being aware that seeing has occurred. graphic design artists have enough tools to expertly embed subliminal messages into their pictures (lechnar 1998). 78 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising theus (1994: 271) describes a series of steps on how to identify the subliminal embed in a print advertisement. first, the advertisement should be read like a book. one should not just glance over the advertisement, but read it from left to right and top to bottom. next, one should look for anything out of place in the advertisement, any unusual shapes used in the advertisement. the advertisement should not be studied too intently, as one can miss the subliminal part of the advertisement. after all, the subliminal advertisement is intended to affect the person who only glances at the advertisement. there is an excess of symbolic imagery that advertisers take advantage of. advertisers often use lemons and oranges to portray fertility and women. these symbolic images can present a seemingly harmless advertisement, while entrenching your subconscious mind with deeper meanings (lechnar 1998). one also needs to look at what first draws the attention to the advertisement, because subliminal advertisements are intended to affect the person who only glances at the advertisement. after this, the advertisement should be re-read but in reverse. it should be scanned from right to left and bottom to top as this may help reveal the backwards words. by far the most commonly embedded image is the word sex (lechnar 1998). the advertisement should therefore be studied from different angles. finally one needs to look at the advertisement upside down. a change in perception can sometimes reveal a subliminal advertisement (theus 1994: 271). in 1990 pepsi withdrew one of its “cool can” designs after someone protested that pepsi was subliminally manipulating people by designing the cans in such a way that when six-packs were stacked at grocery stores, the word sex would emerge from the seemingly random design (lindstrom 2008: 72). figure 2: the pepsi cool can again, this example (figure 2) is only to show that these subliminal embeds exist in print, and can most often be seen only once pointed out. 79 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising research methodology as stated before, the aim of this study was to explore first-year marketing communication students at the university of the free state’s perceptions and awareness of subliminal codes in print advertising. the hypothesis which this study aimed to contradict or confirm was: subliminal advertising in print media can only be seen once pointed out. a combined quantitative and qualitative research methodology was employed in this study. in the quantitative approach, questionnaires and the tobii t120 eye-tracker together with tobii studio 1.5.0 software, and a logitech webcam were used. with the tobii eye-tracker, eye position and gaze direction are estimated using information from an image sensor/sensors picking up reflection patterns on the cornea and other information points. together with very sophisticated image analysis and mathematics, a gaze point on a reference plane can be calculated. with this eye-tracking technology, a computer knows exactly where a user is looking. with the quantitative approach the questions in the questionnaire were standardised and all students were asked the same questions. descriptive surveys were used together with the tobii t120 eye-tracking device to verify the information captured. a structured interview then followed, divided into phase a and phase b. phase a interviews were conducted during the tobii eye-tracking study. the structured interview followed and then, to conclude the data-collection, phase b was completed on the questionnaire. phase b contained five important multiple choice questions to verify the hypothesis. at this stage, the subliminal embeds were pointed out to the respondents, which indicated whether or not the respondents saw these embeds once pointed out. the respondents’ eye-movement on the advertisement were tracked at all times. this information was then compared with the information gathered from the questionnaire and interview. thus, if a respondent focused on the subliminal embeds while observing the advertisement it was compared to the information gathered from the questionnaire and interview to determine whether they actually saw what they were looking at. a webcam and microphone were utilised to capture respondents’ eye-movement, selftalk and facial expressions while the respondents were being exposed to five preselected print advertisements (in digital format) that contain subliminal embeds. integrated video recordings that consist of the user’s eye-gaze, facial expression and voice were made. tobii eye-tracker was used to capture eye fixation and to produce “heat maps” (hot spots) to show the percentage of users who looked at a specific point in the advertisements, and gazing plots (to capture eye-movement during a five second frame). all respondents in the research were exposed to the same print advertisements, as well as the same questions. twenty first-year students studying b.a. (communication science): corporate and marketing communication at the university of the free state took part. eleven of these 80 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising respondents were afrikaans-speaking and nine were english-speaking. there were ten male and ten female respondents. five (25%) respondents were english female, five (25%) were afrikaans female, four (20%) were english male and six (30%) were afrikaans male. the participants were selected by means of a purposeful random sample. while the sample may not be representative of the entire population, these respondents were chosen in order to meet certain predetermined criteria. because of their field of study, it was assumed that these students should be more sensitive towards advertising and how they experience an advertisement. the advertisements used in this study were chosen using criteria on how to spot the subliminal previously discussed. the focus of this study was on print media. there are two reasons for this. the first is that print advertisements are easier to store and easier to study, and secondly it is not possible to give a complete reproduction of television commercials in a book, whereas a print advertisement can be reproduced as a whole. it can be added that subliminal advertising is not upfront, it is therefore easier to study print media where an advertisement can be studied for as long as needed to see the subliminal. the pre-selected advertisements figure 3: advertisement 1 the advertisement in figure 3 was the first advertisement used in the study. the subliminal embed in this advertisement is relatively prominent and easy to spot, and was thus used as a point of departure. the subliminal can be seen in the background setting (the man and the woman on the lower right-hand quarter). 81 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 4: advertisement 2 figure 4 represents the second advertisement used in the study. the subliminal embed is the fire. it can be seen as a face, with the two spots as the eyes, and the big flame as the nose. the nose is positioned in such a way that one can argue that it is busy smelling the liqueur. the designer might be playing on the unique and strong smell of the liqueur. figure 5: advertisement 3 the advertisement in figure 5 does not contain any hidden subliminal embeds, and was only included in the study to enhance the reliability of the results. 82 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 6: advertisement 4 this advertisement (figure 6) contains several hidden subliminal embeds. fear and death and dangerous symbols were used in this advertisement. the subliminal embeds in the advertisements are highlighted in figures 6.1-6.5. the first subliminal embed in the advertisement is a meat cleaver blade (figure 6.1). the next subliminal embed (figure 6.2) is a shark-shaped creature emerging from the lower left-hand corner. when looking down the right of the advertisement, a camouflage net helmeted soldier (figure 6.3) with the lower pointed corner of what remains of the bottle piercing the helmet. the skull of a long-beaked bird (figure 6.4) complete with the gaping eye socket can be seen down the middle of the advertisement. finally, when looking at the background rather than the foreground, the outline of a large raven-like bird (figure 6.5) can be seen. figure 6.1: the meat cleaver 83 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 6.2: the shark figure 6.3: the soldier’s head figure 6.4: the skull of the bird 84 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 6.5: the raven-like bird in the last advertisement (figure 7) the subliminal embed is in front of the beer on the floor at the spill. when reading it from right to left, it spells s e x. it becomes clearer when you imagine reading it as from standing behind the beer. the s can be found on the right-hand side of the glass, the e in the middle (not as visible as the rest) and the x below the ear of glass. figure 7: advertisement 5 results of the study findings of the tobii eye-tracker together with phase a of the questionnaire the respondents were exposed to each advertisement for five seconds. the tobii eye-tracker identified the subliminal area in each advertisement as an area of interest (aoi). it was then calculated how many respondents focused on the subliminal during a five second frame. to indicate how some respondents focused on these aoi and some not, an example of each advertisement will be included where one respondent focused on the aoi and one not. these examples are called a gaze plot. this is captured by tobii. each dot indicates a fragment where the respondent focused on the advertisement. they are numbered to follow the eyegaze. the bigger the dot, the longer the respondents focused on that specific area. 85 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 9: advertisement 1 – gaze plot and percentage of aoi during the five second frame, 73.68% of the respondents focused on the aoi in advertisement 1. from the example in figure 9, it is clear that the respondent in red missed the aoi (which is also known as the subliminal embed) while the respondent in orange focused on this area for a while, as indicated by the size of dot 13. figure 10: advertisement 2 – gaze plot and percentage of aoi during the five second frame, 73.68% of the respondents focused on the aoi in advertisement 2. this is a clear example of one respondent noticing only the aoi. the bigger dots in the aoi indicate the long period that this respondent focused on the aoi. the respondent in purple did not once take note of the aoi, and only focused on the product and slogan. 86 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising 13 figure 11: advertisement 4 – gaze plot and percentage of aoi during the five second frame, 68.42% of the respondents focused on the aoi in advertisement 4. in this example (figure 11), the respondent in purple focused on the product and the slogan, the main components of the advertisement, without looking at any subliminal embeds. the respondent in green saw the slogan and the product, but also focused on the aoi more than once. this respondent actually captured all five subliminal embeds in this advertisement during the five second frame. figure 12: advertisement 5 – gaze plot and percentage of aoi during the five second frame on advertisement 5, almost 37% of the respondents focused on the aoi. once again, it is clear that the respondent in blue only captured the product, slogan, and text at the bottom, while the respondent in yellow focused on the aoi below the beer. these examples all indicate how some respondents focused on the subliminal areas while others did not. when looking at these percentages, the question must be asked how many of these respondents actually realised what they were looking at. to clarify this, the information captured by the tobii eye-tracker was compared to phase a of the questionnaire. 87 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising the subliminal embed in advertisement 1 is much more prominent than any other, and was thus easier to identify. according to the results of phase a of the questionnaire, five respondents were able to identify the subliminal embed in advertisement 1, compared to the 14 respondents who actually focused on the subliminal embed. with advertisement 2, only one respondent identified the subliminal area, compared to the 14 who focused on the aoi. with advertisement 4 and 5, not one respondent was able to identify any subliminal embeds in the advertisement with 12 respondents focusing on the aoi in advertisement 4, and 7 focusing on the aoi in advertisement 5. results of the qualitative approach during the structured interview, the respondents had each advertisement open to explore. heat maps are provided for each advertisement to illustrate where the focus was during the structured interview. the red areas received the most attention and the green areas the least. figure 13: heat map for advertisement 1 as this was the most prominent subliminal embed, it is clear that it received a lot of attention during the structured interview. of the 20 respondents, 18 were able to identify this subliminal embed. twelve respondents identified the subliminal on the first question, four on the second question, two on the third question, and not one on the last question. a total of 90% of all respondents were able to identify the subliminal embed during the structured interview. 88 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising figure 14: heat map for advertisement 2 the example in figure 14 once again shows that the subliminal embed received a lot of attention during the structured interview. according to the information gathered from the structured interview, four respondents were able to identify the face in the fire. on the first question, only one respondent identified the face. it should be noted though that this is the same (and only) respondent who identified the face during the first five second frame. on the second question, not one respondent identified the face; one identified the face on the third question and two on the last question. a total of 20% were able to identify the subliminal embed in this advertisement during the structured interview. figure 15: heat map for advertisement 4 the subliminal embeds in this advertisement (figure 15) are more difficult to identify. as this advertisement contains several subliminal embeds, if the respondent were able to identify just one embed, it counted for the purpose of this section (to see a subliminal embed during a structured interview without it being pointed out). although it is clear 89 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising that there was a lot of focus on the subliminal area, not one respondent was able to identify what they were looking at. figure 16: heat map for advertisement 5 when looking at the above heat map (figure 16), it is clear that the subliminal embed was the second most studied area in the advertisement. in the centre of the yellow over the word sex, one can see red starting to appear, which indicates that these areas were the most studied after the label on the beer. but still not one respondent was able to identify this subliminal embed. on the third question, when respondents were asked to read the advertisement in reverse (which lead to the word sex being more noticeable) still not one respondent was able to identify this subliminal embed. findings of phase b of the questionnaire to complete this study, the subliminal embeds in each advertisement were pointed out to the respondents. this is a vital part of the study, as it refers to the hypothesis, which is: the subliminal embeds in print advertising can only be seen once pointed out. after the subliminal embeds were pointed out, 19 respondents were able to see it in advertisement 1; 20 respondents were able to see it in advertisement 2; 19 respondents in advertisement 4; and 18 respondents in advertisement 5. comparison of the results table 1: comparison of results 90 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising 120% 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% advertisement 1 advertisement 2 advertisement 3 advertisement 4 five second frame structured interview once pointed out according to table 1, it is evident how much the percentages have increased once the subliminal embeds were pointed out. during the five second frame, the subliminal embeds that the respondents were able to identify were 25% in advertisement 1, and 5% in advertisement 2. after the respondents received guidelines during the structured interview on how to study the advertisement, 90% saw the subliminal embed in advertisement 1 and 20% in advertisement two, but still no one on advertisement 4 and 5. only once the subliminal was pointed out to them, 95% saw the subliminal embed in advertisement 1, 100% in advertisement 2, 95% in advertisement 4 and 90% in advertisement 5. summary during the first five second frame viewing of all advertisements, respondents focused on the subliminal embeds for approximately 65% of the time. however, the information gathered from the questionnaires indicated that only 0.75% of all the subliminal embeds were actually identified by the respondents. during the structured interview, when the respondents were given hints on how to spot the subliminal embeds, 100% (n=20) of the respondents focused on the subliminal area in advertisement 1 and 90% (n=18) were able to verify the subliminal embed during the interview. while studying advertisement 2, 95% (n=19) of the respondents focused on the subliminal area, but only 20% (n=4) were able to identify the subliminal embed. when the respondents studied advertisement 4 and 5, all the respondents focused on the subliminal areas, but not one participant identified the subliminal embeds during the structured interview. during the structured interview, respondents focused on the subliminal area 98.75% of the total time, but only 27.5% of the respondents were able to identify the subliminal embeds. once the subliminal embeds were pointed out to the respondents, 95% of the respondents identified the subliminal embeds. thus it is clear that the subliminal embeds were only identified on all four advertisements once pointed out. table 2: increase in conscious awareness of subliminal embeds 91 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising 100.00% 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50,00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% five second frame structured interview once pointed out the first percentage of 0.75% represent the total number of respondents who could identify the subliminal embeds during the first five second frame of viewing the advertisements. the next percentage (27.5%) reflects the total number of respondents who identified the subliminal embeds during the structured interview, and the last percentage (95%) shows the total number of respondents who were able to identify the subliminal embeds once pointed out. the percentage increased dramatically towards the last phase of the research, when the subliminal embeds were pointed out. thus it can be concluded that most subliminal embeds in print advertisements can only be seen once pointed out. however, the fact that in almost 65% of the cases, the respondents’ eyes were fixed on the subliminal embeds, even though they were not consciously aware of what they were seeing might raise some interesting questions. recommendations this study can be seen as a point of departure to investigate the influence that subliminal embeds in print advertising might have on an individual’s perception of advertising, and ultimately purchase behaviour. against the background of ouwersloot and duncan’s (2009: 431) definition of subliminal advertising as messages that are received subconsciously below a person’s perceptual threshold, and causing a desired response, marketing practitioners should definitely take note of subliminal advertising and be sensitive towards the use thereof. a combined marketing and psychological study could be conducted to explore if the subliminal embeds that are subconsciously noticed have any influence on behaviour, and if so, what these influences might entail. it is important to remember that this study only focused on print media, and the results cannot be generalised to any other media such as radio or television. similar studies could be conducted on these media types. conclusion even though the effect of media content cannot be predicted with precision, the knowledge that some kinds of messages (in this instance, subliminal messages) may have a specific kind of response in certain circumstances is strategically important in marketing and advertising campaigns. fourie (2009: 229) opines that the quest for knowledge about a pervasive phenomenon such as the media makes knowledge and continued research about media effects scientifically important. it can contribute to the increased beneficial use of the media for the improvement of people’s circumstances and society in general. this is an important aspect when the ethical considerations regarding subliminal advertising are taken into account. academics, advertising and marketing practitioners should find the results of this study valuable. to these practitioners, public perceptions, as well as the influence those perceptions might have on behaviour, should be very important. different factors affect the reception of information, what is being done with that information and, consequently, its influence on buying behaviour (egan 2009: 57). perceptions are considered to be strong influencers. 92 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising this study did not aim to explain if, how or why this subliminal embeds might work, only whether they can be seen. according to the results, subliminal embeds in print advertising can only be seen once pointed out to the respondents. according to chapman (2010) the thought of subliminal manipulation frequently excites passionate reaction. these authors claim that, before a subliminal explanation for the presence of something is automatically rejected, a better explanation for its appearance should be found. although advertisers and researches disagree on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising, they should nevertheless be concerned about the public perceptions towards subliminal advertising. 93 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising references arens, w. f. 1999. contemporary advertising. boston: mcgraw-hill. baker, s. 1961. visual persuasion: the effect of pictures on the subconscious. new york: mcgraw-hill. beatty, s. e. and hawkins, d. i. 1989. subliminal stimulation: some new data and interpretation. journal of advertising 18(3): 4-8. 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[online]. available at: ebscohost 4673853 [accessed on 19/03/2009]. 95 exploring reaction to subliminal codes in print advertising communitas omslag nov 2008 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 1 15 ian glenn* abstract this article examines the film-going habits and tastes of the south african public, focusing on which films generated the most income and were viewed by the largest public during 2007. it uses the data generated from cinema-going revenues and television viewership of film to engage the theoretical argument between bourdieu's notion of habitus and the notion of cultural omnivorousness developed by peterson and others. the article finds that elements of both bourdieu's and peterson's positions can be supported from the figures. in particular, the figures of channel switching among the wealthiest and highest educated viewers (indicated by the highest living standards measurements or lsms) show that this portion of the television audience shows considerable “restlessness” or range in viewing, supporting peterson's findings that high cultural standing is often equated with cultural range rather than snobbish limitation. yet this restlessness or lack of loyalty seems to work according to positions that accord quite well with bourdieu's notion of habitus. in other words, higher lsms are not equally restless with all cultural products and show a particular impatience with many south african films, to which lower lsms are far more loyal — though it may be restricted channel choice that accounts for much of this difference. this study thus opens a methodological inquiry into film tastes and film consumption in a developing country and also offers, through an examination of channel switching, a new insight into the debate around cultural omnivores and taste. 1 * professor ian glenn is director of the centre of film and media studies at the university of cape town. introduction south africa, unusually for developing countries, has a set of sophisticated commercial tools for measuring cultural consumption. one great advantage of this research is that it has been conducted for many years, allowing longitudinal comparisons and examinations of how audiences and their preferences have changed and developed over time. in addition, various commercial researchers have developed innovative ways of measuring changes in audience tastes and preferences and in predicting future developments – and are usually, in this author’s experience, open and generous with academic researchers.1 yet the academic literature in south africa – at least in the humanities – seems largely ignorant of this data and research, meaning that academic research on cultural consumption, particularly of media, is for the most part underdeveloped and impressionistic. as i have argued in a review of one of the local collections of essays on mass media in south africa, the cultural studies bias of most local media scholarship all too often ignores the major bodies of evidence available (glenn 2004). in trying to answer a very tight question suggested by the editor of this journal (what was the most popular film in south africa in 2007?), this essay can only suggest the theoretical stakes involved in judging cultural consumption in the 21st century and in the developing world in particular, point to some of the methodological complexities in trying to answer this question, examine the industry evidence, and point to possibilities for further research. the theoretical stakes the most sophisticated sociological attempt to map modern cultural consumption is undoubtedly that of pierre bourdieu, and notably his distinction (bourdieu 1984). in this work, bourdieu examined a huge body of data, much of it dating from the 1960s in france, to claim that there were patterns of cultural consumption linked to background, gender, education and professional and economic status – the sum of ingrained influences he categorised as the habitus. in many ways, this analysis, which probably shares something with lazarsfeld’s concept of latent class analysis (sintas & álvarez 2002), gives us our most fruitful way of using local data as it suggests ways of going beyond categories such as social and economic status (conventionally measured in south africa by lsms or living standards measurements), language, or race. we can note some of the obvious problems in applying bourdieu to the post-colonial situation. he was analysing a fairly homogeneous, mono-lingual society with universal literacy and a strong unitary educational system. he did not have to worry about foreign influences or cultural imperialism or multi-lingualism or globalisation or consider a media universe that was as fragmented as ours is. though bourdieu never, as far as i know, examined the problem of multiple fields directly, he did, in an interview he gave me shortly after the french version of distinction was published, say that even in a society like post-colonial algeria, the literary field would assemble the different traditions of the past into one united field. insofar as the commercial analysts are concerned, this is the situation for media here and now: all media are analysed into one body of information. 2 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions bourdieu was also dealing with a simpler media world. in his work, for example, he was able to draw a clear distinction between cinema and television viewership, showing that the former was more linked to reading novels and higher cultural status, while the latter was seen as a more typically escapist and a lower cultural status form of consumption. in a world where most films are undoubtedly seen on television screens, and where many televisions series (such as the sopranos or the west wing or the simpsons) have a greater sophistication than most popular films, these judgments seem to come from a simpler cultural landscape. and might it also be that the french are more hierarchical and judgmental about cultural consumption than other nationalities? can one generalise about patterns of consumption across cultures and eras? recent work, based on several groundbreaking articles by richard peterson and various co-authors, suggests that in many modern cases, it may be that the highbrow snob and cultural dichotomies of old have given way to a more modern phenomenon and figure: the cultural omnivore (peterson & simkus 1992; peterson & kern 1995; peterson & kern 1996). in this understanding of cultural consumption, the privileged figure expresses his or her cultural being by sampling widely across culture or cultures rather than sticking to a safe zone of cultural exclusivity. nor does this seem to be only a north american phenomenon, as research from many cultures suggests that modern media – and, undoubtedly, technological devices like the remote control and satellite television – may be a common factor in breaking up old divisions of culture (alderson et al. 2007; chan & goldthorpe 2007; torche 2007; sintas & álvarez 2002; sintas & álvarez 2006). in its simplified form, this suggests that we have two possibilities. at the extreme versions, we have quite clearly defined strata (an intellectual with high symbolic capital who goes to cinema nouveau, watches art movies, reads serious novels, watches little or no tv, and attends events like ballet and opera, along with the wealthy person with less symbolic capital who watches and probably plays golf, watches financial channels on dstv or mainstream hollywood material, and those with less financial and symbolic capital who watch wrestling on e.tv, read the tabloids, and watch whatever movie is available), or we have a cheerful cultural promiscuity (almost everybody channel hopping and watching big sporting events and chuck norris and the latest hollywood action movie). while research on south african cinema viewing allows us the chance to test these models against each other, it should be clear that they are by no means mutually exclusive. it may be that, as sintas and álvarez found in spain, bourdieu’s model applies more strongly to older consumers while peterson’s omnivores appear more strongly among younger consumers – particularly given the ways in which young south africans have been much more heavily exposed to international global film culture than their elders. it should also be clear that cultural omnivorousness may simply be the result of means: one cannot sample a range of films without a television set, let alone satellite television, or a dvd player. (some recent industry research suggests, for example, that the vast majority of sabc viewers are frustrated by their lack of choice 3 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions rather than contented with it.) and cultural omnivorousness may not tell us very much about habitual or preferred behaviour. does it mean that omnivores sample a wide range on an ongoing basis in a kind of itchy cultural consumptive restlessness, or sample briefly before settling on a repertoire that may be quite compatible with bourdieu’s habitus? the south african data, which breaks film viewing on television down into 15-minute segments, allows us to draw quite complex conclusions about the relationship between cultural and social background and cultural sampling – and, thus, cultural omnivorousness. while my own work in literary and media studies draws more strongly on bourdieu (glenn & knaggs 2008; glenn 1994), this article is methodologically pragmatic or agnostic, willing to combine the best insights from bourdieu and peterson. peterson’s work certainly resonates with the desire, particularly among young south africans in the new south africa, to experience a range of opportunities, to break out of cultural confines, to experience living in change. yet, might this be typical only of certain groups: youth, upwardly mobile, linguistically open? the work of burgess and mattes suggests that something like this might be the case – that, in other words, the habitus of young south africans is to be omnivorous (burgess et al. 2002) while the omnivore model may suggest that we have moved to a more democratic, shared, open culture, it may be that we have exchanged one form of cultural division (linguistic, racial) for another (class and financial). but what does the evidence show? two approaches to film popularity there seem to be two ways to measure popularity: the amount of money the film made, or how many people saw it. neither of these is easy to gauge, for reasons that will become clear. show me the money if we want to measure the most popular film of 2007, the available research suggests hollywood’s major concern: revenue. thus the motion picture producers’ association (http://www.mpaa.org/researchstatistics.asp) announced the five top grossing box office successes of 2007, where for the first time, all four top films grossed over $300 million: spider-man 3, shrek the third, transformers, and pirates of the caribbean: at world’s end, while harry potter and the order of the phoenix was just below that figure. while this record figure might seem a cause for celebration, cautious observers pointed out that the record gross reflected a dollar that had lost ground against currencies like the euro and increased prices rather than increased attendance at cinemas. the average american only sees six movies in cinemas a year and consumes about 150 times more audio-visual material at home than in the movie house. in south africa, figures provided by ster-kinekor show that the leading 2007 box office success was shrek the third with other mainstream hollywood films some way behind. 4 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions table 1: leading films in south africa in 2007 [chart courtesy of ster-kinekor] shrek the third made r22.6 million (including vat) at the box office with almost 1.1 million people having seen the film – with attendance more than 50% greater than that for the other top films. overall, the cinema industry generated r570 million in 2007 with attendances of 27.1 million. but, given a total population of over 40 million, it is clear that cinema attendance per person is far lower than the american norm and that going to cinemas is not the major way of consuming film here either. another way of putting the comparison is that the top grossing film here made about 1% of what it made in the us, even though our population is about 15% of theirs. what the south african list suggests is that the cinema audience here, like that in the us, is heavily driven by treats for middle-class children and by large budget special effects films. the success of i am legend and ratatouille suggests also that the audience for movie-going may overall be more sophisticated than the average american audience. another point worth making is that film success here does to some extent a selffulfilling prophecy, as shown by the number of prints ordered. past experience, international success, and in some cases prior research determine how many prints of a particular film local distributors commit to and this, in turn, shapes how widely the film in question is shown and, quite probably, how many people come to see it. this is not to suggest that any highly hyped film will work, but it does remind us of the huge proportion of hollywood costs devoted to marketing, pre-release publicity, and the promotion of hit films. in dealing with total revenue from a film, there are a host of questions. the us box office is now only about a third of total international box office, and then box office revenue is only a minority (one estimate is 20%) of the total revenue of a film. after international box office come dvd sales, both to consumers and to dvd rental agencies – both locally and internationally. after that new films would be sold to paytv channels, then eventually to broadcast television channels. thus, it may be that the 5 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions final success of a film may only be known much later than the year of its release. one example is the ongoing success of films in the bourne series in the us with new releases seeming to trigger an interest in earlier films in the series. nor do we have any reliable figures for the amount of money made from pornographic movies, either distributed through dvds or on the internet, though 2007 seemed to mark a year of crisis for the dvd porn industry, along with estimates that the adult-movie industry would try to turn to the third world for revenue, given the trend in the us for free or very cheap broadband material to replace paid for porn. while we have reasonably reliable figures for box office in the us and internationally, and some informed figures for dvd sales in the us, little material seems available on other sales and costs and any figures would be complicated by issues such as trade confidentiality. and, once again, sales figures raise complex issues. in the us, the lavish and expensive multi-dvd bbc documentary series planet earth would have rated in the top ten grossing dvds, but in terms of units sold, it ranked only 40th. are certain kinds of dvds likely to be watched by bigger audiences or more often? in south africa, a recent complaint has been made against local dvd rental companies for using parallel imports and thus “invading” the time which should be devoted to local box office. there seems no reliable way in south africa of aggregating income from dvd sales or rentals as there is no central body or dominant industry player able to give a clear sign of total trends. local franchises seem to keep their own figures and so we can only guess at dvd rentals from other data that will appear later. the major international trend now, however, will be for the whole cycle of distribution to be compressed and globalised. already, the bulk of hollywood films are released simultaneously across the globe to avoid piracy and the problem of legitimate local vendors and movie-house owners suffering from that. this is likely to make it much easier to calculate global appeal and trends in future than in the past, where there have been quite long delays between us and south african distribution. viewership of films when we get to the question of gauging the popularity of a film by viewership, we have far more useful and sophisticated local material. through the south africa advertising research foundation’s (saarf) amps profiles (all media products survey), we have a strong indication of how many south africans attend films in movie houses, or watch rented or their own dvds, and we also have, in their television ratings or tams measurements of which the most popular films shown on television in south african in 2007. yet we face tough methodological difficulties. do we judge a film by total attendance, or by individual viewers, discounting, for example, the legendary viewers who watched titanic countless times? what are we to make of dvds where we have some indication of how many people have watched movies during the previous week, fortnight, and month, but very little idea of how many movies they have watched? what about illegal copies of material? (in the us, there is even a website that calculates how many pirated 6 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions copies have been made, and here the figure approximates the best seller list fairly closely.) what are we to make of the measurements of television viewership which use sophisticated measurements to indicate how much of any film viewers watch? are two people watching the first half of a movie and then turning off really equivalent to one viewer who sat through the whole thing in a movie house? more importantly, perhaps, is the question of when we judge the success or failure of a film. if many of the 2007 box office releases will only be shown on “free” television in south africa in 2008 or 2009 or even later, might it be too early to tell what the most “popular” film of 2007 was? are there filmic classics, whose worth has to be measured, not over the short term, but over decades – a tsotsi or little miss sunshine that will, in time, come to be seen as a casablanca or bicycle thief? let us try to place the different kinds of viewership in relation to each other. in the us, the figures for 2007 suggest that the average american spent less than 1% of time viewing filmed material, both television and cinema, in movie houses – 13 hours per year of a massive total of nearly 2000 hours. nor did dvd rented or owned viewership come out as a major factor, reaching only an average of 64 hours per year. the vast bulk of viewing was of cable or satellite and broadcast tv, with consumer internet broadcasts far more significant than either movie-going or dvd viewership. south africans as cinema goers the south african 2007 amps figures give a very clear picture of cinema attendance. of about 31 million possible cinema goers aged 16 and over, only about 1.7 million had attended a cinema during the preceding four weeks, and 559 000 in the previous seven days. if we return to the ster-kinekor figures, our average annual attendance in cinema is less that one viewing per viewer over 16. cinema attendance is strongly positively correlated with income and with youth. in lsms 1-5, cinema attendance is negligible, under 1% of the group, till lsm 4 (1.4%), picking up to 5.1% in lsm 5 and rising sharply till, in lsm 10, some 24% of viewers had attended cinema during the past four weeks. cinema attendance (over the past four weeks) also seems to drop steadily with age, from about 9% in the 16-24 age group to 2.4% in the 50+ age group. we thus see that if we stick with box office as the indication of popularity in south africa, we will have a sample that is doubly skewed: towards a wealthy, still predominantly non-african, youthful sample. it is highly likely that this group will find the dominant international media of the day attractive and follow international trends and tastes quite naturally. south african dvd and vhs viewership of film the amps 2007 figures for hired video or dvd viewership during the past four weeks came as a surprise to this author. of 31 million potential viewers, only 3%, or fewer than a million (932 000), were estimated to have hired material or watched hired material in places like hotels – and, of course, many dvd or video hires are not of films but of television series. the figure for viewing during the past seven days, however, was higher than that for going to cinema (726 000 against 559 000). it seems, in other words, that hired video or dvd has fewer total adherents than movie-going does, but 7 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions they are watching more regularly. given the prevalence of video hire outlets across south africa, it seems likely that many of those watching are watching a significant number of films, but the amps figures do not give this detail. the low numbers reported as hiring film material is particularly surprising given the very high number of households that report having a dvd player and/or video player. of some 11 million households, over 5 million (46%) reported having a dvd player in the home, while over 2 million (22%) report having home theatre systems. it may be that in economically tough times, the main function of the home theatre system is to make television viewing more attractive, while the dvd player, as an increasingly affordable item, is used only occasionally, but it seems more likely that kinds of viewing are taking place that the figures are not capturing accurately. what, then, are these people watching? the usual suspects would be bought dvds, pirated material, and perhaps pornography. as the south african market for bought dvds seems relatively small, it may be that the phenomenon of “ripped” dvds of hit series like grey’s anatomy¸ desperate housewives, or prison break may account for a lot of use of the dvd player. the viewing of international material pirated off the internet and then exchanged among friends is clearly widespread among students and the it community in south africa – one graduate student pointed out that the international hit series heroes was voted second most popular series on a local facebook group even before the series had been shown in south africa. this discrepancy between the potential for dvd viewing and the hiring of dvds needs further investigation and it is a pity that the saarf all media products survey will no longer include questions about the use of dvds. consumption of film through dvd and video is strongly linked, not surprisingly, to income, reaching some 10.8% of the lsm 10 group, or 208 000 as opposed to lsms 1-4 (all under 1%). the correlation of viewership with age is not as marked as with cinema going, however, with the 25-34 age group at 3.6% of the group marginally ahead of the 16-24 and 35-49 groups, who come in at about 3%. the over 50 age group, once again, shows a drop – to 1.5% of the age cohort. what we do not know is whether the use of dvds and videos for young children might show some surprising trends. this, according to industry sources, is the major genre for bought dvds, and in the us, for example, the animated comedy happy feet in 2007 outsold movies that had done better at the box office. jan du plessis suggests that one reason that disney children’s specials do not do better when shown on television is that so many of the potential viewers have the film available and thus are able to watch in their own time – a case of children driving the on-demand viewing phenomenon. we do not, in other words, have any strong way of measuring viewership of films through dvds, but it seems likely that most dvd hiring agencies take the lead from hollywood success and buy stock accordingly. while there may be a few minority or specialist stores such as dvd nouveau or others dealing with classics or independent film, there seems little reason to suggest that dvd viewership here will do much to alter the pecking order established by box office success. 8 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions watching films on television when it comes to film viewership, we face the methodological challenges mentioned earlier: how to judge partial or fragmented viewership of a film and what to do about the time lag between box office and distribution on “free” television. in addition, there are contingent problems which are central to the success of a film: the amount of publicity given to a forthcoming film; what its competition is; when it is shown. nonetheless, an analysis of the top 15 rated films shown on south african television in 2007 reveals some key phenomena: table 2: top 15 rated films on south african television in 2007 9 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions the columns reflect the following in order: the ranking, based on weighted viewership or the amr (audience minute rating percentage shown in the 4th column), the title, the channel, the amr as a %, the amr as a weighted number, the total reach as a percentage, the total reach as an absolute figure, and the year of release. (the four films without release dates are all local short films for which little information is available.) the relationship between weighted audience and reach is important as it gives us key indicators about channel hopping or incomplete viewing and thus a useful proxy for cultural omnivorousness. in the case of tsotsi, for example, the ratio between weighted audience and reach is about two thirds. in the amps figures, over 8 million south africans watched some of tsotsi, but in weighting those figures for those who stopped early, switched channels, or came in late, the weighted figure drops to the equivalent of over 5.5 million viewers. this retention or loyalty or “stickability” factor is higher for the very short films (for obvious reasons) and the south african material than for old action movies, like die another day, where the ratio between weighted and reach is less than half. (candice ulrich of agb nielsen points out that this factor is seen as increasingly important in industry calculations.) what conclusions can we draw from this list? the first is that there are three genres that dominate: south african long films; south african short films; and action movies. (disorderlies, as a comic action movie, suggests that this genre could be exploited further.) one could argue that sarafina is a hollywood rather than a local film, but as it was based on a local musical and has strong south african associations, it seems easier to treat it as a local film. the second conclusion is that the major audience for film in south africa is the sabc 1 audience, with e.tv pushing into contention – though it should be noted that a significant portion of the viewers of sabc 1 and e.tv watch the channels through dstv. (the reach of spike lee’s inside man on m-net, its most successful film of 2007, was only about 10% of the reach of tsotsi.) the third conclusion is that this is an audience with a hunger for south african material, as a closer examination of tsotsi and sarafina reveals. in the case of tsotsi, the oscar-award winning foreign film for 2005, the sabc was, unusually, able to bid to show the film before it had gone to pay-television. they paid heavily to show the film much sooner than any public broadcaster would usually have been able to as the makers, as an independent studio, did not have to honour the usual hollywood position that pay-tv sales take precedence over public broadcasters. although the sabc paid a premium for the rights, jan du plessis argues that it did not do enough to promote the film as a premium showing in august 2007. had it been heavily promoted, it seems likely that it might have beaten all comers quite handily. in the case of sarafina, it clearly benefited from its scheduling – on 30 december in the midst of the holiday season on a sunday night – and it showed even higher retention rates of viewers than tsotsi. we can thus probably conclude that the most watched film in south africa in 2007 was tsotsi, which is a positive note for south african cinema. (it received strong ratings in 2008 when shown on sabc 3 in march 2008, emerging as the top-rated film shown on sabc 3 in the first quarter of 2008, with a weighted rating of about half the sabc audience.) had the short films been omitted, a film like yesterday might have crept into 10 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions the top ratings as it had a weighted reach of over 13%. this suggests that there is a hunger for top quality material about south africa, perhaps stimulated in the sabc 1 audience by hit series such as generations. cultural omnivores, channel switchers and cultural crossovers but what of the theoretical debate? when we delve more deeply into the figures and the ways in which various groups move in and out of programmes, it seems that we have several overlapping demographics or indeed movie-watching classes. the figures make some trends very clear: table 3: trends in movie-watching classes 11 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions the first point to make is that this is decidedly a mass and not an elite audience. the weighted audience for a film like tsotsi among the wealthiest and best educated audience, the lsm 9-10 segment, is only 3.7%, though the reach was a hefty 13.1%. we also see that the highest lsm audience has very little taste for south african material. in the case of the longer south african films, the retention or “stickability” factor is only about 25-30%. in other words, about an equivalent of one in four high lsm viewers watches the whole film, as opposed to two out of three for all viewers. in the case of the middle of the road james bond action thriller, die another day, the weighted factor is about 43% of the total viewership, while of the longer films, the jean-claude van damme prison action movie in hell proved the most “stickable” with the weighted audience equalling some 55% of the total reach. as we drop in lsms to lsm 7-8, we see a slightly different adherence factor. a film like sarafina does much better, with its weighted audience at over 60% of its total reach, while tsotsi holds half its audience. the percentage holding onto in hell is almost identical to the higher lsm audience, suggesting that in action movie tastes, these groups, or significant sub-groups within them, are very similar. if we drop down to the lsm 5-6, then the weighted total proportion to reach is much higher throughout, but with a difference that is most strongly marked with tsotsi, where over 70% of the total reach is recorded for the film as a whole and nearly 70% for sarafina. in the case of lsm 1-4, though the universe is smaller and some of the figures less reliable, the figure is roughly 75%. these differences are even more marked if we look at the figure for english speakers (mostly white and indian south africans) where the numbers viewing are much lower and the weighted ratio for a film like tsotsi drops to almost 20% of the reach and to 15% or less for sarafina. afrikaans or both language speakers (typically white or coloured south africans) have higher absolute ars and also “stickability”. we could use these figures to support both the bourdieu and the peterson perspectives. clearly, wealthier viewers have more choices and are less likely to watch a film through, suggesting that cultural omnivores have remote controls and use them to travel through channels, sampling a range of material. but, at the same time, they are not equally likely to abandon all films or skip through all films on an equal basis. it seems clear that south african material here is not seen as being as desirable by the higher lsms, suggesting that the wealth of material at their disposal and their cultural position distances them from local productions or material seen as dealing primarily with black south africans or even multi-cultural situations here (as in the case of malunde). english-speaking south africans seem even more distant from local material than other groups. we could suggest that bourdieu’s original insights might still be worth exploring here. it seems clear that in many black households, viewership of television (whether of news or other programmes) is a family affair – in part because of economic and space constraints, in part because of lack of choices. in this situation, it makes much more sense that if a film is switched on, it will be watched through by all the members of a 12 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions household. in the case of a more privileged household, with other entertainment options (computer games, other television sets, internet, books, ipods), it may be that an individual “sampling” or idle flipping through channels mode may predominate. the style of watching is thus something that would benefit from more anthropological investigation, but bourdieu’s argument that cultural capital manifests itself in a kind of aesthetic or even playful or knowing style of watching seems worth further investigation. second, it may be that many some black south africans felt that they should over report or even watch south african material viewership out of cultural patriotism, particularly as tsotsi had won an oscar. but it seems more likely that this increased viewership rather than reported viewership. does this cultural distance in ways of viewing film suggest that we are condemned to an ongoing cultural apartheid, destined never to share the same culture, with white and/or wealthy viewers indifferent or hostile to south african material or productions? some evidence certainly suggests that south africans remain racially and linguistically divided, particularly in their attitudes to what we might call cultural and social politics. in elihu katz’s terms, we have not been delivered from, but into, segmentation (katz 1996). even in watching the hearings of the truth and reconciliation commission, audiences remained divided with figures and racial divisions in some ways very similar to those watching south african films like tsotsi. it may be that the local afrikaans and african-language audiences are more loyal to local productions and that englishlanguage material that is palpably south african or draws on other languages will benefit from this kind of loyalty, while english speakers are more likely to see south african cultural products simply as one offering among others. yet there is certainly evidence that south africans share a good deal of their film culture and that this culture is one of the closest things we have to a common culture. considerable evidence suggests that hollywood genres, conventions and production values dominate. in their reactions to television advertising, according to local media analysts millward brown south africa (formerly impact information), south africans have been becoming more similar to one another. conclusion are there film genres or figures with a genuine appeal across racial and economic groupings? might it be that they give us an idea of what south african films should be to reach a large local audience across racial barriers, or what kinds of foreign films or figures might offer models? two figures are worth considering: leon schuster and chuck norris. schuster’s film mr bones did well at box office, was shown widely on dstv, and drew large black and lower lsm audiences. what did schuster do right? in playing a range of south african roles, perhaps schuster makes fun of local identities in a way that people find liberating or intriguing, allowing people both to claim him as one of them yet feel unthreatened by him. 13 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions similarly, chuck norris’s long-running series, walker, texas ranger, has proved more or less impervious to opposition as a late-night e.tv series, drawing a surprising number of high lsm dstv viewers. jan du plessis says ruefully that he has thrown everything at it (including dexter and the tudors), but that walker rules. clearly also, chuck norris has entered some kind of mythic status which helps drive a mix of amused and self-mocking admiration. recently, e.tv reached the end of this series, only to announce that they would start the whole cycle all over again. it may be that south africans are looking for a genre which is at once strongly african, but also optimistic and a lot gentler than most local offerings. jan du plessis points out that when given a choice on sunday nights, most m-net viewers prefer romantic comedies to sterner stuff such as munich or heavy dramas. if one were to predict, it seems that something like alexander mccall smith’s the no. 1 ladies’ detective agency, soon to be a film and 13 part detective series, might be the kind of thing to unite south african viewers. endnotes 1 i would like to acknowledge the generous help in writing this article and in giving helpful information from a variety of industry figures: glen marques, former ceo of m-net and jan du plessis of m-net, from claire milne, lucas raganya and michelle boehme at saarf, from erik du plessis at millward brown south africa and from candice ulrich at agb nielsen. i have also benefited from discussions with colleagues mary watson-seoighe and cahal seoighe. none of the conclusions or errors should be blamed on them. 14 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions references alderson, a.s., junisbai, a. & heacock, i. 2007. social status and cultural consumption in the united states. poetics 35: 191-212. bourdieu, p. 1984. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. london: routledge & kegan paul. burgess, s.m., harris, m. & mattes, r.b. 2002. sa tribes: who we are, how we live and what we want from life in the new south africa. claremont (south africa): david philip. chan, t.w. & goldthorpe, j.h. 2007. social stratification and cultural consumption: the visual arts in england. poetics 35: 168-190. glenn, i. 1994. nadine gordimer, j.m. coetzee and the politics of 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(eds.) at the end of the rainbow: power, politics and identity in post-apartheid south african media. cape town: hsrc press. katz, e. 1996. and deliver us from segmentation. the annals of the american academy of political and social science 546: 22-33. peterson, r.a. & kern, r.m. 1995. hard-core and soft-shell country music fans. journal of country music 17: 3-6. peterson, r.a. & kern, r.m. 1996. changing highbrow taste: from snob to omnivore. american sociological review 61: 900-907. peterson, r.a. & simkus, a. 1992. how musical taste groups mark occupational status groups. in lamont, m. & fournier, m. (eds.) cultivating differences: symbolic boundaries and the making of inequality. chicago: university of chicago press. sintas, j.l. & álvarez, e.g. 2002. omnivores show up again: the segmentation of cultural consumers in spanish social space. european sociological review 18: 353368. sintas, j.l. & álvarez, e.g. 2006. patterns of audio-visual consumption: the reflection of objective divisions in class structure. european sociological review 22: 397-411. torche, f. 2007. social status and cultural consumption: the case of reading in chile. poetics 35: 70-92. 15 film viewing in south africa in 2007: some vexed questions 16 1. paul schutte 169 lost in translation: election poster viewing and other memories communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 169 171 margaret linström* * margaret linström is a veteran journalist with 25 years experience in broadcast and print journalism. she is a fellow of the poynter institute, and lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. meo iudicio elections – as a journalist i’ve covered a few. predictably the most memorable one was on 27 april 1994. i was a radio news journalist at the sabc and i was dispatched to my home town, upington, to tell the story of how democracy was eventually reaching this forgotten part of our country. i drew my cross in kanoneiland, home to a small community on the largest inland island in the orange river. although i was a citizen, voting for a dream long cherished, i was also a journalist armed with an ancient marantz, recording the voices of those for whom it would be their first time. i approached a small group of men and women, the women wearing bleached head scarves, their faces heavily lined by many years in the unforgiving northern cape sun. when i asked them how they felt, they laughed shyly, and turned away. i remember being told in a primary school history lesson that kanoneiland got its name from the days when koranna river pirates, under the leadership of klaas pofadder, used the island as a hideout. in 1879 the island was attacked by 80 policemen, using a small cannon. the korannas responded by building their own cannon from a hollow aloe stem. they loaded it with gunpowder but when fired, it exploded and killed six koranna. i wondered if any of klaas pofadder descendants still lived on the island, and if on this historic day, they thought back on how he surely would have relished it as much as they hopefully were. our election day had started before dawn in paballelo – home to the upington 26. i recalled the day in 1985 when, at a soccer field near the entrance to the township, a large group of demonstrators had gathered. in the next few hours, a policeman, jetta sethwala, would be chased into the street by the angry mob and be beaten to death. fifty-four people were held, 26 were charged, and 14 people were sentenced to death for sethwala’s killing. they were all eventually released. we’d been warned not to go into paballelo but it was peaceful, with friendly people thronging the streets. the only drama of this historic election had happened the previous night while i was filing stories for the next day’s early morning news bulletins and the lights went out. the doomsayers had been predicting the worse, and when this happened they probably smiled in satisfaction, whipped out their torches and slunk off to their secret cupboards lined with emergency supplies. their happiness was short-lived, though, because all it 170 lost in translation: election poster viewing and other memories turned out to be was an inquisitive wild cat which had taken a short stroll through an electrical sub-station, plunging the whole town into darkness. was it a case of the damp squib or the dead cat? sadly that was my last election out in the field. after that i worked as a bulletin producer, compiling news bulletins in the safe but frenetic confines of a newsroom, and later as a news editor frantically trying to keep all the balls up in the air. which brings me to the 2009 elections: since the previous elections i had moved from the adrenaline driven world of hard news to the more sedate world of magazine journalism. this meant that for the first time i was an outsider, experiencing the run-up to an election as many south africans do – from the comfort of their cars with one eye catching election posters plastered on lampposts. to amuse myself i began poster viewing (much like the japanese go cherry blossom viewing in tokyo, with the difference that i did not have a poster viewing party – it’s a thought, though) and this election did not disappoint. friends and colleagues who heard about my post-hard news fixation kindly took to e-mailing me photos of their favourite posters, and thus i built up a mini-archive. though it started out as a bit of a joke among friends, i soon realised that there is something more behind this, and that our comments and observations actually pointed out what might be an inherent communication problem that could – and in some instances probably already did – unwittingly damage a political party’s campaign, or image. or both. while discussing agenda-setting with my first-year journalism students, i realised what the problem was: the intended messages that political parties want to convey with their posters are in many cases lost in translation, if you want, by the “other” messages screaming from the posters. and in most cases, these screamers are far removed from politics or any serious business. the most baffling of the poster bunch came from mitchells plain in cape town, and the party involved the universal party. the face on the poster was one of a bewildered looking fellow, his arms spread in a welcoming gesture, much like that famously irritating television shrink, dr phil. the poster was cluttered with writing but it’s “the good shepherd” in the bottom right hand corner which really threw me. are they claiming some divine intervention? would a vote for the universal party get you straight into heaven? and it’s not just the smaller or relatively unknown parties that got it wrong. the democratic alliance (da) boasted heavenly blue posters with helen zille’s puffy postbotox face and perfectly coiffed hair. the words “vote to win” under helen’s photoshopped face begs the question, win what? a date with helen? (i digress, but wasn’t the sight of helen toyi-toying at election gatherings the most comical sight you’ve seen in a while? the young communist league likened her to a mosquito). now we all know helen but who were the other people on the da posters? on my way to work each day i was confronted by the sight of a man with a big white smile. this unnamed fellow gave me a slight jolt every time i spotted him smiling down at me. i asked around, but no one knew who it was. some assumed that was “some person working for the da”. maybe helen’s pa? i presume he was simply the poster boy for 171 lost in translation: election poster viewing and other memories the da – the generic da man – which would make sense since he was a lovely politically correct cappuccino colour. then there was the poster of the african national congress (anc): “working together we can do more” poster. in bloemfontein one of these was planted in a large pothole in the middle of a suburban street and the wording changed to “… can do more damage”. the freedom front plus’s (ff+) poster sported pieter mulder with an enigmatic grin. the words took the cake, though. “ons staan op vir jou regte.” (we stand up for your rights.) any afrikaans speaker would tell you that it actually should be “ons staan vir jou regte”. the badly placed op sounds positively phallic, and one wonders exactly how excited one can become about the ff+? in kwazulu-natal, animals seemed to be big. from durban came amichand rashbansi and the minority front’s “vote for the tiger”. the inkatha freedom party (ifp) had daddy, mommy and baby elephant on its posters. other ifp posters featured the face of mangosuthu buthelezi, with the slogan “the tried and tested alternative”. sounds a bit like a washing powder ad to me. to add insult to injury, buthelezi’s orange shirt with the elephant motif looked suspiciously like the overalls worn by inmates. the election poster which took shoddiness to new levels was the one of the pan africanist movement’s thami ka plaatjie. whatever the message was, it was completely overshadowed out by two glaring spelling mistakes: “movemment” and “canell”. which brings me to my last question: why can’t our politicians even get the basics right? one should think that months and months’ worth of exposure to barack obama’s impeccably designed campaign should have rubbed off somewhere. the success of that campaign was in part built on a poster, featuring barack obama looking upward and outward, above the word “hope”. created by street artist shepard fairey, the image became one of the most widely recognised symbols of obama’s campaign message. soon the iconic image was everywhere – on walls, on bumper stickers, on clothing, in home windows, on the internet and under people’s e-mail signatures. obama’s campaign set new standards, using everything from social networking sites like facebook and twitter, to sms. media philosopher marshall mcluhan’s sometimes strange ideas have been criticised often, but one cannot help to think that in instances such as these the medium really is the message. fact is, the message remains the core of any communication activity. and getting the wrong message across is far more catastrophic than not getting the message across at all. if political parties in south africa want to attract a new generation of voters, they’ll have to think fresh and new and harness technology… or die trying. 172 39 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 39-57 herman wasserman and anthea garman* abstract at the heart of the 1996 south african constitution is a new vision of citizenship. the constitution is premised on the eradication of apartheid separation and provisions for a shared humanity. bearing in mind an authoritarian history and a systematic denial of voice to the majority of people, the truth and reconciliation commission entrenched the right to speak and the recognition of a shared humanity as factors in our shared public life. but questions about who is a south african, who belongs and who has the right to speak and criticise erupt frequently in the media as themes alongside issues of great public importance being debated. there is also a steady increase over the years since 1994 in protest action, which could be considered a demand by citizens to be heard. these protests have provoked violent response from state agents, thus undermining ordinary south africans’ sense of their ability to affect political processes. we ask whether these features of our public life are indicative of a crisis in citizenship in a post-authoritarian, “new” democracy and what mediated modes of practising citizenship, apart from casting votes, are available to south africans and whether these have value in deepening democracy. the article explores the relationship between the media and the emergence of new forms of citizenship in democratic south africa by providing a brief overview of various notions of citizenship before illustrating how these notions find manifestation in contemporary south africa. * professors herman wasserman and anthea garman co-direct the mellon-funded research focus area into media and citizenship at the school of journalism and media studies at rhodes university in grahamstown.1 40 herman wasserman and anthea garman introduction it is often claimed that the media serve an important role in new democracies to facilitate public debate which may shape policy, re-order societal hierarchies and renegotiate cultural identities – in short, to deepen the emerging democracy. although the democratisation of formerly authoritarian countries after the end of the cold war does not follow identical patterns, there are parallels between the media in south africa and the media in the post-communist countries of eastern europe and asia. in many of these democracies of the “third wave” (huntington 1991), authoritarian control of the media for political means gave way to processes of democratisation and marketisation. consequently, the extent to which media could contribute to the transformation of society has been limited (sparks 2009; splichal 1992). the political changes in these transitional countries have had profound implications for the restructuring of the relationship between media and civil society (murphy 2007). in south africa it has been noted that the media have operated as a site and an agent for change (teer-tomaselli & tomaselli 2001). despite the wide-ranging changes that the south african media has undergone, and the role it has played as an agent of democratic discourse, consensus about how exactly it should deepen the democratic gains of the post-apartheid era and facilitate citizen participation in this democracy has been elusive. eighteen years into south african democracy the very notion of citizenship is fiercely contested. while the decisive shift to formal democracy in 1994 restored the legal and political rights of all south africans – reinstating to all the status of citizenship – the high levels of inequality (among the highest in the world measured according to the gini coefficient) have prevented the majority of citizens from exercising the practice of citizenship in the ways that matter most – voice in the public sphere and decision-making power at local level to impact on the processes that affect their daily lives. the status and practice of citizenship robins, cornwall and von lieres (2008: 1069) insist that to research citizenship and democracy the starting point must be the “the perspectives of citizens themselves” and whether active citizenship is realised in their everyday lives. despite the “normative vision” of citizenship that asserts engagement with the state via the mediated public sphere, in reality citizens do not always manage to acquire new political identities by claiming their democratic rights (robins et al. 2008: 1071). as has been the case in other post-colonial and post-authoritarian settings, existing unequal relationships to government persist even when new democratic spaces have opened up. 41 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media in south africa and africa the persistence of inequality and the inability to endow the category citizen with full rights and capacities has historical roots, as mahmood mamdani’s work shows. mamdani (1996: 17) uses the term “bifurcated” to characterise the state and citizenship in both the colonial and post-colonial eras in africa. he shows how states can limit the possible modes of being a citizen, and how african states under colonialism and in their post-colonial incarnations divided their peoples into “citizen” and “subject”. under british colonialism in south africa citizenship was a “privilege of the civilised” while the “uncivilised” were “subject to an all-round tutelage” – relegated to the state of subjecthood. mamdani (ibid.) shows that the british adopted two approaches to ruling colonies like south africa: direct rule as a form of urban civil power (which excluded natives) and indirect decentralised despotism through the tribal authorities as “their principle answer to the native question”. mamdani’s meticulous work places a burden on us to revisit the long history of the formation of citizenship in south africa, and to engage with a past in which differing patterns and identities of being, belonging and speaking were laid down. mamdani (1996: 8) says generally of african postcolonial states that although the state was deracialised after independence it was not democratised. this suggestion that democratisation does not imply complete transformation, resonates with sparks’ notion of “elite continuity” (sparks 2011: 11), to which we will return shortly. preben kaarsholm (2008: 5) echoes this view when he characterises the south african ruling party as having a tradition of “secularism and modernism… under constant challenge from varieties of ‘traditionalism’ and cultural essentialism”. in addition the african national congress in power has struggled with interpellating the subjecthood of the citizen in post-apartheid south africa without drawing on struggle-era discourse of race. leaning on the theoretical work of ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, chipkin (2012: 263) shows that in south africa the struggle for liberation was constituted around the creation of a “people” and an “enemy”. the political space was divided racially into two camps – into black and white – with each of these camps becoming nodes of articulation of all sorts of “antagonisms”. chipkin shows how the designation “black” attracted and housed the struggles of women, workers, the youth, the poor. the people who waged the struggle for liberation against apartheid were therefore synonymous with the identity “black”. when the struggle was won, the “demos” of the democracy was, as a matter of course, also identified as “black”. chipkin quotes mouffe: “the moment of rule is indissociable from the very struggle about the definition of the people, about the constitution of its identity” (2012: 268) which leads chipkin to conclude that “blackness [is]the essence of the social” (2012: 267). 42 herman wasserman and anthea garman the double effect of this inherited situation, as explicated by mamdani, plus the ruling party’s inability to rethink citizenship and society beyond racial categories, as shown by chipkin, is that both subaltern south africans and those elites with power to mobilise their middle-class privilege are affected by the undercutting of their rights to set agendas, determine issues and assert their belonging via a variety of identities and speaking positions. the anc’s insistence that it speaks for and represents the black majority does not seem to adequately extend to empowering that majority to speak for itself – except via the five-yearly ballot. simultaneously the government, considering itself the true voice of the majority – a claim backed by high voter turnout and consistent successful performance of the party in each general election – frequently characterises the media as the mouthpiece of “white” elites. this reinforces chipkin’s insight that the state continues to constitute the “demos” of this democracy in the racial terms that characterised the struggle. especially under former president thabo mbeki, this antagonism has been expressed in essentialist identity terms which called into question the right for “white” elites to criticise the government. mbeki for instance reacted to criticism of his administration in an email party newsletter (2005) by saying “the white elite continues to believe that it has a responsibility to provide ‘thought leadership’ to an african population that is ‘intellectually at zero’”. mbeki (2003) has also on occasion reminded black journalists, “you were african before you became journalists and that despite your profession, you are still africans”, a statement taken by many in the media to construct a certain essentialised, “authentic” african voice in order to dismiss critics of the government (see wasserman 2011). this equation of race with loyalty as a south african is a hallmark of public discussions, debates and altercations and is exacerbated and complicated by the news media taking up the self-appointed position of ad hoc political opposition against the anc’s one-party dominance of the political arena (see wasserman 2010a). patrick heller (2009: 134) characterises south africa as having a consolidated formal constitutional democracy but with little capacity among its subaltern citizens to shape public policy. heller is preoccupied with post-colonial nations which have embraced democratic transitions and in which formalised, and even consolidated, democracy does not necessarily lead to active citizenship with depth of content and effects on political process. in south africa, the ruling anc has turned local government structures into a site for the (often inadequate) delivery of desperately-needed and essential services (shelter, water, electricity, schools, clinics) thereby making south africa’s poorest people “clients” dependent on “patronage” (heller 2009: 140). the result, says heller (2009: 137), is a public domain characterised by powerful interests on the one hand “lobbying” for access to the government’s ear and, on the other hand, by “inchoate” local protests when 43 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media service delivery fails. heller (2009: 144) describes this as the “bifurcation” of south african civil society. neither of these two modes of engagement – while they may be successful in getting media attention or the resolution of problems at times – could be considered voice or participation in the full sense that enriched citizenship in a vibrant public sphere is supposed to offer. the media often claim to facilitate citizens’ participation in political processes. to what extent have the south african media succeeded in fashioning new forms of citizenship in the postapartheid era? theorising citizenship in relation to the media in order to explore the relationship between the media and the emergence of new forms of citizenship in democratic south africa, a brief overview of various notions of citizenship will be given, before providing examples of how these notions find manifestation in contemporary south africa. the marshallian schema t.h. marshall (1963), who studied the content of citizenship and its evolving nature post-world war two, proposed three successive stages of modern citizenship: a) civic, which entailed personal liberty, freedom of speech, property rights, access to justice; b) political, involving the vote and the right to hold public office; and c) social, where education, employment and welfare benefits are rights that enable the beneficiaries sufficient social standing to exercise their freedom of speech and to participate more deeply in a democracy. in south africa, with its history of dispossession on political, social and economic levels, these three “stages” have been incorporated into the post-apartheid constitution with the state bearing responsibility for fulfilling the civic, social and political stages simultaneously to enable those most affected by colonialism and apartheid to attain equality as citizens. in other words, the status of citizenship that heller refers to was conferred on all south african citizens across these three categories with the establishment of formal democracy in 1994. but, as hartley (2010: 238) points out, marshall’s schema has never unfolded without problems as each step forward has been “resisted, denied or compromised”. these resistances, denials and compromises can be seen in the south african context as part of the limitations to the practice of citizenship heller refers to. cultural citizenship for media scholars, the question then arises what role the media and other cultural forms may play in enabling citizenship. here the extension of marshall’s schema by toby miller (2007) to include the notion of cultural citizenship is helpful. 44 herman wasserman and anthea garman miller adds “the right to know and speak” to the political, social and civic rights, and – importantly – takes citizenship out of the realm of the state alone to include the private sphere of consumption in the consideration of citizenship. miller argues that “the last two hundred years of modernity have produced three zones of citizenship” (2007: 35): a) the political (the right to reside and vote); b) the economic (the right to work and prosper); and c) the cultural (the right to know and speak). miller broadens the last category to include people who express themselves via media and the markets in ways that do not ostensibly conform to the political and economic forms of citizenship as envisaged in marshall’s classic typology. miller’s contribution is rooted in cultural studies (which he characterises as a study of inequality and identity) and in the relationship between the identity of citizen and consumer. hartley (2010: 238-239) comments about such studies that they encompass claims made by groups that may mobilise under the banner of identity politics and “discourse publics” (referring to michael warner 2005), experiencing themselves as both “citizens and consumers, publics and audiences, workers and traders, all at once”. markers of the membership of these communities and publics may be style and, in the case of subcultures, alternative food, housing and family arrangements (e.g. in the hippie or eco-movement) or fashion. especially for those who have traditionally been excluded from civil, social and political rights, “culture” becomes a “battleground where demands for rights and duties are fiercely asserted and denied” (van zoonen 2005: 8). this form of citizenship as consumption, hartley (2010: 238) points out, might be “startling to social theory, but lived by millions”. media citizenship the cultural dimensions of political citizenship (van zoonen 2005: 9) are of particular interest to scholars investigating the link between media and politics. within this broad category, hartley (2010: 239) sees a phenomenon emerging which he calls “media citizenship”. this form of citizenship is based on the use of especially popular media to construct identities, associative relations and communities. he describes the actors involved as: [t]he very people who have most keenly felt excluded from classic citizenship – groups who uncannily reproduce the classical exclusion of women, slaves (read: workers), strangers (immigrants and ethnic others) and minors (children) – are most likely to engage in ‘citizenship of media’ (hartley 2010: 239). 45 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media media citizenship depends on an active audience in which “co-subjects” organise themselves reflexively in response to a multiplicity of messages and not simply to those considered rational, critical or deliberative in the sense that hartley (2010: 239) characterises as the “modernist minimalism of the habermasian public sphere”. seen in this way, not only the types of media that facilitate “serious”, rational deliberation can be effective in teaching audiences about civic values and virtues, but also those types of media that are ostensibly focused on leisure and entertainment. these popular media texts should therefore also be taken seriously as part of “media citizenship”: despite the categorical messiness, people are not fazed by entertainment and comedy formats alongside informative and decision-making ones – and in this they have athenian antecedents (hartley 2010: 239). soap operas, popular music, television shows and films can provide resources for citizenship and provide an impetus for consumers to discuss and engage the political (van zoonen 2005: 124, 139). hartley asserts that such audiences do not necessarily distinguish between messages aimed at “consumer” subjects and those aimed at “citizen” subjects. the merging or porousness of these identity boundaries becomes a hallmark of this new type of citizenship. the public formations that might coalesce as a result of attention to a message or medium are equally fluid. media citizenship, according to hartley, is “bottom-up, selforganising, voluntarist, tolerant of diversity, and also a great deal more fun for participants than the modernist minimalism of the habermasian public sphere” (hartley 2010: 239, italics added). diy/diwo citizenship the growth of new media technologies have led to the postulation of a further category of citizenship, still within the broader area of cultural citizenship and related to media citizenship, but “more inviduated and privatised than previous types” – one which hartley (2010: 239) calls “diy/diwo citizenship” (do-ityourself or do-it-with-others). the ability of digital connectivity to boost consumer productivity and connect citizens with other citizens who share the same interests, has led to a greater participatory culture, one which facilitates new social networks and collaborations. hartley (ibid.) refers to this form of citizenship as “diy citizenship” because it is dynamic and constructed bottom-up rather than through formal processes. the mass media can no longer “speak both to and for the entire citizenry”, or assume the existence of the public. as a result, hartley says: … much smaller groups can self-organise and self-represent, and act both culturally and politically, without bearing the weight of ‘standing for’ the whole society. as a result, ‘diy citizenship’ is arguably 46 herman wasserman and anthea garman becoming more democratic as individual media (content-platforms) become less popular (hartley 2010: 240). silly citizenship the spread of the internet, the proliferation of technologies and the fragmentation of the audience have led to the further collapse of distinctions between “public and private life, power and entertainment, politics and celebrity, television and viral video” (hartley 2010: 241). this has led to the rise of what hartley calls “silly citizenship”. comedy is a prime vehicle for the construction of this kind of citizenship, with the best known example perhaps jon stewart’s daily show. spoofs, parodies, send-ups and home-made video that go “viral” has become “part of the mediated political landscape” and provides a resource for political identities, news surveillance and civic understanding (hartley 2010: 241). many of these forms can be classified as what thussu (2007) calls “news as entertainment”, or “infotainment”. these forms privilege entertainment, diversion and spectacle over what would usually be considered serious public information. they can also be described as “news lite” or “quasi news” (thussu 2007: 163). these forms can be viewed pessimistically (as thussu tends to do) as depoliticising their audiences, or as providing vehicles for cultural imperialism or the spread of global capitalism. (see louw 2011 for application of this critique to an african context.) these ‘“silly media’” can however also be viewed more optimistically, as providing an alternative public sphere, and read as manifestations of the everyday experiences of and attitudes towards citizenship. south african examples of mediated citizenship how can these categories of mediated citizenship be applied to the post-apartheid south african context? media citizenship hartley’s definition of media citizenship as practiced by “people who have most keenly felt excluded from classic citizenship” (2010: 239), including minorities and strangers, can be applied to groups who have either gained visibility in the media in the post-apartheid era as a result of shifts in the market, or those who perceive to have lost visibility and are trying to reclaim it by organising themselves through media. the first group – who gained visibility in the media – can be exemplified by the readers of tabloid newspapers such as daily sun, daily voice or son, made up largely of the socially and economically (albeit not politically) marginalised black majority who are still largely neglected by the mainstream commercial press. through mass-market tabloids, these readers 47 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media now have access to media narratives that validate their everyday experiences, construct modes of belonging and provide tools to engage the state – even if this remains on the municipal level around service delivery, and the containment of such engagement within a commercial media conglomerate limits the extent to which the political-economic status quo can be challenged (see wasserman 2010b). white afrikaans citizens are an example of a group who perceive themselves as having lost visibility and use the media to reclaim some visible space. with the arrival of democracy white afrikaners lost political power and their identities were thrown in flux. not only were they forced to redefine their linguistic identity in relation to the subaltern (but numerically majority) group of black speakers of the language, they also had to redefine their cultural identities in terms of their new minority status in the country. because this group is still an economic majority, they have access to a wide range of media that assist them in renegotiating their citizenship. the media house naspers, who under apartheid served as a vehicle for afrikaner journalism and literature, has been particularly influential in the reshaping of afrikaans cultural identities post-1994. naspers had to reposition itself radically within a post-apartheid, globalised world (for a discussion on how naspers did this see wasserman 2009). the decline in support for afrikaans radio and television in the public broadcast service led to a proliferation of private media outlets in afrikaans. these include the mainstream print media, private satellite television channels, the entertainment channel kyknet and the music channel mk (originally mk89), as well as a plethora of websites, blogs and social media sites, some of which are quite reactionary and right-wing (see wasserman 2009). other communities in south africa who feel socially marginalised as a result of their immigrant status use online media effectively to construct diasporic identities, organise themselves into community structures and in aid of the struggle to attain and sustain social cohesion. diy citizenship the productivity of smaller groups of the public to “self-organise and selfrepresent, and act both culturally and politically” and which hartley (2010: 240) describes as “diy/diwo citizenship” are also evident in post-apartheid south african media. these groups are associated with the increased participatory nature of new social networks, especially online. online social networks like facebook and twitter have provided space for debates about racism and cultural identity. an example of this is the green skin initiative that used facebook to counter racism (krige 2010). social movements like the treatment action campaign have successfully used new media technologies like websites, email listservs and mobile telephone messaging to build a national and international community of 48 herman wasserman and anthea garman solidarity (see wasserman 2007). mobile phones have emerged in recent years as a technology that holds potential for community-creation. an example of this is the peer-to-peer chat program mxit, where social hierarchies can also be replicated (schoon 2011). like the use of mobile phones to enforce pre-existing social hierarchies (for example gender and class) (schoon 2011), the existence of a range of politically right-wing groups on facebook serves as a cautionary note against overly optimistic notions that new media are solely or mostly used to facilitate the reconstruction of positive forms of being and belonging. silly citizenship in his discussion of “silly citizenship” hartley (2010) emphasises comedy as having the potential to offer new opportunities for imagining one’s being and belonging to a particular community and society. in post-apartheid south africa, there has been a spate of these new formats, where news is presented or analysed from a satirical angle. some examples are the online puppet show za news. in an interesting example of convergence, the show is carried on the website of the commercial newspaper mail & guardian, after the public broadcaster refused to air it (serrao 2009). the satirical television show on e.tv, late night news with loyiso gola, and the online satirical website hayibo are other examples of “silly media” providing opportunities for ways of reflecting on the meaning of citizenship in south africa. advertisements – especially controversial ones like the recent da students’ organisation’s campaign in our future you wouldn’t look twice – quickly becomes “culture jammed” and shared on viral networks (see thomas 2012). the reasons for the recent rise of infotainment in south africa can be ascribed to various factors to do with the shift from apartheid to a democracy. this phenomenon is also related to the transition from an isolated regime to one which is now subject to the flows and contraflows of globalisation. the opening up of south africa’s media landscape after apartheid has made it more susceptible to global influences, aspired to by a local consumer middle class. even if programmes are produced locally, the programming formats are often inherited from abroad. of the same examples mentioned earlier, late night news with loyiso gola is modelled on jon stewart’s the daily show, za news is modelled on a combination of the british show spitting image, the french programme les guignols de l’info (still on air in france), and jim henson and his muppet show (personal communication with thierry cassuto, 2011). the online hayibo bears similarities to the us publication the onion. while content is localised, the “box” for that content stays anglo-american (louw 2011: 37). while the rise of these globalised formats can provide south african media consumers with new opportunities to construct citizenship in a bottom-up, fluid 49 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media and “silly” fashion, they should also be critically examined for perpetuating stereotypes, notions of inequality and social exclusion still remnant from the postapartheid era . the limits of mediated citizenship critics point out that the media itself contributes to the bifurcation of postapartheid society. sparks (2011) extends his critique of the “limits to liberation” (see the title of the book by robins 2005) in south africa to the role of the media. the proclaimed empowerment of civil society that would happen via the media in newly-democratic countries, sparks states, has been “the empowerment of economic and political elites, not ordinary people and their organisations”. while teleological theories of “transitology” (sparks 2011:6) are largely based on the media’s role in established liberal-democratic democracies, sparks points out that in many emerging democracies, including south africa, renewal and transformation have gone hand in hand with a continued focus on elite audiences and a high degree of elite continuity in media institutions. the conflicting views on how the media should contribute to the deepening of post-apartheid south african democracy have included, but are not limited to, divergent views on the media’s role in supporting “development” and the “nation-building” state. as has been the case in other new democracies, the dominant liberal-democratic orthodoxy of media freedom (which finds vocal support among many in especially the commercial media) has been criticised for its potential to aggravate tensions and conflicts and privileging the voices of those who have access to mediated communication (voltmer 2006). the liberal-democratic assumption that a free media would necessarily contribute to democratic deepening has been challenged. friedman (2011) points out that in a post-colonial country, emerging from a long history of violent conflict and marked by continued and severe economic inequalities, a marketised media can contribute to the widening of social and political rifts. instead of facilitating greater inclusion of previously marginalised groups, a profit-seeking media within an increasingly globalised media environment can also contribute to the further exclusion of subaltern, economically-marginalised publics from the mediated public sphere (sparks 2009). the south african media has certainly enjoyed much more freedom in the 18 years of democracy than it ever had under apartheid, where an intricate set of laws curtailed the media’s ability to challenge state legitimacy. (not that all apartheidera media always wanted to challenge the government. most of the afrikaanslanguage press supported the regime, while many of the english-language press titles were owned by mining capital whose interests were served by the system of racial capitalism, and therefore only provided a limited, liberal critique of apartheid). the post-apartheid constitution guarantees freedom of expression, 50 herman wasserman and anthea garman including freedom of the media which makes it harder for the state to restrict the flow of information. further, the opening up of the economy after years of isolation makes it possible for the south african media to become not only a regional powerhouse, but also to compete globally. a notable example is the previously mentioned media conglomerate naspers that now wields influence in media markets across africa, asia and latin america. the commercial vibrancy of the south african media and the new freedoms it enjoy cannot however simply be taken as an indication of a diverse and inclusive mediated public sphere. although all citizens have the constitutionally-guaranteed right to participate freely in this sphere, in practice this participation remains limited. the ability of the south african media to represent the full spectrum of lived experiences and to provide a platform for an inclusive range of south africans to express their voices and contribute to the deepening of post-apartheid democracy remains imperfect. the impediments to the media’s function as an inclusive and diverse space for the practice of citizenship are both structural and political in nature. structurally, the media landscape has seen increased marketisation and conglomeration (see wasserman and botma 2008 for a more detailed discussion and a case study of this process), with a resultant preference among the commercial media for elite audiences. in a country characterised by high inequality, this preference has severe implications for the inclusivity of the media and the diversity of perspectives in public debate. the public broadcaster, the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc) has not escaped this commercialisation (tleane & duncan 2003), and is reliant on advertising revenue to complement state funding and licence fees for its sustainability. democratisation also brought the demise of the once vibrant alternative, antiapartheid press (switzer & adhikari 2000) as donor support dwindled or was directed elsewhere. the result is that communities marginalised under apartheid have lost a range of channels in the print media where their views could be articulated. the post-apartheid government, recognising the need for intervention in a media landscape dominated by the commercial media, set up the media diversity and development agency (mdda). the objective of the mdda is to strengthen community and small commercial media to provide under-served communities with access to the media. the community media sector has however also largely been captured by large conglomerates, and independent community media are struggling to remain viable in this competitive environment. one exception to this picture – and one which is argued to widen the range of options for citizen participation – has been the advent of highly-successful tabloid newspapers. these papers, focusing on the daily lived experience of the poor and 51 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media working class, provide an alternative public sphere, where audiences articulate their disillusionment with the political and social status quo. the tabloids, although being commercial ventures that may be criticised for sensationalising the lives of the poor, aim to capitalise on the upwardly-mobile, lower middle-class, black audience and have managed to highlight the extent to which the economic and socially-marginalised majority remain excluded from the practice of citizenship in mainstream news channels (see wasserman 2010b). politically, the range of perspectives offered by the mainstream media has been shaped by a dominant normative framework that sees the media in adversarial terms, as an unofficial opposition to government. in recent years the sabc has frequently been accused of political bias towards the government and the corporation has also staggered from one management crisis to another. this resulted in a serious loss of legitimacy among citizens hoping to find in the public media an inclusive and vibrant countervailing force for the commercial media. while “media citizenship” has the potential to provide south africans with a broader range of opportunities to belong than the traditional categories of political, social and civic identities, the media is not an equal playing field. media citizenship may still reflect many of the historical divisions and polarisations marking citizenship in the political, social, cultural and civic spheres as well. tabloids, for instance, provide an opportunity for the previously marginalised black working class to gain visibility in the media but these newspapers are not impacting policy debates or influencing mainstream media news agendas, and these papers are still owned by commercial media conglomerates and can therefore not be considered grassroots vehicles for the expression of citizens’ voices. and while celebrating the possibilities for “diy citizenship” which opened up with new media technologies, we have to acknowledge the continued asymmetrical distribution of access as a result of the political economy governing these technologies. the descriptions of changing patterns of social and media behaviour which provoke theorists to talk of cultural citizenship, media citizenship and even diy citizenship, which hartley (2010) offers as advances on marshall’s stages, are fascinating. yet, their usefulness in contexts such as south africa needs to be unpacked and examined. many of the features described by hartley of self-organising publics consuming messages not considered deliberative and of merging of citizen and consumer identities apply here. but the larger question of whether these can enhance citizenship status in relation to the state, and how these can deepen the practice of citizenship in such a way that democracy can be imbedded, must be asked, given south africa’s history of exclusion and authoritarianism. counter-intuitively perhaps, it is on the terrain of “silly citizenship” that mediated contestations of citizenship have managed to impact most notably on the national 52 herman wasserman and anthea garman public sphere. these include the debates around the provocative “diversity” advertising campaign of a local fast food outlet (consumer) (nando’s 2012), president jacob zuma in an art work, the spear (commercial art) (hlongwane 2012) and the cartoonist zapiro’s controversial “rape of lady justice” (mail & guardian 2010). the question remains to what extent these controversies remain limited to an elite, cosmopolitan class (which includes politicians) and divert attention away from more pressing, political-economic issues that require urgent attention in south africa. conclusion nick couldry (2010: 113) makes the point that “we see everywhere a huge explosion of voice – in reality tv, magazine confessions, blogs, social networking sites” but that nevertheless “voice” is losing its value as a mechanism to impact on political processes and shape citizenship. he agrees with ulrich beck’s (1992) assessment that the political and social failures of late modernity force ordinary people to develop “biographical solutions to structural problems” (ibid.). couldry (ibid.) adds that “voice” is about more than just speaking and the growing incitements to speak”. he argues for concerted attention to the conditions which make “effective voice” possible. this is a significant challenge for the south african media. the south african case indicates that formal democratisation of society does not necessarily mean a broadening of platforms for the expression and renegotiation of citizenship. the bifurcation of civil society through an eliteoriented and clientelist politics has been exacerbated by a commercial media that largely contribute to the fragmentation of audiences through its privileging of elite voices. this bifurcation is further entrenched by the failure of public and community media to provide a viable alternative public sphere. the political contestations around the mainstream media have resulted in the media becoming a political player in its own right, representing the interests of narrowly-defined audiences in an antagonistic relationship towards the state. the post-apartheid public sphere in south africa has therefore not yet delivered fully on the promise of the empowerment of its citizens and their expression of voice. 53 speaking out as citizens: voice and agency in post-apartheid south african media endnotes 1 previous versions of this 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(eds). the political economy of transformation of the south african media. creskill, new jersey: hampton press. wasserman, h. & botma, g. 2008. having it both ways: balancing market orientation and political claims at a south african daily newspaper. critical arts 22(1): 1-20. 1. paul schutte revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 1 16 paul schutte* abstract this research addressed two questions: (1) are black and white students rather more different or similar concerning hofstede’s cultural dimensions?; and (2) how should culture differences be accommodated during communication? a questionnaire was administrated among a sample of 1374 respondents, 50% black and 50% white students, from three different universities. the findings provided a glimpse of the “cultural software of the mind” of students who will be employees in different organisations in the near future. the findings indicate that there are more similarities than differences concerning the cultural dimensions, irrespective of biographical, racial or ethnic differences. the vast majority (83%) agreed that some form of accommodation should take place. sixty three different suggestions have been mentioned by all respondents. it is noteworthy that the three with the highest frequency are the same for both groups: knowledge of the other culture, respect for them and the use of english as code for communication. this indicates and proves to a certain extent that, despite the existence of certain differences, these respondents are not only rather similar concerning the cultural dimensions alone, but also in their suggestions on how to accommodate cultural differences during their communication with people from another culture. 1 * professor paul schutte is the director of the school of communication studies at the north-west university’s potchefstroom campus. introduction according to geert hofstede’s ibm research (1987; 2001) conducted more than 20 years ago the “software of the mind” in people from different countries is divergent, especially with regard to five dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and – more recently – long-term orientation. these differences distinguish people from different countries but also certain groups of people within a country from others, the so called sub-cultures. amongst all the many definitions, hofstede (1987: 21) defines culture as the “interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence a human group’s response to its environment”. he collected data from 53 countries during his first survey in 1967 and from 71 countries during the second survey done in 1971-1973 (hofstede 2001: 43-46). with regard to south africa, hofstede (2001: 189) involved only white south african employees of ibm (an organisational context) in his research and thus created the perception that all south africans have the same cultural “software of the mind”. even recent textbooks on intercultural communication uncritically use hofstede’s index and south africa’s ratings against other countries (lustig & koester 2003: 110-138; jandt 2007: 157-182; neuliep 2006: 65-92; samovar, porter & mcdaniel 2007: 198-207). the ratings concerning south africa can be questioned on the basis of the generalisation, which implicate all south africans are the same in spite of the nonrepresentativeness of the respondents used and also the lack of currency, as this was done more than twenty years ago. as opposed to hofstede’s broad generalisation, south africa is often referred to as the rainbow nation, a term coined by archbishop desmond tutu and later adopted by former president nelson mandela. this metaphor describes the country’s diverse multicultural range. it is a country with four broad racial groupings, eleven official languages and growing communities of migrants and immigrants. some researchers (cf. asante, miike & yin 2008: 195 & 206; van der walt 1997; van der walt 2007: 140-149; groenewald 1996: 13-23) also confirm the cultural differences among afrocentric people who originated from africa and those who originated from europe with their more eurocentric cultures. subsequently, questions regarding the nature of differences and/or similarities between south africans emerge. these include the issue whether communication should focus on the accommodation of possible cultural differences (and possibly perpetuate likely stereotypes) or rather on similarities to enhance the preferred unity within the rainbow nation. in the post-apartheid era and also as a result of affirmative action and immigration, people of diverse backgrounds and different languages or sub-cultures are working side by side in most organisations, finding themselves involved in communication across, between and among different cultures. business or organisational communication is thus for a large part intercultural communication. as beamer and varner (2001: xiii) articulate it in their introduction to pinpoint the need for intercultural business communication competence: “in order to understand the significance of a message from someone, you need to understand the way that person looks at the world, and the 2 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace values that weigh heavily in that person’s cultural backpack.” this cultural backpack relates to the dimensions of the so called “software of the mind” (cf. gudykunst & kim 1992: 5). this research endeavours to offer more recent information/data for people in positions where they have to manage employees from different cultures. it could also empower them to come to terms with the cultural diversity within organisations (cf. varner & beamer 2005: 76). therefore, the respondents used in this research were chosen because they could be employed in different organisations within the next two to four years. furthermore, improving organisational coherence and intercultural business communication seems an important reason for the interest in intercultural knowledge. as such, several commercial south african books try to explain the differences between traditional african cultures and so called western cultures in business (boon 1996; lessem 1996; mbigi & maree 1995). against this reality, where it is not clear if the rainbow nation is rather “brothers and sisters under their skin” or really “birds of a different feather”, the research presented in this article revolves around two overarching questions: 1) can the two most extreme racial groups within the so called rainbow nation (i.e. the black and white students/peoples) be perceived as rather more different or more or less similar concerning the cultural dimensions?; and 2) should communication behaviour accommodate differences or rather focus on similarities? data collection and analysis following a pilot study, a final questionnaire was administered among undergraduate students of five different campuses in three provinces during 2008: the university of the free state’s main campus; the north-west university’s mafikeng, potchefstroom and vanderbijl park campuses; and the university of johannesburg’s auckland park kingsway campus. the respondents were asked to complete a five-point lickert scale questionnaire where they had to indicate whether they strongly agreed (1), agreed (2), were unsure (3), didn’t agree (4) or strongly disagreed (5) with statements that were retrieved and adapted from neuliep’s (2006: 79) questionnaire (cf. hofstede 2001: 467474). as hofstede warned that an exact replication is not possible for many reasons, this study does not endeavour to replicate the hofstede research. although general tendencies will be mentioned, this research does not endeavour in the first place to present a general classification or common trend of the two cultural groups concerning the five cultural dimensions. rather, certain individual factors or values of each dimension will be the focus (cf. hofstede 2001: 1-36; bearden, money & nevins 2006: 195-203). eight (8) biographical questions were asked; twenty five (25) statements were phrased, with five each related to the five cultural dimensions; and two (2) questions (one openended) related to the accommodation of people from another cultural while communicating to them. the statements were phrased alternatively in a positive and negative way within an organisational context as this was anticipated to be the context where much of the 3 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace intercultural communication takes place. after working hours most people will be at home where they normally communicate in their mother tongue with family members of the same culture. it was assumed that this convenient sample of students (n = 1374) would provide a glimpse of the “cultural software of the mind” of future employees in different organisations. statistical analysis was performed using spss release 16.0.1 and sas 9.1.3. a comparison of means was performed using independent t-tests with a significance level of 0.05. standard errors of the mean were supplied to ensure that the t-tests are reproducible. small standard errors are also an indication that this sample is likely to be an accurate reflection of the population. this supports any inferences which might be made concerning the population (field 2005: 17). levene’s test (neter, kutner, nachtsheim & wasserman 1996: 112), with a significance level of 0.05, was used to analyse the sample variances of different groups before drawing conclusions from the t-tests. comparisons of the mode score of different groups were also used to highlight possible differences between groups. biographical data of the 1374 respondents, 50% were white and 50% black. of these, 28% were male and 72% female. according to the languages they indicated as their mother tongue, the distribution was as follows: afrikaans: 41%; sesotho and sepedi: 19%; setswana: 16%; isizulu: 9%; english: 7%; isixhosa: 5%; siswati: 1%; xitsonga: 1%; and tshivenda 1%. of all respondents, 8% grew up in a rural area, 44% in a semi-rural/urban area and 48% in an urban area. fifteen percent (15%) consider their family as traditional; 68% as somewhere in between and 17% as modern or non-traditional. eleven percent (11%) perceive their family to be poor, 78% to be average and 11% to be rich. the main distinguishing characteristics of the average respondent in this group can thus be described as either black or white (with an equal probability) with a female majority between the age of 19 and 25. most grew up in a semi-rural or urban area and perceive their upbringing as somewhere between traditional and modern with an average income. the female majority is in line with the current policy of the anc to get more women appointed in government as well as all other sectors. findings the findings concerning the cultural dimensions will be discussed and summarised first, followed by the analysis of the answers to the open-ended question, namely how should one accommodate different cultures during your communication? this will be followed by a reflection and, to conclude, a summary and synthesis, hopefully to evoke further debate on the complex and dynamic issue of cultural dimensions and intercultural communication. 4 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace cultural dimensions masculinity versus femininity on the one hand, this dimension refers to cultures’ maximal or minimal distinction between what men and women are expected to do, and, on the other hand, to the broad tendency of both women and men of certain cultures to value strength, assertiveness, competitiveness and ambition (masculine) rather than attributes such as affection, emotionality, quality of life and compassion (feminine) (lustig & koester 2003: 127; samovar et al. 2007: 273; hofstede 1987; jandt 2007: 171). as a group, the respondents agreed that there should not be much difference between the work performed by women and men in the workplace. they preferred a job which leaves enough personal time to have quality of life and good relationships rather than one with a high income and material success. the respondents further agreed that managers should be more concerned with the quality of life of their employees. although the mode score indicated that the majority agreed that competition among employees does more good than harm, the mean score (3.48, standard error = 0.0306) indicated that they were unsure about the value of competition in the workplace. the mean and the mode scores indicated a stronger tendency toward a feminine dimension in both groups: blacks: 1.97 (standard error = 0.035) and whites: 1.99 (standard error = 0.03). this tendency may be slightly biased due to the 72% female respondents. although the female respondents showed a slightly greater tendency towards the feminine dimension (mean = 1.9, standard error = 0.025) than men (mean = 2.3, standard error = 0.049, with a significant difference: a p-value of less than 0.01), both men and women indicated a tendency towards a feminine dimension. while the whites just agreed with all statements, the blacks all strongly agreed and therefore the black respondents indicated a slightly less pronounced feminine tendency. as mentioned above, this research was not a replication of the research done by hofstede. comparisons can therefore only be made tentatively. however, it is interesting to take note that the above finding regarding the future employees differs significantly from hofstede’s findings, which placed south africa as the 13th most masculine amongst 53 countries (hofstede 2001: 286). uncertainty avoidance this dimension deals with the extent or degree to which people try to avoid uncertainty or feel threatened by unknown situations. normally this would create nervous stress and would be avoided by maintaining strict codes or formal rules of behaviour and a belief in absolute truths. members of high uncertainty avoidance cultures are aggressive, emotional, compulsive and intolerant, while members of cultures that are tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity have lower stress levels, are contemplative, accept dissent and are more willing to take risks (jandt 2007: 175; gudykunst & kim 2003: 74; neuliep 2006: 82-84). there was no significant difference between the racial and language groups among the respondents regarding the concept of uncertainty avoidance. the mean score of 3.49 5 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace (standard error = 0.0185) showed moderate uncertainty avoidance, although the majority agreed that they felt nervous when they are uncertain what is expected of them when working in a group, and were not comfortable when they were unable to interpret a situation. that 52% agreed that rules should not be broken even if it would be in the best interest of the company serves as an indication of a slightly higher than moderate uncertainty avoidance regarding this aspect. although the general tendency leans towards a rather moderate to high uncertainty avoidance, the different scores indicate a variety with regard to uncertainty avoidance amongst these students, with the black students slightly higher (mean = 3.63, standard error = 0.025) than the white students (mean = 3.35, standard error = 0.025). the difference was significant with a p-value of less than 0.01. thus, although the order of the difference is not that high (only 0.28 difference), the white students are more tolerant of uncertainty or ambiguity. although the majority agreed that they would prefer a manager who would rather give broad guidelines than detailed descriptions with regard to how to do their job, the majority of white students with a traditional upbringing did not agree with this notion, preferring detailed instructions. in hofstede’s study, south africa scored on the lower part of the scale pointing to a moderate to low level of uncertainty avoidance (39/40th lowest of 53 countries; hofstede 2001: 151). however, the results indicate a slightly higher than moderate avoidance of uncertainty. power distance power distance refers to the way members of a culture deals with inequalities. hofstede (1987) believes power distance is learned early in families. cultures with high power distance accept power as a basic necessity and stress coercive or referent power with respect for authorities while members of low power distance cultures prefer expert or legitimate power and believe power should only be used in exceptional instances and would rather use fewer levels of hierarchies within organisations (gudykunst & kim 1992: 46; jandt 2007: 172; samovar et al. 2007: 271-273). the results indicate a preference towards an average to low power distance, with white respondents indicating a slightly higher power distance (black mean = 2.36, standard error = 0.023 and white mean = 2.72, standard error = 0.023). the difference is significant, though, with a p-value of less than 0.01. the majority of respondents disagreed that people in higher management levels deserve more respect than their subordinates, while they agreed that they would easily ask for a salary increase if necessary and would express their disagreement with managers in higher positions. one difference, however, is that 50% of black students would not accept decisions made by higher management if they disagreed, while 45% of white students would accept such decisions. most students were unsure whether it is acceptable for an organisation to have many management levels and hierarchies to function properly which indicates a moderate power distance. it is also possible that their lack of working experience could be the reason for their uncertainty. 6 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace according to hofstede’s findings (hofstede 2001: 87), south africa scored more or less in the middle regarding this dimension and could thus be regarded as a country with a moderate power distance. hofstede’s ranking is to a certain extent similar to what was found in this study, although the respondents – especially black students – would prefer a smaller power distance. individualism versus collectivism individualism refers to cultural values that emphasise the individual’s identity, rights and needs over the collective identity, rights and needs of the larger group. the former appreciates the “i-identity” while the latter emphasises the “we-identity” (orbe & harris 2008: 205-208; gudykunst & kim 2003: 73). it is noteworthy to mention that, according to van der walt (1997) and groenewald (1996), african cultures are stereotyped as collectivistic and people originating from europe as individualistic. according to the mean and mode scores of the students, both groups showed more collectivistic than individualistic tendencies with the white students (mean = 2.7, standard error = 0.025) slightly less collectivistic than the black students (mean = 2.47, standard error = 0.029). the majority of students in both groups disagreed that decisions made by individuals are usually better than decisions made by groups. they agreed that they would usually take their own group and their family into consideration in decision-making even if they would not benefit from the decision. however, one difference between the two racial groups is that 50% of black students agreed that acknowledgement of success at work should be given to the team rather than to the one person who contributed mostly to the success, while 55% of whites didn’t agree with this statement and would rather acknowledge the individual in this case. according to dodd (1991: 76) and hampden-turner and trompenaars (2000: 95) individualistic cultures can be characterised by a sense of personal guilt, while collectivistic cultures are known as shame cultures where it is more important not to lose face. in contrast to the other rather collectivistic responses, 87% of all students strongly disagreed with the statement “there is no harm in cheating society as long as people do not find you out”. the general findings (that these young respondents indicated more collectivistic than individualistic tendencies with the white students slightly less collectivistic) also differ from hofstede’s results, which considered south africa as a rather individualistic country – in fact, as the 16th most individualistic amongst 53 countries (hofstede 2001: 215). long-term orientation this dimension was not included in hofstede’s initial research, but he has acknowledged that the four previously described dimensions have a western bias. the time-orientation dimension is based on the work of a canadian, m. h. bond, who has lived in asia, and is related to the confucian work dynamism (hofstede 2001: 356; jandt 2007: 176; lustig & koester 2003: 130). this dimension refers to one’s point of reference about life and work. cultures that nurture a long-term orientation admire 7 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace thrift, persistence, “savings, perseverance toward results and willingness to subordinate oneself for a purpose” (jandt 2007: 176). conversely, a short-term orientation tends to have an appreciation of tradition, personal stability, less savings and maintaining the “face” of self and others. all respondents agreed that they should cultivate the habit of saving money and use resources sparingly, while perseverance in spite of difficulties was considered as very important. the only difference found was that blacks (mean = 2.39, standard error = 0.05) would rather focus on doing well every day than spend time to plan for the future, while whites (mean = 3.09, standard error = 0.042) disagreed with this view. the big difference is not only confirmed by a p-value of less than 0.01, but is also statistically confirmed when comparing the modes, with the majority of black students strongly agreeing with the statement, while the majority of white students did not agree. both groups were also unsure about whether what could happen in the future is more important than what has happened in an organisation’s past. thus, both groups’ responses leaned towards a long-term orientation while the black students’ responses suggested a tendency towards a more medium-term orientation, as noted above. hofstede has no score or rating for south africa where long versus short-term orientation is concerned, as this dimension was not part of the original research. he mentions, though, that “africa, and particularly africa south of the sahara is a development economist’s headache” and predicts that the administration of a possible questionnaire would “see whether any new dimension emerges that might explain why western recipes for development don’t seem to work in africa” (hofstede 2001: 369). suggestions for employers masculinity versus femininity although female respondents showed a slightly greater tendency towards the feminine dimension than men, and black respondents indicated a slightly less pronounced feminine tendency, both men and women indicated a tendency towards femininity. therefore managers should be more concerned with the quality of life of their employees as they prefer a job which leaves enough personal time to have quality of life and good relationships rather than one with a high income and material success. employers should be cautious not to initiate competition between different groups as this can create more tension than motivation for improvement. it seems that a peopleoriented rather than a task-oriented manager will be more acceptable for future employees. uncertainty avoidance the results showed a slightly higher than moderate uncertainty avoidance as the majority agreed that they felt nervous when they are uncertain what is expected of them when working in a group, and were not comfortable when they were unable to interpret 8 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace a situation. managers should wisely give clear instructions using regular communication opportunities with open channels when innovative undertakings or new tasks should be completed, especially when it includes group activities. especially black employees as well as whites with a traditional upbringing are less tolerant of uncertainty or ambiguity, preferring detailed instructions. otherwise, when it comes to individual tasks, the average employee will prefer broad and clear guidelines rather than detailed descriptions with regard to how to do their job. power distance the average employee prefers an average to low power distance, with whites indicating a slightly better tolerance for a higher power distance. managers should take note that employees will easily ask for a salary increase if necessary and will express their disagreement with them. the employee of the future seems to be more assertive and expects the same respect for all workers even if they are subordinates. compared to their black colleagues, white employees will more readily accept decisions with which they do not agree. thus, consultation and consensus seeking should be used, and, if necessary, expert or legitimate power should be utilised during persuasion. individualism versus collectivism as both groups showed more collectivistic than individualistic tendencies, with the white students slightly less collectivistic than the black students, managers should realise that most employees will usually take the group and/or their family into consideration in decision-making. decisions based on individual basis should be the exception and not the rule. one difference between the two racial groups, though, would imply that acknowledgement of success at work should be given to the team when black employees are involved while the individual who contributed mostly to the success should be acknowledged when white employees are involved. this leaves the manager with a dilemma when both races are involved in a successful project. long-term orientation both groups’ responses lean towards a rather long-term orientation while the black students’ responses suggest a tendency towards a more medium-term orientation. during strategic planning managers should take this tendency into consideration. after plans for the future have been decided on, these strategic plans, as well as the long-term vision and mission of the organisation should be communicated to employees to enable them to “see” their day to day work as an essential part of the bigger picture. it is encouraging for managers on all levels that all respondents agree that they should cultivate the habit of saving money and use resources sparingly, while perseverance in spite of difficulties is considered as very important. general reflection if one takes the responses of the students into consideration, there are more significant similarities than differences regarding the cultural dimensions, irrespective of biographical, racial or ethnic differences. contrary to the diversity within the country 9 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace and the anticipated differences, as stated above, this is in line with a report released in 2008 by the presidency’s policy coordination and advisory services: a nation in the making: a discussion document on macro social trends in south africa. the report mentioned that since the end of apartheid there has been a growing sense of nationhood in this race-conscious country, with a large number of divergent people seeing themselves as primarily south african and not as members of specific racial or ethnic groups. except for the dimension of power distance, this study suggests that this younger sample of the rainbow nation is different in respect of the other mentioned dimensions from hofstede’s generalised ranking of “south africa”. hofstede’s dimensions are based on the idea that the different groups in south africa are homogenous and do not change over time. quite often, these dimensions are used uncritically despite the fact that they were developed as early as 1980 (jensen 2008: 3). individual cultural values or dimensions are a much more complicated, multidimensional concept than onedimensional measures of general national cultural values. another deduction from the results indicates that the general assumption and statements regarding the “significant” differences between the so called afrocentric and eurocentric cultures (asante et al. 2008: 195 & 206; van der walt 1997; van der walt 2007: 140-149; groenewald 1996: 13-23) as far as the youth is concerned, are not that significant. on the contrary, it proved to be rather more similar. the highly negative response from all the students to the statement regarding cheating or betraying society is, however, encouraging in a country where cheating, fraud, bribery and corruption is part of everyday life. for example, max du preez (2009: 5) states that corruption has become systemic and an integral part of the south african culture. the issue is: will these students actually put their money where their mouths are? only future conduct will tell. as the saying goes: it is easier said than done. this also relates to a question in an editorial article in beeld (anon. 2009: 12): “regte geluide, maar dade sal deurslag gee” (right sounds, but the deeds would be conclusive proof). despite the similarities that were found between the two racial groups in this study, intercultural communication will not be without stumbling blocks or prejudice, ethnocentrism and racism. the differences in appearance and background of these two racial groups, or appearance heterophily (dodd 1994: 178-182), unfortunately often play a more significant role than the dimensional homophily between racial and ethnic groups. although it seems that acculturation has taken place to a certain extent between black and white students, the imagined and/or real experiences of the apartheid past, certain applications of affirmative action, fraud and crime (which is mostly perceived as racially motivated) and the lack of service delivery, to name a few, create fear within the white minority groups that the black majority will do unto them what their white forefathers did during the apartheid era. 10 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace such differences regarding the “positions of experiences”, a concept in the post structural model of iben jensen (2008), come into play here and should be addressed in intercultural communication within organisations. it is not possible to ignore communicators’ daily experiences in the context of intercultural communication. according to jensen, minorities often struggle to establish a position separate from the majorities in the media as well as in everyday life, which can be a crucial stumbling block in intercultural communication and overshadow the dimensional similarities. therefore, the perpetuation of stereotypes and possible differences accompanied by the well-meant accommodation thereof in communication might confirm the social inequalities of the past in south africa as a country in transition trying to construct a new identity of one nation in the post-apartheid era. thus, the critical debate should be concerned with whether and how these similarities and perceived or real differences should decide the content and manner of intercultural communication. communication accommodation the last section of the questionnaire focused on the issue of whether one should accommodate your fellow communicator’s culture. it concluded with the open-ended question: if agreed, how should it be done? the vast majority of students (83%) strongly agreed that some form of accommodation should take place. there was a high measure of consensus between the frequencies of responses from white (n = 1072) and black (n = 1039) students with regard to the openended question to give suggestions as to how one should accommodate someone from another culture during communication. the responses were coded by assigning the same code number to more or less similar suggestions and by grouping similar suggestions together. sixty three different but related suggestions were coded. only the eight with the highest frequency are mentioned in this article. the three responses with the highest frequency were the same for all students. to know or learn more about the other’s culture received the highest response rate (96.4% of all respondents). many added that one should adjust accordingly. this response is in line with berger and calabrese’s uncertainty reduction theory (jandt 2007: 72; cf. rogers 1999) where the communicator feels insecure or anxious because little is known about the other culture. correct and relevant knowledge will reduce the possible anxiety and indicate what to expect and how to behave. the response with the second highest frequency (94.1%) focused on respect for other cultures, even if one does not always agree. thus, knowledge is fine but not sufficient as respect for differences should be part of the communication behaviour. as houston and wood (1996: 54) state, a culture should respect how another culture interprets experiences. the third most mentioned behaviour involved the use of english as communication code (67%). this seems to be very relevant for south africa with its eleven official 11 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace languages. english, while being the language of business, politics and the media, and the country’s lingua franca, ranked only joint fifth out of eleven as a home language. in spite of the fact that the use of english, which is a second and third language for most, can cause many misunderstandings during communication as the command of english varies from very good to very poor, most regard it as the preferred language code to communicate with someone from another culture. the next priority, fourth for the speakers of african languages (38.2%), was to be able to speak the mother tongue of your communication partner. white students (12.1%) rated the priority of this suggestion lower (5th). the issue would be that one should make a choice about which language to use. should it be the code of the person in the socially perceived subordinate position or the code of the perceived superior partner/manager? the fourth most frequent response for the white students (13.1%) focused on the specific use of the language code utilised, namely to avoid jargon or slang, and to speak slower, articulate clearer and choose words carefully. according to the bernstein (1966) hypothesis (cf. dodd 1994: 134-136) one should thus adapt to the social context and use an elaborated code and not a restricted code (shorthand) when speaking. this should not be perceived as “speaking down” to a colleague, but as trying to accommodate the fact that their mother tongue is not used in the communication. this was the ninth most frequent response from the speakers of african languages (26.4%). fifth for blacks (35.3%) and sixth for whites (10.3%) is the endeavour to know and accommodate the perspective, viewpoint or context of the other culture, or, as some phrased it, “to know where they are coming from”. this response relates to a certain extent to the first two recommendations above: knowledge and respect. to know the customs and more overt aspects of the culture are not enough. their values, world view and religious beliefs also need to be understood. apart from comprehending the more cognitive aspects of the other culture, more black students (1.1% while 0.1% for whites) also mentioned that one should empathise with the feelings/emotions of the other as part of accommodating another culture. the accommodation of the other’s perspective relates directly to “cultural presuppositions”, another one of the analytical tools of jensen’s model (2008: 8) mentioned earlier. it refers to knowledge, experiences, feelings and opinions the communicators have towards people they do not regard as members of their own community with which they identify themselves. this implies a “deeper” understanding of one’s own prejudices to counter the normal process where people from another culture are often negatively characterised on the basis of one’s own values. another response (7th for white students [9.5%] and 8th for black students [26.8%]) mentioned the importance of feedback in the sense that one should ask if you do not understand something or detect that you are not well understood. this response relates to the notion that one should listen even more carefully in intercultural interactions (7th for black [27.2%] and 10th for white students [7.5%]). if one listens carefully, 12 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace misunderstandings can more easily be detected and corrected by using feedback. attentive listening also communicates respect and concern for your fellow colleague. the next response involves nonverbal communication: 9.5% for whites (8th) and 22.5% for blacks (11th). both groups mentioned that, on the one hand one should avoid nonverbal behaviour that could offend another culture – especially with regard to eye contact and personal space – and on the other hand, use “positive” nonverbal behaviour that will encourage the partner’s involvement. although the concept positive nonverbal behaviour was not articulated in detail in most answers, it would imply at least an open body stance or position and appropriate greeting (i.e. any nonverbal behaviour which would communicate attentiveness, openness and acceptance of the other person). although 63 different suggestions have been mentioned by all respondents, it is noteworthy that the three with the highest frequency are the same for both groups: knowledge of the other culture, respect for them and the use of english as code for communication. the frequency of the other responses differs slightly, but not significantly between the two groups. this indicates and proves to a certain extent that these respondents are not only more like “brothers and sisters under the differences of their skin” regarding the cultural dimensions alone, but also in their suggestions on how to accommodate cultural differences. one difference worth mentioning, though, is that most black respondents can speak apart from english on average three to four other african languages. a few even speak eight of the official languages, while the afrikaans and english mother tongue speakers mostly speak only these two languages, and, with a few exceptions, no african language. during apartheid, language was to a certain extent used as an instrument of division and control. in the new democratic dispensation, however, language should become instrumental in the effort to unite its previously divided communities, at least within a diverse organisational context. to learn at least one african language, depending on the specific region/province, should be a priority for afrikaans and english mother tongue speakers to improve intercultural communication especially within the workplace. this will enhance intercultural competence and demonstrate respect for one another. it is positive to note that the majority of respondents phrased their suggestions in a “you-oriented” manner, in other words, with the intention to accommodate the other person, while only 3% were “i-oriented” expecting others to accommodate them. conclusion as people, even from the same sub-culture, are unique, no prescribed formulas can be given regarding this complex issue. only guidelines or suggestions have been and can be deducted from the above data. people in organisations concerned with communication could apply these above-mentioned suggestions within their specific context while taking the nature of the organisation into consideration. alternatively, human resource managers can interpret the data from their point of view and experience to enhance intercultural competence. communicators should search, articulate and 13 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace emphasise commonalities and similarities, since there are quite a number, as these findings indicate. hopefully, that will draw people closer together. the tendency towards similarities rather than actual differences is indicative of the idea that a model of cultural synergy should be pursued. differences should be valued, and people should be encouraged not to ignore them but to respect and understand these differences. the dynamics that can arise from differences through interaction should be used to fill the gap between the possible cultural differences within the mentioned cultural dimensions. maybe one criterion for intercultural competence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas or different cultural values, your own and those of the other, and still retain the ability to function while tolerating the differences. although one should take the bigger picture and co-cultures into consideration, one should also never forget that every person is not necessarily typical of the stereotyped perceptions of a certain cultural group. both employers and employees should accept their individual role and collective responsibility and accept responsibility for their behaviour within a diverse working environment in striving for intercultural competence. all participants must be aware that they should be actively involved and play the role of both addresser/sender and addressee/receiver at the same time, a notion that demands a transactional alertness and commitment. the sometimes unpredictable context of intercultural interaction requires the ability to adjust and fashion your communication behaviour to fit, ideally, the setting, the other person and yourself. the notion and freedom of trial and error should come into play rather than using strict formulas. in conclusion, the small standard errors indicate that the sample used is likely to be an accurate reflection of the population used in this study (field 2005: 17). this supports the findings concerning the youth of south africa who will be employees within the next few years. the general responses create cautious optimism regarding intercultural communication in the future. to get a more complete picture of the “software of the mind” across the whole spectrum of the rainbow nation – younger and older people – more research with other target populations needs to be undertaken. more complete cultural knowledge will enhance the ability to improve on intercultural communication competence in all spheres of life. 14 revisiting hofstede among south african students: some intercultural communication guidelines for the workplace references anon. 2009. regte geluide, maar dade sal deurslag gee. beeld 19 may: 12. asante, m. k., miike, y. & yin, j. 2008. the global intercultural communication reader. new york: routledge. beamer, l. & varner, i. 2001. intercultural communication in the global workplace. new york: mcgraw-hill/irwin. bearden, w. o., money, r. b. & nevins, j. l. 2006. multidimensional versus unidimensional measures in assessing national culture values: the hofstede vsm 94 example. journal of 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tertiary institution communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 163-179 dionne van reenen* abstract while south africans have made some significant social and political progress since the first democratic elections in 1994, there are still divisions1 in this recovering society, and the aftermath of apartheid has not subsided as quickly as we may have hoped. this conflicted socio-political history has created a confusing web in which the people of south africa find themselves entangled as they attempt to reconcile themselves with this history, while striving for authenticity in their lived experience. in becoming more aware of how various groups of south africans might have come to conceptualise their position in society, it may prove useful to consider a metaphorical model of morality proposed by american cognitive linguist george lakoff2 (1990; 2002; 2008), who attempted to resolve some major difficulties in american politics by making the unconscious conscious, as the problems begin in the minds of citizens. this article interfaces a version of this metaphorical model with johann visagie’s postural model3 of humanity in an attempt at moving beyond personal and political narratives towards opening a constructive, licensed discourse. the article was originally written in response to the 2009 and 2010 colloquia4 at the university of the free state (ufs) in bloemfontein. the colloquia served to address issues of racial conflict in society and on campus. since then, the ufs has made huge inroads in social reconciliation. however, issues such as these remain pertinent in all levels of south african society, and this article, although presented here as a case study of the ufs, could be applied to similar situations elsewhere where problems still persist. * dionne van reenen lectures in the department of philosophy at the university of the free state in bloemfontein 162 dionne van reenen introduction it is important to state from the outset that this is not an attempt to transcribe american politics onto a particular south african model as the uniqueness of the south african political situation cannot be disregarded. it is lakoff’s methodology – employed in analysing politics and interpreting how people talk and how people think about morality – that forms this article’s point of departure, rather than his own liberal agenda which he makes quite clear in his political publications. it is left entirely up to the reader to determine whether or not to pursue such ambitions and is not of chief concern here. however, it could be of possible interest that lakoff (and those like him) would have witnessed, and perhaps taken on, the massive paradigm shift in the intellectual and social climate of the sixties (lakoff 2002: 318), as it is termed in american popular culture, which swung quite dramatically away from authoritarianism and establishmentarianism towards an ethic of nurturance so that people may feel less alienated in society. in would be in this context that the new models of ethical conduct in society would have split off from the mainstream and began to flourish into what americans have today. the objective, in this instance, is to form crossing points between complimentary perspectives of at least two different philosophical sub-theories in order for us to reach a more inclusive solution to the problem of deep communicative divisions. the article was originally written in response to the 2009 and 2010 colloquia at the university of the free state (ufs) in bloemfontein, south africa. the colloquia served to address issues of racial conflict in society and on campus. since then, the ufs has made huge inroads in social reconciliation. however, issues such as these remain pertinent in all levels of south african society, and this article, although presented here as a case study of the ufs, could be applied to similar situations elsewhere where problems still persist. lakoff applies what he has garnered from his work as a cognitive scientist to american politics which he believes is about the unconscious worldviews and moral systems of liberals and conservatives and which, he suggests, are deeply embedded in different models of the family. he frames the deeper question as follows: “do models of the family and family-based moral systems allow one to explain why liberals and conservatives take the stands they do on particular issues?” (2002: 12). lakoff comes up with two distinct family-based models which will be familiar to readers of his work: that of the strict father for conservatives, and that of the nurturant parent for liberals. he goes on to do an extensive analysis of what these models mean in american politics, citing many events and examples of language used in various contexts. he also explains how these models are not always exclusive but may be combined in different ways for various groups. would it be useful if, hypothetically, we pose the question in a specifically south african (and possibly a ufs) framework? could we ask something like: “do 163 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution models of the family and family-based moral systems allow one to explain why different groups in this country take the stand they do on particular issues?” during the apartheid era, the nurturant parent model might have been valid for some but, this author would suggest, only for a very small sector of the population5. it seems more plausible that, given our largely conservative patriarchal family systems, most south africans would have been able to identify with, and operate within, a strict father model. it could even be reasoned that many more south africans would identify with what one could call an abusive father model. this term may appear a little extreme to some, but it is useful for the sake of the thought experiment of the university. it is important to note that the issue is not that students literally see university authorities as abusers, but we need to determine if they are thinking in this way because of unconsciously formed models. if so, what should all members of the university do about that? interfacing lakoff’s and visagie’s models might prove useful in an endeavour to construct critique and pave the way for fruitful research possibilities that inform what would be acceptable or not in a total representation of working reality. conceptual metaphors in a prior publication, metaphors we live by (1999; 2003), lakoff and mark johnson discuss the pervasiveness of metaphor in our everyday conceptual systems, rather than seeing it as a tool reserved for literary elegance or panache (cf. lakoff & turner 1989). metaphors necessarily structure the way we perceive, think and act – indeed they govern our very functioning in the world, especially when we are attempting to understand complex occurrences. following their theory, what we do is to identify a partial relationship of identification between two separate concepts, i.e. a is b. the two concepts are different from each other but we use certain selected parts of each in our structuring of the metaphor which result in hiding or highlighting certain features. we are not born with (innate) metaphors in our brain, but they form quickly and they develop over time and are “grounded in our embodied structures of meaning” (johnson 1994: 1). consider one of lakoff and johnson’s many examples, more is up: from the time a baby sees the level of milk rising in the bottle, the circuitry of this metaphor is connected in the brain. due to repeated recurrence over time these circuits become more permanent, and hundreds and hundreds of such metaphors are similarly formed in our brains. most of our conceptual structuring is not literal. we do not actually think that “more” literally means “up”, but we mentally map the concept of “more” onto the concept of “verticality” in order that we may better understand and express the more abstract concept. through the constant and repeated mapping of such concepts, they assume an unconscious status in our minds and we take them for granted in political and moral discourse without even being 164 dionne van reenen aware of it most of the time. lakoff and johnson frequently assemble commonly used examples as well as less typical examples employed by those with more flair, and they form general metaphors with which we can all identify quite easily. relevance for a south african context one general metaphor lakoff mentions which concerns us here is the state is a family. “family” is the source domain with which we are all intimately familiar, and “the state” is the target domain which is abstract and which we experience more difficulty in grasping and communicating. we could identify our own examples of the nation as family metaphor, for example when we refer to “coming home” we could mean either our family home or our home country. many south africans talk about their “fatherland” or the “land of their ancestors” or the “land of their forefathers” and refer to fellow citizens as “brothers” and “sisters”. there are many everyday expressions which convey the idea that the state and its members are conceptualised in terms of family ties – the government being the parent and the people being the children. another example is a 1996 documentary titled mandela: son of africa, father of a nation. during a recent ceremony at the ufs in which emeritus archbishop desmond tutu received an honorary doctorate, the vice-chancellor and rector, prof. jonathan jansen, called tutu a “great son of south africa”. in philosophical discourse, this metaphor dates back to the dialogues of plato, and the character of socrates uses it explicitly in his proposal of the social contract relationship between a government and its citizens in the crito (plato 1993: 87. trans.). the family metaphor in the south african historical context the crimes of apartheid are by now quite well-documented and for the present purpose of recognising particular functions in conceptual systems they will not be addressed in any great detail. in terms of generalised racial categories, the architects and executors of the apartheid system were largely white male6 authorities, while those denigrated were people of colour. in terms of the present south african society this resulted in many members still seeing white people as possessing the power and capability, while people of colour are not, and this categorisation affects thought and behaviour. from various media, conferences and conversations it is evident that many south africans still identify themselves, and others, in these groups, be it consciously or unconsciously, correctly or incorrectly. understandably this can cause massive frustration on many levels for both the identifier and the identified. the problem of racial categorisation is that it positively allows for a particular group to celebrate its unique features, yet at the same time it negatively allows for divisions within the larger group which could result in privileging or maligning of individuals within an institution. 165 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution the family metaphor in the context of the lifeworld7 of the ufs given the above-mentioned rationale it is not too much of a leap to work from the assumption that that this type of metaphorical (partial) identification might also happen with the teacher-student relationship as it occurs within the context of the university, which is also structured like a mini-society. since the fourteenth century, the mode of thinking in the west has been significantly dominated by the effects of nominalism, which denies the real existence of universals. we are by now well aware of the resulting overemphasis on the individual and repudiation of abstract entities thereby supporting the opposite trends of subjectivism and particularism in philosophy. groups have been perceived as fictitious constructs, but more recently, there has been some recognition that organisations are indeed conceptualised as having some kind of collective subjectivity and are identified and handled as such, which is why we can hold them responsible for their actions. an example would be a motor vehicle manufacturing company that could be held legally liable should it be proven that a production error has caused injury to a person. lakoff’s analysis supports this view in that he acknowledges that people do think of states and institutions as subjective entities (which can be “guilty”, and “suffer” or “die’), therefore they think of them metaphorically, but may be unconsciously experienced and characterised as actual. the ufs is an institution that comes out of a conservative patriarchal tradition. up until about a decade ago, the lecturing staff would very much have represented the members of our government in the apartheid era, i.e. mostly white afrikaans christian males8. this is in direct opposition to the school system, where there were (and still are) many females in teaching roles. also, most south african learners were (and are) not habitually taught by people outside of their own race at school level. one can therefore well imagine how difficult and awkward it might be for a presently more diverse university student body to encounter educators from a different background for the first time in their individual learning process. the university is a family metaphor will probably come into play here as mentors or lecturers are often considered to be a guide to their students, as well as being seen by some as a kind of parental authority in the learning processes of individuals. this view would also resonate with the observations of foucault who noted that the pastoral power traditionally administered by the church has been taken over, in modern western culture, by the state and its institutions including the family and the university as well as other power networks (in rabinow 1984: 64, 263). now, if the teacher in question happens to be a white afrikaans male and the student in question, from a different race and/or gender, has made an unconscious mental identification between teacher and father – what might that entail? 166 dionne van reenen the strict father firstly, let us take the metaphorical identification of the strict father family model of morality. as suggested by the lakoff model, those roles would be clearly defined in a strict relational system, with little room for manoeuvring for either party. the role of teacher is one of (knowing) authority, there to teach the (unknowing) student what the student needs to know for the course, and the student is expected to attend classes as required and submit to the learning process in a respectful and obedient fashion. the communication process almost exclusively flows in one direction – the teacher delivers the learning material and the student listens and takes notes, and completes various assignments as designated by the teacher. furthermore, senior members in the system make the rules and determine the policy of the institution to which all subordinate members must adhere. those who do not adhere to the rules are punished. taking care of students (and other such mentoring functions as discussed below) is relegated to a minor task in comparison to the central authoritative function of the teacher. one should note that the above model is an idealisation and may vary somewhat in actuality, e.g. that the authoritative role may be filled by a woman, but the model itself will be familiar to people who grew up in south africa9, even if it does not fit their personal experience exactly; and, obviously, there may be exceptions in institutions that in no way adhere to the model at all. however, careful attention must be paid so that one or two exceptional examples are not used to determine the central case. what the model wants to get at, is “…a technical recognition of the nature of the concept and the way it functions in our conceptual systems” (lakoff 2002: 71). what we can then roughly formulate from the model for our purposes is that the student is encouraged to obey the rules, and s/he will not do well in the system, or his/her profession in the future, if s/he does not obey the rules. discipline is administered in order to develop the student’s sense of self-discipline for the future because this is perceived as a necessary skill to survive in the world which is seen as a difficult and competitive environment. the process of recognising a legitimate authority is carried out beyond the mini-society of the university into the world which is then perceived as hierarchical with some people filling the role of authority and others filling the roles of subordinates. what’s more, the authority figure sees himself as carrying out his duty when exercising his authority and does not typically accept what he may perceive as insubordination. the abusive father the hypothetical abusive father family model could be loosely formulated as follows: he would exercise power in all levels of society and have expressed it for its own sake. at the most negative end of the scale, this expression has come 167 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution with the intent of self-definition and self-promotion and has not been exercised in genuine relationship with other members of the society, not unlike the antisocial personality (pdm 2006: 36). their relationship with others is largely characterised by fear, manipulation, aggression, violence, and exploitation to serve their own ends. this abusive father persona may come across as charismatic and engaging, but that façade often hides a far more sinister and insincere character with little honest connection to others. they have minimal feeling for the needs of others and lose interest in their targets when their purpose is served. their lack of remorse can be astounding. the difference between this model and the strict father model is that it is driven, not by straightforward authority, but by fear-inducing domination. the relationship is not characterised by simple establishment hierarchy, but by a more cruel or ominous power over the other. once people have suffered at the hands of an abusive authority, the ritualised decimation of personal dignity leaves scant hope of a balanced, well-formed relationship based on mutual trust and respect. the guilty authorities during the apartheid era were in such a relationship with many members of their society. many members who suffered abuse during this time have found the path to recovery to be a rocky one with feelings of anger enclosing them and forgiveness near impossible. on the other hand, many members who were favoured, or advantaged, have had to handle feelings of guilt, resentment and remorse, and many have claimed not to know what was happening (with varying levels of sincerity). the outcome is a lifeworld characterised by confusion – confusion about where members are to position themselves and about what is expected of them, as well as what they can expect from others, and how to conduct themselves appropriately under the new order. indeed, the official truth and reconciliation website states, “no section of society escaped from these abuses.” possible prototypes for the ufs prototypes provide a good explanation of what we identify as central members of radial categories; in other words we have a reductive tendency in our thought processes to use single prototypes to identify a whole group that may actually consists of numerous differentiated members, which are consequently overlooked. all prototypes are cognitive constructions used to perform a certain kind of reasoning; they are not objective features of the world, states lakoff (2002: 9). he offers a brief explanation of different prototypes which is useful and insightful, and should sound familiar. examples from the university lifeworld will be used to explain further. the central subcategory of a radial category, according to lakoff (ibid.), “provides the basis for extending the category in new ways and for defining variations”. 168 dionne van reenen examples may include, for our purposes, central types of teachers, central types of students, and central types of relationships within the lifeworld of the university. lakoff defines a typical case prototype as one which “is used to draw inferences about category members as a whole, unless it is made clear that we are operating with a non-typical case” (ibid.). for example, if i had to picture a typical professor at the ufs, what comes to mind is an adult, white male, who is native born, probably speaks native afrikaans, and so on, unless it is specified otherwise. an ideal case prototype would be what students consider to be an ideal lecturer. for example, a black sesotho speaking male student who grew up in the mangaung area might prefer, as an ideal, to have a black male lecturer with whom he can most easily identify or communicate. the anti-ideal prototype defines the negative standard of the subcategory, i.e. the worst possible ideal of a lecturer. for example, this type of professor could be identified with the abusive father metaphor depicted above which lakoff would term a “demon” subcategory. social stereotypes are pervasive in all cultures and make for the snap-judgment we all resort to without much deliberation. for example, a snap judgment from a female student might be that all older, white, male professors are arrogant and will patronise her intelligence. a salient exemplar is when one takes a single isolated example and uses it to make probability judgments or form conclusions about what is typical of category members. for instance, if a single student gets drunk and disorderly on campus and that one case is used to portray all students as irresponsible drunks, with the decision taken by management that they all need to be disciplined like children. lastly, an essential prototype is a hypothesised collection of properties that serves to determine what makes a thing the kind of thing it is, or what makes a person the kind of person s/he is. for example, a good student might be determined as one who does her work well, hands it in on time, gets good marks, and contributes positively to campus life. she does these things because she is a good student. the most pressing problem here is that a prototype is the central element of a category that is used to identify the whole category, and we should be acutely aware of the difference in possible prototypes enclosed in categories as we can easily make inaccurate assumptions which could have disastrous consequences for all members. rational reflection will reveal that no single selected prototype represents a balanced, precise account of all elements of the set. we should aim to allow for the generation of as many variations in a set as needed to secure an accurate representation, as well as constraint in what may not be included in the category, thereby bringing to our conscious understanding that, e.g. the 169 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution male professor is not necessarily the best professor or the worst professor, but he is a prototype, possibly a central case, and therefore the variants are defined with reference to him, because “he” may be acting as the “cognitive reference point” (lakoff 2002: 45). lakoff argues that there is nothing abnormal about these prototypes forming in our minds, but we do need to be aware of how they are used. it is critical that we do not confuse, say, a typical case (female kindergarten teacher) with an ideal case (excellent teacher). a central case prototype of the mentor-student relationship johann visagie (2006: 14) proposes a postural theory10 which deals with the most basic characteristics of the human condition, formulated around the central question: “what should i do?” it seems most appropriate here as it was observed to be one of the predominant and pressing questions that emerged from all stakeholders, on both a personal and group level, in the colloquia mentioned earlier. the postural model is an attempt to establish what can be regarded as overarching norms or conditions for being human and/or living meaningfully (and ethically). in this version of the model, the “dark” postures are the experience of suffering, meaninglessness, and guilt. we may allow ourselves to experience these dark postures, but they may not be outputs, since formulating an ethical attitude implies that it must be a good one. the “light” postures that we may assume for ourselves would be formulated from the postural complex of alternating creative work with respite at home or elsewhere. besides being busy with ordinary life, there is also withdrawal into contemplation; letting go; humility; taking care; peace; joy; hope; transcendence. visagie goes on to discuss the opposite poles of success and failure, as well as the “grey” side of postures which includes the potentially irritating, yet harmless, daily duties which must be fulfilled, but hamper us from realising all sorts of goals and ideals. it is obvious that the “dark” postures could not be reasonably accommodated within the learning process as it is conducted in the lifeworld of the university. no-one would want to be part of a learning process that allowed suffering, meaninglessness and guilt to dominate that process. even though, when a student fails an exam, s/he may experience suffering, making students suffer should not be the intent of the lecturer. when struggling students are unable to understand the learning material, they may experience meaninglessness but should be able to find help with tutoring or teaching staff. when students plagiarise documents, various members of the institution may experience guilt but this could be easily avoided. it would be up to all members within the process to work creatively in order to avoid such postures as far as possible. 170 dionne van reenen the “grey” postures of getting the nitty-gritty work done and fulfilling administrative duties would be incorporated into the process, but not as an end in itself. the central prototypical concern of the university lifeworld should be that of knowledge – the imparting, acquiring, facilitating, developing and expansion of knowledge. other radial concerns may be technical know-how, practical knowledge, life and work skills development, personal development, projectbased research, training, organisation, financial management, community service (visagie 2005: 223), and so forth. these may be accommodated as long as it supports the kernel function of knowledge without assuming power over it. one could suggest, perhaps, that in forming the central case prototype of a mentor-student relationship, pointing towards a goal of what we may term “light postural output” would be the ideal for all active members within the institution. pragmatically speaking, the whole relationship would be designed against the background of creatively working towards successful actualisation of all positive aspects of knowledge: the postural positions of contemplation and reflection on knowledge and its role in our lives; letting go of potentially harmful agendas even when one feels deep personal attachment to them; personal humility in the higher pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; taking care of all members in the various relationships of the institution; forming an overarching, and a general atmosphere of peace and joy instead of conflict and controversy with a clear direction to transcending problems that may be encountered in any area of the learning process. these would be the central considerations, with others forming the radial categories orbiting and sustaining those objectives, thereby making a sharp and purposeful turn away from any potentially “abusive” or “authoritative” models toward a “nurturant” one in order to serve the best interests of all members optimally. rethinking metaphors within the context of the mentor-student relationship interfacing metaphors and postural sub-theories will allow for the construction of useful models which can either license valid discourse for the university, or expose constraints on what might be prohibited in such discourse. tom gasner (1997) identifies useful metaphors for mentoring from various studies and surveys in his paper metaphors for mentoring: an exploratory study. these are based on interpersonal relationships; teaching; problem prevention – emergency service; providing direction; growth and creation; and the positive and negative experiences of the mentor. the interpersonal relationship metaphor is seen in the taking care posture which is characterised by various ties resembling that of a family, where the student reasonably expects to be cared for as a family member (e.g. parent or older sibling) 171 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution would care for him, ensuring his personal well-being and development while at the institution, but not beyond the institution, while the student would take care in the form of due diligence in his tasks. the teaching metaphor would include that the mentor makes sure s/he has the necessary material and access to resources in order that s/he may acquire the knowledge needed to navigate successfully his or her way through the learning process, thereby assuming the humility posture demanded by any profession where serving the needs of others is tantamount to their success. at the same time, the student would be required to assume humility in deferring to the mentor with adequate respect for his/her expertise. the problem-prevention and providing direction metaphors could be loosely interpreted as assuming the “light” postures of peace, joy and hope. in this way the student does not feel overwhelmed in the context of the lifeworld of the university and all the stress that higher education entails. at the same time, the student learns and implements the necessary problem-solving skills needed to transcend problems while s/he assumes these postures in a healthy or positive attitude to his/ her work, the institution, his/her peers, and so on. the facilitating metaphor of growth and creation would fall to the postures of success and creative work which, if pursued by both parties, could result in significant reduction of the “dark” and “grey” postures by engaging in interesting and stimulating projects. by making such goals and attitudes explicit in open communication, we could relieve ourselves of some of the confusion that these relationships might cause because postures are assumed to be normative in their individual manifestations of universally being human. determining our roles in lifeworlds seems to be a very normal need among human beings, and should not be seen as restrictive, but rather as a resource to eliminate feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, especially where these feelings hamper the person’s success and creativity in the wider context of authenticity in lived experience. the two postures not overtly linked with the metaphors identified by gasner are that of letting go and that of withdrawal into contemplation. these are important for both mentor and student, and should be addressed. in letting go, the mentor would have to make a concerted effort to abandon any intrusive commitments to e.g., personal beliefs, or his/her own cultural convictions that may have detrimental effects on the imparting of knowledge to students. the authoritative role that the mentor assumes must be linked to all the other “light” postures and cannot be construed as what visagie (1990: 46) would term a “negative posturing of power” over the student, especially not with the intent of promoting the mentor’s 172 dionne van reenen own objectives, as the relationship must be characterised by the joint pursuit of knowledge as a goal in itself. the student, on the other hand, may also not manipulate the learning process to his/her own ends and disrupt the process negatively for his/her own ideological ends. examples of useful metaphors representing the mentor-student relationship could be those of responsibility and guidance or facilitating. the contemplative posture would have an integral role to play in forming metaphors of the reflective or considered type. such contemplation would serve to bring about coherent, balanced structures in response to problems contained in the learning process, e.g. variations in the medium of instruction, the need for added learning support, access to materials, economic concerns, representational diversity of members, and so on. honest11 contemplation of the roles of self and others should be encouraged in all facets of the mentor-student roles. we may gain much insight into problems and their solutions if we not only contemplate the metaphors that play a role in our everyday understanding of the university lifeworld, but also if we think of new and innovative ways in which to understand this lifeworld. gasner (1997: 5) makes a useful suggestion of dialogue “… between mentors and their protégés by examining the metaphors for mentoring that each brings to the experience”. communication, along with research and analysis, will prove extremely valuable in opening and expanding the relationships within the university to free the essential goal of knowledge from possible inessential constraints. these inessential constraints may assume centre stage thus hindering the knowledge essence of the university. they may be illustrated by various metaphors of the university being identified with e.g. a religious or political institution which might have specific ideological agendas that do not have knowledge at its core. this means all knowledge imparted by such an institution will be framed by a specific ideology which will determine what information is allowed to filter through to students and indeed how it will be interpreted because any knowledge acquired will have to be subservient to the dominant ideology controlling the institution. an example would be a corporate institution which sees students as clients and mentors as suppliers, so the whole context is shaped by economic factors such as profit and performance, with quality of knowledge and quality of students dangerously being relegated to an outer category. another example is a flux and transformation12 system which elevates its goal of personal development above that of knowledge. identifying these metaphors as well as when they come into play must lead to the question, “is this category necessary in the collaborative procedure of knowledge production?” if it is not integral to the process, it can only exist in 173 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution the category as a non-essential, non-definitive periphery which is simply “there” and cannot be allowed to have any negative effect. conclusion becoming consciously aware of various metaphors, and evaluating how they are employed in lifeworlds, do not allow these metaphors to be absolute determiners. metaphors themselves are normal or natural (in our thought processes), but they are not normative in that they are fluid and can be re-evaluated. in other words, the mechanism for metaphor formation is probably innate and can be argued to begin in the mind, but the metaphors themselves are experiential and embodied. from lakoff (2002: 323) we understand that universities and governments are not literally families linked by genetic markers and bonds of love and affection, but our understanding of models of morality as informed by such metaphors will filter into how we carry out our roles and the comprehend the roles of others in various lifeworlds. grasping the meaning of different prototypes will draw our attention to the fact that, for instance, the ideal case of an excellent teacher is only part, albeit a defining part, of a category which will include many other cases like male and female teachers; older and younger teachers; teachers from different races, cultures, backgrounds, and countries; teachers with different belief systems, ethical systems, religions, qualifications, and areas of expertise; teachers with different biographies, languages, and ways of expressing themselves. the list goes on, but it would be a grave error to assume that any one of these factors determines a good teacher or a bad teacher. the central determining factor should be that the excellent teacher effectively communicates the requisite knowledge to the student in a way that ensures the success of the student and lecturer as well as the learning process itself. the postural model shows that the complex generated in order to answer questions is exactly that – a complex. what postural complexes reveal is that we are able to formulate intricate structures in order to clarify and differentiate which applications of power are acceptable in certain instances, and which are not. there is no need for any continuing confusion, because when we make the unconscious conscious, we exercise power over assumption, thereby allowing ourselves to relate in a far more meaningful, deliberate and productive manner. in an ideal university, this should be the primary goal of all stakeholders in order to diminish imbalance, unreasonable expectations and distorted representations. interfacing as many valid models as possible, without pitting them against one another, would feasibly point them in the right direction so as to generate discourse which is clear about what can be accommodated as well as to eliminate elements that could undermine the legitimacy of the learning process. perhaps most importantly, we could take the discussion in a new direction – beyond that of recounting history – 174 dionne van reenen towards forming new ethical models which can effectively answer that persistent question, “what must i/we do?”, with growing insight and empathy. endnotes 1 the present discourse targets racial divisions, but it is conceivable that the models could be applied to divisions of a different nature such as gender, sexuality, language, culture, and so on, where there has been a history of injurious application of power by one group over another. 2 some of the referenced material is written in conjunction with mark johnson, and it is noted that there are many other cognitive scientists conducting important work in similar areas. 3 visagie has developed a way of practicing philosophy known as discourse archaeology (da) which is “…not so much to argue for some or other ‘grand narrative’ that is of foundational importance for (large segments of) the world around us, but rather to investigate the structures and systems, patterns and relationships, from which discourse – also the discourse of grand narratives – originates” (visagie 2001: 87). in da, there are 20 departments altogether (postural theory and metaphor theory, amongst others), which ideally interact simultaneously in order to give the fullest representation of reality possible, and it is in this context that this evaluation takes place. not all models have been explicitly stated, for the sake of brevity. essentially, i have abstracted two “parts” of da for this analysis. 4 dvds of these events are available at the international institute for studies in race, reconciliation and social justice at the university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa. 5 it would be widely accepted in south african society, during apartheid (and in many homes today), that most family structures were distinctly patriarchal, therefore a “nurturant parent” would have been designated specifically to the role of the mother (or female caregiver) in the family, so more accurately, a nurturant mother model would be recognisable. furthermore, the father customarily would not have been involved in establishing the emotional climate of the home; his role was seen as a provider and authority, and if need be, a protector. many fathers in such a conservative environment were largely emotionally distant, or even physically absent, as in the case of migrant labour which was a common occurrence during apartheid. 6 again, this is not to say that all and only white south africans were perpetrators of crimes during this period and that all and only black people were victims of these crimes. in actuality, we know the issues are far more complex than that. 7 in this article, the term institution will be interchanged with the term lifeworld which is borrowed from the german philosopher jurgen habermas. 8 see research figures in pretorius et al. (2002: 1-38). 9 not only south africans, but many other conservative institutions or societies’ members will be familiar with such a model. 175 interfacing metaphors and postures for understanding deep communicative divisions at a tertiary institution 10 this would be a version of an idealised ethical model to be adopted within the archaeological machinery of the whole complex known as discourse archaeology as it is practiced at the department of philosophy at the ufs, of which postural theory is one department among 20 others. 11 honesty and transparency is implied in the postures as one cannot allow for situations where e.g. a student blames his personal shortcomings on the incompetence of a lecturer when he knows this not to be the case. 12 this is mentioned by morgan (1986) in gasner (1997: 6). my italics. 176 references gasner, t. 1997. metaphors for mentoring: an exploratory study. the mentoring and leadership & resource network “mentor” journal. issue 1. johnson, m. 1994. moral imagination: implications of cognitive science for ethics. chicago: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g. 1990. women, fire, and dangerous things. what categories reveal about the mind. chicago: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g. 2002. moral politics. how liberals and conservatives think (second edition). chicago: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g. 2008. the political mind. why you can’t understand 21st-century american politics with an 18th-century brain. usa: tantor media. lakoff, g. & johnson, m. 1999. philosophy in the flesh. the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. new york: basic books lakoff, g. & johnson, m. 2003. metaphors we live by. chicago: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g. & turner, m. 1989. more than cool reason. a field guide to poetic metaphor. chicago: the university of chicago press. pdm task force. 2006. psychodynamic diagnostic manual. silver spring, md: alliance of psychoanalytic organizations. plato. 1993. the last days of socrates. (trans. treddenick, h. & tarrant, j.) england: penguin. pretorius, e., de villiers-human, s., niemann, r., klinck, e. & alt, h. 2002. fighting from within: gender equity at the university of the free state. acta academica supplementum 1: 1-38. rabinow, p. (ed.). 1984. the foucault reader. london: penguin. truth and reconciliation commission. [online]. available at: http://www.justice. gov.za/trc/ visagie, p.j. 1990. philosophy 600. the sub-theories of archaeological discourse analysis. theory 1. developing a semiological hermeneutics for archival discourse. bloemfontein: university of the free state. visagie, p.j. 2001. philosophy as a language game. tydskrif vir christelike wetenskap. spesiale uitgawe. die etos van menswees. 177 visagie, p.j. 2005. deconstructing the discourse of community service and academic entrepreneurship: the ideal colonization of the university. acta academica 37(1): 222-237. visagie, p.j. 2006. discourse archaeology, anthropology, spirituality. a posthumanist critique. unpublished manuscript. bloemfontein: university of the free state. 1. melissa steyn 189 exploring branding in the non-profit sector: a case study of the girl guides’ association of south africa communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 189 206 alta le roux and maritha snyman* abstract this article reports on a case study of the girl guides’ association of south africa (ggasa) in an attempt to recommend a corporate communication strategy for the organisation. a theoretical construct combining principles of corporate communication theory (including the role of image and identity), brand management as well as social marketing is suggested as a possible basis for improving the brand management of a non-profit service organisation. in this qualitative study of restricted scope the purpose was to test the feasibility of the above-mentioned theoretical construct by a perception analysis of the organisation’s external and internal publics. the analysis included documents created to communicate with external and internal publics. the findings indicate that the diverse messages that are currently communicated via the ggasa’s corporate communication process are hampering the growth of the organisation. recommendations include the creation of a strong brand that will improve the visibility of the ggasa and consequently help to create a persistent presence in the minds of the organisation’s publics. * alta le roux is involved with the national institute of community development and management in pretoria. professor maritha snyman lectures in the department of information science at the university of pretoria. introduction: the girl guides’ association of south africa (ggasa) non-profit organisations (npos) globally play a very specific developmental role in civil society. the girl guides’ association of south africa (ggasa) is one of nearly 100 000 npos in the country and a member of the world association of girl guides and girl scouts (wagggs). wagggs is the largest women’s organisation in the world dedicated to the development and advancement of girls and young women (ggasa 2002a). as a national and voluntary educational organisation the ggasa comprise a network of 800 local guiding units throughout south africa. a unit consists of 20 to 25 members. based on a clearly defined value system, the ggasa’s mission is to actively develop the full potential of all south african girls and women. in 1998 the “nederlandse organisatie voor internationale ontwikkelingsamenwerking” (novib) funded and executed a pilot capacity building project for the ggasa which focused on improving its organisational capacity. the positive results of this two-year pilot programme indicated the need to expand the programme nationally (ggasa 2002b). a progressively dynamic programme was consequently developed to accelerate the growth of the organisation and improve the image of “guiding” in the south african society. this strategic plan included the necessity to explore ways to develop and manage the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa. the objective of this article is to report on a study in which the ggasa’s current corporate branding, identity and image were investigated and suggestions for improvement were made on the basis of an interdisciplinary theoretical construct and an explorative survey of restricted scope. the npo sector in south africa the defining characteristic of the npo sector is its voluntary and developmental nature. npos in south africa are engaged in a wide spectrum of activities ranging from services, mobilising resources, research and innovation, human resource development, public information, education and advocacy. before the 19th century no organised welfare services existed in south africa. a national conference in 1916 recommended the co-ordination of private welfare services and in the late twenties a number of national welfare councils were constituted. today npos are founded within the non-profit organisations act, no. 71 of 1997. different kinds of legal entities for npos exist today which include section 21 companies, trusts, and voluntary associations. although the key defining characteristics of npos can be described as voluntary, independent, not-for-profit and not for self-serving aims, the npo sector has become a dominant economic force all over the world and is often referred to as the “third sector”. npos demonstrate many of the entrepreneurial qualities of a business. the main difference is that an npo’s “profit” is primarily social development. 190 the most recent survey identified 98 920 npos across all sectors in south africa with a revenue source of r14 billion supported by nearly 1.5 million volunteers (swilling & russell 2002). the size of the npo sector in south africa is an indication of the important role it plays in south african civil society. the npo sector currently shares the market with for-profit corporations and public agencies. consequently npos now face increasing competition — competition that forces npos to employ effective management methods. for survival and sustainability it has become necessary for npos to adopt some of the managerial techniques and systems of the for-profit corporations. an important management function of for-profit organisations is the implementation and management of a corporate communication strategy. it is assumed here that the improvement of the communication between npos and their internal and external publics may contribute as positively to their management practices and service delivery as is the case in for-profit organisations. the role that an npo’s corporate brand plays in its corporate communication strategy, specifically in shaping the identity and image of the organisation, is the focus. corporate communication most organisations use three basic forms of communication: management communication, marketing communication and organisational communication. corporate communication “encompasses all three” (van riel 1992: 1). the differences between these three forms of corporate communication as described by van riel (1992: 1-4) are presented in table 1 below. table 1: differences between the three main forms of corporate communication corporate identity and image the image of an organisation is a reflection of the organisation’s reality and it is therefore the way an organisation is seen through the eyes of its publics. identity, on the 191 other hand, is the visual manifestation of the organisation’s reality as seen in, for instance, its logo, buildings and stationary. identity and image are created by the organisation when it interacts with its different publics. van riel (1992: 28) refers to symbols, communication and behaviour as the corporate identity mix. identity is created when an organisation communicates with its publics. they form perceptions based on such messages. corporate identity and image are therefore the two central concepts in corporate communication (van riel 1992: 25; argenti 1998: 56). pickton and broderick (2001: 25) view brand management as the third leg of a corporate communication triangle similar to the one van riel (1992) and argenti (1998) refer to. just like product brands, corporate brands comprise three overlapping concepts, namely corporate personality, identity and image (pickton & broderick 2001: 25). this relationship is presented in table 2 below. table 2: the relationship between corporate personality, identity and image a poor image can be disastrous for an npo (clift 1998: 7). npos should therefore constantly strive to know and understand how their publics perceive them in order to ensure that that they reach out effectively to these publics by fashioning their corporate communication strategy according to their publics’ perceptions. since npos work mainly in the development field, servaes’s (1995: 45) views on participatory communication resonate in clift’s approach. servaes highlights the importance of sharing information, knowledge, trust, commitment and a right attitude in development projects with specific target audiences. applied to npos, this suggests that knowledge about the publics of an npo will affect all stakeholders positively. timely research can point the way to more meaningful relationships with donors, volunteers and other key publics (heinz & robinson 1999: 86). any npo needs to occupy a space in the mind of its target public. the way to attract the public’s attention is by creating awareness (radtke 1998: 18). only then will the public engage with the organisation and ultimately act. npos that take control of their corporate communication strategy and succeed to build a strong image and identity will become leaders in a specific field. npos should therefore consider the application of the principles of corporate communication when marketing their organisations. successful marketing will ensure that their services are utilised effectively, their developmental goals are achieved and that they receive the necessary support from their 192 target publics. this will ensure the sustainability of the organisation. although “branding and image building once was thought to be foreign to npos, they are moving to create stronger brands images, recognisable logos and marketing initiatives they believe are critical to their survival” (feder 1998: 1). branding only when an organisation’s image and identity are known, can it constitute a brand with real power to act on behalf of a perceived common good. branding is consequently much more “than the naming per se or the creation of an external indication that a product or service has received an organisation’s imprint” (kapferer 1992: 9). the brand is the organisation’s external façade and needs to be maintained and expanded (kapferer 1992: 9). to kapferer (1992: 34) the essence of brand identity lies in an organisation’s individuality, its long term goals and ambitions, its consistency, its values, its basic truths and its recognition signs. aaker (2002: 44) developed a brand identity planning model in which strong brands are determined by their “brand equity”. brand equity is defined as the brand assets (or liabilities) linked to a brand’s name. he groups these assets into four dimensions: • brand awareness affects perceptions and taste. people like the familiar and develop positive attitudes to things that are familiar to them (aaker 2002: 17). • perceived quality influences brand associations and has been shown to affect profitability. • brand association is anything that connects the public to the brand, including imagery, product attributes, brand personalities and symbols. brand management involves inter alia determining which associations to develop and then creating programmes that will link these associations to the brand. • brand loyalty refers to the strengthening of the size and intensity of each loyal segment of the brand. a brand with a small but intensely loyal customer base can have significant equity. a company’s real value therefore lies outside the business itself, in the minds of the potential customer. this is also true for the “service brands” of npos. the difference is that service brands demand a specific relationship between target public and organisation because services, which are the “products” of npos, are invisible. social marketing to help overcome this problem, the correlative theory of social marketing can be considered to help ensure that an npo is perceived by its publics as a super brand. social marketing is basically the application of generic marketing principles to a specific class of problems (kotler & andreasen 1991: 427). all marketers are in the profession of creating, building, and maintaining exchanges. because exchanges only take place when a targeted member of the public takes an action, the ultimate objective 193 of generic marketing is to influence behaviour. in social marketing, the objective of the marketer is to change social behaviour — not to benefit the marketer, but primarily to benefit society in general. social marketing programmes are therefore by definition generic marketing programmes carried out to change behaviour that are of interest to an individual or society (andreasen 1995: 9). a social marketing framework contains many points of application in the npo sector. because the bottom line of social marketing is to influence behaviour, this framework and its concepts can be applied to influence volunteers, government agents, donors, staff members as well as a range of potential intermediaries and other cooperating organisations. social marketing can contribute to a strong image-building programme that will increase the visibility of npos (mcclellan, rebello-rao & wyszomirski 1999: 169). any npo not constantly in view will lose public awareness, interest and support. another critical concept for designing a successful social marketing programme is the preparation of a sound strategic plan. the different elements of strategic social marketing are: • extensive background analyses, including target publics analysis; • a core marketing strategy; • marketing procedures designs which include benchmarks and feedback mechanisms; • pre-tests of key programme elements; • implementation of the strategy; and • monitoring and adjustment. this strategic social marketing process is continuous and indefinite. it is not a one-way activity with a neat beginning and end (andreasen 1995: 73). target audiences should be a central and constant part of the process in order to ensure that the publics are aware of an organisation’s image and identity. a theoretical construct towards a corporate communication strategy for npos in theory it seems as if the theoretical views of corporate communication, branding and brand management and social marketing as described above can be integrated to plan corporate communication strategies for npos. in this theoretical construct the service brand of npos constitutes the identity and image of the organisation. the brand is the departure point. without strong branding it would not be possible to implement an effective social marketing campaign and/or a corporate communication strategy. 194 this construct is diagrammatically represented below. the brand is indicated as the core element in an npo’s corporate communication strategy around which corporate communication, social marketing and service delivery converge to create a framework for a successful corporate communication strategy. figure 1: branding as the core element in a corporate communication strategy this theoretical viewpoint was used to explore how the ggasa could more successfully develop and manage its corporate communication strategy. exploring the corporate communication strategy of the ggasa this case study of an explorative nature wanted to elicit a deeper understanding of the world of the ggasa. a qualitative research design was chosen that would enable the researcher to elicit and understand the perceptions of the publics who interact with the ggasa. the aim of the survey was not to make generalisable findings but to understand and interpret the world of the ggasa. therefore the sampling procedures, the data collection methods, the analysis of the data as well the reportage of the findings followed the procedures described as suitable for qualitative research (leedy 1997: 155, 156; cassell & symon 1995: 2; neuman 2000). the research population for this study was divided into two groups comprising members of the ggasa’s internal and external publics. they were selected by purposive and convenience sampling. data was collected from them by using pre-tested semi-structured interviews as well as focus group discussions based on perception analysis. a summary of the research process is presented in table 3. 195 table 3: summary of interviews and focus group discussions 196 all the available ggasa communication materials like news clippings, printed advertisements, radio and television coverage, brochures and posters, publications, newsletters, annual general meeting reports, stationery, website, badges and corporate gifts, uniforms, name boards and banners, vehicle branding, constitution, policy organisation and rules, communication and marketing modules, and the ggasa strategic plan of august 2005 were also collected. one problem occurred during the research process that impacted on the reliability of the study. interviews arranged with members of the corporate sector and funders of the ggasa as representatives of the external public were cancelled at short notice. the ggasa management requested the researcher not to interview them since they had not long ago taken part in a study conducted by management where they were asked to complete questionnaires about their perceptions of the ggasa. management made copies of these completed questionnaires available to the researcher. although interviews would have provided in-depth data of a better quality and consequently a better understanding of the external public’s perceptions, the data collected from the questionnaires was sufficient to obtain insight, albeit not comprehensive, into the perceptions of the ggasa’s external public. after the data was collected, the recordings of the interviews and focus group discussions were numbered and transcribed. the data obtained from the individual interviews, questionnaires and documents was then analysed manually using a qualitative content analysis process (berg 1998). two independent researchers took part in the analysis to enhance reliability. the data was coded manually into four broad pre-determined categories. they were: • the aims of the ggasa as communicated by the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa; • the principles of the ggasa as communicated by the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa; • the characteristics of the corporate communication strategy of the ggasa inferred from the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa; and • the perceptions about the ggasa as communicated by the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa. smaller codes emerged in each of these categories. they will be indicated in the discussion of the outcome of the data analysis below. the corporate branding, identity and image of the ggasa as perceived by its external and internal publics the nature of the ggasa’s corporate branding identity and image is discussed according to the four broad categories into which the data was coded. 197 the aims of the ggasa the following codes emerged in this category: intercultural nature both the external and internal public realised that one of the specific aims communicated by the ggasa is that it wants to offer an intercultural platform for girls and young women to develop as empowered individuals: “i am able to do my job well … — because it was part of my mind frame that they are my mates, all cultures and race. without guiding it would not have been possible. the sharing of different cultures and experiences of people are just fantastic!” (ss111a4). the ggasa offers its members the opportunity to form closer relationships (between cultural groups) and have a better understanding of each other: “we rangers, we are just very much closer to each other” (fg1a3m). the internal public agreed that the intercultural nature of the ggasa made them who they are today. the external public noted the potential of the ggasa to reach out to women in south africa with a diverse background: “the ggasa had been intercultural since its inception” (ss11ea4). leadership building an asset of the ggasa is that the promotion of leadership is seen as part of the identity of the organisation (fg1a3). the internal public felt that the ggasa’s methods and programmes are conducive to develop leadership skills: “girls guides offered me the opportunity to have my say. girls must be leaders” (ssiia2). the external public also saw the ggasa as a training facility where (specifically black) women can be empowered to take on leadership responsibilities in society (ssiiea1). the prominence of the leadership building perception is probably enhanced by the ggasa’s slogan: “once a guide, always a guide; a guide will lead.” female development focus the ggasa’s role in general skills transfer and the consequent developmental focus of girls/women could be seen quite clearly. the internal public saw the ggasa as “… an opportunity to push girls …” (ssiiia2). they noted that “it is especially in the underresourced areas where women are empowered” (fgia2m) and that “ggasa teaches us about being a woman and how to live in this world” (fgia3). the external audience saw the ggasa as an organisation that can prepare girls positively for the future in line with the ggasa’s motto: “be prepared.” the external public perceived the girls as nature lovers, independent individuals who are able to survive and “stand on their own feet” (fgea2). high values and responsibility the internal audience saw the girl guiders as role models who are honest in the execution of their duties. the promise of the ggasa is seen as a unique factor that reminds guiders about their responsibilities and helps them to adhere to high values. “one is able to question yourself when you do something: is this what is expected of me?” (fg1a2) and “it teaches you responsibility and is not just something you do on a friday” (fgia2). in contrast the external audience saw the ggasa as very 198 traditional with specific outdated routines, e.g. the oath and songs. the external public is not always aware of the values system endorsed by the ggasa. the principles of the ggasa the following codes emerged in this category: social skills development the internal public considered social skills development as an important principle. the social experiences and opportunities that the ggasa offers girls are considered invaluable: “it gave me the most wonderful life experiences … i had the opportunity to study overseas … to share opportunities … to develop as an individual …” (ssiiia4) and “ … at the guides we learn … how to understand ourselves, learn not to judge others…” (fgia2). the external public saw guiding as an extramural activity for girls that give them the opportunity to meet people and make friends. a sense of belonging it came out very strongly that the internal public sees the ggasa as girls who subscribe to a specific lifestyle. members noted that they had been members since grade 4 and were still members after 22 years and more: “once a guider — always a guider!” (fgia3); “girl guides are part of our tradition … i want my children also to be one” (ssiia2); “i am a member since the age of 11 and it is part of our tradition” (ssiiia3) and “the ggasa is part of our family … it is a generation activity” (ssiiia1). their uniforms and badges were seen as a symbol of the feeling that they belong to a specific group and that they want to wear the uniform because it strengthens the unity perception. it stands out as a very specific brand statement. the external public associated the ggasa with the “brownies” because of the ggasa’s uniform and badges and commented that the ggasa is an outdated movement with traditional routines. yet they do perceive their sense of pride and that they could not be influenced by others (fgea2). voluntary nature respondents of both the internal and external publics acknowledged the voluntary nature of the ggasa and indicated that it must be preserved. especially ggasa members felt strongly about this: “guiding must be work done from the heart” (ssiiia2). although it is difficult to market the values of voluntary work, it seems critical to preserve this aspect. networking the importance of international links and networks were stressed by both publics. as the ggasa is a founder member of the worldwide movement (wagggs), it offers great opportunities to its members to attend international events. the external public regarded this as one of the ggasa’s biggest strengths and saw the ggasa as an organisation that is well positioned for skills transfer because its networks can maximise its impact. 199 business principles the funders representing the external public felt positive about the fact that the ggasa is managed according to sound business principles: “the ggasa is one of the few organisations we fund that meets our stringent reporting procedures” (ssiiea2). it was further noted that the strength of the organisation lies in the corporate culture of the organisation (ssiiea3). this perception was supported by the analysis of the ggasa’s documents i.e. manuals, proposals, strategic plan and others printed materials that are produced for the external public. the characteristics of the corporate communication strategy of the ggasa the following codes emerged in this category: logo/image/brand the presentation of the logo of the ggasa was seen as problematic by both publics: “it is not a visible logo … all is happening behind close doors”; “the ggasa should be more upfront … less apologetic” (ssiiia2); “the ggasa’s brand is unknown — people know about the scouts because they do more …” (fgea1) and “…we never see them” (fgea2). it seems as if visibility is a great problem. one of the focus group discussions with representatives of the external public was conducted at the school of which the deputy commissioner of the ggasa is the principal. not one of the respondents from this school was aware of the existence of the ggasa. the analysis of documents also made it clear that there is no consistency in the presentation of the look and feel of the ggasa’s brand. there is, for example, a different logo for the different ranks of members, for the different groups (e.g. brownies, rangers, etc.), for world membership, for the africa region and for the ggasa. although a house style and the corporate image for the ggasa are set out in the publication entitled communication and marketing module (ggasa 2004) it is not applied consistently in practice. the fact that the ggasa logo is not presented on the ggasa uniform speaks for itself. the stylised trefoil is the actual ggasa logo. the trefoil symbolises the unity provided by membership of the world association of girl guides and girl scouts (ggasa 2004: 9). the stylised trefoil is illustrated below. figure 2: the trefoil 200 on the ggasa’s website and on some of the ggasa documentation, the stylised trefoil is presented together with three other logos. the south african ggasa logo combined with the flag represents the history of the south african guides and scouts and their pride that it was in south africa that the founder, lord robert baden-powell of gilwell, first envisaged and described his ideas in his book scouting for boys (ggasa 2004: 9). figure 3: the south african ggasa logo in the ggasa’s african region logo the drums are symbols of communication in africa and therefore signify the region. figure 4: the ggasa’s african region logo since the world association of girl guides and girl scouts (wagggs) was formed in 1928, with south africa’s ggasa a founder member, the wagggs member logo is used as the enrolment badge to all new members in the ggasa (ggasa 2004: 9). figure 5: the wagggs member logo diverse activities further confusion regarding the brand of the ggasa was noted by representatives of the internal public. the activities of various regions are diverse. in the east rand, where more money is available, activities focus on science and technology projects, whereas in the under-resourced soweto the focus is on hiv/aids awareness. the 201 important role of religion was stressed by the internal public, probably because the ggasa was, and still is, based in the black townships at anglican, roman catholic, methodist and presbyterian churches. “churches push it as an extra-mural activity as the activities provide physical and mental exercise” (ssiia2) and the ggasa “incorporates all aspects of life: spiritual, physical and cognitive” (fgia3). the external public was not aware of this and perceived the ggasa as an organisation known for its outdoor activities like camping and the physical development of the girls. uniforms and badges the uniforms and badges were mentioned by the respondents of both publics and were strongly associated with the ggasa. the members saw the uniform as a form of branding: “i am hooked by the uniform” (fgia3) and “we love the uniform” (fgia4). some members of the external public perceived the uniform as outdated and felt that it contributed to the perception that the ggasa is not a society for modern girls and women. how the ggasa is perceived the internal public’s perception most respondents representing the internal public were aware that the image of the ggasa was one of “goody-goodies” and “tea makers”. they know that they are associated with “cookies”, “nerds” and “little girls in blue dresses selling cookies”. they are sometimes mocked and only girls with a high self-esteem manage to ignore the mocking. some drop out. this indicates that the ggasa should move towards creating an image that is relevant to the young women of today. this must include “having fun”, “sharing things” and taking part in outdoor activities. creating respect for young women should be the framework. members saw it as their own responsibility to manage the image change of the movement. “it is us that must send this message across … to ensure an understanding of the changes that have taken place in the ggasa” (ggasaiiia2) and “changes must start from within and then be promoted to the outside world” (ggasallla4). members were of the opinion that transformation is the most prominent challenge for the leadership of the ggasa. there were, however, fears of losing the traditions of the ggasa. respondents agreed that changes in leadership should receive priority in a corporate communication strategy, and that the ggasa needs to stay flexible and to keep introducing new current issues. the external public’s perceptions the general perception of the outside world was that girl guiders are old-fashioned and stereotyped by images of tying knots, singing, making tea and other mundane activities. associating words were the same: “the goody-goodies”, “goody-two shoes”, “always doing everything right” and “selling cookies”. the attitude and feeling towards ggasa members was “don’t you have a life?” (fgea2). 202 the external public suggested three priority areas as their vision for the ggasa. this includes the governance structure, a continuation of the transformation process and the establishment of a reputation as a relevant and meaningful partner in development related activities in south africa. conclusive remarks although the findings are not based on a comprehensive survey, some important indicators have been identified. there were similarities between the perceptions of the internal and external publics of the ggasa. both publics feel positive about the ggasa’s focus on intercultural contact, the development focus on various levels, the voluntary nature of the organisation, its networking capacity and the fact that it creates a feeling of unity and belonging amongst its members. while the internal public perceived the ggasa as a value-based organisation that enriches their lives, the external public saw it as outdated and old-fashioned. these different perceptions of the lifestyle and activities of the members of the ggasa can be attributed to the inadequate brand management of the organisation and are caused by the communication of contradictory messages about the identity and image of the organisation. in the section below methods to address these problems are be proposed. improving the corporate communication strategy of the ggasa based on the theoretical construct suggested earlier in the article the corporate communication strategy of the ggasa should centre on a coordinated effort to ensure quality brand management that would create a positive identity and image. the internal public’s resolve to change outdated perceptions of the ggasa as well as the recommendations elicited from the external public regarding their vision for the ggasa should be aligned and integrated to create a new identity and image of the organisation. the new identity and image should centre on a strong brand. this will lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of the organisation’s corporate communication, the building of relationships with its publics and the achievement of its developmental objectives. the process to create a strong brand could centre on aaker’s (2002: 46) four dimensions of brand management. • the ggasa management should strive to build a solid brand awareness campaign to create a consensual feeling of familiarity among target publics. the most important factor is that an upgraded ggasa logo should be created that presents a more comprehensive picture of the identity and image of the organisation. the stylised trefoil, the emblem, logotype and brand message 203 should all form part of a combined logo presented to the external and internal public to ensure a unified brand experience of the organisation. a prototype of the improved logo is suggested in figure 6 below. figure 6: a prototype of the improved ggasa logo • the brand message “guiding advances girls and women” should be publicized as the perceived quality in a concerted corporate communication strategy in which the intercultural and development principles are clearly communicated so that no confusion is created. • the ggasa management should determine which brand associations should be developed. strong associations that already exist are outdoor activity, leadership, values and voluntary service. programmes should be created that link these associations consistently to the ggasa brand. • the ggasa should strive to attain brand loyalty by building support amongst a small but loyal public base that can have significant equity and help to raise awareness. the visibility of the ggasa could be improved by employing social marketing principles to persuade target publics to either join or support the ggasa for the benefit of society. in order to create a persistent presence, the ggasa needs to build and maintain relationships by communicating their service brand effectively. this should be regarded as an ongoing activity. an investment in the building of a good public profile and solid reputation should result in an increased support base and consequently more valued and respected organisation with greater possibilities for expansion. conclusion theoretically at least, it seems as if the approach suggested in this article might be of value in aiding npos to conceptualise and execute a corporate communication strategy that in is line with their aims and nature so that they can more effectively contribute to the development of south africa’s civil society. to test the construct’s practical applicability would need a more comprehensive study. 204 references aaker, d.a. 2002. brand leadership. glasgow: omnia books. andreasen, a.r. 1995. marketing for social change. san francisco: jossey-bass. argenti, p.a. 1998. corporate communication. second edition. boston: irwin mcgraw-hill. 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strategic communications for non-profit organisations. new york: john wiley. servaes, j. 1995. development communication — for whom and for what? communicatio 21(1): 39-49. swilling, m. & russell, b. 2002. the size and scope of the non-profit sector in south africa. johannesburg: university of witwatersrand. van riel, c.b.m. 1992. principles of corporate communication. harlow, england: prentice hall. 206 1. paul schutte 27 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 27 42 willemien marais and johann c. de wet* abstract this article reflects on the initial local, national and international reaction, including media reaction, in february and march 2008 to the publication of the reitz video at the university of the free state in bloemfontein, south africa, and interprets meanings attached to the reactions within the framework of an existential communication critique. given the fact that the university of the free state serves as a microcosm of society at large, these meanings could be seen as having particular relevance for any discussion on race and culture in south africa. the research problem is two-fold: firstly, to determine the nature and extent of the initial reaction to the reitz video which came to light on 26 february 2008, and secondly, to interpret possible meanings attached to the reactions within the framework of the cultural-philosophical views expounded in the renowned works of gustave le bon [the crowd (1896)] and josé ortega y gasset [the revolt of the masses (1930)]. thematic content analysis is employed followed by critical and rational argumentation within the delimitations of the study. it was found that there was a general failure on the side of the intellectual elite and mass media to provide depth dimension to the issues at play. the prevailing public mind which focused and continually emphasised the idea of racism being alive and well in south africa was hardly questioned or contextualised within an understanding that human communication is always influenced by socio-cultural circumstances. * willemien marais lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. professor johann de wet is the chairperson of the same department. introduction we are what our world invites us to be, and the basic features of our soul are impressed upon it by the form of its surroundings as in a mould. naturally, for our life is no other than our relations with the world around.” (ortega 1932: 43) most of us would agree that the publication of the reitz video in february 2008 ignited a crisis, albeit initially for a smallish university of the free state (ufs) community. there is no doubt that the reitz in-house video was never foreseen to be able to cause (even potentially) the outcry and revolt among so may interest groups in the global village. maybe it is, among other matters, because (to quote ortega in man and crisis) “…man is always, at every moment, living according to what the world is to him…” (ortega 1959: 53). and for some, the world is very small. when a crisis occurs – and often only when a crisis occurs – we look at where we come from. we want to know why we reacted in a particular way or why we hold a certain opinion – an opinion which is sometimes as much a surprise to us as to those who we share it with, or force it upon. and a surprise it is only some of the time. mostly, we react along almost predefined lines. we are often predictable. we are often predictable because, as the 20th century spanish journalist and philosopher, josé ortega y gasset, notes, “i am i and my circumstances”. or, to paraphrase rené descartes, i think like those who came before me, therefore i am like those who came before me. ortega goes even further and suggests that he who qualifies as mass man lives without consciousness. therefore, he must repeat today what he did, but forgot, yesterday (maldonado-denis 1961: 684). in this article, background to the reitz video is provided, followed by a note on the methodology used and the theoretical framework within which the research findings could be interpreted. the concepts of culture and traditions; ortega’s concepts of generations and mass man; and the renowned french sociologist and social psychologist gustave le bon’s concept of the public mind are clarified during the course of the argumentation. background: the events preceding the reitz video in june 2007, the management of the university of the free state announced a hostel integration policy for its 23 hostels according to which a traditionally white hostel must take in 30% black first year students, and vice versa. while some role-players welcomed the policy, others, amongst them the conservative white afrikaans political party freedom front plus (ff+), called it “forced integration” and predicted racial conflict as evidenced in previous attempts at hostel integration in the 1990s (cloete 2008a: 10). in july, the ff+ announced that it planned on taking the ufs to court in a bid to stop the implementation of the policy. 28 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? august 2007 saw several protest marches: the ff+ student branch led white students in a march to protest against the policy, while members of the black south african students’ congress (sasco) took part in a march to support the policy. during september 2007 the ufs convocation voted with a 69% majority that the policy be recalled. ufs council took the proposal under advisement, but decided to go ahead with the implementation. only one member of the council voted against implementation. the ff+ withdrew its court case due to “technical inconsistencies” in october 2007. the decision was welcomed by the rector at the time, prof. frederick fourie, who stated that “all energy can now be focused in implementing the policy”. during december 2007, education minister naledi pandor warned that the government would send in the police if students refused to accept the policy. in his speech at the opening of the university in february 2008, prof. fourie said that diversity targets in most of the hostels had been met. however, traditional black men’s hostels had a 0% occupancy by white males, while only 5% of female students moved into traditional black female hostels. house committees from black and white hostels staged a sit-in in front of the main building to protest against the apparent lack of feedback from ufs management. black and white violence during the strike led to damage of nearly r3 million. ten students were arrested, and the ufs secured an interdict against all registered students. then, on 26 february 2008, in what seemed like an unrelated event, word got out of a video filmed by four students of the predominantly white male hostel, reitz, in which a mock initiation ceremony of black workers is played out. the video – apparently made for a cultural evening during september 2007 – is a fierce attack on the university’s integration policy. what followed was one of the darkest, most intense periods in the university’s history of more than a century. reaction from groups and individuals – local and abroad – filled newspaper space and dominated the airwaves. note on methodology the authors were participant observers of the events as it unfolded on the bloemfontein campus of the ufs. after the publication of the video and the ensuing mass reaction, the renowned works of gustave le bon, the crowd (1896), and josé ortega y gasset, the revolt of the masses (1930), sprung to mind. the magnitude of the subject matter persuaded the authors to revisit these works. the focus of this study is to investigate the nature and extent of the initial communicative reaction to the reitz video on community, provincial, national and international level in major south african newspapers; and to interpret possible meanings attached to these reactions within the cultural-philosophical views expounded by ortega and le bon. given the fact that the university of the free state serves as a microcosm of society at large, these meanings could be seen as having particular relevance for any discussion on race and culture in south africa. 29 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? thematic content analysis was employed to analyse 163 newspaper articles and reports published in newspapers in south africa1 during the period 26 february to 10 march 2008. from these articles, 287 responses (reactions) were identified from all major roleplayers, who were identified and categorised as follows (with the number of reactions by a role player and the category as a whole in parenthesis): • the ufs community (96): black and white current students (20), the rector and vice chancellor (8), ufs management (9), ufs council (3), ufs staff (5), parents of current students (1), student body (3), student leadership (9), the reitz 4 (6), the cleaners who appeared in the video (5), current reitz students (1), reitz student leadership (3), reitz old boys (8), reitz parents (2), reitz whistleblowers (1), alumni (2), former ufs rectors (2), nehawu (5), uvpersu (3) • south african education community (17): university of stellenbosch (2), university of cape town (1), university of pretoria (2), university of north west (potchefstroom campus) (1), national department of education (8), hesa (2), high school jim fouché (1) • formal political and governmental organisations (56): da (7), freedom front plus (7), anc (5), independent democrats (2), udm (1), young communists’ league (1), ifp (16), acdp (2), sasco (2), cabinet (1), hnp (1), sacp youth league (1), free state provincial government (6), mangaung local municipal council (1), south african human rights council (3) • civil society (19): church groups (dutch reformed (1), vgksa(1)), fak (2), afriforum/solidariteit (5), free state agriculture (1), afrikanerbond (1), atkv (1), dames aktueel (1), dameskring (1), regslui vir afrikaans (1), rapportryersvereniging (1), suid-afrikaanse akademie vir wetenskap en kuns (1), die voortrekkers (1), afrikaner-alliansie (1) • prominent south africans/commentators (12): fw de klerk (1), commentators (1), dr dorian aiken (1), dr andries bezuidenhout (1), prof. kader asmal (2), johrné van huyssteen (1), raenette taljaard (1), dan roodt (1), irvin khoza (1), danny titus (1), 81 prominent south africans (1) • media (87): columnists (9), letters to the editor (44), editorial (14), international (as published in sa newspapers) (20) only the initial reaction of these role-players was taken into account. however, in some instances the obvious directional change in reaction was noted, for instance the initial official reaction of current reitz residents, the four video-makers, as well as the workers who appear in the video, which differs from later reaction. theoretical framework from a communication perspective, the reitz video calls critical issues in communicology to mind, including the impact of culture, tradition and generation as well as the ideas of mass man and the public mind. 30 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? culture, tradition and the generation culture has always been an important vessel for communicating and sustaining belief systems. information about a race or a group’s culture is communicated by parents to their children, and is often passed on by church and social groups which we choose to belong to. especially when growing up, this exposure is extremely selective. knowledge and experience of others are limited. action takes place within one’s circumstances (jansen & steinberg 1991: 117), or as ortega puts it, “here and i, i and here are forever inseparable” (van schoor 1968: 57). what a person regards as the meaning of his or her life derives largely from those collective interpretations which are passed on from generation to generation, possibly creating an entire society without much individual thought – the masses, as ortega calls them (ortega 1959: 97). mass man’s opinions are based on those of “the others”; the source of knowledge indicated as “they” when starting an argument of statement with “they say” (ortega 1959: 92). “they”, says ortega, refers to the “irresponsible i” or the “social i”. by choosing the opinion of “them”, mass man has replaced himself with the solitude of the mass (ibid.). ortega refers to these collective interpretations as absolute beliefs (jansen & steinberg 1991: 117). it embodies the “spirit of the times”, or zeitgeist. these absolute beliefs are never perfect, and force the individual to find solutions for the problems that arise as a result of this (cf. van schoor 1968: 61). ortega’s view of the existence of absolute beliefs is supported by le bon, who states: “the memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought. the reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing as stable in a race as the inherited groundwork of its thoughts” (1917: 14). le bon even ventures to state that “every civilisation is the outcome of a small number of fundamental ideas that are very rarely renewed” (1917: 67). the generation, says ortega in the modern theme (1961:15), is a dynamic compromise between mass and individual. to ortega “it is the most important conception in history” (1961: 15). people of the same age constitute a generation (jansen & steinberg 1991:118), with age here defined not as a date, but as a “zone of dates” (ortega 1959: 47) – the members of a generation are “men of their own time” (ortega 1961: 15). such a generation, explains jansen and steinberg (1991: 118), may be distinguished from other co-existing generations by its peculiar set of perspectives, which is expressed in cultural productions. however, each generation’s set of perspectives rests upon that of an earlier generation (ortega 1959: 53; cf. van schoor 1968: 157; ortega 1961: 16.). van schoor explains that the concept of the generation encompasses a two-sided unit: the inherited and experienced ideas, values and convictions of the previous generation, and the new generation’s own experience thereof (1968: 157). when the current generation coalesce with the old, and submit to them, the old regime continues. in the instance where the current generation forms part of a movement 31 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? towards relegation and substitution, and when there are no attempts at preserving a previous set of beliefs, “the old are swept away by youth” (ortega 1961: 18). these are years of innovation and creative struggle (ortega 1961: 18) – an idea which correlates with le bon’s view that traditions have to be substituted in order for progress to take place (1917: 93). in terms of the reaction to the reitz video, it is evident that the old regime – specifically the divide between black and white – is still in force, albeit not in the official, institutionalised manner of apartheid. both black and white members of the current generation (the youth) is building on and reacting in a manner prescribed by the belief system inherited from the previous generation. mass man and the public mind ortega’s concept of mass man or the masses (1930) and le bon’s concept of the crowd or public mind (1896) show many similarities. “the masses” is a term used by ortega to describe the majority of the people, a multitude, a formless and amorphous heap of persons whose essential mission is to follow the minority. minorities must lead and the masses must follow (maldonadodenis 1961: 682). although ortega used “the masses” and “mass man” interchangeably, mass man is essentially a psychological type, while the masses is a social phenomenon. maldonado-denis (1961: 683) explains it as follows: “the fact is that mass man is led by his own psychological make-up to unite with other mass men in the formation of a mass in the sociological sense.” this ties in with le bon’s concept of the popular mind, which he considers to be “the last surviving sovereign force of modern times” (1917: 14). le bon (1917: 26) defines a crowd in a psychological sense as follows: “under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men represents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it [and] a collective mind is formed.” it is very important to note that le bon’s concept of a crowd only refers to a gathering that is influenced by “certain predisposing causes” – not all gatherings of people are considered representing a collective mind. when formed, however, this collective of public mind exists irrespective of the characteristics, occupations, level of intelligence, etc. of the individuals that form part of the crowd. and, postulates le bon, it is this very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities that explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence (1917: 32). moreover, states le bon (1917: 36), by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. among the characteristics of the public mind are impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, and the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit (le bon 1917: 40). the public mind is very simple and very exaggerated – a suspicion transforms as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence (ibid.). 32 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? mass man’s reaction to a crisis is encapsulated by the fact that he has only appetites: he insists on his rights but denies that he has any obligations (maldonado-denis 1916: 685). coupled with this, mass man is intolerant and violent towards all who dare to think and act differently (van schoor 1961: 32). le bon likens this intolerance to religious sentiment, and explains that intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of such a sentiment (1917: 82). these two – intolerance and fanaticism – can be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. as mentioned earlier, shared convictions are what constitute a generation. this could explain the almost sectarian loyalty of the then residents of reitz to their hostel and traditions (fanaticism) and their rejection of the integration policy (intolerance), as well as the unified and intense reaction of the current black students towards the video (fanaticism) and their sense of urgency for change borne out of generations of oppression (intolerance). in its darkest hour, the bloemfontein campus almost resembled a war zone. le bon (1917: 90) postulates that all the beliefs and opinions of crowds or the masses rest upon two kinds of factors: remote factors and immediate factors. the remote factors include race, tradition, time, institutions and education (le bon 1917: 90). these are the factors that prepare the ground in which new ideas germinate, says le bon (ibid.). the immediate factors, on the other hand, serve as the source of active persuasion – “they are the factors which ... set it [the idea] loose with all its consequences ... it is due to them that a riot breaks out ...” (le bon 1917: 90). of these remote factors – the strong foundation of belief – race has by far the biggest influence. it dominates the characteristics peculiar to crowds or the masses. closely tied to race is tradition, which represents the ideas, the needs and the sentiments of the past. tradition, explains le bon, is the synthesis of the race: “a people is an organism created by the past, and, like every other organism, it can only be modified by slow hereditary accumulations.” (le bon 1917: 93). however, it should be noted that “race” and “culture” should not be seen as synonyms, an idea that macdonald (2006: 165) explains as a “conceptual problem” which would mean that “cultures are rendered as fixed ... that races and cultures are coterminous”. he explains: “...[r]acial and ethno-cultural groups are not and never have been interchangeable in south africa, something the anc recognized when it conceived of races as clearing houses for the political affairs of tribes and the white state recognized when it defined both afrikaners and english-speakers as ‘whites’” (macdonald 2006: 165). born out of race and tradition are political and social institutions (le bon 1917: 97). these institutions are determined by the character of the people they govern, and therefore they have no intrinsic value. “those which are good at any given moment for given people may be harmful in the extreme for another nation.” (ibid.). government determines which kind and level of education a people receives, and it is through education, says le bon (1917: 113), “that the mind of the masses is improved or deteriorated”. 33 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? the vehicle for these four remote factors, namely race, traditions, institutions, and education, is time (le bon 1917: 96): “it causes the birth, the growth and the death of all beliefs. it is by the aid of time that they acquire their strength and also by its aid that they lose it. it is time in particular that prepares the opinions and beliefs of crowds...” the reactions to the reitz video – although in most cases exact opposites – are quite similar when viewed against le bon’s statements regarding race and especially tradition or culture. these reactions have the same origin and carry the message of south africa’s history of racism – first introduced by colonisation, then cultivated by institutionalisation and perpetuated through the cultural inheritance of each new generation. tradition guides men, says le bon (1917: 93), and especially when they are in a crowd. a reaction of a black student confirms this: “white students operate in packs – they only act like this when they are in a group...” (rademeyer 2008a: 8). given the reaction of black students in terms of violent protests following the video, this sentiment could be – and according to le bon is – applicable to not only white students but black students as well. “...the individual forming part of crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint” (le bon 1917: 33). the revolt of the masses when a crisis occurs, the system of convictions belonging to a previous generation give way to a vital state in which man remains without these convictions, and therefore without a world (ortega 1959: 86). the end of the ideology of apartheid is such a crisis – a change of a system of convictions. in a column in the times prof. jonathan jansen2 comments on the reitz incident by referring to what he calls “knowledge in the blood”: “here is a story about emasculation writ large among young white men who came into the new south africa with the racial knowledge but without the racial power of the past” (jansen 2008: 10). the equilibrium between the absolute belief and the actual experience of this generation (the youth) is thus disturbed – and the masses are revolting in an attempt to find a solution to correct this imbalance. this disequilibrium does not only exist for the white younger generation, but also for the black younger generation. theirs is the exact opposite: they came into the new south africa with the promise of an equal distribution of power, but now have to contend with that promise not being delivered on. both these groups found themselves without the world into which they, and especially their parents, were born, and both reacted in a way traditionally characteristic of their culture: with some shame we recognize that the greater part of the things we say we do not understand very well; and if we ask ourselves why we say them, why we think them, we will observe that we say them only for this reason: we have never tried to rethink them on our own account, or to find the evidence for them (ortega 1959: 92). 34 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? but what prompts the masses – the public mind – to revolt? as mentioned before, le bon (1917: 19) explains that while the mind of the masses is prepared by remote factors such as race, tradition and time, it is immediate factors that lead to an outburst. these include images, words and formulas. le bon refers to the particularly powerful influence of images. “crowds, being only capable of thinking in images, are only to be impressed by images” (le bon 1917: 76). the reitz video gave the crowds, all the generations exposed to it, a “motive for action”; a force so powerful that le bon considers it to be a “natural force, a supernatural power” (1917: 117). here was tangible evidence of racism at work and the video provided fertile soil for, among others, the aggrieved and politically correct to climb on the propaganda bandwagon. such an outburst could of course serve the purpose of making mass man aware of his circumstances. this feeling of unease forms part of what ortega, in man and crisis, calls the fundamental insecurity of living (1959: 34). however, instead of learning as an individual or progressing as a generation, mass man’s revolt is mostly an effort to remove the sense of unease. this sense of unease could explain the outrage or revolt of the media, especially the international media, whose reaction was one of outright condemnation. again, here they had tangible evidence of racism, says charlene stanley from e.tv (personal communication, 7 july 2008). some reactions even likened the video with nazi germany or the conduct of american soldiers at the abu gharib prison in iraq (smith 2008a: 6; 2008b: 4). the central message contained in the reaction of international media was that of the reality of racism in the rainbow nation. time.com (smith 2008a: 6) reported on the incident by saying that some 16 years after nelson mandela’s release from prison “his dream of a rainbow nation is far removed from reality”. analysis and reflection it could be argued that the reitz video is a cultural production of a generation. in numerous interviews it was mentioned by the reitz 4 (van rooyen 2008a: 1; rademeyer 2008b: 8; 2008c: 1), parents of current reitz residents (cloete et al. 2008: 2) and the residence head of reitz (van vuuren 2008: 4) that the video was produced for a “cultural evening” at the hostel. it even won first prize in the competition (van rooyen 2008a: 1). looking at the content of the video, the “cultural traditions” of this group – white, afrikaans males – is remarkably similar to those of the generations preceding them. in several interviews the value of hostel traditions – especially at reitz – has been mentioned, including the fact that “it has always been like this at reitz” (dlodlo 2008: 2). this generation’s parents, it should be noted, grew up during apartheid, which could explain the new generation’s perspective. our present is made out of the material of the past (ortega 1959: 53). 35 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? the power of culture and traditions is further underlined by the reaction of the parents of the video makers and current reitz students, as well as reitz old boys. the essence of the message contained in this reaction is that of boys will be boys – it was a “student prank” was the reaction of on of the fathers of the reitz 4 (dlodlo 2008: 2). he goes on to say “if someone cannot see the humour behind all of this it is probably cultural differences” (dlodlo 2008: 2). the reaction of this group was almost completely defensive. not only did they defend hostel traditions fiercely, but blame is also placed on the university’s lack of consultation with students regarding the integration policy. in an interview with volksblad (dlodlo 2008: 2) the father of one of the reitz 4 blames the media for biased reporting, followed by a statement in which he blames the ufs and the media for not contacting him or his son – “i’ve heard my son’s side of the story and the rest i had to read and hear in the media”. it is important to note that within the space of the two weeks of this analysis, the reitz community went from defending their actions to unconditional apology “for making such a video and the consequent harm done by it” and an expressed desire to be given the chance to be a leader in the successful implementation of the integration policy (cloete 2008b: 2). in between these two opposites came the announcement that the ufs is considering closing the hostel. during this time, the primarius of the hostel was quoted as follows: “the guys are worried about the possibility of closure. we have been made out to be the world’s worst racists, but we are no worse than any other residence on campus in terms of traditions. we admit it was a mistake. to apologise is the only thing we can do. we need to walk to path of reconciliation” (cloete 2008b: 2). but this generation does not only comprise white people, it also includes black people of the same age; black people whose parents also grew up during apartheid, experiencing an entirely different side of the ideology and its practices. and, as is evident from the analysis of the reactions of the different groups, the younger generation not only reacted along the same lines as their parents did during apartheid, but in some instances also used the same rhetoric to convey their perspectives. this is evident in reaction from white students saying they “feel scared and threatened”, and black students allegedly threatening to “throw petrol bombs” at white hostels. these could be mistaken for reactions during the height of apartheid, but instead came from young people who were in primary school when apartheid ended. they did not grow up with the actual experience of being threatened by the swart gevaar (black threat) or having to take part in the struggle, which included throwing petrol bombs at apartheid structures. their parents, however, did. the analysis has brought to light several examples of the influence of an inherited belief system. • an opinion piece in volksblad (du toit 2008: 11) carries the following statement: “one wonders if afrikaners, if they are not simply racists, have an inherent 36 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? feeling of superiority over black people: a belief that the ‘white man’ will always be better than the ‘black man’”. • several newspapers reported that black students told of many instances of racism and violence at the hands of the residents of white male hostels. when asked why these instances were not reported, a female black student explained that a security guard on duty at a residence told them not to “worry about it. it is just part of their culture” (tromp, molosankwe & visagie 2008: 4). • a black student tells a reporter of saturday star (tromp, molosankwe & visagie 2008: 4) that she spoke to one of the cleaners who appears in the video. “i asked her why she had allowed the white male students to verbally abuse her. she told me: ‘that’s just the way they were brought up. they can’t help themselves.’” this last example requires further analysis. included in the reaction of many of the supporters of the video is the observation that the cleaners appeared to be enjoying themselves; they were laughing and were apparently willing participants. this was also the opinion of the lawyer of the four. he was quoted in the star (tromp & molosankwe 2008: 1) as saying “the employees took part voluntarily in the making of the film. as is evident, they clearly enjoyed it...” from an ortegan perspective, the behaviour of the cleaners – their participation, shock and humiliation – is also a product of their generation. they were born into and grew up in a society where white people were dominant. their almost subservient reaction is the result of decades of being told what to do. during apartheid a white child had more power than an adult black man or woman. a gender dimension could also be added to this explanation: traditionally, african men have more power than african women. white men had more power than black men, which means that black women were at the bottom of the hierarchy. from a communication perspective, this communicative relationship could be categorised as a control mode (yoshikawa 1987: 320-321, in de wet 2005: 56-57). one party is perceived as an object to be exploited by the other party. manipulation represents a distorted communicative relationship between the communicator and the recipient. this is also evident in martin buber’s renowned classification of the i-it communication encounter (de wet 2005: 57). the i-it relation points to a mere relation in which the it is passive and allows itself to be experienced and used. most of the reaction to the reitz video is that of the (predominant) public mind. there were almost no unique reactions amongst those analysed for this article. the major reactions may be summarised as follows: • the reitz community’s message was that of a group (or crowd) under fire, and they’ve reacted defensively; • white students condemned the video, but also said they felt unsafe, referring to the fact that black students allegedly threatened them and reacted violently. they 37 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? also feared for the image of “afrikaners”, and blamed ufs management for lack of consultation and “forced integration” – a freedom front plus term often repeated by white role-players; • black students reacted with disgust and anger, and many instances of other racial incidents were brought to light. they blamed ufs management for slow pace of transformation; • ufs management, council and staff condemned the video; • the cleaners who took part in the video were hurt and humiliated; they felt their trust was betrayed; and one demanded action against the hostel; • political parties condemned the video: the da made special reference to the role of the freedom front plus in the debacle; the freedom front plus distanced itself from the video, and also made a reference to the damage to the “afrikaner’s” reputation; the anc, the national department of education and cabinet condemned the video and demanded action from ufs management; • several afrikaans institutions, such as free state agriculture, condemned the video and also distanced themselves from the students who made it; • the reaction in letters to newspapers mostly represented the two opposites: one side condemned the video, while the other side defended the video makers and reitz residence; and • alumni distanced themselves from the ufs for two reasons: they were ashamed to be associated with an institution where something like this could happen or they blamed ufs management for the policy of “forced integration” (and, consequently, the loss of traditions). conclusion the messages contained in most of the reaction of the different groups/generations have confirmed the tendency of man to live within his circumstances (jansen & steinberg 1991: 117). given the reactions to the video, ortega’s call to the intellectual minority of each generation to make (their) “countrymen aware of the crisis and uniting them in the national interest” (jansen & steinberg 1991: 117) is in play. this élite interprets its circumstances, as well as the typical experiences of the mass to provide them with a framework of guiding perspectives for approaching life’s problems (jansen & steinberg 1991: 117). while ortega defines the élite as an “intellectual or cultural minority that is constantly involved in creating culture”, there are others – individuals and institutions – that serve the purpose of acting as a sounding-board, or mirror, or creating awareness of the quality – or lack of quality – of existence in a society. amongst these would be a truly responsible, balanced media, which should not only reflect mass man’s experience of 38 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? an event, but also the ideas, opinions and convictions of those who do not merely “react to external compulsion” (ortega 1932: 47). the prevailing public mind; “the collective mind ... formed by an agglomeration of men [and] representing new characteristics different from those of the individuals composing it” (le bon 1917: 26) should be questioned, but was hardly questioned or interrogated in the case of the reitz video. it seems that with the reitz video there was failure on the side of the intellectual elite as well as the media. the intellectual elite may well have fallen prone to what ortega calls the “barbarism of specialisation” (1932: 78). considered by mass man as “someone who knows” (van schoor 1968: 173), the specialist is actually nothing more than “the prototype of mass man” (ortega 1932: 79). the specialist, living in the confines of his laboratory and discovering new facts (ibid.), is prone to becoming an “learned ignoramus” – someone who “knows very well his own tiny portion of the universe”, but is “formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality” (ortega 1932: 82). only a few of the reactions analysed for this article could be labelled as having what ortega calls “depth dimension” (van schoor 1968: 54): the ability to look at an object, concept or event and seeing reflections or associations with surrounding objects, concepts or events. very little debate took place among the intellectual elite in the coverage analysed. the majority of the reactions and commentary by the media failed to move beyond the superficial. media practitioners across the spectrum and across boundaries were oh so politically correct. in mitigation, several role-players across the spectrum – directly or indirectly – referred to the effect of a generational communication solution in order to ensure that new messages are communicated from generation to generation. for ortega solution of a problem means “being clear with myself about the thing that was a problem to me, suddenly finding, among my ideas about it, one which i recognize as my actual and authentic attitude towards it” (1959: 109). this is the flipside to ortega’s generational coin; the exact opposite of mass man: the excellent man. it plays out like a modern-day action cartoon: the villainous mass man pitted against the virtuous excellent man. ortega’s excellent man is he who demands more of himself; he faces his obligations as something he must fulfil (maldonado-denis 1961: 685). only by doing this can a generation change its opinions and progress from merely trying to remove its sense of unease during a crisis to becoming a generation of excellent men. this conversion is what leads to the emergence of a new man. and ortega especially urges the younger generation to seek for this conversion (1959: 152). while “the mass, in face of any problem, is satisfied with thinking the first thing he finds in his head”, the excellent man “only accepts worthy of him what is still far above him and what requires a further effort in order to be reached” (ortega 1932: 45). 39 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? it is extremely difficult to change or exchange traditions. and even if such changes have been introduced, it still takes time. “why,” asks many of those reacting to the video, “are we still struggling to adapt to a new society more than a decade after apartheid ended?” and why, one might add, do people so fiercely defend and protect their traditions? the answer to both of these questions could be time. maybe not enough time has passed for people to adapt to a new way of life – far removed from apartheid – to an open society where freedom and equality are internalised in the hearts and minds of most people, especially the academic youth. endnotes 1 volksblad, beeld, die burger, kampus-volksblad, bloemnuus, the times, mail & guardian, rapport, express, kampus-beeld, the star, die burger oos-kaap, cape times, son, business day, city press, people’s post, the weekender, daily sun, the citizen, saturday star, die kerkbode, afrikaner. 2 these comments were made before prof. jonathan jansen was appointed rector of the university of the free state in march 2009. 40 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? references cloete, h. 2008a. só ontvou sage rondom uv se integrasiebeleid. volksblad, 23 february: 10. cloete, h. 2008b. reitz-primarius vra ‘n kans om fout reg te stel. volksblad, 7 march: 2. cloete, h., van rooyen, m. and sapa. 2008. video ‘was net toneel’. uv gaan strafsaak teen 2 studente maak. beeld, 28 february: 2. de wet, j.c. 2005. meeting on the “narrow ridge” in intercultural communication with specific reference to the ufs. communitas 10: 53-65. dlodlo, c. 2008. pa’s van uv-studente hoogs ontsteld. volksblad, 29 february: 2. du toit, p. 2008. reitz-video ‘gaan lei tot stereotipering, spanning’. volksblad, 29 february: 11. jansen, j. 2008. national conversation needed. an educated guess. column. the times, 6 march: 10. jansen, n. and steinberg, s. 1991. theoretical approaches to communication. communicamus 7. kenwyn: juta. le bon, g. 1917. the crowd. london: t. fisher unwin ltd. macdonald, m. 2006. why race matters in south africa. pietermaritzburg: ukzn press. maldonado-denis, m. 1961. ortega y gasset and the theory of the masses. the western political quarterly 14(3): 676-690. ortega y gasset, j. 1932. the revolt of the masses. london: george allen & unwin ltd. ortega y gasset, j. 1959. man and crisis. london: george allen & unwin ltd. ortega y gasset, j. 1961. the modern theme. new york: harper. rademeyer, j. 2008a. dié trop jag al lank. swart studente glo gewoond daaraan om uitgejou te word by reitz. beeld, 1 march: 8. rademeyer, j. 2008b. primarius: ‘was nie bedoel om seer te maak’. beeld, 1 march: 8. rademeyer, j. 2008c. ‘flou oros en ‘n schuster-grappie’. beeld, 3 march: 1. smith, c. 2008a. kovsie-video wêreldnuus. suid-afrika op internet vergelyk met naziduitsland. volksblad, 29 february: 6. smith, c. 2008b. vergelykings met nazi-duitsland en aboe ghraib getref. beeld, 29 february: 4. stanley, c. 2008. personal communication, 7 july. tromp, b. and molosankwe, b. 2008. the hostel of hate. the star, 29 february: 1. 41 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? tromp, b., molosankwe, b. and visagie, n. 2008. inside the apart-hate campus. saturday star, 1 march: 4. van schoor, m.b.1968. die sosiologie van die lewende-rede. ‘n studie van die sosiologise beskouings van ortega y gasset. d.phil. thesis. university of pretoria. van rooyen, m. 2008a. uv-video ‘blote toneelspel’. volksblad, 28 february: 1. van vuuren, m. 2008. ‘hulle is goeie ouens’ ‘níks leliks bedoel’. rapport, 2 march: 4. yoshikawa, m.j. 1987. the double-swing model of intercultural communication between the east and the west. in de wet, j.c. 2005. meeting on the “narrow ridge” in intercultural communication with specific reference to the ufs. communitas 10: 53-65. 42 the reitz video: inviting outrage and/or pity? 1. paul schutte dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 137 150 zarine roodt* abstract this article aims at investigating labyrinth walking as a form of communication with the self. based primarily on the concept of self-talk as a distinguishable form of communication, the author draws a number of conclusions, mainly in relation to the concepts of listening and meaning. it is inferred that the labyrinth is a communication medium and that the labyrinth walker as source / receiver is afforded the opportunity to embrace silence, and to enter into dialogue with the self in the heart of the labyrinth in order to find meaning in both the personal and transpersonal context. it could be concluded that the labyrinth is a medium of intrapersonal communication, with the physical activity of walking the labyrinth a visual manifestation of the process of intrapersonal communication, and the circuitous process through which we gain access to our innermost communicative and communicating self. * zarine roodt is a research fellow of the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. 137 inleiding daar is tans ongekende belangstelling in labirinte: lonegren (2007) verwys na die ontploffing van belangstelling in labirinte wat hy in die voorafgaande 15 jaar weerskante van die atlantiese oseaan ervaar het; kern (2000: 311-315) maak melding van ’n “labyrinth revival” wat volgens hom sedert 1982 ’n wêreldwye verskynsel geword het. die labirint word in wyduiteenlopende dissiplines ondersoek (saward 2003: 8). op the labyrinth society se webwerf gee rhodes (2008) ’n omvattende uiteensetting van navorsing oor die labirint: die oorwig hiervan hou verband met gesondheidsorg; vervolgens ’n sielkunde-perspektief – waarin die temas transformasie, “journey” en individuasie sterk figureer, terwyl die labirint ook dikwels as spirituele praktyk ondersoek word. daar is substantiewe pogings om die effek van labirintloop te dokumenteer en om kwantitatiewe en kwalitatiewe navorsingsbeginsels in hierdie verkenningsprosesse in te bed (rhodes 2008: 21-22). dit blyk dus dat daar afdoende bewys is dat labirintloop ’n bepaalde uitwerking het, hetsy fisiologies, sielkundig of andersins. divergerende verkennings van die labirint baan die weg vir die moontlikheid dat ’n wêreldwye ontploffing van belangstelling in ’n eeue-oue argetipiese simbool ook vanuit ’n kommunikasiekundige perspektief beskou kan word. in hierdie vroeë stadium ontstaan die volgende vrae: is die loop van die labirint ’n vorm van kommunikasie met die self, met ander woorde, kan die proses wat binne die individu afspeel tydens die loop van ’n labirint gelykgestel word aan kommunikasie, en dan spesifiek intrapersoonlike kommunikasie? of is dit eerder ’n geval dat die loop van ’n labirint ’n visuele manifestasie van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie is? bied die loop van ’n labirint die individu die geleentheid en die praktyk om met die binnewêreld kontak te maak en hiermee in dialoog te tree? die punt is: “iets” gebeur wanneer ’n labirint geloop word. in die sielkunde word die uitkoms byvoorbeeld gedefinieer as verandering, as transformasie. en gevolglik is die vraag: hoe sou dié verskynsel vanuit ’n kommunikasieperspektief verduidelik kon word? later in die bespreking sal dit blyk dat bepaalde weergawes van labirintloop die grense van ’n normale struktuuranalise oorskry deurdat implisiet bepaalde lewensbeskoulike keuses in die struktuuranalise deurskemer, soos wanneer verwys word na reiniging, openbaring en verbintenis (sien die stadia van labirintloop) en wanneer die individuele self subtiel as norm vir intrapersoonlike kommunikasie na vore gebring word. 138 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie enkele aspekte moet opgeklaar word: eerstens word daar in hierdie artikel deurgaans na intrapersoonlike kommunikasie as ipk verwys. tweedens word die begrip “labirintloop” as afrikaanse vertaling vir labyrinth walking gebruik om die meditasiepraktyk te benadruk en te onderskei van die labirint self. as motivering vir hierdie artikel word baglan (1997) se standpunt dat die meditasiepraktyk die ipk-proses aan die hand werk, voorgehou. hierdie argument word ’n stap verder geneem deur venter (1995), wat die uitgangspunt dat beter intrapersoonlike kommunikasie tot beter interpersoonlike kommunikasie lei as afskopplek gebruik om aan te dui hoe konsentrasiemeditasie tot spesifieke voordele vir interpersoonlike kommunikasie lei. venter (1995) se standpunt verdien egter spesifieke toeligting en dit lê in jandt (1975: 398-399) se verwoording dat “authentic interpersonal communication begins with authentic intrapersonal communication, and authentic intrapersonal communication results from knowing yourself, accepting yourself, asserting yourself, and realizing yourself” (vgl. devito 1986). mcmaster (2000) het hierdie siening teoreties verantwoord en haar hipotese was dat hoe minder bewustheid van die self mense aan die dag lê, hoe laer is hul intrapersoonlike en interpersoonlike kommunikasiedoeltreffendheid. hierdie outeur het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat kommunikasie verbeter kan word wanneer mededelers bewus word van hul intrapersoonlike stelsel en vanuit daardie fokus kommunikeer. uit bostaande argumente kan daar dus afgelei word dat labirintloop as meditasiepraktyk ’n indirekte gevolg op interpersoonlike kommunikasievaardighede het. as rasionaal word die uitgangspunt soos jandt (1975) dit hierbo verwoord, geneem en word die idee voorgehou dat die labirint en spesifiek labirintloop egte kommunikasie met die self aan die hand werk. dit spreek dus vanself dat outentieke interpersoonlike kommunikasie uitkring na gemeenskappe en sodoende gesonde gemeenskapsverhoudings onderlê. intrapersoonlike kommunikasie as spesifieke verskynsel binne menslike kommunikasie daar moet van meet af aan daarop gewys word dat daar ernstige vrae en selfs bedenkinge oor die geldigheid van die konsep “intrapersoonlike kommunikasie” is, asook oor intrapersoonlike kommunikasie as die grondslag vir ander vorme van kommunikasie – soos cunningham (1995) in ’n deurtastende oorsig en beoordeling uitwys. verder is daar kritiek oor ’n gebrek aan teorie wat betref intrapersoonlike kommunikasiestudies (vgl. vocate 1994: 26). daar word gevolglik erkenning gegee aan die problematiek rondom enige bespreking van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie. hierdie outeur volstaan met die standpunt dat intrapersoonlike kommunikasie wél bestaansreg het en dat dit nie die doel met hierdie artikel is om die aard en geldigheid daarvan te regverdig nie. die mees basiese aard van ipk is kommunikasie met die self (steinberg 2007: 140) en hierdie verskynsel word vervolgens bespreek. 139 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie omskrywing van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie die aanduiding “intrapersoonlike kommunikasie” verwys na ’n verskynsel waarvan verskillende gesigspunte in ’n veelheid van saamgestelde uitdrukkings aangedui kan word. let slegs op enkele frases wat in die standaard duitse historiese woordeboek van die filosofie (ritter & gründer 1995) relatief uitvoerig bespreek word. • selfbesinning (330-335); • selfpresentasie (383-386); • selfkenne / -kennis [406-413 – die antieke; 413-420 – die middeleeue; 420-440 – insluitende die volgende subafdelings: moderne tyd – inleiding (420-423); vroeë moderne tyd (423-426); van weidel tot leibniz (426-427); verligting (427429); hamman en kant (429-431); rousseau tot marx (431-434); schopenhauer en nietzsche (434-435); twintigste eeu (435-438); en psigo-analise (438-430)]; • selfrefleksie (518-520); • selfwees (520-528); • selfmisleiding (539-545). aandag sou ook geskenk kon word aan selfkommunikatiewe verskynsels soos selfkritiek, selfoorleg (“wat sal ek nou doen?”) en selfverwyt (“wat het ek nou aangevang?”). nogtans word hierdie artikel beperk tot dit wat in die titel weerspieël word. ’n eenvoudige omskrywing van ipk dui op ’n konteks waar die kommunikator sowel die mededeler as die ontvanger van boodskappe is (vocate 1994: 5); hier is ’n enkele menslike kommunikator dus die bron, asook die objek van interaksie (vocate 1994: 6). vocate (1994: xi) se beskrywing van kommunikasie met die self as selfspraak is van belang vir hierdie artikel – spesifiek die feit dat sy meen dat hierdie vorm van kommunikasie uit twee operasioneel-verskillende fenomene bestaan: selfspraak (self talk), wat sy as dialoog met die self beskryf (vocate 1994: 6), en binnespraak (inner speech). die fundamentele onderskeid tussen selfspraak en binnespraak is dat intrapersoonlik een konteks van spraakkommunikasiegedrag is, terwyl binnespraak die bevoegdheid is wat alle vorme van kommunikasieverrigting moontlik maak (vocate 1994: 4). wood (2004: 15) se definisie stem met vocate s’n ooreen aangesien sy ook ipk as kommunikasie met onsself beskryf, en ook die begrip selfspraak gebruik. verder verwys sy na die dialoog wat ons met onsself het as die gesprekke wat voortdurend in ons koppe draai. in sy gebruik van die begrip selfspraak verwys abbott (2007: 8,9) na selfregulerende boodskappe. vocate (1994: 7) gee die spesifieke eienskappe van selfspraak: (a) selfbewussyn of “reflective consciousness” soos mead (in vocate 1994: 7) dit stel; (b) die dialogiese aard, met ander woorde, die self is die objek van die spraak, ongeag of dit geverbaliseer word of nieverbaal is; (c) ’n stimulus, hetsy teken of simbool wat vanuit die self 140 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie ontstaan, dus selfstimulus; en (d) ’n vertolkende, simboliese respons of terugvoering van die self, dus selfrespons. abbott (2007: 8,9) voeg by dat selfspraak gefragmenteer of voltooid kan wees, voornemend (of vooruitlopend) of histories (terugwerkend), en versorgend of krities. ’n vlak van bewustheid is nodig ten einde die self as objek aan te spreek (vocate 1994: 7, 23), alhoewel dit nie die geval is by binnespraak nie (abbott 2007: 10). in sy wese is selfspraak dus ’n spraakaksie (searle, in vocate 1994: 7) vir die self. hierdie handeling mag doelbewus of outomaties wees, en die resultaat mag kognitiewe begrip of ’n overte verandering in gedrag wees, maar die oproep van ’n interpreterende respons van die self moet teenwoordig wees ten einde selfspraak voort te bring (vocate 1994: 7). gevolglik word vae indrukke en sensasies, beelde, gedagtefragmente, ensovoorts uitgesluit uit hierdie definisie van selfspraak. verder moet daar in gedagte gehou word dat selfspraak, of dialoog met die self, nie kan plaasvind voor binnespraak bestaan (wat saam met spraak self ontwikkel) en ’n “self” gevestig is nie (vocate 1994: 8). wanneer binnespraak tot stand gekom het, maak dit selfspraak moontlik wat dan op sy beurt die oorwegende wyse word waarop nuwe betekenis vir die self geskep word (vocate 1994: 11). die omskrywing van ipk word afgesluit deur te verwys na cunningham (1995: 2-6) se samevatting van ipk se handelinge en eienskappe, en sonder dié uit wat relevant is vir die hieropvolgende bespreking van labirintloop. wat handelinge betref, is die volgende van belang: • om met jouself te praat; die proses van kommunikasie met en binne jouself of binnespraak; • ’n interne dialoog of uitruil van betekenis tussen komponente van die individu, soos onder meer tussen bewussyn en die onbewuste, of tussen die deel van onsself wat fundamenteel idiosinkraties en persoonlik is, en die deel wat as ’n sosiale produk beskou kan word; ’n verwante handeling is die oordrag van boodskappe tussen die brein en die ander komponente wat by die kommunikasieproses betrokke is; • ’n proses waardeur ’n individu met die omgewing in wisselwerking tree of by die omgewing aanpas; ’n proses waardeur stimuli van buite en van binne gemanipuleer word; • persepsie as die proses waardeur die individu inligting of simboliese abstraksies ontvang, en dit stoor en herwin; • ’n interaktiewe proses waardeur betekenis toegeskryf word aan die “rou data” van persepsie en getransformeer word in inligting van ’n meer konseptuele aard; en • wat betref mentalistiese handelinge is ’n aantal epistemologiese funksies van belang (cunningham 1995: 4): 141 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie ❍ die toeskryf van betekenis, of die interpretasie van persepsies, gebeure en ervarings; ❍ denke en begrip; ❍ probleemoplossing, konflikoplossing, resolusie, beplanning en besluitneming; ❍ geheue; ❍ introspeksie, bewustheid, selfbewussyn en selfkennis, refleksie, metakognisie; en ❍ gevoel. wat eienskappe betref, is die volgende relevant vir die latere bespreking: • ipk staan sentraal tot die realiteit van en tot ons begrip van alle kommunikasie; • ipk, of kennis van ipk, dra by tot ons kennis van onsself en hoe ons die proses van kommunikasie met ander verstaan; en • ipk het terapeutiese waarde; deur hierdie vlak van kommunikasie te ontwikkel, kan ons innerlike harmonie bevorder en die skeiding tussen liggaam en siel verenig; ons kan gesondheid en stabiliteit herwin. funksies van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie twee spesifieke funksies van ipk word uitgewys omdat dit die grondslag lê vir die verband tussen ipk en labirintloop. wood (2004: 16) beskryf die funksie van die interne dialoog as ’n meganisme om ons gevoelens en idees uit te sorteer, om ons lewe te beplan en alternatiewe gedragsmoontlikhede uit te toets. in die voorafgaande deel van die bespreking oor ipk is daar verwys na selfregulerende boodskappe in die konteks van selfspraak. blackwood (1997: 1) trek ’n verband tussen selfspraak en gesondheid wat gegrond is op haar oortuiging dat innerlike spraak ’n ander kontrolestelsel van die liggaam is: “specifically, people can control their health by monitoring internal messages (i.e. what they say to themselves)”. hierdie stelsels sluit in elektriese, chemiese en meganiese funksionering, wat op hulle beurt aan gedrag gekoppel is. sy trek hierdie oortuiging deur na die sogenaamde liggaam-siel-konneksie en na holistiese medisyne wat die psige beskou as ’n onontginde bron in die helingsproses (vgl. abbott 2007 vir ’n meer resente verband tussen ipk en welsyn). opsommenderwys enkele punte wat toepaslik is vir die bespreking van labirintloop in sy geheel: • ten einde ’n sinvolle bespreking van labirintloop binne ’n kommunikasieperspektief moontlik te maak, moet intrapersoonlike kommunikasie (ipk) as ’n vorm van kommunikasie, onderskeibaar van ander vorme van kommunikasie, verstaan word; 142 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie • selfspraak moet onderskei word as ’n fenomeen van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie wat primêr ter sake is in die proses van labirintloop; • selfspraak in sy mees basiese vorm is ’n dialoog met die self, of ’n interne dialoog. selfspraak word dus tot die individu self gerig en is gevolglik interaksie met die self eerder as met ’n ander individu of groep mense; • ’n sekere vlak van bewussyn is ’n voorvereiste vir selfspraak; • ipk sluit boodskappe in wat op ’n onbewuste vlak lê en vervat ook niekognitiewe elemente; en • ipk het ’n aantal funksies, waarvan veral een, die selfregulerende en terapeutiese aard van interne boodskappe, van belang is. omskrywing van die labirint en labirintloop in die aanloop tot hierdie bespreking is aangedui dat die labirint vanuit verskeie perspektiewe ondersoek is en steeds groter belangstelling op verskillende fronte ontlok [vgl. kern (2000: 25); saward (2000: 20); buchanan (2007: 15-17)]. die labirint as medium van bewegende meditasie die labirint word dikwels verkeerdelik aan ’n doolhof gelyk gestel. sodanige wanopvatting spreek lynreg teen die aard van die labirint as medium vir spirituele praktyk. gesaghebbende labirintkenner lauren artress (in miller 2007) stel dit as volg: “...a labyrinth is designed for you to find your way; a maze is designed for you to lose your way”. daar word volstaan met the labyrinth society (2009) se definisie op sy webwerf: “a labyrinth is a single path or unicursal tool for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation”. croxon (2003: 163) verduidelik die praktyk van labirintloop: “it has become common practice for people to ‘walk the labyrinth’, following the single winding path to the centre and back out again … this has been described as a meditative experience.” en kern (2000: 317) dui op die trefkrag van labirintloop: “ … we do know that astonishingly profound and wise insights have been formulated in labyrinths, probably unconsciously …”. vir die doeleindes van hierdie bespreking word daar verwys na die labirint wat geloop word en wat as “full-body walking” bekend staan, in teenstelling met die ervaring deur “hand-held devices” (saward 2003: 5) of tekeninge. verder, en spesifiek na aanleiding van die verwarring rondom ’n labirint en ’n doolhof soos hierbo uitgewys is, word ’n labirint beskou as een waarvan die pad nie vertak nie, dus is dit unikursief: jy loop in en uit by dieselfde paadjie, langs dieselfde weg (daar is nie in die labirintwêreld eenstemmigheid hieroor nie – sien champion 1997). daar moet verder verstaan word dat hierdie artikel spesifiek gemik is op hedendaagse labirintpraktyk soos buchanan (2007: 12-14) dit omskryf – met ander woorde, as ’n lewende en interaktiewe praktyk wat in ’n gebou (dikwels kerke) of in ’n natuurlandskap plaasvind om die persoonlike 143 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie en spirituele praktyk van genesing en groei te beoefen deur dit te loop as bewegende meditasie. die mees algemene gebruik van die hedendaagse labirint is juis as ’n medium vir bewegende meditasie, soos buchanan (2007: 13) uitwys. labirintloop as meditasiepraktyk labirintloop is ’n alleenlopende aktiwiteit teenoor ’n groepsritueel. dit word vervolgens baie kortliks binne die groter perspektief van meditasiepraktyk geposisioneer. walsh (1983: 19) meen “the term ‘meditation’ refers to a family of practices that train attention in order to heighten awareness and bring mental processes under greater voluntary control”. daar is twee hoofkategorieë van meditasiepraktyke, naamlik konsentrasie en bewustheid (walsh 1983: 30; vgl. slabbert 1992: 160-169). in die lig van hierdie outeur se onderskeid kan labirintloop as bewustheidmeditasie beskou word aangesien die aard van die psige ondersoek word, asook die deurlopende stroming van oomblik-tot-oomblik ervaring. (vir ’n diepgaande oorsig oor meditasie self, asook navorsing oor die beoefening daarvan, sien walsh 1983; vgl. knight 1990: 20-22). die doel met bogenoemde praktyke is om diepgaande insig te verkry in die aard van geestelike prosesse wat ingebed is in terme soos bewustheid, identiteit en realiteit, en om optimale toestande van psigiese welsyn en bewussyn te ontwikkel. meditasiepraktyk is dus ’n selfreguleringstrategie, maar ook ’n dissipline vir diepe selfverkenning en transformasie. daar is verskeie voordele verbonde aan meditasie, waarvan sommige fisiologies en ander sielkundig is: sielkundige faktore, wat meer relevant is tot hierdie bespreking, fokus op angsen stresvlakke, lokus van kontrole, empatie, en verhoging in selfagting (baglan 1997: 14). teen hierdie agtergrond word die fokus teruggebring na labirintloop, wat binne walsh (1983) se hoofkategorieë as bewegende meditasie figureer. volgens frazer (2002: 1) gaan dit die beperkings van stilmeditasie te bowe omdat die beweging die oortollige energie verjaag wat verhinder dat die psige stil word. in hierdie sin kan labirintloop beskou word as ’n wyse waarop die individu sy intuïtiewe prosesse verryk (lonegren 1991: 22; vgl. kern 2000: 317) en regterbreinaktiwiteit verhoog (the labyrinth society 2009). artress (in miller 2007) beskryf die praktyk van labirintloop soos volg: by walking the labyrinth your inner world becomes transparent to you. you become aware of what your thoughts and feelings are … part of it has to do with the structure of the labyrinth itself. the path is narrow by design, and that narrowness focuses the mind … it intensifies your focus … another reason your mind quiets in a labyrinth is that you’re actually moving your body. unlike in sitting meditation, it’s much easier to allow your mind to flow and you’re not trying to control your mind. you’re releasing energy to allow you to quiet more quickly … and a deeper awareness of ourselves emerges. you begin to bring into consciousness the parts of yourself that are working against you. that’s the shadow at work. 144 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie die stadia van labirintloop in aansluiting by kern (2000) se beskouing blyk dit dat die loop van ’n labirint uit drie stadia bestaan. ’n beknopte beskrywing word hier aan die hand van artress (2006: 2830) gegee omdat dit die transformatiewe effek van labirintloop illustreer: • reiniging (purgation): hierdie fase verteenwoordig die stap in die labirint in, die geleentheid om die psige stil te maak en te suiwer, en om gedagtes en emosies van buite los te laat; • openbaring (illumination) of boetedoening: dit gebeur in die kern, in die geheiligde ruimte waar laste afgelê word, waar leiding en vertroosting ontvang word, waar genesing plaasvind en waar daar met “gees” ’n verbintenis gesluit word; en • verbintenis (union): die uitstap uit die labirint is verbind aan ons hoër mag wat bemagtig is om ons onbewuste, negatiewe emosies te hanteer, wat aandui watter rigting ons vorentoe moet inslaan – in balans en met innerlike kalmte. bandiera (2006: 262) gebruik dieselfde drie-fase indeling en verwys ook kortweg daarna as “die begin”, “in-die-middelwees” en “aan die einde”. die middelfase behels spesifiek dat die individu tot ruste sal kom en daar sal vertoef. hierdie outeur bespreek die labirintritueel vanuit ’n spirituele perspektief, en dui aan dat die kernelement van hierdie opeenvolging in die proses verandering is – wat permanent of tydelik mag wees. bandiera onderstreep dus ook die transformatiewe effek van hierdie praktyk. artress (in miller 2007) verwys ook na die drie fases as die drie r’e (releasing, receiving, return). die fases stem breedweg ooreen, hoewel daar klemverskille voorkom: • losmaking, wat die loper voorberei vir die tweede fase; • ontvangs: soos in die skema hierbo, verwys sy ook na die feit dat die loper leiding kan ontvang, of bloot net ’n diep innerlike vrede en kalmte ervaar; en • terugkeer, waar jy dit wat in die hart van die labirint ontvang is, integreer; jy werk daarmee soos jy terugkeer na die (buite)wêreld. daar is dus ’n verband tussen die proses van labirintloop en selfgenesing. die rasionaal hiervoor lê hoofsaaklik in bewustheid (“consciousness”) sodat die individu se siel self aan die stuur van die persoonlikheid se koers staan (frazer 2002: 1). intrapersoonlike kommunikasie en labirintloop: enkele gevolgtrekkings met die konsepte “intrapersoonlike kommunikasie” en “labirint” uiteengesit, en met labirintloop as meditasiepraktyk in oënskou geneem, is dit nodig om die vrae wat in die inleiding tot hierdie bespreking gestel is, in heroorweging te neem: is die loop van die labirint ’n vorm van kommunikasie met die self, met ander woorde kan die proses wat binne die individu afspeel tydens die loop van ’n labirint gelyk gestel word aan 145 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie kommunikasie, en dan spesifiek ipk? of is dit eerder ’n geval dat die loop van ’n labirint ’n visuele manifestasie van ipk is? bied die labirint aan die individu die medium, en die loop van ’n labirint die praktyk om met die binnewêreld kontak te maak en hiermee in dialoog te tree? dit wil voorkom of die antwoord op al hierdie vrae kortweg “ja” is. die aanname is dat elkeen van ons in ons diepste wese oor die volmaakte kennis beskik van wat ons roeping op aarde is en hoe ons dit moet volvoer, met ander woorde, hoe om sin aan ons bestaan op aarde te verleen. deur die kondisioneringsen akkulturasieproses verloor ons ons verbinding tot hierdie inligting wat as’t ware soos ’n bloudruk en ’n kompas in elkeen van ons funksioneer. daar is verskillende wyses om te herkonnekteer met hierdie “innerlike wysheid”, waaronder ’n “geestelike” / “goddelike” / “transendente” verhouding, ’n diepgaande terapeutiese pad, ’n standhoudende meditasiepraktyk of -praktyke – om enkeles te noem. op hierdie wyses beweeg ons met tyd stelselmatig dieper en dieper in ons binnewêreld in om daar toegang tot hierdie “goddelike wysheid” binne onsself te verkry. vanuit ’n ipk-perspektief tree ons dus in dialoog met onsself: uit ons onbewuste word boodskappe geformuleer wat as gedagtes en konkrete idees en insigte na die bewussynsvlak deurdring en deel van ons bewussynsinhoud word, en sodoende as voorlopers dien vir veranderings in houding en gedrag wat uitkring na die eksterne omgewing waarbinne ons leef en werk en sosialiseer. labirintloop, as meditasiepraktyk, werk hierdie proses aan die hand omdat dit dialoog tussen die bewuste en onbewuste deel van die psige, tussen die kognitiewe, rasionele sy en die affektiewe, gevoelsy bewerkstellig. wanneer jy die labirint loop, kan jy hierdie proses sy eie gang laat gaan, of jy kan dit in ’n bepaalde rigting stuur: die bewuste stel ’n vraag of ’n intensie in die eerste stadium van die proses, en daar word terugvoering vanuit die onbewuste in stadium twee ontvang. sodoende tree jy dus direk in kommunikasie met jou eie innerlike proses. daar is veral in die sielkunde, een van die dissiplines waaruit kommunikasiewetenskap ontstaan het, bewys van die terapeutiese waarde van labirintloop, en dit is gesetel in begrippe soos die self (om sig self te vind, selfinsig, selfkennis en dies meer), bewustheid en bewussyn, individuasie en heelheid, en transformasie en verandering. die uitdaging hier is om die proses vanuit ’n intrapersoonlike kommunikasieperspektief en deur middel van kommunikasiekonsepte te beskryf. binne die groter kommunikasiemodel staan die begrippe mededeler, enkodering, boodskap, medium, dekodering, ontvanger, terugvoering en konteks sentraal. vanuit ’n ipk-perspektief kan daar dus gesuggereer word dat die labirint die medium is, dat die labirintloper sowel mededeler as ontvanger is, en dat die boodskap verband hou met daardie gedagtes, insigte, stellings en vrae (om enkele voorbeelde te noem) wat binne die mededeler/ontvanger die prosesse van enkodering en dekodering deurloop. die dialogiese aspek van ipk is gebaseer op die terugvoeringsproses wat dus ook vanuit die mededeler ontstaan. ’n verdere kommunikasiekonsep kan in hierdie sin 146 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie bygetrek word, naamlik “ruis”, wat die kommunikasieproses kan beïnvloed en hier op tweërlei wyse interpreteer moet word: in die proses van labirintloop is daar interne of psigologiese ruis wat verwys na die lastige en opdringerige gedagtes (“monkey chatter” in meditasieterminologie), en wat pla totdat die beweging daardie rustelose energie verjaag, die gedagtes hokslaan en die verstand tot kalmte bring; eksterne ruis verwys na geraas wat in die onmiddellike omgewing kan voorkom, soos die banale geluid van ’n grassnyer in die park waar die labirint geleë is, of iemand wat hardop in die onmiddellike nabyheid van die labirint praat. dit is egter hierdie outeur se ervaring dat die verstand en psige wat kalmer word, in die omgewing gereflekteer word sodat die labirint en die labirintloper mettertyd deur stilte omring word. twee kommunikasiekonsepte word uitgesonder en kortliks toegelig: die eerste is luister (listening), terwyl die tweede betekenis (meaning) is. in ipk is dit die self wat die boodskap formuleer, die boodskap oordra en na die boodskap luister, kortom, vir wie die boodskap bedoel is – en dit kan gestel word dat labirintloop die proses waardeur die self boodskappe formuleer wat diepliggende betekenis vir sigself inhou, vergemaklik. verder maak labirintloop dit vir die self moontlik om na hierdie boodskappe te luister – daarop ag te slaan – spesifiek omdat labirintloop as meditasiepraktyk die logiese en rasionele prosesse tydens die ritueel tersyde stel sodat die sluimerende regterbreinprosesse soos intuïsie na vore beweeg om sinergisties met die linkerbreinprosesse in interaksie te tree om sodoende op kreatiewe wyse antwoorde en oplossings aan die hand te doen. die labirint as medium skep die fisieke en psigiese ruimte vir hierdie kommunikasieprosesse om te ontluik, spesifiek omdat die labirint self stilte skep en omdat labirintloop in stilte plaasvind – vergelyk in hierdie verband frazer (2002) se woordgebruik oor die labirint: “path to the center of stillness”, asook dié van goode-harris (2001): “a place to find stillness, and a space to listen to your innermost thoughts”. kortom: jy kan nie luister indien jy nie stilte binne jouself ervaar nie. dit is baker (in bruneau 1997) se standpunt dat die doel van sodanige kommunikasie stilte moet wees. bruneau (1997: 11) formuleer in hierdie sin twee voorskrifte, spesifiek ten opsigte van ipk; hoewel dit gemeenplaas is, illustreer dit nogtans die punt wat hier vanuit ’n kommunikasieperspektief met hieride artikel gemaak wil word: “be still of mind – there you may find wisdom. be still of mind, there you may evolve yourself.” die deel van betekenis is die onderliggende doel met alle kommunikasie en gevolglik ’n sentrale konsep in enige bespreking oor kommunikasie. op ’n semantiese vlak kan daar onderskei word tussen begrip (understanding) – dit waarna die kommunikator streef in sy kommunikasiehandeling – en betekenis (meaning). die verskil tussen die twee begrippe kan kortweg aan die hand van die inhoud van hierdie artikel verduidelik word: die leser kan die bespreking volg, die inhoud verstaan en gevolglik ’n begrip ontwikkel van waaroor die labirint en labirintloop gaan – maar dit sal nie noodwendig vir die leser betekenis inhou nie. die mens is ’n soeker na betekenis (goss 1982: 45), en in haar bevindinge oor labirintloop as spirituele praktyk identifiseer bandiera (2006: viii) die verwerwing van betekenis as een van die ervarings tydens labirintloop. dit is 147 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie hierdie outeur se oortuiging dat die onderliggende doel met labirintloop, vanuit ’n kommunikasieperspektief, ’n soeke na betekenis is en dat jy in die hart van die labirint nuwe betekenis oor jou bestaan verwerf. (die gebruik van die begrip “betekenis” met betrekking tot labirintloop hoort uiteraard nie uitsluitlik in die domein van kommunikasie nie, maar sluit ook aan by die groter spirituele konteks van die mens se soeke na persoonlike betekenis.) en dan spreek dit vanself dat betekenis rondom jou eie bestaan lei tot ’n beter verhouding met die wyer gemeenskap waarbinne jy funksioneer. as slotgedagte is dit opvallend dat labirintloop ’n visuele manifestasie is van die proses van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie: dit beeld die wydlopige manier uit waarop ons te midde van ons daaglikse realiteit poog om by onsself uitkom … om met ons essensie in gesprek te tree. die kern van die labirint is ’n geheiligde voertuig waar die self met sigself in gesprek tree en waar dialoog moontlik word. 148 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie verwysings abbott, j. 2007. intrapersonal communication and well-being. ongepubliseerde studie. noord-dakota: die universiteit van noord-dakota. artress, l. 2006. walking a sacred path. rediscovering the labyrinth as a spiritual practice. new york: riverhead books. baglan, t. 1997. intrapersonal communication and meditation. in: aitken, j. e. & shedletsky l. j. 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(reds.). 1997. intrapersonal communication processes. gesamentlik gepubliseer in virginia: the speech communication association en michigan: hayden-mcneil publishing. buchanan j. 2007. labyrinths for the spirit. londen: gaia books. champion, a. 1997. a labyrinth is a type of maze. caerdroia. the journal of mazes and labyrinths 28: 35-42. croxon, p. b. 2003. the piatkus dictionary of mind, body & spirit. londen: piatkus. cunningham, s. b. 1992. intrapersonal communication: a review and critique. in: deetz, s. a. (red.). 1992. communication yearbook 15. newbury: sage. cunningham, s. 1995. intrapersonal communication: a review and critique. in aitken, j. e. & shedletsky l. j. 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(derde uitgawe). australië: thomson wadsworth. 150 dialoog met die self: die labirint as medium van intrapersoonlike kommunikasie 141 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 141-161 bianca wright* abstract the use of games to communicate messages is not new; however the evolution of the digital environment has opened up opportunities for brand communicators to use games as a means to communicate with audiences in ways that were previously impossible. in south africa, so-called advergaming currently does not reach a mass audience because of the low number of internet users and the high cost of internet access. however, as a brand communication tool, advergaming has the potential to be used as a viral marketing tactic. the article analyses the perceptions of advertising agencies about the use of advergaming in the south african context. * dr bianca wright is the head of the department of journalism, media and philosophy at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. 142 bianca wright introduction the study of video games as communicators of messages that influence behaviour has traditionally focused on the potential negative impact such games may have particularly on children (griffiths 1998; lavender 2006). however, digital games are able to communicate messages with a variety of purposes and to different effects depending on the type of game. this has particular implications for brand communicators. the internet seemed like a tool to create new communication forms and draw new audiences. advertisers quickly realised the appeal of online communication, but the promise remains unfulfilled. an analysis of traditional methods to reach specific audiences online has showed that less than one percent of users actually clicks on banner ads, let alone end up making a purchase as a result of a banner ad. the average click-through rate for banner ads in 2011 was 0.09% (google 2011). this study focuses on digital games, played either on a personal computer, a gaming console or a mobile device, and more specifically on advergames, which are digital games created to promote a brand, product, service or issue. it thus draws on a variety of theories ranging from game studies, media studies and narratology to marketing and communication studies. research design and methods a national survey by questionnaire of advertising agencies in south africa was used to determine how advergames are currently being used and what the industry identified as the primary obstacles to widespread use of advergaming as a communication technique in south africa. the sample was drawn from the bizcommunity database (www.bizcommunity. com) of advertising agencies, which is the largest south african marketing and advertising community online, currently listing 662 advertising agencies of which 431 had working email addresses. a response rate of 22.505 per cent was achieved, with 97 survey responses having been obtained. the survey was distributed through email with a link to the esurveys pro site which hosted the survey. the survey by questionnaire was live for a period of four months, from september to december 2010. the questionnaire was divided into two sections. section a was used to determine the nature of the advertising agency in terms of its activity in the online and mobile advertising space. section b focused on the advertising executive’s opinion about advergaming and its use as a communication tool in south africa. it also requested the participant to indicate urls to any advergames their agency had created or used. one open-ended question was used to determine the respondents’ opinion about what needs to be done to make advergaming a viable option as a brand communication tool in 143 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa south africa. statements on a likert scale were also used. the data was then coded according to the identified categories and an analysis of the data to extrapolate descriptive statistics was conducted. ethical clearance for this study was approved by the nelson mandela metropolitan university rti higher degrees sub-committee of the faculty of arts research, technology and innovation committee. the ethics clearance reference number for this study is h10art-jms-001. the advertising agencies are not identified by name. a detailed introduction was included with the questionnaire to ensure that respondents were aware of the nature of the research and their role in it. the information represents the opinion and experience of the advertising agency as a whole rather than that of the individual. understanding the appeal of games gaming theory as a body of academic research enjoys a fractured theoretical framework. on the one hand, literary theorists and media studies proponents advocate the exploration of narrative through narratology as the focus of game studies. on the other hand, ludology, which views games as simulations, is championed by others working in the field. the core difference is that ludology proposes that the focus of video games is the game-play itself and that the gamer derives pleasure from that game-play, while narratologists believe that the pleasure is derived from the story told within the game. however, murray (2005) says an either/or approach may be too simplistic. she adds, “[b]ecause the game essentialists want to privilege formalistic approaches above all others, they are willing to dismiss many salient aspects of the game experience, such as the feeling of immersion, the enactment of violent or sexual events, the performative dimension of game-play, and even the personal experience of winning and losing” (murray 2005: 1-2). within this context it is important to look at advergames from both perspectives, as simulation but also as narrative. from a ludological perspective, one of the primary appeals of advergaming lies in its ability to immerse the user in a simulated environment in which the issue or brand is at the forefront. this simulation draws on ludology, which proposes that the user relates to the simulation, is immersed in the game environment and therefore engages with the game at a different level than more passive pursuits such as television. however, as mentioned previously, in traditional academic study games are seen as merely interactive narratives, procedural stories or remediated cinema (eskelinen 2001). 144 bianca wright gaming is growing in popularity worldwide. research by the entertainment merchant’s association (ema) showed that 68% of all american households are now playing video games (brightman 2009). there was a 19% total industry sales jump to almost usd$23 billion in 2008, and video game rentals increased eight percent for 2008 to usd$541 million (brightman 2009). in america, the average gamer is 35 years old and has been playing for 12 years (entertainment software association 2009). gamers have traditionally been thought of as male, but the number of female gamers is growing (the npd group 2009). women prefer word and puzzle games, while men are more interested in sport, combat or casino games (gurău 2008). the south african gaming industry (gfk 2011) surpassed the r1.7 billion mark in 2011, which translates into a total of 3.86 million physical games sold in 2011, up from 3.48 million in 2010. exact statistics on the number of south african gamers are not available. the agasa gamers league, which calls itself the largest competitive gaming league in south africa, has 7702 players, 934 teams and 742 clans competing in over 30 games and disciplines (agasa 2009). a search of google south africa lists at least six other gaming leagues, including do gaming league, uso clan, leagueoflegends, mygaming and intel annihilator league. personal uses of games both blumler and katz (1974) and mcquail (1983) proposed that media users select specific media on the basis of their specific needs and that the media fulfil a specific role for media users. a study of adolescent gamers by raney, smith and baker (2006) identified four main psychological appeals of video games, namely pleasure and enjoyment; excitation and arousal; mood enhancement; and management and mastering the challenge. raney et al. (2006) also linked game content, most specifically interactivity and violent content with these appeals, and also explored the social experience of game playing. advergaming may fulfil two primary needs: the need for entertaining relaxation and the need to compete as theorised above. most advergames include a “challenge a friend” and/ or high score list aspect, which may appeal to users’ need to prove themselves superior to others (moore 2006). forty-five per cent of the games offered multiple levels of play, 69% awarded game points and 40% incorporated time limits of some sort to increase the challenge aspect of the advergame (moore 2006). stafford and faber (2004) identified escapism, relief of boredom, competition, fun and curiosity as being the primary uses and gratification motivations for playing advergames. the results of their study found that the first four identified motivations correlated with a positive attitude towards an advergame, while 145 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa the last motivation, curiosity, correlated with a negative attitude towards the game (stafford & faber 2004). it further indicated that the pleasure a player experiences during game-play may transfer to the positive feeling towards the site and relationship with the brand (ibid.). they also identified a number of reasons why players did not play advergames. interestingly, although the study pointed to an indirect relationship between favourable attitude towards the advergame and purchase intention, it did not test this relationship. falstein (2004) links the fun element of a game to the survival needs of humankind’s palaeolithic ancestors, a theory he calls natural funativity. falstein (2004) says that the technology behind video games has in effect “made possible a concentrated, particularly potent play experience that is both very new in its expression and very old in its origins”. he looks at games as a specialised form of play and draws an analogy with the way young animals use play to learn survival skills. the buzzcity mobile gaming survey found that south african mobile gamers play mainly to pass the time (45%), to learn something new (30%) and to get the most out of their phones (17%) (buzzcity 2010). games as persuasion the question becomes how do games persuade? dahl et al. (2009) posit that according to the persuasion knowledge model (friestad & wright 1984), consumers process messages clearly marked as persuasive content differently to those that are not clearly marked. within this context, drawing on the work of raney et al. (2006), they argue that if gamers are unaware of the embedded brand message within the game they will process those messages differently and may therefore be more susceptible to the persuasion attempt (dahl et al. 2009). studies on the effectiveness of advergames are limited, but there is some evidence that companies, particularly those in the automotive and energy drink markets, have seen awareness move to trial and actual purchase as a result of exposure through advergames (dahl et al. 2009). the kaizer family foundation study (moore 2006; gurău 2008), which looked at the marketing methods embedded into food advergames that targeted children, identified characteristics of advergames that encouraged repeat playing. these included a membership opportunity for children aged 12 or under, such as registering or joining a club to get access to special activities or secret games and incentives to get the user to buy more food so he or she can collect points, which can then be exchanged for new games, brand-related clothing or other products. the study also found that 13% of the sites include polls or quizzes, which were 146 bianca wright used to ask personal opinions about products and nearly half the sites included a movie or tv tie-in (gurău 2008). gurău (2008) investigated the way advergames may persuade by using the concept of flow and the advertising principle of aida (attention, interest, desire and action). he draws a correlation between the capability of the game player and the difficulty of the game and suggests that these two need to be in equilibrium in order for the player to reach a state of flow rather than frustration or boredom. this, gurău (2008) says, counters chen and ringel’s (2001) earlier assertion that advergames should be kept simple. gurău (2008) conducted a study of 200 first-year students between the ages of 20 and 24 and found a clear statistical relation between the capacity of the advergame to induce the state of flow, and a change in the buying behaviour of players. those who experienced a state of flow were also more inclined to pass the game and/or brand message on as a viral message to more people. the study sample was too small to be generalisable, however. an analysis (moore 2006) of 431 advergames on food-related websites found that the most common types of advergames in use were arcade, sports and adventure games, which seemed to have been chosen because they are not very complicated and the rules of play are generally simple. the study also found that the vast majority of games were animated, and about 90 percent incorporated lively music or sound effects. the clear emphasis throughout the games is entertainment and brand reinforcement (moore 2006). although this focused on children, the issues are applicable to young adults as well. advergames as advertising lee and youn (2008) conducted a content analysis of the websites of the top 100 companies in the united states, ranked by advertising expenditure in ten major media, to determine how advergames were being used by advertisers. the study found that only 26 of the 100 companies examined used advergames as an advertising tool on their websites, but that those 26 offered a total of 294 advergames between them (lee & youn 2008). the most prevalent genres of the advergames examined in the study were arcades, puzzles, and quizzes/trivia. lee and youn (2008) also analysed the fit between the brand and the game as part of their study and found that most of the advergames fit well with the product being advertised in terms of lifestyle and image fit. in addition to lifestyle and image congruity, lee and youn also look at functional congruity, drawing on the work of gwinner and eaton (1999). functional congruity occurs when the product category being advertised in the game is a 147 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa central object typically used in the content of the game, such as in the case of cars in racing games (gwinner & eaton 1999). the lee and youn (2008) study found that 59% of the advergames analysed demonstrated low levels of functional congruity with the product, 29% showed high congruity, and 12% had moderate levels of functional congruity. congruity was considered an important aspect of positive attitude creation among gamers, with a study by hernandez et al. (2004) showing that brands that were incongruent with the game play were perceived as more intrusive than congruent product placement. wise et al. (2008) also revealed a stronger positive relationship between attitude toward the advergame and attitude toward the brand when participants play games with a high thematic connection to the brand’s product. the effectiveness of advergames advertising effectiveness in traditional models has focused on the relationship between attitude toward the advertisement and attitude toward the brand and this could be used as a method to determine the effectiveness of advergames, but wise et al. (2008) argue that these scholars have not specified production features of interactive forms of advertising that might moderate the relationship between attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand. it is difficult to equate the relationship towards the game with the relationship towards the brand as little evidence exists to support this. however, gamers seem open to the use of advertising messages within games. linking advergames to overall brand messages has merit, as evidenced by the receptiveness study conducted by winkler and buckner (2006). the study found that those who play are receptive to the advertising message, or at least to the product or company that is displayed within the game, and, further, that players recall many of the details of the brand integration within the game such as the location of the logo (winkler & buckner 2006). winkler and buckner propose that this might be because even though most advergames are engrossing and keep players immersed in the game experience, they are generally simple and straightforward. consequently, the player can subconsciously focus better on the advertising messages communicated through the game (winkler & buckner 2006). however, cognisance should be taken of the fact that younger generations, especially the digital natives born after 1978, tend to have a photographic memory in the visual environment but not necessarily a conceptual memory, and learn differently compared with past generations. prensky (2001) describes digital natives as being used to receiving information really fast. “they like to parallel process and multitask. they prefer their graphics before their text rather than the 148 bianca wright opposite. they prefer random access (like hypertext). they function best when networked. they thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. they prefer games to ‘serious’ work” (prensky 2001). it can therefore be proposed that digital natives are more receptive to messages communicated through games. however, memory alone does not indicate comprehension or indeed positive perception of a message. also significant for south african advertisers is these researchers’ (winkler & buckner 2006) finding that suggests that advergames might work more effectively for brands that are already known to the game player in some way, indicating that advergames may be more suitable to enhance and alter the brand impression instead of building brand awareness for a product that is new to the target audience. thus, the current strategy of using advergames as part of a broader marketing campaign makes sense. length of play and repeated game use seem to have an effect on recall of the brand advertising as evidenced in a study by constantin and grigorovici (2004), the results of which suggested that 30% of in-game ads are recalled in the short term and 18% in the longer term. coulard (2007) looked at the differences between the way men and women perceive advergames. he found that men tended to play games more than women and that women preferred advergames which required some sort of reflection. women tended to be more sensitive to the presence of the brand in the advergame, but men tended to enjoy the game less once they noticed the branding (coulard 2007). kretchmar (2004: 49), citing pintak (2001) and rodgers (2002), claims that advergames offer “retention rates 10 times greater than for broadcast commercials, 16-45% of recipients play games received via promotional e-mail for an average of 25 minutes, 400% viral compounding with 90% of those who receive the passalong e-mail responding”. she adds that advergames transfer the emotion of the game to the brand that is powering it, creating an engaging, rather than passive, experience (kretchmar 2004). mobile gaming literature on gaming and advergaming seems to point towards it as a useful tool for communicating brand messages, but it has only been used in a limited way in the south african context. in order to reach the broader south african audience and make advergaming a viable tool in advertising in south africa, it needs to make the move to the mobile environment which enjoys a larger number of users than the traditional wired infrastructure of the pc and internet connection. mobile use in south africa is high. according to the international telecommunications union (itu 2007), mobile users represent 90.1% of the total 149 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa telephone subscribers in south africa, reaching 87.08% of the adult population. the buzzcity mobile gaming survey 2010 provided a picture of the average south african mobile gamer. she (53% were female) is between 25 and 30 years old (25%), in the service industry and downloads games on average once a week (36%) and plays games daily (44%) or at least whenever she can (32%) (buzzcity 2010). the report also found that board/ brain/ puzzle games are the most popular among south african mobile gamers, with 22% listing them as their favourite (buzzcity 2010). fifty-five per cent of south africans surveyed in the tns mobile life study indicated that they played games on their mobile phones (tns research surveys 2011). the mobility 2011 study (world wide worx 2011) found that mobile internet usage among south africans above the age of 16 had increased substantially, with 39% of urban south africans and 27% of rural users now browsing the internet on their phones. there are approximately six million mobile internet users in south africa, of which 4.5 million also have access to a computer (world wide worx 2011). if translated to mobile, advergaming could leverage the concept of viral marketing. viral marketing, as a concept, has evolved from a traditional marketing term, word of mouth (wom), which refers to “oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a communicator which the receiver perceives as a noncommercial message, regarding a brand, product or service” (wiedemann 2007). many online advergames are small enough to be emailed from user to user, thus spreading the game and the brand message quickly and with greater credibility. according to gurău (2008), 81% of players will email their friends to try a good game and this should extend to the mobile environment as well. currently advergaming as an advertising tactic is being used to complement existing marketing campaigns in south africa. advergames, which are thus just one small part of the whole spectrum, ultimately aim at increasing brand awareness and reinforcing existing brand associations. advergames therefore need to be understood within the context of their broader marketing environment and in relation to the overall brand message being communicated. as discussed above, advergaming is currently used in south african marketing campaigns on a limited basis to reach a clearly defined niche audience of affluent users. the reason for this, it could be argued, is that advergaming is an online strategy and wired internet access within south africa is relatively low (goldstuck 2012). this research focuses on the following barriers to the use of advergaming to reach a mass audience: access, mobility, cost and education. this study set out 150 bianca wright to investigate the perceptions that south african advertising agencies have about advergaming in south africa. results ninety-seven (97) of the 431 advertising agencies contacted completed the survey, representing a response rate of 22.505%. the first part of the survey focused on information about the advertising agencies themselves. the majority (46.67%) had been existence for ten years or more. almost 74% of respondents indicated that they had a dedicated online division responsible for digital and online advertising initiatives such as website banner advertising and more than 88% stated that they provide online advertising services to clients such as the creation and distribution of banner adverts. just over 76% provide mobile advertising services to clients such as the design and implementation of sms advertising campaigns. most of the respondents (73.33%) had heard of advergaming prior to the survey and 57.33% had played an advergame. as expected, use of advergames in marketing campaigns in south africa was relatively low with just under 30 percent (28%) saying they had made use of an advergame as part of an online campaign for a client. there was mixed opinion about the challenges to widespread adoption of advergaming as a brand communication tool in south africa, with almost equal numbers of respondents citing access, cost, education and lack of interest as the core obstacles. 151 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa figure 1: challenges to widespread use of advergaming in sa (expressed in percentages) those that indicated “other” as their response to this question were asked to elaborate. the responses were intriguing, with a number of those surveyed indicating that the mind set of marketers needed to change in order for advergaming to become more accepted and used more widely. respondent 1, for example, said “not cost, as very simple and cost effective solutions abound. and mobile is making access not a problem either. i think the main challenge is the mind set of marketers – it’s far easier to run a radio add than to conceptualise a successful online media campaign, even though online will always be cheaper” (all responses verbatim). another respondent said, “clients are very reluctant to invest in stuff that isn’t tried and tested.” the respondents also linked this to the need for demonstrated return on investment (roi). the challenge is “defined roi. marketers simply don’t know enough about the medium, so they lump this into the risk basket, along with most digital offerings,” one respondent said. this was echoed by at least one other respondent. other challenges identified included the stickiness of the game – that is, its ability to keep the user playing – time for development and testing, the dearth of free content available on the web and the mobile web, quality of advergames, advertising depth and diversity, and the feeling that “people with the skills are not briefed far enough in advance, they should be involved in the creative strategy upfront to determine what is possible or not”. 152 bianca wright sixty-three respondents provided suggestions as a response to the open-ended question, “what do you think needs to be done to make advergaming a viable option as a brand communication tool in south africa?” these responses are discussed under the following themes: theme 1: education one of the most prevalent themes in this section was the need to educate the market both from an industry and a consumer point of view with 20 of the 63 respondents indicating this should be addressed to improve the viability of advergaming in south africa. six of the relevant responses are included in table 1, which indicates that education was an important theme among the respondents of the survey. table 1: responses relating to education respondent no. statement 17 we need to educate the general populace on the fun aspects, and to play the game with an open mind. also, since 80% of sa internet users access the world wide web on their phones, we need to be focussing on mobi games more, especially when a game is designed to promote a brand. 19 train more design and communication professionals in the technology, to be able to design and build the games. but mostly, to educate / introduce to ‘older’ production managers and creative directors, to show them how this medium can be an effective tool. i think many of the decision makers in the industry / agencies a) simply do not know about this medium, b) do not trust it as an effective investment of time and resource, c) see it as more expensive and time consuming than it actually is. 32 corporates and brands need to be educated on the value they offer. online is still a ‘mystery’ to many executives, who think it – and advergaming – is merely a ‘fad’ that young people are going through! 40 advergaming itself needs to be advertised to become a better known media channel option for advertising agencies to use, as advertising managers and media strategists need to see the benefits of this form of a brand communication tool. successful advergaming (with stats attached) should be promoted with pr to create hype about it. 153 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa 44 rich and creative advertising games will draw consumer’s attention in a new and exciting way, but there is still a lot that needs to be done to help marketers, agencies and publishers understand what they can do/achieve in the digital space. they need to understand how it works and what it can do for their and their clients’ brands. lack of knowledge and understanding mean that a lot of marketers, agencies and publishers are ignoring digital media all together. access to the internet, high costs and slow bandwidth speeds all play a huge role here as well. for rich media and tactics like advergaming to be adopted all of these areas will need to be addressed (which all the new cables will hopefully achieve sooner rather than later). 56 educating ad agencies on all the possibilities and specific ways to integrate an advergame into their ‘normal’ campaigns. it seems that everyone wants to make games, but as soon as you ask them on what platform or which devices, they lose interest because they did not plan properly or they can’t spend the time in research. tv, print and radio is proven, ‘easy’ and don’t require too much resources. clients need to know that their main audience all have mobile phones, most (if not all) spend oodles of time in social media and that they actually like to choose which brands to interact with and not being force fed by traditional media. theme 2: mobile networks the need to explore mobile possibilities and further to improve mobile offerings through network service providers was highlighted by eight of the respondents. “if you could develop advergaming on social platforms and allow it to gain popularity via social media or on mobile phones. traditional gaming (psp, nintendo wii, xbox ...) is too expensive for the vast majority of south africans and that limits the number of people who will view such integrated ads,” one respondent explained. other concerns the issue of bandwidth was also highlighted as a possible area that requires attention, as was cost of development and the need to ensure that advergames are engaging as well as meeting the requirements of the client. as one respondent said, “advergaming is not the total solution in and of itself. it must be within an overarching digital and brand strategy that has support throughout the year, on-going commitment from client budgets, new features, active community development and management, on-going and constant advertising, and a medium to long term approach. short term approaches do not produce results. client objects also need to be clear... is it data capture? driving sales? loyalty? etc.” another respondent added, “it is a viable option, but it doesn’t always deliver on the objectives of the task and therefore may not be included in the plan. cost is variable – depending on the development required. but so often brands to not promote the game once it has been created. mobile games are very popular – 154 bianca wright games should be developed with mobile in mind – the cost however increases when you make it accessible to more phone users (optimised for various phones)”. regulation was also a concern, as one respondent indicated that stricter mechanisms need to be put in place to regulate the mobile environment. “cpa (consumer protection act) and popi (protection of personal information) will aid this, but abuse of online and mobile marketing is the biggest enemy of campaigns that do no harm and operate as a value-add to the consumer. subscriptions services should be completely eradicated in my opinion and better practices to disallow spam need to be adhered to.” another respondent suggested that the industry should “publish engines and build-your-own-game solutions to let the market create their own”. such a solution already exists with skillpod media’s advergame creator site (www. advergamecreator.com), which provides companies with a selection of existing games which they can customise with their own logo. the site allows advertisers to name the games, add logos and products to the various game screens and change the colour schemes (game specific). advertisers are able to access reports, which detail the number of game plays by each player, clicks on banners, high scores logged and user registrations. the solution also provides distribution code and a simple user registration feature. users of each game can log their high scores and the top 10 scores are displayed within the game. games include popper, tritris and a driftracing game. perceptions of advergaming in south africa the next part of the survey listed statements with which the respondents needed to indicate their agreement or disagreement on a five-point likert scale, from strongly agree to strongly disagree. more than 60% of respondents either agreed (41%) or strongly agreed (21%) that they were positioned to offer advergaming as a potential medium for brand communication to clients. twenty-two percent neither agreed nor disagreed, while six percent disagreed and a further eight percent strongly disagreed. respectively 37% and 49% strongly agreed and agreed with the statement, “advergaming has the potential to provide a rich, interactive experience of a brand to consumers.” six percent indicated that they neither agreed nor disagreed, while only six percent combined indicated that they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. almost 75% of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that “advergaming in south africa cannot work”, while only three percent combined agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. twenty-one percent were neutral. despite this, close to 55% of respondents felt that advergaming 155 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa can only appeal to a small percentage of south african consumers. twenty-one percent disagreed and eight percent strongly disagreed while 16% were neutral. similarly, 30% and 46% strongly agreed and agreed respectively that advergaming will remain a complement to other advertising strategies rather than a core advertising medium in south africa. eight per cent disagreed and 14% neither agreed nor disagreed. advergaming was almost unanimously thought to be a viral marketing tool with 41% and 50% strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement. five percent were neutral and only two percent disagreed. the survey also sought to determine the perceptions about how advergames should be structured in order to be successful. the statement, “in order for an advergame to work, there must be some kind of narrative or story to the game”, saw the majority (26% and 29% respectively) strongly agree or agree with 28% remaining neutral. two percent strongly disagreed that narrative was necessary for an advergame to succeed and 13% disagreed. the majority of advertising executives surveyed disagreed (42%) or strongly disagreed (26%) that merely adding a logo to an existing game was enough to create an advergame. seventeen percent neither agreed nor disagreed and eight percent and five percent agreed or strongly agreed respectively. the opportunity for the player to engage with the product, service or brand in a manner similar to real-life was highlighted as an important aspect of advergaming with the majority of respondents either strongly agreeing (25%) or agreeing (40%) and 22% remaining neutral. close to 85% of respondents recognised advergaming’s ability to communicate educational messages about issues such as hiv/aids, examples of which have been implemented in india. zmq created the freedom hiv/aids initiative which comprises four mobile games targeting different mind sets and psychologies of mobile users. “there have been effective download of 10.3 million game sessions in 15 months from its launch. as reported, more games have been downloaded in smaller cities and towns in india. the prime reason of this phenomenon is that these areas are media dark areas and have very less access (sic) to information. people here preferred to download free mobile games to know more about hiv/ aids” (zmq 2008). advergaming is an area that has not yet been explored in depth in terms of health communication in south africa, but there seems to be consensus among the advertisers surveyed that it could provide valuable opportunities for health communicators. the assessment of the extent of the use of advergames by advertising agencies shows that only 20% (10% and 10% respectively) of respondents are currently 156 bianca wright using advergaming as part of their advertising campaigns to clients, while 53% indicated that they were not. thirty-five percent of those surveyed indicated that they were currently investigating using advergaming as part of their advertising campaigns and 29% were neutral. an almost equal number (34%) of respondents disagreed that they were investigating using advergaming in their campaigns. there were mixed opinions about whether or not advergaming will become an important part of advertising in south africa, with 13% and 20% strongly agreeing and agreeing respectively, 49% remaining neutral and 14% and 2% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. however, the respondents showed far more consensus in terms of the statement, “the mobile platform can provide a means to reach a wider audience with advergaming”. ninety-two percent of respondents either strongly agreed or agreed and eight percent were neutral. conclusions and recommendations the following conclusions and recommendations can be extrapolated from the literature and the findings from the survey. it is evident from the study that education about the possibilities of advergaming as a form of message communication needs to take place both at industry and at consumer level to broaden the appeal of the advergame within the south african context and to create platforms for innovation within this domain. the general lack of awareness about advergaming among respondents is indicative of the need for this type of education, a need echoed by the advertising agencies surveyed. although there is evidence of the use of advergaming in the south african advertising industry, the research found that advergaming in its traditional wired form cannot reach a mass audience in south africa at this time, due to the lack of access to the internet among the majority of the population and other barriers such as cost of access and cost of ownership. the study has explored those barriers and concludes that the mobile environment has the potential to overcome those barriers and enable advergaming to reach a larger mass audience. despite this there is evidence that both advertising agencies and potential consumers are interested in the possibilities of advergaming as a means to reach the south african audience in a unique and engaging manner. already there is some evidence to show that mobile gaming and mobile advergaming is starting to be explored in south africa. in addition to the need to take cognisance of ease of use and challenge of skill in advergames, respondents indicated that advergame developers and their clients need to look at the technical aspects of their games to ensure a smooth game playing experience and to lessen the frustration of game players. there is also evidence to support the need for advergame developers and their clients to identify 157 perceptions of advergaming as an advertising tool in south africa potential technical difficulties that players may experience and to design games around these technical restrictions, such as bandwidth, connection speed and device compatibility. access to the internet, whether fixed line or mobile, does not necessarily translate into the ability to access and play games as the device and connection used have an impact on this. users also have different levels of sophistication in terms of the use of their devices. developers need to look to device-independent games standards as a means to expand the reach of mobile games within the current context and to cater to all levels of user sophistication. once the game-play is defined, it is important to investigate the dissemination and promotion of an advergame in order to ensure its success. viral marketing is an accepted tactic in online brand communication and has a demonstrated effectiveness as evidenced by the literature explored earlier. advergames seem set to remain a complement to other branding and communication tools, rather than a central strategy in itself. therefore, advertisers and game developers need to focus on the ways in which advergames can be used as part of the broader communication strategy and interlink the various components of the strategy to drive traffic across all platforms, including advergames. while the commercial potential of advergames is important, it is equally vital to consider applications beyond advertising and marketing. from the survey of advertising agencies it was clear that the majority believed that mobile gaming could provide the ideal platform for extending the reach of games for communication, whether advergames or so-called serious games. the survey also demonstrated that there was widespread support for the idea that games can be used as educational and issue dissemination media for hiv/aids, environmental consciousness and so on. this is especially significant in the south african context where social, health and environmental issues continue to impact on the well-being of society. drawing on international examples such as that of india, the south african government and non-profit organisations could explore the possibility of creating games to communicate messages through mobile phones as part of their broader educational and awareness campaigns. it is clear from the data collected and the literature cited that games offer more than just an entertainment experience and that they can be used in a variety of ways to communicate messages to niche and mass audiences. in south africa, advergaming is slowly growing as a complement to existing brand strategies and could potentially be used to reach citizens with messages regarding health, social ills, education and environmental conservation among others. as proposed in an earlier article (wright 2011), the mobile platform seems ideal for overcoming the obstacles to the use of advergames to reach a mass audience. 158 references agasa. 2009. about us. 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[online]. available at: <http://www.zmqsoft.com/wbda.htm> [accessed on 1 september 2009]. untitled 95 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 95 111 johann c. de wet* abstract albert camus (1913-1960), recipient of the nobel prize for literature in 1957, was one of france's greatest post-war writers. he published his first novel, the outsider (l'etranger), in 1942. given that the outsider is widely regarded as a classic existentialist work, the following research question is posed in this article: how, and to what extent, does the existential tradition of communication theory feature in the mentioned work? the penguin edition of the novel (translated from the french by joseph laredo and published in 1983) is used in the study. with regard to the methodology used, the study necessitated in the main research of literature on the outsider, existentialism and existential communication. the methods employed were analytical in order to determine the relationship between the outsider, existentialism and existential communication; and critical, for purposes of highlighting aspects of the existential tradition of communication theory that can be read in the novel. a brief summation of the storyline is provided with particular focus on the communication of the protagonist, meursault, followed by camus's short interpretation of the novel which he wrote as a preface to the american university edition in 1955. thereafter the gist of an existential perspective on communication and some recurring themes in existentialism are provided to facilitate and contextualise the ensuing analysis of the outsider. the article concludes that the outsider persuasively captures fundamental traits of the existential tradition of communication theory. * professor johann de wet is chairperson of the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 95 introduction: a word on albert camus albert camus (1913-1960) was born in what is now called algeria. he was raised mainly by his grandmother on his mother’s side. camus’s father was killed in the first world war before he was one year old. at the age of ten, camus won a scholarship to study at the lycée in algiers, later to be renamed lycée albert camus. he lived in the working-class district of belcourt in the town of algiers with his grandmother and mother, a charwoman of spanish ancestry, as well as his elder brother until, at the age of seventeen, his first attack of tuberculosis forced him to leave home. thereafter he was to lead an independent life in places where he could better look after himself. he suffered recurrent attacks of tuberculosis throughout his life. camus read philosophy at the university of algiers but for health reasons never wrote the competitive examination which would have qualified him to teach in a lycée. he held journalistic positions in algiers and later paris where he joined the resistance movement in 1941. a year earlier, in 1940, he married his second wife, francine faure, who five years later, gave birth to their twin children. while the publication of his first novel, the outsider (l’etranger), in 1942 made him well known in french literary circles, camus’s increasing fame in post-war france stemmed essentially from the reputation of his body of literary works, ranging from essays to novels and plays. camus did not write literature for a living. when he died in a car accident near paris in 1960, he had been a reader with the publishing firm of gallimard for the previous seventeen years. [see lottman (1981) on camus’s life.] while camus never wanted to be branded as an existentialist, he is widely regarded as one of the foremost proponents of existentialism – a philosophy of existence fathered by soren kierkegaard (1813-1855). while existentialism has a long history, it became, especially on the continent of europe, one of the major forms of philosophy in the 20th century (cf. billington 1993: 151-152). there are of course specific historical reasons for this. for our purposes, suffice it to say that existentialism has flourished in those countries, such as camus’s france during and after world war two, where the social structures had been turned upside down and where previously established values had been questioned critically. in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of camus’s death in 2010, french president nicolas sarkozy has indicated that he wishes to have camus’s remains moved from a cemetery in provence to the pantheon, the secular temple on the left bank in paris where france lays to rest its greatest men and women. the left bank edifice houses voltaire, rousseau, victor hugo, jean moulin, marie curie and louis braille. research question, aim of the study and methodology given the fact that camus is widely regarded as an existentialist, and that the outsider, a masterpiece, was his first novel, the following research question may be posed: are 96 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 96 there traces of, and to what extent are there traces of, the existential tradition of communication theory in the mentioned work? the aim of the study is therefore to highlight aspects of the existential tradition of communication theory as recorded in the outsider. the penguin edition of the novel (translated from the french by joseph laredo and published in 1983) was used for the study. to this end, a brief summation of the storyline is provided with particular focus on the communication of the protagonist, meursault, followed by camus’s interpretation of the novel which he wrote as a preface to the american university edition in 1955. thereafter the gist of an existential perspective on communication and some recurring themes in existentialism are provided to facilitate and contextualise the ensuing analysis of the outsider. with regard to the methodology used, the study necessitated in the main research of literature on the outsider, existentialism and existential communication. the methods employed were analytical in order to determine the relationship between the outsider, existentialism and existential communication; and critical, for purposes of highlighting aspects of the existential tradition of communication theory that can be read in the novel. brief summation of the storyline from the outset, one acknowledges summaries of the story provided also by thody (1957), o’brien (1970) and masters (1974). the novel, written in the first person, opens with the words: “mother died today. or maybe yesterday, i don’t know. i had a telegram from the home: ‘mother passed away. funeral tomorrow. yours sincerely.’ that doesn’t mean anything. it may have been yesterday.” meursault receives the news of his mother’s death merely with faint annoyance at having to ask for two days’ leave of absence from the office where he works. the opening pages describe meursault’s journey to the home where his mother died, and the funeral. at her funeral he has no sadness or regret, and feels only the physical inconveniences of watching over her body and following the hearse to the cemetery under the burning sun. the day after the funeral he goes swimming, meets a girl, marie, whom he had known slightly before, takes her to a fernandel (comedy) film and goes to bed with her that night. marie would later ask him to marry her, but meursault shows no more affection for her than he had shown for his mother. his reply to marie is that he accepts, since it is all the same to him. when she remarked that marriage was a serious matter, he replied that it was not the case. meursalt spends the following day (a sunday) in his room (of a house with many tenants) watching the people in the street below. 97 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 97 at his work, he is more interested in a detail like the pleasant dryness of a hand-towel at midday and its clamminess in the evening than in a possible promotion and transfer to paris. after a routine day at the office, meursault meets an elderly neighbour, salamano, who has a dog which he is in the habit of beating. then he meets another neighbour called raymond who asks meursault whether he was not disgusted by the way that salamano treated the dog: “i answered no.” raymond asks meursault to eat with him: “it struck me that this would save my having to cook my dinner, so i said, ‘thanks very much.’” raymond asks meursault’s advice on a personal matter. he had been keeping a girl, a moor, who had “let him down” and he wanted to teach her a lesson. “he wanted to write her a letter ‘with insults in it and at the same time things to make her sorry’. when she came back he’d go to bed with her and ‘right at the crucial moment’ he’d spit in her face and throw her out of the room.’ i agreed it wasn’t a bad plan; it would punish her all right.” raymond asks meursault to write this letter for him and meursault agrees. soon afterwards, meursault and marie hear thuds and a scream from raymond’s room: “marie and i went out of the room to see. the woman was still screaming and raymond still knocking her about. marie said, wasn’t it horrible! i didn’t answer. then she asked me to go and fetch a policeman, but i told her i didn’t like policemen.” raymond is charged with assault and meursault agrees to act as his witness by saying that she had cheated on raymond. later raymond rings him at the office: “it’s like this,” he said. “i’ve been shadowed all morning by some arabs. one of them’s the brother of that girl i had the row with. if you see them hanging round the house when you come back, pass me the word.” “i promised to do so.” meursault gives evidence for raymond about the girl having been false to him. the police, without checking meursault’s statement, let raymond off with a warning. meursault and marie are invited by raymond to spend some time with him at a friend’s chalet near the beach. as they were about to leave the house for the bus, meursault and raymond observe that some arabs, including the brother of the girl who raymond had beaten, were staring at them. later, meursault, raymond and his friend go to the beach, where they drink and swim. the arabs had followed them. there is a fight on the beach in which one of the arabs draws a knife and raymond is cut on the arm and face. later on at the beach they (meursault and raymond) again meet the arab who had cut raymond. raymond has his revolver and he and meursault discuss whether to shoot the arab. meursault advises against shooting him in cold blood and raymond gives meursault his revolver. the arabs retreat. on their way back to the chalet, meursault leaves raymond and returns to the beach in the noonday glare and heat. he finds the arab on the beach, and the arab draws his knife. almost unconscious, under the blinding sun, of what he is doing, meursault 98 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 98 shoots the arab and then fires four more shots into his inert body: “and it was like four sharp raps which i gave on the door of unhappiness.” in the second part of the book, which deals with meursault’s trial and sentence, meursault remains as detached and indifferent as he was in the first, equally preoccupied by his own sensations and equally reluctant to pretend to feelings which he does not have. he never thinks of pleading self-defence when accused of the murder of the arab, and expresses no remorse or feeling of guilt about his victim. his lawyer warns him that the reports of his apparent indifference at his mother’s funeral might prejudice the jury against him, but meursault refuses to allow lies to be told on his behalf. the evidence given by certain witnesses of his insensitivity at his mother’s funeral, weighs overwhelmingly against him in his trial. the warden of the home says that he had been surprised by meursault’s calmness on the day of the funeral in that he did not want to see his mother, that he did not cry once, and that he had left straight after the funeral without paying respects at the grave. what also struck him was that meursault could not tell one of the undertaker’s men how old his mother was. the caretaker testified that at the home’s mortuary and beside his dead mother he had smoked, slept, and had some white coffee – the custom being that a son must refuse it beside the body of the one who brought him into the world. the prosecutor emphasises meursault’s callousness and his connivance with raymond. as the prosecutor declares to the jury and others: “has he even expressed any regrets? never, gentlemen. not once in front of the examining magistrate did he show any emotion with regard to his abominable crime.” (at this point, meursault informs the reader that he would have liked to explain to the prosecutor in a friendly way, almost affectionately, that he had never really been able to regret anything. he was always preoccupied by what was about to happen.) the prosecutor alleges that meursault has no soul and that he had no access to any humanity nor to any of the moral principles which protect the human heart. he argued in conclusion that meursault had no place in a society whose most fundamental rules he ignored. “i ask you for this man’s head, and i do so with an easy mind,” the prosecutor said. the defence pleads guilty (of homicide) with extenuating circumstances and argues that the fact that “for one tragic moment he lost his self-control” when killing the arab should not earn meursault the death sentence. the court decides otherwise. he is condemned to death. the judge told meursault that he would be decapitated in a public square in the name of the french people. while awaiting execution he rejects the chaplain’s offer of religion. meursault responds almost violently by proclaiming that this absurd life on earth alone is all that is certain and that in it the inevitability of death obliterates all significance. for him, this applies to everyone. and what difference would it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he did not weep at his mother’s funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end. 99 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 99 the novel ends with meursault feeling that he had been happy in his life, that he would like to live it all over again, and that he hopes, in order that all may be fulfilled, that there will be many people at his execution and that they will greet him with cries of hatred. camus on the outsider the following, in camus’s own words, first appeared as the preface to the american university edition of the outsider in 1955 and as an afterword to the outsider, translated by joseph laredo in 1982 and published by penguin in 1983. a long time ago, i summed up the outsider in a sentence which i realize is extremely paradoxical: “in our society any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.” i simply meant that the hero of the book is condemned because he doesn’t play the game. in this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives, wandering on the fringe, on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual. and for that reason, some readers have been tempted to regard him as a reject. but to get a more accurate picture of his character, or rather one which conforms more closely to his author’s intentions, you must ask yourself in what way meursault doesn’t play the game. the answer is simple: he refuses to lie. lying is not only saying what isn’t true. it is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. we all do it, every day, to make life simpler. but, contrary to appearances, meursault doesn’t want to make life simpler. he says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened. for example, he is asked to say that he regrets his crime, in time-honoured fashion. he replies that he feels more annoyance about it than true regret. and it is this nuance that condemns him. so for me meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun which leaves no shadows. far from lacking all sensibility, he is driven by a tenacious and therefore profound passion, the passion for an absolute and for truth. this truth is as yet a negative one, a truth born of living and feeling, but without which no triumph over the self or over the world will ever be possible. so one wouldn’t be far wrong in seeing the outsider as the story of a man who, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth. i also once said, and again paradoxically, that i tried to make my character represent the only christ that we deserve. it will be understood, after these explanations, that i said it without any intention of blasphemy but simply with the somewhat ironic affection that an artist has a right to feel towards the characters he has created. what is an existential perspective on communication? from the outset one may note that among the many existentialist writers on communication we can differentiate between those who follow a religious (christian, jewish, etc.) or non-religious approach. 100 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 100 whether one adopts a religious or non-religious existential perspective on communication, the basic starting point is that communication embraces the whole of man1 (human beings in their totality): it is a mode (way) of existence, an ontological concept of man’s being (existence) (van schoor 1979: 13). the existential view of communication transcends the view of communication as a social activity and holds that communication forms the centre of man’s existence. man is what he is in communication; his existence is defined by his ability to remain in communication – not only with others, as a prerequisite for any participation in the social process, but also with himself as a source of genuine feelings and appreciations of his environment (hardt 1972: 178). communication is a mode of existence because it qualifies our existence, it tells something of our way of being. therefore, the nature and quality of man’s mode of existence will depend on the nature and quality of his communication, as manifested in specific forms of communication that he adopts, and which he adheres to predominantly. in conceptualising man as a communicating being, one also proceeds from the assumption that man needs man and that man is capable of forming a living relationship with people (and with the world). guignon and pereboom (2001: xxv) note: although existentialists are concerned with getting people to recognize their responsibility as individuals, they nevertheless emphasize the fact that the world in which we find ourselves initially is essentially a shared, public life-world, a realm of meanings constituted by our public practices. and this means that, as being-inthe-world, we are at the deepest level participants and place-holders within a social context. it is in terms of a shared “herd consciousness” or “they-self” that we pick up our initial sense of reality, and it is on the basis of our belongingness to the public that we can later strive to discover our identity as individuals. thus, just as existentialists tend to think that consciousness is an achievement rather than a given, so they hold that our being as individuals is something we make rather than something we find. but are there different ways of being in communication with others? existentialism often distinguishes between two major ways of existing or being in communication with others, that is inauthentic and authentic being-with-others (remembering that it is inherent in man that he simultaneously displays both these modes of existence); and specific ideal-typical forms of communication associated with these modes of existence. in elucidating the argument for the purposes of this article, specific reference is made to selected ideas of soren kierkegaard, the father of modern existentialism – even though kierkegaard was a christian and camus an atheist. 101 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 101 the writings of kierkegaard on the question of inauthentic (and authentic) being-withothers can be related to his exposition of specific spheres of existence, the aesthetic, ethical and religious spheres of existence, and the ideal-typical form of communication predominant in each sphere. in his doctrine on the spheres of existence, kierkegaard sets forth a philosophy of communication in which he describes the fundamental existential alternatives open to every human being. for kierkegaard, man’s whole existence is becoming conscious of and realising his self, and it is the extent that he becomes conscious of himself that determines how far he actualises himself (jansen 1986: 4). self-actualisation entails self-discovery and self-expression in communication. the different spheres of existence, coupled to their ideal-typical forms of communication, presuppose various levels of self-actualisation, and it is the form of communication in which man predominantly expresses himself that reveals the quality of his existence. kierkegaard’s aesthetic sphere of existence, to which we are all given at birth, and its concomitant aesthetic communication are representative of an inauthentic being-withothers. although we normally use the term aesthetic for art, kierkegaard uses it in its broader sense of anything that refers to the sensual, the immediate, this worldly hereandnow. inauthentic being-with-others in communication is a negative concept, but one that is, almost ironically, possibly easier to understand, because man tends to exist inauthentically much of the time. for kierkegaard the aesthetic sphere of existence is characterised by a predominant affiliation of man to his external conditions. here man is overly conscious and desirous of external reality. he feels compelled to enjoy and gratify himself and lives for the moment of gratification. this apparently legitimate goal is a form of self-deception, for it amounts to an emphasis on selfish satisfaction and fulfilment under the guise of being-with-others. the aesthete lives only for the moment, but can never repeat it. he can remember it, but can never relive his experience, so that his life becomes tedious and dull (jansen 1986: 6). this existence culminates in boredom and ultimately in despair. although we all start out in life in the aesthetic sphere of existence, selfbecoming demands that we adopt a different outlook on life. an authentic being-with-others is for kierkegaard adopting an ethical lifestyle. in the ethical sphere man consciously chooses to express his own self, to express what is uniquely his own and to communicate this to others in his own particular way. man is committed to be the accountable source of his own state and self. the ethical individual knows himself, but this “knowing himself” is not as a result of mere contemplation. more is involved. this knowledge of himself is a reflection upon himself which is in itself an action, and is more accurately reflected in the expression “choose oneself” (see van schoor 1980: 30). the ethical sphere of existence contains the core of kierkegaard’s communication concept (see anderson 1971; van schoor 1980: 28). ethical communication, as the ideal-typical form of communication in the ethical 102 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 102 sphere of existence, is not ethical because the message content reveals high moral standards. communication is ethical only when it is truly expressive of the individual’s inwardness, an inwardness that is present in every person. although kierkegaard regards the religious sphere of existence as the ultimate sphere of existence (valone 1983: 191), the ethical existence underlies religious existence. recurring themes in existentialism two groups of themes may be identified (cf. macquarrie 1973; billington 1993; guignon & pereboom 2001; cox 2009): • those which constitute the core of personal being, namely decision, freedom and responsibility; and • those which address the tragic elements in human existence, namely alienation, anxiety, guilt, finitude and death. for existentialists, decision for man includes the inwardness and pathos of action – the latter implying that decision is never simply self-fulfilment but it is also selfrenunciation. man fulfils himself also by decisions that may be painful because of what they cut out of his life. as macquarrie (1973: 142) notes: “…the stress on decision means a corresponding stress on the intensiveness of life rather than its extensiveness. every decision is a decision against as well as a decision for; and every decision limits the range of possibilities that will be open for future decision.” freedom for existentialists is almost synonymous with existence. it is the exercise of freedom (or the right to choose) and the ability to shape the future that distinguishes man from all other things on earth. “it is through free and responsible decisions that man becomes authentically himself” (macquarrie 1973: 4). freedom implies action and should be understood both as the starting point and the way, and also as the end and the aim – there is therefore a distinction between the freedom that is prior to action and the freedom that is subsequent to it. to exist as a human being is to go “beyond one’s facticity (concrete context with determinate meanings and values laid out by the practices of a particular historical community) by taking it over, interpreting it, and trying to make something of in the light of one’s long-range projects. we can through the exercise of our freedom transcend our facticity. to say that we transcend our facticity is to say that we always stand out into an open range of possible courses of action for the future” (guignon & pereboom 2001: xxv-xxvi). it is the responsibility of man in his quest for authentic selfhood, which also has a communal dimension, to make the necessary decisions which are reflective of his true self. the emphasis on the individual’s own responsibility is arguably the most valuable and enduring contribution of existentialism (guignon & pereboom 2001: xxxvii). existentialists also regard it as their responsibility to be free to criticize every sociopolitical movement or technological-bureaucratic system that restricts human freedom 103 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 103 and diminishes human dignity – in fact, every system that sets the abstraction of the system itself above the concrete well-being of the persons whom the system is supposed to serve. alienation, for the existentialist, is understood mainly in inward terms. it is man’s alienation from his own deepest being. he is not himself but simply a dot in the massexistence of the crowd or a cog in the technological system. usually the concept of alienation suggests estrangement from or powerlessness in society, and the depersonalisation of the individual in large and bureaucratic organisations. anxiety is a kind of instability or tension experienced prior to action when exercising one’s freedom. it has been described as the so-called “dizziness” of freedom. macquarrie (1973: 129) states that freedom is by its very nature pregnant with possibility, and it is the stirring of possibility in the womb of freedom that is experienced as the basic anxiety in man. in sum, man is in a condition of anxiety arising from the realisation of his necessary freedom of choice, of his ignorance of the future, of his awareness of manifold possibilities and of the finiteness of his existence which will end in death. guilt arises within man when he fails to live up to his potential or when he has not done something which he should have done, for man is so constituted that he stands in the possibility of falling in the sense of failing to measure up to the stature of his possibility. macquarrie (1973: 159) suggests that there is “something like a tragic conception of guilt among the existentialists. from the very way he is constituted as a finite being who is also free, man is placed in the possibility of guilt, and his ‘rising’ seems to be inseparable from his ‘falling’.” for existentialists death is not simply the termination of life, not just an event that comes along at the end of the story, but itself enters very much into the story. for the existentialist, the existent’s inward awareness is that his being is a being-toward-death. in existing, death is already present as a certain possibility, the most certain of all possibilities. in the mood of anxiety, man is aware of living in the face of the end. man exists first (he is born) and then creates himself (essence) and this creation is only finalised at his death. let us now turn to the communication of meursault, the protagonist of the outsider. meursault’s way of communication from the very first paragraph of the novel the reader is confronted with meursault’s stance towards finitude and death. for him, it is no big deal that his mother has died today or yesterday, for her death merely represents a happening which everyone is to confront. meursault confirms this at the end of chapter 2 by saying “i realized that…nothing had changed”. (interestingly, the first part of the name meursault, that is “meurs”, is a french verb form which means “i die” or “you die” in english.) 104 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 104 before the chain of events which led to his arrest and trial, meursault, on the one hand, submits himself predominantly to an aesthetic way of life. in his solitary and sensual way he shows an affiliation to his external conditions – notably the heat, the sun, the sea and marie’s body. he does not question anything, he asks no questions. as masters (1974: 20) points out, “the reader feels that he sees very little point in life, but merely carries on for want of anything better to do. he sleeps, eats, works, all without enthusiasm.” meursault observes with detachment other people’s doings. it is as if their and his existence is dominated by habit. elsewhere masters (1974: 23) notes that meursault lives for the now, which is so characteristic of an aesthetic way of life and aesthetic communication. not looking backwards, he cannot know remorse. not looking forward, he cannot know hope. these words are to him empty generalities. this is why, when marie asks him if he loves her, he says that the question is meaningless. “love” as she understands it involves permanence, a commitment to the future. meursault knows that no one can predict what he will feel in the future, and so the question cannot honestly be answered. she asks him if he would like to marry her. he says that it is all the same to him, but they could if she wanted to. he is not thinking of a continuing emotion; he is thinking no further than of what she may like to hear now. on the other hand, his clear indifference towards entrenched societal values shows him to have also chosen a way of existing, a way of communication, that is geared predominantly towards being authentically himself. meursault does his own thing. for example, society expected and demanded that he weep at his mother’s funeral, that he should have fallen on her tomb, that he should not have smoked a cigarette after seeing the body, that he should not have gone swimming or have gone to the cinema to see a comedy or have enjoyed carnal pleasure so soon after his mother’s death. meursault acted against the prevailing sentiments of society. meursault is never prepared to lie about his own feelings. thody (1964: 41) observes: when his lawyer asks him if he had suffered at his mother’s funeral, he receives the surprising reply that ‘certainly, i was fond of mother, but that didn’t mean anything. all normal people had more or less wished for the death of their loved ones.’ it is this refusal to disguise what he feels and thinks in hypocritical phrases that leads to meursault’s condemnation, for camus’s account of the trial leaves little doubt that a few well-judged tears about his poor mother would easily have secured a verdict of homicide or self-defence. in this sense his communication is ethical with the expression of subjective truth being paramount. it does not mean that truth for meursault is to be identified with private prejudice against the police, the (nameless) arab whom he kills, the lawyers, the journalists at the court practising pseudo-objectivity (except for one who confirms in meursault the new awareness of himself as an outsider who does not fit the categories 105 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 105 of prisoner or murderer to which the other journalists and lawyers have relegated him) the prosecutors, judge or chaplain. for meursault, truth in the fullest sense comes out of the inward depth of existence that is rooted in the openness of existence. he refuses to lie. yes, objectively speaking, he does lie when he agrees to act as raymond’s witness by saying that raymond’s girl had cheated on him, as o’brien (1970: 21) notes. but in the context of the work, he does so more out of a state of indifference towards legal technicalities. meursault says what he is and he refuses to hide his feelings. and in the end, as camus in his preface to the outsider states, meursault agrees to die for the truth. meursault’s decisions in the novel resonate with the idea of decision in existential communication. on the one hand his decisions such as to smoke, sleep and drink white coffee at the home’s mortuary and beside his dead mother as well as his decision to shoot the unnamed arab and to refuse to plead self-defence when accused of the murder of the arab imply self-fulfilment, but on the other hand also self-renunciation in the sense that he does not care an inkling what others think or whether it will count against him. meursault exercises his freedom, or the right to choose, continually. he does not compromise about being authentically himself. he refuses other people’s notions of love and career and clings to his existence as he feels it. he gives primacy to lived experience in the sense that he believes that man’s only guide is his direct experience. life is to be lived rather than dreamed about or mulled over. man exists among or against others in a brutal adventure, to which he must by his actions give meaning. in fact meursault regards it as his responsibility to be free to reject the predominant value system of his day as it relates to child-mother relationships, marriage, law and order (he tells marie that he does not like policemen), the justice system (which he intentionally subverts when he testifies in raymond’s defence and when he mocks the legal men at his own trial) and christianity. he reinforces his sense of alienation, of being an outsider at his own trial, by saying that he felt “a bit like an intruder”. he remains an outsider till the end, alienated in a society which condemns a man to death for failing to weep at his mother’s funeral. he does not want to play society’s game. as mccarthy (1988: 96) remarks, the outsider was read as a landmark of the most important trend in 1940s french thought: the sense that man was trapped in an alien universe, and that he must protest against the artificiality of existing social systems and against his metaphysical condition. the scene in which he shoots the arab is an excellent example of the anxiety, the dizziness of freedom, which he experiences prior to exercising his freedom (see camus 1983: 60). all i could feel were the cymbals the sun was clashing against my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear still leaping up off the knife in front of me. it was like a red-hot blade gnawing at my eyelashes and gouging out my stinging eyes. that 106 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 106 was when everything shook. the sea swept ashore a great breath of fire. the sky seemed to be splitting from end to end and raining down sheets of flame. my whole being went tense and i tightened my grip on the gun. the trigger gave, i felt the underside of the polished butt and it was there, in that sharp but deafening noise, that it all started. i shook off the sweat and the sun. i realized that i’d destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence of this beach where i’d been happy. and i fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. and it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness. in his cell, meursault suffers anxiety in the sense that he is not totally sure about how he will be taken away for execution, and how that execution will unfold. he does for a few moments fear death, before he accepts his fate. meursault shows no guilt or remorse at all. he explains to the chaplain near the end of the novel that he was sure of himself, sure of everything, surer than he (the chaplain) was, sure of his life and sure of the death that was coming to him, and that there was no god or another life after death. waiting for his execution, meursault proclaims that he had been happy in his life until then, however ridiculous and meaningless it may have been, and that he was still happy – in fact, he was profoundly in love with life. meursault faces death not in its social guise (via the death penalty) but as the great fact of the human condition. in prison meursault reflects on death and says, …it doesn’t matter very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy since, in either case, other men and women will naturally go on living, for thousands of years even. nothing was plainer, in fact. it was still only me who was dying, whether it was now or in twenty years’ time. at that point the thing that would rather upset my reasoning was that i’d feel my heart give this terrifying leap at the thought of having another twenty years to live. but i just had to stifle it by imagining what i’d be thinking in twenty years’ time when i’d have to face the same situation anyway. given that you’ve got to die, it obviously doesn’t matter exactly how or when (camus 1983: 109). meursault wants a crowd of spectators to be at his execution and he wants them to greet him with cries of hatred because once condemned “he wants society to give him some sign that it realizes how much he defies it, and because he know he is right and the others wrong” (thody 1964: 40). in drawing on kierkegaard’s idea of “choosing oneself” (see van schoor 1980: 30), meursault consistently does choose to express his own self, to express what is uniquely his own and to communicate this in his own particular way. meursault is committed throughout to be the accountable source of his own state and self. 107 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 107 the outsider as artefact of an existential tradition of communication theory the novel can make scientific theory come alive for students. the use of a novel by a renowned author to illustrate the underlying characteristics of an existential tradition of communication theory is no new endeavour in south africa. a study of george orwell’s nineteen eighty-four to show how communication (by way of the role and the misuse of language) in a dictatorship can impact on man’s existence comes to mind immediately. the late professor nerina jansen led such studies at unisa’s department of communication during the 1980s and 1990s. the question is whether the novel in general is used enough today in the communication theory curricula of our communication science institutions. the argument is that a novel is a most useful way to illustrate theoretical traditions of communication theory. stories appeal to all people. as the father of modern narrative theory, walter fisher, would say, people are by nature storytellers; all except the mentally constrained have a narrative logic which they use to assess human communication; and that the world which we know is a collection of stories out of which people construct realities (cf. fisher 1987; terblanche 2009: 33-35). in focusing on the outsider one must emphasise that it is not only an existential (phenomenological) tradition of communication theory that can be read into the work. of littlejohn and foss’s (2005) various traditions of communication theory, the outsider lends itself most certainly to socio-psychological (influencing processes), socio-cultural (the ways that understandings, meanings, norms, roles and rules are worked out interactively in communication), critical (how messages reinforce power and oppression in society) and rhetorical (language style) analyses. although the outsider was written almost seventy years ago many of the central messages still ring true. in our contemporary mass and technological society many grapple with the state of man who is continually facing attempts to reduce him to a life of mediocrity, to a life where he is part and parcel of the mass and where a questioning of societal values and various forms of authority is deemed to be “otherwise”. it is not easy to stand out as an outsider, to do one’s own thing despite the odds, to rebel against established thought patterns and processes and to imply that life is inherently absurd – which is a result of an awareness of one’s own mortality and that nothing is to follow after death. this is not to suggest that there are not many in society, if not the majority, who are at ease when integrated in the mass, who reject critical judgements, choices, and differentiations, because they cling to clear certainties and want it that way. they are conformists. in a sense these conformists are fleeing from their freedom and responsibility. their escape seems almost perfect. they admit no personal responsibility for their opinions, for they are merely accepting what their leaders tell them, and their hates and loves 108 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 108 move with the symbolism provided by propaganda, by the propagation of all kinds of causes. such a conformist, who is so highly attuned to the need to adjust to the responses of others that he loses the ability to be himself and to act autonomously, is one who kierkegaard in the present age (1962) refers to as but one of “the public”. for kierkegaard members of “the public” are those men who do not themselves want to find out the meaning of their existence, but who rely on others and institutions, such as the mass media, to tell them about it. one should mention that the importance of the outsider also lies in the way that the novel has captured two fundamental traits of individualism, a cornerstone of much of existentialism, and which finds expression in a non-religious existential view of communication. these may be described as (1) the determination to trust one’s own experience while distrusting the many and various forms of authority; and (2) the attempt to face the absence of transcendence and to enjoy this life (cf. mccarthy 1988: 102). one may admit that meursault would be an outsider in almost any society; he may well excite antagonism and even aggression in most people. masters (1974: 27) rightly suggests that “we all assume feelings, points of views, reactions that are more or less manufactured, and take it for granted that we must lie or exaggerate to some extent every day. all except meursault. he is consistently loyal to the truth of his own feelings, this being the only truth that he can know, that he can be sure about. take from meursault his sincerity, and he would crumple in vacuity.” yes, without his sincerity, his honesty, one would probably give him no serious thought. there are allied problems attached to adopting meursault’s stance to existing, to beingin-communication. two problems come to mind immediately. firstly, meursault’s idea of life on earth being absurd in the sense that it will certainly end in death with nothing to come thereafter, and that it therefore does not matter whether you die at thirty or seventy, belies the argument (cf. billington 1993: 158) that it is the knowledge that our time of existence is short that makes us put effort into things. if we knew that we were to live forever, why would we attempt to achieve anything today? existence then would be a continuous process of postponement. secondly, sound interpersonal communicative relationships, whether at work or home, demands involvement and caring for other people. indifference to state of affairs in general and to others will get you nowhere, even if you are true to yourself. at the extreme end of indifference and at the point of the dizziness of freedom, killing people simply because it feels convenient to do so in a given circumstance, à la meursault, is barbaric and must be condemned – even though, in the context of the novel, the killing of the arab gradually became almost a non-event, because the accusers’ indignation of his general nonconformist conduct overshadowed it. however, in concluding, when looking back at the novel and situating meursault’s way of communication within the existential tradition of communication theory, one would probably agree that camus has masterfully explored the predicament of the individual 109 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 109 110 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive who, cut off from a sense of god, is prepared to face society’s often flawed values courageously and alone, and who is prepared to die for subjective truth. endnotes 1 note that reference to “man” here and elsewhere is inclusive of all human beings. 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 110 111 the outsider: making the existential tradition of communication theory come alive references anderson, r.e. 1971. kierkegaard’s theory of communication. in: lawson, l.a. (ed.). kierkegaard’s presence in contemporary american life: essays from various disciplines. metuchen, nj: scarecrow press. billington, r. 1993. living philosophy. an introduction to moral thought. (second edition). london: routledge. camus, a. 1983. the outsider. translated by joseph laredo. harmondsworth: penguin. cox, g. 2009. how to be an existentialist. london: continuum. fisher, w.r. 1987. human communication as narration: toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. columbia: university of south carolina press. guignon, c. and pereboom, d. (eds). 2001. existentialism. basic writings. (second edition). indianapolis: hackett. hardt, h. 1972. the dilemma of mass communication: an existential point of view. philosophy and rhetoric 5(3): 175-187. jansen, n. 1986. soren kierkegaard: haltes op die lewenspad. communicatio 12(2): 2-8. kierkegaard, s. 1962. the present age. translated by alexander dru, introduction by walter kaufmann and first published in 1846. new york: harper & row. littlejohn, s.w. and foss, k.a. 2005. theories of human communication. (eighth edition). belmont, ca: thomson wadsworth. lottman, h.r. 1981. camus. london: picador. macquarrie, j. 1973. existentialism. harmondsworth: penguin. masters, b. 1974. camus: a study. london: heinemann. mccarthy, p. 1988. the stranger. cambridge: cambridge university press. o’brien, c.c. 1970. camus. glasgow: fontana. terblanche, l.l. 2009. fantasietema-analise as metode in retoriesekommunikasiekritiek. unpublished doctoral thesis. port elizabeth: nelson mandela metropolitan university. thody, p. 1957. albert camus. a study of his work. new york: grove press. thody, p. 1964. albert camus, 1913-1960. london: hamish hamilton. valone, j.j. 1983. the ethics and existentialism of kierkegaard. outlines for a philosophy of life. lanham, maryland: university press of america. van schoor, m. 1979. the idea of communication. bloemfontein: p.j. de villiers. van schoor, m. 1980. kierkegaard and communication. pretoria: academica. 6. johann de wet 11/18/11 3:50 pm page 111 6. johann de wet 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice untitled 113 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 113 129 wj greeff* abstract a fact so widely accepted as to be considered common sense is that communication is influenced by the context in which it functions. it is for this reason that there is no single communication-related measurement scale suitable for all circumstances (le roux 2008: 264; devlin 2003: 27). yet, communication researchers continually make use of existing communication research methods in order to strengthen reliability and validity in research and to standardise measurement instruments for comparability of results. in most cases, these methods originate in the international arena. le roux (2008) proposed methods for adapting communication satisfaction and relationship scales to the south african, third-world context specifically for use within the mining industry of south africa. this article reports on a study testing le roux's (2008) adapted versions alongside those of the original questionnaires at the gautrain project. the study confirmed le roux's adaptations, and adds additional recommendations for the distribution and administering of internationally generated questionnaires within the mining and construction industry of south africa specifically, and the third-world context in general. * elnerine greeff lectures in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 113 introduction according to carol k. goman (as cited by cutlip, center, broom & du plessis 2002: 1), “our organisations are living systems existing in a turbulent environment that constantly tests their abilities to survive.” this survival of organisations is tested by its means of reaching organisational objectives (cutlip et al. 2002: 21; steyn & puth 2000: 19). simply put, this amounts to the fact that an organisation will only be able to reach its objectives (survive) if it adapts to the environment and community that finds itself in (van der walt 2006: 116; cutlip et al. 2002: 21; steyn & puth 2000: 19). in much the same way, le roux (2008: 264) and devlin (2003: 27) argue that, in order to be successful and reach its set objectives, research measurement scales used in organisations need to adapt to the environment and community of that organisation as well. still, le roux (2008: 264) states that very little mention is made as to how this measurement scale for research needs to be adapted. in order to fill this void, le roux (2008) proposed methods and guidelines for adapting francis and woodcock’s (1994) communication satisfaction and grunig and hon’s (1999) relationship questionnaires (among others) to the south african, third-world context. these guidelines were based on empirical research conducted at a mine in the north-west province (le roux 2008: 265; cf. le roux, naudé, fourie & van heerden 2004). in this study, however, only the adapted questionnaire items were included and tested, and not the original questionnaire items as from the two aforementioned questionnaires which, naturally, did not offer the opportunity of comparing the manner in which employees answered these two sets of items (the original, international; and the adapted, localised questionnaire items). this article attempts to build on the contribution of le roux (2008) by framing and testing the proposed guidelines in a new (but corresponding) context as it relates the answers given by respondents in the original questionnaire items to those of its adapted counterparts. herein, insight will be gained into the manner in which established, international communication questionnaires should be administered in order to be valid and reliable within one of the most unique communities in south africa – the community of workers in the mining and construction industry. specifically, the focus of this article is to: • provide a brief background of the theoretical underpinnings that guided the formulation of the communication satisfaction and the relationship questionnaires, as well as its adapted equivalent; • report on the challenges and subsequent changes encountered in the piloting and administering of the questionnaire (that included original questionnaire items as well as adapted questionnaire items); • contextualise the community and environment of the organisation where the questionnaire was administered; • evaluate the reliability and validity of the original questionnaire alongside its adapted version; and • build forth on the guidelines offered by le roux (2008) for the future adaptation of measuring scales for use in communities in a third-world context. 114 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 114 theoretical background before discussing the adaptation of the two questionnaires, an understanding of what these questionnaires were designed to measure, and how they were designed to measure this, should be sought. broadly speaking, francis and woodcock’s (1994) as well as grunig and hon’s (1999) questionnaires were designed within the field of corporate and organisational communication. in this, francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire was designed with the goal of auditing (in a quantitative manner) the effectiveness of an organisation’s communication efforts. according to grunig and hon (1999: 3), where there is communication in an organisation, there will be a relationship that ensues – and this is what their questionnaire aims at researching (also in a quantitative manner). francis and woodcock’s (1994) audit of communication effectiveness with the goal of auditing the effectiveness of an organisation’s communication efforts, francis and woodcock (1994: 4) constructed a conceptual model with four main sections. each section is divided into three subsections, as illustrated in figure 1. according to francis and woodcock (1994) effective communication in an organisation has to account for the fulfilment of these four main factors, namely the sharing of the compelling vision; effective integration of efforts; sustaining a healthy community; and intelligent decision making. figure 1: the conceptual model 115 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 115 these factors include the following (francis & woodcock 1994: 4): • communication for sharing the compelling vision: this section proposes that, in order for communication to be seen as effective, a feasible identity has to be strategised for the organisation – and then be communicated in a persuasive manner. herein it is seen that managers must possess the necessary communication skills to be persuasive in communicating the compelling vision of the organisation to all stakeholders. • communication for the effective integration of effort: for this, the organisation has to ensure that the energy and efforts of the workforce are pushing in the same direction. very important is that communication from the top of the organisation (management) has to be clear and consistent, as it is management that sees the “big picture” of the organisation’s operations, as well as how each employee’s work fits into this “big picture”. in this, all efforts need to be integrated to reach the objectives set out. • sustaining a healthy community: in order to sustain a healthy community, all communication at an organisation has to be free of prejudice. francis and woodcock (1994: 6) state that: “healthy communities are based on the principle of fairness. the most common kinds of prejudice are racial, sexual, religious and between social classes. prejudice is destructive because it increases the distance between social groups and individuals.” this in its turn hinders the organisation in doing the work it sets out to do. • communication for intelligent decision making: this aspect looks at efficiently collecting, structuring and transmitting relevant information to those with power. upward communication from subordinates to supervisors and to managers is researched, taking the communication skills of subordinates into consideration. although grunig and hon’s (1999) questionnaire also looks at communication as generated by an organisation (from different sources) this questionnaire focuses more on the outcomes of communication endeavours than the effort that goes into it, as in francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire. it is in this instance that grunig and hon (1999) focus on the relationship that is established between an organisation and its constituencies (in this case the employees). grunig and hon’s (1999) relationship questionnaire although numerous ways have been proposed to measure short term outputs of communication, a method of measuring long term worth still escaped the profession of corporate communication until grunig and hon (1999) constructed their questionnaire, designed to measure the long term intent of corporate communication (in this case internal communication) which is to build long term relationships with the organisation’s key constituencies (in this case employees). this questionnaire consists of six key elements of which a relationship comprises. these elements are (grunig & hon 1999: 3): 116 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 116 • control mutuality: this alludes to the degree to which the parties in the relationship agree over who has the right to influence whom. stable relationships expect that both the organisation as well as the employees (the two parties relevant to this research) have some form of control over the relationship – although some imbalance is inevitable. • trust: this aspect looks at the willingness of each party to open themselves up to the other party. this element differentiates between integrity, dependability, and competence. • satisfaction: the degree to which each party feels favourable towards the other, based on the positive expectations that are upheld by the other, points to satisfaction. a satisfactory relationship is one where the advantages outweigh the costs. • commitment: this refers to the degree to which each member of the relationship feels that the relationship is worth the energy spent on it. • two relationship styles: between an organisation and its constituencies (for example the employee group) one or a combination of the following relationship styles can be seen: º exchange relationship: in this relationship, one member of the relationship offers advantage or gain to the other member, only if the latter feels that the former has given advantage to them in the past, or is expected to do so in future. º communal relationship: in this relationship, both parties provide an advantage to the other, based on the fact that the parties are concerned with the other’s wellbeing. in order to test the above, both questionnaires make use of closed-ended questions, tested quantitatively by means of a likert scale. francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire proposes 62 questionnaire items to be tested on a five-point scale, where grunig and hon (1999) proposes a nine-point scale to test the potential 46 items. the combination of these two questionnaires in totality can present a very intense questionnaire by any standards. the intensity of this is felt even more in communities in a third-world context, according to le roux (2008: 266), which makes the adaptation of measuring scales important. before this adaptation can be explored, however, the context that guides the adaptation should first be investigated. contextualisation although le roux’s (2008) study talks to the third-world context, the research was undertaken specifically within the mining industry of south africa which faces specific and unique environmental challenges. in the introduction above, it was stated that this current research was empirically tested in a related context to that of le roux (2008). this is due to the fact that the research was done at the gautrain project, which is an 117 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 117 operation that falls under the mining as well as construction spheres (greeff 2009: 76; van tonder 2008). herein, the community of employees and the organisation are facing the same obstacles that influence the measuring scales and research conducted therein, the most pertinent of which can be said to be cultural diversity, language, and illiteracy. cultural diversity “south africa is extremely heterogeneous with an abundance of cultures and subcultures in the country” (rensburg 2003: 159). this is intensified in the mining and construction industries by the migration of workers, not only from the various provinces within the country, but also from neighbouring countries and the rest of the world (le roux 2005: 3). as a result, communications (for example through questionnaires) that are sent to employees could be interpreted in various ways (lustig & koester 2003: 12). it is for this reason that le roux (2008: 266) states that, in order for the measurement to be consistent, any cultural-specific references and content has to be adapted in questionnaires administered in this context. language very closely related to the different cultures inherent to the employee groups of these industries, are the varying languages spoken therein. the language diversity in this community culminates in the use of the pidgin mining language fanakalo (also spelled fanagalo). this language was created due to the fact that so many different cultures and languages were thrown together in the mining and construction industries, as to see the mixing of these languages to make up a new language particular to these industries and communities (holtzhausen & fourie 2008: 84; naudé & le roux 2005: 6; githiora 2002: 164). in recent years, however, this language has been ruled as racist, and english has replaced it as the lingua franca of these industries (githiora 2002: 164) – although the de facto language can still be seen to be a relation to fanakalo. it is in this instance that le roux (2008: 266) states that adaption is needed. this does not only refer to the translation of the questionnaire items. in these industries, not only are there many different languages spoken and read on many different levels, but there are also numerous dialects of the same language. for example, the zulu word that originally inspired a fanakalo word might have different connotations in different dialects and different communities, and might still have an entirely different connotation in fanakalo. illiteracy both cultural diversity and language barriers are intensified by the third obstacle, namely illiteracy. according to creamer (2002: 2) a low level of literacy is one of the greatest qualms faced by the community of workers in the mining and construction industries. the leon commission for health and safety reports that 84% of general labourers and machine operators are totally or functionally illiterate and can, therefore, not be reached through communication channels that require them to read or write (stanton 2003: 70; leon 1995: 70). 118 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 118 this aspect is indeed an immense obstacle to overcome when administering a written quantitative questionnaire in these industries. le roux (2008: 266) proposes that the length and complexity of the scales be adapted to accommodate the literacy level of employees, where semi-literate and illiterate employees be assisted by interpreters to complete the questionnaire. research methodology the research for this article was conducted at the gautrain project during 2009, as this organisation saw a need, and was willing to participate in the study that sought to research their communication endeavours and the subsequent employer-employee relationship. this organisation, as stated before, is seated within both the mining as well as the construction industries, as its operations are legislatively governed by both (van tonder 2008). within the operations of this project, the research was conducted at the gautrain project’s precast yard. this selection was based on the principles of the convenience sampling method, which, according to david and sutton (2004: 151), as well as keyton (2006: 126), takes place due to the ease of access to units of analysis. this selection was based on the fact that, at the gautrain project, there are many different operations, or sites, that run on a temporary basis. these sites have only a few employees at a time, and mostly have no full hierarchical structures. the precast yard, however, is a more permanent establishment that has a hierarchical structure ranging from managers down to general labourers. this site is responsible for the manufacturing of the precast cement segments for the bridges on which the gautrain runs. as such, this operation functions mostly as a self-governing operation with, as mentioned before, its own structures (including a safety department, industrial relations department, and more). due to this, as well as the fact that this operation has 807 employees working on one site, the precast yard amounts to a convenient selection. needless to say, this selection of operation within the gautrain project hampers representativeness of, and to, the project as a whole. the findings can therefore not be generalised to the entire gautrain project, but only apply to the precast yard (keaton 2006: 126; gravetter & forzano 2006: 117; david & sutton 2004: 151). having said this, this organisation and its community of employees are influenced by the context of the mining and construction industries as set out above. using this operation’s employees as population (as opposed to the entire gautrain project) therefore still served the purposes of this research. the sampling method used for the questionnaire was systematic sampling. systematic sampling is part of the probability sampling category. every person in the population has an equal and known chance of being included in the research. this makes systematic sampling a random sampling method, which excludes any bias from the researcher’s side. as such, the findings of the measuring instrument are generalisable 119 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 119 to the broader population – in this case the entire precast yard (gravetter & forzano 2006: 74; keyton 2006: 54; berg 1995: 178). with the full population at 807 employees, the desired sample of 350 (allowing for a good response rate) determined n to be 2.48, converted to 3. with this, the response rate of the questionnaires turned out to be 281, which gives the sample a confidence level of over 95%, which thus has a satisfactory sampling error of under 5% (keyton 2006: 122; du plooy 2002: 104). the questionnaire (containing original and adapted items) was administered to these respondents, followed by focus groups and semi-structured interviews with managers in order to contextualise the findings of the questionnaires (after le roux 2008). this stage was preceded by a pilot study to test the questionnaire items. the pilot study was conducted on two levels, namely by means of a conventional pretesting pilot study, as well as through the use of an expert panel. according to keyton (2006: 175), the latter involves including experts in research methodology or in the survey’s content to read through the questionnaire (keyton 2006: 175). for the pilot study of this questionnaire, both experts in research methodology, as well as in the survey contents were used. the experts included le roux – an academic from the north-west university, one from the university of south africa (knowledgeable in the field of research methodology), as well as an expert from the gautrain project (knowledgeable of the content of the survey). after these experts examined the questionnaire, it was administered to ten employees (who did not form part of the final sample) in order to complete the conventional pre-testing as mentioned above. it is in this pilot testing and administering phase that the findings of the research, as far as the adaptation of the questionnaire is concerned, featured. findings le roux (2008) speaks to adaptations to the original grunig and hon (1999) as well as francis and woodcock (1994) questionnaires in the form of practical problems and solutions encountered in research. these general adaptations (not yet speaking to the contents of the questionnaire items) will be dealt with first, as they were experienced in the research at the gautrain project. general adaptations in the first instance, le roux (2008: 266) discusses that adaptations to the questionnaire had to be made so as to take the literacy levels of the respondents into account. in this, the complexity and length of the questionnaire as well as the item ratings on the likert scale had to be reduced. in the piloting phase, as well as in the administering of the questionnaire at the gautrain project, this was found to be the case as well. firstly, during the piloting phase, the respondents showed difficulty in interpreting the fiveor nine-point likert scales suggested by grunig and hon (1999), and francis and woodcock (1994) respectively. for this reason, the scale was reduced to a four-point 120 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 120 scale which proved easier for the respondents to interpret – as was also found by le roux (2008). over and above this recommended adaptation of le roux (2008), it was also found that the “neutral” or indecisive rating (usually in the middle) on the likert scale had to be removed. the main reason for this is the aspect of translation. some of the languages used for the administering of the questionnaire make no provision for a word or concept that corresponds to “neutral”. in terms of the questionnaire, this aspect would have to be translated along the lines of “this is not something i care about” or in some cases as “sometimes yes, but sometimes no”. through this kind of explanation and translation it was seen that most of the employees opted for this option every time – which is not as indicative of their perceptions as other options on the scale would be. secondly, during the pilot study, the complexity of the questions proved to be a problem. this is in line with what was found by le roux (2008: 266), as respondents were found to “lack basic numeric, business, technological and business-language skills”. this resulted in having to simplify the wording of the items, whilst ensuring that the meaning remains unchanged. during the administering of the questionnaire, the length thereof also proved problematic (consistent to le roux’s (2008) findings). the length of the combined questionnaire – taken alongside existing questionnaires of the same length – should not have taken respondents longer than 20 minutes to complete. some respondents at the gautrain project, however, took considerably longer (some did not even fully complete the questionnaire after spending close to an hour on it) whilst others needed translator assistance, which prolonged the process even more. this leads to the conclusion that the length of the questionnaire to respondents in this community and industry has to be very succinct. this last aspect points to the next adaptation mentioned by le roux (2008) where it was found that a translated questionnaire would be unsuccessful due to the fact that there is a vast diversity in terms of the languages spoken in organisations within this context. furthermore, these languages are read on different levels, and many different dialects of the same language exist. in order to bridge this obstacle, le roux (2008) suggests the use of translators who, in a one-on-one situation, are able to aid those respondents who are not comfortable with answering the english questionnaire on their own. this was found to be the case in the current research as well, where the translation of aspects had to be done in such a fashion as to allow elaboration. for example, in the contextualisation it was mentioned that fanakalo is still the de facto language of the industry. in fanakalo, however, there is no word for “relationship” – the only word close to this is “thandi” which, directly translated, means “love”. this can prove to be an insurmountable problem when a relationship questionnaire is being administered. it was found that translators who are able to elaborate on aspects in different languages (as suggested by le roux 2008) should be employed. not directly suggested by le roux (2008), however, is the fact that the questionnaire – both in layout and construction – has to be structured in such a way as to allow the translators to easily facilitate respondents’ answering of the questionnaire. at the 121 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 121 gautrain project, it was found that the layout of the questionnaire has an influence on the way that respondents fill out the questionnaire. due to the fact that respondents in this industry, in many instances, have to fill out the questionnaires on site – meaning not in an office, or in a space where they have use of a desk or the like – the questionnaires need to be physically easy to handle. it is for this reason that the questionnaire administered at the gautrain project ended up being laid out in a5 format which is easier to handle and answer on one’s lap, for example. with the general adaptations as from le roux (2008) being discussed alongside the additional findings as from the gautrain project, the specific adaptations of the two existing questionnaires can now be focussed on. this will be done by firstly focussing on the items of francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire and thereafter that of grunig and hon (1999). in order to do this, the data from the questionnaire completed by employees at the gautrain project was subjected to factor analysis and the calculation of the cronbach alpha coefficient – as these were the two predominant methods employed by le roux (2008: 276) to determine validity and reliability. also in line with le roux (2008) the findings were triangulated with qualitative methods, namely in-depth interviews with managers and focus groups with employees, in order to contextualise the findings from the questionnaires. in this it was found that some concepts, found in existing literature to be interpreted one way, was interpreted by employees in this context in an entirely different way. it is for this reason that triangulation of the quantitative questionnaire should be done with qualitative measurements in this environment – if valid and reliable inferences are to be made from the research. in order to give specific account of the foregoing, the two questionnaires will now be discussed respectively. adaptations of francis and woodcock’s (1994) audit of communication effectiveness the first aspect that le roux (2008) discusses under the adaptations of francis and woodcock (1994)’s questionnaire is the cronbach alpha coefficient found in the questionnaires. the cronbach alpha can be described as a coefficient of reliability, as it measures how well a set of questions measure a single variable. this measurement ranges between 0 and 1. if the question tested has a score of 0.7 and higher, the measurement of that question is valid (ucla 2006; roberts, priest & traynor 2006: 44; santos 1999: 7). the coefficient found in le roux’s (2008) study ranged between 0.68 and 0.76 for this questionnaire (it is not mentioned what the overall cronbach alpha for the entire question dealing with francis and woodcock’s (1994) items was). in the questionnaire administered at the gautrain project, the cronbach alpha for the entire question set dealing with francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire was determined by looking at the adapted items and the original items disjointedly. although the cronbach alpha was found to be generally higher than was found in le roux’s (2008) study, this is not really a relevant point as the questionnaires were administered to two different 122 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 122 populations with different numbers of questions. rather, the remarkable aspect in this instance is the fact that the cronbach alpha for the adapted questionnaire items was very close to, but still higher than those of the original questionnaire items. for the adapted (le roux 2008) items, a cronbach alpha of 0.898 was found, whilst the original items (francis & woodcock 1994) yielded a cronbach alpha of 0.883. the lower score for the original items might be attributed to the fact that the original items were harder to understand by employees. this was echoed by the facilitators, who believed these questions – the original items – took longer to explain (mostly due to the fact that they included abstract terms). next, a factor analysis was done on the questionnaire. this factor analysis was not confirmatory, but rather exploratory due to the fact that this analysis allows loadings that are not pre-empted in any way by means of a factor model. in lieu of this, neutral inferences could be made with regards to the correlation between loadings as reported on the original questionnaires, and those by le roux (2008) in adaptation. for these exploratory factor analyses the extraction method was a principal component analysis with a promax with kaiser normalization rotation to determine the statistical variation. the principal component analysis, which begins with communalities of 1, allowed for all factors to be retained (and thus not discarding any information) (field 2009: 641). furthermore, in terms of the substantive importance of the factor loadings, only loadings yielding an absolute value of more than 0.4 was considered (with most ranging between 0.6 and 0.8) – well above the benchmark of 0.3 (field 2009: 644). the factor analyses findings showed some difference to what was found by le roux (2008), as is to be expected, since factor analyses are population specific (field 2009: 667). le roux (2008) found that in the factor analysis, items originally belonging to upward communication were attributed to persuasive management by respondents, whilst downward communication was grouped with items dealing with prejudice. this was not found to be the case in the current study, where the respondents at the gautrain project attributed downward communication and prejudice to persuasive management, whilst upward communication stood disconnected to this grouping (in the original as well as adapted questionnaire items). le roux (2008) also found that respondents made a distinction between prejudice as it pertains to communication, and prejudice as it pertains to equal employment – this distinction was not seen at the gautrain project. in lieu of the factor analysis findings from the adapted francis and woodcock (1994) questionnaire, le roux (2008: 277) made the recommendation that the “concepts defined by francis and woodcock ... may need to be renamed for this particular environment”. although the findings from the gautrain project tend to show an agreement with this recommendation, these findings also indicated that fewer distinctions are made than that found by francis and woodcock (1994). this is due to the fact that the respondents from the gautrain project grouped all communication from management (whether it could be attributed to the dimension of prejudice or downward communication) as one aspect – not three as suggested by francis and woodcock (1994). the distinction found in the factor analysis was therefore discovered to be more 123 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 123 simplistic as all upward communications and all downward communications (as pertaining to these items) were grouped together, where smaller differences or nuances in the questionnaire items did not seem to feature. on the back of le roux (2008)’s statement that the concepts need to be renamed, this study found that some of the concepts should rather be combined for this environment. although the respondents did not make fine distinctions when it came to the concepts of francis and woodcock’s (1994) questionnaire, one distinction was, however, made in the items themselves. in the pilot phase of the study at the gautrain project, employees indicated a change that would be needed before the questionnaire could be administered. this change was in the form of dividing a few questions from le roux’s (2008) questionnaire – which was originally one question into two. for example, in le roux (2008)’s questionnaire, item 30 reads “management / team leaders / supervisors are convincing when communicating to me”. when this question was piloted at the gautrain project, the recommendation was made to split this question to read: “supervisors are convincing when communicating to me”, followed by a separate question reading: “management are convincing when communicating to me” (there are no team leaders at this operation). this was explained to be due to the fact that employees make a distinction between top management, middle management and lower management. in the focus groups with employees, this sentiment was echoed, where employees stated that, due to the fact that many employees are illiterate and/or not proficient english, all communication has to filter through a very strict hierarchical system, verbally. put differently, this means that top management communicates a message to middle management, who communicates to lower management, who in turn then has to communicate to employees at the bottom of the hierarchy. employees thus felt that a distinction needs to be made between management communicating directly to them (which they found to be lacking), and their supervisors communicating to them (which is considered to be abundant). simply put, at the gautrain project it was found that not all “sources” (management, supervisors, etc.) of downward communications can be grouped together, as was done in le roux’s (2008) study, as different “sources” meant different perceptions with regard to communication. adaptations of grunig and hon’s (1999) relationship questionnaire as was found to be the case in testing the francis and woodcock (1994) questionnaire at the gautrain project, le roux (2008) found, in the administering of the grunig and hon (1999) questionnaire, that respondents could not make a distinction in the small semantic differences in the questions. related to this, it was found at the gautrain project, during the factor analysis, that employees did not perceive six factors in grunig and hon’s (1999) questionnaire but only three. herein, employees grouped the element of trust together with control mutuality as commitment was grouped with satisfaction and communal relationship, whilst exchange relationship is an aspect that stood alone. this finding supports the 124 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 124 results found in the administering of the francis and woodcock (1994) questionnaire, namely that some concepts of the questionnaire could be combined when the questionnaire is administered to respondents and interpreted within this environment. remarkable here is the fact that le roux’s (2008) study found much of the same. in this study, exchange relationship was also an aspect that stood alone after the factor analysis, whilst the statement (only one was included) of control mutuality was paired with communal relationship. herein, the study at the gautrain project echoes the findings of le roux (2008) that “the concepts of trust, control mutuality, commitment, relationship satisfaction, and communal relationship were not as clearly distinguished from one another... the uniqueness of the respondents could have influenced the matching of the findings to the previously defined aspects”. furthermore, le roux (2008) found here that negatively phrased questions should be excluded from the questionnaire as employees did not seem to understand how to interpret these questions. yet again, in support of le roux (2008), this was found to be the case for negatively phrased questions in the questionnaire to the gautrain project employees as well. for example, the following item shown in table 1, from the adapted le roux (2008) questionnaire, was included alongside its negatively phrased counterpart from the original grunig and hon (1999) questionnaire. as these items measure the same aspect, it would be expected that they yield a similar response from respondents, in an inverse pattern, as the one is positive and the other is negative. seeing as they did not, this points to the fact that negatively phrased questions cannot always be considered in this environment. table 1: negatively and positively phrased questions in le roux’s (2008) questionnaire the cronbach alpha coefficient for the entire question dealing with grunig and hon’s (1999) questionnaire is not mentioned, but for the factors derived from it, a range between 0.63 and 0.81 can be seen. yet again (probably due to the inclusion of more items) the range found on this from the questionnaire administered at the gautrain project was higher. however, it should be pointed out here that the adapted version as from le roux (2008) again included a higher rating than that of its original counterpart – this time a noticeable difference (the 125 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 125 adapted questionnaire items with 0.913 and the original items with 0.825). this points to the fact that the questionnaire adapted to the environment (as after le roux 2008) proved to be more reliable in its testing in this environment. conclusion at the onset of this article, it was mentioned that communication in an organisational setting has to be adapted to the environment thereof, if this organisation is to be successful. in the same way, questionnaires (that can be argued to form part of organisational communications) need to be adapted to the environment of the organisation as well, if it endeavours to reach its research goals. this aspect is intensified by the fact that most of the well known and generally respected corporate and organisational communication questionnaires originate from within an international arena, from which african, third-world countries can vastly differ. this diversity is intensified in south africa’s mining and construction industries, which have some of the most diverse workforces to be found, especially in terms of cultural diversity, language diversity, as well as differing levels of literacy, thus forming a unique community to communicate with. this diversity poses obstacles to the administering of communication questionnaires (especially if they are designed to be self-administered). in lieu of this, le roux (2008) proposed various recommendations and adaptations for the south african, third-world context. the contribution of this article lies in the fact that le roux’s (2008) adaptations were, for the first time, empirically tested alongside the original items of the (international) questionnaires. it was found that the adaptations of le roux (2008) were valid in every instance – especially the general adaptations which included the reduction of the length of the questionnaire, as well as the number of items on the likert scale. in the testing of the questionnaire items, it was found that the adapted questionnaire items were more reliable, as it yielded a higher cronbach alpha coefficient (overall). although all adaptations and recommendations suggested by le roux (2008) were therefore found to be of merit, the following additional recommendations can be made over and above those proposed by le roux (2008) for the distribution and administering of internationally generated questionnaires within the mining and construction industry of south africa specifically, and the third-world context in general. recommendations exclusion of the neutral option: when responding to quantitative questionnaire items, many respondents in this environment (especially when making use of a translator) opts for the “neutral” or “indecisive” option on the likert scale for many or most of the questions. as this item on the scale (when chosen significantly) does not offer a decisive reflection of respondents’ perceptions, it should be considered to exclude this item in the administering of questionnaires in this kind of environment. 126 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 126 design of the questionnaire to ease translation: as translators will inevitably be used in many instances when administering questionnaires in this environment, the questionnaire should be designed in such a way as to take translation thereof into account. in line with this, the layout of the questionnaire should also be of such a kind as to allow respondents to answer it on site – that is to say not only at a desk or the like. the importance of hierarchy should be noted: in this environment (due to the illiteracy and non-proficiency of english of many respondents) communication messages have to filter verbally through a strict hierarchy in many cases. the supposition that management or top management is viewed as one entity in questionnaires should be rethought. triangulation: due to the diversity of respondents in this environment, quantitative items are sometimes interpreted by different respondents in very different ways. it is for this reason that it is strongly recommended that the findings from quantitative questionnaires, such as that of grunig and hon (1999), and francis and woodcock (1994), be triangulated with qualitative research methods in order to improve the validity and reliability of the study. factor groupings: it was found in le roux’s (2008) study, based on the factor analysis, that groupings of constructs (for example the elements of relationships as from grunig and hon’s (1999) questionnaire) might have to be renamed for this context. in this study, it was found that respondents do not group items differently, just that less distinction is made between smaller nuances (for example in relationships). it is therefore rather recommended that these constructs, in the form of factors, be combined in this environment to form larger groups of items – which will inevitably impact positively on the cronbach alpha coefficient. 127 different salves for different sores: international research 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(eds). integrated organisational communication. lansdowne: juta. van tonder, e. 2008. personal interview. midrand. 129 different salves for different sores: international research remedies for a south african communication context 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 129 7. wj greef 11/18/11 3:51 pm page 130 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /warning /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjdffile false /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true 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5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice september 2006 21 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 21 37 danie jordaan* abstract the commonly accepted notion that a picture is worth a thousand words paradoxically places greater communicative value on images than on spoken or written language. ironically, a lingering precedence of letters and numbers over images still characterize “enlightened” contemporary discourse, in spite of many claims that we live in a society dominated by the visual. this article explores the hermeneutics of photographs and visual images on a conceptual level, touching on issues such as validity of interpretation, the fallacy of a universally understood and pictorial language and the distinction between functional visual literacy and nuanced reflective visual literacy. finally it makes a case for including visual literacy as part of the formal curricula at school and at tertiary level. * danie jordaan is professor in the department of journalism, media studies and philosophy at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. introduction the origin of the well-known expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” can not be determined with any certainty, but it became widely used in america during the early part of the twentieth century. advertising people in america soon applied this bit of “common sense” in their advertising copy, one early example being the wideranging adverts for doan’s backache kidney pills. these featured a black and white image of a middle-aged gentleman holding his back with his left hand, with the caption “every picture tells a story”. in a 1911 lecture the celebrated american newspaper editor arthur brisbane (1864-1936) advised members of the syracuse advertising men’s club to “use a picture. it’s worth a thousand words” (phrases.org.uk: n.d.: online). this “lecture” represents, to my knowledge, one of the earliest intellectual dis courses arguing that an image somehow communicates more efficiently (if not effectively) than words alone, although one could argue that brisbane’s stance might have had less to do with more effective communication and all to do with selling more advertising space in his newspapers, since images took up more column inches. this article engages with the hermeneutics of photographs and visual images on a con ceptual level and is therefore not based on empirical research. using de saus sure and the “linguistic turn” of the previous century as a point of departure, the author briefly explores how the meaning of texts (linguistic as well as visual) are generated through the interpre tative actions of readers / viewers, and how inter pretative strategies have been influenced by, inter alia, for malism and the new criticism, reception aesthetics, structurlalism, posstruc turalism and post modernism. is a picture indeed worth a thousand words? most people believe so, and with good reason. consider the deeply disturbing photograph of the terrified children fleeing the effects of napalm bombs dropped by the south vietnamese air force on the village nam trang bang in the outskirts of saigon on 8 june 1972. this picture was syndicated to international agencies and millions of people voiced their outrage. this single photograph arguably did more to expose the horror of the vietnam war than the hundreds, if not thousands of articles that appeared in newspapers and magazines during the eight years of conflict. 22 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye figure 1: fleeing children in nam trang bang (source: http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1972-upi-photo-viet-nam-trangbang-fleeing) but is it indeed a case of the picture being worth a thousand words, or is it the anguish and horror that speak from the children’s distorted bodies and faces that seared readers’ hearts? i would argue that the picture in isolation conveys emotions of horror and anguish, and generate disgust, sympathy, anger and a range of emotions in the reader, but it does not tell a story; in order to do so the latent signification of the photograph has to be activated by the context (caption, accompanying article, plus the reader’s own socio-cultural, political, ideological, and other knowledge or beliefs). i shall return to this topic in more detail later. interpreting photographs next, consider the close-up photograph of sharbat gula, for 17 years known to the world as the “afghan girl” that appeared on the cover of the june 1985 edition of national geographic (mccurry 1985: online). this photograph by journalist steve mccurry mesmerised millions and “became a symbol both of the 1980s afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide” (national geographic 2003: online). the image itself was named “the most recognized photograph” in the history of the magazine and national geographic launched an expedition in january 2002 to find the woman behind the picture, and subsequently published her story in the april 2002 issue of national geographic as “a life revealed” by cathy newman and steve mccurry. the header reads: “her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. now we can tell her story.” 23 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye figure 2: ‘afghan girl’ and ‘a life revealed’ (source: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/covers/gallery) to my mind the sentence “now we can tell her story” is revealing, for the initial (1985) photograph (above left) told nothing, the photographer did not even know her name, and her face was merely exploited by the media to become “a symbol both of the 1980s afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide” (ibid.). following barthes (1977) i would argue that these pictures in isolation convey very little meaning and hardly tell a story. to use my term, they are latent signifiers that generate meaning only by virtue of being “anchored” (barthes) linguistically (caption, accompanying article) and by the reader’s contextual savvy (socio-cultural, historical, religious, ideological, etc.). is a picture then worth a thousand words? not to my mind. if one takes into account our increasing awareness of the complexity of the semiotic processes involved in generating and decoding meaning, the question warrants a closer look. tomaselli (1999) views the photograph as an empty signifier; roland barthes argues (1977) that it is not a signifier at all, since it needs no “relay” or code to convey meaning. mitchell (2008: 18) convincingly argues that an image “is constituted as a relation rather than an entity of substance”, whereas a picture “is a material object, a thing you can burn or break. an image is what appears in a picture, and what survives its destruction – in memory, in narrative, and in copies and traces in other media” (2008: 16). to mitchell, the image is therefore an abstract entity that can be evoked by even a word. in this regard he refers to pananofsky’s notion of the motif, an element in a picture “that elicits condition and especially recognition; the awareness that ‘this is that’; the perception of the nameable, identifiable object that appears as a virtual presence; and the paradoxical ‘absent presence’ that is fundamental to all representational entities” (mitchell 2008: 17). to my mind this distinction between picture (photograph) and image offers a way 24 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye out of the bind barthes causes when he states that the picture is not a signifier, but more about this later. whose picture, whose interpretation? if we take the viewer’s realisation that “this is that” as the key moment when picture becomes image (that is, it becomes representational of more that the physical components it is made up of), we move into the field of semiotics, and peirce’s concept of determinacy / indeterminacy becomes useful. barthes’ contention that the newspaper photograph needs to be “anchored” by linguistic text in order for its meaning to become clear supposes an indeterminacy regarding the meaning of pictures, or one may also speak of the latitude of interpretation that the picture (as a sign) allows. iconicity (the resemblance between the pictorial sign and the referent) does not provide it with a determinate meaning. human nature being what it is, we invariably determine what the picture means to us, thereby relating it to our existence, our experiences, our meaning expectations. the picture therefore remains dependent on interpretation by someone, using, amongst other things, culture-based contingencies and contextual elements to construct its meaning(s) (see also gadamer’s [1960, tr. 1975] “historically affected consciousness” or wirkungsgeschichtliches bewußtsein). the term visual literacy has been in use for more than 150 years, and “a tremendous force of rhetoric has been brought to bear on the notion that ours is a predominantly visual culture” (elkins 2008: vii). while vision as the “master” sense has been discredited in phenomenological and deconstructivist discourses over the past number of decades, visuality, or modes of seeing and interpreting what is seen, has gained significance in most disciplines within the humanities. while mitchell (1996: 82) makes it clear that images are as complex as written text and demand equal scholarly attention, he is adamant that images are not reducible to a “grammar”. visual language requires a hermeneutics that recognises its particular ontology, but one should avoid falling into a kind of “visual essentialism” (bal 2003, in van eeden & du preez 2005: 5). to my mind our ability to interpret pictures in a nuanced, critical way can benefit from key insights gained in linguistics and literature studies. it is generally acknowledged that the “language turn” of the previous century, heralded by de saussure’s work, had a huge impact not only on the study of language and literature, but on most of the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in the way that established notions on presentation, representation and meaning were questioned, and sometimes overturned. by the seventies gadamer’s views had become widely accepted in the study of literature, and a shift occurred from the analytical, text-centred approaches established by the formalists and new critics to approaches that, while still acknowledging the importance of the text as central to interpretation and meaning, also became interested in how readers made meaning of texts (reception theory). in this regard it is useful to paraphrase robert scholes (1982: 15-16) who held that a text is the product of a person or persons, in a given form of discourse, originates at a certain time and in a certain 25 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye context, taking its meanings (plural) from the interpretative gestures of readers who use their knowledge of linguistic, social and other codes and conventions in order to make plausible meaning. the above description of the construction and deconstruction of written texts can apply equally to pictures and images. as already stated, it is neither desirable, nor feasible to equate written texts to pictorial texts since they do not generate meaning in exactly the same way. for example, the syntagmatic axis is of primary importance in determining the meaning(s) of a written (linguistic) text, while the paradigmatic axis is of greater importance for a visual / pictorial text. however, the insight regarding the importance of codes and conventions, culture and context in the process of interpreting linguistic texts is as important when interpreting visual / pictorial texts, and at the very least, makes us wary of attaching apodictic, determinate meanings to visual texts merely because there seems to be a one-on-one relationship between the signifier and the signified. visual literacy as mentioned, the term visual literacy (an “unavoidable contradiction” according to elkins [2008: 1]) has been in use for more than 150 years. during this time visual literacy has denoted various competencies regarding the production and use of visual images to communicate. elkins (2008) provides a concise conceptual overview of the term in the concept of visual literacy, and its limitations. central to elkins’ thesis is that a university education should be based on images as well as (written) texts. he finds it amazing that, given the enormous literature on the visual nature of our world (citing numerous authors, such as mitchell, nicolas mirzoeff, martin jay, jean baudrillard and lisa cartwright), university curricula “continue to be mainly textbased, with intermittent excursions into visual art and culture” (elkins 2008: 3). elkins touches on four main areas pertaining to visual literacy, namely con cep tualization, the politics of representation, pedagogy, and images outside the arts1 (with a focus on technology, engineering, science and medicine). although he does not specifically address the issue of degrees of visual competency (or levels of visual literacy, if you will), it is clear that the kind of visual literacy education that he advocates has a critical, rather than functional focus. in an article written more than twenty years earlier, sylvia scribner, writing on linguistic literacy in the american school system, uses three metaphors to indicate three main aspects of literacy: literacy as adaptation (what i would term the functional aspect), literacy as power (what i would term the politics of representation) and literacy as “a state of grace”. she describes the latter as follows: the self-enhancing aspects of literacy are often given a cognitive interpretation (...). for centuries, and increasingly in this generation, appeals have been made for increased attention to literacy as a way of developing minds. an individual who is illiterate, a unesco (1972) publication states, is bound to concrete thinking and cannot learn new material. some teachers of college english in the 26 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye united states (...) urge greater prominence for writing in the curriculum as a way of promoting logical reasoning and critical thinking. literate and nonliterate individuals presumably are not only in different states of grace but in different stages of intellectual development as well. although evidence is accumulating (...) refuting this view, the notion that literacy per se creates a great divide in intellectual abilities between those who have and those who have not mastered written language is deeply entrenched in educational circles of industrialized countries (1984: 18). can visual literacy be effectively categorised in terms of level of competency? more importantly, is it necessary? let us take the concept of linguistic illiteracy as a point of departure. a person is considered illiterate if he or she is unable to read and write, with understanding, a short, simple sentence about everyday life (unesco 1995: 4). the converse would be true for a literate person, according to this classification. this is a very coarse classification and seems of little use for our discussion, since, if we apply it to understand images or pictures, one would be considered visually literate if you could describe a simple picture about everyday life – this would also reduce the concept of visual communication to merely using images to denote the object they represent. such a view on visual communication denies that a picture or photograph is a signifier, and that complex relations between the (visual) signifier and the signified is possible. a next step up could be described as functional communicative visual literacy, meaning that a person can use pictures or signs as a form of communication, allowing him/her to function in his / her society. the problem with defining various levels of competency is that it is always relative to a given context, in a given society, at a given time. i am also concerned that a focus on levels of visual literacy and the criteria defining each level could efface its contextual relativism, limiting the possibility of multiple readings and favouring the old hegemony of the “one true reading”. although scribner (1984: 14) writes on linguistic literacy in the context of american school curricula, her perspective on the quest for definition and measurement that informed much of the debate on literacy is, to my mind, also valid for this discussion on visual literacy: grasping what literacy ‘is’ inevitably involves social analysis: what activities are carried out with written symbols? what significance is attached to them, and what status is conferred on those who engage in them? is literacy a social right or a private power? these questions are subject to empirical determination. but others are not: does the prevailing distribution of literacy conform to standards of social justice and human progress? what social and educational policies might promote such standards? (...) points of view about literacy as a social good, as well as a social fact, form the ground of the definitional enterprise. we may lack consensus on how best to define literacy because we have differing views about literacy’s social purposes and values. 27 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye it seems clear to me that defining and measuring levels of visual communicative competence is far less important than understanding how visual communication occurs, and its role in society. it is important that we understand visual communication as part of an integrated, “multi-layered” discourse that, through modern information tech nology, presents itself as a seamless entity combining language, sound and image. in spite of claims to the contrary, late capitalist democratic society is not democratic in its distribution of resources and power, and communication is predominantly strategic (in the sense that habermas uses the term). because of this, it is important that visual communication be analysed in terms of the way in which visual communicative competency enables individuals to function (and thrive) within specific contexts. it is, however, even more important to understand how visual communication functions in terms of the politics of representation (asymmetrical power relations) and what scribner called “literacy as a state of grace”, by which she referred to deeply held western convictions regarding the correlation between literacy, cognitive ability and personal worth. let me briefly comment on the functional aspect of visual literacy. this is of particular interest to, for example, health communicators who wish to pursue non-linguistic ways of conveying messages that are clearly understood by patients in a multicultural, multi lingual society with vastly differing levels of formal education. health communication must be clear and concise, and leave no room for misinterpretation. visual com munication constructs that have been designed in such a way that it has one clear, “obvious” message has long been held as the answer to this requirement, with health communication practitioners striving to construct determinate visual signs that leave no leeway for alternative interpretation. several south african studies (delate 2001; bechan 2003; jordaan 2006) have shown, however, that visual health communication is not a panacea. several billboard campaigns by lovelife, south africa’s largest hiv and aids ngo, failed precisely because the planners and designers failed to take into account culture-based contingencies and contextual elements pertaining to the audiences, assuming that visual images conveyed the same meaning to everyone. even more seriously, it seems that the designers did not have an adequate understanding of the way that meaning is visually encoded and decoded. these designers and graphic artists no doubt consider themselves highly competent in visual communication, but i believe that i have shown in the article mentioned that artistic competence (in producing striking visual material) does not necessarily translate to effective visual communication. for that to occur, the visual artist / communicator also has to be wellversed in the semiotics and hermeneutics of visual media, particularly in terms of the politics of representation. it is therefore clear that even at the level of relatively simple functional visual communication, the making of meaning (interpretation of pictures, photographs and compound images such as often employed in billboards) is not straightforward, and visual communication is not a universal “language” understood by all. 28 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye regarding more complex visual texts, as often used in advertising, interpretation becomes even more complex, requiring reader (viewer) sophistication in terms of being au fait with the codes and conventions of the particular visual medium, the context (historical, cultural, political, ideological) of its production and reception. it seems that the average student studying in the humanities at university level has no problem in “reading” fairly complex visual compositions, as research by a number of master’s de gree students under my supervision has shown. the readings, however, are “in tuitive”, that is, the students are not aware of how they interpret the visual data; using scholes’ terminology, one may say that they are not aware of the “interpretative gestures of individual readers using the grammatical, semantic and cultural codes available to them” (scholes 1982: 15) to generate meaning. to return to my original question regarding the possible classification of visual literacy: how would one distinguish between levels of competency in interpreting visual images, either in isolation, or in combination with linguistic texts? would it be possible to design “reading tests” to determine the level of visual competency, and what would the purpose of this be? i suppose that advocacy groups could find it useful to have a universal system of visual literacy classification in order to segment target audiences and design appropriate com munication campaigns. in this regard i have already referred to health communication where the planners of campaigns and the designers of communication material need to distinguish between levels of competency regarding the ability of their intended audiences to make meaning. but i have also pointed out that the process of interpreting, of “making meaning” is hardly ever simple, even if the pictorial elements used to communicate seem to have “obvious” meaning for the creator / sender of the message. the question of visual literacy, or visual communicative competency, is one that is at least as old as that pertaining to linguistic literacy, and may even predate it if it is accepted that humans used pictorial images to communicate before the invention of symbolic systems of writing. however, unlike writing, which is based on an arbitrary system of symbols denoting expressions of language (using arbitrary words/sounds which gain symbolic meaning through consensus), visual images trick us into conflating the signifier with the signified, leading us to a false sense of security that the picture is the thing itself, and therefore worth a thousand words. it may very well be that a particular picture is worth a thousand words, but that is the very dilemma that faces visual communication: how to “frame” the “thousand words” so that the image does not slip into indeterminacy; how to reduce the latitude of possible meanings to arrive at a shared meaning. this is, unfortunately, a never ending project because meaning depends on ever changing culture-based contingencies and contextual elements. i therefore propose that it would serve little purpose to design “reading tests” to determine generally applicable levels of visual competency. to my mind it is more feasible, and useful, to distinguish between basic functional visual literacy on the one 29 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye hand, and nuanced reflective visual literacy on the other hand. by basic functional visual literacy i mean the competency to “read” visual images at “face value”, that is, to make plausible meaning of it without necessarily being aware of how that meaning is constituted. ostensibly one would be able to categorise such basic functional visual literacy in terms of the complexity of the images that can be “read”, but that would again lead to questions regarding the criteria used in such a hierarchy. it is, however, possible to clearly distinguish between functional literacy and nuanced reflective literacy, as the latter requires of the “reader” to not only be aware of what could be called the codecs employed in the text, but to also be a self-aware reader, that is, aware of how you are using culture-based contingencies and contextual elements (what i would call cultural, contextual and formal savvy) in order to construct and deconstruct meaning(s). validity of interpretation can one distinguish between a “correct” and “incorrect” reading of an image? again, this is an old question and has been answered in different ways through the ages. for a long time the author’s intention was used as a criterion to determine whether an interpretation was “correct” or not, but this was convincingly refuted by w.k. wimsatt and monroe beardsly in their essay the intentional fallacy (1946, rev. 1954). the seminal hermeneutic e.d. hirsch, whose work could be described as taking further the tenets of new criticism, touches on several useful aspects for this article in his book validity in interpretation (1967). although hirsch’s work in this book could be typed as early structuralist, and although he focused on literary texts, this does not decrease the applicability of his insights regarding validity in interpretation to the field of visual communication. a clear line of progression in theory pertaining to meaning and interpretation (with some jumps and points of aporia) can be seen in the works of twentieth century thinkers like de saussure, peirce, barthes, terence hawkes, jauss, iser, baudrillard and lyotard. this is hardly surprising, since one finds that central tenets from a particular theory may well inform aspects of a later theory, which then acts as a “correction”, or improvement of the previously dominant theory. one can certainly show, referring to the evolution of literary theory and hermeneutics, that there has not been a single absolute break in the spiral of theories where all the tenets of a preceding theory have been completely overturned; in fact, one could quote instances where a current, dominant theory can lose ground against, if not the key tenets of an earlier theory, then at least in respect of some elements. as a case in point, one could argue that radical postmodernism has to some extent lost ground to american neo-conservatism (jordaan 2004), and that post-postmodernism (to coin a phrase) increasingly re-introduces elements of structuralism in a post-late capitalist era characterised by a desire to find stable truths and values. consider in this regard the current focus on green studies across all major fields of study. to return to hirsch’s question regarding validity in interpretation: his purpose was not to arrive at a formula that could be used to determine if a given interpretation is correct, 30 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye but rather to provide a paradigm that could be used to determine the soundness of the reasoning that informs the interpretation. this is done by establishing if such interpretation takes into account all of the structural / compositional elements of the text. interpretations that take into account most (or all) elements of the text, and that are not in clear conflict with one or more textual elements, are deemed valid. this validity can be questioned by a subsequent reading or readings if such (a) reading(s) expose(s) textual element(s) that place a different perspective on the previous interpretation, conceivably rendering aspects of the previous interpretation implausible by showing that certain text elements cannot be reconciled with that particular reading. this essentially structuralist approach can be adapted by broadening the focus on intratextual elements to include intertextual and relevant extra-textual elements, thereby making use of insights gained from reader reception theory, poststructuralism and postmodernism. the central criterion for effective communication (visual or other) is that the signified should, largely, be plausibly linked to the signifier (or its agents), using commonly accepted (if arbitrary) codes. while a particular signified (meaning) may be clear to one individual, based on an individualistic or idiosyncratic code, it does not qualify as communication if other individuals do not / cannot arrive at the same, or at least similar meaning construct(s). given my acceptance of the active role of the reader / viewer in constructing meaning, how far can connotation be taken before the “distance” between signifier, signified and barthes’ third-order meaning2 becomes too strained and one gets bogged down in the postmodernist trap of the utter relativism of meaning?3 for, as several postmodernist thinkers have shown, the (incorrectly) perceived postmodernist attitude of “everything goes” leads nowhere. is it indeed a case of every reader making up his own meaning, like italo calvino’s (1979) protagonists in if on a winter’s night a traveller? in this novel two readers desperately try to put together a “logical” meaning for the book they are reading. the problem is that pages and even chapters are missing from the book, and some parts seem not to belong, or not to be authentic. thus we find our protagonists, wandering along an incomprehensible maze of signifiers, missing parts of the text, generating confusion and conflicted meanings, based on their (often) erroneous suspicions and assumptions – all in a quest to arrive at the true meaning of the novel. are we therefore doomed to preliminary meanings, multiple ways of interpreting the same text, with no fixed (or at least stable) meaning, since each meaning is the construct of an individual reader, and in no way more “true” than any other reading or interpretation? has the “intentional fallacy” (wimsatt & beardsly 1946) that dispensed with the critic who cites intimate knowledge of the author, his / her text, psychological, and voiced explanation of what he / she intended as “proof” of his / her interpretation come to full term with barthes’ death of the author? reception aesthetics certainly places the focus on the role of the reader as co-creator of the meaning of the text, but it would be a misperception to push reader construction to the centre of the hermeneutic project at the exclusion of the insights gained by new criticism and structuralism. 31 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye to repeat robert scholes: any communication (text) is the product of a person or persons, originates at a certain time and in a certain context, taking its meanings (plural) from the interpretative gestures of readers who use their knowledge of linguistic, social and other codes and conventions in order to make plausible meaning. obviously, many aspects of the text cannot be tied down in a single way – think of cultural, historical, intellectual and experiential differences that might exist between the creator(s) of the signifier and the current reader, and which may alter the perceived meaning(s) of the text. it is of course well known that texts take on altered meaning(s) for subsequent generations of readers of the same text. if not, why would shakespeare’s complete works, for example, still warrant new readings and analyses, given that what has been written on his work dwarfs his oeuvre? if one is to believe that meaning by consensus (not necessarily truth) can to some extent be achieved amongst different readers, at least one has to agree to some common ground rules (conventions) that have to be satisfied in order to lend plausibility to (decoded) meaning. it goes without saying that these, in the case of a language, are completely arbitrary within a fairly closed system that effaces its very arbitrary nature. in the case of visual representation, however, these codes are never as rigorously circumscribed, lending greater capacity for “looser” signification, or, if you will, a wider range of possible meanings. on the other hand, because of the (visual) likeness between the signifier and the signified in the case of visual images, the opposite also tends to be true: the signifier is mistaken for the signified (barthes already referred to notion that it ceases to be a signifier at all, since it needs no “relay” or code to convey meaning). this “coalescence” of signifier and signified in visual communication does not generate a kind of universal language understood by all. this has, for example, become clear in health communication where pictograms were for a time seen as a way to effortlessly cross language and cultural differences between the caregiver and the patient. dowse and ehlers (2001) for example found that only 11 out of 23 usp internationally standardised pictograms were correctly understood by a sample of 46 isixhosa speaking respondents. the same group correctly understood 20 out of 23 locally developed, culturally sensitive pictograms. research conducted in britain (knapp, raynor, jebar & price 2005) confirms that existing, “standardized” pictograms are not easily interpreted and the authors recommend that pictograms should be tested for suitability for specific target audiences. to return to barthes and the idea that the photograph in itself is no signifier; this is just a short jump away from baudrillard (1981; cf. poster 1988) and his notion of simulacra – endless copies of copies with no original available to us. but let us take barthes’ early work at face value and say that the photograph has a clear, direct meaning since it needs no “relay” or code to convey meaning. returning to our first photograph of the children fleeing nam trang, most people will be able to identify the components of the photograph and describe it in words. a screaming child cannot be mistaken for anything else; soldiers in the background are indisputably there, etc. but to claim nuanced reflective visual literacy on that basis would amount to saying that a grade one learner who is able to read simple sentences is literary competent. it is a case of differing 32 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye complexities, and the ability to interpret these complexities in a creative, yet plausible way. the problem arises when visual texts are seen as simple, “transparent”, and it is not realised that it can be as complex as dense writing. visual images, just like writing, range from compositionally simple to complex and can be likened to barthes lisible (or readerly) text as opposed to ecriture, a term used to denote complex texts that demand significant input from the reader to generate meaning. barthes’ lisible text (“readerly” text) can be compared to a photograph with a “fixed” meaning: what you see is all there is. on the other hand, barthes’ notion of text as ecriture (the “writerly” text) requires my already referred to cultural, contextual and formally savvy reader who actively constructs meaning by decoding and recoding the textual composition. visual literacy as part of the curriculum i have already referred to elkins’ (2008) convincing argument for the inclusion of visual literacy in formal university curricula, and to mason, morphet and prosalendis’ (2006) proposals for the development of visual communication curricula for the sciences, so will not belabour the importance of such a project here. while apodictic readings of texts are today frowned on in many disciplines (with law being one of few exceptions), it does not mean that meaning lies solely in the eye of the beholder. meaning is generated by a reader (viewer) who actively engages with the image, bringing a repertoire of known codes (social, linguistic, cultural, etc.) to bear. these are “intuitively” gained while growing up in a particular society. it is encouraging to see that visual literacy now features in our national school curriculum, however, my experience in presenting workshops on visual literacy to teachers indicate that very few are qualified to present such classes as they did not receive adequate training while they were university or college students. the result: visual literacy is prescribed in all the language curricula from grades ten to twelve, but very little comes of this as, in my experience, the visual literacy class turns out to be a dvd showing of one of the prescribed literature books. a bigger concern regarding the inclusion of visual literacy in the national school curriculum: again the responsibility to teach visual literacy seems to fall on language teachers, instead of teaching visual literacy across the curriculum. in order to be considered linguistically competent you have to study your particular language for years, mastering its codes. this is done by combining theory (grammar) with the various practical applications of language we are all familiar with: writing, speaking and listening. if linguistic competence can only be gained by the study of its theory, coupled with practical application and the honing of skills, why is it assumed that competent visual literacy is somehow picked up along the way, with no need to study the “grammar” of the image? for if we as viewer-readers do not share a common set of codes that enable us to generate meaning when faced with an image, how shall we be able to make meaning of complex visual images? and how would we argue our interpretation, or question others’ interpretations if we do not have a paradigm for it? while highly developed literacy is today one of the key objectives of higher education, with a strong focus on the textual / linguistic competence of the student, visual literacy 33 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye has been more or less ignored in general academia, except in those disciplines where the visual is key, such as in fine art, graphic design, architecture, cultural studies, medicine, and paradoxically, zoology and chemistry4. academics take pride in students who can skilfully interpret and compose dense linguistic texts, and much active teaching is devoted to mastering “academic” english (or whatever the preferred language of the institution). but when it comes to visual literacy, students are expected to more or less “pick it up” as they go along their way (with the already noted exception of certain disciplines). it is as if letters and symbols have taken precedence over “mere” pictures or images, have greater intellectual status, and convey on its competent user academic, intellectual, economic, social, and personal prestige. shlain (1996) proposes an interesting theory to explain this in his book the alphabet vs the goddess: the conflict between word and image by arguing that a hegemony of letters and numbers is still evident today, despite a perceptible growth in the status of the image. he links this precedence of letters and numbers to the decline of the status of females in almost all spheres of power before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, basing it on the notion that women are right-brain dominant (more visually oriented) and males left brain dominated (abstract reasoning) and that the valorisation of values such as conceptualisation and abstraction, linked to masculinity, promote patriarchy. this lingering precedence of letters and numbers over the visual / pictorial is ironic, given the generally accepted view that in the media dominated (especially visual media) late capitalist society our “direct” experiences are not direct or “real”, but reactions to media representations. thompson (1990) argues convincingly that present day society is largely a media construct, while baudrillard (1981; 1994) has become (in)famous for his concept of the simulacrum: there are no originals, just copies that pose as the original, hiding the fact that they are copies, and that signs merely represent other signs, and have no true meaning. in contemporary consumer society this perceived lack of distinction between reality and representation is the result of, i would argue, an education system that has not given adequate prominence to the development of visual literacy, and then in particular nuanced reflective visual literacy. conclusion the generally accepted dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words masks the fact that visual images do not constitute a universally understandable means of communication that functions independently of language. while it is acknowledged that visual communication should not be explained in terms of language communication, images are nonetheless linked to language since we as humans are unable to think except in terms of language. insights into how readers of linguistic texts generate meaning can be applied to the study of visual communicative competency, but one should be cautious not to attempt to explain the visual solely in terms of insight gained from linguistics. 34 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye visual literacy is crucially important in a contemporary society dominated by visual media, yet visual literacy education has not (yet) achieved sufficient recognition in terms of secondary and tertiary education curricula because of a paradoxical precedence of letters and numbers over the visual. because the visual is so pervasive across disciplines, it has become the responsibility of everybody to teach it, and therefore nobody (formally) teaches it outside a few specialist disciplines. just as the ability to passively read simple language texts is not considered adequate for an individual to function optimally in current late capitalist society, basic functional visual literacy does not equip people to engage meaningfully with their worlds, contributing to an uncritical consumer society where the distinction between reality and representation fades. the answer is not to try and resist the new paradigm of a mediated society driven by social media where the virtual has taken the place of face-to-face human interaction, but to embrace visual technologies in a critically aware state, that of the person who is visually literate in the sense that he/she not only is able to make meaning of images, but also knows and understands the codes of its production and reception. this requires a reflective and critical attitude towards the construction and deconstruction of meaning in a visually dominated society. endnotes 1 mason, morphet and prosalendis (2006) argue the case for visual literacy training specifically for the sciences in south africa: “visual literacy is the ability to read and understand images. while we are taught to read and write words at school, no focused attention is given to teaching the skills to read images other than as ‘art’ or attractive illustrations of the words we read in school. however, in the life sciences images are not mere illustrative supplements to written texts, but are indispensable for communicating complex ideas and concepts, and, if visual literacy doesn’t develop ‘naturally’ many will battle to grasp the full meaning of scientific images.” 2 images can simultaneously operate on the iconic, indexical and symbolic levels. functional visual literacy can be said to operate primarily at the iconic and indexical levels, and the “reader” engages mainly on a denotative level of meaning. nuanced reflective visual literacy requires of the “reader” to engage on a connotative level (analogical, symbolic and mythic). barthes (1977) argues that the first and second orders of signification, namely denotation and connotation, combine to generate myth, described by fiske and hartley (1978: 43) as a third order of signification. barthes’ use of the term myth can be likened to ideology that effaces the fact that it is a (hegemonic) social construct that presents itself as “natural”, uncontested “truth”. in this way, myth as third order signification paradoxically presents itself as first order signification: that which is natural, common sense and requires no explanation. 3 of course, such relativism is not equal to postmodernism, which has many supporters and detractors over a wide range of disciplines. 4 one might argue that different visual competencies for these fields are required, and that competent visual literacy in chemistry, for example, does not entail nearly the same thing for, say, fine art. 35 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye references baudrillard, j. 1994. french edition 1981. simulacra and simulation. michigan: university of michigan press. barthes, r. 1977. image, music, text. london: fontana. bechan, n. 2003. addressing national issues through communication campaigns. reflections on lovelife and proudly south african. communitas 8: 59-70. delate, r. 2001. the struggle for meaning: a semiotic analysis of interpretations of the lovelife his and hers billboards campaign. [online]. available at: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccms/mediacommunications/pubhealthcommunication.a sp?id=15 [accessed on 02/09/2010]. dowse, r. and ehlers, m. s. 2001. the evaluation of pharmaceutical pictograms in a low-literate south african population. patient education and counseling. international journal for communication in healthcare 45(2): 87-99. elkins, j. (ed.). 2008. visual literacy. new york: routledge. calvino, i. 1979. if on a winter’s night a traveller. translated by weaver, w. new york: harcourt brace. fiske, j. and hartley, j. 1978. reading television. london: methuen. gadamer, h. 1975. truth and method. london: sheed and ward. hirsch, e. d. 1967. validity in interpretation. new haven: yale university press. jordaan, d. j. 2004. the promotion of neo-conservatism through contemporary hollywood film with reference to spielberg’s saving private ryan (1999). communitas 9: 117-133. jordaan, d. j. 2006. the effectiveness of visual media campaigns: a critical perspective on the reception of three lovelife billboards in rural transkei. communitas 11: 107-124. knapp, p., raynor, d. k., jebar, a. h. and price, s. j. 2005. interpretation of medication pictograms by adults in the uk. the annals of pharmacotherapy 39(2): 1227-1233. mason, r., morphet, t. and prosalendis, s. 2006. reading scientific images: the iconography of evolution. cape town: hsrc press. mccurry, s. 1985. national geographic. 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(ed.) 1988. jean baudrillard. selected writings. stanford: stanford university press. scribner, s. 1984. literacy in three metaphors. american journal of education 93(4): 6-21. shlain, l.1996. the alphabet vs the goddess. the conflict between word and image. new york: penguin arkana. scholes, r. 1982. semiotics and interpretation. new haven: yale university press. thompson, j. 1990. ideology and modern culture. critical social theory in the era of mass communication. stanford: stanford university press tomaselli, k. g. 1999. appropriating images. the semiotics of visual representation. hojbjerg: intervention press. unesco. 1995. compendium of statistics on illiteracy. no. 35. paris: united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation. van eeden, j. and du preez, a. (eds). 2005. south african visual culture. pretoria: van schaik. wimsatt, w. k and beardsly, m. c. 1954. the verbal icon: studies in the meaning of poetry. lexington: university of kentucky press. 37 reflective visual literacy: far more than meets the eye untitled thinking about mass communication research communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 1 14 pieter j. fourie* abstract the article presents an argument for a return to phenomenological (mass) communication research. the article is informed by social semiotics' emphasis on the multimodality of communication and phenomenological hermeneutics' emphasis on the development of a semiotic consciousness. the central argument is that the technology and market-driven media, media landscape and media culture have created a media studies which disregards and overlooks the phenomenological nature of mediated communication. the article expands on and substantiates this criticism as it has emerged from, what for the purpose of this article, is called a group of french, harvard and bloomington academics. as a solution the article argues for a phenomenological approach, taking as its point of departure the basic constructs of what constitutes mass communication, viz. signification, dialogue, rhetoric, and representation. 1 * pieter fourie is professor in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 1 introduction this article is informed by the emphasis in contemporary social semiotics1 on the multimodality of communication (see for example the work of kress 2010) and the emphasis in phenomenological hermeneutics2 on the development of a semiotic consciousness (see for example the work of deely 2004). the article is essentially about mass communication. mass communication is increasingly also referred to as public communication to include organisational, political, and strategic communication, as well as marketing, public relations, etc. – all of which, in one way or another, deal with and concern the mass media. social semiotics and phenomenological hermeneutics share the view that the technology and market-driven media, media landscape and media culture have infiltrated all forms of public communication and have wiped out almost all the old assumptions about mass communication and the validity of “old theory”. social semiotics and phenomenological hermeneutics also question the market-driven nature of present media studies research and argue that in the process of being marketdriven the phenomenological nature of mediated communication (and for that matter, organisational and all other forms of communication) is neglected, if not completely ignored. therefore, there should be a return to phenomenological hermeneutics in mass communication research and theory building. in a paper (see fourie 2010a) at north-west university in 2009, when 50 years of communication science in south africa was celebrated, the author also referred to this questioning and made a plea for a return to phenomenology and the search for new paradigms, especially in the field of media studies. specific reference was made to the so-called “chaos paradigm”, which questions the validity of the key tenets of critical political economy in the new digitised, converged and pluralised media landscape, and the “practice paradigm”, in which the focus is on what people (and academics) are actually doing with the media, and what the media is doing to them and the discipline. that paper was concluded by emphasising the need for a meta-theory to direct south african mass communication research based on an analogy with yuri lotman’s semiosphere of meaning and reformulated for communication science’s purpose as the concept of the mediasphere of meaning. in this article, the idea of a meta-theory is continued but now the emphasis is on the need for a return to phenomenological mass communication research and theory building. with this as background and introduction, the article sketches the content and drift of the above concern and criticism. thereafter four theoretical constructs, namely, signification, dialogue, rhetoric, and representation, are explicated. in social semiotics these constructs are dealt with as modalities. the constructs also characterise the phenomenological nature of mass communication and perspectives from which many fundamental questions, assumptions and hypotheses in mass communication research and theory building could depart. 2 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 2 what is meant by these constructs? if one asks from a phenomenological perspective what constitutes communication, then the phenomenological study of communication has shown over and again that mass communication is always about the production of meaning, dialogue, rhetoric, and representation. this applies to all forms of mass communication – whether the communication is basic, sophisticated, arbitrary and/or symbolic. it can also be argued that much of what is going on in organisational, political, intercultural, health and whatever other forms of communication can also be described, interpreted and analysed from the perspectives of these constructs. the article concludes by emphasising that apart from research, the teaching of communication science should also return to the study of, inter alia, these constructs as a theoretical foundation. one could pose the question whether this theoretical foundation has not declined if not completely disappeared from south african communication sciences’ teaching programmes, to the detriment of the academic value and depth of the discipline. criticism the extent of the criticism and concern about mass communication research’s lack of a phenomenological paradigm and depth is so wide, and growing, that it has led to what is described, for the purpose of this article, as three groups, namely, a group of concerned french academics, a group of harvard university academics and a group of usa bloomington academics. in one way or another, all of them emphasise the need for phenomenological research and theory and the need to demythologise the myths of and about the information society, including the so-called “new (social) media”. the criticism is that the new media landscape in new and changed (postmodern) societies3 has led to a marketand technology-driven communication science. this has happened to such an extent that it has corroded the study of communication as a unique human and mental facility4. the “french group” has formed an international association called ars industrialis (cf. ars industrialis 2001; stiegler 2010; 2011). its purpose is to promote an “industrial politics” of the spirit. a key argument is that the “life of the mind” (in other words, the human spirit) is subjected to the demands of the market, “to the law of rapid profits for firms exploiting the technologies of what have come to be known as the culture industries, program industries, media, telecommunications and lastly the technologies of knowledge or cognitive technologies” (cf. ars industrialis 2001) – the last being the internet and related media. all this has created an industrial spirit. mass communication plays a key role in the creation and maintenance of this de-humanising spirit. mass communication research itself has not succeeded in explaining, and eventually breaking, the hegemonic, shallow, insecure and superficial role of the media in the control and shaping of individual and collective modes of thinking and experiencing the world and its realities and fictions. the media as a key instrument for the promotion of capitalism has created a culture of desire – a desire for commodities shaped to 3 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 3 conform to the requirements of profitable investment. this desire for commodities threatens humanity as a whole. mass communication research should rather aspire towards raising the standard and quality of mass communication and its phenomenological nature as an instrument for the enrichment of human experience. from harvard university (cf. darnton 2009; 2011) comes the argument that mass communication research, and especially research about the new media has not succeeded in wiping out confusion about the nature of the so-called “information age”. to the contrary, in its complete ignorance of the phenomenological nature of mediamorphosis (cf. fidler 1997), and thus of how different and new media throughout the centuries have developed from and out of each other and complement each other, mass communication research, and especially the lack of phenomenological research about the new media, rather contributes to a state of collective false consciousness. “it’s no one’s fault but everyone’s problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged. taken together, they constitute a front of proverbial nonwisdom” (darnton 2011: 3). in this regard darnton highlights five myths: 1. “the book is dead” – which is nonsense; 2. “we have entered the information age” – no, we have always been in it; 3. “all information is now available online” – which is not so, and will never be the case; 4. “libraries are obsolete” – which is also nonsense; libraries are flourishing more than ever; and 5. “the future is digital” – so what? digital is only another technical/electronic instrument for communicating; only another platform. it is not the communication itself. it may be new technology but the communication itself is very old. phenomenological mass communication research will prove these myths wrong, and by doing so, will contribute to a better understanding of the “new” media, its use, and predictions about its future. the results of not doing phenomenological research is, however, best pointed out by the “bloomington group” as formulated by lang in a 2011 ica paper in the division: mass communication. briefly, the criticism also boils down to an emphasis on the lack of phenomenological research and theory – the taking of communication for granted (including meaning, rhetoric, dialogue, and representation) without decoding its phenomenological nature. the bloomington group claims that although there may have been agreement and cohesion in mass communication research about research topics (usually a novel topic) and the use of the same methodologies, an underlying phenomenological paradigmatic 4 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 4 point of departure was and remains missing. when this happens a discipline is in a crisis. such was/is the case with the effects/power research and theory which has and is in one or another way still the dominant perspective, often also called paradigm, in mass communication research. however, it is not a paradigm but rather a set of technological deterministic assumptions about the effects and power of mass communication as an instrument for social change and human behaviour. it says nothing about communication as such. the same technological deterministic assumptions about effects underlie much of today’s research about the new media. again there is no phenomenological paradigm guiding and steering the reasons why the new media are communicating as they are and are able to do what they do and how they function on a cognitive level as communication phenomena. for lang (op.cit.) and the bloomington group the phenomenological paradigmatic question should be what constitutes the new media as communication, and from that why and how people, viewed from a cognitive perspective, use, experience and communicate with, in and through the new media in the ways they are doing; how communication works cognitively, neurologically and biologically. only when we know something about this, will we be able to contribute explanatory, diagnostic and predictive knowledge about mass communication and lately especially about the new forms of mass communication. by not asking fundamental questions and not formulating assumptions based on the phenomenological nature of media as human communication, lang (2011: 5) continues that: we have made remarkably little progress in answering our questions about how mass communication affects people and societies ... we glorify a few small effects with the name theory(ies) (such as the ‘agenda setting theory’ and ‘uses and gratifications theory’), but we fail to explain how (even if they may be small effects) they come about; we have made very little progress in explaining how they occur, nor have we made much progress in developing interventions which prevent their occurrence (suggesting that our understanding is at the best inadequate and more likely wrong)”. when talking about phenomenological paradigms it is unavoidable to quote one of the most seminal science philosophers, thomas kuhn (1996: 96): “without a [phenomenological – pjf] paradigm, one can do science, but one cannot create science. this is because, without a [phenomenological – pjf] paradigm, one is merely ‘looking around’ to see what one can see. the observer within a [phenomenological – pjf] paradigm, on the other hand, is looking, with difficulty, for something they expect to see that has not yet been observed or demonstrated.” what does a phenomenological paradigm do for research and theory building, or what are the attributes of such a paradigm? potter (1993), for example, argues that it provides a researcher with: 5 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 5 • an understanding of the fundamental nature of the thing which he/she is studying; • based on that fundamental nature, the ability to develop new, particular and/or specific ways of describing, explaining and interpreting the thing being observed; and • those who share the paradigm to also share agreement on the primary questions that should be asked about the phenomenon,. in other words, a phenomenological paradigm directs in a coherent way the kind of research questions and assumptions about a specific phenomenon, such as in our case, the new (social) media, freedom of expression, and the indigenisation of communication science. examples of south african mass communication research if some of the topics addressed at the 2011 conference (unisa, pretoria) of the south african communication association (sacomm) and their abstracts are taken as being exemplary of south african mass communication research, then the following examples can be extracted to illustrate or ask questions about the lack of a phenomenological approach. on new media it is obvious that as elsewhere in the world, the south african mass communication research agenda is focused on the new media (also to a great extent in organisational communication) and that the “new” media is researched with a variety of methods, be it experimental and/or survey research. however, phenomenological questioning and theory about what these new media are as communication phenomena are virtually nonexistent in south africa. for example, and to use the constructs of what constitutes communication as referred to earlier, is it ever asked whether the “new” media are intrinsically about signification, dialogue, rhetoric, representation, or what? are fundamental questions asked about the new media as communication phenomena (and enough fundamental questions)? most of all, are the questions being asked fundamental at all? african ontology and epistemology a second example concerns the topic of indigenisation and african ontology and epistemology. is this topic approached from the perspective of fundamental questions about the nature of communication, or is the topic dealt with only on the surface, in a rhetorical way, as part of politics, and to be politically correct? is this intrinsic ontological and epistemological topic approached from the perspective of a phenomenological paradigm about what constitutes human communication? is the thinking about “african communication” (if it is at all possible to distinguish african communication as being different from other human communication and if such a distinction isn’t inherently racist and culturally deterministic) informed by a view in 6 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 6 relation to the constructs of mass communication and thus mass communication as, for example, signification, dialogue, rhetoric and /or as representation? freedom of expression and the right to know given constant threats in south africa to freedom of expression and the right to know, this topic is prominent in south african mass communication research. however, from a phenomenological perspective the questions “what is freedom of expression?” and “why should people have a right to know?” are seldom addressed. do communicologists deal with this topic from the perspective of a coherent paradigm informed by the phenomenological nature of mass communication? mass communication research’s focus on freedom of expression still tends to be more political and sociological than communication-oriented and communication-informed. as such, and from a communication point of view, it should be seen as little more than industry talk with an academic slant. are the arguments about freedom of expression and the right to know motivated strongly enough in terms of the phenomenological nature of mass communication as representation, as symbolic forms of expression, as rhetoric, as dialogue and/or in terms of how mass communication and its media cognitively forms people’s perceptions, thinking, ideas and eventually cognition and behaviour? based on a knowledge of the phenomenology of mass communication, does mass communication research propound more or something different than what the industry, politicians and policy-makers coming from the disciplines of political science, sociology, law, and public and development administration offer and what the industry itself knows from experience and practice? formulated differently: are mass communication research questions, assumptions, arguments and hypotheses motivated clearly enough in terms of what should be a phenomenological knowledge and understanding of why mass communication and its media are able to signify and represent in the ways they do, how this is done, for example, in dialogical and rhetorical ways, and on the basis of such explanations provide reasons for why mass communication and its media are important for democracy and should be free. media ownership the topic of media ownership is high on the agenda of south african politicians, labour unions and ngos. usually they relate debates and arguments about this to representativeness (and the so-called inequality of media ownership in south africa, still seen to be mainly white-owned), diversity and pluralism and the presence thereof or not in a society. yet, the discourse about ownership, diversity and pluralism is informed by market, political and economic driven assumptions and arguments. seldom are these issues addressed from the perspective of the phenomenological nature of the content and form of the mass communication available in society. if media ownership is addressed from the phenomenological perspectives of mass communication as signifying systems, representations, dialogue, and rhetoric, the emphasis will probably move from quantity to quality, and redundancy and insignificance will probably be pointed out and emphasised. 7 thinking about mass communication research 1. pieter j. fourie 11/18/11 3:37 pm page 7 untitled 151 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16:151 169 ronél rensburg and estelle de beer* abstract the king iii report on corporate governance for south africa (with a separate chapter on governing stakeholder relationships) highlights the importance of stakeholder management in corporate governance. for the first time the inclusive approach to stakeholder relationship management is explained more fully and principles on how stakeholder relationships can be managed in a corporate governance context are provided. these have implications for corporate communication strategy in all organisations. the inclusion of all stakeholders in corporate issues has taken centre stage in corporate governance. in any given communication situation, a stakeholder could play many roles in an internal or external organisational environment. total stakeholder involvement (engagement) is crucial and will have implications for organisational practices, reputation and corporate sustainability. the explosion in social media and networking has empowered stakeholders beyond imagination. their roles are no longer merely employees, clients or the community in general, but on the virtual stage of communication, stakeholders are taking on roles as citizen editors, journalists, writers, recipients and interpreters of their own communication material. they can become reputation ambassadors or demolishers in the corporate environment. in this continuous neo-corporate communication environment, it is not about communication control, but about communication power-sharing. in this article stakeholder engagement as an allinclusive communication management approach will be illustrated by considering stakeholder theory, corporate governance and integrated reporting and the growing importance of reputation management. *ronél rensburg is professor in the department of marketing and communication management and director of the centre for communication and reputation management at the university of pretoria. estelle de beer lectures in the department of marketing and communication management and is manager of the centre for communication and reputation management at the same university. 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 151 introduction and problem statement the recent focus on governance and sustainability has altered the contemporary business-society landscape and as a result also that of corporate communication. stakeholder theory in general and the inclusive stakeholder approach to corporate governance in particular posit that all stakeholders should be engaged in the strategic decision-making processes of an organisation. the oversight function of a board of directors should therefore include the consideration of the legitimate interests of all stakeholders – employees, customers, investors, government, community, media – in their strategic decision-making (king iii 2009). on-going dialogue between organisations and their stakeholders provide the best approach to the management of complex issues that characterise contemporary society. organisations therefore have to engage in dialogue within and beyond the boundaries of the organisation in order to engage all significant stakeholders (foster & jonker 2005: 56). katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 55) state that the need for a proactive role by governments, business and civil society in development has motivated three interlinked business movements, namely corporate social responsibility (csr), corporate sustainability, and global reforms on corporate governance. csr and corporate sustainability involve the organisation’s assessment and improvement of its economic, environmental and social impact to align it with stakeholder requirements using integrated reporting. corporate governance (legal responsibilities) provides the foundations upon which csr and corporate sustainability practices can be built. according to aula and mantere (2008: 118) a recent trend in strategic management emphasises the role of networks in strategic management. organisations operate within networks formed by customers, partners, subcontractors, legislators and other stakeholders. quirke (2000: 21, cited in welch & jackson 2007: 178) furthermore argues that the assets of an organisation in the information age include the knowledge and interrelationships of its people. this requires novel management approaches, entailing that stakeholders (like employees) accept increased responsibility for the destiny of the organisation. the management style is about individual and collective leadership – the ability to build relationships, connections, community and a positive culture and value system (verwey 1998: 13). beerel (1998: 3) states that in the “adaptive age” there is a need for leaders who can deal with the “systemic” problems that go to the very core of human existence in a dynamically interrelated and interdependent world. this responsible leadership focuses on recognising interconnected relationships, developing adaptive capacities, and forming communities that can learn through dynamic feedback. van wyk (2002: 13) further refers to ethical leadership plus rational management as “good governance” and states that: “the lack, or absence of sustained good governance remains the greatest challenge in the world today.” as a result of the above, the role of communication in information dissemination and conversation in organisations is changing in a triple context (people, planet, and profit) 152 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 152 environment. engaging stakeholders in decision-making processes according to the “stakeholder-inclusive approach to governance” has become important globally, but particularly in south africa with the publishing of the king iii report. following the traditional approach to integrated communication will not be sufficient in a new organisational context where governance and sustainability issues have become important in organisational decision-making. it is proposed in this article that communication in the new enterprise, with its strong focus on stakeholders, should be considered as part of a multidisciplinary approach to integrated internal communication, resulting in integrated reporting on organisational performance. strategic management and strategic communication management theories will support the argument that one of the main purposes of integrated internal communication should be to disseminate strategic information – obtained from internal and external stakeholders – to the dominant coalition, top management and the board. information on the legitimate expectations of stakeholders should be obtained by communicators through research and environmental scanning; contextualised from the perspective of the strategic intent of the organisation; and subsequently included in the development of its different strategies. feedback should then be given to stakeholders through various communication channels, such as the web, brochures, events and specifically the integrated report, on how these expectations were addressed by the organisation. in this article, integrated communication as a prerequisite for internal communication will be discussed first and will then be followed by a discussion of three phases of development of internal communication, namely “the stakeholder approach”, “the knowledge management approach” and “the resource-based approach”. a next phase of development in integrated internal communication will be proposed, namely that of “enterprise communication from a corporate governance and sustainability approach”. contemporary business and communication perspectives the basic philosophy of the king i (1992), king ii (2002) and king iii (2009) reports on corporate governance in south africa is the inclusive stakeholder approach to corporate governance. the king ii report states that by developing good governance practices, managers can add significant shareowner value to an organisation. however, organisations not only need to be well-governed, but also need to be perceived in the market as being well-governed. the board’s responsibilities in the inclusive stakeholder approach are therefore to define the purpose of the organisation and the values by which the organisation will perform its operations and to identify the stakeholders relevant to the business of the organisation. all these factors must be included in the corporate strategy and must be implemented by management. the board must also ensure that there is effective communication with stakeholders for its strategic plans and ethical code. the king iii report was developed around the three pillars of governance, sustainability, and strategy. chapter 8: governing stakeholder 153 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 153 relationships specifically addresses the inclusive stakeholder approach to corporate governance (king iii 2009: 13). profit-organisations have recognised that embedding an organisation in society is a beneficial strategy that promotes business continuity and growth. consequently, managers are increasingly interested in the management of corporate performance and its effects on various stakeholders within society (epstein & roy 2001, as cited in galetzka et al. 2008: 435). managers need to know the most effective way in which to communicate about performance throughout the organisation. external disclosure initiatives to communicate (positive) performance indicators may also be a way to overcome stakeholders’ concerns and promote stakeholders’ relationship with an organisation; and to validate success and justify the use of resources (behn 2003, as cited in galetzka et al. 2008: 436). according to van tulder and van der zwart (2006: 138-140) it is increasingly acknowledged that both management and stakeholders can influence the profitability of organisations. corporate social responsibility is now referred to as corporate societal responsibility to avoid the narrow interpretation of the term as applying to “social welfare issues only”. the issue of csr then shifts from a largely instrumental and managerial approach to one aimed at managing strategic networks where longer-term relationships with stakeholders are considered in the strategic planning of the organisation. the business-society approach developed along with techniques such as (strategic) “stakeholder dialogue”. this development signals the quest for the “balanced organisation”, which has a moral identity and combines medium-term profitability with longer-term sustainability (kaptein & wempe 2002, as cited in van tulder & van der zwart 2006: 138-140). in the light of the above developments, the global communication profession developed the stockholm accords during the first half of 2010 and approved these at the global alliance for public relations and communication management’s public relations forum in june 2010 in stockholm, sweden. this guiding document for communication management professionals and academia highlights the role that governance, management, sustainability, internal communication, external communication, and the coordination of internal and external communication can play in strategic communication management. the arguments in this article are based on certain communication management and strategic management theories and theoretical perspectives that assisted with the conceptualisation of a new integrated and multifaceted approach to communication management across porous organisational boundaries. theoreticalperspectives margaret wheatley (1999: xii) explores the territory of the new science – the theories of biology, chemistry and physics – that creates a framework to rethink worldview. wheatley (1999: 4) discovers new ways of understanding the challenges that contemporary organisations face: chaos, control, freedom, communication, participation, planning, and prediction. in an environment where information is an 154 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 154 essential element, more fluid, organic structures of boundary-less and seamless organisations are emerging; whole systems or “learning organisations” where people exhibit self-organising capacity. these organic organisation forms change, but the mission remains clear – structures emerge, but only as temporary solutions that facilitate rather than interfere (wheatley 1999: 15-18). from wheatley’s (1999: 105) perspective it is only the meaning of information that makes it useful – meaningful information circulates, grows and mutates in the conversations and interactions that occur between people. she refers to “meaning” as “the most powerful force of attraction” in organisations and in individual lives and regards it as the “strange attractor” in organisations. she also suggests that values create such attractors. beerel (1998: 2) suggests that people are moving out of a “technical age” of technical fixes into an “adaptive age” where there is a return to meaning-making and a focus on the values that underlie those meanings. reflective paradigm the reflective paradigm is a theoretical model developed to understand the conditions of existence for late modern organisations and the function of public relations. it defines, analytically, phenomena such as the triple bottom-line (people, planet, profit), multi-stakeholder dialogue, symmetrical communication and ethical accounts. it is based on the ability of reflection (luhmann 2000, as cited in holmstrom 2002: 1), and is based on two analytical assumptions: (1) social systems are capable of reflection; and (2) there is an evolution towards the coordination of society which activates learning processes towards reflection as a general feature of social processes (holmstrom 2002: 3). as a communicative network, an organisation is kept together by a specific logic, a social system of meaning. the organisation’s perception of its function and role in society is based in this particular perspective (holmstrom 2002: 3). in the reflective paradigm, a basic dynamic for a business enterprise is economic. however, reflection opens up the possibility for a broader perspective involving the horizon of a public sphere. it is in this broader perspective that “reflection” is identified: an expression of polycontext-referential self-regulation – a “multi-stakeholder dialogue”, ethical programmes, a broader value orientation, “triple bottom-line” and “symmetrical communication” (holmstrom 2002: 8-9). excellence theory the excellence theory is a broad, general theory that begins with a general premise about the value of public relations to organisations and to society. it integrates a number of middle-range theories about the organisation of the public relations function; the conduct of public relations programmes; and the environmental and organisational context of excellent public relations (grunig, grunig & dozier, cited in botan & hazleton 2006: 54). grunig, grunig and dozier (as cited in botan & hazleton 2006: 34) used the following premise to integrate a number of theories of public relations into a general theory: public relations contributes to organisational effectiveness when it helps reconcile the organisation’s goals with the expectations of its strategic constituencies. this 155 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 155 contribution has monetary value to the organisation. public relations contributes to effectiveness by building quality, long-term relationships with strategic constituencies. public relations is most likely to contribute to effectiveness when the senior public relations manager is a member of the dominant coalition where he or she is able to shape the organisation’s goals and to help determine which external publics are most strategic. grunig, grunig and dozier. (in botan & hazleton 2006: 31-33) state that the value of communication can be determined at least at four levels: programme level, functional level, organisational level, and societal level. since the completion of the excellence study a theory of organisational effectiveness was developed, defining it as the stakeholder approach to organisational wealth (grunig, grunig & dozier, as cited in botan & hazleton 2006: 33). it was pointed out that organisations have intangible assets as well as physical and financial assets. the most original current approach to estimating the value of these intangible assets is that of relational wealth (grunig, grunig & dozier, as cited in botan & hazleton 2006: 34). business is also regarded “as a connected set of relationships among stakeholders where the emphasis is on the connectedness” (grunig, grunig & dozier, as cited in botan & hazleton ibid.). stakeholder theory friedman and miles (2006: 1) quote freeman (1984: 46) when they define a stakeholder as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives”. they furthermore state that the stakeholder concept represents a redefinition of all organisations to be thought of as a grouping of stakeholders – the purpose of the organisation should then be to manage the interests, needs and viewpoints of stakeholders. the concept of stakeholder management was later elaborated on resulting in the following two principles: (1) principle of corporate legitimacy: the organisation should be managed for the benefit of its stakeholders. the rights of these groups must be ensured and they must participate in decisions that substantially affect their welfare; and (2) the stakeholder fiduciary principle: management bears a fiduciary relationship to stakeholders and to the organisation. it must act in the interests of the stakeholders as their agent, and it must act in the interests of the organisation to ensure the survival of the firm, and in sodoing safeguard the long-term stakes of each group (friedman & miles 2006: 1). a different definition of stakeholders is later developed, as “those groups who are vital to the survival and success of the corporation”, in which the two above principles are redefined and altered: (1) the stakeholder-enabling principle: organisations shall be managed in the interests of stakeholders; and (2) the principle of director responsibility: directors of the organisation shall have a duty of care to use reasonable judgement to define and direct the affairs of the organisation in accordance with the stakeholder enabling principle (friedman & miles 2006: 2). a relatively new tendency in stakeholder theory is to consider the stakeholder concept from the perspective of the stakeholders: (3) the principle of stakeholder recourse: stakeholders may bring an 156 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 156 action against the directors for failure to perform the required duty of care (friedman & miles 2006: 2). structuration theory witmer (in botan & hazleton 2006: 366) recommends structuration theory as an extension to systems theory that enables public relations scholars to overcome some of the limitations inherent in the traditional systems perspective, such as the organisation/environmental interface and environmental scanning; the communicative practices of social organisations; and the recursive nature of institutional structures through human interactions. one of the factors that impact on an organisation’s ability to communicate with its stakeholders (and specifically its employees), is organisational structure. witmer (in botan & hazleton 2006: 368) suggests that structuration theory offers explanations in the following areas: (1) the organisational/environmental interface: structuration focus on the way in which organisational members reproduce social systems. organisational/environmental interconnections both create and are created by an organisation and its members and are therefore co-constructed through social interaction. structuration overcomes the time-bounded-ness of general systems theory – it accounts for the development of internal and external opinions and trends over time to facilitate and encourage forecasting and long-term planning; (2) publics as discursive communities: structuration encourages a view of stakeholders (publics) as created and recreated through shared experiences. in a technological age “new publics arise as discursive organisations through members’ shared experiences”. in online communicative interactions, members utilise their experiences to constitute and enact dominant “ideological meaning systems”; and (3) organisational culture as lived experience: culture is created through the interactions of human actors, both as organisational members and as constituents of organisational publics (witmer in botan & hazleton 2006: 368-369). arena model of reputation aula and mantere (2008: 61) identified a tension between two competing discourses on organisational reputation: the financial, value-driven capital discourse and the meaning-driven, interpretive discourse. for an organisation to become excellent it has to pay attention to both aspects of reputation. the latter can be regarded as a negotiation of meaning, taking place between an organisation and a number of stakeholders. the strategic management of reputation requires an understanding of an organisation’s internal and external environment. aula and mantere (2008: 62) use the communicative metaphor of arena to describe the environment in a market of meaning. organisations interact with their stakeholders in different types of arena where interactions create mental impressions. they also integrate the concepts of “negotiable reputation” and “reputation arenas” into their discussion. they argue that organisational communication occurs in exchange of texts, new and digital media, meetings, unofficial networks and the internet. ralf stacey 157 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 157 (1991) calls these places of organisational communication the “arenas” of communication. arenas can also be studied through the interrelationships between an organisation and its external stakeholders. the media is an arena, as are interactions with stakeholders or between employees. arenas are places where the organisation and its stakeholders encounter each other and create new knowledge, representations and interpretations about the organisation. arenas are therefore the birthplace of reputations where interactions between organisations and their stakeholders occur (aula & mantere 2008: 62). statements about an organisation create stories that are transmitted among stakeholders and these statements generally concern issues or themes that are interesting to stakeholders (aula & mantere 2008: 63). in the ritualistic view of human communication, communication can be defined as a process, in which a common culture is created, reformed, and regenerated. from the ritualistic view of organisational communication, reputations can be seen as the production and renewal process of the conceptions and representations of an organisation, whether positive or negative (aula & mantere 2008: 66). strategic management theories in a strategic management framework developed by katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 356) to “mainstream” corporate responsibility into strategic management approaches, the following six theories of strategic management are conceptualised against the criteria of value, responsiveness and responsibility: (1) industrial organisation/environmental approaches; (2) resource-based view (rbv) and related theories of core competencies and dynamic capabilities; (3) business networking and relational perspectives; (4) knowledge view of the firm; (5) corporate responsibility and sustainability; and (6) stakeholder approaches. the reference model for stakeholder-oriented integrative strategic management illustrates the interaction of the above theories in developing a single strategic management capability. an important contribution includes the development of the concepts for advantage-creating knowledge and advantage-creating stakeholder relations according to resource-based theory. katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 356) furthermore differentiate between the instrumental elements of stakeholder approaches and the ethical aspects or intrinsic elements of these approaches. integrated communication: from fragmentation to integration in acquiring physical and symbolic resources, organisations have established specialised groups and departments (community relations, government relations, customer relations, labour relations and human resources) at corporate and business unit level to communicate with targeted stakeholders. this has led to a fragmentation of the organisation’s communication system that has limited its effectiveness (van riel & fombrun 2007: 3). 158 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 158 according to van riel and fombrun (2007: 4; cf. vos & schoemaker 2001) integrated communication is a systematic process for building a coordinated communication system inside the organisation to support a coherent corporate image, brand and reputation. doorley and garcia (2007: 269) define integrated communication as a dynamic communication practice aimed at advancing not only the marketing plan, but also the overall operating or business plan of the organisation and in so doing aligning brand with reputation. knecht (as cited in van riel & fombrun 2007: 30) furthermore describes integrated communication as follows: corporate communication helps an organisation to create distinctive and appealing images with its stakeholder groups, build a strong corporate brand, and develop reputation capital. integrated communication requires the organisation to conduct communication management from the perspective of stakeholders and to perform research on their communication needs and then disseminating it to appropriate individuals in the organisation. the integration process needs to be supported by a planning process from senior management focussing on the vision, mission, philosophy and annual goals. according to gronstedt (1996: 39-40) some organisations have adopted a corporatewide planning process called “policy deployment” to integrate departments and achieve the organisation’s vision. vos and shoemaker (2001: 15) cluster their approach to integrated communication in three principal domains, each requiring its own approach: (1) concern communication (seen by the organisation as a whole, especially aiming at external relations); (2) internal communication (aimed at internal relations); and (3) marketing communication (aimed at the consumer). they describe the concept of integrated communication on a macro-level (communication policy should be embedded in organisational policies), a meso-level (harmonisation of communication policy on departmental level), and a micro-level (harmonisation between the various communication activities of an organisation). van riel and fombrun (2007: 14-15, 25) argue for a more integrated approach to corporate communication, which encompasses marketing communication, organisational communication and management communication (regarded as the most strategic cluster – the communication that takes place between the management level of the organisation and its internal and external stakeholders). they define corporate communication as “the set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating favourable starting points with stakeholders on which the organisation depends”. blaaw (in van riel & fombrun 2007: 25) defines corporate communication as: “the integrated approach to all communication produced by an organisation, directed at all relevant target groups. each item of communication must convey and emphasise the corporate identity.” van riel and fombrun (2007: 31-36) state that criteria against which corporate communication should be evaluated, are embedded in corporate reputation. electronic communication as a tool for integration at a time where the focus is on systemic principles and a trend towards connectivity, networks are growing in size and complexity. driven by information technology and 159 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 159 in particular the social media, organisations are forming partnerships and becoming part of social networks – even networks of networks. the ability to effectively manage networks is the new measure of success (verwey 1998: 7). this is referred to as network economics. the real change – that which is reshaping the economy, is not a computer revolution, but a communication revolution. the effect of connectivity is what economists call “the law of increasing returns”. verwey (1998: 1) states that as a result of information technology in the age of communication, shifts are occurring in the relationship of the organisation to individuals and society as a whole. the new corporate building blocks of connectivity, corporate renewal, and culture can evoke and liberate the intellectual capital in the organisation, and more importantly revive its spirit. engaging and communicating with stakeholders to identify their concerns allows the organisation to set objectives and key measures of performance for each of the stakeholder groups. the internet has an important role to play in this process, and as a result is increasingly becoming part of business models. the accessibility and interactive possibilities of the internet allow users to easily identify and convey information relevant to their interest (cooper 2003: 232; einwiller & will 2002: 104-105). bonsón and flores (2011: 34) state that opportunities for corporate dialogue should be created by organisations, thereby increasing the level of transparency. in this space of social networks and virtual communities, places are created where people learn, cocreate knowledge and share their experiences. a process of technological democratisation is currently taking place in the electronic media environment. adopting corporate dialogue would mean facilitating multi-directional flows between the stakeholders of an entity and engaging them in communication through the contribution of content, comments, tagging, etc. (bonsón & flores 2011: 35). apart from information conveyed by the organisation itself, transparency is also enhanced by other internet sources like independent sites for corporate information, consumer communities, anti-corporate sites and discussions in newsgroups (einwiller & will 2002: 105). communication and corporate reputation communication plays a central role in increasing stakeholder identification with the organisation – a dimension of corporate identity and consequently corporate reputation. kennedy (as cited in melewar 2008: 8) found that images held by external stakeholders are a function and a reflection of those held by employees – the internal stakeholders or an organisation. gotsi and wilson (2001) state that corporate reputation reflects a stakeholder’s overall evaluation of an organisation and is based on the stakeholder’s direct experiences with it. reputation is built within the stakeholder networks that surround organisations. dortok (2006: 322) furthermore found a correlation between corporate reputation and internal communication. 160 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 160 corporate communication: a stakeholder approach welch and jackson (2007: 184-186) suggest the following four dimensions of internal communication: line management; team level internal communication; project level internal communication; and internal communication that focuses on communication with all employees. from the latter, they conceptualised internal corporate communication, which they define as “communication between an organisation’s strategic managers and its internal stakeholders, designed to promote commitment to the organisation, a sense of belonging to it, awareness of its changing environment and understanding of its evolving aims”. their internal communication matrix furthermore focus on the importance of corporate messages, goals of internal communication (commitment, awareness, belonging, and understanding) and the context of internal communication (external and internal environment). a stakeholder approach is followed in the internal communication matrix to highlight the interrelationships between all forms of internal and external communication. according to foster and jonker (2005: 52) messages should not be passively received and “understood” by stakeholders. rather, the stakeholder should actively develop meaning, created in terms of their perspective on the world in which they live and the situation at hand, which implies a strong reflexive quality. the process of stakeholder engagement will lead to more communication and interactions, and finally to a “nexus of transactions”. the key to this emerging organisational concept is managing the “transactivity” of the organisation. this approach to communication, being actionoriented, is also compatible with the achievement of organisational goals (foster & jonker 2005: 56). this perspective on internal communication can be linked to the responsibility dimension of strategic management as conceptualised by katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 362). they refer to the “enterprise strategy”, which highlights the need for changing the relations between organisations and society to enhance an organisation’s societal legitimacy. from this perspective the “redefined corporation” mobilises resources to create wealth and benefits for all its stakeholders. csr, and related concepts such as corporate citizenship and social accountability, are associated with ethical issues and can be seen as a way of corporate self-regulation. stakeholders have also been defined as risk-bearers based on the argument that a stakeholder should have some form of capital at risk, either financial or human, and therefore has something to lose or gain depending on an organisation’s behaviour (clarkson, as cited in katsoulakos & katsoulacos 2007: 362). from this perspective the king iii report (2009) refers to stakeholders as the organisation’s “compliance officers”. integrated internal communication: a knowledge management approach many scholars stress that the ability to effectively share knowledge internally in the organisation is fundamental for maintaining a competitive advantage. kalla (2005: 310311) describes knowledge-sharing as a function of integrated internal communication. 161 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 161 knowledge-sharing is the formal and informal exchanges through ongoing social interaction, which mobilise knowledge that is dispersed around the organisation. two themes, namely efficiency, and security and motivation, emerge around knowledge-sharing. this approach to internal communication can be linked to the responsiveness dimension of strategic management as conceptualised by katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 360). they state that dynamic strategies associated with enhanced organisational responsiveness can be subdivided into: (1) strategies associated with flexibility and agility addressed by core competencies and business networking strategies; and (2) strategies associated with detection and reaction speed addressed by dynamic capabilities and learning/innovation strategies. according to king and cushman (1994: 2) communication functions as a second-level support activity in an environment where organisational strategy focuses on noncommunication activities such as product cost or product differentiation. however, when response time becomes the primary source of competitive advantage or organisational strategy, the effective functioning of communication within and between organisational units and business processes becomes the primary cross-organisational activity. “high-speed management”, as king and cushman (ibid.) define it, is a set of communication and management principles designed to assist an organisation in its reaction to environmental volatility by allowing for rapid adaptation to changing environmental conditions. it uses communication principles and information technology in creating a rapid response system that is innovative, adaptive, flexible, and efficient. responsiveness is also dependent on the learning and innovative capacity of the organisation. learning is ultimately “the only sustainable source of competitive advantage” and depends on the “capacity for knowledge absorption” by the members of knowledge networks and their “collaboration motivation”. stakeholder engagement is closely related with the concept of social capital described by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) as “... networks, together with shared norms, values and understandings which facilitate cooperation within or among groups’’ (katsoulakos & katsoulacos 2007: 360). responsiveness is also facilitated by transparency as advocated by responsibility strategies as it encourages broad stakeholder participation in risk management processes (katsoulakos & katsoulacos 2007: 361). strategic internal communication: a resource-based approach the fuzzy boundaries of contemporary network organisations and the complexities that they create, prompted mazzei (2010: 221) to consider alternative approaches to internal communication. she proposes a definition and model of internal communication on the basis of the resource-based theory and intangible resources for competitive advantage, instead of the traditional systems approach of organisational boundaries. internal communication is defined as a set of interactive processes to generate knowledge (as an intangible resource) and allegiance (through communication behaviours such as 162 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 162 dialogue). mazzei (2010: 231) states that the internal communication department has a key role in encouraging active employee behaviour in addition to delivering messages. inactivity derives from a lack of awareness, sensitivity, ability and a sense of constraint. in planning activation strategies, it is necessary to forge a link between internal communication and human resource management systems (mazzei ibid.). this approach to internal communication can be linked to the value dimension of strategic management as conceptualised by katsoulakos and katsoulacos (2007: 360). environmental-based strategies focus on market characteristics and examine how best an organisation can configure its value chain to obtain a competitive advantage, while resource-based theories address how organisations can perform activities within the value chain more efficiently. organisations adopting a resource-based approach begin the strategy process by identifying their core resources and how they can be leveraged and developed to achieve corporate goals. the collective knowledge and learning capacity in the organisation enables resource recombination and offers opportunities for developing core competencies. strategies for developing core competencies are frequently combined with networking and knowledge management strategies. the focus of resource-based theory may be too narrow by concentrating on the acquisition and protection of critical resources since knowledge of how resources are brought together, coordinated, integrated, and put into use is the essence of a successful organisation. networking strategies should combine a “competence” perspective for the acquisition and development of knowledge and capabilities with a perspective of “governance”, for the management of “relational risks” and the minimisation of transaction costs. from a value perspective, instrumental stakeholder approaches view stakeholders as controlling resources that can facilitate or slow down the implementation of strategies and therefore must be managed to create competitive advantage. trust is also regarded as a moderating mechanism facilitating coordination of expectations and interactions between economic actors (katsoulakos & katsoulacos 2007: 359). enterprise communication: a corporate governance and sustainability approach it is proposed in this article that communication in the context of the governance and sustainability of the enterprise should be considered as part of a multi-dimensional approach to integrated communication. governance and sustainability communication supports ethical corporate governance and more specifically board communication, the governing of stakeholder relationships, corporate social performance, social auditing and integrated reporting. simmons (2004: 601) uses stakeholder theory to advocate “ethical corporate governance” as an alternative philosophy and practice for managerialism, which is seen as morally and commercially inferior to “moral management” in the new era of stakeholder-accountable organisations. this alternative philosophy centres on the concept of “the responsible organisation” with a stakeholder systems model of corporate governance offered as the means of operationalising this. simmons (2004: 601) suggests that effective governance can be integrated with csr, 163 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 163 and that incorporating stakeholder views in decision-making processes enhances organisation performance and reputation. the ethical stance is also more participative in recognising extended stakeholder relationships across increasingly permeable organisation boundaries (soloman, as cited in simmons 2004: 602). two types of organisation-stakeholder relationship constitute challenges to conventional approaches to corporate governance: the organisation’s relationship with its employees; and alignment between how an organisation describes its actions and how stakeholders perceive these (simmons 2004: 603). according to van riel and fombrun (2007: 34) success of corporate communication results when organisations demonstrate their accountability on three levels: (1) overall accountability (involves demonstrating the effects of corporate communication on building a favourable reputation for the entire organisation. having quantitative information about the organisation’s reputation demonstrates overall accountability.); (2) specialist accountability (involves creating protocols describing both the procedures applied and the success criteria used at the functional level); and (3) coordinated accountability (results when all communication specialists draw on the same core elements to implement their specialised communications). governing stakeholder relationships muzi-falconi (2009) states that the ability to effectively govern relationships, within and amongst networks as well as with society at large, reinforces the organisation’s “license to operate”. in the mid-eighties corporate governance concerns began to emerge in organisations with the shareholder versus stakeholder debate. the stakeholder model has since gained significant ground and has now become a primary responsibility of the board of directors in many countries, and one that management needs to monitor and report on to the board. the 2009 king report on corporate governance for south africa is an example of this shift towards stakeholder relationship governance, with its chapter 8: governing stakeholder relationships, as mentioned before. muzi-falconi (2009) furthermore refers to stakeholder relationship governance from an organisational and relational perspective; considering the societal perspective and integrating this with the value network society model of the organisation. from this perspective the stakeholder decides to have a stake in the organisation. however, the organisation may decide to ignore, to involve (allow access and input) or to engage (actively attempt to include in its decision-making processes) some or all of its stakeholders. the principal contributions of communication management to organisational value rely on (1) the ability to collect, understand and interpret stakeholder and societal expectations to organisational leadership, with the result of improving the quality of management decisions; (2) the ability to introduce organisational processes to effectively govern stakeholder relationships; and (3) the ability to facilitate and enable other organisational functions to govern stakeholder relationship systems. 164 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 164 by ensuring a permanent stakeholder dialogue based on contents (rather than messages), both the organisation and its stakeholders can reciprocally modify opinions, attitudes, decisions, and behaviours in closer alignment with the public interest and prevailing expectations of society, represented by active citizenship groups (rather than merely those of the organisation or its stakeholders). from this perspective the quality of effective relationships with stakeholders is based on the dynamics of the following four indicators which may be measured before, during and after: trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality. a responsible organisation is effective when it achieves balance on objectives between the three different levels of interests involved in organisational activity: the organisation’s interest; the different and often conflicting interests of its stakeholder groups; and the public interest (muzi-falconi 2009). in research conducted by spitzeck and hansen (2010: 378) it was found that stakeholders of contemporary organisations are granted a voice regarding operational, managerial and strategic issues. the power granted to stakeholders by the organisation varies from non-participation to co-decision making. another way of giving stakeholders a voice is through the participation of non-executive directors (“public interest directors”) on the board. they come from outside the bubble of organisational reality to the inside and have the challenge of continuously aligning the worldviews of those inside and outside. social auditing, corporate sustainability and stakeholder engagement literature on corporate sustainability posits that businesses should integrate sustainability principles into corporate strategic policies and business processes (gao & zhang 2006: 722). corporate sustainability as an ideology for rethinking business beyond corporate social and/or environmental responsibility activities requires systemic corporate culture changes “consistent with the concept of sustainable development”. the key premise of corporate sustainability is that organisations should fully integrate social and environmental objectives with financial aims and account for their actions against the wellbeing of a wider range of stakeholders through an accountability and reporting mechanism. social auditing is a practical approach to engage stakeholders in assessing and reporting on corporate sustainability, with a focus on the framework of aa1000 and the dialogue-based social auditing model. the aa1000 standard stresses the principle of inclusivity in the dialogue process, so that organisations should seek to include as wide a collection of stakeholder groups as possible (gao & zhang 2006: 724, 730). legislation and market mechanisms are ways of persuading businesses to shift towards sustainability; however, they largely ignore the “internal” impetus and peculiarities of a business for change. engaging stakeholders through constructive dialogue is perhaps a more effective way to achieve change as “dialogue draws together the values, issues and indicators relevant to stakeholders in a language that is meaningful, consistent and useful for decision making”. dialogue should not only be intended as a forum to share 165 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 165 ideas but must lead to “discrete action” and “parties should be prepared to change if the results … demand it”. in other words, parties to genuine dialogue should be open to the transformative effects of their communication (gao & zhang 2006: 729). social or environmental reports are key stages in any stakeholder dialogue process. therefore, social auditing designed as a process of assessing and reporting on social and environmental performance of an organisation has an important role to play in the above engagement process (gao & zhang 2006: 730). integrated reporting, corporate governance and stakeholder engagement it is commonly recognised that there is a strong relationship between the stakeholder perspective, which stresses non-financial aspects of organisation behaviour, such as csr, sustainability (including environmental respect), and corporate governance. zambon and del bello (2005: 130) refer to these emerging corporate phenomena and attitudes as “stakeholder responsible (or oriented) approaches”, which provide insights into the “active role” subtly played by stakeholder-oriented reporting (for example, social and sustainability statements). in the last few years, issues linked to csr, sustainability, environmental respect, corporate governance and similar aspects have influenced the governance and the actions of a growing number of organisations and institutions, thus contributing to a change in their attitudes and actions. a particular outcome of these dynamics is that more and more organisations declare the importance of preparing reports showing information of a non-financial nature to stakeholders with the aim of providing them with a clearer view of organisational performance in terms of social responsiveness, long-term sustainability, environmental respect and corporate governance (zambon & del bello 2005: 130). these concepts also foster a concrete change in corporate behaviours and practices since they pose an “urgent” implementation challenge, thus implying a need for making concrete behavioural and reporting choices (zambon & del bello 2005: 131). conclusive remarks with interactive relationships built through communication in a shared arena of meaning, an organisation and its stakeholders create a common vision – a shared reality of the organisation and its operations. effective communication should therefore be built more upon the idea of community (communicare) than on the transfer of information (communicatio) (aula & mantere 2008: 177). contemporary business and communication perspectives are changing to include strategic stakeholder dialogue in the communication mix when communicating with stakeholders (van tulder & van der zwart 2006: 138-140). taking into account the reflective paradigm, the excellence theory, stakeholder theory, structuration theory, the arena model of reputation and specific strategic management theories, this article posited a new approach to communication in the boundary-less organisation, considering the strategic dimensions of value, responsiveness, and responsibility. its (1) overview of traditional integrated communication approaches; and (2) its link to 166 stakeholder engagement: a crucial element in the governance of corporate reputation 9. ronel & estelle 11/18/11 3:58 pm page 166 reputation management; (3) corporate communication from a stakeholder perspective; (4) integrated internal communication from a knowledge management perspective; (5) strategic internal communication from a value-based perspective; and (6) enterprise communication from a corporate governance and sustainability perspective, provide new insights and considerations on a paradigm for “stakeholder communication”. important considerations in this debate include accountability, transparency and reporting of the financial and social performances of organisations. galetzka et al. 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice 1. paul schutte 57 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 57 70 danie strauss* abstract the aim of this article is to show that the issue is not whether there is a mutual communication between philosophy, the special sciences (scholarly disciplines or scientific disciplines) and popular conceptions, but rather whether these communications acknowledge what are actually communicated, namely philosophical views of reality. unless this basic and inevitable mutual communication is recognised the ultimate philosophical roots of much that is floating around will not be acknowledged as such. the philosophical problem of the coherence of irreducibles receives a negative answer in monistic -isms – such as physicalism or biologism – that attempt to elevate some or other aspect of reality to be the exclusive and decisive principle of explanation of whatever there is. one may designate the underlying philosophical issue here also as that of unity and diversity. in our discussion below another issue will surface, namely the relation between continuity and discontinuity (constancy and change). these examples will serve to show that the special sciences cannot operate except upon the basis of implicit or explicit (perennial) philosophical problems explicitly or implicitly communicated from philosophy to the various academic disciplines and popular conceptions of reality. in the course of the exposition the impasse of special scientific stances (such as physicalism and neo-darwinism) will be subjected to immanent criticism from the perspective of a non-reductionist ontology, in particular also questioning positivism as a philosophical orientation, the philosophical stance known for its denial that it is a philosophical orientation. * danie strauss is professor in the dean’s office, faculty of the humanities at the university of the free state. orientation although the title of this article may suggest that its main focus will be on scholarly communication and its impact upon everyday thinking, its goal is different. of course scholarly communication certainly forms an intrinsic part of the scholarly (i.e. scientific) enterprise. the focus is on looking at some cross-cutting examples that turn out to be instantiations of the communicative links between philosophy, the special sciences or scholarly disciplines and popular conceptions. can the “exact sciences” explain everything? this mutual communication is already implicit in the previous paragraph because instead of simply referring to “the scientific enterprise” a qualifying term is employed, namely “scholarly.” popular understanding is entrenched in the view that “science” is identical with physics. at most mathematics will sometimes be added to the domain of the “exact sciences”, alongside biology that, since the rapid development of so-called molecular biology, also claims to be an exact science. in terms of this legacy the other scholarly domains, found in disciplines such as communication science, history, economics, sociology, aesthetics or law, do not truly qualify to be designated as “sciences.” at most they sometimes receive the label of “soft sciences”. since we do engage with physicalism below, we merely note in passing that 20th century mathematics gives shelter to opposing schools of thought. stegmüller writes: “the special character of intuitionistic mathematics is expressed in a series of theorems that contradict the classical results. for instance, while in classical mathematics only a small part of the real functions are uniformly continuous, in intuitionistic mathematics the principle holds that any function that is definable at all is uniformly continuous” (stegmüller 1969: 331; cf. brouwer 1964: 79). beth (1965: 89) also highlights this point: “it is clear that intuitionistic mathematics is not merely that part of classical mathematics which would remain if one removed certain methods not acceptable to the intuitionists. on the contrary, intuitionistic mathematics replaces those methods by other ones that lead to results which find no counterpart in classical mathematics.” theories about everything – rationality as the ultimate guide to human life the (popular) idea of exact sciences is embedded in the conviction that human understanding (“rationality”) is the ultimate guide to reliable knowledge through an exploration of factual data – tied to what became known as the “scientific method”. human rationality, supported by these exact sciences, will be able to explain whatever there is – and oftentimes it is pursued in the hope that a “theory of everything” will emerge. with reference to einstein’s thirty-year search for a unified field theory, brian greene, a specialist in the theory of super strings, believes that physicists will find (have found) a framework fitting their insights into a “seamless whole”, a “single theory that, in principle, is capable of describing all phenomena” (greene 2003: viii). he introduces super string theory as the “unified theory of everything” (greene 2003: 15; cf. pp. 364-370, 385-386). 58 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality the equally encompassing all-claim of neo-darwinism in this the big darwin year – darwin was born in 1809 – we cannot ignore a similar claim made by neo-darwinists, for they believe that the new synthesis erected during the thirties and forties of the previous century represents a biological theory that is also capable of explaining everything – from the big bang up to the accidental appearance of human beings. within the context of an evolutionary epistemology van huyssteen demonstrates a strange fusion of different positions at once. he is in search of a new (interdisciplinary) space for the communication between theology and science. he proceeds from the assumption that evolution is a fact (van huyssteen 1998: 143) and that we have to “take very seriously the general conclusions and findings of general cosmology” – “that is that this universe is evolving, that all that is within it has had a common physical origin in time, and that all it contains is in principle explicable by the natural sciences” (van huyssteen 1998: 75). strangely enough forty pages later we read: “and even if through natural science the cognitive dimension of human rationality is revealed as possibly our best example of rationality at work, it should not be overextended to explain everything in our world in the name of natural science” (van huyssteen 1998: 115)! this inconsistency is consistent with other fundamental ambiguities present in his thought. the neo-darwinian presupposition of continuity (cf. van huyssteen 1998: 111) and chance are slowly but surely substituted with a mixture of emergent evolutionistic (cf. van huyssteen 1998: 134, 151) and vitalistic (cf. van huyssteen 1998: 37, 121, 125, 127) overtones – without evincing an awareness of the fact that these positions are alternative to neo-darwinian theory and contradict its basic assumptions. the following statements show his emergent evolutionistic position, continuity in ascent, discontinuity in existence: “culture indeed has evolved, but the principles of culture are not the same as the principles we know from organic evolution” (van huyssteen 1998: 146); and in affirming the approach of wuketits he says: “culture is not reducible to biological entities” (van huyssteen 1998:157). on page 130 he explicitly employs the phrase “emergent evolution”. more recently van huyssteen continues these ambiguities. on the one hand he refers to darwin who stressed the continuity between species in respect of instincts or rational abilities (van huyssteen 2006: 81) as well as to the continuity of organic evolution from “unicellular organisms to humans” (van huyssteen 2006: 87). but on the other hand he discerns something unique within human cognition, culture and religious world views, something irreducible (van huyssteen 2006: 86-87). emergent evolution is a philosophical stance, found within various disciplines – thus illustrating the power of comprehensive philosophical views communicated to the various special sciences and via them to everyday conceptions of the world. of course physicalist naturalism is quite widespread amongst natural scientists. pigliucci, for example, holds a similar conviction: “no serious scientific discussion of any topic should include supernatural explanations, since the basic assumption of science is that the world can be explained entirely in physical terms” (pigliucci 2003: 59 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality 195). divinising one aspect of creation is not considered to be a “supernatural explanation”! a sound natural scientific approach certainly will avoid (speculative) “supernatural explanations”, just as much as it will avoid any reification of something within creation. underlying philosophical problems burdening neo-darwinism the new synthesis that emerged during the thirties and forties of the previous century proceeds from the (philosophical) conviction that everything changes. this basic orientation is explicit in darwin’s 1859 work on the origin of species. the term “change” occurs 268 times, the term “variation” 281 times, and the plural “variations” 162 times – altogether there are 711 instances in which change in some or other form is asserted. the term “constancy” appears twice and “persistent” (or: “persistently”) three times. however, leaving aside the fact that it cannot be employed to account for the origination of the first living entity, the combination of mutation and natural selection serves as the pre-supposed constants of neo-darwinian theory. were these two constants themselves variable, then the entire theory collapses at once. the insight that change can only be established on the basis of constancy derives from a long-standing legacy, permeating various academic disciplines (cf. strauss 2005: 225 ff.). the preoccupation with change created a prejudice that distorted the interpretation of the fossil record ever since darwin’s on the origin of species was published. however, after more than hundred years of palaeontology even neo-darwinian palaeontologists were no longer willing to explain away the ever-present discontinuities (gaps). kitts straightforwardly states: “evolution requires intermediate forms and palaeontology does not provide them” (kitts 1974: 467). to this he adds the remark: “but most of the gaps are still there a century later and some palaeontologists were no longer willing to explain them away geologically” (kitts 1974: 467). at the same time gould honestly pointed out: “the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of palaeontology. the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not evidence of fossils” (1977: 14). eldredge, curator of the american museum of natural history in new york, unambiguously states: “we palaeontologists have said that the history of life provides support for the interpretation of gradual development through natural selection while all the time we knew that it was not true” (cf. van den beukel 2005: 105). according to gould the dominant theme of the palaeontological record is not change, but constancy. types abrupty appear and then remain constant for millions of years before they equally abruptly disappear. most species “enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged” (berlinski 2003: 158). the self-incoherent basis of physicalism it is not difficult to communicate the untenability of this “basic assumption” to the interested public exceeding the confines of mere specialists within the discipline of 60 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality physics or what is known as the natural sciences. evidently this basic assumption that everything ultimately is physical is held to be true. however, is it possible to specify which elementary particles, atoms, molecules or macro-molecules constitute this truth claim? furthermore, the assumption is formulated in language, using certain terms (words) with their specific meanings – without providing in purely physical terms any explanation of these lingual meanings. an additional (immanent-) critical remark concerns the conditions (laws) for existing physical entities that are not identical to the entities meeting these conditions. the conditions for being green are not themselves green and the conditions for being an atom are not themselves an atom. therefore the physical world presupposes conditions for what is physical that are distinct (and distinguishable) from these physical entities, entailing that for something physical to exist conditions are required that themselves are not physical, thus uprooting the physicalist claim that everything is physical. finally, the meaning of what is physical cannot be explained without taking recourse to other – non-physical – modes of explanation, such as the numerical, spatial and kinematic aspects of the world. the composite concept of physical mass reflects the coherence between the physical and the arithmetical aspect (energy-quantity). likewise the phrase physical field brings to expression the coherence between the physical and spatial aspects of reality. it is also possible to observe the quantity of energy from the perspective of the kinematic aspect and then the technical expression kinetic energy highlights the action capacity inherent in a moving body (cf. maier 1949: 142). without the foundational meaning of uniform motion (constancy) no single physical change (dynamics) can be established – clearly evinced in a more precise formulation of the well-known physical law of energyconservation, namely energy-constancy. the multi-aspectual nature of physical matter we may now return to our initial reference to the idea of exact sciences (“objective” and neutral”), because the history of our “rational” understanding of the material world (understood to constitute the field of investigation of physics) communicates a story incompatible with the idea of sensory perception as the only gateway (through empirical experimentation). what the popular image of the exact sciences do not realise is that its basic assumption does not proceed from the “positive facts” but from the underlying philosophical view of what became known as positivism (to which we shall return below). this becomes abundantly clear from the history of the concept of matter. this mysterious reality designated as matter successively was explored by employing the four modes of explanation mentioned above: • the pythagoreans thought everything is number but in fact only acknowledged rational numbers, that ran into serious difficulties with the discovery of irrational numbers (incommensurability). • this crisis led to the geometrisation of greek mathematics and the subsequent metaphysics of space, including the medieval understanding of the chain of being with god, as the highest being (ipsum esse), on the top. • through the contributions of galileo and newton the main tendency of modern physics started to explore the kinematic mode of explanation. 61 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality • it was only by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century that physics sufficiently recognised that material entities are characterised by physical energy-operation. although descartes and newton did employ the concept of force, it may in general be said that modern physics since newton is characterised by a mechanistic main tendency. the mechanistic view consistently attempts to reduce all physical phenomena to a kinematic perspective. however, in the course of the 19th century, modern physics already started to explore the nature of energy. the founder of physical chemistry, wilhelm ostwald, developed his so-called energetik (energetics), which even influenced the later views of heisenberg. vogel refers to heisenberg’s work “wandlungen in den grundlagen der naturwissenschaft” (stuttgart 1949), where the latter explicitly speaks of energy as the basic stuff that constitutes matter in its threefold stable forms: electrons, protons and neutrons (vogel 1961: 37). yet ostwald’s energetik did not exert a lasting influence upon the physics of the 20th century, probably because it was attached to a specific view of continuity that is opposed to an atomistic approach. niels bohr in particular mentions the excessive skepsis found in mach’s thought regarding the existence of atoms. the last prominent physicist who consistently adhered to the mechanistic approach was heinrich hertz. soon after hertz’s death in 1894, the work in which he attempted to restrict the discipline of physics to the concepts of mass, space and time, reflecting the three most basic modes of explanation of reality, namely the modes of number, space and movement, appeared: “the principles of mechanics developed in a new context.” this caused him (and russell) to view the concept of force as something intrinsically antonymous. the latin designation of mass during the medieval period was “quantitas materiae” (cf. maier 1949: 144). we therefore noted that that number (quantitas) plays a key role in the concept of mass for mass is a physical quantity. (from a biotic perspective the equivalent phrase is biomass. jones, for example, refers to the fact that plants constitute 99% of the world’s biomass, while fungi are estimated to have twice the total biomass of animals – cf. jones 1998: 54). it is remarkable to observe the power of a particular understanding of nature, communicated to subsequent generations. although the mechanistic approach in physics reached its limits by the end of the 19th century (mainly through the discovery of irreversible physical processes), the contemporary physicist von weizsäcker, in his treatment of the kantian conception of matter and his view of pure physics, still appreciates the concepts of motion and speed as the basic concepts of all genuine science! (cf. von weizsäcker 2002: 196). of course one is immediately reminded of the famous statement by kant: “however, my claim is that in every particular theory of nature only that much science is found as the amount of mathematics present in it” (kant 1786: ix). in contrast, einstein apparently opts for an opposite view when he says, “to the extent in which the propositions of mathematics are related to reality they 62 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality are not certain and in so far as they are certain they are not related to reality” (einstein 1921: 124). yet as soon as the physical aspect of reality surfaced, it opened up the way for 20th century physics to explore it as an independent mode of explanation and to arrive at an even more nuanced understanding of reality. for example, in his protophysics, paul lorenzen distinguishes four units of measurement reflecting the first four modes of explanation: mass (number), length (space), duration (kinematic) and charge (physical) (cf. lorenzen 1976: 1 ff.). weinert mentions even that usually physicists “distinguish fundamental constants from conventional units” – and he then lists the kilogramme (number), the metre (space), the second (the kinematic) and temperature (the physical) (weinert 1998: 230; cf. lorenzen 1989). in particular owing to the fame of einstein associated with his special (1905) and general (1916) theory of relativity every person, whether or not academically trained, is acquainted with the famous formula e = mc2. from these considerations it is clear that the meaning of the physical aspect of reality is dependent upon its coherence with non-physical aspects – in particular the numerical, spatial and kinematic modes of reality. this insight eliminates the existence of anything purely physical. the physical aspect, serving as the gateway for an understanding of reality by the academic discipline physics, loses its meaning the moment one attempts to understand it apart from the mentioned (and many other) aspects of reality. the impasse of positivism at this point we have to question the way in which a particular orientation communicated a distorted image of the modern natural sciences (in particular of physics) to the general public. what has been communicated to popular understanding of “science” in fact is simply one (self-uprooting) philosophical orientation, briefly earlier referred to as positivism. however, positivism did not realise that sensory perception relates to things and events, to the concrete what of experience, but that it does not give access to the terms employed in describing the how of what has been observed, for these terms actually stem from the various modal aspects of reality. and these modalities (functional ways of being) as such are never open to sensory perception. yet, these aspects provide theoretical thinking with modal terms (aspectual terms) that are indispensable for the formation of scientific concepts and theories. as soon as the inevitability of employing modal terms is acknowledged, the achilles heel of positivism is laid bare. the key question is whether these modal aspects could be observed in a sensory way. can they be weighed, touched, measured or smelled? if so, it would be meaningful to speak of the weight of the numerical aspect, the softness of the spatial aspect, the colour of the kinematic aspect, the taste of the physical aspect, and so on. the answer therefore is clearly negative, for these facets are not things but aspects of things (or rather aspects within which concretely existing things function). the first step positivism had to take 63 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality in order to digest “sense data” theoretically has already eliminated the restriction of reliable knowledge to sense data. from modern physics, inspired by the theory of relativity of einstein (building upon the contribution of minkowski), popular accounts refer to the “space-time-continuum”. this habit also reveals hidden philosophical views. besides, time also does not belong to what can be observed through the senses, for we can apply the same critical questions to it: has anyone ever seen time? touched it? smelled it? felt it? or heard it? by introducing time as a fourth dimension einstein gave the impression that what is physical is geometrised – just compare his idea of curved space as well (through gravity). yourgrau pushes this understanding to its limits: “time itself had been tamed – or so it seemed – by its transformation into space, into the temporal component of four-dimensional space-time. in this way einstein turned out to be no less an ironist than gödel. everything is really something else: time is really space, gravity is really geometrical curvature, energy is really mass” (yourgrau 2005: 146). with regard to the idea of a space-time continuum we note in passing that this mode of speech actually conceals the difference between mathematical space (which is both continuous and infinitely divisible) and physical space (that is neither continuous nor infinitely divisible, because it is bound to the quantum-structure of energy – cf. hilbert 1925: 164). bernays (1976: 37) also remarks: “only through the contemporary development of geometry and physics did it become necessary to distinguish between space as something physical and space as an ideal multiplicity determined by spatial laws.” the work in which yourgrau communicates to people not necessarily trained in mathematics and physics these explanations, is one amongst numberless similar contemporary works dealing with all kinds of natural scientific issues, including the disciplines of mathematics, physics and biology. they are all well-written, with simplified and lucid accounts of complex natural scientific issues. in spite of the thoroughness and well-informed nature most of these presentations they nonetheless largely lack a sufficient insight into the mostly hidden philosophical presuppositions directing the explanations put forward. consequently they do not communicate or make sufficiently explicit what lies at their foundation. is physical time the only time? implicitly, for example, most (natural) scientists tend to identify time with physical time. however, the first remarkable feature of what is designated as cosmic time by dooyeweerd (cf. dooyeweerd 1977-i: 28 ff.) is that it manifests itself within each modal aspect of reality in accordance with the inner nature and unique meaning of that aspect. (in a more restricted physical context gödel also introdced the idea of cosmic time – cf. yourgrau 2005: 124, 133.) what is even more remarkable, is that the history of western philosophy (and the special sciences) implicitly reveals an insight into different modes of time without having been able to relate it to a general theory of functional modes of time. the influential enligthenment philosopher, immanuel kant, generally considers time to be a form of intuition (kant 1787-b: 46 ff.). yet, in spite of 64 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality this psychological one-sidedness, he also distinguishes three “modes” of time that are strictly correlated with the way in which cosmic time manifests itself within the first three cosmic modalities. his striking remark reads: “the three modes of time are endurance, succession and simultaneity” (kant 1787-b: 219). kant also realised that one has to distinguish between succession and causality – for although day and night succeed each other, it is meaningless to say that the day is the cause of the night, or vice versa. in the 20th century, after modern physics succeeded to transcend its mechanistic restriction, it was realised that physical time is intrinsically connected with causation, for the effect can never precede the cause. the numerical order of succession is reversible – manifested in the plus and minus directions of the system of integers, closed under the operations of addition, multiplication and subtraction. saying that these operations are closed means that applying them to the set of integers always yields integers from the same set. when any two integers are added, multiplied or subtracted, the result is always another integer. the symmetry of any spatial configuration – allowing being turned upside down or front-backwards – shows the reversibility of the spatial time order, and the same applies to the kinematic time order, for the mathematical description of a constant movement (like the swinging of a pendulum) is equally valid in both directions (a mere switch of the sign provides a description in the opposite direction). finally, the physical time order is irreversible. einstein explains the difference between physical irreversibility and kinematic (mechanical) reversibility: on the basis of the kinetic theory of gases boltzman had discovered that, aside from a constant factor, entropy is equivalent to the logarithm of the ‘probability’ of the state under consideration. through this insight he recognized the nature of courses of events which, in the sense of thermodynamics, are ‘irreversible’. seen from the molecular-mechanical point of view, however, all courses of events are reversible (1959: 43). from another angle, the distinct manifestation of cosmic time within the first four modes is evident, particularly in the history of time measurement. it belongs to our general awareness of time: earlier and later, simultaneity, time-flow and irreversibility are well-known modalities of time. in his work on the foundations of physics, stafleu remarks: this is most clearly shown by an analysis of the historical development of time measurement. initially, time measurement was simply done by counting (days, months, years, etc.) later on, time was measured by the relative position of the sun or the stars in the sky, with or without the help of instruments like the sundial. in still more advanced cultures, time was measured by utilizing the regular motion of more or less complicated clockworks. finally, in recent developments time is measured via irreversible processes, for example, in atomic clocks (1980:16). 65 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality what is striking in this whole development is that different time orders are used, the one after the other: the numerical time order of succession, the spatial order of simultaneity, the kinematic time order of constancy and the irreversible physical time order, expressed in the relationship of cause and effect. philosophical presuppositions these considerations are philosophical in nature because they proceed from a morethan-special-scientific totality perspective. from this philosophical perspective an account is given both of the uniqueness and mutual coherence of different modes of explanation. it is only on this level that one can critically assess the above-mentioned remark of yourgrau. einstein did not really turn time into something spatial. his special theory of relativity in fact is as purely kinematic theory, explaining why the kinematic time-order of constancy is captured in the postulate regarding c as the vacuum-velocity of light. einstein builds upon the insight of plato, namely that change presupposes constancy, and in addition he further explores galileo’s formulation of the law of inertia. the core idea of einstein’s special theory is after all the constancy of the velocity of light in a vacuum. although he often merely speaks of “the principle of the constancy of the speed of light,” he naturally intends “the principle of the vacuumvelocity” (“das prinzip der vakuumlichtgeschwindigkeit” – cf. einstein 1982: 30-31; and 1959: 54). [einstein speaks of “das prinzip der konstanz der lichgeschwindigkeit” (einstein 1982: 32).] it follows that einstein primarily aimed at a theory of constancy – whatever is in motion moves relative to an element of constancy. it was merely a concession to the historicistic zeitgeist at the beginning of the 20th century that einstein gave prominence to the term “relativity“– for actually all movement is relative to the constant c. in his general theory of relativity einstein moved to a physical perspective exploring an expanded notion of gravity. yet yourgrau mentions that, in his special theory of relativity, “einstein is said to have accomplished the geometrization of physics”, while adding to that: “similarly, in general relativity, he not only provided a new geometry for the laws of gravity, he defined gravity itself geometrically, as space-time curvature” (yourgrau 2005: 127). does this mean that einstein really returned to the spatial mode of explanation explored in greek philosophy after the discovery of irrational numbers? at this point philosophical perspectives are decisive. if we assess the development of physics (and the concept of matter) in terms of the above-mentioned modes of explanation successively employed then the distinctive hall-mark of twentieth century physics is indeed given in its acknowledgement of energy-operation as the charactersitic feature of material entities and processes. therefore, the curved space of the general theory of relativity is not the cause of gravity – in fact it is the effect of gravity. likewise, when time is combined space (as a fourth co-ordinate) it concerns kinematic time and physical time. within the aspect of space, in its original functional meaning, time merely appears as an order of co-existence, of simultaneity. the main point of 66 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality einstein’s theory of relativity in this regard simply states that spatial time (simultaneity) does not have an absolute meaning for it is relativised by motion. and finally energy is not simply mass for we have seen that the basic concept of physical mass reflects the intrinsic coherence between the physical and the numerical aspects – mass merely is the quantity of energy and that energy and mass are equivalent (e = mc2). the general statement of yourgrau, namely that “time is really space, gravity is really geometrical curvature, [and] energy is really mass”, is therefore philosophically problematic. • as a unique dimension of reality (cosmic) time expresses itself within each modal aspect according to the nature of that aspect. but is does not mean that time essentially is space. • gravity does not depend on the curved world space. space is curved because gravity causes it to be so. when we start to move in in a straight line, we shall eventually, owing to the curved world space, end up where we started. this enabled einstein to hold that although the universe is unbounded, it is finite. • finally, the physical quantity called mass does not imply that energy is its mass, merely that it is equivalent to mc2. although this argumentation opened up the inevitable role of underlying philosophical views, communicated via die special sciences (in this case physics) to popular conceptions, the outcome of the subordinate disputation is subservient to the overall claim, namely that philosophical views play a foundational role in communicating coherent (or sometimes incoherent) understandings of our world to the special sciences and popular understandings. this situation is of course diametrically opposed to the stance of positivism. the formerly highly admired “scientific method”, closely connected to the unverifiable principle of verification, ran stuck in the descriptive terms (sometimes designated as theoretical terms) that are not themselves open to sensory observation. the relativity of method is emphasised by putnam: “today, virtually no one believes that there is a purely formal scientific method” (putnam 1982: 25). the affinity of positivism for a physicalist view highlighted the inevitable (philosophical) choice of a particular mode of explanation, or, alternatively, the acceptance of mutually cohering but irreducuble modes of explanation. the underlying philosophical issue at stake here can also be captured with reference to the coherence of irreducibles. a positive approach may opt for a non-reductionist ontology, i.e. a view of reality that does not aim at reducing what is truly irreducible. the renowned physicist, max planck, who eventually became sharply critical of mach’s positivism, distinguishes between the real outside world, the world of the senses and the (theoretical) world of the science of physics, which he equates with the “physikalisches weltbild” (the physical world picture) (planck 1973: 208). the 67 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality abstractions that belong to the ‘‘weltbild‘’ are not sensorily perceptible – they embrace, according to him, the known law-conformities and concepts such as space, time and causality (cf. vogel 1961: 149). he holds that strictly seen it is totally impossible to find any physical question which can be assessed directly through measurements without the aid of a theory (planck 1973: 341). putnam, for example, holds that (positivistic) scientism and relativism are reductionist theories (putnam 1982: 126). in respect of “phenomenalism” he remarks: “the idea that the statements of science are translatable one by one into statements about what experiences we will have if we perform certain actions has now been given up as an unacceptable kind of reductionism” (putnam 1982: 187). conclusion from the examples discussed we may conclude that the issue is not whether there is a mutual communication between philosophy, the special sciences and popular conceptions, but whether they are acknowledged for what they are. unless this basic and inevitable mutual communication is recognised, the ultimate philosophical roots of much that is floating around will not be acknowledged. the philosophical problem of the coherence of irreducibles receives a negative answer in monistic -isms – such as physicalism or biologism – that attempt to elevate some or other aspect of reality to be the exclusive and decisive principle of explanation of whatever there is. one may designate the underlying philosophical issue here also as that of unity and diversity. in our preceding discussion another issue surfaced, namely the relation between constancy and change. in both cases it has been shown that the special sciences cannot escape from perennial philosophical problems such as these, indirectly permeating and influencing the interested non-scientific public relatively vulnerable particularly to the implicit philosophical views communicated to them through a multitude of popular scientific works available on the market. special scientists (and popular opinion indirectly) have two communicative options (but just one choice): • either they give an explicit communicative account of the philosophical presuppositions with which they work – in which case they communicate an explicit philosophical view of reality, or • implicitly (and uncritically) communicate some or other philosophical view of reality – in which case they are the victims of communicating an implicit philosophical view. 68 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality references bernays, p. 1976. abhandlungen zur philosophie der mathematik. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. beth, e. w. 1965. mathematical thought. new york: d. reidel publishing company. brouwer, l. e. j. 1964. consciousness, philosophy, and mathematics. in: benacerraf, p. and putnam, h. 1964 (eds). philosophy of mathematics. selected readings. oxford: basil blackwell. darwin, c. 1968. on the origin of species by means of natural selection 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(ed.). 1998. science in faith. a christian perspective on teaching science. essex: romford. kant, i. 1786. metaphysische anfangsgründe der naturwissenschaft. herausgeber wilhelm weischdel. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. kant, i. 1787. kritik der reinen vernunft. (second edition). 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penguin books. 70 popular conceptions and the communication of philosophical views of reality untitled ’n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel 666 is net 'n syfer communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16:171 189 lydie terblanche and danie jordaan* abstract given the reality of persuasive communication practices in south africa, the question arises as to which rational and/or non-rational characteristics of the contents of rhetorical messages contribute to the way in which recipients of such messages are so dramatically affected by them that they are motivated to display certain behaviour. it would seem that the symbolic convergence theory (sct), along with its methodology, fantasy theme analysis (fta), as developed by bormann (1972) and his colleagues, is especially appropriate to explain this phenomenon. the identification and observance of a comparatively large number of possible phases in fta aids the critic in his/her task to acquire the skills and proficiencies that are essential for the analysis of fantasy themes. on close examination rhetorical criticism is an art form that “requires” a competent rhetorical critic to display a unique approach, as well as the application of his/her own creative insights in the analysis of symbolic realities. based on the principles of fta, this article gives an indication as to why deon maas, with reference to his article 666 is net 'n syfer, is regarded as a controversial figure. in particular, an investigation is carried out in respect of the role played by the chaining out of fantasy themes in the creation of a rhetorical vision and the motivation of behaviour relating to the events surrounding the maas article. * dr lydie terblanche lectures in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. danie jordaan is professor in the department of journalism, media studies and philosophy at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. 171 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 171 inleiding in hierdie dae en tye van vryheid van spraak is dit kenmerkend dat mense in die media mekaar amper met woorde moor. ’n soort “woordmoord” is ter sprake wanneer bekendes soos byvoorbeeld steve hofmeyr en anton goosen, mike bolhuis en joost van der westhuizen, of jurie els en robbie klay mekaar in die openbare oog aanvat. die keuse vir die analise van die maas-artikel is dan ook relevant as gelet word op die inhoud van die volgende berig in die afrikaner (2007a: 1): “selde het ’n boodskap so vinnig versprei en is sukses so vinnig geoes as tydens die versetbeweging teen die omstrede rubriekskrywer, deon maas, se nuwe rubriek in rapport [...] ’n hele veldtog, wat ondersteun is deur telefoniese kortboodskappe (sms’e) en vonkposse [het] gevolg, en ’n week later was die golf van verset wat aan die brand gesteek is, van so ’n aard dat rapport se redakteur, tim du plessis, deon maas afgedank het as rubriekskrywer, amper nog vinniger as wat hy hom aangestel het.” die impak van hierdie maas-gebeure was so oorweldigend dat menige joernalis hul gedagtes hieroor uitgespreek het. rabe (2007:16) skryf byvoorbeeld: “as verskynsel van die inligtingstegnologie-era was dit fassinerend om dop te hou: ’n massa-aksiemobilisasie wat oor ’n (klein?) deel van ons bevolking gespoel het soos nooit tevore nie danksy selfoontegnologie.” fantasietema-analise (fta) is ’n benaderingswyse binne die veld van retoriese kritiek vir die ontleding van ’n groep persone se gedeelde werklikheid. die fundamentele aanname in fta is dat menslike kommunikasie simboliese werklikheid skep. fta stel dus die navorser in staat om navorsing te doen oor verskillende persone se verskillende betekenisse wat hulle aan dieselfde artefakte heg, wat uiteindelik konvergeer en lei tot die skep van gemeenskapsbewustheid. metametodologiese aanslag die maas-gebeure:’n voorlopige verkenning binne die konteks van fta-navorsing is dit nie vreemd dat die aanvanklike waarneming van ’n kritiese impuls – wat die moontlikheid het om ’n kettingreaksie tot gevolg te hê (of reeds gehad het) – in die massamedia gevind word nie. deon maas het begin as ’n joernalis by huisgenoot en was ook later rubriekskrywer by koerante en aanbieder van ’n geselsprogram voordat hy op grond van sy musiekondervinding as beoordelaar vir die afrikaanse idols-reeks op kyknet gekies is (groenewald 2007: 14). dit is hier waar maas se gesig en styl deur die publiek leer ken is. soos groenewald (2007: 14) dit stel: “this is not the first time maas has stirred up controversy – in fact he is someone afrikaans speakers love to hate. he became this community’s simon cowell when he judged hopefuls in the afrikaans version of idols, and received tons of hate mail for his biting remarks.” daarna is dié beeld van omstrede karakter in die nuusmedia, meestal in afrikaanse koerante soos beeld, die burger en volksblad, versterk en uitgebrei. maas het ook op sommige kunstenaars soos steve hofmeyr en kurt darren se tone getrap (groenewald 172 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 172 2007: 14). die publiek het in ooreenstemming met maas se openbare personae op uitgesproke en kritiese maniere op feitlik alle maas-optredes en -artikels gereageer. soos in die meeste van maas se artikels maak hy in die 666-artikel soms gebruik van ’n effens tong-in-die-kies aanslag. hiervan getuig byvoorbeeld: “dis goed om te sien dat in die tye waarin ons lewe daar nog suksesvolle arrestasies deur die polisie is” en “in my huis is daar ook kerse. dit help as eskom weer besluit dat dit my buurt se beurt is om te ly onder hul swak beplanning. daar is ook heelwat swart klere in ons huis, want as ek die slag na ’n ordentlike plek toe genooi word, is swart maar die maklikste oplossing.” maas wend ook dieper in die artikel ’n poging aan om sy standpunte te verduidelik: “propageer hierdie rubriek satanisme? nee.” hy skryf voorts: “klink vir my na ’n wenwen-situasie en een wat vreedsame naasbestaan kan bevorder.” die poging was duidelik nie goed genoeg nie. om die feit te illustreer dat maas se openbare personae ’n rol gespeel het in mense se houding teenoor sy artikel, word van sy stellings met soortgelyke stellings uit ’n artikel van koos kombuis vergelyk. maas skryf byvoorbeeld in sy artikel: “ekself is nie ’n groot aanhanger van georganiseerde godsdiens nie.” ’n soortgelyke stelling word deur kombuis (2008) in rapport op 28 julie 2008 gemaak: “... ek hou nie van godsdiens nie. ek voel nie tuis in kerke nie.” laasgenoemde artikel se soortgelyke anti-godsdiensstrekking kom nie binne die konteks van die artikel (en met kombuis se vooraf gevestigde openbare personae) in die spervuur nie. nog ’n stelling van maas uit sy artikel kan met kombuis vergelyk word: “om iemand anders se idees te verstaan, beteken nie dat jy daarmee hoef saam te stem nie”, teenoor kombuis: “ek is nie ’n ateïs nie. ek is ook nie ’n christen nie. ek is mal oor ateïste, ek het minstens drie vriende wat ateïste is van wie ek baie hou, net soos ek drie christene ken van wie ek baie hou, maar daar eindig dit.” die ooreenkoms is opvallend. soos reeds gestel, is dit duidelik dat maas se media-personae, en nie net die inhoud van sy artikel nie, beslis ’n groot rol in die publiek se reaksie gespeel het. maas skryf in sy artikel: “om iemand anders se idees te verstaan, beteken nie dat jy daarmee hoef saam te stem nie. dit beteken dat jy luister na wat hulle sê en dan kan saamstem dat hulle nie saamstem nie. dit beteken dat jy leer wat in ander mense se koppe aangaan en hulle dieselfde vryhede toelaat wat jy verwag dat hulle aan jou moet gee. klink vir my na ’n wen-wen-situasie en een wat vreedsame naasbestaan kan bevorder.” kombuis het in sy artikel ’n soortgelyke uitkyk: “miskien, wie weet, is daar iewers iemand, op hierdie huidige oomblik, wat vir iemand ander sê: ‘ek het drie vriende wat oor godsdiens voel soos koos kombuis daaroor voel. ek verstaan hulle nie, maar ek hou van hulle en ek respekteer hulle.’ sjoe, dit sou darem nice wees, nè.” bogenoemde voorbeelde, hier uit konteks aangehaal, toon aanvanklik baie ooreenkomste en is op die oog af tog heel aanvaarbaar. daar is egter ’n groot verskil tussen die twee artikels, hoewel albei skrywers dieselfde soort verdraagsaamheid (probeer) propageer. 173 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 173 hoekom het die maas-artikel dan met die eerste oogopslag ’n ongemaklike gevoel, selfs by die mees uitgesproke, verligte, liberale lede van die gemeenskap gegenereer (reeds voordat daar ’n kettingreaksie plaasgevind het)? beskou die opskrif: 666 is net ’n syfer. ’n groot taboe-onderwerp en satanisme-aanslag word met hierdie opskrif uitbasuin. in teenstelling hiermee is kombuis se opskrif van sy artikel: huldeblyk aan die mense in my kerk – en dit maak ’n baie groot verskil. voeg hierby die maas-frase wat in alle waarskynlikheid deur die boodskapontvangers letterlik opgeneem en hulle reaksie genoop het: “wat iemand duidelik vergeet het om vir die polisiewoordvoerder insp. paul ramaloko te vertel, is dat satanisme ’n godsdiens is en dat ons grondwet bepaal dat almal die vryheid het om die godsdiens van hul keuse te beoefen.” met hierdie spesifieke stelling is die morele waardes van dit wat as riglyn vir reg of verkeerd binne die retoriese gemeenskap (retoriese gemeenskap verwys na die “gehoor” van die fantasieë, die mense wat betrokke is in die herkenning van die drama en vertroeteling van die fantasieë, in ’n poging om van alles sin te maak) gestel word, oorskry, en het maas so te sê homself in die rigting van die “brandstapel” gestuur. wat was die retor (maas) se beweegredes vir hierdie spesifieke artikel? buiten vir sy verduideliking in die artikel kan ook gelet word op ’n artikel in rapport op 18 november 2007, waar maas se reaksie op sy ontslag weergegee word. veral van belang uit die artikel is die frases: “ek het nié oor satanisme geskryf nie. ek het dit net as ’n voorbeeld gebruik om groter verdraagsaamheid vir uiteenlopende opinies te bepleit. ek het gereken dis ’n goeie begin om my filosofie aan rapport se lesers te verkoop”, “ek glo ek bring lesers terug”, en “my rubriek sou dié lesers lok wat enige koerant wil hê.” navorsingsvrae die volgende navorsingsvrae word in hierdie artikel aangespreek: watter aspekte van die maasdiskoers en die reaksie daarop het daartoe gelei dat maas afgedank is? watter kenmerke van die maas-gebeure het daartoe aanleiding gegee dat maas by rapport ontslaan is? fta as benaderingswyse in retoriese kritiek fta is ’n dramaties-gebaseerde metode van retoriese kritiek wat op bepaalde epistemologiese aannames van bormann (1972) se simboliese konvergensieteorie (skt) gebaseer is. vir die doeleindes van hierdie kwalitatiewe navorsing is die volgende artefakte ingesamel: maas se 666-artikel, skrywes wat vooraf deur maas self gepen is, ander skrywers wat na maas verwys (voor en ná die plasing van die spesifieke skrywe), die publiek se reaksie in die nuusmedia op maas se artikel, asook maas se reaksies op sy ontslag. die tydlyn strek vanaf 24 junie 2006, waar daar in ’n artikel in beeld na maas verwys as word as “openbare vyand no. 1”, tot en met ’n artikel in afrikaner op 13 maart 2008 waar opsommendergewys gestel word dat “maas se siening van geloofsinkretisme strook met ander bevrydingsteologieë wat almal ten doel het om die christendom tot ’n 174 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 174 val te bring”. hierdie artikels is 94 in totaal, en verskaf ’n redelike hoeveelheid materiaal om insae in die retoriese situasie te verskaf. ook die ketting-sms wat versprei is: “boikot rapport [sic] volgende sondag oor deon maas se artikel dat satanisme erken moet word as godsdiens. stuur v 10 persone” (werklike bewoording) is onder die loep geneem. rapport (2007b: 1) berig: “daar word geraam dat derduisende e-posboodskappe en sms’e die afgelope week landwyd tussen selfone en rekenaars geblits het ... rapport het sowat 450 georkestreerde, gedupliseerde briewe ontvang. die spesiale sms-lyn vir maas se rubriek het teen saterdagaand 629 teksboodskappe gehad – mengsels wat die rubriek goeden afgekeur het.” al die koerantberigte (94) is deurgelees en ontleed om ’n indruk van die geheel te bekom. die berigte is verdeel in: artikels deur maas self; artikels oor maas of wat na hom verwys; en spotprente oor maas. aannames van die skt • betekenis, emosie en beweegrede vir optrede is in die klaarblyklike inhoud van ’n boodskap geleë is (cragan & shields 1995: 31-32; bormann, cragan & shields 2001: 273). • die mens se siening van die werklikheid word simbolies geskep. • simboliese konvergensie word in ’n dramatistiese formaat geskep. • fantasietema-analise is die basiese metode om die simboliese realiteit te ontdek, vas te lê en te analiseer (shields & preston 1985: 102; cragan & shields 1995: 33). • fantasietemas kom in alle diskoersvorme voor en kring uit deur middel van ’n teks (soos in die gedrukte media), asook mondelings in kleinen grootgroepkommunikasie (cragan & shields 1995: 33-34; borchers 2006: 164). • minstens drie alternatiewe argetipe strukture (ook dieperliggende strukture of meesteranalogieë genoem), nl. normatief, sosiaal en pragmaties, kompeteer as alternatiewe verduidelikings vir simboliese realiteite (cragan & shields 1995: 34; shields & preston 1985: 104). konsepte in aansluiting by cragan en shields (1992; 1995) kan die volgende konsepte met betrekking tot die skt en fta onderskei word: basiese konsepte fantasietema ’n fantasietema is ’n spesifieke vertelling van ’n insident met ’n konkrete intrige en karakters. die gebruik van die term fantasie is verwarrend omdat dit assosiasies met fiksie, byvoorbeeld kinderliteratuur wat beelde van elwe en feë optower, of selfs seksuele begeertes oproep. binne die veld van die skt en fta is dit egter ’n tegniese 175 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 175 term wat as die sleutel dien tot begrip rakende ’n groep se sosiale realiteit (bormann 1983; st. antoine, althouse & ball 2005: 213, 223). simboliese aanduiders hoewel ’n fantasietema konkreet en spesifiek in sy oorspronklike vorm is, is een van die kenmerke daarvan dat, nadat dit deur lede van die gemeenskap aanvaar is, dit nie in totaliteit oorvertel hoef te word nie. so byvoorbeeld is binne die christelike gemeenskap die meeste van die lede bekend met die betekenis van die uitdrukking “goeie samaritaan” sonder dat na die betrokke bybeltekste verwys hoef te word. fantasietipe fantasietipes is ’n argetipe – ’n groter abstraksie as fantasietemas – en kan as ’n oorkoepelende term vir verskeie konkrete fantasietemas of ’n versameling herhalende of verwante fantasietemas beskou word (vgl. shields & preston 1985: 105). sage ’n sage is ’n uitgebreide, gedetailleerde verslag van dit wat uiteindelik in ’n leeftyd deur ’n persoon, groep, gemeenskap, organisasie of nasie bereik is (bormann 1982; 1983). hierdie verslag van gebeurtenisse word dan menigmale herhaal (bormann et al. 2001:284). dramaties-strukturele konsepte retoriese visie ’n retoriese visie kan beskou word as ’n tipe samesmelting van verskeie fantasietemas, fantasietipes en samelewingsfantasieë wat ’n breër visie van ’n kultuur of retoriese gemeenskap se simboliese realiteit verskaf (shields & preston 1985: 106). dramatis personae dramatis personae is die karakters (karakterrolle) waaraan, binne die drama/retoriese visie, lewe gegee word. wanneer iemand ’n situasie met beeldspraak karakteriseer, of dramatiseer wat gebeur het, moet die persoon sekere karakters as die fokus van die storie selekteer. die karakters kan lewendige of afgestorwe mense wees, soos in historiese gebeurtenisse of dokumentêre programme. intriges die intrige (soms ook na verwys as scenario of storielyn) verduidelik hoe die sentrale karakter(s) konflik hanteer in ’n poging om hul doel te bereik (kidd 2008: 8). die intrige is dus fantasietemas wat die optredes, aktiwiteite of ontwikkeling van die karakters van die storie vergestalt en wat verwys na handelinge wat binne die retoriese wêreld of drama plaasvind. toneelinkleding dramas geskied in ’n bepaalde omgewing, konteks of raamwerk wat die toneel inkleur of inklee. die toneelinkleding (soms ook na verwys as die stel, omgewing, agtergrond 176 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 176 of raamwerk) is die sosio-kulturele milieu, soms die fisieke omgewing of konteks waarbinne die drama ontvou (bormann 1985: 132), maar dit kan ook simbolies van aard wees (kidd 2008: 8). goedkeuringsagent die onderbou van ’n fantasietema, en sentraal aan die retoriese visie, is basiese waardes, met ander woorde ’n goedkeuringsagent wat die bron van die storie vir die ontvanger “wettig” of waar maak, of dit as eg verklaar (bormann 1985: 132). dit is ’n meganisme wat besluite van die sentrale figure regverdig en ’n rede of rasionaal vir die optredes van die karakters verskaf (vgl. kidd 2008: 8). hierdie goedkeuringsagent is dikwels ’n morele standaard, ’n waardestelsel, ’n ideaal of emosie, maar soms net intellektuele begrip. dit kan ’n hoër gesag soos god of ’n spesifieke hier-en-nouverskynsel soos ’n kruis, instellings soos die hooggeregshof of demokrasie, of ’n aanvaarde gedragskode soos ’n erekode insluit. meesteranalogieë retoriese visies is nie net narratiewe nie, maar het ook ’n dieptestruktuur wat die sin van die werklikheid reflekteer en beïnvloed. hierdie meesteranaloog is geneig om normatief (regverdigend), sosiaal of pragmaties te wees (bormann 1985: 133; cragan & shields 1992: 202; 1995: 25-26; bormann, knutson & musolf 1997: 314). as ’n retoriese visie ’n normatiewe meesteranaloog het, berus dit op fantasietemas wat moraliteit en die regte manier van optrede beklemtoon, met ander woorde sieninge oor reg en verkeerd, gepas en onvanpas, meerdere en mindere, moreel en immoreel, en regverdig en onregverdig. die sosiale meesteranaloog is verwant aan die normatiewe meesteranaloog omdat die normatiewe meesteranaloog ter sprake gaan kom die oomblik wanneer byvoorbeeld oor goed en kwaad gepraat word. hierdie soort visie dui dus hoogstens ’n klemverskuiwing aan. nietemin, ’n retoriese visie met ’n sosiale meesteranaloog word gekenmerk deur idealistiese idees, soos harmonie en vryheid, en dit weerspieël primêr menseverhoudings (cragan & shields 1992: 202; bormann, cragan & shields 1996: 4; bormann, knutson en musolf 1997: 314; bormann, cragan en shields 2001: 288; st. antoine, althouse en ball 2005: 219). die pragmatiese retoriese visie het gewoonlik ’n wetenskaplike aard met ’n praktiese en utilitaristiese grondslag. dit gaan hier oor ’n realistiese benadering wanneer dit by die oplossing van probleme kom – wat die kruks van die saak is, wat die uitkoms is en wat sal werk. in hierdie benadering word konsepte soos diplomasie, wenslikheid, toepaslikheid, doeltreffendheid, spaarsamigheid, eenvoud, uitvoerbaarheid, (koste)effektiwiteit en minimale emosionele betrokkenheid, met ander woorde gesonde verstand, beklemtoon (cragan & shields 1992: 202; bormann, cragan en shields 1996: 4; 2001: 288; bormann, knutson en musolf 1997: 314; st. antoine, althouse en ball 2005: 218-219). 177 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 177 krities-evaluatiewe konsepte binne die skt en fta kan tussen drie krities-evaluatiewe konsepte onderskei word, nl. gedeelde groepsbewustheid, retoriesevisie-werklikheidsbinders en fantasietemakunstigheid (cragan & shields 1995: 42). gedeelde groepsbewustheid kom tot stand wanneer daar op die gedramatiseerde boodskap uitgebrei word en dit deur een of meer lede van die groep versprei word (aleman 2005: 8). binne die skt word daar na die beweging, uitbreiding, deling in of verspreiding van ’n fantasietema as “uitkringing” verwys (st. antoine, althouse en ball 2005: 214). groepe word deur gedeelde fantasieë bymekaar gehou. lede dra boodskappe met die nodige byvoegings aan ander oor en so word elke lid ’n skakel in ’n ketting wat al langer (kan) word (cathcart 1981: 99-100). volgens shields en preston (1985: 108) het baie retoriese visies fantasietemas met ’n sterk realiteitskakel, of dan ’n retoriesevisie-werklikheidsbinder, as grondslag. hierdie binders/skakels is die hier-en-nou-verskynsel wat geldigheid aan die dramatiese interpretasies (wat binne die retoriek van ’n visie voorkom) verskaf. fantasietema-kunstigheid sentreer rondom die gedagte dat retoriese kunstigheid verlang word om intriges op ’n aantreklike wyse aan te bied sodat mense daarin sal deel (soos ’n “slim” reklameveldtog). dit is heel aanvaarbaar dat mense se kunstigheid in die hantering en aanbieding van retoriese fantasieë grootliks sal verskil (bormann 1985: 130; cragan & shields 1992: 202, 203; bormann, knutson en musolf 1997: 313). bespreking van die bevindinge fantasietemas en tipes (a) wat het maas verkeerd gedoen? (b) indien hy wel iets verkeerd gedoen het, wat moet hieraan gedoen word? vir argumentsonthalwe is dit weer eens nodig om te stel dat dit hoogs waarskynlik is dat ’n persoon reeds deur vorige kontak met maas, hetsy deur die afrikaanse idols op kyknet, of deur sy vorige nuusmedia-artikels, ’n negatiewe opinie oor hom gevorm het. hierdie opinie word nie deur hierdie navorsing bevestig nie, maar slegs gebruik as ’n uitgangspunt. dié opinie, aanvanklik net ’n fantasietema, kan iets wees in die lyn van: “maas is ’n omstrede figuur” (selfs ’n sterker gevoel is natuurlik moontlik). hierna volg die 666-artikel. die skt stel dit duidelik dat wanneer inligting of stellings (die boodskap), soos wat in hierdie maas-artikel, gemaak word en wat die boodskapontvanger se reeds gevormde retoriese visie ondersteun, dit baie maklik as ’n bevestiging van die tema aanvaar word. dit dien ook gemeld te word dat indien inligting beskikbaar gestel sou word wat nie by bestaande fantasietemas of selfs retoriese visies inskakel nie, dit maklik geïgnoreer kan word. wanneer die boodskap egter wel inskakel by ’n reeds bestaande tema, word dit nie net aanvaar as ondersteunend van die tema nie, maar dit word ook gedeel met ander mense. dus kring die boodskap (fantasietema) binne ’n eendersdenkende groep mense uit en vorm uiteindelik ’n retoriese visie. 178 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 178 wat het maas dus verkeerd gedoen? hy het nie gehou by sy aanvanklike “omstrede”tipe fantasietemas en tipes van sy vorige artikels nie. van niekerk (2007: 1) stel dit duidelik dat maas se vorige argument “wel kontroversieel, maar kontekstueel” was. met die rapport-artikel het hy egter een stap te ver gegaan deur die satanismefantasietemas; en sodoende het hy oor die (soms) onsigbare morele grenslyne van die retoriese gemeenskap getrap. van niekerk (2007: 1) stel dit weer eens baie oortuigend wanneer hy skryf: “dié artikel bloei van ‘onverdraagsaamheid’ teenoor ’n essensiële geloofsoortuiging van die meerderheid christene”. harber (2007: 14; 2007a: 9; 2007b: 16), caxton-professor in joernalistiek en mediastudie aan wits, stel die maas-situasie as volg: “maas se sonde, by wyse van spreke, was om ’n rubriek te skryf oor godsdiensvryheid waarin hy aan die hand gedoen het satanisme moet dieselfde grondwetlike beskerming en verdraagsaamheid geniet as enige ander godsdiens.” harber (2007: 14; 2007a: 9; 2007b: 16) vervolg: “dit was tipies maas: uitdagend tot die uiterste toe, gewaarborg om ’n woedende reaksie te ontlok.” wat moet hieraan gedoen word? maas moet uit die spesifieke gemeenskap verwyder word (sien die aksies wat voorgestel word onder die metodologiese prosedures), en om dit op te som: “ons land beleef ’n moraliteitskrises, enige vorm of suggestie van immoraliteit behoort met hand en tand en/of met rand en sent bestry te word” (van niekerk 2007: 1). simboliese aanduiders die hoofsimboliese aanduider is die woord “maas”. so byvoorbeeld sal in die koerantopskrif van 19 november 2007 bloot geskryf wees: sa gons oor maas. daar word dus nie meer daarna verwys dat maas ’n artikel oor satanisme geskryf het of dat hy deur rapport afgedank is nie, maar die retoriese gemeenskap weet waaroor dit gaan. die simboliese aanduider, “maas”, is genoegsaam. dramatis personae die volgende dramatis personae kom uit die ontleding: maas as neutrale karakter van der westhuizen (2007: 16) skryf: “hoewel ek min saamstem met wat maas te sê het, glo ek hy het die reg om sy mening uit te spreek.” van der westhuizen (2007: 16) stel ook die volgende: “en, blyk dit uit die maas-geval, ons gaan diegene in ons midde wat dinge kwytraak wat ons nog meer onveilig laat voel, doodskree.” prof. wilhelm jordaan (2007) skryf in beeld van 21 november 2007 dat maas se gewraakte artikel “aanstoot (kon) gee aan mense wat met weersin vervul is oor satanisme as ’n mededinger/uitdager van die christelike godsdiens, maar dat dit [die artikel] op geen manier haatspraak bevorder het nie”. dr. kobus gerber , sekretaris van die sinode van die ng-kerk, skryf in rapport van 18 november 2007 (in van wyk & eybers 2007: 5): “die e-pos wat ek gekry het, was blatant onverantwoordelik [...] mense moet seker maak van hulle feite. deon maas is 179 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 179 aspris en hy het dalk op dun ys geloop, maar op geen manier het hy satanisme bepleit nie. ek het nie die afleiding gemaak dat deon satanisme ondersteun nie.” rabe (2007: 16): “(maar) is die rubriekskrywer in hierdie geval beskuldig, verhoor en gekruisig sonder bewyse? moes die voltaire-wysheid van ‘ek stem nie noodwendig saam met wat jy sê nie, maar sal jou reg om dit te sê tot die dood verdedig’ nie liewer gegeld het nie?” “maas het sy verpligting teenoor die samelewing nagekom in ooreenstemming met sy grondwetlike regte. hy het debat aangemoedig en dus sy werk gedoen” (van wyk & eybers 2007: 5). maas as held/protagonis “deon maas, ek hou van jou eerlikheid en veral hou ek daarvan dat jy anders as sommige afrikaners, uit gebreek (sic) het uit ’n armsalige denkpatroon” (harber 2007b: 16). “die waarheid maak mos seer – kry deon terug. ons het meer van sy soort nodig (sms – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). “ondanks die stroom sms’e glo ek daar gaan ’n rekordverkoopsyfer wees. deon, doen so voort! (sms – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). tim du plessis as held/protagonis higgens (2008: 15) skryf: “dit moes mannemoed geverg het (en sekerlik ruggraat) om jou [tim du plessis] besluit deur te voer om maas se dienste te beëindig wetende watter gevolge dit sou inhou teen die agtergrond van ‘persvryheid’. weer eens getuig dit vir my van ware leierskap wat jy aan die dag gelê het om selfs ten koste van die moontlike beëindiging van jou dienste by die moed van jou oortuigings te hou en daarna ook nog die kritiek van die publiek die hoof te bied. ’n baie geseënde en voorspoedige jaar word jou en jou gesin toegewens. mag daar nog baie ‘goeie rapporte’ aan jou lesers onder jou redakteurskap uitgevoer word.” “dankie vir gebede. ons sê dankie aan rapport se redakteur” (sms – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). god/christus as held/protagonis mev. koekemoer wat die aanvanklike oproep gemaak het in die afrikaner (2007a: 2): “alle eer moet aan god gegee word, want menslik gesproke was so ’n veldtog met so ’n resultaat onmoontlik.” “die pakslae wat maas en rapport gekry het, deur god self, wat die mense as sy nederig instrumente gebruik het, is net so waar vir diegene wat weggekruip het agter welke rede denkbaar ook al. daardie mense wat die veldtog gedra het, het ’n boodskap vir maas, rapport en elke predikant gestuur dat christus gaan nie so maklik verloën word nie (sic). daar is nog 7 000 wat nie bereid is om die knie voor baal en sy priester te buig nie” (afrikaner 2007b: 1). 180 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 180 rapport-lesers as held/protagonis “... rapport se lesers (het) ook die reg om die koerant te boikot indien hulle ontevrede is met ’n rubriekskrywer” (saunders 2007: 23). die publiek (rapport-lesers en nielesers as beswaardes) as skurk/antagonis botha (2007: 7) skryf: “... ek is verontrus oor die georkestreerde veldtog wat pas teen maas gevoer is. om ’n koerant te wil bykom omdat jy nie saamstem met iets wat ’n rubriekskrywer geskryf het nie, is eenvoudig nie billik nie.” uithaler (2007: 7) berig: “boikot ’n koerant omdat jy nie met ’n rubriekskrywer saamstem nie? stuur aan tien ander? terwyl jy daardie gevreesde ‘isme’ met ’n hoofletter spel?.... nogal met satanisme en godsdiens ge-hoofletter s en g.” [in ketting-sms]. jordaan (afrikaner 2007a: 2): “die manier waarop beswaardes suksesvol was om die sondagkoerant rapport te oortuig om deon maas as rubriekskrywer die trekpas te gee, is ’n onthutsende demonstrasie van hoe onvolwasse ons demokratiese bestel is.” prinsloo (“só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4): “as alle lesers en nielesers van rapport die sms-geld wat hulle die laaste paar dae vermors het om vir my te laat weet ek moet rapport boikot vir ’n behoeftige in die hand gestop het, was baie meer mense se mae dalk voller en my irritasievlak laer.” breytenbach (facebook – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4) sê: “dalk is dit tyd dat mense ophou skynheilig wees. ophou oordeel. ophou op hol gaan oor k*k.” maas as skurk/antagonis “die skrywer van so ’n maas-dwaas-rubriek in enige van die ortodokse islamitiese lande sou ’n aaklige straf moes verduur...” (saunders 2007: 23). “ek veroordeel deon maas se uitlatings ten sterkste” (“só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). “deon maas, duidelik ken jy nie die tien gebooie nie!” (“só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). deon, ek dink jy praat die grootste k*k onder die son (sms – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). du plessis as skurk/antagonis rapport (2007c: 4) berig: “die besluit om deon maas se rubriekreeks te beëindig, was dié van die redakteur en syne alleen. geen opdragte of versoek is van naspers en media24, eienaars van rapport ontvang nie.” “du plessis self het die dag toe die rubriek gepubliseer is, geskryf: ’n breëspektrumkoerant wat net strelende stof publiseer, is nie die naam koerant werd nie. maar, het du plessis later in die week geskryf, die bedreiging teen die koerant het so groot geword dat dit later nie meer ’n eenvoudige redaksionele kwessie was nie” (harber 2007b: 16). 181 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 181 “hiermee wil ek my teleurstelling uitspreek in mnr. tim du plessis se besluit om te swig voor ’n spul idiote met oogklappe wat steeds in die oertyd ‘van met klippe doodgooi’ leef” (harber 2007b: 16). “ai swaer [du plessis], kon jy darem nie verder gedink het toe jy die mannetjie maas aangestel het om ’n rubriek te behartig nie?” (e-pos – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). “i believe the editor of rapport’s first error was to put himself up as the guardian of his employer’s financial interest” (du preez 2007: 20). “it has been made clear that there are still very severe parameters to what an afrikaans newspaper editor can do and survive” (harber 2007a: 9). karen bliksem in haar sunday independent-tong-in-die-kies-rubriek “out of africa”: “… tim, you have to step in and stand up for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, robust debate, and all that good stuff” (bliksem 2007: 12). “having an ass as editor could be prejudicial to one’s commercial interest” (bliksem 2007: 12). du plessis/rapport-kombinasie as skurk/antagonis “du plessis, wat hom met dié wete [maas se uitdagende skryfstyl] aangestel het, het die rubriek deurgegaan en besluit om dit te publiseer. toe die storm losbars, het hy hom en sy koerant van die sienings gedistansieer. en maas gelos toe dinge handuit geruk het. waarom, sal u vra, word ’n skrywer aangestel as jy nie by hom gaan staan wanneer hy doen waarvoor skrywers lief is nie: om die pot ’n bietjie te roer?” (harber 2007a: 9; 2007b: 16). “die wyse waarop tim du plessis en sy mense hulle laat afdreig en terroriseer deur ’n klomp ultra-verkrampte happy clappies dui meer daarop dat die redaksie van rapport niks anders as ’n klomp sissies is nie” (“só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). rapport as skurk/antagonis “rapport het sy etiese waardes verraai deur te swig voor die druk van ’n persentasie lesers wat gedreig het om die koerant te boikot” (van wyk & eybers 2007: 5). “dit is kommerwekkend dat rapport meer waarde heg aan geld as aan die waarde van vryheid van spraak” (“só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). maas/rapport-kombinasie as skurk/antagonis die ketting-sms wat versprei is: “boikot rapport volgende sondag oor deon maas se artikel dat satanisme erken moet word as godsdiens. stuur v 10 persone” (werklike bewoording). christene/gelowiges/godsdienstiges as skurk/antagonis “die veldtog is hoogs waarskynlik deur ’n klomp beswaarde christene bestaande uit onder andere fundamentaliste, fanatici en pseudowetenskaplikes. die sukses van hul 182 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 182 aanslag getuig duidelik van ’n totale aanslag op kritiese denke, die wetenskap, demokrasie en vryheid van spraak” (walters 2007: 13). “dat die besprekingspunt nie meer [oor] maas [gaan] nie, maar hoe christene opgetree het in die veldtog. ‘is dit die christendom van die evangelie?’” (gerber in van wyk & eybers 2007: 5). van wyk en eybers (2007: 5) het ook na mnr. nathan bond, uitgewer van ’n weeklikse e-tydskrif oor die invloed van godsdiens, verwys, wat op sy blog gesê het: “die reaksie op deon maas se eerste rubriek [in rapport] (het) onteenseglik aangedui dat afrikaanse christene ’n baie klein, ’n baie irrelevante ou stamgodjie aanbid. maar die feit dat daai god in hierdie mense se koppe bestaan, maak hom ’n formidabele mag. ek is maar bangerig vir dié godgelowiges.” “sou die mens in wie se naam dit [die sms] gedoen is, en na wie die christendom heet, so veroordelend en selfgeregtig opgetree het? ... pieta (uithaler 2007: 7). “ek sou dus graag wou weet waarom ‘gevoelige’ christene die gewraakte maas se rubrieke so knaend gelees het” (volksblad 2007: 8). “dit is jammer dat ’n groep sogenaamde christene deon maas so haat dat hulle hom laat afdank het. en dit net omdat hy met ander oë kyk as hulle” (sms – “só sê ons lesers” in rapport 2007a: 4). fanatiese anonieme drukgroepe as skurk/antagonis claassen (2007: 23): “ ‘wanneer selfs een amerikaner – wat niks verkeerd gedoen het nie – deur sy vrees gedwing word om sy verstand te sluit en sy mond te hou, dan is alle amerikaners in gevaar.’ dié woorde van president harry truman tydens die vroeë stadium van die anti-kommunisties heksejag in 1950, kon net sowel van toepassing gewees het op suid-afrika die afgelope week toe die rubriekskrywer deon maas deur ’n fanatiese anonieme drukgroep die stilswye opgelê is.” ‘ander magte’ bo du plessis/rapport as skurk/antagonis gerber (in van wyk & eybers 2007:5): “persoonlik sou dit vir my ’n hartseerdag (sic) wees as daar van bo af ingegryp is en tim (du plessis) gedwing is om op te tree.” satan en die pseudowetenskap as skurk/antagonis “satan en die pseudowetenskap [het] geseëvier met du plessis se besluit – en persvryheid het ’n verdere spyker in sy doodskis gekry” (walters 2007: 13). intrige die intrige of storielyn is die 666-artikel van maas wat (aldus hom) handel oor verdraagsaamheid in terme van ander godsdienste. die publiek se reaksies (die temas was ondersoek is) dui egter hoofsaaklik een sentrale intrige aan wat nie ooreenkom met maas se gedagte vir die intrige nie. maas word deur die lesers as ’n tipe anti-christen wat satanisme voorstaan, beskou. dit word duidelik uitgespel wanneer maas “die 183 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 183 omstrede figuur” uitgeskel word as ’n “ketter”, “satansaanbidder”, “satan”, “onbekeerde”, “ongelowige” of “ateïs”. omgewing wat die onmiddellike omgewing van die 666-artikel betref (sover as wat dit die boodskapontvangers aangaan), is hier ’n godsdienstige omgewing waarbinne die intrige afspeel. (die moontlikheid van ’n ideologiese, politiese omgewing of ekonomiese omgewing kon ook ondersoek word, sou daar uit ’n ander invalshoek gewerk word). beweegredes wat beweegredes betref, volgens maas, wou hy satanisme gebruik as voorbeeld om groter verdraagsaamheid vir uiteenlopende opinies te bepleit. hy het ook gereken dat die artikel ’n goeie begin sou wees om sy persoonlike filosofie aan die rapport-lesers te verkoop. voorts wou hy debatvoering uitlok en lesers aan die dink kry. terselfdertyd wou maas deur middel van sy rubriek lesers “wat enige koerant wil hê” lok. soos botha (2007: 7) vir die een kant stel: “maas wou ’n debat ontketen oor die nakoming van etiese reëls, en vryheid van assosiasie, beweging, spraak en denke”. en van niekerk (2007: 1) vir die ander kant: “hierdie keer het hy (maas) met kontroversie so gestir dat dit ontplof het. hy het dit toe nie reggekry om die sirkulasie van rapport op te stoot nie, maar dit eerder laat inplof.” asook: “deon maas is aspris en hy het dalk op dun ys geloop...” (van wyk & eybers 2007: 5). “deon soek net aandag, waarvan hy duidelik te veel kry! rapport, jammer oor julle smaak.” (harber 2007b: 16). “dit is duidelik dat jy aangestel is om reaksie te ontlok....” (harber 2007b: 16). “it was vintage maas: provocative in the extreme, guaranteed to get an angry response” (harber 2007: 11). vergelyk laastens ook: “om die waarheid te sê, dit word openlik erken dat hy aangestel is om as sg. ‘rubriekskrywer’ aspris ’n spreekwoordelike ‘klip in die bos’ te kom gooi sodat die kontensieuse inhoud van sy rubriek sirkulasiesyfers kan opstoot” (smith 2007: 2). ter wille van volledigheid kan net kortliks genoem word dat die aanvanklike beweegredes van tim du plessis/rapport heel moontlik was om meer koerante te verkoop, of om ’n bepaalde beeld (van die koerant) te verander of te versterk (soortgelyk aan maas se voorgestelde beweegredes). in dié verband stel harber (2007: 11) dit as volg: “en du plessis het rede om senuagtig te wees. sy koerant se sirkulasie is in ’n geleidelike, volgehoue daling sedert so gloriedae van 500 000 kopieë in die middel 1970’s, toe rapport kortstondig die sunday times verbygesteek het, tot by sy huidige vlak van net oor die 300 000 (en dalend). hy kan dit nie bekostig om nog lesers te verloor nie.” die publiek se reaksies stel voor dat daar van maas ontslae geraak moet word. wat kan die beweegredes hiervoor wees? motiewe word normaalweg aangedui deur die diepliggende argetipes of meesteranaloë. meesteranaloog wat die boodskapontvangers in die maas-voorbeeld betref, kan gevra word of hier sprake van ’n normatiewe meesteranaloog, wat gegrond is in moraliteit en die regte 184 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 184 manier van optrede, is. vanuit die navorser se perspektief, belewenis en interpretasie van die werklikheid is die antwoord ’n besliste ja. is hier sprake van ’n sosiale meesteranaloog wat klem plaas op menseverhoudings? dit kan wees. is hier sprake van ’n pragmatiese analoog in terme van gesonde verstand? heel moontlik nie in die publiek se reaksies nie. een van die min artikels wat egter ná maas se afdanking verskyn het, voldoen wel aan hier pragmatiese analoog, nl.: “666 is meer as net ’n syfer”. dié artikel oorweeg maas se agtergrond, beweegredes en analiseer sy aksies op ’n pragmatiese manier. gedeelde groepbewustheid is hier bewyse van gedeelde groepbewustheid? dit blyk wel die geval te wees. gedeelde groepbewustheid kom tot stand wanneer byvoeging gemaak word tot die oorspronklike gedramatiseerde boodskap totdat elke lid ’n skakel in ’n ketting word wat al hoe meer uitkring, soos in die uiteindelike retoriese visie oor/van maas waargeneem kan word. fantasietema-kunstigheid die retoriese vaardigheid en kunstigheid waarmee deon maas homself as persoon voorgestel het, asook die aanbieding van sy voorafgaande artikels in die media, het beslis ’n rol gespeel in die feit dat die visie so ongelooflik vinnig uitgebrei het. al hierdie elemente kulmineer in die retoriese visie dat deon maas as individu die perke van reg en verkeerd, toelaatbaar en ontoelaatbaar oorskry het; dat hy ongewens en ongepas was in die rapport-lesers se omgewing, en dus verwyder moes word. slotbeskouing die skt en fta is effektief in die verskaffing van genoegsame insae in die retoriese betekenisse en implikasie wat binne boodskapontvangers se reaksies, soos uitgebeeld in die nuusmedia, saamgevat is. wat openbaar fta dus rondom die publiek se reaksie op deon maas se artikel 666 is net ’n syfer? maas is ’n omstrede figuur, hy het homself so voorgestel en dit is versterk deur sy media-personae. sy keuses van onderwerpe is omstrede. op grond hiervan het die publiek reeds ’n opinie (wat binne die akademiese omgewing as ’n spesifieke groep se retoriese visie beskou kan word) oor/van hom gevorm. die reaksie van die publiek op hierdie spesifieke artikel kon dus nie in isolasie beskou word nie. die artikel (rubriek) was egter die laaste strooi soos deur die woorde, frases en sinne wat gebruik word om maas te omskryf, aangedui word. die reaksies het ook nie net die boodskapontvangers se gevoel oor maas duidelik gestel nie, maar ook aksies voorgestel wat geneem moet/kan word. die oorredingsfaktore vir die ontslag-handeling wat in hierdie ondersoek (in ’n mindere of meerdere mate) na vore gekom het, kan soos volg aangedui word: 185 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 185 • maas se publieke personae; • die aanbiedingswyse van sy “satanisme”-rubriek; • persepsies – mense se intense oortuigings; • geldelike, ekonomiese en kommersiële redes; • drukgroepe, hetsy godsdienstig-fundamentalisties of ander; • etikettering; • die heersende tydsgees; • die tegnologie van selfoonboodskappe en e-pos; en • kombinasies van verskeie van bogenoemde beweegredes. wat openbaar fta rondom die publiek se reaksie? dit openbaar dat die publiek oorweldigend negatief van aard in hul reaksies op hetsy maas of du plessis/rapport was. maas word sterk gekritiseer as persoon en ook as joernalis. die retoriese visie van maas wat heel moontlik reeds bestaan het, is hier op ’n uiters kritiese en negatiewe manier versterk. dit kan aanvaar word dat ruimte in enige nuuspublikasie waar die publiek menings kan lig, as platform vir kritiek beskou kan word. dus kon hierdie individue se reaksies en voorstelling van aksies as verteenwoordigend van die boodskapontvangers insae in die retoriese visie bied. ’n sterk normatiewe meesteranaloog, gegrond in moraliteit en die regte manier van optrede, dra die boodskap oor dat dit waarmee maas homself besig, verkeerd is. die retoriese visie dui daarop dat die maas-artikel onvanpas is in die afrikaner-christensamelewing en om hierdie rede kan die boodskapontvangers dit afkeur, saamstaan om verdere onvanpaste gedrag te voorkom en aandring dat daar van maas ontslae geraak moes word. hierdie visie het duidelik ’n oorredingsboodskap, aangesien die gevolg was dat maas wel afgedank is. die oorredingsimpak van boodskapontvangers se reaksies of voorstelle vir aksies moet dus nie onderskat word nie. die sosiale impak van soortgelyke artikels behoort egter ook uitgewys te word. artikels soos dié wat maas aanpak, behoort ’n belangrike rol te speel in die skepping van diskoers rondom omstrede onderwerpe. dit behoort die beginpunt te wees wat boodskapontvangers dwing om oor kwessies wat deel is van die samelewing te dink, soos wat maas dan ook aanvoer sy doel was. hierdie artikel het egter slegs daarin geslaag om die boodskapper te verdoem. die retoriese visie, soos dit uit die ondersoek van die boodskapontvangers na vore gekom het, kan saamgevat word as “maas is ’n arrogante, aandagsoekende ateïs, wat die samelewingsriglyne vir vreedsame bestaan verontagsaam en uit die publieke oog verwyder behoort te word”. die ontleding deur middel van fta het ook duidelik uitgewys hoe ’n groep boodskapontvangers ’n gebeurtenis dramatiseer; hoe daardie dramatisering ’n spesiale 186 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 186 soort mite skep; hoe hierdie mite ’n realiteit word wat ’n werklikheid vir die groep vorm; hoe dit dan ’n groep se denkwyse en gedrag beïnvloed; en uiteindelik hoe lede van die groep (nou gemeenskap) optree in verhouding met hierdie geskepte werklikheid. maas is eindelik dan ook ontslaan. dit is aanvaar dat die ontslag op die publiek se reaksies (wat’n morele inslag gehad het) gegrond is, hoewel die ekonomiese implikasies ook ’n groter rol as wat aanvanklik toegegee is, gespeel het. 187 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 187 verwysings afrikaner. 2007a. nog ’n sms-veldtog voorgestel. 29 november: 2. afrikaner. 2007b. boikotaksie uitgeroep teen deon maas wat satanisme in rapport verdedig. 15 november: 1. aleman, m.w. 2005. embracing and resisting romantic fantasies as the rhetorical vision on a serniornet discussion board. journal of communication 5-21. bliksem, k. 2007. the great delusion is a really sticky subject, tim – and do wipe your feet. sunday independent, 18 november: 12. borchers, t. 2006. rhetorical theory. an introduction. california: wadsworth. bormann, e.g. 1972. fantasy and rhetorical vision: the rhetorical criticism of social reality. the quarterly journal of speech 58: 396-407. bormann, e.g. 1982. the symbolic convergence theory of communication: applications and implications for teachers and consultants. journal of applied communication research 10: 50-61. bormann, e.g. 1983. symbolic convergence: organizational communication and culture. in putnam, l. en pecanowsky, m.e. (reds.). communication and organizations: an interpretive approach. beverley hills: sage. bormann, e.g. 1985. symbolic convergence theory: a communication formulation. the journal of communication 35(4): 128-138. bormann, e.g., cragan, j.f. en shields, d.c. 1996. an expansion of the rhetorical vision component of the symbolic convergence theory: the cold war paradigm case. communication monographs 63: 1-28. bormann, e.g., cragan, j.f. en shields, d.c. 2001. three decades of developing, grounding, and using symbolic convergence theory (sct). communication yearbook 25: 271-313. bormann, e.g., knutson, r.l. en musolf, k. 1997. why do people share fantasies? an empirical investigation of the symbolic communication theory. communication studies 48: 254-276. botha, p. 2007. onthou die man wat die valbyl ontwerp het. beeld, 01 desember: 7. cathcart, r.s. 1981. post-communication: rhetorical analysis and evaluation. new york: macmillan publishing company. claassen, g. 2007. as spleet vir gedagtepolisie eers toegelaat word. die burger, 23 november: 23. cragan, j.f. en shields, d.c. 1992. the use of symbolic convergence theory in corporate strategic planning: a case study. journal of applied communication research 20: 199-218. 188 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 188 cragan, j.f. en shields, d.c. 1995. symbolic theories in applied communication research: bormann, burke and fisher. cresskill: hampton press. du preez, m. 2007. the rapport between finances and freedom. the star, 22 november: 20. groenewald, y. 2007. no holy cow too sacred. mail & guardian, 29 november: 14. harber, a. 2007. between the devil and du plessis. business day, 21 november: 11. harber, a. 2007a. a devilish predicament indeed for rapport’s tim du plessis. daily dispatch, 23 november: 9. harber, a. 2007b. wat maak ’n koerant as so ’n storm opsteek? rapport, 26 november: 16. higgens, j. 2008. redakteur hanteer bitsige aanvalle goed. rapport, 06 januarie: 15. kidd, v. 2008. fantasy theme analysis. 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(red.). the art of rhetorical criticism. boston: pearson education. uithaler, p. 2007. die ding met deon. die burger, 24 november: 7. van der westhuizen, c. 2007. jy kan afrikaners uit apartheid haal... maar kan jy apartheid uit afrikaners haal? volksblad: 1 desember: 16. van niekerk, a. 2007. tot dan weet ons om ons mond te hou. volksblad, 8 desember: 16. van wyk, e. en eybers, j. 2007. christene lug hul besware nie so. rapport. 18 november: 5. volksblad. 2007. de la rey se kode. 9 februarie: 8. walters, n. 2007. ’n spyker in die doodskis. die burger, 20 november: 13. 189 'n fantasietema-analise van maas se artikel '666 is net 'n syfer' 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 189 10. lydie & danie 11/18/11 4:00 pm page 190 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb 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5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice september 2006 131 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 131 150 mariekie burger* abstract in contrast to the concerns of scholars that the visual spectacle of television lulls audiences into passive consumption of pre-packaged entertainment, this article argues that popular television formats can address matters of social concern. it is shown that reality television and soap operas can engage the audience into actively taking part in 1) formulating messages for the television serials, 2) reflecting on the media messages, and 3) participating in identification processes. it is this active participation in formulating and reflecting on the televised messages and the identification processes (with the celebrity persona of the programme presenter and/or the fictional characters in the fictional soap opera and/or the authenticity of ordinary people that appear on reality television) that counters passive consumption of pre-packaged media entertainment. furthermore, if media entertainment is used to enhance dialogue through such audience participation regarding matters of social concern, the assumptions of the latest approaches to social change/development communication are adhered to. in this article four south african television programmes, soul city, kwanda, khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7, are discussed as edutainment programmes that actively seek to address matters of social concern. * dr mariekie burger lectures in the department of communication and media studies at the university of johannesburg introduction the field of development communication has evolved over time to include all communicative human interaction that seeks to enhance the well-being of humans as far as social change/developmental issues are concerned. increasingly, visual images on television play a prime role in such communicative events. the television genre of soap operas has been used extensively to facilitate communication on matters of social concern. on the one hand, the visual medium of television has been criticised for turning the masses as “spectators” into passive consumers of mediated messages (littlejohn & foss 2005: 293–295; merrin 2005: 17–21; debord 2006: 117–121). in this sense “visual spectacle” refers to the legacy of debord’s (2006: 117–121) notion of the “spectacle society”: society tends to choose the media spectacle and passive entertainment above actively participating in creating entertainment for itself. this passive consumption of pre-packaged media entertainment displaces active participation and authentic experiences (debord 2006: 117–121). baudrillard (2005: 460–462) further develops this view, arguing that the media creates simulated experiences of enjoyment to the extent that such experiences are seen as improving on real authentic experiences (simulacra). this is one further step in reducing media audiences to passive consumers of messages. on the other hand, proponents of edutainment argue that television and other popular cultural media can make a meaningful contribution towards addressing matters of social concern, as they provide people with time to reflect through emotional identification rather than conceptual reasoning (fuenzalida 2006: 715–717). fuenzalida (2006: 715–717) argues that the concept of the visual spectacle does not need to be seen in opposition to pro-social educational messages, but that the two concepts are often integrated in latin america. fuenzalida (2006: 715–717) therefore argues that entertaining visual spectacles can be used as a fruitful vehicle for pro-social messages that advocate social change/development. it is this latter train of thought that is associated with the newer approaches to social change/development, where the assumption is that social/developmental problems are complex and not necessarily merely the consequence of a lack of information (carlsson 2005: 211–212; mefalopulos 2005: 158–159; servaes & malikhao 2005: 93; waisbord 2001: 3–15). proponents of these newer approaches to social change/development argue that social and developmental problems may be the result of a lack of information, but may also be a result of structural problems often associated with geopolitical inequality (eriksen 2005: 36–37; mefalopulos 2005: 158–159). consequently, human rights issues such as inequality and oppression should also be addressed. in the process, care should be taken to address the non-material aspects of diversity, culture, identity, and human dignity to ensure that social change/developmental efforts do not impair the individual members of society’s chances of empowerment, self-efficacy and finding meaning in their own lives (burger 2008: 107–113; carlsson 2005: 211–212; mefalopulos 2005: 158–159; servaes & malikhao 2005: 93; singhal & rogers 2004: v15). 132 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television edutainment,1 a well-established practice in the field of social change/development,2 combines educational messages with entertainment to address a range of social/development issues. edutainment can influence audiences’ awareness levels, attitudes and behaviour toward a socially desirable end, and it can influence the audiences’ external environment to help create the necessary conditions for social change at the system level (singhal & rogers 2004: 5–6). a wide variety of edutainment efforts exist, ranging from national programmes to small-scale community efforts; from reliance on research to reliance on intuition and creativity of the production staff; and from a few lines in the media to a long-running edutainment series on national television (singhal & rogers 2004: 8–9). a variety of communicators are used in edutainment, including ordinary people, actors and celebrity performers (singhal & rogers 2004: 9). some edutainment initiatives focus on widening the audiences’ knowledge, while some focus on individual self-efficacy or collective efficacy – that is, the perceived capacity to deal effectively with a situation or the perceived control over one’s situation (singhal & rogers 2004: 15). in this article the edutainment aspects of two television genres, the soap opera and reality television, are investigated. the particular examples investigated are the south african broadcasting corporation’s (sabc) soap opera soul city and the reality television serials kwanda, khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7. edutainment, audience participation and the soap opera soul city the early roots of edutainment can be traced to mexican telenovellas, where a dramatic crisis spurs exciting intrigues and tension between members of a well-established family (sabido 2004: 69, 71). cliff-hanging excitement heightens this tension and after 250 one-hour episodes a resolution between the protagonists and antagonists is found and a new social and family order is established (sabido 2004: 69, 71). drawing on latin american telenovellas, miguel sabido drafted his own edutainment telenovellas model (poindexter 2004: 26–28). in so doing sabido incorporated “educational” messages through ensuring that a) the protagonists share the value system of the audience; b) the antagonists’ values are rejected by the audience; and c) the satellite characters who have to choose between the two value systems, choose the value system of the protagonists (sabido 2004: 70). the sabido model ensured further that the satellite characters are framed in such a way that the audience identifies with them, and when they are swayed towards the protagonists’ value system, the audience follows (sabido 2004: 70). the focus of this form of edutainment thus falls on using the telenovellas format in combination with a deliberate educational message. the sabido model provided the blueprint for contemporary dramatic serial telenovellas and soap operas in the edutainment mode, and these have evolved over three generations of edutainment programming. this first generation edutainment programming has a persuasive orientation, where information is transmitted to an audience with normative and behavioural change in 133 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television mind (tufte 2004: 699). programmes usually focus on transmitting health-related information (singhal & rogers 2004: 8) and are often accompanied by the promotion of foreign cultural practices (tufte 2004: 699). the implication is that an external change agent formulates persuasive educational messages and presents them through an entertaining format to relatively passive recipients with the aim of persuading the audience to change its values, norms and behaviour. in contrast to this persuasive orientation, the second generation of edutainment programming moved from one-directional messages towards a situation where the audience would start to be involved in creating messages for television programmes. from the perspective of the second-generation edutainment programmes, the root of developmental problems was a lack of information and skills due to structural inequalities (tufte 2004: 699). this generation of edutainment programming generally follows the contours of postcolonial thinking, attributing social problems and issues largely to geopolitical and other inequalities. for this reason a partnership between change agents and developing communities is suggested, leading to greater public and private debate than in the case of the first-generation edutainment programmes (tufte 2004: 699). the outcome of second-generation edutainment is, however, still seen as change in the norms and behaviour of the audience and/or structures or institutions of power (tufte 2004: 699). the third generation of edutainment programmes evolved still further away from the primarily one-directional communication process implied in the first two generations of edutainment. from this newer perspective the reasons for social problems are lack of information, structural inequalities, unequal power relations and social conflict (tufte 2004: 699). edutainment is consequently seen as a process of using popular culture to help communities articulate and discuss social problems (tufte 2004: 699). the implication is that, instead of assuming that the solution to social problems and social issues is a matter of simply changing the norms and behaviour of individuals, it is proposed that the solution to social problems lies in addressing the possible lack of information, inequalities, and a complex range of contextual aspects. in contextually addressing social problems these problems should in the first place be articulated collectively by the developing community, and secondly the structural problems need to be addressed through a citizenry that actively seeks solutions for complex problems. one of the ways of articulating, investigating and eliciting social dialogue about social and developmental problems is through the serial drama. the serial drama forms the backbone of edutainment programmes, mostly in the form of a soap opera or edutainment telenovellas. the appeal of the serial drama lies in its use of the dramatic to draw on the emotions of audience members and subsequently to facilitate emotional identification. various scholars (cf. fuenzalida 2006: 715–717; tufte 2004: 401, 410–411; piotrow & de fossard 2004: 39) argue that it is a mistake to see emotions as unimportant and irrational, because emotion is one of the prime motivational principles of behaviour. in his large-scale brazilian study of women’s experiences of telenovellas, tufte (2004: 411–412) confirmed this: he found that the use of the dramatic to elicit 134 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television emotions increased social dialogue and debate, even regarding controversial or taboo issues, and that it socialised viewers into new lifestyles and articulate cultural citizenship. tufte (2004: 410–411) also found that if the settings focus on everyday realities the emotional attachment of the viewer is even stronger. the tendency for audiences’ emotional involvement in serial dramas to stimulate discussion was also confirmed by piotrow and de fossard (2004: 39). moreover, the emotive effect of audiences’ identification with actors, and the stimulation of dialogue that this induces, is enhanced when serial dramas span many episodes – sometimes years or even decades. after long and repeated exposure to the characters of soap operas some audience members develop parasocial relationships with fictional characters. a parasocial relationship is a pseudo-relationship that forms after long-term exposure of audience members to real people or fictional characters in the media (brown & fraser 2004: 103–105). identification is stronger if characters are depicted in credible ways, for instance where they experience setbacks similar to those in real life and they then overcome these (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 51). it has been found that if this identification process takes place over a long time-span it is stronger (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 51). in long-running serials credible characters with which audience members form parasocial relationship can evolve into strong credible role models (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 39). these relationships are powerful as they often have the effect that the audience member wants to be like the celebrity, and adopts his/her values, beliefs and behaviour, including his/her clothing, manner of speaking and lifestyle (brown & fraser 2004: 103–105). the powerful effect of such psychological and emotional attachments between the audience and media persona has been researched and confirmed extensively (brown & fraser 2004: 103). it has been found in many studies that more audience members identify with positive role models than with negative role models (brown & fraser 2004: 107–110). it has further been found that greater identification with a celebrity role model will produce greater audience awareness of the issue at hand and actual change in values and behaviour (brown & fraser 2004: 107–110; cf. sood, menard & witte 2004: 129). the longevity of serials has the further benefit of allowing complexity in terms of main and subplots as well as a range of characters that explore the complexity of social issues (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 51). this results in a rather realistic social context that mirrors society and creates multiple opportunities to present a social issue. furthermore, it offers the possibility of presenting different perspectives, which could subsequently stimulate the audience to critically engage with the message of the serial (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 51). to summarise: the serial drama has the edutainment benefits of emotional identification with the celebrity characters, which stimulates social discussions and allows for the complexity of a situation to be investigated. the likely effect is that the audience members will be more aware of the social issue at hand and social dialogue will be elicited. serials could thus induce a change in values, norms and behaviour through audience identification with a character. 135 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television a prime example of the third generation of edutainment programmes is found in the efforts of the soul city institute for health and development communication. the work of the soul city institute includes, firstly, the television soap opera soul city, which, in a manner similar to the first generation of edutainment programming, conveys health and development information in a deliberately persuasive manner (cf. sood, menard & witte 2004: 132). soul city is persuasive because it has the purpose of increasing the audience’s knowledge about a particular social issue; changing attitudes; shifting social norms; and changing individual and collective behaviour (usdin, singhal, shongwe, goldstein & shabalala 2004: 155). in its nine seasons since 1994 soul city has sought to instruct people through information and attitudinal and behavioural change on a wide range of social issues: maternal and child health, hiv/aids prevention, housing, land reform, the control of tuberculosis and tobacco usage, alcohol abuse, energy conservation, violence prevention, violence against women, youth sexuality and aids, hypertension, personal finance, small business development, access to hiv/aids treatment, cervical cancer, health equity, and masculinity in south africa (the soul city institute for health and development communication 2010; usdin et al. 2004: 156). the second focus of the soul city institute is to combine its advocacy with supportive environments for change (sood, menard & witte 2004: 132). it is this quest to address structural problems that moves the work of the soul city institute from the first to the third generation edutainment programme category. in this regard the soul city institute’s work includes using multiple media in promoting its message, but also other efforts to address unsupportive structures. in order to both address the audience’s lack of knowledge and the structural problems associated with addressing the social problem at hand a lengthy research process is used. the research process is not unique to soul city: singhal and rogers (2004: 6) mention that edutainment programmes generally benefit from formative, process and summative research. the soul city institute’s formative research process spans several months before each soul city season, and includes stakeholder consultations, literature reviews, case studies, general audience research and workshops with various stakeholders (usdin et al. 2004: 156). in preparation for the soap opera’s fourth season, soul city iv, which addressed the issue of violence against women, workshops with the national network on violence against women and other stakeholder organisations were held (usdin et al. 2004: 156). members of such organisations provided valuable insight into both the victim and male perpetrator, which helped the soul city institute team members to gain both a “male” and a “female” perspective on the issue (usdin et al. 2004: 156). before writing the script, consultations with other stakeholders such as government and civil society officials were also held. some of these stakeholder consultations made the soul city institute aware of the possibility that women could, after exposure to the television series, take action that could place them at an increased risk of harm by their male partners (usdin et al. 2004: 157). thus a toll-free telephone helpline was instituted by 136 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television the soul city institute to act as a “safety net” for abused women (usdin et al. 2004: 157). the research process furthermore included studying traditional conceptions of gender: this revealed that men teach their sons to be “captains of the ship”, while girls were socialised by their mothers “to endure” (usdin et al. 2004: 157). from studying various sets of literature the soul city institute research team learned that while abused women show a strong desire to seek recourse from the law, various structural barriers prevented them from seeking help, including the indifference of health workers, the police, and the judiciary (usdin et al. 2004: 157). for this reason the soul city institute team decided to depict the reality of police indifference and apathy to domestic violence and, in the television serial, brought the message home of how police, legal, and health workers should have behaved (usdin et al. 2004: 157). actual soul city iv scenes were used to develop training material for police, and legal and health workers (usdin et al. 2004: 157). the soul city institute team further learned that the south african society largely sees domestic violence as a “private affair” and for that reason neighbours do not interfere or seek to prevent it (usdin et al. 2004: 157). following the latin american practice of neighbours banging pots the minute they know that domestic violence is taking place, this practice was introduced to the south african society through soul city iv (usdin et al. 2004: 163). in this sense pot banging is a form of passive resistance and through using female domestic symbols such as pots, women’s liberation from domestic violence is sought (usdin et al. 2004: 163). in most edutainment programmes the formative research includes researching audience needs and preferences to ensure that the type of characters and situations tie in with what audiences find credible (singhal & rogers 2004: 6). with soul city iv it was no different, as the initial script was tested with various stakeholder organisations and members of the public and adjusted as a result of their objections and the credibility of the story line and characters (usdin et al. 2004: 158–167). summative research found that the soul city message reached 80% of the south african population (singhal & rogers 2004: 8). this success is not solely attributed to soul city, but to its combining with the other soul city institute initiatives that sought, inter alia, to address structural problems that prevent the soul city message from being successful (such as indifference amongst the police, health workers and legal workers). other initiatives that reinforce the soul city message include the “one love” campaign, the children’s television soap opera series soul buddyz, which conveyed pro-social messages on television and through its internet site and soul buddyz club, action4children (direct support for child projects), the short reality television series kwanda, which was presented in the form of a competition between various community-based developmental projects, and an interactive website with blogging opportunities (the soul city institute for health and development communication 2010). this discussion of the work of the soul city institute demonstrates that the television soap opera series soul city is essentially a first-generation television soap opera due to 137 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television its persuasive educational stance towards addressing developmental efforts. the baseline soul city message is created by “experts” outside the audience. this includes scientific health information (for instance regarding the working of hiv/aids) or human rights information (for instance that domestic violence is a violation of human rights). what moves soul city into the third generation of edutainment is firstly the fact that some audience involvement is evident in the formulation of the communication message. this includes the development of the storyline, the dialogue, choice of characters, and so on. consequently, even if members of the audience do not have expert information, they sanction it by participating in the process of helping to facilitate the message. the soul city case has shown, in contrast to the general conception that it is not practical for large-scale edutainment programmes to be participatory (cf. storey & jacobson 2004: 418), that it is indeed possible to obtain some form of audience participation in a large edutainment effort. participation is furthermore seen in audiences’ active identification with characters in soul city. soul city is thus not an example of a television spectacle that lulls audiences into passively consuming mass-mediated entertainment. a second factor that moves soul city into the third generation of edutainment programmes is that the other activities of the soul city institute reinforce the message through its other television programmes, the use of the internet for transmitting information and creating a virtual community through blogging, and its campaigns. a third factor is that the workings of the soul city institute include addressing the structural obstacles to social change/development – for example, in the case of soul city iv, addressing the unresponsiveness of the police, judiciary and health workers. these aspects put soul city in line with the latest thinking on social change/development communication, which assumes that social and development problems might be attributed to a lack of information, but that structural inequalities should also be addressed. in the next section three reality television serials, kwanda, khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7, are discussed, and it is shown that these have even greater audience participation than soul city and that, moreover, they reflect the latest thinking on social change/development – namely, empowerment and self-efficacy. reality television, the visual spectacle and edutainment the advantages of the soap opera serial with its focus on dramatic emotions, possible identification with characters, and the audience being (to a certain extent) involved in formulating pro-social messages can also be utilised in reality television. this genre includes a large number of formats – for instance, soap-docs (airport); game programmes (survivor); romantic excursion programmes (relate – rate my date); talk television programmes (3 talk with noeleen or oprah); voyeuristic programmes (big brother); self-actualisation programmes; home improvement programmes; social experiment programmes (temptation island); concealed camera programmes (candid camera); and programmes that include the supernatural (hill 2005: 8–11, 20–23; huff 138 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television 2006: 13–21; andrejevic 2004: 3–6). the genre also includes a variety of other such shows that frequently change their formula in order to satisfy audiences’ need for new types of mediated entertainment. in order to continuously satisfy audience hunger for the dramatic, reality shows tend to increase their dramatic intensity to include more challenging competitions, more spectacular footage, to offer more emotional moments, and so forth. reality television thus excels in presenting visual spectacles. reality television not only boasts dramatic emotional visual spectacles, but does so in real terms. reality television is, in contrast to the fictional edutainment soap opera, “real” as it is non-fictional, non-scripted, non-contrived, non-staged, and, in a way, factual (andrejevic 2004: 8–12, 81; crew 2006: 61, 68–70). andrejevic (2004: 8–12) argues that the appeal of reality television lies in its being real (the “appeal of the real”), or at least offers itself to the audience to be experienced as real. the sense of “realness” is further enhanced by the use of ordinary people who convey their own unique life stories in their own authentic ways, often revealing their gut reactions and emotions (crew 2006: 61, 68–70). these stories are not scripted, even though the situations in which the programme participants are put when telling their own life story might be well-calculated. reality television is thus real, in stark contrast to the “contrived” nature of the scripted “stories” of soap operas. the use of ordinary people in reality television seems to enhance audience identification: firstly by virtue of the fact that it is real (not staged/acted by professional actors), and secondly by the use of ordinary people (hill 2006: 59–61). audience members might think that the participants appearing on reality television “are like me, in fact, it could have been me, my sister, or my neighbour” (andrejevic 2004: 86–88). the processes of audience identification are thus greatly enhanced due to reality television’s being more believable. it can thus be said that reality television gives ordinary people the power to express their deepest emotions publicly. because these emotions are real (and not staged, as in the case of fictional characters of a soap opera), the audience tends to experience the emotions as real and tends to identify with the emotions. reality television may very well give audience members the sense that they could have produced the message themselves. audience participation also happens on a second level, namely that the actual participant on the reality television programme is empowered to have his/her say or to tell his/her life story (andrejevic 2004: 5–7; hill 2006: 59–61). the actual participant on the reality television programme might feel that “i am worth listening to” (andrejevic 2004: 86–88). herein lies the crux of the social change/developmental orientation of reality television: the actual participation in producing the communication message of the programme, both from the participant’s point of view and that of the audience. one of the largest factors threatening the success of edutainment initiatives is that edutainment is not acceptable for cultural, traditional and other reasons (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 45–47). this can be overcome in reality television, as ordinary people formulate messages in their own ways – often directly addressing cultural, traditional and other normative positions. soul city overcame the potential problem of presenting 139 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television foreign cultural, traditional and other norms by testing the storyline and script with members of the intended audience. in reality television, however, this “testing” is not necessary, as audience members formulate the messages themselves. the fact that audiences formulate the messages of reality television means that they are empowered in the sense suggested by the latest thinking in the field of social change/development. instead of focusing on information transmission, problems associated with inequality and social structures can be exposed, and in this way the individual community member appearing on the screen experiences the first steps of self-efficacy by expressing concern and other views regarding a particular situation. this might furthermore lead to public discussions, social debate, and dialogue regarding issues of social concern. a few examples will suffice to prove that it is indeed possible to use the genre of reality television as edutainment. one such example is found in india. in 2002 and 2003 a 40-episode edutainment reality television show aimed at creating aware of hiv/aids among children was broadcast (singhal & rogers 2004: 10). the show followed the journey of two buses, one for boys and one for girls, on their way to delhi (singhal & rogers 2004: 10). along the journey the children and the show presenters talked about hiv/aids, and the children undertook various creative and entertaining activities (singhal & rogers 2004: 10–11). one such activity investigates who was least embarrassed to buy a condom, and another was a role-playing game where the advances of the opposite sex were repulsed (singhal & rogers 2004: 10–11). every now and then the routes of the two buses coincided, and then further educational activities took place – each with the aim of enhancing knowledge about hiv/aids (singhal & rogers 2004: 10–11). this show reported a 12% positive change in sexual behaviour of the target groups four months after the broadcasts began (singhal & rogers 2004: 11). why this serial is significant for the edutainment debate is that ordinary people (actually children who are not actors) formulated the serial’s message – albeit within the constraints of the serial master plot. through participation in the serial the children had the opportunity to gain information and assess it. the fact that they were real and ordinary enhanced the audience’s chances of identifying with the children. this serial furthermore had a documentary quality, as the journey of the children’s learning about hiv/aids was documented. this “docu-reality” genre, which is a well-established format, is perceived by audiences as “real”. three more examples of reality television documenting a journey of discovery regarding social issues are found in the form of the sabc1 programmes kwanda, khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7. kwanda (which means “communities with soul”) is a reality television series that was broadcast once a week on sabc1 between 2 september and 23 november 2009. the serial followed the activities of five volunteer teams that worked to make a difference in their respective communities by ensuring that children had enough to eat and by reducing violent crime (kwanda 2010: online). in the television series, each team’s 140 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television quest to help their communities were documented and viewers had to vote for the winning team – the team that the audience thought made the biggest difference to the community. in this sense documentary and a competition/game show elements were combined in this reality series, enhancing its sense of being real and adding excitement to the project. the five teams were made up of 50 volunteers of each of the participating communities: pefferville (near east london, eastern cape), umthwalume (near port shepstone and hibberdene, kwazulu-natal), tjakastad (near barberton, mpumalanga), lepepane (near tzaneen, limpopo) and kwakwatsi (near sasolburg, free state) (kwanda 2010: online). the 50 participants chosen by each community attended a five-week training camp to acquire new skills, learn how to organise themselves and devise a social change plan for their community (kwanda 2010: online). ten participants of each team received further training in fashion design and sewing, and this enabled them to partake in the kwanda klothing project, which was launched during the television serial (kwanda 2010: online). kwanda did not have a single message, but, as mentioned earlier in this article, formed part of the workings of the soul city institute for health and development communication. kwanda is thus, by implication, linked to the other activities of the soul city institute, making it a multiple-media effort as it uses more than one avenue for its message. the kwanda message is supported by the kwanda internet website, which seeks to help communities that want to help themselves to “start kwanda” in their communities – in this sense “kwanda” refers to bettering one’s community (kwanda 2010: online). apart from the “starting kwanda” section, the kwanda website offers information regarding hiv/aids, discusses concerns around multiple concurrent sexual partners, and presents information regarding problems associated with alcohol abuse and how to deal with it. various taboo issues are addressed directly on the website and on the social networking and blogging sections of the site (kwanda 2010: online). these interactive opportunities on the website are used by the public to ask for information regarding health and developmental issues; such requests are followed by a reply, which often sparks long discussions (kwanda 2010: online). this brief discussion of kwanda illustrates that it, soul city and the other efforts associated with these two programmes collectively seek to address matters of social concern. the messages of soul city and the other ventures of the soul city institute are enhanced through kwanda, even though the kwanda series was mainly aimed at addressing violence and caring for children. it seems that these initiatives seek to address the moral fibre of society and presents self-help opportunities. these efforts are cast in entertainment formats. the initiatives of the soul city institute provide a wide variety of options for the public to participate not only communication-wise, but also to actively participate in their own communities, to gain information, and, if they so wish, to change behaviour. both kwanda and soul city are in a particular way based on externally formulated messages: the baseline message of soul city consists of “expert” information being 141 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television conveyed, while in the case of kwanda the parameters within which each team participated were predetermined. in kwanda the journey, plan and actual words spoken by each team are authentic, giving it a distinctive quality of realness that marks reality television. kwanda is more “real” than soul city: instead of being scripted, ordinary people participate in the televised competition in their own authentic ways. kwanda is also more “real” than the hiv/aids reality serial in india, as it is set within the everyday realities of communities. not only do the participants of kwanda talk (as on the indian bus), but they also take responsibility for their own futures by actively doing something about their fate and the fate of others. another element that enhances the “realness” in kwanda is that the participants remain in their community, where emotions and the dramatic are easily elicited. kwanda was broadcast for a period of three months only, and the identification of the viewing audience with the community members could therefore not have been that pronounced. in contrast, two other south african sabc edutainment reality television serials have been running for several years: khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7 boast a wellknown kwaito music celebrity as presenter, and in each episode of both serials different members of the public are invited to participate, and they appear on television. the purpose of both serials is to help these participants in different ways. as new participants appear on these two serials every week, there is no possibility of audiences identifying with them, but this is compensated for by the possibility of identifying with the celebrity persona presenting the serial. the celebrity persona is used in both serials to represent the “good” in society working towards a good social cause. such “aid celebrities” act as emotional sovereigns, where the sovereign manifests in the “true will of the people” – the celebrities speak the truth on behalf of the people (richley & ponte 2008: 719). aid celebrities thus embody the “good” in society (richley & ponte 2008: 719). such aid celebrities can say things in much more persuasive ways than “experts” can, given these celebrities’ “field experiences” (richley & ponte 2008: 719). they often do so in a rather sensational and emotional way, with the purpose of bolstering support for a specific social cause (richley & ponte 2008: 719). such totemic aid celebrities merge disparate longings into a new social modality, namely the search for “meaning” among ordinary people. they also help various social causes – usually in an emotional fashion to get the “people” behind them and in doing so gaining support for the cause (richley & ponte 2008: 719). indeed, it has been found that celebrity endorsements have a far greater positive impact on the public than non-celebrity endorsements (byrne, whitehead & green 2003: 393). both khumbul’ekhaya and zola 7 follow this “aid celebrity” line by using celebrities who speak on the basis of their “own field experiences”. the presenter of khumbul’ekhaya was raped, while the presenter of zola 7 comes from a broken family, has a criminal background and comes from a violence and crime-stricken suburb. their own field experiences thus speak “the truth” regarding social and developmental issues. 142 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television khumbul’ekhaya (which means “remember home”) is presented by andile carelse (nee gaelesiwe), a female kwaito star who revealed during her radio show on gauteng youth radio station (yfm) that she was raped as a child (gsport 2007: online). carelse’s disclosure was spurred by a young woman who called in to the radio station threatening to commit suicide because she had been sexually abused (who’s who sa 2007: online). after this disclosure, carelse decided to take action and founded the open disclosure foundation (odf) in 2002, which empowers young people to talk about abuse and to seek help (gsport 2007: online). the slogan for the odf is “talking is therapy and therapy is healing” (speakers of note 2009: online). after establishing odf, carelse became the presenter of khumbul’ekhaya. in the serial the real journeys of south africans on a quest to re-unite families and bring healing to families are followed (sabc1 2010: online; tvsa 2006: online). these journeys include tracing long-lost relatives, finding estranged family members, and healing longstanding family feuds (sabc1 2010: online). the aim of the serial is to show how, through reconciliation and forgiveness, broken family relationships can be healed (tvsa 2006: online). the “heartwarming” series “spark[s] laughter and tears, as viewers reflect on their own family relationships and are moved to implement positive change in their own homes” (sabc1 2010: online). this emphasis on emotions has led to the serial being described as a docu-reality series that uses emotainment (emotional entertainment) (sabc1 2010: online; tvsa 2006: online). carelse has also written a book for school-going young people entitled claiming back your soul (gsport 2007: online). this and other socially responsible work won her a clinton democracy fellowship (gsport 2007: online) and in 2009 khumbul’ekhaya won a national film and video foundation safta golden horn in the category factual entertainment programme (national film and video foundation 2009: online; society news 2009: online). this, together with her radio work and her fame as a kwaito artist, makes her not only a celebrity but an advocate for pro-social change. this short introduction to carelse and khumbul’ekhaya shows that the serial, like soul city and kwanda, is not a once-off effort that exists in isolation, but is supported by other efforts. the aim of the serial is thus not only to help the participants of the reality television programme, but also to elicit public discussion or dialogue about the issues of social concern addressed in the programme and in carelse’s other activities. the possibility of identification with the serial participants is not excluded, but carelse’s positive role model offers an identification opportunity with a celebrity. the reality serial zola 7 also uses a celebrity as a presenter, a triple platinum kwaito music star (bassline 2009: online). zola (bonginkosi thuthikani dlamini) has presented this reality television programme with a pro-social message since 2003. in each episode of the series an audience member who has a dream is helped to achieve his/her dream (discogs 2009: online; tvsa 2009: online). the dreams usually have to do with social (developmental) issues, such as seeking food and resource sponsors for communities and centres; finding equipment for teachers who without it cannot provide 143 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television schooling; solving family crises and restoring good relationships; and encouraging people to accept themselves and others, to show respect, not to harbour prejudices and to be more tolerant (tvsa 2009: online). like carelse, the host of the series is a wellknown celebrity in south africa: zola is not only a renowned musician, but is also known for his acting roles in tsotsi and yizo yizo 2 (clayton-millar 2006: online). moreover, he is a well-established entrepreneur with his own clothing brand (discogs 2009: online; cf. fnb 2009: online), and is co-branded with the telecommunications company cell c (in the form of the hola7 cell phone starter pack) (cell c 2009: online). zola is also a public figure who is part of the united nations’ celebrity team and often talks at public forums presenting pro-social messages (unicef 2006: online) – an example of this is his appearance at the 2007 world aids day (marketingweb 2007: online). zola’s media and entertainment company, guluva, releases his and other music albums. the term “guluva” is associated with the culture around kwaito and is a greeting to someone who comes from a severely disadvantaged background and who “made it big”. (an analogous term would be the skateboarding fraternity’s “top dog”.) zola owes this name to his childhood years in the violence-stricken soweto township of zola, where he grew up without a father and where, as a juvenile, he was associated with car theft (cell c 2009: online; independent online 2006: online; owen 2009: online; insideout 2010: online). the controversy of his private life does not belong only to the past, however: from time to time the media reports his antisocial behaviour – his extramarital children, for example, and how badly he allegedly treats his girlfriends (khumalo 2007: online; pillay 2009: 14–17; chauke 2010: online). his controversial private life is also discussed widely on the internet and in blogs (cf. afritude 2007; holgate 2009; khumalo 2007; pillay 2009: 14–17; chauke 2010). in the television serial, however, he often addresses the male viewer directly, motivating men to stay faithful and to be involved in the lives of their children. the problem with zola’s public image is that it does not support his pro-social work in his television serial. despite this problem, it can be said that the genre of reality television offers the possibility to ordinary members of the public to appear on the serial and to have their say, to get their problems addressed. those not part of these select few have the opportunity to identify with the ordinary people who participate in the serial and/or with the celebrity persona of the presenter. edutainment scholars singhal and rogers (2004: 10) are sceptical about the merits of the more established forms of reality television such as survivor, the jerry springer show, temptation island and big brother, arguing that they valorise lewdness, sexual irresponsibility, greed, and other antisocial messages. nonetheless, it is possible for reality television to be employed as edutainment. edutaining reality television gives audiences the opportunity to formulate messages and to identify with the celebrity persona and/or the participants on the serial. viewer identification with participants is enhanced by the fact that they are ordinary people with real emotions, often depicted in their everyday environments. 144 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television conclusion this article assumes that social change/development efforts should focus on three aspects, namely to address a possible lack of information; to address matters regarding structural inequality; and to provide opportunities to explore self-efficacy, identity and other intangible aspects related to social change/development. based on this assumption this article emphasizes a number of points. firstly, it has been argued that edutainment soap operas and reality television both use emotional and dramatic elements to attract audiences. the soap opera uses these elements to forge the audience’s identification with fictional characters, who in time achieve celebrity status. for its part, reality television provides the opportunity for viewers to identify with celebrity presenters and/or ordinary members of the public who participate in the serial. identification with ordinary people is a particularly strong form of identification because these people are “real” people in their everyday environments. the second point made above is that the scripted nature of soap operas (where the message is tested with audiences and other stakeholders) means that it belongs to the persuasive first generation of edutainment programming, while reality television’s unscripted nature makes it more real. the third point is that edutainment messages are stronger if they are reinforced through other media such as the internet and if they address structural problems (such as the indifference of the police, health workers, and the judiciary system addressed by soul city iv). this means that the messages conveyed by a soap opera or reality television serial in isolation are not that effective in addressing matters of social concern in terms of information transmission. they also do not address structural inequalities, nor provide opportunities for self-efficacy and identification. the last point is that edutainment genres such as soap operas and reality television serials can be fruitfully used for pro-social messages and addressing issues of social concern. the participatory nature of these genres poses a real challenge to scholars who object that the visual spectacle of television lulls audiences into passive entertainment consumption. endnotes 1 edutainment (education through entertainment) is also referred to as “enter-educate” or “e-e” (piotrow & de fossard 2004: 51). 2 “development communication”, “communication for social change” (tufte 2004: 403) and “participatory communication for development” (storey & jacobson 2004: 417) are used as synonyms in this article, and are captured in the term “social change/development”. 145 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television references afritude. 2007. do you know … zola7? 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[accessed on 2009/09/14]. 150 the ‘visual spectacle’ of soap opera and reality television: soul city, zola 7, khumbul’ekhaya and kwanda as edutainment 1. paul schutte 89 organisations as change-agents in hiv/aids programmes through participatory communication communitas issn 1023-0556 2009 14: 89 104 lynnette fourie en elbé kloppers* abstract statistics indicate that hiv/aids is primarily a problem of developing societies. more than a decade of attempts to address the hiv/aids pandemic have demonstrated that traditional communication strategies are not as successful in such societies as anticipated. rather, a participatory approach has been found to be more suitable for communicating developing issues such as hiv/aids. the organisational environment appears ideally suitable for the implementation of a participatory approach because of the opportunity it offers for interpersonal contact and feedback. against this background, this article investigates the quality of participation in the hiv/aids programmes of five south african organisations, by evaluating how these a) fulfil their instructional or educational role; b) act as platforms for dialogue and provide a means for participants to voice their needs; and c) represent or are sensitive to cultural values. semi-structured interviews were conducted with the hiv/aids coordinators of the organisations in order to determine what their programmes entailed. the perceptions of employees and community members regarding the hiv/aids programmes were investigated through focus groups. results indicate that the employees and community members are most satisfied with the programme they take part in and identify the organisation as the most important source of information on hiv/aids. however, the programmes under investigation were not all found to be fully participatory. * professor lynnette fourie and elbé kloppers both lecture in the school of communication studies at the north-west university’s potchefstroom campus. orientation and problem statement in considering hiv/aids statistics, it is evident that although hiv/aids is a worldwide phenomenon developing societies are the most affected by a considerable margin. in 2005, 95% of all new hiv/aids infections occurred in developing countries (unaids/who 2005). sub-saharan africa remains the most seriously affected region, as 76% of all hiv/aids-related deaths occurred in this region in 2007 (unaids/who 2007: 4&6). the significance of this statistic is made apparent in noting that just over ten percent of the world’s population lives in this region, while more than two thirds (68%) of adults and almost 90% of all children who are hivpositive live in sub-saharan africa (unaids/who 2007: 7). south africa currently is the country with the highest number of hiv/aids infections in the world (unaids/who 2007: 16). from this, it is evident that although there are many implemented hiv/aids programmes these have not been as successful as anticipated. a possible reason for the relative ineffectiveness of south africa’s hiv/aids programmes is that these programmes initially addressed hiv/aids as a medical problem only and not as a development issue. in recent literature, there is consensus that hiv/aids extends beyond being a medical problem and thus the social context in which hiv/aids is embedded also needs to be addressed. this implies that communication plays an integral part in combating hiv/aids (saga 2002: 14). in the developing world, hiv/aids is a complex issue and should be viewed within a broader development context (cf. gilbert & walker 2002: 651; loewensen & whiteside 1997: 4-6; tsafack-temah 2004: 4; saga 2002: 14). it has become evident that various socio-economic (for example income inequalities, gender discrimination, a mobile population), socio-cultural (religious and cultural practices, ethnic diversity, access to information) and epidemiological variables (presence of other sexually transmitted infections (stis), condom use) influence the prevalence of hiv/aids in the developing world. in addition, hiv/aids affects all levels of society, for example cultural, economic, and religious levels (cf. gilbert & walker 2002: 654 & 658-659; loewensen & whiteside 1997: 19; tsafack-tema 2004; aicc/sabcoha 2006). owing to the complexity of the issues surrounding hiv/aids, it is evident that communication can play a vital role in combating hiv/aids. it is widely accepted that the participatory approach is the norm for communication in a development context. however, communication on hiv/aids is one of the more complicated issues to which to apply participatory communication. in the case of hiv/aids, the developer assumes the role of expert to some extent and thus it is not possible to consider only the needs of the community. certain information needs to be communicated and this implies a top-down approach. using organisations and peer group educators as disseminators of information are some of the strategies applied to explore approaches that are more participatory regarding communication on hiv/aids. the organisational environment is ideally suitable for participatory approaches, owing to the opportunity it offers for interpersonal contact 90 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication and feedback. against this background, this article investigates the quality of participation in the hiv/aids programmes of five south african organisations. theoretical framework the change-agent the concept change-agent can be traced back to the theory of diffusion of innovations. diffusion of innovations is informed by the modernisation paradigm, which conceptualises communication as top-down from extension worker to rural farmer. diffusion is briefly described as a process through which an innovation (new idea) is conveyed by means of communication channels to members of a social system (rogers 2004: 13). diffusion thus implies some kind of social change within a social system, such as public health. this diffusion process entails five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation (haider & kreps 2004: 4); this thus emphasises the linear and behaviour change premises dominant in the modernisation paradigm. the initial application of the diffusion of innovations was the study of the introduction of new and more modern farming techniques by rural farmers. the principles of diffusion of innovations also spread to other disciplines including health communication, particularly communication regarding hiv/aids prevention (rogers 2004: 17-19). the change-agent is central in this process of diffusion. rogers (1983: 315-317) defines seven consecutive roles of the change-agent: • to develop a need for social change; • to establish an information-exchange relationship; • to diagnose problems; • to create an intent in the client to change; • to translate an intent to change; • to stabilise an adoption and prevent discontinuance; and • to achieve a terminal relationship. these consecutive roles imply a linear model, which is collaborated by rogers’ (1983: 312) definition of a change-agent: “… an individual who influences a client’s innovation-decisions deemed desirable by a change agency”. within this conceptualisation, it is clear that the change-agent has a highly persuasive role and represents the values of the change-agency and not necessarily the needs of the community. interestingly, rogers’ (1971) earlier definition of a change-agent allowed more scope for participatory communication: … a professional person who attempts to influence adoption decisions in a direction that change can be tailored to fit the cultural values and past experiences of the 91 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication clients and that the clients should be enabled to perceive the need for an innovation, a necessity for it to be successfully introduced. as ascroft and agunga (1994: 419) aptly argue, this definition implies dialogue, mutual understanding and that the innovation is not necessarily adopted. in investigating the factors influencing the success of the change-agent as identified by rogers (1983: 321), principles of participation are evident. the more effort the changeagent put into communication activities with the “clients”, the more successfully the innovation was adopted. change-agents who are inclined to favour the clients rather than the change-agency appear to be more successful. the change-agent should thus be able to adopt the process of diffusion to meet the clients’ needs. furthermore, changeagents who empathise more with clients are more successful. empathy could be enhanced by using change-agents who are familiar or could identify with the clients’ circumstances. although rogers viewed the role of the change-agent predominantly as the expert persuading the community to adopt a new innovation, his own criticism also prompts a more participatory look at the role of the change-agent. in following ascroft and agunga (1994), this article explores the possible functioning of the change-agent, specifically the organisation as change-agent, within the framework of participatory communication. participatory approaches to development communication there are a multitude of views in the literature on the meaning of participation and its application. from a summary of these viewpoints, it emerges that the main objective of the participatory approach is to be more democratic and thus empower the community (jacobson 2003: 87; snyder 2002: 463). it would thus appear that empowerment through dialogic communication and the focus on various cultural situations are central to the participatory approach. this article presents a possibility for the employment of the change-agent to empower communities and further the focus on various cultures. empowerment through dialogue the philosophical grounding of the concept empowerment draws on the work of paulo freire. freire (1968) criticised one-way communication in education and advocated an approach that was more interactive and would therefore raise the consciousness of learners. empowerment thus entails not only an emotional or motivational dimension, but also a cognitive or intellectual dimension. hence, in order to effect behaviour change, a community firstly needs to develop a critical consciousness. developing such a consciousness entails two key concepts. firstly, there must be some degree of intellectual understanding of the social circumstances that have led to the disadvantaged position. in the case of hiv/aids, an understanding of the impact of such factors as poverty, culture and gender on hiv/aids is necessary. 92 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication secondly, in order to proceed from a naïve consciousness, learners must be afforded the opportunity to be actively involved in formulating critical analysis and generating alternative scenarios. hiv/aids peer group education, for instance, could facilitate such a process, in which a critical consciousness concerning sexual health could be raised (cf. campbell & mcphail 2002: 333–334; kempe 2003: 267; rogers & singhal 2003; melkote 2004). empowerment supposes a transfer of power. within a developmental context, this implies that a community assumes control of their own situation. the community must thus be empowered to help themselves. in contrast to modernisation, the assumption is that development could be facilitated by using local ideas and resources, rather than imposing a pre-planned project (melkote 2004). traditionally, change-agencies (including health-care agencies) have viewed communication as a linear process, which implies that the message is prescriptive and often technical in nature. however, empowerment requires more than information delivery, it requires the community to reflect actively on the message (melkote 2004). the objective of the change-agent within the context of participatory communication should thus be to empower individuals and communities to participate meaningfully in the political, social, cultural and economic processes of their societies. successful campaigns will eventually become self-driven by the dynamics of the community and the change-agent will no longer be necessary. professionals may still play an important role in the design of the messages, but they are not the key role-players (melkote 2004; snyder 2002: 463). this supports rogers’ (1983) view that the relationship between change-agent and beneficiary should be determinant. a community requires an organisation that co-operates with other organisations for their own self-interest. these relationships could be established through participatory approaches that focus on shared values in the community. for a community to be empowered, individuals in the community must be empowered through the activation of their critical consciousness and need to self-reflect as part of an organised group (melkote 2004). the organisation could provide a forum for discussion through which critical consciousness is raised (campbell & mcphail 2002). focus on culture servaes’ (1999) notion of multiplicity in one world emphasises that each development situation is unique; therefore, a standardised plan for development is not a possibility. even in fairly homogenous societies, there are competing political, social and cultural interests and thus different development needs. diffusion of innovation research indicates that an important reason for the failure of adoption of diffusion is the gap between change-agent and recipient (rogers 1983: 274–275). organisations as changeagents could breach this gap. community organisations understand the local culture and context of the community and could, in many instances, be viewed as representing the community. stephens, rimal and flora (2004: 97) term this the affinity function of an organisation. this term draws on the concept of social capital, which includes trust and 93 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication credibility, the grouping of people with common objectives together, social support and organisational norms. peer education is one of the more successful methods in preventing and managing hiv/aids, as people from the same social group or standing educate one another (campbell & mcphail 2002; wolf, tawfik & bond 2000; kempe 2003). likewise, local organisations should be able to bridge cultural differences in hiv/aids programmes, as they represent a specific community. organisations as change-agents: is participatory communication possible? from the information sketched above, this article argues that organisations as changeagents could serve a participatory function if the following is kept in mind: • owing to the nature of hiv/aids communication, it is inevitable that the organisation will fulfil an instructional or educational role. however, the information provided should be suitable for and applicable to the communities for which it is intended. • the organisation should present a platform for dialogue amongst community members regarding hiv/aids and facilitate communication between changeagency and community, thereby providing a means for the community to voice their needs. the organisation should thus also consider the needs of the community members regarding hiv/aids. • the organisation should represent and/or be sensitive to the community’s cultural values. research methodology the hiv/aids programmes of five organisations from various sectors were analysed for this study. organisations from various sectors were included in the study in order to enable the investigation of the difference in approach between sectors as well. an important criterion upon which selection of the organisations was based was the researchers’ access to both the person in charge of the organisation’s hiv/aids programme and the recipients thereof. two of the organisations are corporate organisations; one is a factory and the other a supermarket. the remaining three organisations are non-profit organisations, of which the first is a church; the second a non-governmental organisation that focuses on hiv/aids programmes, with a primary focus on home-based care for the infected; and the third a community-based organisation that focuses mainly on prevention programmes for the youth. to obtain information on the content of the organisations’ hiv/aids programmes, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the person in charge of the hiv/aids programmes of the different organisations. in the two corporate organisations the aids coordinator was the head of the whole programme and in charge of all the 94 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication communication with regard to hiv/aids in their organisations. in the church this role was fulfilled by the pastor and both the non-profit organisations had a single person responsible for managing the programmes and the communication in that regard. an interview schedule was used to ensure that the same questions were posed to all the respondents. in addition, the interviewers used follow-up questions to gain clarity on the issues investigated, and the respondents had the opportunity to add any information they regarded as important. the questions focused mainly on what the organisation was doing with regard to hiv/aids, how they communicated on the issue and why they chose to communicate thus. special attention was paid to the kinds of media the organisations chose, the content thereof and the reasoning behind these choices. as the researchers wished to analyse the individuals’ experiences of the various programmes, focus group discussions were held with the employees of the corporate organisations, the members of the church and the community members involved with the non-profit organisations. two focus group discussions per organisation were held, with the male and female recipients of the programmes placed in separate groups. during the focus group discussions, the researchers attempted to determine the respondents’ experiences of the organisations’ programmes, the extent to which the programmes fulfilled the respondents’ needs and respondents’ ideas for improving the programmes. all the interviews were conducted as part of a larger research project (cf. sanpad 2006). hiv/aids programmes of five organisations in order to investigate the quality of participation in the selected organisations’ hiv/aids programmes, the programmes were evaluated on how they: • fulfil their instructional or educational role; • act as platforms for dialogue and provide a means for participants to voice their needs; and • represent or are sensitive to cultural values. in examining the individual programmes of the various organisations, it is important to compare the organisation’s statement of their programme’s functions to the perceptions of the programme of the employees or community members who formed part of the programme. instruction or education all the organisations focused on education in their programmes, and in four instances this was the main focus of the programme. each organisation’s programme is discussed individually below. 95 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication the community-based organisation this community-based organisation targeted the youth and their programme was implemented at various school centres. the head said that the organisation was running a prevention programme and using peer group educators to convey the message. in practice, this meant that they were training several teenagers, who would then communicate the information to others in their schools and their friends. the community’s youth who were involved in this prevention programme were most satisfied with the programme and said that they had received a significant amount of information on hiv/aids prevention from the organisation. the youth confirmed that the information was disseminated by means of workshops and by talking to one another. in addition, they were aware of the peer group educator system and were positive about the manner through which the organisation encouraged them to follow a positive lifestyle, as is evident from the following comment: “i feel, because the organisation encourages us, encourages the youth to make positive choices and to live a positive lifestyle. ja [it is successful]” with regard to the success of the programme, the youth stressed that each individual must take responsibility for his/her own decisions and that the role of the organisation is to provide individuals with information so that they are able to make informed decisions. as noted by one of the respondents: “… the success of the programme depends on the people that gets the message. because giving information is not guaranteeing that you will make the right choices. thus, from a personal perspective i truly feel that if i choose to use a condom, the organisation is successful, and if you choose not to use a condom, it is still successful because they gave you the information.” the respondents thus felt that the organisation fulfilled its instructional function, irrespective of whether it actually led to behaviour change. the non-governmental organisation this was the only organisation that did not focus primarily on prevention. the head emphasised: “… our main aim and objective is to care for the terminally ill. palliative care, holistic care, until death, and that they will be able to die with dignity and self-respect. … we want them to accept that if you have hiv/aids, you can make a difference to the quality of your life. but to hide it, you can die with no dignity, and no self-respect. so as long as they live, we want them to live until they die.” the head of this programme made it clear that prevention (and thus information) was not the focus, rather the programme focused on caring for the terminally ill and those living with and affected by hiv/aids. 96 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication even though information dissemination was not the organisation’s main objective, the respondents viewed the organisation as their most important source of information on hiv/aids. they explained the manner in which information was provided as follows: “through pamphlets it explains everything on how you can get it. … the pamphlets is in setswana, english. but other people they can’t read setswana, they can’t read english. … the volunteer can help them and read for her, explain to her.” the respondents were thus satisfied with the information they received from the organisation’s programme. the church the pastor of the church stated the church’s information programme entailed monthly workshops to which the church invited speakers to present talks on hiv/aids. when church members were asked to describe the church’s hiv/aids programme, the informational value of the programme was apparent, as is evident from the respondents’ explanations of the church’s activities in this regard: “the church gives people advice and try to guide people.” “the church is giving us more information about it and is trying to guide us, not to be involved in sex and they try to guide us not to go there … to protect our bodies, ourselves and most of the time to make sure that we are in a save place at all times. … i think that our church is doing a lot about it.” the church members were satisfied with the information they received and found the programme successful. as in the case of the community-based organisation, the respondents from the church placed emphasis on an individual taking responsibility for his/her own decisions, particularly in light of the organisation empowering them to make informed decisions: “… because the choice is upon everybody’s mind … the church is trying a lot to give us information and guide us.” “it depends on us now: we must stop it or what. if we do unprotected sex, your choice. for us, we take it or not … the choice is for us.” the supermarket when asked about the focus of their programme, the hiv/aids coordinator said the following: “i think education is the most important, that if someone knows what this is and how it does come to me, then the awareness will be there.” this programme used peer group educators to convey information on hiv/aids and presented classes and workshops. the programme also gave once-off training to all new employees and disseminated information by means of their notice board. 97 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication respondents from the supermarket indicated that their organisation’s hiv/aids programme was very successful. they stated that they received information from the peer group educators, as well as from the organisation’s magazines, booklets and videos shown to them on hiv/aids. they were very positive about the programme and commented that: “the training was really very helpful, things we didn’t know, we saw what could happen and it was of great help to us.” “it [the training] was wonderful! they showed us what it is.” many of the respondents mentioned the organisation’s policy regarding nondiscrimination against hiv-positive employees and respect for one another. they received monthly information on the topic through booklets. the factory the factory’s hiv/aids coordinator regarded the education and training of the factory’s employees as the programme’s focus. according to the coordinator: “our first goal is to educate our employees about hiv and aids. that’s the primary target. so, within the project have been mainly information campaigns. we have peer educators and they are scattered throughout the factory and they are in the process of educating their colleagues about hiv and aids. … they address the topic at safety talks, they address it when they are just on their own talking with their colleagues: they’re available for questions.” with regard to communication strategies, the coordinator commented: “the nature of everything i do is communication. it is trying to figure out creative and effective ways to convey the message. and i think one of the most important ways to convey the message is face-to-face contact.” the coordinator thus emphasised the importance of face-to-face contact as a means of information exchange. the respondents from the factory regarded their organisation’s hiv/aids programme as very successful. they mentioned that they received a significant amount of information from the organisation, discussed the topic monthly at safety talks, were shown videos and were afforded the opportunity to ask questions about hiv/aids. in order to determine the success of the campaign, respondents were asked whether they thought people were listening and changing their behaviour. a respondent indicated: “i saw a change. now you know what it is, how dangerous it is.” conclusion it is evident that dissemination of information on hiv/aids is at the heart of the programmes because four of the five organisations indicated that this was their main 98 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication focus. respondents from all the organisations not only regarded their organisation’s hiv/aids programme as a source of information, but were also most satisfied with the information and training they had received. in fact, the majority of the respondents singled their organisations out as their most important source of information on hiv/aids. in terms of the theory of diffusion of innovations, the first criteria for the adoption of an innovation, namely information, appears thus to have been met. it is encouraging to note that several respondents indicated that they viewed behaviour change as their own responsibility. they were thus of the opinion that their organisation empowered them to take ownership and make their own informed choices. this is much more in-line with participatory thinking than that of the initial modernistic assumption that there is a causal relationship between information and behaviour change. the respondents’ positive comments regarding interpersonal contact and the use of peer group educators, in particular, is an indication that although the organisations focused on information dissemination the information was distributed in a participatory fashion. furthermore, the respondents appeared to be most satisfied with the information they received. it can thus be concluded that not only did the organisations provide information, but the information was applicable and appropriate to their respective audiences. it is therefore clear that all the organisations investigated fulfilled their instructional or educational duty and employed at least some form of participatory strategy to distribute the information. however, it is of concern that both the coordinators and respondents were reluctant to refer to hiv/aids by name and mostly referred to hiv/aids as “it”. it is against this background that the extent to which these organisations have succeeded in providing a platform for true dialogue with regard to hiv/aids is subsequently discussed. platform for dialogue and means to voice needs the community-based organisation the community-based organisation facilitates debates at schools in order to encourage teenagers to talk about hiv/aids and provides education at school centres. apart from this, they run a support group for hiv-positive people. it could thus be said that the community-based organisation essentially presents a platform to facilitate dialogue with regard to hiv/aids. this was confirmed by several of the respondents’ comments: “i feel [the organisation] is doing a good thing, they are not talking to themselves, but they are doing workshops, talking to people.” the non-governmental organisation the main focus of this organisation is not information dissemination and thus a focus on participation and dialogue would be expected. the organisation did indeed 99 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication emphasise interpersonal contact. besides caring for the terminally ill, the organisation also works with people living with and affected by hiv/aids, by attempting to motivate them through participation in handicraft and bringing hiv-positive people together to support one another emotionally. the respondents from this organisation emphasised the extent to which they appreciated the opportunity to interact with other hiv-positive people through sharing their experiences and supporting one another, as is evident from their comments: “… i am so proud about this day, fridays. because at home, at another day i sit alone. but on friday i come here, coming to share with the people. … at other days, i can’t talk to anyone, i am alone. when i come here, i relieve myself, i tell people everything. … a supportive group, yes. maybe i tell them yesterday my children they slept with nothing, empty stomachs. another one maybe got two rands and that one got twenty cents and then i can go and buy my children some bread. this i why i tell the people, we are supportive, because we support each other, you see?” “everything we say here stays here, it don’t get out of this gate. we call it our small heaven. you see? our small heaven, right here!” it would thus appear that hiv-positive people have a great need for interpersonal communication and the opportunity to relate to one another. they also received much needed emotional support from the staff of the organisation. the church apart from their prevention programme, the church also ran a support group for hivpositive people. the respondents said that they were satisfied with the programme, as they have had many talks and discussions on hiv/aids. the supermarket although the supermarket used peer group educators to distribute information, no mention was made of any form of dialogue or discussions with regard to hiv/aids. the factory the factory also used peer group educators and both the coordinator and the respondents said that they discussed the topic at their monthly safety meetings. although it is not clear whether genuine dialogue was taking place, this appears to be a wonderful opportunity for facilitating debate nonetheless. when asked what they wanted from their organisations with regard to hiv/aids in addition to what was already provided, only respondents from the supermarket and factory voiced their needs. their suggestions included speakers who could talk to them in person and dramas or theatre about hiv/aids. although the respondents were satisfied with the information they received, they had suggestions for the manner in which the information could be shared with them. a further need identified by the respondents referred to the organisations’ social responsibilities. there was a feeling that the organisations should take more responsibility for the broader community and 100 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication not only for their employees. respondents from one of the corporate organisations, for example, were dissatisfied with the manner in which the organisation treated former employees and stated that the organisation should demonstrate more commitment to such employees, even when they can no longer work. other respondents said that they were satisfied that the organisation sufficiently addressed the needs of employees with regard to hiv/aids but would like the organisation to present prevention programmes in their communities as well. conclusion it can be concluded that the non-profit organisations, including the church, were more concerned with dialogue, debate and discussions regarding hiv/aids than the corporate organisations. it was also evident that the respondents from these programmes enjoyed and valued the opportunities for interaction. although dialogue does not appear to have been a high priority for the corporate organisations, they do have systems in place that could easily be utilised to facilitate a higher level of dialogue. as respondents commenting on the non-profit organisations did not voice any additional needs to the researchers, it can be concluded that they had the opportunity to voice their needs directly to their respective organisations. in contrast, it would appear that the respondents from the corporate organisations did not have the same opportunity, as they mentioned their needs to the researchers. it would thus appear that the corporate organisations did not successfully provide a means for the employees to voice their needs pertaining to hiv/aids. represent and/or be sensitive to cultural values none of the coordinators mentioned that their programmes sought to address cultural differences at any level. in many instances, the organisations appeared to have adopted programmes from western, developed countries without considering the suitability of these for african cultures in the developing world. this is an indication that insufficient attention is accorded to this important aspect. although cultural differences were not explicitly mentioned, the peer group educator system can be regarded as culturally sensitive because, in most instances, the peer group educators were from the same culture as their fellow employees whom they were intended to help educate. it is also significant that when respondents were asked to voice their needs, cultural sensitivity was not mentioned. thus, it could be viewed that, in spite of the lack of attention to cultural needs, the respondents appeared relatively satisfied with the hiv/aids programmes. conclusion with regard to the educational role of organisations, it appears that the organisations adopted a relatively participatory approach to communication, as only one organisation indicated that it used the notice board (implying one-way communication) as a means of communication. all the other organisations employed methods of information dissemination that implied participation of some kind. three of the organisations used 101 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication peer group educators for which a small number of volunteers were trained and then in turn trained their fellow-employees or organisation members. two organisations employed workshops for education and training, and arranged speakers to present talks. another organisation, which primarily focused on the youth, provided education at school centres. it appears that all the organisations were very effective with regard to their instructional or educational role. they all had well-planned programmes in place and all the respondents from the programmes were most satisfied with their organisation’s informational programme. in evaluating the means through which the organisations facilitated dialogue, it appeared that the non-profit organisations were, at the time of the study, more successful in this regard than the corporate organisations. respondents from the nonprofit organisations mentioned the organisations’ attempts to involve people in dialogue on hiv/aids, for example through debates on hiv/aids. the corporate organisations had opportunity for facilitating dialogue, for example through safety talks and peer group educators. however, the coordinators did not refer to dialogue or the need to facilitate dialogue. dialogue was thus not an objective of the corporate organisations investigated in this study. the same conclusion can be drawn with regard to the manner in which employees/members were offered an opportunity to voice their needs. only employees from the corporate organisations voiced needs that they had not shared with their organisation. that no respondents from the non-profit organisations raised any needs that had not been attended to by their organisations may indicate that they were comfortable discussing their opinions and needs with their organisations. in considering the cultural sensitivity of the organisations, it is important to keep in mind that the respondents from the non-profit organisations were more homogeneous with regard to culture than those from the corporate organisations. this implies that cultural differences would not be as problematic in the non-profit organisations as in the corporate organisations. it is problematic that the more heterogeneous corporate organisations did not consider cultural differences in developing their hiv/aids programmes. this gap should be addressed by the corporate organisations. it can be concluded that all the programmes appeared participatory at first glance, particularly with regard to the manner in which they disseminated information. however, in considering the facilitation of dialogue in more depth, the opportunity to voice needs and sensitivity to cultural values, it would appear that the quality of participation of the corporate organisations in particular is doubtful. in spite of this, it can be concluded that organisations have the means to act as change-agents for hiv/aids programmes through employing participatory strategies. 102 organisations as change-agents in hiv /aids programmes through participatory communication references aicc/sabcoha (african institute of corporate citizenship/south african business coalition on hiv/aids). 2006. investment to catalyze overcoming the challenges of hiv/aids: an hiv/aids investors’ guide. 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by filmmakers in the guise of various signifiers, each with its own signified, along the trajectories of two signifying axes of meaning, to wit, the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic, respectively, on both of which certain codes are audiovisually inscribed. but even a thorough overview of these elements of meaning-generation is not sufficient to understand the way that film communicates – one has to follow deleuze in his radical philosophy of the cinema, and scrutinise the difference between the cinema of the movement-image, and the cinema of the time-image. this article claims that this complex intertwinement of signifying elements is the way that film communicates. relevant films will be discussed to demonstrate how this happens. * bert olivier is professor of philosophy in the department of journalism, media studies and philosophy at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. introduction how does film communicate meaning to audiences or viewers? at one level, this may seem like a redundant question, because today, people – especially young people – are so thoroughly film and television literate that they decode meanings in the course of watching movies and television programmes without even being aware precisely how they do it. i can say this with confidence because, when i teach courses on cinema, i usually start by giving students a quick primer in film-semiotics to enable them to decode and interpret, in a self-reflective manner, the films that will be studied as part of the course. and invariably they are surprised to find that what they have been doing routinely in the course of watching many movies and television programmes can be broken down into the mechanics of a certain process, with names for every part of the process involved. this usually makes them more reflective, and i would like to believe more critical and discerning, if not “better” viewers of film. given the number of kitsch films that are produced and released annually, especially in hollywood (and bollywood), i believe that equipping not only students, but members of the public in general with the interpretive means to understand and reflect critically on cinema and television is an imperative task if one wishes to contribute to society’s ability to resist the ideological effects of mainstream commercial cinema.1 it is not sufficient to give an account of the “semiotics of cinema” if one wishes to understand how meanings in this important contemporary art form are conveyed to viewers; one has to ask, in addition, what makes cinema distinctive, because some of the elements of its semiotic functioning are not exclusive to it as film. music, for instance, shares some of these elements and the way in which they work with cinema. and although there have been several compelling theories about what is truly distinctive about film, i believe that gilles deleuze’s philosophical account of cinema comes closest to articulating what makes it singular among the arts. i shall focus on these two issues in turn. cinematic materials, signifiers, and registers of meaning what are the materials of film?2 as anyone who reflects on this question would discover, there are five, three of which are auditory, while two are visual: speech or dialogue, music (“soundtrack”), amorphous sounds or noise, images, and graphic elements (such as subtitles). needless to say, these materials are harnessed by filmmakers as “signifiers”, that is, in such a way that they convey certain meanings – not, as some critics naively believe, only the meanings that directors wish or intend to inscribe in these materials, utilised as “signifiers”, but always more, other, perhaps latent meanings, too. meaning in signifiers – auditory as well as visual – is always overdetermined; in other words, signifiers such as spoken and written words, as well as images, are irrepressibly multivocal, just as any context of meaning-generation is, as derrida (1982: 310) has famously argued, “unsaturable”.3 for example, when, in stephen surjik’s (1993) wayne’s world 2, wayne is shown driving a red alfa romeo sports car at breakneck speed to try and prevent his girlfriend from marrying someone else, running out of petrol, and eventually arriving at the church, it is a recognisable 40 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ “intertextual” or inter-cinematic reference to the quasi-identical, classical scenesequence in mike nichols’ the graduate (1967), where benjamin braddock (dustin hoffman) races against time to prevent the woman he loves (who also happens to be his mistress’s daughter) from being married off to someone else by her parents, the robinsons. only here, the weirdly comical wayne (mike myers) – who is a far cry from hoffman’s alienated noir hero in the earlier film – confronts two identical-looking churches, and not merely one. hence, while the “original” meaning (a desperate young man attempting to rescue his beloved from herself as well as from her parents and their chosen bridegroom) is implicitly transferred to the new context, the latter also, inescapably, adds new elements of meaning, as signified by the second church: the postmodern rebellion against the illusions of modernity, signified by nichols’ film noir, has made way for an ironic self-parodying stance to phenomena such as being in love, with all the angst and the quest for authenticity of the earlier film noir being rejected. we have, then, film-materials that are put together or combined in various ways as “signifiers” to produce or “signify” certain meanings. in so far as the meanings generated in this way are “decoded” and “understood” by viewers in such a way that they can articulate an interpretation of what they have viewed (including listening to film speech and music, of course), these meanings comprise “signifieds”. to anyone familiar with ferdinand de saussure’s structural linguistics, the terms “signifier” and “signified” – which, together, constitute the “sign” – would be nothing new. neither would the reminder that saussure’s semiological approach to language as a “system of signs” challenged the standard conception of language as a referential system, where the signs that comprise language “refer” to things and objects (called the “referents”) in the concrete world. needless to say, this standard model of language works satisfactorily as long as one tries to correlate words or signifiers such as “cat” and “mat” with their experiential counterparts, but runs into trouble when one tries to correlate signifiers like “is” or “perhaps” with concrete things. the advantages of a linguistic model where no questions are asked about the ontological status of the signifieds that are the flip-side of the signifiers, and where meaning is explained as a function of differences among signifiers, should be obvious. as saussure famously pointed out, in the linguistic system there are no positive terms, only differences – that is, every word or signifier derives its meaning from its relation with all the other signifiers that comprise the system as a whole. this also explains derrida’s well-known contention that every signifier carries ineradicable “traces” of other signifiers (in fact, every signifier bears the trace of every other signifier which it is not) in the language-system, in so far as it is negatively defined. “cat” is not “mat”, or “dog”, because, denoting as it does, a quasi-carnivorous mammalian, tree-climbing quadruped, it is demonstrably different from the other two signifiers regarding its linguistic meaning (even if only “tree-climbing” – and possibly also “omnivorous” – differentiates between “dog” and “cat”). what this example also demonstrates, is the poststructuralist modification of saussure’s conception of language as a system of signs, where “signs” split up into “signifiers” and 41 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ “signifieds”: every signifier (for instance the word “bird”) has a signified (“an oviparous, feathered, flying biped”) for saussure. and even if poststructuralists such as lacan and derrida would go along with the claim that every signifier has a corresponding signified, they would add that the distinction is not watertight, because every signified is, in its turn, again a signifier. take the example of “bird”, above – to understand its corresponding signified, one has to treat its constituent elements as signifiers in their turn: that is, what does “oviparous” mean, and “biped”? when a search for their meanings yield: “reproducing by means of hatching eggs”, and “twolegged”, respectively, it is apparent that these meanings, too, are formulated in terms of signifiers, and so on, and on, and on. no wonder lacan speaks of language as a “chain of signifiers” – every signifier is a metonymic (and in many cases, metaphorical) link in the chain, and various other links can be attached to it and detached again, to be attached elsewhere (cf. olivier 2005). the metaphor of “chain of signifiers” brings us back to the question of how meaning is generated in film. here, too, one intuitively follows “chains of signifiers” which are analogous to the chain of signifiers comprising language, with the implication that film functions like a language, although it is not identical to a language such as english or french (andrew 1976: 219-224). as in the case of ordinary language, the process of meaning-generation unfolds simultaneously along two axes or registers, which continuously inform and enrich each other, namely the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis of meaning, respectively. this simply means that when people converse, or read, or watch a movie, they understand what signifiers (words, images) mean (their signifieds) because of similarities and differences between these words and/or images (paradigmatic), as well as because of the way that what comes later in the conversation, the text, or the movie, modifies what comes earlier (syntagmatic). to put it simply: all meaning is the result of perceiving differences and similarities (on the paradigmatic, “spatial” register of meaning) and of grasping how sequentiality alters (modifies, enriches, negates) meaning (on the syntagmatic, “temporal” register of meaning). we all know how the completion of a sentence in an unexpected manner can radically affect its anticipated meaning. when someone says to us, referring to their stay at a famous overseas university: “since my return from the us, i just haven’t been able to forget my experience on that campus”, it would probably be the case that we anticipate an elaboration on “experience” which amplifies just how good, interesting or wonderful it was. but when the speaker proceeds by saying: “it was awful”, we learn the lesson that everyone learns sooner or later, namely that we should never jump to conclusions about the meaning of a speaker’s words or a paragraph’s meaning before we have heard or read the “last word(s)”. this is how meaning works at the level of the syntagmatic axis. so, for instance, the concluding words in bret easton ellis’s disturbing but revealing novel about the emptiness of yuppie-life in new york in the late 1980s, american psycho (1991), to wit: “this is not an exit”, not only pertains to the physical situation 42 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ (in a building) of a character in the novel, but retrospectively alters the meaning of the entire novel, in so far as it immediately erases the customary distinction between the aesthetic space of the novel’s “fictional” events, and the “real” world outside its aesthetic “frame”. in other words, the last sentence in the novel reminds the reader that, when he or she has finished reading it, they cannot afford to sit back and sigh with relief at the thought that those terrible events are merely fictional. the sentence means: “you cannot exit or leave the ‘reality’ constituted by the world of this novel; you are in it, part of it.” that final sentence therefore has an indispensable syntagmatic function; without it, it would be a significantly different novel. signifiers that follow one another in time, sequentially, in film function in the same manner – they continually add to, nuance and modify those that went before the later ones. what about the paradigmatic register? while the syntagmatic register is thought of as being the “horizontal”, temporal axis of meaning – signifiers following one another sequentially in time – the paradigmatic register is regarded as being the “vertical”, spatial axis of meaning, where signifiers do not generate meaning through their sequential unfolding in time, as it were, but instead via their similarities and differences on the “vertical” semiotic axis, which “cuts through” the syntagmatic axis whenever such similarities and differences assert themselves in the process of communication. it is easy to understand why the syntagmatic axis of meaning is “temporal” – it has to do with “what follows what” (in time), after all. one should also note that this sequentiality opens the possibility – which will be explored later via deleuze’s “cinema of the time-image” – for experimenting with time-dimensions of various kinds. but what is meant by saying that the paradigmatic axis of meaning has to do with space? this is because signifiers which function paradigmatically do so by establishing semiotic “connections” and resonances with signifieds (which are really also other signifiers, in their turn, as poststructuralism has shown convincingly; cf. olivier 2005) across a spectrum of signification which is not necessarily sequential, but a “space” of signification that transcends sequentiality, even if such signifiers also form part of a syntagmatic level of meaning-generation. in other words, a signifier can function both syntagmatically and paradigmatically at the same time. what would be instances of such simultaneous syntagmatic (temporal) and paradigmatic (spatial) operation of signifiers, specifically in cinema? i have referred to bret easton ellis’s novel, american psycho, to illustrate the functioning of the syntagmatic register of meaning; one could use the film (harron 2000) based on this novel to show how the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axes function together. think of the manner in which the murders committed by patrick bateman (christian bale) in the film follow one another in time. in fact, audiences witness bateman raping, murdering and mutilating acquaintances as well as strangers without rhyme or reason, one after the other. this tale of horror therefore unfolds along the syntagmatic axis, and with every successive murder the senselessness of it all is exacerbated to the point where one is bound to be struck by the utter absurdity of such serial killing. absurdity, one might say, is generated by the consecutive signifiers at the level of this axis. when 43 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ police detective donald kimble (willem dafoe) questions bateman about the disappearance of paul allen (jared leto), whom patrick killed several days earlier, this introduces a sequence of signifiers into the narrative (along the syntagmatic axis) which, one knows from familiarity with other such stories, could possibly alter the sequence of events. expectations of his arrest are therefore raised, but frustrated time and again – all of this at the syntagmatic level of meaning-generation. what about the paradigmatic axis of signification in this film, and where does it function simultaneously with the syntagmatic? every murder and act of mutilation performed by bateman in the course of the film-narrative resonates with every other, subsequent (and preceding) act of that kind. in other words, all his murderous actions are paradigmatically linked in a mutually reinforcing, if modifying and nuancing, manner. from the killing of the beggar, through paul allen’s murder, to his gruesome destruction of the prostitute, and including all his other homicides, the signifiers carrying the meanings that constitute this aspect of the narrative share a paradigmatic element of (recognisable) similarity, and at the same time also function syntagmatically insofar as they carry the narrative forward in time. hence, it is not so much a matter of strict distinction between paradigmatic and syntagmatic signifiers, as between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic functioning of (often the same) signifiers. cinematic codes and ‘cinelogic’ but is there not a more precise way of understanding the paradigmatic similarity between different signifiers that would explain why some signifiers resonate paradigmatically with one another, while not with others (keeping in mind that such paradigmatic functioning always works in conjunction with the syntagmatic role of signifiers)? indeed there is – the concept of a “code” is indispensable here. what is a cinematic code? in semiotics, the concept of “codes” names the principles according to which meaning (or a “message”) is generated by means of signifiers – one might say that all cinematic signifiers operate via codes, which make them interpretable. as dudley andrew (1976: 224) puts it, in the course of his discussion of the semiological work of christian metz: the filmmaker uses codes to make his [or her] material speak to the spectator. the semiotician works in the opposite direction, using the messages of a film to help him construct the codes which transcend those messages. most film discussions and film criticism concentrate on what a film says (on its messages); semiotics aims at the laws governing those messages, at the possibility of filmic speech itself. it does not want to repeat what the text (the film) says; rather it hopes to isolate all the logical mechanisms which permit the raw material to speak such messages. where andrew refers to “logical mechanisms” in this excerpt, i would rather use the phrase “cinematic mechanisms” – or, to coin a word, “cinelogical” mechanisms – which really means the principles that impart to cinema a “cinelogic” all its own. understood in this way, codes function as the interpretive keys to comprehend the meanings generated by audiovisual signifiers on both axes of signification, namely the 44 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ paradigmatic and the syntagmatic. one might even argue that codes are signifiers of a certain kind. this suspicion requires corroboration, however. andrew (1976: 224-225) further points out that codes possess three fundamental characteristics which allow one to understand and interpret them, namely their “degrees of specificity,…levels of generality, and…reducibility to subcodes”. the concept of “specificity”, for metz, allows one to single out those codes that are peculiar to cinema in varying degrees, the most distinctive of which would mark a code that belongs exclusively to cinema, such as what is known as the “freely tracking camera shot”, as well as “accelerated montage” (andrew 1976: 225-226). formally speaking, “accelerated montage” names the alternation of two (or three, perhaps four) different images, which follow one another with increasing speed and ever-shorter duration and intervals between them. while literature can approximate this code, in its specific form of alternating images it is unique to cinema, and nowhere else is a “message” transmitted in exactly this way. any viewer familiar with cinema’s decoding conventions – and today, most viewers are familiar with these – would be able to understand what an instance of accelerated montage conveys, namely to show, or suggest, a narrative or dramatic proximity, a link, or perhaps a confluence of sorts, between the alternating images (or what they represent). an eloquent example of accelerated montage as cinema-specific code is encountered in darren aronofsky’s requiem for a dream (2000), where the images of a syringe, the dilating pupil of an eye, a shot of fluid moving along a tube (presumably a vein or artery) shown consecutively in section, accompanied by a corresponding series of sounds, occur every time two of the principal characters take a dose of cocaine (or heroin). the message communicated by means of this cinema-specific code (this set of visual and closely linked auditory signifiers) is easily recognisable as an indication, not merely that they are in the process of administering the drug (denotation), yet again, but that – as indicated by the mechanically monotonous presentation of the successive image-signifiers – it is a mono-dimensional, repetitive process (connotation), which is likely to affect the people concerned in such a way that they relinquish their essentially human mode of existence in favour of a reduced, scarcely human condition. to the question whether accelerated montage, as code that belongs specifically and distinctively to cinema, instantiates a signifier, the answer seems, at first, to be negative, because it involves a sequence of alternating visual and auditory signifiers. one might, however, think of the sequence of iconic signifiers, alternating in accelerating fashion, as a composite signifier – which is nothing other than accelerated montage as a code. this would confirm my earlier suspicion, that one could regard codes as being themselves (sometimes composite) signifiers. apart from accelerated montage, there are other cinematic codes which are also, by themselves, signifiers. this seems to me to be especially true of the many non-specific “cultural codes” – that is, cultural signifiers functioning as codes simply by being assimilated into cinema. this includes the “car code”, where certain kinds of cars bear 45 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ different cultural meanings, for example a stereotypically american car like a cadillac convertible (andrew 1976: 225), or, for that matter, a chauffeur-driven mercedes benz, each of which represents, as cultural code, a specific set of easily recognisable values. codes shared by cinema with other art forms, like literature and painting, may also be understood as “cinelogical” signifiers of a certain kind, and include, according to metz (andrew 1976: 225), many narrative techniques encountered in literature, for instance “stories within stories”, flashbacks and flashforwards, as well as chiaroscuro lighting, borrowed from painting, and used liberally in german expressionist films such as josef von sternberg’s the blue angel (1930). things appear to be no different with codes that may be differentiated according to their “levels of generality”, in so far as the most general of codes, as well as codes which apply to more circumscribed groups of films ultimately function as signifiers, whether of a simple, or composite kind (andrew 1976: 226). for example, metz regards the panorama shot as a general code because it is not, in principle, restricted to any specific kind of film (even if it is not found in all films), nor is its function restricted to one kind of signification – sometimes it merely serves to show or “reveal” a landseaor cityscape, while on other occasions it can function directionally, enabling viewers to discern the movement of a person, an animal, an aeroplane or a car against a panoramic backdrop. as a general cinematic code, panoramic movement distinguishes film from still photography. in contrast to general codes, particular cinematic codes enable one to differentiate among different film genres, periods in film-history, and the distinctive styles of different directors as auteurs (andrew 1976: 226). who can fail to identify the codes (horses, cattle, wide-brimmed hats, revolvers in hip-holsters, gunfights, and so on) that communicate to viewers that they are watching a “cowboy film”, or the vampirecode(s) – including incisors-turned-fangs, pale-complexioned, black-cloaked figures, wooden stakes, and so on – which communicate the fact that one is confronted by a “vampire film”? and even if it is less often recognised as a distinct genre – judging by relevant film reviews – film noir is marked by a cluster of unmistakable signifiers-ascodes, such as unconventional detective types, fedora hats, venetian blinds, chiaroscuro lighting, cigarette-smoking femme fatales and incoherent plots. silent movies as belonging to an identifiable historical period, project the code from which their name derives via their “silence” and the use of written text between scenes, among other things, and auteur-directors are recognisable by many particular, differentiating codes, including certain preoccupations and predilections. david lynch, for example, has a penchant for the grotesque in his films, while alfred hitchcock’s films teem with psychoanalytically relevant themes, such as “symptomatic behaviour” on the part of characters, which reveals repressed trauma from their past. in addition to all of these kinds of cinematic codes, one can distinguish many subcodes (particular “solutions” to all the coding problems in cinema) within each of them, such as the many different varieties of acting (in different genres, or in different periods of film history; compare the acting in casablanca with that in more recent films) as a 46 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ general fiction-film code (andrew 1976: 227), or different kinds of camera movement or different camera angles introduced at specific moments in film history (think of the innovative work done in this respect by orson welles in citizen kane). in light of what has been said so far, it appears to me that what is known as the syntagmatic axis of meaning, on the one hand, and the paradigmatic axis of meaning, on the other – discussed earlier – are nothing other than what metz and other filmsemiologists would refer to as “general codes” of a certain kind. after all, if viewers make sense of what is communicated through cinematic image-sequences by interpreting these on the basis of “what follows what” (syntagmatic), and, concomitantly, in terms of “what belongs with what”, that is, difference and similarity (paradigmatic axis), these are arguably the most fundamental “cinelogical codes” for the “decoding” or interpretation of film. admittedly, they are not cinema-specific codes, because they operate elsewhere, too, for instance in speech and in literature, but they are sufficiently fundamental for the creation as well as the reception of film – which is to say, for film-communication – for it to be unthinkable without them. ‘movement-image’, ‘time-image’, and ‘cineaesthesis’ i would like to argue that one could go further than this semiological thinking about how signification or meaning-generation works in cinema (which really comprises the basis for the way film communicates), by drawing on the highly original work of gilles deleuze concerning what he calls classical cinema of the “movement-image” (1986) and modern cinema of the “time-image” (2005),4 respectively. it is not a matter of deleuze’s work invalidating the insights of thinkers like metz;5 rather, he places semiological and semiotic considerations within a new horizon of meaning – one that changes one’s conception of the way film communicates. one might say that the notion of the movement-image in cinema enables one to grasp that film does not simply communicate specific “contents” or “messages” (supposedly from a director to an audience), but communicates a novel way of perceiving the world as one of “moving images”, namely through the dislocating “mechanical eye” of the camera, which decentres the sight belonging to “normal” human embodiment, freeing motion for the first time from anthropocentric vision. even more radically, the cinema of the timeimage explores, and in so doing, communicates, a sense of time as that which is constitutive of subjectivity as such, and which cinema is in a unique position to address experimentally. the cinema of the time-image repeats what kant did in the eighteenth century, when he reversed the aristotelian dictum that “time is the measure of motion” (which grants movement primacy over time, as still visualised in analogue watches), by making time the fundamental, constitutive form of being-human in the world (deleuze 1999). these insights on deleuze’s part into the philosophical and communicational significance of cinema enable one to understand and interpret specific films in terms of distinct kinds of treatment of images, something that gives new meaning to the idea of communication via cinematic signifiers and codes. for one thing, if there is a cinematic mode which constitutes, that is, “en-codes” images in terms of a movement freed from 47 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ the primary perspective of the human eye, it would make sense to assume that, for audiences to make sense of “movement-image” films, they first had (and still have) to “de-code” such movies at a fundamental level – where “de-coding” would mean understanding or “translating” (what were then) novel modes of visual representation through techniques such as cutting, suture, panning, montage, tracking and zooming into their familiar, life-world counterparts. if one considers that deleuze regards the cinema of the movement-image to have been what characterised the first great “wave” of films produced in the first half of the twentieth century, it should be clear that, by now, every viewer is familiar with the interpretive conventions for decoding this (sometimes dominant) aspect of films. today, very few (if any) viewers fail to understand that, when a cine-camera shot zooms in on a running cheetah, keeping the animal, with its legs moving rapidly, in the frame while excluding its prey from view, it is covering ground fast, instead of marking time, as it were. but this is a specific visual (silent) film code that viewers had to learn first – it is doubtful whether the first audiences that witnessed something like this would immediately have grasped how they should decode such a shot, not to mention one of a car, a locomotive, or an elephant ostensibly charging towards the audience. moreover, from these considerations it is apparent that these movement-images instantiated what i have dubbed a certain distinctive “cinelogic”, to which i should add – given that (“cine-)logic” still, unavoidably, carries the imprint of the superiority attributed to the (abstract) “word” (logos) over the (concrete) image – a recognition of its irreducible “cinaesthesis”, in the sense of the “aesthesis” (from aisthanesthai, the ancient greek for “to perceive”) or perceptual principles proper to the encoding production as well as the decoding of cinematic signifiers of the movement-image kind. the homophonic qualities of “cinaesthesis” and “synaesthesis” further enrich this concept in the context of cinema. something is said to have “synaesthetic” qualities when it draws on, or implicates more than one of the senses, for example the visual texture of a rock which reminds one of the appearance and the taste of honeycomb simultaneously, or sibelius’s “synaesthetic” composition, finlandia, which conjures up, via its auditory signification, visual images of finland’s breathtaking landscapes. hence, “cinaesthesis”, or the “kinaesthetic” qualities of movement-images (as deleuze understands them) bring together perceptual qualities of images in a novel manner, never before experienced from the perspective of the human eye – that is, in principle not capable of being experienced before the cine-camera mediated the visually perceivable world in such a way that the centrality of the human eye was removed, and in its place the world of movement was presented through the impersonal “eye” (lens) of the camera. a glance at the history of cinema confirms my claim, above, that fundamental “cinelogical” and “cinaesthetic” codes for making sense of what film (in this case movement-image film) communicates, first had to be learned. referring to the first projection of thomas edison’s film images (which had previously been shown in “kinetoscope” peepshows) onto a theatre screen in 1896, griffith and mayer (1971: 3) observe: 48 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ these ‘wonderfully real and singularly exhilarating’ scenes were mostly moving photographs of standard vaudeville acts, and vaudeville houses, then in their heyday, became the first home of the movies. for a time the new invention took the place of the star turn. there was something marvellous and magical about even routine acts when they were blown up by the camera to ten times life size – and when they involved the onlooker in a new physical experience. the distance between the movie viewer and what happens on the screen is in a state of perpetual flux. he is either drawn into the midst of the action or the action comes toward or recedes away from him. in 1896, this was a new and godlike experience. if it is not yet clear from this excerpt (as it should be) that the experience of film-images projected onto a screen was sufficiently novel to disorientate people’s “normal” visual perception, then griffith and mayer’s (1971: 5) reference to the striking occurrence of audiences in 1896 “shrieking in fear” when they saw the image of a train speeding towards them on the screen, should convey the point that the “movement-image” disrupted everyday viewing experiences so radically that the key to understanding or decoding what these moving images were communicating first had to be acquired at a “cinelogical” and “cinaesthetic” level.6 and in the process, while confronting them with images embodying movement as something liberated from its customary substantialist bias (that is, the uncritical belief that things or objects exist primarily as independent substances, and movement is somehow dependent on this)7 according to deleuze, classical cinema did not give audiences “direct” access to a cinematic experience of time, but kept it in the background, guarding the primacy of movement. claire colebrook (2002: 50) elaborates as follows on the difference between cinema of the movement-image and its time-image counterpart: in the cinema of the movement-image the flow of time is sensed as that which lies above and beyond any of the divergent movements. in the time-image we sense duration directly, not derived from movement… its becoming is positive: for we confront becoming itself, not as an indirect whole of all the composed mobile sections. and this non-dialectical or positive becoming also has a different political orientation. it does not just free us from fixed images by indicating the flow of history from which we have emerged; it presents the creative flow of time as becoming or the opening to the future. but does this make sense? already with the cinema of movement-images a major mindshift is required – one is so accustomed to thinking of the visually perceivable world as comprising substantially enduring things that it is hard to adjust one’s mind to the thought that, in colebrook’s words (2002: 51): “life is movement and becoming from which distinct things are actualized.” it requires nothing less than the metaphysical revolution, from the assumption of a static universe within which local movements occur (underlying aristotle’s ancient greek world-view) to that of a universe in constant motion to begin with (underlying galileo’s and newton’s modern worldview), to do perceptual justice to what classical cinema communicates through its 49 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ moving images. against the everyday prejudice concerning the secondariness of movement, deleuze claims (phrasing it in the language of the movement-image; 1986: 58): there is no moving body [mobile] which is distinct from executed movement. there is nothing moved which is distinct from the received movement. every thing, that is to say every image, is indistinguishable from its actions and reactions… in the cinema of the movement-image human beings discover movement as such (deleuze 2005: 33-35) – movement which is no longer inescapably linked with “centred” perception; movement that is “abnormal” in so far as it can be presented via codes such as speeding-up, slowing-down, reversal, paradoxical motionlessness-inmotion (recall the example of the cheetah running, with its body remaining in “the same place” relative to the audience). hence one could say (deleuze 2005: 35): the movement-image does not reproduce a world, but constitutes an autonomous world, made up of breaks and disproportion, deprived of all its centres, addressing itself as such to a viewer who is in himself no longer centre of his own perception. this was a far cry from the lifeworld-experience of moving things, and hence (as remarked earlier) necessitated audiences’ re-calibration of their perceptual apparatus, as it were. a more radical step is taken by the cinema of the time-image, which presents, in audio-visual images, the temporal conditions of possibility of a natural and social world. if, in ordinary perception, as well as in the cinema of the movement-image, time remains subordinated to movement (in accordance with aristotle’s precept that time is the measure of motion), deleuze points out that, for the time-image to become manifest (2005: 35): …aberrant movement calls into question the status of time as indirect representation or number of movement, because it evades the relationships of number. but, far from time itself being shaken, it rather finds this the moment to surface directly, to shake off its subordination in relation to movement and to reverse this subordination. conversely, then, a direct presentation of time does not imply the halting of movement, but rather the promotion of aberrant movement. whether one subscribes to the (premodern) aristotelian conception of time as “the measure of motion”, or to the (modern) kantian corrective that time has primacy over movement, it seems clear that, for deleuze, movement and time are somehow “connected” – or, to put it differently, the one always implicates the other. otherwise the time-image could not have emerged from the “aberrant movements” encountered in the cinema of the movement-image. such “aberrant movements” therefore seem to me to mark a transitional point from one cinaesthetic context to another, where that of the time-image requires a different kind of decoding than that of the movement-image. what would such aberrant movement, which becomes the aperture through which the time-image emerges, be, and how would one decode it as a “direct” intimation of time in the image or image-sequence concerned?8 deleuze (2005: 35) gives one a clue where he refers to those image-sequences (already alluded to above) that are reversed, speeded 50 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ up, slowed down, non-distancing of frontally shown moving bodies (such as a facial shot of a person running), ongoing alterations in proportion and scale (such as the alternation between close-up “sections” and panoramic shots of mountains), and “false continuities of movement”. a reversed image-sequence of a woman ostensibly walking backwards into a shop presents one with “false movement” of a certain kind, and the time-image announces itself in one’s intuitive awareness that such a sequence implies “going back in time”. the kind of speeded-up image-sequences of plants growing at an impossible rate (from bud to flower in a matter of seconds) encountered in david attenborough’s bbc nature films, again, are “direct” intimations of time. so are impossible image-sequence continuities where a series of shots culminates in one where the hero – indiana jones, for example – after running along a hang-bridge strung across a deep ravine, the anchoring ropes of which are being cut by the villain, leaps forward at the moment when the bridge collapses and just manages to reach the side, with his hands clinging to the edge. in these instances it is not a matter of the movement-image being absent, but of the time-image being liberated from its dominant function, and announcing itself as the interpretive matrix within which all other signifiers as codes have their provenance. in deleuze’s words (2005: 36): “what aberrant movement reveals is time as everything, as ‘infinite opening’, as anteriority over all normal movement defined as motivity…: time has to be anterior to the controlled flow of every action…” conclusion in light of the above i would like to argue that both the cinema of the movement-image and that of the time-image as characterised by deleuze have – that is, communicate – distinct “synaesthetic” and “cinelogical” qualities, which audiences (that is, communities) have to learn to decode, lest the implications of these images escape them. and for society – or, on a smaller scale, communities – to be ignorant of what appears to me to function as fundamental cinematic codes, would be tantamount to be the film-counterpart of illiteracy, recognisable by a kind of iconic anaesthesia regarding film. no community can afford to be guilty of such an-iconicity in the early twenty-first century, a time when icon-interpretation constitutes a significant part of every urban dweller’s life. but there is an even more important reason for taking the implications of deleuze’s elaboration on especially the time-image seriously. at present the world is in the grip of a recent (2008) financial crisis-induced economic recession, something that ought to galvanise people (consumers) worldwide into organised resistance to capitalist greed and exploitation (which is demonstrably to blame for the crisis). i say “ought to” because, as foucault has persuasively argued, the mere “knowledge” of being exploited is not sufficient for people to resist the dominant discourse of neo-liberal capitalism; a fundamental re-subjectivisation in terms of a completely different discourse of individual autonomy is required before this is even conceivable.9 and yet, as claire colebrook remarks (in the passage quoted earlier) about deleuze’s cinema of the timeimage: “it does not just free us from fixed images by indicating the flow of history from 51 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ which we have emerged; it presents the creative flow of time as becoming or the opening to the future.” in other words, an understanding of, or ability to decode timeimages such as those discussed above, should alert viewers to the awareness that humans are fundamentally temporally constituted beings, and that this creates the everpresent possibility to change what has been, into something different – something, perhaps, liberating with regard to dominant discourses and the hold that they seem to have on people’s behaviour. endnotes 1 this is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of kitsch cinema and its “ideological” effects on the vast numbers of moviegoers worldwide. in this regard, see olivier (2003). 2 most of what is discussed here regarding the materials of film and the manner in which meaning is generated by means of relations between signifiers and signifieds, as well as the two “axes” of meaning – the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic – may be found in andrew’s (1976: 212-241) overview of the semiological work of christian metz in cinema theory. 3 that is, when a signifier or a set of signifiers is shifted from one context to another, it takes the “original” meaning along with it, but in addition acquires new meanings in every successive context. see in this regard olivier (2005), especially regarding the itinerary of einstein’s famous formula, e = mc2 from one context to another. 4 it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of deleuze’s two books on cinema and its implications for philosophy in a mere article – for example to his classification of different kinds of cinematic images within each category of cinema, or to his reading of bergson and of peirce (whose semiotic categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness correlate with deleuze’s “affection-image”, “action-image” and “relationimage”, respectively) which feeds into his own philosophy of cinema, or to the significance of his concepts, “percept” and “affect”, for understanding the workings of cinema. that will have to wait for an opportunity that allows a more lengthy treatment; here i can merely focus on the most general, albeit (in my judgment) profoundly significant aspects of his work on cinema. 5 it is true that there are fundamental differences among them, of course, but one can read the two together, as i try to show here. see, for example, andrew (1976: 228-229) on metz’s position regarding the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of meaning in film, and deleuze (2005: 27-28), where he denies that the movement-image has anything to do with paradigm and syntagm. as far as the latter two concepts are concerned, i believe that one can indeed use them in a manner compatible with deleuze’s two kinds of cinematic images. 6 dana polan (1986: 66-67) mentions another very telling, intra-cinematic illustration of (cinema’s self-reflective awareness of) the unavoidable need to learn the codes of cinema, lest the innocent viewer remain flummoxed by incomprehensible imagesequences. in godard’s film, les carabiniers (1963), the character of michel-ange enters a cinema theatre for the first time, and, dumbfounded but excited by the images 52 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ on the silver screen – especially one of a naked woman taking a bath – walks to the front of the theatre and tries to peep over the edge of the bathtub at her, in the process rupturing the screen to reveal the grimy wall behind it. as polan points out, this scene is simultaneously (self-) critical of the limitations of film as a concatenation of mere images masquerading as “reality”, and caught within the paradoxical limitations of film as, inescapably, always, a spectacle that merely “shows” something, in the process justifying it and undermining cinema’s own self-criticism. 7 lacan (1977: 17), too, draws attention to this (falsifying) substantialist bias in ordinary perception. 8 elsewhere (olivier 2009) i have elaborated on the interpretation of several films (including roeg’s bad timing and gavin hood’s rendition) in terms of deleuze’s cinema of the time-image. 9 see in this regard olivier (2007), for an examination of foucault’s concept of discourse in relation to a discursive strategy against the present bureaucratisation and corporatisation of universities in south africa. 53 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ references andrew, j. d. 1976. the major film theories. an introduction. new york: oxford university press. aronofsky, d. (dir). 2000. requiem for a dream. artisan entertainment and thousand words. colebrook, c. 2002. gilles deleuze. london: routledge. deleuze, g. 1986. cinema 1: the movement-image. translated by habberjam, b. and tomlinson, h. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g. 1999. kant’s critical philosophy. the doctrine of the faculties. translated by habberjam, b. and tomlinson, h. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g. 2005. cinema 2: the time-image. translated by tomlinson, h. and galeta, r. new york: continuum. derrida, j. 1982. margins of philosophy. translated by bass, a. chicago: university of chicago press. ellis, b. e. 1991. american psycho. new york: vintage books. griffith, r. and mayer, a. 1971. the movies. new york: spring books. harron, m. (dir). 2000. american psycho. lionsgate entertainment. lacan, j. 1977. écrits: a selection. translated by sheridan, a. new york: w.w. norton & co. nichols, m. (dir). 1967. the graduate. united artists. olivier, b. 2003. kitsch and contemporary culture. south african journal of art history 18: 104-112. reprinted in: olivier, b. 2009. philosophy and the arts. collected essays. oxford: peter lang. olivier, b. 2005. the contemporary context of relativity and relativism. acta academica supplementum 2: 73-104. special edition on relativity and relativism. reprinted in: olivier, b. 2009. philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. collected essays. oxford: peter lang. olivier, b. 2007. truth, power, intellectuals, and universities. paper presented at international conference on philosophy in africa, organised by the philosophy department of st augustine’s college, johannesburg, south africa. olivier, b. 2009. extra-ordinary cinema. south african journal of art history 24 (1): 20-32. polan, d. p. 1986. ‘above all else to make you see’. cinema and the ideology of spectacle. in: arac, j. (ed.). postmodernism and politics. minneapolis: the university of minnesota press. 54 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ surjik, s. (dir). 1993. wayne’s world 2. paramount pictures. von sternberg, j. (dir). 1930. the blue angel. ufa. welles, o. (dir). 1941. citizen kane. rko. 55 cinema and communication: ‘ cinelogic’ and ‘cinaesthesis’ 1. melissa steyn 133 “the self on the page”: the therapeutic value of writing communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 133 151 zarine roodt* abstract this article comprises a review of writing as therapy, a therapy practised by the client heror himself as a means of achieving equilibrium on a psychological level the self on the page1. in this sense it focuses on the therapeutic value of autobiographical writing which is inherently a communication act. it underscores a substantial body of research which validates the notion that individuals can bring about physical and psychological change by writing about traumatic experiences. writing in this manner vents the emotions associated with trauma, enables the individual to gain distance and insight, and could ultimately lead to the integration of such experiences and emotions. therefore, it should be understood that writing in this way is a form of “selfhelp” therapy. however, some measure of support is advised for the individual wishing to practise writing as a form of personal therapy. in its treatment of the therapeutic value of writing, this article spans two broad themes: first, it posits a rationale for the therapeutic value of writing, and secondly, it explores the application of writing as therapy. in this process, a number of related aspects are reviewed, namely the therapeutic benefits, as well as the constraints related to this form of writing. on a more practical level, specific techniques and exercises are discussed briefly. * zarine roodt2 is a research fellow in the department of communication and information studies at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction the focus of this article is on the therapeutic value of personal or autobiographical writing. in the main, it relates to the substantial body of work validating the therapeutic benefit of writing (cf. pennebaker and others [pennebaker 1991]). hunt and sampson (1998b: 10) get to the heart of the matter when referring to a steadily growing interest in “the practice of autobiography and creative writing as a means of gaining insight into oneself, of coping with difficult emotional or psychological problems, or as a way of dealing with difficult life experiences such as emotional traumas, illnesses, ageing, and death”. therefore, based on the premise that the practice of autobiographical writing is of and in itself therapeutic, writing of this nature may be described as “narrative self-therapy” (jordaan 2007: 1) or “writing as therapy”, a therapy practised by the individual as a means of achieving psychic equilibrium (roodt 2006: 123). however, it should be borne in mind that this type of writing, or writing therapy, “is not yet a stand-alone therapy like art therapy, music therapy or drama therapy” (bolton, field & thompson 2006: 28). writing in this context spans the disciplines of communication and psychology: writing the self on the page constitutes intrapersonal communication (steinberg 2007: 140), while the therapeutic value of writing embraces principles of psychology, albeit from a “self-help” perspective. intrapersonal communication is understood to be one of the contexts of communication and, as human beings, we are engaged in intrapersonal communication on an ongoing basis, i.e. “communication within the self to the self” (steinberg 2007: 140). (the concept of “the self” differs when compared from the perspectives of communication and psychology, although this is not the place to explicate this distinction; however, it is necessary to be cognisant of this.) when the concept of writing for therapeutic benefit is situated within the framework of intrapersonal communication, one should take note of the elements in intrapersonal processing: decoding, integration, memory, schemata or perceptual sets, and decoding (steinberg 2007: 148-149). it is the author’s opinion that writing in this sense dovetails with decoding, which may be viewed as the final organising part of the internal communication process (steinberg 2007: 149). it is here, at this stage of the process, that meaningful, personal communication is produced. it is here, and on paper, that we make sense of, and ascribe personal meaning to the mental activity which combines “the pictures in our mind and the words in our head” (steinberg 2007: 149). it should be understood that the use of writing as a technique in the context of psychotherapy — writing in therapy — is a subject all its own. this, then, is the juncture at which to single out the matter of the psychotherapeutic relationship. such a relationship acts as a space within which the written material is explored and, more importantly, within which the individual is contained psychologically — compare the concept temenos from a jungian perspective (sharp 1991: 133). the reader should be aware of this crucial distinction; moreover, the individual embarking on the road of writing as therapy is advised to seek out some measure of support — cf. bradshaw (1990: 151) who suggests enlisting a support person for this form of “self-help” therapy. 134 this discussion is an encapsulation of what is entailed in writing for personal development. following a brief description, it focuses on two broad themes and a number of related aspects: first, it posits a rationale for the therapeutic value of writing, and secondly, it explores the application of writing as therapy. from the discussion that follows, it will become clear that writing in this manner “is not only for the gifted, the educated, or the highly literate person” (leavitt & pill 1995: 137), although it does require a certain proclivity towards writing (hunt 2000: 14; wenz & mcwhirter 1990: 40). viewed from this perspective, this article argues that “writing as therapy” is a powerful form of personal therapy of a highly individualised nature. an important point emerges from this discussion, based on largo-marsh and spates’s (2002: 581) belief that there is good reason to suggest that “writing for therapeutic benefit” might serve as a treatment in its own right when properly structured. this begs the question of how such a treatment should be structured and what it should comprise; a question which lies beyond the scope of this article. secondly, the notion of writing as therapy could conceivably be extrapolated so as to include its practice on a group level (as evidenced by wenz & mcwhirter 1990: 40), thereby benefiting communities and society as a whole. writing as therapy: a rationale to understand the use of writing in the context of this article, it should be viewed in terms of allport’s (1951: xvii) description of “personal documents” and conceptualised as autobiographically based — in the sense in which hunt (2000: 12) uses the term. the emphasis is on writing as a process — of self-discovery, for instance — rather than on the product or outcome of writing, although the value of such outcomes is not discounted in any way. it should be noted that a number of concepts are used interchangeably throughout this discussion: writing as therapy, writing for personal development, and autobiographical writing. constructs such as writing therapy (writing therapy™ 2005) and writetherapy (henderson 2005) provide important clues as to the manner in which writing as therapy is conceived of in commercial terms. the therapeutic benefits of writing the strongest case made for the therapeutic benefit of writing is the research conducted by pennebaker and his colleagues and students over a 20 year period beginning in the late 1970s (pennebaker 1991: 66). this is an important body of research regarding the therapeutic value of writing, and any discussion of this subject has to be cognisant of these views and findings. however, owing to the span of their work, it is impossible to do full justice to their treatment of the subject. therefore, the main thrust of their work is summarised3. during the course of his research, pennebaker developed what is described as the “most thoroughly researched writing strategy” (largo-marsh & spates 2002). pennebaker (1991) describes the writing strategy employed in the research as follows: student 135 volunteers were requested to keep journals (in notebooks), writing 15 minutes a day over four days. they were to write about either traumatic experiences or superficial topics. additionally, those who wrote about traumas would either: (1) merely vent their emotions, (2) write down facts only or (3) combine both by writing about facts and emotions simultaneously. pennebaker (1990) initially developed an inhibition / confrontation approach or an inhibition model based on the following premises: inhibition, or actively holding back or inhibiting thoughts and feelings can be hard work; in time, this effort gradually undermines the body’s defences (pennebaker 1990: 13), while excessive inhibition involves the risk of both major and minor diseases (pennebaker 1990: 14). however, it was found that significant short and long term health benefits are derived from confronting innermost thoughts and feelings — whether by talking or writing (pennebaker 1990: 14). more specifically, writing or talking leads to “profound” physical and psychological changes (pennebaker 1990: 100). the work of pennebaker and his colleagues eventually questioned the “viability” of the initial inhibition model and, on reflecting on the issue of what accounts for the “powerful” effects of writing, the broader field of cognitive change was gradually entered into (pennebaker & francis 1996: 603). bootzin (1997), for instance, provides a very succinct description of these two lines of research. in the course of studying the pennebaker material, research along similar lines materialised, either in an effort to replicate their findings or as an expansion of these; for example: jamner, schwartz and leigh (1988); greenberg and stone (1992); smyth (1998), who comes to the conclusion that written expression may “fill a very important niche”; lepore (1997); and largo-marsh and spates (2002: 581), who believe there is good reason to suggest that “writing for therapeutic benefit” might serve as a treatment in its own right when properly structured. the value of the substantial body of work referred to lies in the fact that it provides evidence of the salutary effect of writing about emotional experiences (see similar findings by hunt 2000; hunt & sampson 1998a). however, as murray and segal (1994: 403) indicate, there has — unfortunately — been essentially no research on the effectiveness of writing therapy “outside of the pennebaker tradition”. a number of authors have pointed out specific benefits in relation to writing. some of the main points can be summarised as follows: • it has cathartic value to the extent that milici (in allport 1951: 42) uses the term “graphocatharsis”. painful memories and emotions are expressed, thus leading to new insight and understanding (jordan 2001: 68); see also allan and bertoia (2003: 3) in this regard. • it becomes possible to articulate issues and to achieve distance and objectivity; also, repeated consideration is made possible through written material (ryle 1983: 365). 136 • it fulfils the need for completion and the search for meaning (pennebaker 1990: 100-106); it is a form of self-expression and relates to a basic human need (pennebaker 1990: 110-112); one of its values lies in helping to “integrate and organise” our lives by, amongst other things, clearing the mind and resolving traumas that stand in the way of important (developmental) tasks (pennebaker 1990: 198). • in addition to enhancing the expression of feelings, it also develops cognitive skills such as balanced thinking (l’abate 1992: 19). • the written word is more enduring, less fleeting, and a more permanent reminder of painful thoughts and feelings (leavitt & pill 1995: 146). • in view of the fact that writing allows for a “flow or stream of consciousness”, the opening or unfolding of images, ideas, and thoughts is often demonstrated (allan & bertoia 2003: 17). • through the process of writing, time for reflection on our “inner world” is created, with the opportunity to “work through or transform” difficult emotions and painful thoughts (allan & bertoia 2003: 18). however, one has to consider the potentially negative effects of writing, as the following section of the discussion illustrates. possible problems and constraints in the use of writing as therapy the overriding problem in using writing is pointed out by hunt (2000: 14) when she states that her findings and conclusions regarding writing as a therapeutic tool “are not going to apply so readily to people who do not have such skills or the environment in which to develop them”. in other words, the use of writing in this manner will have a limited, rather than a universal, application. the reason for this will become clear in the discussion that follows. on the other hand, it should also be understood that writing is not the exclusive domain of the intellectually gifted or literary talented; a point made in the introduction (cf. leavitt & pill 1995: 137). stuart (1998: 149) points out that writing is “a process of social interaction”. the implication is that, in writing, we imagine our reader and we write to someone. although this creates the possibility for writing, according to stuart (1998: 149), it also constrains the writer. the constraint lies specifically in how the writer imagines his audience or in how audiences will “see” him, and this shapes the “presentations” of the self. there are reasons for why, and also situations in which, the use of writing could present problems. for instance: “writing apprehension” and “writing anxiety” (allen and grundy respectively in wenz & mcwhirter 1990: 37) are phenomena which are believed to affect many people in modern american culture (wenz & mcwhirter 1990: 37). oaklander (1988: 95) expresses it as follows: “i think children are often reluctant 137 to write because the schools put primary emphasis on spelling, form, sentence structure, and even penmanship, thus stifling and choking off the child’s creative flow.” although this author makes the point with regard to children, her observation is directly related to the origin of problems experienced by many adults in expressing themselves, or their creative thoughts, on paper. a very strong argument in this case relates to the upsurge in a negative mood following a session of written expression; this point relates to the research findings of murray, lamnin and carver (1989), pennebaker (1991), donnelly and murray (1991), and murray and segal (1994). in the latter study, it is pointed out that this could limit the “practical use” of the written method (murray & segal (1994: 404). in fact, pizarro (2004: 6) believes this “unintended side effect” of writing therapy is sufficiently serious because it may, ultimately, defeat the object of the therapeutic exercise. these points relate directly to the matter of a therapeutic relationship made in the introduction to this article. on the other hand, it should be noted that pennebaker’s (1991: 91) follow-up research — four months after the original experiment — found that the volunteers’ moods had improved: “writing about their deepest thoughts had started a process that resulted in a lighter mood and more positive outlook.” this finding was substantiated by reports from the student health centre which reported that these students had visited the health service for treatment “much less” than the control group(s). the question at this point, therefore, is the question of how the individual goes about this form of self therapy. the next main section of the discussion will address this matter. writing as therapy: application a very important point regarding writing in this context is the one made by wenz and mcwhirter (1990: 40), namely, that a “mindset” for writing is useful — meaning that there should be some proclivity towards writing (these authors discuss the creative writing experience within a group context, and the principles are relevant to this discussion). inevitably, in writing as therapy some ability is implied. equally important is the question of separating the two parts of the writing process (elbow in hunt 2000: 20): the creating and the editing. the idea that writing is facilitated if the writer is able to achieve this separation, is attributed to elbow (in hunt 2000: 20), who believes that writing is a developing process: a free flow of words should be encouraged as a right-brain activity, whereafter these can be “shaped” by applying the critical or left-brain faculty. this distinction serves the purpose of letting go of conscious control (hunt 2000: 20) which normally attends left-brain thinking. l’abate and platzman (1991: 103) and l’abate (1992: 47-50) refer to the importance of phillips and wiener’s work and paraphrase their guidelines for the use of therapeutic writing, for example: • writing should be done at set times and for a set period of time. (it must be pointed out that a certain degree of experimentation, certainly during the initial 138 stage of writing, is useful until such time as the individual determines what works best for him/her [haarhoff 1998: 34]). • focusing on a specific topic is useful. • they also emphasise that writing should take place freely, without pause to consider grammar or other language considerations — cf. elbow (in hunt 2000: 20). pennebaker (1990: 49-51) answers some of the questions commonly asked about the writing methods. in view of the fact that the author has come across very little material of this nature and, given his extensive research on the writing methods, this information is considered extremely relevant: • what should the writing topic be? º the author suggests focusing on everyday issues, not necessarily the “most traumatic” experience of one’s life. º he believes it is critical to describe not only the experience itself, but particularly the emotions surrounding the issue. º he suggests writing continuously without being overly concerned about grammar, spelling or sentence construction. (the emphasis here is on “overly concerned”.) • when and where should one write? º one should write whenever the need arises — it need not necessarily be that frequently. [this contradicts l’abate and platzman’s (1991:103) previous guideline. the answer probably lies in a degree of individual experimentation, as pointed out by haarhoff (1998: 34).] º where one writes depends on circumstances, but a unique setting has an influence on writing. º writing should ideally take place in a setting where there is no interruption or troubling sounds, sights, or smells. (the emphasis here is on “troubling sounds, sights, or smells”. sensory stimulation (in the form of essential oils, for example) on the other hand, may enhance the writing experience.) • what should one do with what one has written? º he suggests anonymity in the sense that one should keep what one has written to oneself or even destroy it when finished. here one should compare jordaan’s (2007: 1) incisive discussion of the advent of the online diary (blog), a public writing and discussion space where individuals elect to note their life experiences and most private thoughts on the internet in 139 diary format. this forum for the writing experience stands in stark contrast to pennebaker’s (1990) view and highlights the 17 year difference between the pennebaker and the more contemporary experience. however, this difference cannot be explained only by the time difference, and it may be surmised that the more introverted individual would prefer the pennebaker option, while the blog route is for the more extroverted. º he believes that, from a health perspective, one should act as one’s own audience and not rationalise or justify oneself in terms of the perspective of another. • what should one do if one hates to write — is there a substitute? º the author suggests talking into a tape recorder as a substitute — continuously, for fifteen minutes a day. º irrespective of which method is used, it is important to relax and practise, bearing in mind that no one is evaluating one or one’s work. • what can one expect to feel during and after writing? º he cautions that the writer may feel “sad or depressed” immediately after writing (this was confirmed in all the pennebaker studies; see, for instance, pennebaker 1990). however, these feelings usually dissipate within approximately an hour, or may last for a day or two at most, in some cases. on the upside, feelings of relief, happiness, and even contentment are experienced soon after the conclusion of the writing process. º he believes that writing should provide both distance and perspective which will accompany the improved understanding of feelings and emotions produced by the writing exercise. haarhoff (1998: 34) points out that it is important for the individual making use of the writing technique to ascertain what mood she has to be in, in order to write — angry, excited, or at peace, for instance. in other words, one should be aware of which particular mood facilitates writing. further to the setting and mood which facilitate writing, there are a number of specific techniques to be used in writing for personal development. specific techniques utilised in writing the actual techniques employed in therapeutic writing in therapy are manifold and, once again, full justice cannot be done to these in the limited space of this article. of these techniques, that of poetry appears to be the most developed one — for instance, the association for poetry therapy was established as long ago as 1969, while there is a “biblio-poetry therapy” model in existence which was established in the united states in the 1930s (field 2006: 97). another technique which has been intensively developed is that of journals: dr ira progoff, in particular, is well-known for 140 his efforts in this regard and has developed the intensive journal® programme (progoff 2005). another important exponent is kathleen adams who, in 1985, founded the center for journal therapy (adams 2005). a bird’s eye view of the field points to the following as being available to the interested individual, bearing in mind that this is not an exhaustive review for reasons mentioned formerly: • poetry: according to sampson and hunt (1998: 207) the “most fruitful model for a writing therapy” is provided by poetry therapy. however, it should be understood that poetry is one of the genres (haarhoff 1998: 163-176) within the larger field of writing for both creative and therapeutic purposes. there is a long tradition of using poems as a means of generating therapeutic writing (field 2006: 97). for this reason, poetry therapy appears to be most often practised in writing groups and in a workshop format (cf. bolton, field & thompson 2006). other than this group or workshop format, the writing of poetry itself has a curative benefit. oaklander (1988: 97) makes the point that rhyming poetry is not the most useful for “free-flowing expression”; therefore, it should be pointed out that poetry need not necessarily rhyme in order to be regarded as such. • journals: journal writing focuses on the writer’s internal experiences, reactions, and perceptions and differs from traditional diary writing where daily events and happenings are recorded from an exterior point of view (adams 2005) (see also journal writing from a psychological perspective by halberg 1987). sampson and hunt (1998: 206) refer to “a detailed method of therapeutic diary writing” advanced by ira progoff. progoff renders the journal process in book form which involves documenting one’s life from different perspectives; the contents page, for instance, includes entries such as a “life history log” and “intersections” (haarhoff 1998: 31). this author identifies with the allan and bertoia (2003) approach to journals: theirs is a jungian approach, and consequently emphasises dreamwork. the authors refer to their technique as picture and writing journals and suggest a booklet of approximately 184 x 228mm, recommending that the top half of the page is blank and the bottom half lined which would enable the addition of drawings to words and sentences. in this approach, journals are referred to as “experience journals” and so-called time-tabling logs (i.e. “today i did this and then that …”) (allan & bertoia 2003: 50) are not permitted. the goal of these experience journals is to enhance perceptiveness about the environment and to facilitate reflective thought. one variation on the journal theme is a dream journal where the dream is not only recorded, but where some aspect of it is illustrated (hence the suggested format for the journal) (allan & bertoia 2003: 59). the dream journal is regarded as an important tool in view of the fact that the self-healing ability of the individual emerges at night — “when the control of the ego and ego defenses weaken during sleep and the dream process becomes activated” (allan & bertoia 2003:190). 141 • letters: letters are used as a vehicle to offer interpretations, hypotheses, empowerment and messages about self-esteem or as a form of strategising; in short, therapeutic letters may take many different forms and may also incorporate different goals (wojcik & iverson 1989). furthermore, according to these authors, letter writing can be incorporated into a variety of theoretical models. schaefer (1988: 392) provides information best suited to this dissertation: writing letters or even notes can be very therapeutic as a method for expressing feelings. they are particularly useful in the sense that they are not as direct or as confrontational as a face-to-face exchange. moreover, by expressing themselves in a letter, individuals are able to clarify what they want to say and how to say it. finally, letters may be mailed while others may simply be written for their therapeutic value. • self-descriptions: this comprises a description of the self by writing about positive and negative characteristics (van der merwe 1996: 121). • stories and autobiographies: not much information on the utilisation of the story-writing technique as such could be found. however, there are references to story-telling mainly and, to a lesser extent in certain sources, story-writing. in addition, at least one of the exercises listed in the following section results in stories. in the main, these two techniques refer to the way in which an individual can write incidents or aspects of her life as “stories”, the purpose of which is integration. two important aspects in this regard are: first, the fact that personal memory is “unreliable”; secondly, stories, and particularly life stories, change over time as the individual’s perspective changes. although it may be understood that the autobiography is written mainly by older persons as part of their developmental tasks at that age, this technique may be put to good use at any age. the following section will explore some of the writing exercises which may be employed. exercises utilised in writing it is self-evidently impossible to provide examples of all the different writing exercises employed by the individual, mainly because these are open to the individual’s imagination, creativity, and innovative skills — to unlimited effect. the following, which are summarised in appendix 1, are examples of how writing as therapy may be focused: • the first exercise singled out, is that of “freewriting”, which is an exercise in how to write. with reference to the earlier point regarding a release of conscious control, elbow (in hunt 2000: 21) suggests the following exercise in two parts: the first comprises two or three writing periods of approximately five minutes. during each of these periods, the writer will write continuously — for the first, there is no given starting point; the writer simply starts writing whatever is in her head. in this period, no attempt is made to edit in any way and, should the writer 142 become stuck, the previous word or phrase will be repeated until the flow commences again. once the five minutes are up, the next stage comprises a reading of the text, and an underlining of anything seemingly interesting or significant as a basis for the next stage of the exercise. during the second stage, the selected word, phrase, or image is written at the top of a new sheet of paper, and another five minutes of freewriting commences, using the heading as the trigger and with the emphasis on keeping the flow going; this stage can be repeated several times. having completed the first part, the writer proceeds to the second part which comprises the editing stage for which at least 20 minutes is allowed. corrections are done at this point and shape is given to what has emerged from the freewriting exercise. as an alternative, it is suggested that the second stage is postponed for at least a week, so as to create distance from the material (brande in hunt 2000: 23). hunt (2000: 91) recommends this exercise as a means of suspending the “critical faculty” so as to evade the control of defence mechanisms. • hunt (1998: 21-27) describes the exercise “writing with the voice of the child” which provides insight into the inner life by accessing early memories. this exercise is facilitated by the use of old photographs of the individual, her parents, and early environment. the individual is requested to “enter” the photograph and experience it in sensory terms, before writing down words and phrases associated with the memory. thus, this forms the basis of a more connected piece of writing in either prose or poetry format. • bradshaw (1990: 149-151) recommends writing the myth or fairy tale about one’s childhood (bradshaw 1990: 149-151). he suggests focusing on an event or events during the school years for instance, or on an event that strongly affected the individual. the story should have two parts: the first commencing with “once upon a time”, describing the events chosen by the individual and how they created the spiritual wound. part two should begin with “and when she/he grew up”, focusing on the later life-damaging effects of this wound. bradshaw (1990: 151) believes that the resulting story enables the individual to get in touch with feelings about issues, while it also enables the individual to see the connection between the neglect of unmet developmental dependency needs and consequent life history. bradshaw (1990: 149) points out that myths and fairy tales circumvent the rational, thinking brain. • moskowitz (1998: 35-45) employs an exercise referred to as “the self as source” to enhance personal development through self-exploration, investigation, and understanding. the author utilises the exercise, for example, by locating an area of conflict or polarity within the individual’s personality — such as the “good” girl and the “bad” girl. these two aspects of the personality are described as two different characters, named and ultimately integrated by creating a story. 143 • hunt (2000: 33-35) describes “creating a life map”, which is useful not only in identifying topics and themes arising from one’s own experience, but in “objectifying the self”. in this exercise, a horisontal line is drawn across an a4 sheet to indicate the lifespan from year zero to the present. the task is to divide this line up into time segments, denoting significant change in the individual’s life. for each segment, the following are to be identified and written underneath the line: significant places; significant events; and significant people. a word or phrase to characterise one’s relationship with the outside world during that period is to be added. having completed this part, the next task is to distance oneself from the personal material and to identify topics and themes of a more general nature which characterise the different time segments; these are to be written above the line. having completed the life map, certain of the topics or themes can be singled out and used as a trigger to write a story (about an aspect of one’s life — author’s addition). • hunt (2000: 29-31) uses dialogue on paper as a means of “taking us back into the present of the experience and re-experiencing it from the inside”. individuals are asked to write a short piece, using mainly dialogue, under the title “the misunderstanding”. this exercise facilitates a dialogue with “the voices of significant people in our lives … voices which exert a powerful influence over our views of ourselves and our relationship with the past” (hunt 2000: 97). • on the subject of keeping a dream journal, allan and bertoia (2003: 61) suggest the following technique for those who “don’t have dreams” or “don’t remember” dreams. while falling asleep, the individual is to repeat “i am going to dream and remember it”; in addition, a tape recorder or dream journal should be kept beside the bed and the dream should be written down immediately on awakening, before getting out of bed. • allan and bertoia (2003:78) make use of letter-writing and have found a “to whom it may concern” format useful, especially with individuals who have just come through a very difficult period; the suggestion is that the letter would be helpful to others, but its actual benefit lies in the possibility of it integrating an experience. they also suggest the “unsent letter” in instances where communication with another party could exacerbate the existing problem. allan and bertoia (2003: 84) regard this technique as especially helpful in dealing with bereavement in that it affords the opportunity of completing unfinished business with the deceased. hunt (2000: 27) is of the opinion that exercises such as the ones described above provide a means of getting in touch with oneself and one’s experience “at a deep, emotionally felt level”. furthermore, the above exercises can be explored and expanded in different ways, one of which is by combining them with art and music. playing music before or while a writing exercise is conducted is a means of heightening sensory awareness. in this regard, it is important to take note of pennebaker’s (1990: 112) 144 observation. he compares art and music therapies and states that these are found to “quickly strip away” inhibitions and other defenses. in such a state, individuals are more emotionally aware although, as the author points out, they do not necessarily achieve understanding. pennebaker’s point (1990: 112) is that thoughts and feelings are understood through the process of writing. leavitt and pill (1995: 146) explain this phenomenon in their view of writing as being “metaphoric”. in terms of the concept “metaphoric”, the authors understand that writing is more a “primary process” than a conversation, and metaphor facilitates rapid access to innermost thoughts, which make them easier to approach and, ultimately, to integrate. conclusion this article indicates that writing as a form of personal therapy has value and, moreover, that the perception of its value is embedded in a basis of empirical research. other than a review of the body of work which substantiates the idea of the therapeutic value of writing, the discussion highlighted its application from a practical point of view, including both techniques and exercises for writing as therapy. three central points emerge from the discussion, namely that there is a question as to how such a writing treatment should be structured and what it should contain. a second point concerns the matter of support for the individual in the course of such a personal writing treatment, and it is clear that such support is imperative. furthermore, it is evident that this form of personal therapy is not exclusively for the intellectual or the gifted individual and although having a universal application, a mindset for writing is mainly required. finally, it may be surmised that writing in this manner is a “self-help” therapy, one which leads to physical and psychological change. arguing from this premise, it is conceivable that the basic tenets of such a form of therapy may be practised on a group level, thereby influencing communities and society as a whole. endnotes 1 this concept is borrowed from hunt, c. & sampson, f. (eds.). 1998a. the self on the page. theory and practice of creative writing in personal development. london: jessica kingsley. 2 the author has been practising autobiographical writing for a number of years. she combines this form of writing with auto-ethnographic research. 3 the following sources were consulted and provide detailed information on the nature of their studies and the resultant findings: pennebaker & o’heeron 1984; pennebaker & chew 1985; pennebaker & beall 1986; pennebaker, hughes & o’heeron 1987; pennebaker & susman 1988; pennebaker, kiecolt-glaser & glaser 1988a; pennebaker, kiecolt-glaser & glaser 1988b; watson & pennebaker 1989; pennebaker, barger & tiebout 1989; pennebaker, colder & sharp 1990; francis & pennebaker 1992; pennebaker 1993; wegner & pennebaker 1993; hughes, uhlmann & pennebaker 1994; petrie, booth, pennebaker, davison & thomas 1995; pennebaker & francis 1996; pennebaker, mayne & francis 1997. (this is not a comprehensive reflection of their body of work, but rather of the ones that could be accessed.) 145 references adams, k. 2005. a brief history of journal therapy. 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[online]. available: http://www.healingwithsoul.com/writing%20therapy(r)/writing_therapy_tm_.html [accessed on 2005/06/21]. 150 appendix 1 examples of exercises which may be utilised in writing 151 “freewriting” • exercise in how to write • releasing control, critical faculty “writing with the voice of a child” • provides insight into inner life • accesses early memories writing the myth or fairy tale about • commences with “once upon a time” one’s childhood • concludes with “and when she grew up” “the self as source” • enhances personal development through self-exploration, investigation and understanding • can focus on polarities “creating a life map” • identifies topics and themes arising from own experience • “objectifies the self” • divides lifespan into time segments dialogue on paper • retraces an experience and re-experiences it from the inside “to whom it may concern” • writing a letter so as to integrate an experience • could be utilised as “unsent letter” as alternative method exercises to facilitate written techniques: the dream journal • repeat: “i am going to dream and remember it” • keep tape recorder or dream journal beside the bed and write dream down immediately upon waking up poetry • draw a picture about feelings experienced while listening exploration and expansion of written exercises: combine with art draw a specific part of self or create a symbol of an experience so as to facilitate integration combine with music play music before or while writing an exercise to heighten sensory awareness. 179 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 181-197 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder* abstract residences are directly affected by transformational change in south africa, as these are key areas in transformation strategies of south african tertiary institutions. although inroads have been made in this area, there is still room for improvement as transformation targets seem difficult to reach. to address this problem, the primary objective of this study was to recommend a theoretical communication framework that can contribute towards more effective communication during the process of change in multicultural junior female residences. a qualitative approach and grounded theory strategy were used as research design. as the grand theory of this study is based on the general systems theory approach, the mitroff model (mitroff et al. 1974) of problem-solving was applied. as a holistic perspective is deemed essential in order for an organisation to change successfully, the four dimensions of a contemporary organisation impacted by change were explored. the importance of organisational culture, and the essential place of the learning organisation where constant development of employees is encouraged to ensure that the organisation survives in, and adapts to, an ever-changing environment were emphasised. the central role of the manager, the importance of leadership communication, the engaging of employees, as well as the fact that listening to employees should be regarded as an action step critical to successful change implementation were discussed. an important factor often overlooked, namely the human factor or micro-emotional level of the organisation, was addressed. a five-pillar communication framework with indicators that can contribute towards more effective communication during a change intervention was recommended. * lucrezea de lange and dr dalmé mulder lecture in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. mrs de lange completed a master’s dissertation on the topic in the department recently. dr mulder was the supervisor. 180 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder introduction residing in a residence is an important part of the university experience for many students. it is in this home away from home that friendships are forged that sometimes last a lifetime. as a result of the changes that took place in south africa since democratisation in 1994, the relatively calm waters in which higher education institutions functioned previously has become stormier. although residences are synonymous with a healthy spirit that characterises student life on campus, residence life at tertiary educational institutions was not excluded from these changing conditions. this study was conducted at a multicultural tertiary institution which offers on-campus accommodation to approximately 3000 students in 17 junior residences. the problem under investigation is the partial failure of the cultural integration process in residences as most of the traditionally “white” residences have reached their integration goals, while at the time of this study the traditionally “black” residences have not reached their transformation goals. there were many factors that could have contributed to this problem, one of which was the way the communication in the organisation was managed during this process of change implementation. the article addresses this issue and recommends a five-pillar communication framework with indicators that can contribute towards more effective communication during a change intervention. change management communication organisations do not merely exist. they are scientifically managed in order to attain predetermined goals and objectives. the main focus of organisational behaviour is organisational design, management, teams and the dynamic interaction between people and their working environment. the challenge is to create an organisation that is managed in such a way that its members are energised and engaged (werner 2007: 3). changing conditions pose a particularly strong challenge to organisations. changes in organisations have significant impact on the organisation as well as the employees that have to implement these changes (werner 2007: 5). the organisation can be seen as a complex set of systems and sub-systems, all of which interact with one another within an existing environment. change, according to burnes (2004), is an ever-present feature of organisational life, both at operational and strategic level. the implementation of change is a complex process that is often unsuccessful, mainly as a result of poor communication or an underestimation of the amount of retraining required (price & chahal 2006: 237). the importance of communication and collaboration cannot be highlighted enough according to smeltzer (1991, in richardson & denton 1996: 203). keyton 181 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution (2005: 13) is of the opinion that organisational communication is a complex and continuous process through which organisational members create, maintain, and change the organisation. it is important to note that all organisational members participate in this process and that communication is not the sole responsibility or privilege of managers. even if managers create and send most of the messages, their subordinates and peers create meaning from the messages. while the process is said to be transactional, involving and enacting both sender and receiver roles to create mutual and shared meanings, shared meaning is not always achieved in organisational settings. werner (2007: 5) refers to the different dimensions of an organisation as the environmental, organisational, interpersonal, and intrapersonal dimensions. supporting this view, rollinson et al. (1998: 647) differentiate between two broad levels, namely the microand macro-level of an organisation. at the microemotional level the focus is on parts (or sub-systems) of an organisation, and so the unit of analysis is the individual or group. the focus at this level is to further the understanding of human behaviour in organisational settings, be it at an individual level or that of individuals in social groupings. the behaviour in these organisations tends to have a very humanistic approach, and there is often a very real concern for the well-being of individuals and groups. the macro-rational level perspective has a focus on the organisation as a whole: that is, the total system made up of all the subsystems. this can be highly technical in approach and lead to the impression that there is a lack of concern for the human element. the ideal according to rollinson et al. (1998: 647) would be the integration of these two levels in what they refer to as the meso-level. one would expect to find this type of approach in a contemporary organisation. contemporary organisational functioning requires a paradigm shift from traditionally “closed” operating procedures (characterised by one-way hierarchical interorganisational communication) to highly flexible innovative and collaborative functioning (verwey & du plooy-cilliers 2003). the contemporary organisation is a constantly changing organisation in which constant learning is essential (van tonder 2010: 49). contemporary organisations are learning organisations that are able to adapt to new circumstances and constantly change in order to be able to deal with the demands placed on them by pressures from inside and outside the organisation. the essence of organisational learning is the organisation’s ability to use the amazing mental capacity of all its members to create the kind of process that will improve its own functioning (mansor, malik & mat 2010: 63). organisational learning will enable an organisation to transform information into valued knowledge, which in turn, enriches the organisation’s capacity and capability for adapting to environmental changes and demand (yang 2003, in mansor, malik & mat 2010: 63). it can be argued that effective organisational 182 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder learning or an effective learning organisation that has obtained unique knowledge, will acquire a competitive advantage over other organisations in the same field (mansor, malik & mat 2010: 63). furthermore, organisations with strong, positive cultures inspire employees. when an organisation espouses one philosophy but practices another, employees become disheartened and disillusioned. the organisational culture essentially provides a unique point of commonality and identity and distinguishes employees from those in other organisations (clampitt et al. 2005: 50). saee (2005: 142) refers to trompenaars (1993) and mead (1998) who state that a strong positive organisational culture is one in which its members support senior management, and the relationship between senior management and workers is good. mead (1998, in saee 2005: 142) states that a culture in which there are incongruous and often contradictory value systems and a lack of communication among members, is referred to as a weak culture. when the culture is negative, relationships with management are bad and conditions opposite to those that prevail in strong cultures. disunity, mistrust, and a lack of communication among organisational members are traits of a negative culture. strong organisational cultures give rise to positive relationships between management and staff. communication is easy, open, and fruitful; morale is high and productivity climbs (mead 1998, in saee 2005: 142). a learning organisation’s culture is one in which everyone agrees on a shared vision and everyone recognises the inherent interrelationships among the organisation’s processes, activities, functions, and external environment. a strong sense of community, caring for each other, and trust are perceived in such an organisation. employees feel free to communicate, share, experiment, and learn openly, without fear of criticism or punishment (hellriegel et al. 2006: 385). the role that leadership plays becomes very important as an organisation moves towards becoming a learning organisation with a strong culture. as has been stated, the creation of a shared vision and then keeping organisational members working toward that vision is one of a leader’s most important functions (hellriegel et al. 2006: 384-385). the implication behind the concept of leadership is that there is a combination of personal qualities and skills that allow some people to obtain from their employees a response that is cohesive, effective and enthusiastic, whereas other people in the same situation cannot accomplish such results (guerra 2009: 122). without communication there can be no management or leadership. the communication skills of an organisation’s leaders, and their understanding of leadership communication, directly influence all other management functions in the organisation. corporate philosophers, such as mintzberg, kanter, nasbitt, 183 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution and many others, indicate new directions in the nature and actual processes of leadership which will require a much greater emphasis on the communicating abilities of the modern leader (puth 2002: 11-12). according to baldoni (2004: 20) effective leadership communication is rooted in the values and culture of the organisation. effective communication is furthermore grounded in the character of the leader and the values of the organisation. leaders of character communicate with openness, integrity, and honesty. effective leadership messages work to create a bond of trust between a leader and follower. these messages give the followers good reason to support the leader and what he or she is trying to accomplish. leaders should also create an environment that encourages learning. in learning organisations, all employees share at least some leadership responsibilities. this shared leadership that involves the sharing of decision-making and leadership creates a culture that fully supports the goals and efforts of the learning organisation (hellriegel et al. 2006: 384-385). the most frequently used tactics for effectively managing change are engagement of employees and encouragement of participation. another important factor that has to be taken into account is the role that leaders have to play in sense-making. the important role of internal communication and the use of the appropriate communication media are also essential. the value of “rich” media such as faceto-face communication cannot be stressed enough. the construction of meaning takes place through social interaction, the role of bottom-up communication and leaders that are prepared to listen to subordinates are also essential. against this background it is clear that there are several aspects that could have had an influence on the successful integration of diverse cultures in the residences of which communication is but one. however, as communication is essential for an organisation’s survival, the goal of this study was to formulate a theoretical communication framework that will provide indicators for more effective communication towards the successful integration of diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution. research methodology a qualitative approach was employed to explore the role of communication during a change intervention. grounded theory was used as research strategy, and indepth interviews and focus group sessions were used as primary data collection techniques. the detailed procedures of the grounded theory method prescribed for data analysis was used (strauss & corbin, in cresswell 2007: 160). this type of analysis consists of three phases of coding, namely open, axial and selective coding. in this study, the analytical process started with initial coding – this was the first step in the coding process and moved towards later decisions about defining the core conceptual categories. the second major phase in coding was focused 184 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder coding. focused coding entailed using the most significant and/or frequent earlier codes to sift through large amounts of data. deciding which initial codes made most sense to categorise data incisively and completely, was done at this stage of the coding process. theoretical sampling was employed (charmaz 2006; dick 2001). as categories emerged from the data, the researcher added to the sample in such a way that diversity was increased in useful ways. the purpose was to strengthen the emerging theory by defining the properties of the categories, and how these mediated the relationship of category to category. the data collection and analysis were completed when theoretical saturation was obtained (charmaz 2006). a non-probability, purposive sample was used for the in-depth interviews. the respondents for the focus groups and in-depth interviews were selected based on their specific position in the organisation being impacted by the change intervention; therefore in-depth interviews were conducted with respondents that were part of the change process in the specific division chosen. these respondents represented a theoretical “population” in that they were spokespersons for the topic of inquiry (henning 2004: 71). from the ten junior female residences, a sample of eight residence heads partook in the study. work experience of the respondents varied between twenty years and one year of service in this specific position, with the majority of respondents having between eight and twenty years of experience. the research commenced with the in-depth interviews in which certain themes were identified, after which two focus group sessions took place to explore the themes in more detail. finally, respondent validation was employed to check the authenticity of the results. the indicators derived from the data were presented in a preliminary theoretical communication framework. this framework was presented to the respondents of the study for validation. they had to determine if they agreed, were neutral to, or disagreed with the indicators included in the framework. the grand theory that this study is based on, is the general systems theory. the systems thinking perspective was adopted as systems theory is considered in many quarters to be the dominant perspective in current thinking about organisations and their management (van tonder 2010). in order to meet the goal and objectives of this study, the research process was based on the mitroff model (mitroff, betz, pondy & sagasti 1974). the mitroff model was used as guiding principle. as the mitroff model implies that legitimate research need not address all the activities and elements in the model (niemann 2005: 16), the scope of this study covered the first three circles of the model (reality problem situation, conceptual model, and scientific model) and then the 185 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution path (conceptualisation 1 and modelling 2) that connects them. circle i represents the first phase of the research methodology of the study. the second phase, namely the identification of indicators that can lead to more effective communication for the successful integration of female residences, materialise in circle ii. circle iii refers to the respondent validation of the suggested model. within the scope of this study, the indicators were used to develop a model that was conceptual in nature and validated by the respondents in order to continue to circle iv (solving). thus, in the first phase of the current research (exploring the literature on contemporary organisations), the activity of reality problem solving took place. this in turn led to the next phase (circle ii) where the conceptualisation of the indicators took place. in circle iii the model was presented to the respondents to determine the authenticity of the suggested framework. an interactional approach to communication was adopted. communication is seen as a process, not a structure. it is inherently interactive, adaptive and transactional, and it evolves. it is regarded as the process by which meaning is shared and association is built up in the formation of groups and cultures, and by which interpersonal transaction, social position, action status and power are manifested, changed and, in some cases, diminished. the interactional view does not describe communication as an entity or activity that exists apart from people and their interactions. at the core of organisations are communicating, interacting and transacting individuals who actively shape their own behaviour (charmaz 2006). the theoretical domains within the paradigm of the systems theory in this study were the contemporary organisation, and change management communication. it was reasoned that the contemporary organisation forms the context within which both integrated communication and leadership communication are practised. it was further argued that a contemporary organisation is a constantly changing organisation. van tonder (2010: 49) opines that contemporary theories suggest a more naturalistic and less controlled (i.e. organic) form of change, which is anchored in the view that organisations are organic and have within them the seeds of self-organisation despite increasing complexity and the likelihood of chaos. furthermore, as all organisations in south africa function in a multi-cultural environment and consist of employees from different cultural backgrounds, intercultural communication is part and parcel of a contemporary south african organisation. finally, it was reasoned that to be effective in a changing environment, management should act as leaders and not as managers, thus the focus on leadership communication. 186 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder research results communication is often referred to as the nervous system of an organisation. with regard to the communication approach in the mentioned study, respondents indicated that, at the time of the study, a serious lack of communication was experienced and existing communication was described as of poor quality. it became clear that communication channels were not effective and that there was no communication system in place. communication that did take place, took the form of top-down communication. furthermore, a silo approach to communication, where each department functioned on its own, lead to isolated functioning. there was no lateral communication between different departments and inconsistent messages were often being sent out. it was reported that when problems arose, there was no retrospective communication. respondents also reported that they were not consulted, never received feedback and experienced a disregard for communication or input from their side. regarding the culture and structure of the organisation, respondents experienced the organisation’s culture to contain aspects such as reciprocal distrust, rigid decision making on management’s side, and being too “politically” inclined. jandt (2004) states that culture is a set of values, goals, and priorities that is encouraged through the policies and procedures of an organisation. one of the biggest obstacles to change in an organisation is the self-reinforcing value structure of the existing organisational culture. therefore, if change has to take place, organisational culture must be changed (nelson & coxhead 1997: 35). this has been found to be easier said than done. an organisation’s culture is the product of its history, of its accumulated experiences and the lessons it has learnt in seeking to survive and prosper. what is valued, what is assumed and what is lodged in the organisational memory, often unconsciously, is what has worked for it in the past (nelson & coxhead 1997: 35). an organisation with a strong culture creates an environment where employees feel nurtured and valued. based on the research results, it can be concluded that at the time of the study, respondents experienced the culture and climate of the institution as negative. furthermore, the existence of an offensive organisational climate was a problem reported by the respondents. on an emotional level the climate was experienced as threatening and abusive. furthermore, the organisation was polarised by active political involvement and activities. the respondents felt that the culture was politically driven and that most strategic decisions, such as the integration of the residences, were informed by political agendas. as a result, integration was experienced as forced. as such, a client-responsive culture which is indicative of a successful organisation was absent. the climate was further experienced as negative as no relationship of trust existed between respondents and students on the one hand, and management on the other. verwey and du plooy-cilliers (2003: 187 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution 135) refer to this type of communication climate as a defensive communication climate. the staff members of the division under investigation reported that they were functioning in a stultifying climate. to add to this, the organisational structure also did not continuously provide the necessary support to the people who had to implement the change process. the implementation of change in any organisation poses many challenges. therefore, the proper management of the change process is extremely important. according to the respondents this was another area where problems were encountered. it was reported that the process was not focused, no direction was provided in the change process and activities were repeated without any progress. the process commenced without key role players’ understanding and insight into the scope, dynamics and complexity of the environment. as a result of the lack of planning, the process seemed disorganised and too many changes were attempted at once. the practical implications of the process were also not considered. this led to many crisis situations that had to be managed under pressure. other issues that arose included the absence of proper consultation, and the lack of transparency and feedback. following the inefficiencies identified in the process, the important role of leadership surfaced. a serious lack of leadership communication skills was identified. leaders were described as unapproachable, non-transparent, and unprofessional in their conduct; they were seen as autocratic and that they undermined the authority of the respondents. the respondents reported that leadership was inconsistent, could not be trusted and double standards prevailed. furthermore, leadership was experienced as lacking expertise, being absent, and not acknowledging cultural differences between the respondents. strained relationships between leadership and the respondents were common because of serious distrust on both sides. respondents felt that they were left to their own devices and received no support from leadership. the success achieved by some of the residence staff groups was also not recognised. the important communicative role of the transformational leader as change agent has a great influence on the outcomes of change initiatives. robbins (1992: 398406) predicts that the communication in organisations will continue to become more complex, forcing leaders to evaluate their communicative effectiveness. the use of clear and open communication where listening and verbalising are equally important and communication is viewed as a transaction is essential. the competencies of effective change agents are described as clarity of goals, the specification of goals, communication skills, negotiation skills, and “influencing skills” in order to gain commitment to goals, as well as team building activities. throughout this study it became apparent that trust in top management had a significant influence on the support of change. 188 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder another topic that surfaced during the investigation was the consultative process. consultative intervention can assist in creating a platform where open communication and dialogue is stimulated. consultation should also contribute towards a context in which the human factor is acknowledged and respected. however, the consultation experienced by the respondents reflected a totally different picture. the consultants were described as disrespectful, unapproachable, and uninformed. in contrast to what has been described in the literature as effective consultative communication, the respondents in this study experienced communication as openly one-sided, ineffective and without insight as the content was not well thought through. the consultants did not listen to input from participants; input was often disregarded. great frustration was experienced with the facilitation of the process. most of the respondents reported that when they did not agree with the consultant they were treated with disrespect. the consultants’ conduct made respondents feel unsafe, frustrated and discontent. the appointment of the consultants created certain expectations with staff members, as it seemed as if the respondents were eventually going to be able to state their point of view and be listened to. according to the respondents they were however disillusioned very early on in the process. this might have resulted in the fact that the consultants were incapable of securing everybody’s buy-in into the process. last but not least, the human factor in change communication proved to be an important factor in the success of the process. as stated earlier, an organisation is constituted, enacted, and exists through the interaction of the people who constitute it at any point in time. in this study the respondents indicated and were adamant that the human factor was totally disregarded. respondents reported feelings of despair, helplessness, frustration, humiliation and deceit. this gave rise to individuals being inhibited as they were constantly criticised or attacked personally. clearly the impact of change on individuals was not regarded as important. based on the results discussed, conclusions were drawn and recommendations identified that are discussed in the rest of this article. conclusions the main themes mentioned by respondents which stood out as barriers to effective communication were: communication approach, organisational culture and climate and organisational structure, management of change, management approach and the role of leaders, the consultative process and finally, the human factor. three of the themes, namely the communication approach, the management of change, and the consultative process surfaced as more prominent themes. it was evident from the data that essential elements like organisational culture and climate did not receive the necessary attention, and the importance of the human factor was ignored completely. 189 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution it is evident that contemporary organisations need to change as part of their evolution. it is important to recognise that change has an impact on all the dimensions of an organisation, especially as contemporary organisations are viewed from an open systems perspective in which an organisation is seen as a dynamic living system consisting of sub-systems that influence and are influenced by one another. the implementation of change in an organisation should therefore be viewed from a holistic perspective. the macro-rational level of change that refers to the organisation as a whole should ideally be integrated with the microemotional level in order to prevent a technical approach that gives the impression that there is a lack of concern for the human element in the change process. change in organisations is implemented and sustained through human communication. throughout this study it became clear that the communicative role of leadership during a change effort is essential for the success of any change intervention. the importance of considering the context within which the change takes place should also not be neglected. the integrated approach to communication where different aspects of communication are combined in one strategy was not employed by this institution. this change initiative was unsuccessful, primarily due to the fact that the communication was not integrated, or approached from a holistic point of view. the need for a communication framework with indicators that can be used during change was therefore re-established. recommendations a theoretical framework with its roots in the theory of contemporary organisational communication and change management communication is recommended. the concepts and the constructs that evolved from the research data, verified against the literature review, form the body of the framework. the pillars of the communication framework as identified consider important aspects highlighted by jandt (2004) and saee (2005). jandt (2004) underlined the importance of policies and procedures within an organisation, while saee (2005) added organisational processes to the equation. as human interaction forms the nucleus of an organisation, the human element was considered an essential pillar within the context of this study. furthermore, the importance of principles to guide conduct in the organisation was added as the final pillar. the function of the processes and procedures are to manage the context of the change intervention, the principles and policies are added to address the quality of the intervention and the people affected by the change intervention therefore form the five pillars of the framework. these five pillars embrace the main themes identified in the data. the process is representative of the communication approach, the management approach, and the consultative 190 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder process. the procedures refer mainly to the themes of organisational culture, climate and structure and the management of change. as the principles and policies are considered as regulating the quality of the communication in the change intervention, it is linked to all of the identified main themes. finally, the people are representative of the human factor. in the following section the five categories will be elaborated on to demonstrate the indicators relevant to each. the process with regard to the process the following aspects are indicative of success: ♦ change should be approached from a holistic perspective; ♦ an evaluation of the nature, scope and context of the change intervention that must be communicated should be regarded as the first step in the process; ♦ the most relevant components of the different approaches to change management should be identified and combined according to the contextspecific requirements; ♦ a theoretical background on the nature, reasons of, and mechanisms for the change should be developed; ♦ change should be approached as a consultative process; ♦ the macro-rational and micro-emotional levels of change should be implemented simultaneously; ♦ a strong organisational culture and positive climate should be created; ♦ clients’ needs should be taken into consideration during the change process; ♦ the quality of the process should be regarded as important; and ♦ change should be implemented systematically. procedures procedures that should be in place to enhance the quality of the communication during change are: ♦ adequate resources to assist with the implementation and to support the process should be in place; ♦ the formulation of planned and purposeful communication strategies to direct behaviour and motivate participants are essential; 191 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution ♦ the micro-emotional level in change management should be adequately managed to ensure that the human component receives preference in the process; ♦ channels that accommodate two-way communication should be established and should receive precedence as it enables feedback; ♦ a combination of top-down and bottom-up involvement should be encouraged; ♦ in change management the receiver should be considered the most important participant in the process; ♦ practical implications of decisions should be considered before implementation of such decisions; ♦ professional training should be provided at all levels of the organisation to enhance the organisational culture; ♦ the implementation of too many changes at once should be avoided; and ♦ wide-scale consultation should take place. the people the people in charge of the change process should demonstrate effective interpersonal communication skills. they should: ♦ be competent communicators that are approachable, transparent in conduct, and possess basic management skills; ♦ be consistent in their conduct; ♦ be open to dialogue; ♦ listen with an open mind; ♦ take emotions into consideration as aspects such as fear, frustration, despair and anxiety could impede on the effectiveness of the communicative process; ♦ encourage individuals to engage in open communication; ♦ value relationships of mutual trust and respect; ♦ establish a culture of support; ♦ acknowledge individual differences; ♦ manage the process without preconceived ideas and unbiased; and ♦ realise that strong leadership is necessary in a changing environment. 192 lucrezea de lange and dalmé mulder the principles principles that will guide the ethical conduct during the change process include: ♦ acknowledgement of cultural differences; ♦ practicing of two-way communication; ♦ establishing a relationship of trust; ♦ underwriting values such as fairness, trustworthiness, honesty and integrity; ♦ genuinely starting from the point of view of the other; ♦ including the four areas of great leadership – envisioning, enabling, energising and focusing; ♦ achieving buy-in from the receivers whom are most affected by the changes; ♦ communicating clearly; ♦ having no hidden agendas; ♦ communicating timely, consistent and accurately; ♦ making use of rich channels of communication such as face-to-face techniques; ♦ acknowledging the personal values of all participants; ♦ recognition of success during the process should be seen as important; ♦ objectivity towards all participants in the change process is essential; and ♦ non-verbal communication should at all times enhance the verbal communication. policies policies stipulating the necessary conduct regarding the process and procedures should be formulated and these policies should be honoured. it is important to align these policies with the principles of the king iii report on corporate governance pertaining to responsible leadership and ethical conduct. as the five pillars presented in the recommended framework address the macrorational level (the process, the procedures, and the policies), as well as the microemotional level (people and principles), it is in line with the ideal suggested by rollinson et al. (1998) of a mesa level where the mentioned macro and micro levels are integrated to enhance the effectiveness of communication during a change intervention. although this study was conducted within the context of 193 communication indicators for integrating diverse cultures in junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution junior female residences at a south african tertiary institution, the suggested communication framework is not restricted to this context and could easily be applied to any change intervention. 194 references baldoni, j. 2004. powerful leadership communication. leader to leader 20-24 (spring). burnes, b. 2004. managing change: a strategic approach to organisational dynamics. 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(second edition). pretoria: van schaik. communitas omslag nov 2008 75 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 75 92 thalyta swanepoel, lynnette m. fourie and johannes d. froneman* abstract hiv and aids is a complex developmental issue. cognisance should therefore be taken of the socio-cultural, socio-economic and epidemiological factors impacting on the syndrome. to deal with hiv and aids in such a comprehensive manner, a multi-sectoral approach is required in which government, civil society, the media and ngos take hands. in this regard criticism about media coverage on hiv and aids has resulted in constructive suggestions, mainly from interest groups, through which they performed a potentially powerful agenda-setting function. this article extracts a number of guidelines from the suggestions to formulate an ethical framework for hiv and aids reporting in view of the lack of guidelines in professional ethical codes (e.g. the code of the press council of south africa) as well as institutional codes (i.e. that of individual media institutions). the proposed interest group guidelines are directed at journalism practice, but also address ethical issues, e.g. that the media consider the rights of people with hiv and aids, respect their right to confidentiality and portray them in a dignified manner. * thalyta swanepoel, dr lynnette fourie and professor johannes froneman lecture in the school of communication studies at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus. this article is based on ms swanepoel’s master’s dissertation which she completed under the supervision of dr fourie and professor froneman. introduction it is generally acknowledged that hiv/aids is more than a medical problem, but the full complexity of the issue within a developing society is less often stated. in recent literature arguments emerged that hiv and aids should be viewed as a developmental matter and all factors influencing development should therefore be taken into account (cf. swanepoel, fourie & steyn 2007; tsafack temah 2004: 3; somavia 2004: v). socio-cultural and epidemiological factors are generally present in a developed society. it is, however, the socio-economic factors such as income inequality, gender discrimination, low income levels, a mobile population, low education levels and in certain instances bad governance (the priority government gives hiv and aids as a health issue) that are unique to developing regions. the complexity of the problem in these regions thus requires a unique solution. in this regard a multi-sectoral approach where government, ngos (non-governmental organisations), community-based organisations (cbos), faith-based organisations (fbos) and the corporate sector take hands in the fight against hiv and aids has become popular (cf. chen & liao 2005; gómez-jáuregui 2004). moreover, it is evident that the media play an important role in addressing problems relating to hiv and aids. in this context the media have a distinct agenda-setting function (panos institute 2003:13). however, given the unique interrelated conditions that need to be taken into account when addressing (and thus also reporting on) hiv and aids issues in a developing environment such as south africa, it is not surprising that interest groups in the field often criticise the media. there are a number of professional codes in south africa to guide media professionals, including the code of the press council of south africa (voluntarily implemented by the print media industry, and generally referred to as the press code), the sauj code (applicable to members of the now defunct south african union of journalists) and the code of the broadcast complaints commission of south africa (bccsa, which is implemented in terms of the broadcast act). institutional codes include those of the sabc, the star and die burger. with one exception, these codes make no specific reference to hiv and aids reporting. this is an important gap, as hiv and aids is a specialist field and one of the most complex journalistic challenges of our time – not only due to the level of scientific understanding and background knowledge it demands, but also due to a host of relevant ethical issues such as the conflict between the public interest and the rights of the individual (cf. cullinan 2001; delate 2003a: 9; smith 2003). in a multi-sectoral approach it could be useful for the media to turn to the other partners for guidelines. while civil society does not necessarily have the ability to formulate and implement policy in the long run, research (seckinelgin 2004; 2005) has indicated it is best equipped to identify needs, hiv and aids contexts and complexities at grassroots level. government on the other hand, is focused on policy formation, making a partnership essential. 76 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor against this background this article aims to identify guidelines enabling journalists to be more sensitive to the development context surrounding hiv and aids reporting. this will be done by studying different critiques and comments from interest groups (both from government and civil society) regarding reporting within the field. research methodology in this qualitative study literature investigation and document analysis were predominantly used to analyse the critiques of different interest groups regarding hiv and aids reporting. the interest groups referred to include government departments such as the national department of health (doh); activist groups such as the treatment action campaign (tac), the aids consortium and the aids law project (alp) seated in the wits centre for applied legal studies; ngos including napwa (the national association for people living with aids); and world bodies such as the world health organisation and the different agencies of the united nations. organisations that have been particularly active in promoting hiv and aids reporting are the centre for aids development, research and evaluation (cadre); the safaids media unit; and the africa women’s media centre (awmc). in co-operation with the alp, journ-aids compiled ethical guidelines on hiv and aids reporting for the south african media (delate 2003a). these and other proposed interest group guidelines for acceptable ethical reporting on the epidemic mainly focus on the rights of people living with hiv and aids (pwas), the rights of infected and affected children, and the roles and responsibilities of media practitioners when covering the epidemic (cadre 2004). the critiques were categorised into four main categories: • category 1: genres and sub-themes are points in question that the media write about including grassroots social issues and activities, critical and in-depth journalism, and positive and constructive coverage; • category 2: presentation focuses on guidelines ruling how news on hiv and aids should be presented; • category 3: language, issues such as stigmatisation, discrimination and sensationalism; and • category 4: accuracy. guidelines on the use of sources, contextualisation, statistics and claims are analysed. proposed guidelines for ethical hiv and aids reporting genres and sub-themes many studies worldwide have analysed the content of news items on hiv and aids and certain trends have emerged, including sensationalism, alarmism, inaccuracy, disinformation and blame (parker & kelly 2001: 2). galloway (2001) concludes that 77 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor the lack of authoritative reporting on the epidemic can cause harm because many south africans did not study science and biology at school. furthermore, newspapers should spend more time planning sustainable hiv and aids coverage rather than concentrating on event-driven news related to the epidemic. critical and in-depth journalism well-informed citizens need true facts, analysis and interpretation to be able to make informed decisions – “otherwise, they will be like the blind men who touched only one part of the elephant and falsely interpreted it as the whole” (hiebert, ungurait & bohn 1991: 445; cf. sheridan burns 2002: 149). although there is a lot of criticism against interpretive journalism (nel 1999: 284-285), it is important that the facts have meaning, which they will only have within the correct context – including the necessary (ethical) interpretation to clarify the facts. wellinformed, critical and ethical editorial comment on hiv and aids is particularly important, if not to persuade, then to further the debate and keep it on the agenda (cf. hiebert et al. 1991: 446; leiter, harriss & johnson 2000: 393). parker and kelly (2001: 3,6) found that although the media often focuses on issues related to hiv and aids, analysis is sorely lacking, stories are not followed through or developed beyond the obvious. in this regard, we submit that very little analysis of the critical cost implications of mother to child transmission therapy could be found. furthermore, little attention was paid to the prevention of further hiv infection and the care of mother and child (cf. beamish 2002: ch-4696; parker & kelly 2001: 3,6). responsible journalism expects of its practitioners to be informed writers. an uninformed person cannot be critical. however, it would be unfair to expect of journalists other than regular hiv and aids reporters to be fully informed about all aspects of the epidemic. what one can and should expect of any journalist, however, is to double-check facts and comments when he or she is working in an unfamiliar field; and within the usual time constraints gather as much background information as possible to enable him/her to finish the task at hand in an ethically acceptable manner. news themes galloway (2001: 2) says the subject (hiv and aids) offers many challenges for the science or health journalist who acts as mediator between the experts and the public who need to understand the information in order to change their lifestyle and protect them against infection. this holds that newspaper editors undertake to regularly allocate space to the subject – not only when hard news breaks, new statistics are made public or in lieu of world aids day on december 1. beamish (2002: cd-4690) describes the topic of hiv and aids as “political, economic, social and cultural. it is local, national and global. it is about individuals, communities, regions, nations and the world.” if a journalist keeps this in mind, he/she will never want for ideas (beamish 2002: ch-4696). hiv and aids subjects include: 78 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor • action, i.e. stories on counselling and care; politics and policy – rape, mtct (mother to child transmission of hiv), issues in the workplace, awareness and prevention, risk, conflict and politics; • impact, i.e. statistics, economic impact, social issues such as poverty and hiv and aids orphans, and legal issues; • research, scientific and social; and • treatment, i.e. new drugs, clinical trials, so-called “cures” and vaccines. the most effective hiv and aids journalism integrates three elements, namely the perspectives of pwas (the human-interest element); the bigger cultural, economic and political context of the epidemic; and the science of hiv and aids (stein 2001: 7,11; cf. delate 2003b, parker & kelly 2001: 3). finlay (2003) holds that conflict has shaped south africans’ perception and understanding of hiv and aids since the mid 1990s. in 1994, there was the furore about the government’s hiv and aids plan; in 1996, the sarafina ii scandal emerged; in the late 1990s the focus shifted to activists’ plea for mtct treatment; in 2000, president thabo mbeki and “his” dissidents held the media’s attention for months regarding their stance on the causal aspects of the syndrome. at the end of 2003, the pressure started building for the provision of antiretroviral treatment (art) in the state sector. in 2004 the debate centred on the prevalence of hiv among economically active south africans. news coverage again mainly focused on political issues, such as statements by the minister of health, dr manto tshabalala-msimang at the xvth international aids conference in bangkok, thailand, in july 2004. towards the end of 2004 a donor blood debacle at the south african national blood service once again placed the spotlight on hiv and aids (de lange 2004). but at the time mbeki refrained from referring to the syndrome at all, preferring to concentrate on racism issues following the sanbs’s decision to test the blood of black donors for hiv infection. in 2005 the media concentrated on the corrupt relationship between schabir shaik and former deputy president jacob zuma (basson 2005), leading up to the rape charge zuma would face in march 2006 after an incident at his home in november 2005. his testimony in court that he had a shower after having had intercourse with an hiv positive woman (he knew of her status) again made headlines all over the country. the court proceedings stayed in the public eye for many months. zuma’s shower became food for continuous ridicule. at the xvith international aids conference in toronto, canada, in 2006, the health minister emphasised nutrition and the use of traditional remedies as alternative therapies to antiretroviral treatment. her references to lemons, beetroot, garlic and potatoes were ridiculed in the local press. these foodstuffs were prominently displayed at south africa’s exhibition stall in toronto. 79 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor thus, conflict, key personalities and the government’s stance on the issue still influence news priorities when it comes to hiv and aids – in line with traditional news themes (finlay 2003), but at the expense of even more important issues, such as those in the social context (cf. de wet 2004: 105, 110). the media has also struggled to give the epidemic a “human face”. according to beamish (2002: ch-4690) the human-interest element provides this “face”. people infected and affected with whom readers can relate, should illustrate the statistics, politics and economics of hiv and aids. these include teachers, married couples, pioneers in the field of hiv and aids, and aids orphans. key personalities are also included. after all, big names are news (leiter et al. 2000: 34). however, people are getting tired of seeing the same faces repeatedly. using the same faces too often could lead to people perceiving the epidemic as no wider than, for instance, young nkosi johnson (who died on 1 june 2001 of an aids related disease), former president nelson mandela, the activist zackie achmat and judge edwin cameron. the south african media focuses on government policy rather than showing readers that one can live productively with hiv and aids; women are portrayed as victims or as the responsible party in the spread of the epidemic (qakisa 2003: 46). in developing countries, information on the illness should be comprehensive, including issues such as health care, housing, treatment for drug abuse, education and training, and legal services (qakisa 2003: 61). the nelson mandela/hsrc study (2002: 102) recommends that the news media pay more attention to topics of research, myths and misconceptions, and strengthen the relationships with service organisations on grassroots level. the media should also take steps to offer basic information according to the needs of the specific audience. positive and constructive reporting the message of hope is sorely lacking in hiv and aids reporting. but how, especially in the light that the media is punch-drunk to the point that several editors of financial publications have in recent years barred any reporting on the epidemic without clear economic reference, according to the journalist and aids activist charlene smith (2003). she says there is still too much focus on hiv and aids as a “disaster”. although the media cannot ignore the negative aspects, these should be balanced by also focusing on the fact that many people carry on with their lives despite hiv and aids. presentation the way the media presents the news package does not happen by chance. it requires thorough planning and careful selection of news and graphic material. the way hiv and aids and in particular pwas are portrayed in the media is a strong point of criticism. this dimension of ethical hiv and aids journalism can therefore be addressed with reference to news frames, prominence, stereotyping and sensationalism. news frames through the information it provides and omits, and the news angle chosen, the media promotes a specific reality (tuchman 1978: ix, 1-12; entman 1993: 54). interest groups 80 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor are particularly sensitive about news coverage that portrays the epidemic as a disaster or as an image of war. however, the news frame that is created is often influenced by how interest groups themselves portray the epidemic (cf. delate 2003b). the frame within which news is presented, influences the way in which people will interpret, evaluate and remember an issue. with reference to hiv and aids, this places a huge responsibility on the media. at the same time, it creates an opportunity for closer working relations in the fight against the syndrome as a huge social problem (pickle, crouse & brown 2002: 441). prominence the manner in which a news item is presented in a newspaper offers the reader an indication of how important the publication regards this item to be. in contrast to sensational reporting where the tendency is to present an item much more prominently than it deserves, many role players in the hiv and aids field believe that news on the epidemic is often not used prominently enough. readers quickly learn that an item with a bold heading at the top of a page is more important than one placed in a small corner at the bottom of the page (cf. fourie 2001: 452-453). journalism ethics does not just apply to newspaper content, but also to presentation or layout (garcia 1993: 36). responsible journalism entails that info graphics are accurate and that care is taken when photographs and graphics are selected. it further holds that an item is not presented in a sensationalist way. editors should keep in mind that graphics often speak louder than words. photographs can either send a message that is in line with what the journalist meant to say, or the complete opposite (woods 1999). the manner in which pwas are portrayed in photographs could perpetuate the myths that these people are thin and helpless, that africa is a “sick, backwards and dying continent”, and add to stigmatisation and discrimination. in contrast, the positive portrayal of pwas could create role models for other hiv positive individuals. this is a far more accurate portrayal of the reality of the world we live in (delate 2003b: 3). smith (2003) calls the way the international media portrays hiv and aids in africa “aids pornography”. they seek out so-called “stick people”, people who are clearly miserable and not coping. this is misleading, and adds to stereotyping. stereotyping and sensationalism these issues are rife within the hiv and aids sphere, i.e. that it is portrayed as a “black” or “gay” disease, and that all pwas (especially africans) are emaciated and helpless. women are often stereotyped. for example, hiv and aids discourses on women mainly focus on the normative understanding of sexuality: prostitutes are portrayed as “indiscriminate in their sexuality and dangerous and polluting to men” (sacks 1996: 70). to avoid perpetuating stereotypes, journalists should write about people to whom the audience can relate (beamish 2002: ch-4693), i.e. a middle class married mom or community leader. however, responsible journalists should take care to protect the 81 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor privacy of pwas, not to use sensitive and confidential information, and to avoid blame and stereotyping by portraying people in a sensitive way. asking how a person was infected could create the impression that someone is to blame. it also shows that the journalist is biased and insensitive (beamish 2002: ch-4693). pwas should not be depicted as irresponsible, because it is often not true. in reality, there are pwas in all lifestyles and all professions. they live productive lives and can stay healthy for many years. journalists should therefore also scrutinise their own feelings and biases on the subject (retief 2001: 481; cf. stally 2001). sensationalism can perpetuate stereotypes. sensational publications concentrate on trivialities and present serious topics in a superficial, often frivolous manner. journalists can also create sensationalism by exaggerating. this could lead to twisted facts, which has an influence on the credibility of the news item and the journalist. however, sensation is not necessarily created, nor is it always unethical. sometimes the facts themselves are sensational because they are so out of the ordinary or shocking. hiv and aids is a sensational subject, but publications should take care to report on the epidemic and related issues in an ethically accountable manner by being accurate, balanced and placing the facts in the correct context (cf. froneman 2002: 103). nel (1999: 285) says news should be presented in a “respectable manner that does not offend people’s sense of good taste”. due to the explicit nature of hiv and aids information, it can easily offend. journalists should keep this in mind. language the media influences the language of hiv and aids (beamish 2002: 4682). a media that is sensitive towards the environment it operates in, issues of gender and race, and social matters, should also be sensitive when it comes to language. interest groups feel that to implement guidelines that promote the ethical use of language (i.e. language that does not stigmatise, discriminate or sensationalise) could have a positive influence on the media. woods (1999) argues that the content of a publication, the news sources chosen, and the news angles create a specific image of that publication. when news coverage portrays a community in its totality – including all races, classes, religious and gender groups, and people of all sexual and political orientations – there is a bigger chance that all groups will feel included and will respect the publication. good language is direct and strong. it avoids descriptions that one group/person can use against another, and also avoids hyperbole and euphemism. a journalist should further avoid words that have negative emotional value (cf. rossouw 2003: 18). in the hiv and aids context these include “suffering”, “sufferer”, “carrier”, “war”, “scourge”, “plague”, “victim”, “shame”, “blame”, “curse” and “punishment” (stally 2001). to write that someone “allegedly” has hiv and aids or that someone “admitted” to being infected perpetuates stigmatisation (soul city 2001). 82 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor good language is also accurate. in the context of hiv and aids, the words a journalist chooses could very well distort the facts. for example, one cannot die of aids. aids is a syndrome – a group of illnesses – due to diminished immunity. aids is caused by the hi-virus, which exposes the body to opportunistic infections that take advantage of the weak immune system. one therefore cannot die because of hiv and aids, but rather because of one or more of the opportunistic diseases (cf. beamish 2002: ch-4694; delate 2003a: 27). although interest groups have made solid suggestions regarding the use of language in hiv and aids reporting, there are proposals that do not hold water in a journalistic context. delate (2003b: 17) quotes a suggestion from a napwa official who has a problem with the word “aids”. this person feels the word implies that pwas are helpless and is therefore not acceptable. he suggests the use of “advanced hiv disease”. however, this would only cause more confusion as people generally have a problem distinguishing between hiv infection and the syndrome, aids. likewise, the united nations development programme prefers the description “men who have sex with men” (msm) to “gays” or “homosexuals”, which are seen as western terms (delate 2003a: 18). this, however, could add to stereotyping and could describe men according to the manner in which they have sex rather than according to their gender orientation. in south africa, most organisations use the term “same sex”. in the afrikaans media the terms “gay” and “homoseksueel” are commonly used. stigma and discrimination in south africa, pwas feel judged and discriminated against (fourie 2001: 498). they are stigmatised because others think they will infect them, and that they “deserve” hiv and aids because of their own promiscuity. this perception is perpetuated by the media due to the emphasis placed on promiscuity as a cause of the epidemic. in south africa, hiv and aids is further portrayed as a “black disease” or a disease that only affects white homosexual men. soul city (2001: 27) argues that the stereotypes more often perpetuate because of the images used in the media and the profile of pwas who are willing to talk openly about their status. smith (2003) alleges that mainly service providers cause stigma. interest groups create stigma, e.g. by focusing on the pitfalls of being open about your status or an incident such as rape, instead of focusing on the benefits. beamish (2002: ch-4694) highlights that language should be appropriate for the audience in question. the use of language should not only be an issue of whether one should use a local dialect, but also about the actual words you choose to describe a concept. to be able to choose the most appropriate language, a journalist should understand his/her audience and should have extensive knowledge about hiv and aids terminology. the syndrome has a highly technical vocabulary which should be “translated” accurately. proper hiv and aids reporting also uses neutral, gender sensitive language. 83 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor sensationalism because hiv and aids is about sex and death, the media are often tempted to sensationalise (soul city 2001: 21; cf. delate 2003a), creating the perception that death is unavoidable. consequently, little attention is paid to pwas. sensationalism further holds that people are portrayed as “good” or “bad”, is aided by emotions, and offers a very superficial view on real points in question (soul city 2001: 21). sensation does not analyse, nor does it evaluate or inform readers. to accurately and ethically report on the issue, a journalist should understand the essence of the problem. he/she should also keep in mind that hiv and aids and its contexts are not entertainment (beamish 2002: cd-4696). equally, interest groups should not use sensation to “sell” their stories. in this regard, delate (2003b) refers to a press release sent out by die world food programme using the words “vanishing population of africa”. media reports on the death of nkosi johnson on 1 june 2001 were mainly sensational (cullinan 2001). for six months prior to the young activist’s death, the media predicted that he could die “at any moment”. local and international media literally lived on the doorstep of his adoptive mother’s home in melville, johannesburg. politicians used the “opportunity” to get favourable publicity. the media described the boy’s physical and emotional state in detail to pad stories with no substance (cf. jara 2001; pan african news agency 2001; sapa 2001). one has to accept that the facts of hiv and aids are already sensational. however, the media should take care not to create (further) sensation using inappropriate language, flashy headlines and insensitive graphic material as it could cause false hope, or perpetuate stigma and discrimination (delate 2003a). the final decision about language lies with the sub-editors, not the journalists. this group, however, is never targeted in relation to training on hiv and aids reporting, according to delate (2003a). it certainly is a serious deficiency. accuracy the final category addressed here is accuracy, a basic element of news reporting included in most international and local journalistic codes of ethics (retief 2002: 238240). as a matter of course, accurate reporting is thorough and precise, but the term also relates to credibility. although accuracy implies that all facts, names, quotes, statistics, dates and places are correct, errors often occur. in the process the journalist’s credibility and the media’s reputation are affected, and the value of the story diminishes. accuracy also implies the correct and careful use of words to avoid putting words into someone’s mouth – a common problem in africa according to nel (1999: 281-282). one could at this point add that an inaccurate journalist also does not care about context, balance, appropriate sources or sensitive writing. therefore, these aspects should resort under the definition of accuracy (cf. froneman & de beer 1998: 308-309.) 84 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor for the purpose of this article, the term accuracy therefore implies not only factual accuracy and acceptable language usage, but also fairness, balance, truth, context, comprehensiveness and focus. factual accuracy to say that someone has aids when he/she is in fact hiv positive, adds to stigmatisation. sceptics may very well argue that to say someone is tested for hiv and not for aids, is a matter of splitting hairs. however, it is not scientifically correct and such a report would be inaccurate. in addition, knowledge about hiv and aids multiplies continuously as scientists discover new facts. a journalist should therefore make sure she/he stays abreast of developments to ensure accurate reporting (soul city 2001: 20). to omit vital information is also inaccurate. very seldom does one find a media report on art that clearly states that not all south africans who are hiv positive need art, only those who have aids. this has a marked impact on the issue whether the country can afford art, and should be brought to a reader’s attention. readability and clarity one of the biggest challenges of hiv and aids reporting is to report the technical terminology, medical jargon, scientific concepts and research findings in a clear, understandable and concise manner. unfortunately many journalists are not precise enough to recognise the delicate shades of difference in semantics (cf. mencher 1997: 159-162). on the other hand, well-grounded hiv and aids journalists should guard against losing the ability to report clearly and understandably due to their superior knowledge. focus and context the best stories are those with a clear focus. reports on hiv and aids could become long and complex, therefore journalists should guard against including too much information in a single story. good journalism further relies on contextualisation (perspective and background) (cf. nel 1999: 281-282), which is related to focus. news sources it is often said that a journalist is as good as his/her sources. this is particularly relevant in the context of hiv and aids where a lot of unsubstantiated information is circulated. a journalist should not solely rely on expert sources relevant to his/her field of reporting. it is necessary to include the opinion of several sources to ensure balanced and fair reporting. at the same time new insights generate new ideas (cf. greer 1999: 50). a regular hiv and aids reporter quickly builds up a comprehensive list of trustworthy, expert sources. the problem lies with journalists who do not report on the subject regularly. to play it safe, the same sources are quoted repeatedly. shepperson (2000: 12) found that most news items were the result of press releases or press conferences, press statements by individuals or copy distributed by news agencies. more distressing is that journalists apparently do not take the trouble to 85 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor develop a solid list of credible sources (parker & kelly 2001: 2, 6). furthermore, although women are a particularly vulnerable group in the context of the hiv and aids epidemic, they are not seen as important news sources. the media institute of southern africa (misa) found that only 17% of all news sources in the region are women (irin news 2003). there is definitely no shortage of appropriate hiv and aids sources. however, as beamish (2002: cd-4695) rightly remarks, it is not always easy to find them. potential sources, in particular pwas who add the human interest element to hiv and aids reporting and give the epidemic a face, might be scared to talk to the media, especially in an environment where stigma, fear of rejection and violence still prevail (delate 2003a: 2; cf. anon 2005). on the other hand, the media in south africa largely ignores the opinion of pwas (cullinan 2003). stally (2001) suggests that journalists form relationships with organisations such as napwa to ensure access to the latest hiv and aids information as well as access to pwas as news sources. another source of concern related to news sources is that journalists who do not regularly report on the epidemic, often too easily accept someone as an expert without questioning their authority and level of knowledge in the field (smith 2003). journalists’ best sources are those who have proved their knowledge and skills as accurate observers and interpreters (mencher 1997: 306-307). balance the traditional way to ensure balanced reporting is to convey all perspectives on the issue. however, two sides of an argument do not always carry equal weight and news coverage should reflect this. to present two perspectives as equally important when in fact one deserves far less attention, is misleading and inaccurate (beamish 2002: ch4684). beamish (2002: ch-4684) argues that a journalist can maintain balance and “objectivity” by staying neutral. however, “objective” journalism is not possible and journalism can never be a neutral activity. on the other hand, hiv and aids is a subject that can tempt a journalist to become an advocate for the cause. journalists should be aware of this danger, because it could cloud their judgement. this is exactly the problem critics of advocacy journalism have with this particular style of reporting where balance and fairness do not always come into play. advocacy journalism is not widely practised in south africa, and while some interest groups encourage the media to play a bigger advocacy role, others are vehemently against the notion (cf. stally 2001; beamish 2002: cd-4684). howa’s (s.a.) approach is most acceptable in this regard. she holds that it is more appropriate to recognise that “a diversity of viewpoints exists; that there are solutions along with problems; that there is good with the bad. we should worry less about balance and more about reflecting a sense of fairness and wholeness.” 86 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor truth, fairness and completeness to seek the truth and report on it as accurately and as fairly as possible is, according to claassen (2004), the single most important function of a journalist. nevertheless, to identify the truth – or the “provable truth” (hausman 1990:29) – is a problem in journalism. news sources with a vested interest might be less likely to tell the whole truth (hausman 1990:32). that is why it is so important that journalists seek out appropriate, knowledgeable sources as far as possible, and verify information. this is particularly important when reporting on claims about “cures” or treatment for hiv and aids. fairness in journalism is closely related to balance. “maximum truth, minimum harm” is a principle retief (2002: 84) holds as the most basic ethical consideration in journalism. fairness also comes into play when choosing words through which to portray reality – within the proper context. completeness relates to which information is included in a news report, and not to how much information is used (leiter et al. 2000: 159). this raises a few difficult questions. when does a journalist know that he/she has gathered enough information and at which point can a journalist honestly say he/she has covered an issue properly? statistics and claims there are recurrent examples of inaccuracy and the perpetuated use of incorrect data, and the incorrect interpretation of data in hiv and aids reporting (parker & kelly 2001: 6-7). it is clear that the media in general lacks proper understanding of research matters. furthermore the media is inclined to present careful deductions as fact, thereby creating a wrong impression. journalists should portray the experimental nature of research findings and refrain from presenting it as final proof (beamish 2002: ch-4684). more importantly, journalists should make very sure that they understand statistics before they report on it. they should also confirm the validity of the data. on the other hand, science is not always clear and the hiv and aids epidemic is particularly difficult to measure (schwartz & murray 1996). even the most authoritative predictions on the number of hiv and aids cases and aids deaths are merely guesswork. where claims are concerned, interest groups suggest that journalists remain sceptic, especially where “cures”, clinical trials and vaccines are concerned (cf. cohen 1997). journalists should also distinguish between treatment for aids and treatment of opportunistic infections, as inaccurate reporting in this regard can create false expectations (soul city 2001: 23). the media has to be open to criticism about inaccurate and sensational journalism. the eventual aim should be to uphold the rights of pwas, and to respect their right to be portrayed accurately and with dignity. several publications, i.e. sunday times and die burger, have accuracy tests to ascertain whether their reporting is accurate. this includes questions about whether the credibility of the facts and the sources were checked, and that the facts reflect the truth (cf. claassen 2002). journalists at sunday times also have to indicate whether the report could have any legal implications, 87 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor whether they can provide the documents in question and whether they have objections to their sources being contacted (sunday times 2004). conclusion retief (2002: 37-45) highlights several tangent points in the press code, the code of the sauj, that of the bccsa, and the codes of the star, sowetan, and sunday times – points that largely correspond with the suggested hiv and aids reporting guidelines. these include accuracy in text and context; balanced, fair and unprejudiced reporting; the protection of news sources; and respect for the privacy of individuals. other points are that conflict of interest and stereotyping should be avoided, and that journalists should report responsibly on issues such as violence, blasphemy and sex. in summary, journalists should understand that hiv/aids is a scientific, social, economic, health, education and labour issue, among others. this holds that they have knowledge beyond mere awareness about hiv/aids. however, seeing that despite the general guidelines available in ethical codes the media in south africa often still reports on hiv and aids in an unacceptable manner, guidelines reiterating responsibilities within the specific context should be either included in professional codes or in institutional codes. the above-mentioned codes were thus supplemented with guidelines extracted from critiques and comments from interest groups concerned with the issues of hiv and aids. it is further recommended that the following compilation of guidelines be published as a quick reference guide, not just in professional and institutional codes, but also in resources directed at journalists in the field: • avoid sensational reporting through language, content and presentation; • avoid stereotyping and discrimination; • use sensitive, non-discriminatory, simple and understandable language; • reporting should be accurate, i.e. fair, balanced, correct, true, in context, focused and comprehensive/complete; • use at least two trustworthy and credible sources, including pwas; • practise critical and in-depth journalism; • use statistics with care and date data; • find fresh news angles, and also pay attention to social issues and activities at 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[online]. available at: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_print.asp?id=4610&custom [accessed on 03/07/2003]. 92 ethical guidelines for hiv and aids reporting: the interest-group factor 21 qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 21-38 margaret linström and willemien marais* abstract framing theory has become increasingly popular in media analysis. the idea of framing is based largely upon the book by sociologist erving goffman (1974) titled frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. goffman used the idea of frames to label “schemata of interpretation” that allow people “to locate, perceive, identify, and label” occurrences or events. with robert entman’s 1993 paper, frame analysis evolved into an important methodology. since goffman introduced the concept of frame analysis and entman applied framing to the analysis of mass media, researchers have utilised it to understand how print and other media present information. consequently for the last almost four decades, leading media scholars have applied the concept of framing to explain how the media structure their delivery of news, promoting certain interpretations of events by selecting certain facts. frame analysis serves four main purposes within the context of media research – to define problems, to diagnose a course, to make value judgments, and to suggest remedies (entman 1993: 52). in this article, the authors review the meaning of the concept of frame analysis, approaches to studying news framing, and qualitative news frame analysis. after defining news frames, we articulate a method for identifying news frames in print media. * margaret linström and willemien marais lecture in journalism in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. margaret linström and willemien marais 22 introduction mass media have a powerful effect on the world view of society. “the entire study of mass communication,” mcquail (1994: 327) writes, “is based on the premise that the media have significant effects.” mass media frame “images of reality… in a predictable and patterned way” (mcquail 1994: 331). the mass media have the greatest potential for powerful societal effects in: ♦ attracting and directing public attention; ♦ persuading in matters of opinion and belief; ♦ influencing behaviour; ♦ structuring definitions of reality; ♦ conferring status and legitimacy; and ♦ informing speedily and broadly (mcquail 1994: 69). cohen (1963: 13), almost two decades before mcquail, wrote in his famous dictum that the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling readers what to think about… the world will look different to different people, depending … on the map that is drawn for them by writers, editors, and publishers of the papers they read.” two media effects, known as long-term or cognitive theories, are the agendasetting theory and the framing theory. fourie (2001: 298) defines cognitive as “our faculty of knowing and understanding something in a specific way and how we base our behaviour and thinking on such knowledge”. agenda-setting is often called first level agenda-setting; framing second-level agenda-setting. according to jasperson, shah, watts, faber and fan (1998: 206), “the traditional agenda-setting concept attempts to explain only why one issue becomes more important than another issue in the public’s mind; it does not explicitly focus on the nuances of coverage within an issue”. framing, on the other hand, “provides a means of describing the power of communication to direct individual cognitions towards a prescribed interpretation of a situation or object” (jasperson et al. 1998: 206). what are news frames? although there is no widely accepted definition of framing, those that have evolved strongly resemble one another. as gaye tuchman writes in making news: a study in the construction of reality (1978: 1): qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 23 news is a window on the world, and through its frame, americans learn of themselves and others, of their institutions, leaders, and life styles, and those of other nations and other peoples. the news aims to tell us what we want to know, need to know, and should know. but, like any frame that delineates a world, a news frame may be problematic. the view through a window depends upon whether the window is large or small, has many panes or few, whether the glass is opaque or clear, whether the window faces a street or a backyard. goffman (1974) defines a frame as “the principles of organization which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective involvement in them”. this “schemata of interpretation” helps people to “locate, perceive, identify, and label” everyday events (goffman 1974: 21). journalists use “frames (to) organize strips of the everyday world, a strip being an arbitrary slice or cut from the stream of ongoing activity” (goffman 1974: 10-11). similarly tuchman (1978: 193) elucidates: “an occurrence is transformed into an event, and an event is transformed into a news story. the news frame organizes everyday reality and the news frame is part and parcel of everyday reality, for the public character of news is an essential feature of news.” for gamson and modigliani (1989: 3) a frame is a “central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events, suggesting what is at issue”, while for gitlin (1980: 7) frames “help journalists to process large amounts of information quickly and routinely package the information for efficient relay to their audiences”. reese (in reese, gandy & grant 2003: 11) provides a thorough working definition of frames: frames are organising principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world: ♦ organising: framing varies in how successfully, comprehensively, or completely it organises information. ♦ principles: the frame is based on an abstract principle and is not the same as the texts through which it manifests itself. ♦ shared: the frame must be shared on some level for it to be significant and communicable. ♦ persistent: the significance of frames lies in their durability, their persistent and routine use over time. ♦ symbolically: the frame is revealed in symbolic forms of expression. ♦ structure: frames organise by providing identifiable patterns or structures, which can vary in their complexity. margaret linström and willemien marais 24 cole c. campbell on poynteronline (n.d.: online) puts it in more simple terms: “frames are efficient ways to sort information and create stories. they connect journalists’ work to the common understandings of our communities and the larger culture. they make facts meaningful. frames create ‘reality’.” what is news framing? framing has been described as a concept, an approach, a theory, a class of media effects, a perspective, an analytical technique, a paradigm, and a multiparadigmatic research programme (d’angelo & kuypers 2010: 2). as stated by entman (2007: 4) in his oft-cited definition, framing is “the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights the connections among them to promote a particular interpretation”. “news is anything but a true reflection of reality.” this is the assertion oosthuizen (in fourie 2001: 465) makes, and this is the crux of the framing theory. oosthuizen adds that news, rather, “is a frame or window on reality that seeks to or can only reflect part of this reality.” terkildsen and schnell (1997: 881) suggest that “framing is important whenever an issue can be presented in multiple ways which may potentially influence how people think about an issue”. frames, gamson and modigliani (1987: 144) opine, “imply an implicit answer as to what should be done about an issue”. for pan and kosicki (1993: 53), framing highlights certain parts of an issue allowing “the selected elements to become important in influencing individuals’ judgments”. according to van gorp (2007: 14), selection and construction form the foundation of framing. hertog and mcleod (1995: 4) assert that the “frame used to interpret an event determines what available information is relevant (and thereby what is irrelevant)”. referring to the factors that could influence how a journalist frames an issue, scheufele (1999: 109) names societal norms and values, organisational constraints, pressure from interest groups, journalistic routines, and the journalist’s ideological orientations. van gorp (2007: 14) suggests that “there is an interaction between the journalist’s (un)conscious selection of a frame as a result of the individual belief system, and the influence of additional factors inside and outside the media organization”. according to fourie (2001: 305), framing “describes the influence on the public of news angles used by journalists”. van gorp (2005: 485) argues similarly that “a typical characteristic of framing is the linkage between, on the one hand, the journalistic approach of shaping the news within a frame of reference and according to a latent structure of meaning and, on the other hand, the stimulation qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 25 of the public to adopt these frames and to view reality from the same perspective as journalists do”. qing (2000: 666) explains the framing process as follows: news is a representation of the world mediated via the journalist. like every discourse, it constructively patterns that of which it speaks. differences in expression carry ideological distinctions and thus differences in representation. the content of news stories therefore represents ideas, beliefs, values, theories, and ideology. the major role of news language as discourse is to supply the categories imposed by the journalist on the event itself. framing as a methodological strategy scholars employ different methodological approaches to frame analysis. some studies used quantitative content analysis or computer-assisted frame analysis (such as frame mapping), while others prefer a text-based interpretative, qualitative approach. according to pan and kosicki (1993: 57), utilising framing as a methodological strategy requires “constructing and processing discourse or characteristics of the discourse itself”. reese (in reese et al. 2001: 1) adds: “the framing approach bridges the competing tendencies of social analysis toward closure and openness and may be regarded as one of its strengths.” according to reese (2007: 1), framing’s value, however, “does not hinge on its potential as a unified research domain but as a provocative model that bridges parts of the field that need to be in touch with each other: quantitative and qualitative, empirical and interpretive, psychological and sociological, and academic and professional”. frame analysis serves the following purposes within the context of media research: to define problems, to diagnose courses, to make value judgments, and to suggest remedies (entman 1993: 52). wimmer and dominick (2006: 152-153) add that news frame analysis, as a form of qualitative content analysis, could be conducted for these media research purposes: ♦ describing communication content; ♦ comparing media content to the “real world”; and ♦ establishing a starting point for studies of media effects. reese (2007: 10) states that the “qualitative approach to framing analysis helps resist the reductionistic urge to sort media texts and discourse into containers margaret linström and willemien marais 26 and count their size or frequency. indeed, some define frames as an inherently qualitative construct. in this case, one must capture the meanings embedded in the internal relations within texts, which collapsing into reductive measures would obscure.” pan and kosicki (1993:58) argue that framing analysis differs from other approaches to news texts in the following ways: ♦ first, “instead of conceiving news texts as psychological stimuli with identifiable meanings”, it rather “views news texts as consisting of organised symbolic devices that interact with individual agents’ memory for meaning construction”; ♦ second, “framing analysis is not constrained within a content-free structuralist approach of news discourse”. rather, “it accepts both the assumption of the rule-governed nature of text formation and the multidimensional conception of news texts that will allow for cognitive shortcuts in news production and consumption”; ♦ third, “the validity of framing analysis does not rest on researchers’ resourceful reading of news texts. rather, it retains the systematic procedures of gathering data of news texts in order to identify the signifying elements that might be used by audience members”; and ♦ finally, “it does not assume the presence of frames in news texts independent of readers of the texts”. qualitative vs. quantitative frame analysis “not all communication can be measured quantitatively,” according to wood (2004: 69), “and quantitative data cannot provide substantial insight into the texture and meaning of experiences.” wood (ibid.) argues that “qualitative methods are valuable when we wish not to count or measure phenomena but to understand the character of experience, particularly how people perceive and make sense of their communication experience. this involves interpreting meanings and other unobservable dimensions of communication”. kelle, prein and bird (1995: 3) observe that “the central analytic task in qualitative research is understanding the meaning of texts”. du plooy (1997: 33), in similar vein, says that “qualitative inquiry is analytic and interpretative”. furthermore, “it attempts to examine phenomena in a holistic manner”. du plooy (ibid.) states that “the nature of the data and the research problem dictate the research methodology”. qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 27 van gorp (2007: 72-73) is a proponent of a mixed-methodology approach to frame analysis. he suggests using quantitative techniques to examine overall trends in large data sets, and qualitative techniques to examine subtle framing effects in smaller data sets. qualitative frame analysis qualitative frame analysis, according to reese (in d’angelo & kuypers 2010: 18), emphasises the cultural and political content of news frames and “how they draw upon a shared store of social meanings”. for gitlin (1980: 303), qualitative analysis pursues a level of complexity that “does justice to the complexity of media artefacts”. connolly-ahern and broadway (2008: 369) explain the concept of qualitative frame analysis as follows: “qualitative framing analysis involves repeated and extensive engagement with a text and looks holistically at the material to identify frames”. these authors (ibid.) state that this approach to frame analysis examines the key words and metaphors in the text, identifying what was included in the frame, as well as what was left out; recognising “that the words repeated most often in the text may not be the most important”. criticism against qualitative frame analysis two major problems, highlighted by researchers in regards to framing research, are reliability and validity. one threat to validity in qualitative frame analysis is how the frames are operationally defined. according to d’angelo and kuypers (2010: 46), researchers tend to “reinvent the wheel” when identifying news frames. for klandermans and staggenborg (2002: 62), frame analysis poses challenges relating to data collection, analysis and the final presentation of results. the first challenge involves definitions and concepts, as distinctions between news frames frequently are indistinct, while the second challenge involves verification and proof. other criticism against qualitative framing analysis comes from tankard (in reese et al. 2001: 98) who observes that “this approach makes frame identification a rather subjective process” as “researchers might tend to define frames in a stereotypical or conventional way”. for d’angelo and kuypers (2010: 37) a qualitative approach can be challenging when definite categories are not immediately obvious and “no easy coding scheme into which textual units can be sorted is evident”. more criticism against this approach is that it is time consuming as an inductive frame analysis needs to be done before a list of frames can be drawn up (d’angelo & kuypers 2010: 104). margaret linström and willemien marais 28 a typology of media frames an examination of past framing research shows two main types of media frames: issue-specific frames and generic frames. the first type of media frame “is pertinent only to specific topics or events”, while generic frames “transcend thematic limitations” and can be identified in relation to certain topics (de vreese 2005: 54). the disadvantage of an issue-specific approach says de vreese (2005), is that it makes “analyses difficult to generalise, compare, and use as empirical evidence for theory building”. according to hertog and mcleod (2001: 150, in de vreese 2005: 55), this approach has led researchers to “too easily find evidence for what they are looking for” and to add to “one of the most frustrating tendencies in the study of frames and framing, the tendency for scholars to generate a unique set of frames for every study”. neuman, just and crigler (1992: 74) identified five common frames utilised by the media. they are human impact; powerlessness; economics; moral values; and conflict: ♦ the human impact frame focuses on “descriptions of individuals and groups affected by an issue”; ♦ the powerlessness frame refers to “the dominance of forces over weak individuals or groups”; ♦ the economics frame reflects “the preoccupation with profit and loss”; ♦ the moral values frame refers to “morality and social prescriptions”; and ♦ the conflict frame deals with the news media’s “game interpretation of the political world as an on-going series of contests, each with a new set of winners and losers”. semetko and valkenburg (2000, in de vreese 2005: 56), took neuman, just and crigler’s research further. they identified five frames, namely conflict; human interest; attribution of responsibility; morality; and economic consequences. their definitions for these frames are similar to those of neuman et al.’s, apart from the human interest frame, which they define as “bringing a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue or problem”. their conflict frame, which is broader than neuman et al.’s, refers to “conflict between individuals, groups, institutions or countries”. semetko and valkenburg’s frame typology does not include powerlessness. instead their fifth frame is attribution of responsibility, which is defined as “presenting an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for causing or solving to either the government or to an individual or group” (2000, in de vreese 2005: 56). qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 29 conducting a frame analysis of news media the following section contains an explanation of how to conduct a straightforward qualitative news frame analysis. the methodology is based on the above analysis of the literature, a comparison of previous news frame analyses, as well as the authors’ personal experience of conducting frame analyses. for ease of explanation the process is set out in a series of steps, with steps 5-7 comprising the actual news frame analysis. as part of the formulation of the research problem (du plooy 2009: 55), the following details regarding the news frame analysis should be determined beforehand: step 1: choose a medium / topic select the media form of choice for the study. this would obviously be informed by the research problem, for example a comparison of the framing of a specific event, group, action, etc. by two or more publications, or even two or more media (e.g. radio vs. television). newspapers are a good choice for a medium of analysis as, according to mcnair (2000: 136), they are able to “communicate more complex ideas”, as opposed to television and radio. this does not imply that broadcast or electronic media cannot be the focus of a news frame analysis. step 2: determine a time-frame once a topic/medium has been selected, the researcher has to determine a timeframe. it is important to explain why this specific period is of significance. step 3: draw a sample the time-frame forms the parameters for defining the universe from which a sample is to be drawn. step 4: identify a unit of analysis according to wimmer and dominick (2006: 158), the unit of analysis is crucial. in written content, according to these authors, “the unit of analysis might be a single word or symbol, a theme, or an entire article or story”. the unit of analysis in frame analysis often is individual news articles which appeared in the selected newspaper during the selected study period. step 5: selection of a frame typology the selection of news frames is crucial to the success of a frame analysis. as mentioned earlier, the selection of frames could be done inductively, where frames emerge as the research progresses. the researcher selects news frames by margaret linström and willemien marais 30 conducting a pilot study using randomly selected news articles from the sample. usually the stories will be selected from the articles used in the final study. in the pilot study, each news article is read several times, while the researcher makes thorough notes, and thereafter the news frames are decided on. often researchers are led by the standard news frames identified in previous framing analyses such as the conflict frame, the attribution of responsibility frame, the economic consequences frame, and the human interest frame (scheufele 1999: 106; neuman, just & crigler 1992: 64, semetko & valkenburg 2000, in de vreese 2005: 56). this is referred to as the deductive approach. once a decision has been made on the process of selecting frames for the study, the researcher can decide to identify either only a dominant frame in each of the news articles, or a dominant and secondary frame in each of the news articles. the dominant frame is the main theme of the news article, while the secondary frame is a supplementary idea that supports the main theme. step 6: operational definitions the researcher has to provide operational definitions of selected news frames. according to wood (2004: 65), “operational definitions are precise descriptions that specify the phenomena of interest”. if the concepts have been studied by other researchers, it is advisable to consider their definitions. wood says “this allows different researchers to use concepts in the same ways, and thus their findings can be compared and related”. according to de vreese (2005: 53), many researchers prefer to apply concise operational definitions of frames, which are decided on before the study begins. capella and jamieson (1997:89, in de vreese 2005: 54) are among those who support this approach. they suggest the following criteria for a frame: ♦ a frame must have identifiable conceptual and linguistic characteristics; ♦ it should be commonly observed in journalistic practice; ♦ it must be possible to distinguish the frame reliably from other frames; and ♦ a frame must be recognised by others and not be a figment of a researcher’s imagination. step 7: identifying news frames the process of identifying news frames can only begin once the “groundwork” (steps 1-6) has been laid. the identification of news frames requires the researcher to know “how” to look for frames, as well as “what” to look for when identifying frames. qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 31 the “how” of identifying news frames is based on wimmer and dominick’s (2006: 117-118) constant comparative technique for qualitative research analysis, which consists of four steps: ♦ comparative assignment of incidents to categories (or frames); ♦ elaboration and refinement of categories/frames; ♦ searching for relationships and themes among categories/frames; and ♦ simplifying and integrating data into a coherent theoretical structure. similarly, alozie (2005: 66) suggests the following: ♦ phase 1: general multiple reading of the articles while taking descriptive notes about the content; ♦ phase 2: a second reading to identify certain recurring themes, frames, values and topic categories; and ♦ phase 3: in-depth interpretation of the articles. the “what” of identifying frames implies that the researcher analyses the text for “symbolic devices” or “signature elements” that are located within news stories (gamson & lasch 1983: 399). there are several devices used to frame a specific event/story. the research problem will guide the researcher in terms of whether to look for a single framing device (such as news sources) or multiple framing devices. for the purposes of this article, these framing devices will be divided into two categories: rhetorical devices and technical devices. rhetorical devices rhetorical devices include word choice, metaphors, and exemplars. other devices that can be examined are “the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgement” (entman 1993: 52). gamson and lasch (1983: 407-408) offer comment on the above-mentioned: ♦ metaphors: they always has two parts – the principal subject that the metaphor is intended to illuminate and the associated subject that the metaphor invokes to enhance readers’ understanding; ♦ exemplars: while metaphors rely on imagined events to frame the principal subject, real events of the past or present are frequently used for the same purpose; margaret linström and willemien marais 32 ♦ catch-phrases: commentators on events frequently try to capture them in a single theme statement, tag-line, title or slogan that is intended to suggest a frame. catch-phrases are attempted summary statements about the principal subject; and ♦ depictions: news stories have certain principal subjects that they characterise in a particular fashion. they may do this through metaphors or exemplars or through a string of modifiers. pan and kosicki (1993: 59-61) add the following: ♦ syntactical structures which refer to patterns in the arrangements of words or phrases; ♦ script structures, referring to the fact that most news reports cover newsworthy events and that news is expected to help link audiences with their environment; ♦ thematic structures, which refer to a multilayer hierarchy with a theme being the central core connecting various sub-themes as the major nodes that are connected to supporting statements; and ♦ rhetorical structures, which describe “the stylistic choices made by journalists in relation to their intended effects”. technical devices technical devices include various elements of news-writing, as well as technical elements such as layout and visuals. tankard (in reese et al. 2003: 101) suggests the following technical framing devices: ♦ headlines; ♦ subheadings; ♦ photo captions; ♦ leads; ♦ source selection; ♦ quote selection; and ♦ concluding statements and paragraphs. news sources are considered important framing devices. according to pan and kosicki (1993: 60), who is quoted, how they are identified, and where the quote is placed in the story is important. qualitative news frame analysis: a methodology 33 these authors (ibid.) add that quotes are used as effective framing devices by “quoting experts to claim empirical validity or facticity; by quoting official sources to link certain points of view to authority; and by quoting a social deviant to marginalise certain points of view”. headlines are another important indicator of the frame of a news story. as pan and kosicki (1993: 59) observe, “a headline is the most salient cue to activate certain semantically related concepts in readers’ minds: it is thus the most powerful framing device of syntactical structure”. table 1 provides a checklist for framing devices: table 1: framing devices category examples rhetorical and other written/grammatical devices word choice; metaphors; exemplars key words (presence and/or absence) stock phrases (presence and/or absence) sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgement concluding statements and paragraphs technical devices (elements of news-writing, layout, visuals) headlines; subheadings; photo captions; leads; photographs; layout (prominence of the article) page placement (front page, etc.) all sources of information in article who is quoted how are they identified where is the quote placed in the story quoting experts to claim empirical validity or facticity quoting official sources to link certain points of view to authority quoting a social deviant to marginalise certain points of view conclusion journalists are considered “sense makers”, but it is important to acknowledge that they may also present the news in such a way that it distorts as much as it attempts to make sense of our world (reese 2001: 10). news frame analysis poses pertinent questions in this regard to those involved in the manufacturing and dissemination of news. margaret linström and willemien marais 34 a qualitative news frame analysis can be done to achieve various media research purposes. these include defining problems, diagnosing courses, making value judgments, and suggesting remedies (entman 1993: 52). in addition, it can describe communication content, test hypotheses of message characteristics, compare media content to the “real world”, assess the image of particular groups in society, and establish a point from which media effects can be studied (wimmer & dominick 2006: 152-153). areas of concern regarding this methodology remain the subjectivity of the process, coupled with the fact that consensus on a standard frame typology does not exist yet. although a combination of neuman, just and crigler’s (1992: 74) five frames (human impact; powerlessness; economics; moral values; and conflict) and semetko and valkenburg’s (2000, in de vreese 2005: 56) five frames (conflict; human interest; attribution of responsibility; morality; and economic consequences) are often used as a “standard” typology, many variations as well as completely new (and often surprising) frames continue to emerge from studies. this makes it difficult to distinguish qualitative news frame analysis as a research technique that is specifically applicable to the discipline of journalism. the aim of this article was to provide a step in this direction by attempting to provide a methodology for conducting a basic qualitative news frame analysis. 35 references alozie, e. 2005. sudan and south africa – a framing analysis of mail & guardian 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(3rd edition). canada: thomson wadsworth. september 2006 97 third screens, third cinema, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 97 111 jonathan dockney and keyan g. tomaselli* abstract this article discusses cellphilm aesthetics and their resultant effect for visual culture in the 21st century. the new media have impacted traditional analogue structures with profound effects. the cellphone, for example, has become a part of the film and television industries. accessibility and relative ease of use have ensured their popularity. the article operates from previous work on cellphilms and establishes an argument for the social value that cellphilms have and their attendant social impacts. what becomes important is not so much their comparative aesthetic qualities, but what these qualities mean for their users and the social contexts. the article discusses aesthetics based on work on many cellphilms including shane (wfc 2009a), trains (wfc 2009b), the sacred orchid (2009), pussy g’awn crazy (2010), and aryan kaganof ’s sms sugar man (2008). * jonathan dockney is a master’s student and researcher at the centre for communication, media and society at the university of kwazulu-natal in durban. prof. keyan tomaselli is the director of the centre. introduction the new media have impacted traditional analogue structures with profound effects. the cellphone, for example, has become a part of the film and television industries. accessibility and relative ease of use have ensured their popularity. this article discusses cellphilm1 aesthetics and their value for “visual culture” (for discussion of this new paradigm see van eeden and du preez 2005). our invention of “philm” is based on the neologism cellphilms (cellphones + films) – a shorthand of sorts of films made with a cellphone. what are the aesthetic qualities and their attendant real-world implications and effects? how do cellphilms operate within the social and cultural parameters of an african context? rather than operating from a singular definition of what constitutes a cellphilm (see dockney and tomaselli [2010] and simons [2009] for a discussion about the complexities of defining cellphilms), this article is developed premised on the already extant practices in which cellphones are used in imaging industries. the “cellphilm” includes citizen journalism, documentary, fiction, the ordinary person’s “show and tell” philms, philms made for cellphones, made with cellphones, for the cellphone screen, for the computer, etc. visual culture postmodernity is marked by an emphasis and almost intense reliance on the visual element. jay. d. bolter and richard grusin (1999) and lev manovich (2001) contextualise new media within visual culture from a historical perspective – aesthetically and culturally – starting from the renaissance (fetveit & stald 2007: 3-4). the centrality of the visual has engendered its own cultural formations, visual culture. in an effort to contextualise digital film theory, robert stam (2000: 315) defines visual culture as: …an interdisciplinary formation situated at the frontiers of such diverse disciplines as art history, iconology, and media studies… which names a variegated field of concerns having to do with the centrality of vision and the visual in producing meanings, channeling power relations, and shaping fantasy in a contemporary world… hyperrealism, simulation and spectacle dominate twenty-first century visual culture. in investigating a cellphilm aesthetic then, it is necessary to ask the questions: what is the relationship between representation and the pro-filmic in cellphilm aesthetics and then, what is the resultant contribution to our world today? postmodernity has brought forth its own aesthetics (creeber 2009: 17). cellphilms as constitutive elements of postmodern visual culture give life and perhaps a release or reprieve to the schizophrenic anxiety inherent in modernism. the containment provided by scientific and rational certainty – denying chaotic diversity – is singularly being unravelled by the attendant changes that the twenty-first century is witnessing in postmodern visual culture – with cellphilms more than adequately playing their role. a “massified” and seemingly pointless culture industry sits quite smugly alongside all 98 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture manner of conceptions of culture and art, including high art. the divisive distinctions provided by the structuralists and the frankfurt school about mass, pop and pulp culture’s deluding effect on a duped public – who needed to be protected from the “standardised and debasing influence” of media (creeber 2009: 14) – has proved somewhat unfounded (cf. creeber 2009: 11-14). the relationship between audience and media has been a central point of debate in the shift from modernist media-audience relations to postmodernist audience relations. the postmodern world has resulted in paradigmatic, conceptual and operational changes in the economic, cultural and political worlds. consumer culture has come to dominate the cultural sphere where experience is invested in the “product” and consumption and leisure determine experience (creeber 2009: 15). mediated visual culture, as an element of the postmodern world, is reflective of modifications in critical theory; poststructuralism has broken down determinism and stability for situatedness and polysemy (creeber 2009: 15-16). cellphilms, visual culture and power relations as the “visual” becomes all the more a productive and meaningful factor within human life, it becomes increasingly necessary to scrutinise what stam (2000: 315) calls “the asymmetries of the gaze” – how is the gaze and “looking” organised such that certain individuals are given preference; are power relations skewed in the gaze and if so, how? the “visual” has become a constitutive and socially constructive aspect of our lives. cellphilms offer an opportunity in the productive moment to re-align skewed visual codes which augment certain ways of seeing. user-generated content (ugc) allows for audiences’ involvement in the productive moment, thus creating dominant hegemonic, negotiated and oppositional readings (cf. hall 1980: 136-138). users can generate their own content and thus their own fragmentary ways of seeing which either conform entirely, partially or not at all to the dominant hegemonic reading positions. cellphilms therefore provide means for remedying mediated viewing and reading positions. shane (world film collective 2009a), for example, is a cellphilm made in conjunction with the world film collective2 (wfc). shane tells the story of shane, a young, gay, bi-racial and hiv positive man from gugulethu3. the philm documents shane’s relationships with various members of his family and provides exposition on aspects of his life. what shane does is provide a potentially corrective measure to viewership, particularly in an african context where homosexuality is frowned upon. although shane cannot necessarily shift the social power relations associated with the “gaze”, it can provide a means for encouraging the correction of disempowering and destructive viewership patterns through providing personal, nuanced and celebratory representations. in the face of restrictive and suppressive mass mediated representations which ignore representative locality, specificity, and nuance, shane is all the more powerful and necessary. vision is always linked to issues of social power. cellphilms and their respective aesthetic qualities provide means for qualifying media power in visual culture (also see dockney, tomaselli and hart [2010] for further discussion about shane). 99 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture celling cultures, subsistence filmmaking and shape shifters digital film technology in general, of which cellphilms are inclusive, allows for a unique and localised take on events. in addition to this, digital film technology can develop aesthetic qualities and coding systems that are unique and specific temporally, spatially and culturally. analogue industry structures do not necessarily afford the space to develop organic and indigenous aesthetics and codes. digital film technology, as argued by michael allen (2009), services national cinemas through a closer alignment to nuanced cultural tones. accessibility and virtually zero budgets – “subsistence filmmaking” (mba 2009: 5) – have placed the camera within the ordinary person’s reach. these features are seen by some as a means for “bypassing the cultural blockage created by a glut of western film products which fails to relate to the reality of life in africa” (allen 2009: 66; cf. dockney, tomaselli & hart 2010). african popular memory is revived through the organic creative processes opened up through digital film technology (bakupa-kaninda 2003). “africa” is re-mapped and reconfigured against colonialism, corporate (western) media, and the ensuing chinese scramble for africa. digital media – as shape shifters (stam 2000: 327) – offer users opportunities for critical progression. authoritarianist, restricted and hegemonic notions of identity and power are singularly subverted through digital media. digital media challenge the “increasingly vulnerable representational hegemonies” of older media (everett 2003: 3) although the power relations inherent within digital media need to be addressed in order to tap into their progressive potential. in order to holistically utilise cellphilms, one needs to address the ideologies inherent within digital technology. new media may cancel out the “stratifying effects of embodiment” (stam 2000: 320), however the inertia of history ensures that access to new media privileges certain individuals over others. technology has not necessarily alleviated the dire conditions of most third world countries. in many examples the digital divide has grown wider. therefore, new media need to be thoroughly investigated before being lauded as devices for the rescue of the disadvantaged. the personal and the other social power as expressed through other-same (o-s) relations is continually being encountered and to some extents confronted in globalisation. crippling o-s relations that hamper the constructive collaborative relationships amongst various parties can be singularly overcome through cellphilm productions, but this is entirely dependant upon the producer. one can respond to attempts at “othering” oneself through portraying the self through the “othered’s” eyes and thus solidifying o-s relations. however, the accessibility provided through mobile filmic devices and the ensuing organic codes – they are developed from the community up and not imposed as in traditional media representative strategies of codes – established can overcome the restrictive binary which functions to maintain o-s relations. what makes cellphilms significant – as 100 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture alternative media – is their accessibility and their organic, potentially disruptive, codes. the chances of personal stories and organic codes being generated within corporate and mass media operations are slim indeed. cellphilms, particularly those used in citizen journalism, thus have the potential to disentangle destructive mass-mediated representations through deconstructing the binary oppositions present in o-s relations. in so doing, cultural, historical, temporal and spatial others are overcome. trains (wfc 2009b) and shane (wfc 2009a) both present examples where o-s relations are potentially dismantled. trains highlights the plight of the working classes. inefficient and unreliable metrorail train services in cape town often leave commuters stranded – with multiplied social effects. what is important here is not the image quality as many film theorists become bogged down with in new media and film. rather, the cellphilm aesthetic and codification systems ensure dissenting voices are given expressive power. these codification and aesthetic systems however bring the personal – the working-class other – in face-to-face contact with authorities. rather than espousing the semantics of the violent civil unrest approach (“we will kill for zuma”4) characteristic of south african labour, the philm humanises and personalises the plight of the working classes and in doing so, it helps to overcome the preventive binaries in o-s relations. like trains, shane also provides a means for overcoming disempowering o-s relations. shane reworks stereotypes of gay men in corporate media – the effeminate buffoon, the morose butch guy searching for love, etc. – through incorporating a personalised and organic code into its narrative and aesthetic structure. shane fractures the stock identities utilised by corporate media and which permeate popular culture of gay men through making what is usually inaccessible, accessible. shane’s story is now available to public culture and memory. although, distribution is obviously key to making shane and other cellphilms available for public consumption. h/b/nollywood 2.0 the cellphilm aesthetic straddles numerous cinematic styles: digital cinema, analogue cinema (remediation) and its own cellphilm aesthetics. as new media have become repositories for old media, cellphilms have adapted older analogue film techniques, styles, genres, etc. the informative and constitutive relationships between new and old media are often ignored in studies of new media. rather, what a historical analysis of new media would show is how new media often remediate old media – “the combination of homage and rivalry” (bolter 2007: 26). new media and digital aesthetics need to be conceptualised within the frameworks of this argument. the significance for new media, and indeed what distinguishes them from old media, is the establishment of new representational practices; new claims for effectively, albeit culturally tinged, portraying the real (bolter 2007: 26). the sacred orchid (o’hagen 2009) is a cellphilm that aptly demonstrates remediation. it literally miniaturises the kung fu/martial art film genre. in true style of cellphilms which emphasise visual over verbal, the philm opts for little dialogue and instead 101 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture centres on the “prowess [its] heroes” – which is typical of martial arts film indeed (hong 1995: 8-9), but the cellphilm takes the spectacle to the extreme in this instance; it is purely surface – sensation over verisimilitude (stam 2000: 317-8). the simple but effective binaries incorporated in the philm immediately associate themselves with western cultural values. the philm imports and westernises the values associated with “new heroism”5 (zhang 2004: 41) such that the white-clad hero stands for virtues such as “integrity, altruism, honesty, dependability, as well as abstinence from sex, money and officialdom” (chen 1996: 15-106). the black-clad villain stands as the antithesis to the hero. the central point to note here is how the cellphilm draws on the analogue aesthetic and modifies and manipulates it. alternative futures: post-cinema, post-tv and digital aesthetics the other area which encompasses cellphilm aesthetics is that of digital cinema aesthetics. digital cinema is defined by benoit michel (2003) as: above all a concept, a complete system, covering the entire movie production chain from the acquisition with digital cameras to post-production to distribution to exhibition all with bits and bytes instead of 35mm reels. television, as with cinema, has “alternate futures” (nicholas 2006: 153). digitality has changed the very concepts of television and cinema – an “ontological shift” which has altered media forms, infrastructures and practices (everett 2003: 3). television and cinematic screen sizes are changing, film and television are increasingly being consumed in non-traditional user situations and contexts (television and cinema can be consumed anywhere and anyhow), which directly relates to the idea of television and cinema going mobile. small hand-held devices such as cellphones are increasingly becoming distribution and consumption platforms (cf. tomaselli & dockney 2009: 128-134). many television and cinema firms around the world – e.g. cartoon network, bbc world news, skylife (south korea), china mobile network, swedish public television, naked news (canada), fox sports, nbs news, universal and the south african broadcasting corporation, etc – are boarding the mobile phone bandwagon (nicholas 2006: 157). in many instances, television and cinema companies are teaming up with mobile phone brands. consumption practices have also meant that notions of television and cinema are changing. the notion of the “prodsumer” (lister, dovey, giddings, grant & kelly 2003: 33; some authors refer to the “prosumer” – marshall 2004; tapscott & williams 2005) has systematically changed media production as we know it. ugc has meant that the traditional analogue categories of television and cinema producers and consumers need to be reconfigured to include content which is generated and uploaded for consumption by audiences themselves. “the synergistic evolution of digital technologies and audience activity may be the most telling portent for the future of television” – see itv, mytv and daily me (nicholas 2006: 154). synchronous and linear television and cinema are giving way to television and cinema which are asynchronous, omnipresent and mobile media (nicholas 2006: 155). 102 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture as a result of this, a digital aesthetic is emerging. trying to delineate the entire digital aesthetic would be impossible if not a worthless effort. however, various key elements need to be highlighted. digital aesthetics, as presented by sean cubitt (2009: 23-29), presents an aesthetic form which is markedly different from that of analogue aesthetics. he quotes the work of andrew darley (1999) who characterises digital aesthetics as encompassing simulation, hyperrealism and spectacle. visual pleasure is preferred over narrative. the mediated image does not necessarily need to index a real-world referent anymore – the disconnection between information and capital, image and experience (marks 2003). however, cubitt argues that the notion that image and reality have become disconnected is premature – he bases this argument on the fact that in many instances digital aesthetics need to reference the real-world; their base comprises an existent object in the real-world. however, much of what makes digital aesthetics so hard to define and capture is that firstly, there is no single digital aesthetic form, and secondly much that constitutes digital aesthetics is invisible – we often have no idea how digital representations were created and produced, unlike more obvious aesthetic forms such as painting, music and literature (cubitt 2009: 28). trying to define digital aesthetics remains an obstinate task owing to reasons concerning the aesthetic principle of the whole and the sum of its parts. the whole should comprise an entity greater than its parts, but the parts are far too numerous to be considered a whole in the digital domain (cubitt 2009: 28). in addition to this lev manovich’s (in cubitt 2009: 28) principle of modularity means that the parts remain distinct to the whole. as a reprieve, cubitt (2009: 28-29) proposes two aesthetic principles from david gelernter (1998) and democratic aesthetics built out of computing and mathematics. gelernter’s key value of “elegance” emerged from mathematical concepts which propose that formulae are only as complicated as they need be and no more – that beauty of design lies in its simplicity and effective power. the second aesthetic principle works from the renewed democratic endeavour enabled by networked media. every part, be it human or non-human, should be able to partake in the digital domain, and constitutes it. digitextuality the concept of digitextuality was developed by anna everett who also outlined digital aesthetics and various attendant issues. digitextuality is hinged by everett on the “posttelevision age” and jean-luc godard’s notion of the “end of cinema” (in everett 2003: 3). digitextuality is defined by everett (2003: 6) as: a utilitarian trope capable at once of describing and constructing a sense-making function for digital technology’s newer interactive protocols, aesthetic features, transmedia interfaces and end-user subject position, in the context of traditional media antecedents…intended to address…those marked continuities and ruptures existing between traditional…media and their digital…media progeny… 103 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture intertextuality is a central concept in understanding digitextuality and digital aesthetics. it references the emergent transposition of different signifying systems within differing platforms (everett 2003: 6). comprehension attains in the “field of transpositions” – the redistribution of signifying systems within a singular text (everett 2003: 6). as applied to digital film technology and cellphilms, they appropriate older, analogue filmic systems and our ability to “read” them effectively results from our accustomed reading of other texts. this results in a new articulation or enunciation (everett 2003: 6). however, intertextuality only captures a part of digitextuality. as a combination of the words “digital” and “intertextuality” the other necessary emphasis should be on the word “digital”. where digitextuality distinguishes itself from pure intertextuality, is that it becomes a meta-signifying system of discursive absorption and translation of differing signifying systems into ones and zeroes (everett 2003: 7). it is in these two processes – intertextuality and translation – that a digital aesthetic emerges. an “über-real image construct” is how everett describes the digital cinema aesthetic (2003: 9). “über” here refers to the ability of digital media to represent the sublime and what was previously unrepresentable (everett 2003: 9). iconic codes disappear or at least become irrelevant, whilst their indexicality references computerised binary codes (manovich 2001: 25). believability and verisimilitude have also become unnecessary in the face of a curiosity towards “technological magic” (everett 2003: 9). have the drastic changes in the media environment resulted in what everett calls a “fundamental hyperattentiveness” (2003: 8)? with the advent of digitality, various production techniques were hauled into the computer binary system and made available for anyone with enough patience to teach themselves. as a result of this, multi-faceted production techniques are combined into one editing and production system – the manovichian concept of “deep remixability” (2007). cellphilm aesthetics digital film technology has blurred the boundaries between the mainstream and the avant-garde (stam 2000: 317). with this in mind, cellphilms become sites for experimentation and haphazardness. cellphilm aesthetics develops from the aesthetic forms and principles discussed above. some of the most notable features of cellphilm aesthetics will be discussed (cf. dockney & tomaselli 2010; tomaselli & dockney 2009). the duration of most cellphilms usually does not exceed a few minutes. various usersituation characteristics such as screen size and the pragmatics of consumption mean that users generally do not want productions which require the same attention span as for other visual media such as television and cinema. cartoon network offers a fiveminute star wars mini-series (nicholas 2006: 158); vodafone (united kingdom), verizen and fme (america) launched one minute mobisode6 versions of the television series 24 (lovelacemedia 2005). however, aryan kaganof’s7 sms sugar man is an exception to the rule – the philm is a full length feature. 104 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture the narrative structure of most cellphilms is generally simple and linear. once again user-situation characteristics require that philms are fairly easily understood and offer bite/byte sized movie snacks to occupy brief moments of unused time. cellphilms also seem to fit comfortably into diegetic and memetic narrative techniques. however, memesis does seem to be the dominant of the two. even though an individual example of a cellphilm will probably incorporate a linear and simple narrative, a collective of cellphilms can contribute to a synthesised and multifaceted “achronological and multiple-entry ‘narrative’” (stam 2000: 323) for a singular media event. interactivity has also meant that users can generate their own narratives, plots and story lines for certain texts. as mentioned previously, there would seem to be a preference in cellphilms for the visual element over the dialogue or word. the sacred orchid certainly demonstrates this. in this philm, only four lines of dialogue are spoken between two characters. the total talk time is 13.34 seconds for a philm of 124 seconds in duration (excluding the brief introduction by the director at the beginning). sound effects too seem to replace dialogue. a few argh!s, and heh!s suffice. however, this does not mean that all cellphilms privilege sound and visuals over dialogue and words. there are many citizen journalism cellphilms which present the opposite – words preferred over visuals. indeed, everett labels some media critics’ lamentations for the fall of the word as premature (2003: 12). “image quality” seems to be an unavoidable topic of cellphilm discussion. cellphilms just cannot capture the pro-filmic with the same level of quality as high-definition (hd) television and hd film cameras. the move from professional to ordinary seems to have done something to aesthetics and quality (hilmes 2009: 49). however, two points need to be made here. “image quality” seems to be very much linked in two ways: 1) to a stable ontological definition of film; and 2) to the social values attached to aesthetics. essentialising film’s ontological status is futile. according to janet hardbord (2007: 118-145), the developments in film and television suggest that we rather take a multilayered and supplementative approach to film definition. talk of image quality appears to be ruinously attached to a singular definition of film and point of comparison. for while one cannot argue that cellphilm image quality is necessarily inferior to that of hd cameras, one does need to acknowledge the meanings associated with a particular image quality. what associations develop in relation to cellphilm image quality? “[i]mage quality takes on a different meaning, especially when the screen of the future is the one on your cell phone or ipod” (hilmes 2009: 50). ‘pussy g’awn crazy’ cellphilm-making is a learned practice – as first author jonathan dockney was duly reminded at a conference on african filmmaking in the digital era (cf. dockney 2010, forthcoming). as a result of this and a praxis-oriented theoretical approach to cellphilmmaking, a friend (eldriën jooste) and i (dockney) decided to utilise our cellphones (sony ericson w950i and a blackberry curve 8520) to make a philm. what resulted 105 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture was pussy g’awn crazy (dockney & jooste 2010), a 53 second philm. the plot involved seeing my hand irritating my cat (muffin) and then muffin meowing and getting increasingly irritated. we did not have a story board, shot schedule or plan – we literally pointed and shot. coincidentally, muffin yawned after a few exasperated meows; we appropriated this yawn and digitally overlaid it with a lion’s roar – courtesy of free sound files available on the internet. hence the viewer sees a hand annoying a cat that is meowing with increasing irritation and then finally hears/sees the cute cat expelling a guttural roar – über-real indeed. part and parcel of the filmic-entertainment experience also includes the introductory and end credits. we decided to appropriate the english language by re-organising the spelling – direcktor, edit-awr, etc – and rolling the credits to mike oldfield’s tubular bells (1973) – used in the exorcist (friedkin 1973) – for dramatic effect and made available for manipulation by youtube and internet-based downloading platforms such as keepvid. the innocent cat’s transformation into a lion mimicked the demonic transformation of the young reagan into satan himself. click ’n go aesthetics: digital lions muffin’s roar very crudely highlighted a phenomenon that is emerging in visual culture media products. firstly, the boundary between the real and the media image is gradually being eroded (creeber 2009: 17). parody ensured that muffin’s roar was obviously fake. however, the point is in the very ability to replace her meows. had we chosen the roar of a north american mountain lion – a more cat-like screech – then the effect may have been less apparent to some. the media image and its digital modification became part of the same entity, taking on a life of its own. the image indexed no known reallife animal – to the savvier it would have indexed digital manipulation – as the media image, a baudrillardian “copy” of sorts would have taken on its own life. perhaps this warrants another example. it is quite common to see thousands of people digitally recreated from their real-life “cousins” and then digitally recreated from the digital copy. the “third order of simulacra” is a concept developed by jean baudrillard (1994) to explain the copy superseding the original object. digital lions’ roars thus became the copies for our perusal and replacement or substitution of the real. furthermore, we did not need to seek out a real lion in order to record its roar, thanks to the internet. this highlights stam’s comments about the “de-ontologisation of the bazinian image” (2000: 319). “virtual irreality” (stam 2000: 319) means that the digital media image is no longer connected to the real world, but rather in a dynamic relation with itself. however, in the face of virtual irrealities, its important to point out that the physical real world has not necessarily become irrelevant. the very creation of the digital world is dependent on the healthy functioning of the real world – if we stop eating, we die, and so does the digital world. extending on this, we reiterate calls for scrutinising the realworld effect and power stratifications existent within digital media. 106 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture try it and see it philosophy8 without realising it, we (dockney and jooste) fell into the cellphilm (and digital) aesthetic “norm” – short, sharp philms, where visual dominates over verbal, narrative and plot are fairly tight and simple and characters – in this philm: “hand” and muffin are caricatured or made larger than life, irreal and fantastical. syuzhet structures are also manipulated and modified – potentially disconnected from fabula verisimilitude (muffin did not roar) – in accordance with the director’s creative intent. a number of points were raised in this experimental process of significance for cellphilm aesthetics. the insertion of cellphone technology within the visual arts has meant that increasingly people are able to capture coincidence – we did not expect muffin to yawn. coincidence then becomes part of the haphazard aesthetic and final product. what was also significant here was how new media narratives and aesthetics have permeated visual culture – we almost instinctively, without conscious reflection followed the norms of new media narratives. in studying various cellphilms, it has become evident that people’s ability to make cellphilms with some final effect shows that people are obviously aware of how to produce effective story lines. we knew how to: create tension, tell a story, play with anticipation and expectation, thwart expectation and generally operate within the genre without any prior “training”. the professional has now become the ordinary. ‘sms sugar man’ sms sugar man (kaganof 2008) presents to the audience a swirling johannesburg underworld. sugarman, played by kaganof himself, is a pimp whose girls are his sugars. the philm plots their various escapades on christmas eve. the issue of image quality presents a unique aesthetic effect here. on the one hand, “lower” image quality results from a lower megapixel resolution in cellphone cameras than hd cameras. on the other hand the “lower” image quality works to reinforce the underlying themes in sms sugar man. image quality serves to reinforce the philm’s social com mentary. in a sense, sms sugar man denies the media image’s replacement of real-world – a shortcircuiting of the sign, where the image and the real-world object become the same entity in the audience’s minds. the lower image quality almost serves as an interface to deny verisimilitude, or at least dilute it, thus preventing audience identification to some extent. the hazy effect – the denial of audience perception fully penetrating the media image – also reflects the johannesburg sex and drugs underworld that kaganof tries to capture. through the haze, the underworld is made inaccessible and other; somehow alien to the audience and perhaps maintaining a jarring effect – this is certainly not a world you are meant to feel comfortable and at home in. hazy media images seemingly force viewers into the position of a voyeur. the cellphone camera, with its ability to go where no hd camera has been before, reinforces voyeuristic positions. extreme close ups combined with the intense immediacy afforded through hand-held recording devices peel away the concealed and congealed layers of the urban underworld. 107 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture stable narrative structures are systematically broken down in sms sugar man. multiple narratives snake their way through the philm, often leading nowhere and remain seemingly unresolved, “the narrative is filled with plots and schemes that go nowhere, that implode on the plotters themselves” (hardy 2009). the hallucinogenic effect developed through the camera work on sms sugar man seems to be the resultant effect of cameras that can manoeuvre with greater dexterity than an ordinary hd camera. in many of the scenes one feels that one is flying as the camera swirls and twirls. the overall effect is a fluid and experimental film style, an apparent allegory to kaganof’s comments about the “superficiality of our hyper-real late capitalist society” (hardy 2009). conclusion cellphilms’ contribution to the film and television industries straddles various areas. they have provided, first and foremost, an opportunity for the ordinary citizen to partake in what was once available only to trained professionals. in doing this, they have re-conceptualised the industries as we know it, with significant consequences for film/philm aesthetics. the central thrust of this article has been one of relating art back to visual culture; the real-world effects of our creative endeavours. in addition, cellphilms aesthetics have been celebrated, as well as tempered. for while we acknowledge that cellphilm aesthetics cannot compare from a technological standpoint, their cultural meanings and values are the most important starting points for discussion. understanding cellphilm aesthetics from this point of view provides a positive framework for understanding their social impacts; for what cellphilm aesthetics mean for twenty-first century visual culture. endnotes 1 this is how we will refer to cellphone films. 2 the world film collective (www.worldfilmcollective.com) is a non-governmental organisation which works with disadvantaged communities to make films using cellphones to tell their stories. 3 gugulethu is a township about 15 km from cape town. 4 one of the slogan’s used in support of south african president jacob zuma’s campaign for presidency. 5 “new heroism” emerged as a filmic response to the horrors of wars and massacres in china (cf. zhang 2004: 41). 6 episodes made for mobile phones. 7 kaganof is a south african film director. sms sugar man was shot entirely on cellphones using eight sony ericsson w900i cellphones. 8 allen, m. 2009. digital cinema: virtual screens. in: creeber, g. and martin, r. 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[accessed on 07/11/2009]. 111 third screens, third cinemas, third worlds and triadomania: examining cellphilm aesthetics in visual culture 1. melissa steyn 93 aspekte van fisher se narratiewe teorie as vertrekpunt vir ’n retoriese kritiekbenadering tot die de la rey-liriek? communitas issn 1023-0556 2007 12: 93 113 lydie terblanche en f.h. terblanche* abstract in this discussion, it is pointed out that bok van blerk’s song, de la rey has had an unusual impact on a large number of south africans. it unleashed a fierce debate in the media in which interested parties offered divergent explanations in sometimes reasonable and sometimes malicious ways for the reasons why de la rey grabbed and fascinated people. against the background of the turbulence in the de la rey debate, one may ask, from the perspective of the science of persuasive communication, about the reasons that contribute to the fact that the de la rey lyric has such an enormous power of persuasion. seeing that fisher (1987) has addressed the role of both logical reason and value-laden good reasons in his narrative paradigm theory, this discussion takes up aspects of his theory as it pertains to the abovementioned question. attention will be paid to the ontological, epistemological and axiological presuppositions of the theory. relevant basic, structural and evaluative concepts are explained. although the theory is useful in various ways in the relevant field, it is especially the criteria for narrative rationality, i.e. the requirements that holds for narrative probability and narrative fidelity, that arguably can be used as a starting point for a rhetorical-critical approach to rhetorical acts in the lyric of de la rey. * lydie terblanche doseer deeltyds in die departement kommunikasie en inligtingstudie aan die universiteit van die vrystaat in bloemfontein. professor terry terblanche is ’n navorsingsgenoot in die departement kommunikasie en inligtingstudie aan die universiteit van die vrystaat in bloemfontein. inleiding en motivering in die jaar 2006 het bok van blerk met sy omstrede liedjie oor die anglo-boereoorlogheld, de la rey (bylaag a), as’t ware oornag bekend geword. op van blerk (2007a: 1) se webwerf word die volgende vermeld: “in februarie 2006 word bok van blerk se debuut cd, jy praat nog steeds my taal, in suid-afrika vrygestel. in oktober 2006 herdruk die vervaardigers van mozi records dit as de la rey en sluit die epiese musiekvideo in, gereken deur mk89 as die beste musiekvideo nog ontvang. tans is die cd #3 op kyknet se program dknt, en het op 2 november 2006 goue status bereik.” intussen het dit op meer as een vlak duidelik geword dat de la rey hoegenaamd nie maar net nog ’ntoevoeging tot die reeds bestaande lys afrikaanse liedjies is nie. byvoorbeeld: “mozi records (sean else en johan vorster) kondig met trots aan dat bok van blerk se debuutalbum so pas 5 keer goud bereik het” (van blerk 2007b: 1). op ’n ander vlak weer, blyk dit dat die liedjie al talle mense vasgevang, “geabsorbeer” en beduidend beïnvloed het. hiervan getuig byvoorbeeld die buitengewoon groot getal meningsvormers en belanghebbendes wat in die massamedia aan die de la rey-debat deelgeneem het. in genoemde debat het vrae soos die volgende herhaaldelik aan die orde gekom: hoekom is die liedjie so gewild; om watter redes is dit so ’n uitstaande treffer; watter waardes wat daarin vervat is, spreek die luisteraars of toeskouende gehore aan? hoewel die antwoorde op hierdie soort vrae, op die keper beskou, met minstens twee inmekaarverweefde dimensies van die liedjie verband hou, nl. die “musiekdeel” (toonsetting) en die “woorde-deel” (liriek), het die klem hoofsaaklik op betekenisse en konnotasies rondom die lirieke geval. laasgenoemde is ook die onderwerp van hierdie bespreking. wat die sogenaamde “musiekdeel” van de la rey betref, kan vir die doeleindes van hierdie bespreking volstaan word met ’n verwysing na enkele van die opmerkings wat tydens ’n bespreking op 12 julie 2007 op die volsblad-kunstefees gemaak is. by hierdie geleentheid het vier bekende kundiges in die musieken aanverwante wêreld, nl. coenie de villiers, ian wessels, andré swiegers en natie botes elk ’n sinvolle bydrae tot die de la rey-debat gelewer. eersgenoemde twee deelnemers het hulle ook eksplisiet oor die musiekaspek uitgelaat. volgens de villiers bestaan daar nie ’n resep vir ’n treffer nie, maar vir de la rey was die tyd en die bemarkingsmengsel reg en het dit ’n snaar geraak. hy meld onder meer ook dat die musiekkant ’n saamsinggedeelte met ’n haak aan die oor (“hook”) het. wessels noem dat die de la rey-musiek ’n gemeenskaplike kenmerk van afrikaanse treffers vertoon, nl.’n eenvoudige wysie waarvan minstens die koorgedeelte sonder enige inspanning herroep en saamgesing kan word. sy mening is dat ons erfenis hoofsaaklik uit die fak is: eenvoudige deuntjies wat jy kan fluit. hy voeg by dat hierdie formule ook vir ander bekende treffers soos “liewe lulu”, “skarumba”, “pampoen” en “meisie-meisie” gewerk het. wat die lirieke van die de la rey betref, het baie van die deelnemers aan die nuusmedia-debat vanuit die een of ander oortuiging of invalshoek in ’n mindere of 94 meerdere mate ’n bydrae gelewer tot ’n begrip van die meriete van die liedjie, of die redes waarom dit in so ’n groot mate op die aandag van so baie mense aanspraak maak. daar is ook diegene wat hulle geroepe gevoel het om die verskriklike gevare van die liedjie op ’n anti-de la rey-wyse te besing. vanselfsprekend was daar ook ’n handvol deelnemers wat langs moedswillige weë niksseggende en selfs neerhalende uitlatings gemaak het wat hier en daar aan smerigheid grens. hoe dit ook al sy, vir die doel van hierdie bespreking is ’n seleksie van naastenby 70 mediaberigte (bylaag a) uit dié wat vanaf oktober 2006 tot julie 2007 verskyn het, oorsigtelik in oënskou geneem. op grond hiervan word deur middel van enkele sinne, frases of woorde ’n aanduiding gegee van die soort betekenisse wat sommige van diegene wat aan die debat deelgeneem het, aan die liedjie toegeskryf het of as redes vir die sukses daarvan beskou het. • afrikaanssprekendes is leierloos en is naarstigtelik op soek na ’n leier. • die afrikaners voel bedreig en staan nou saam. • afrikaner-nasionalisme, post-apartheidspatriotisme en neo-apartheid. • dit is veral jong afrikaanssprekendes wat op soek is na ’n identiteit. • daar bestaan ’n verlange na die ou suid-afrika, dalk selfs apartheid. • opstand-gees/die opneem van wapens/strydlied/“terugveg”. • rebelleer teen die anc en teen die huidige demokraties verkose regering. • verwysings soos: volkstaat/orania/verwoerd/boeremag/volksfront. • afrikanertrots/-gemeenskap/-kultuur. • die afrikaner gee sigbare gestalte aan die herkoms van afrikaners. • die afrikaner herleef die passie vir sy taal. • polities-ideologiese gevare. • messianisme/die “messias-figuur”. • die liedjie kan gekaap word deur ’n minderheid van regsgesindes. • die afrikaner beskik nie oor die vermoë om aan te pas nie. • de la rey spreek tot die een of ander dimensie van die psige van die afrikaner. • die de la rey-lirieke is op werklike kenmerke van generaal de la rey gebaseer. • de la rey is nie ’n politieke toespraak of beweging nie, dit is ’n “song”. 95 gedurende genoemde tydperk het óf bok van blerk self óf een van sy medeskrywers van die liedjie, naamlik sean else en johan vorster, verskeie standpunte gestel waarvan die essensie soos volg saamgevat kan word: • die liedjie is nie ’n verskuilde oproep om wapens om te neem nie. • de la rey is nie ’n politiekgeïnspireerde lied nie, maar wel ’n pro-kultuurlied. • die liedjie kan nie met die ou landsvlag vereenselwig word nie. • dit gaan in die liedjie oor menswees met die anglo-boereoorlog as sentrale tema (bylaag a). hierbo is aspekte aangedui van die menings van sommige suid-afrikaners oor die redes waarom de la rey so besonder gewild is, of nie gewild behoort te wees nie. dit kan, afhangende van die invalshoek waaruit dit onder die loep geneem word, as byvoorbeeld interessant, veelseggend, sinryk, waardeloos, oorvereenvoudig of selfs absurd beskou word. dit is nou maar eenmaal so dat die mens se omskrywing van verskynsels in sy leefwêreld en byvoorbeeld sy evaluering daarvan bloot ’n funksie is van die “lens” waardeur sodanige verskynsels waargeneem word. vanuit ’n retoriese kommunikasiekundige perspektief beskou, gee die de la rey-debat aanleiding tot allerlei vrae rondom die retoriese handelinge wat in de la rey vervat is. só, byvoorbeeld, blyk die volgende vraag relevant en navorsingswaardig te wees: watter argumente en/of waardes in die de la rey-lirieke dra daartoe by dat dit oor so ’n enorme oorredingskrag beskik? die navorser wat in die humaniora deurknee is en wat vanuit ’n interpretatiewe navorsingsbenadering in antwoorde op aspekte van genoemde vraag geïnteresseerd is, bevind hom/haar uiteraard op die terrein van retoriese kritiek as vorm van tekstuele analise. alle vorme van retoriese kritiek op sosiale of simboliese werklikhede is, soos uit die volgende oriënterende opmerkings duidelik word, fundamenteel in die een of ander retoriese teorie ingebed. retoriese kritiek retoriese kritiek behels ’n sistematiese metode vir die beskrywing, ontleding, interpretasie en evaluering van die oorredingskrag van boodskappe wat in tekste ingebed is (frey, botan & kreps 2000: 229). die plek wat retoriese teorie in hierdie navorsingsmetode inneem, spreek duidelik uit borchers (2006: 8) se omskrywing van retoriese kritiek as die proses waarin retoriese teorie gebruik word ten einde retoriese praktyk te verstaan en te evalueer, en toekomstige retoriekteorie te genereer. ivie (1995: 138) stel uitdruklik dat die uitvoering van retoriese kritiek slegs moontlik is as voordeel getrek word uit ’n retoriese teorie wat duidelik maak waarvoor om in die sosiale praktyk op die uitkyk te wees, wat om daarvan te dink en of dit as betekenisvol beskou kan word. navorsers wat aan die hand van retoriese kritiek ’n aspek of aspekte van oorredingshandelinge in byvoorbeeld ’n politieke mededeling, ’n situasiekomedie, ’n 96 film, ’n preek, ’n toneelstuk, of ’n liedjie (soos de la rey) wil bestudeer, het ’n verskeidenheid retoriese kritiekvorme tot sy/haar beskikking. wat westerse retoriekdenke betref, kan byvoorbeeld tussen historiese, neo-aristoteliaanse, genre-, dramatistiese, metaforiese, narratiewe, fantasietemaen feministiese kritiek onderskei word. die bepaalde teorie waarop elk van hierdie retoriese kritiekbenaderings gebaseer is, behels, soos reeds geïmpliseer, eiesoortige fokuspunte, vakwetenskaplike oriëntasies en terminologie. normaalweg stel retorici, aldus foss (1989; aangehaal deur frey et al. 2000: 231), drie algemene, onderling verbonde navorsingsvrae, nl.: (a) wat is die verhouding tussen die teks en sy konteks? hierdie vraag plaas die aandag op hoe die elemente van ’n sosiale konteks soos tyd, plek en geleentheid die produksie van oorredingskommunikasie beïnvloed. (b) hoe konstrueer ’n teks realiteit vir boodskapontvangers? met ander woorde, hoe beïnvloed oorredingsboodskappe ontvangers se voorstelling van die realiteit? (c) wat suggereer die teks omtrent die mededeler? in hierdie vraag gaan dit dus oor hoe die motiewe, persoonlikheid en ander kenmerke van die mededeler die konstruksie van sy/haar oorredingsboodskap beïnvloed. in die lig van die voorgaande opmerkings oor die de la rey-debat sowel as onder meer die plek van teorie in retoriese kritiek, word daar in hierdie oorsigtelike bespreking probeer om op grond van fisher (1987) se narratiewe kommunikasieteorie ’n teoretiese vertrekpunt vir ’n narratiewe kritiekbeskouing oor die oorredingsimpak van die de le rey-lirieke te identifiseer. dit verdien duidelikheidshalwe eksplisiet vermeld te word dat daar nie in hierdie bespreking aan ’n metode vir retoriese kritiek aandag geskenk word nie. dit gaan bloot om die daarstelling van ’n teoretiese vertrekpunt om die retoriese handelinge in de la rey op ’n narratiewe wyse te analiseer. so benader, word egter toegegee, soos later aan die lig kom, dat aspekte van fisher (1987) se teorie as sodanig bruikbaar is om die narratiewe rasionaliteit van die liriekdeel van de la rey te assesseer. die relevansie wat fisher (1987) se teorie met betrekking tot de la rey het, spreek alreeds duidelik wanneer daarop gelet word dat fisher (1987: xi) in die voorwoord van sy boek oor die narratiewe teorie skryf dat die boek antwoorde op die volgende vrae voorstel: (1) hoe gebeur dit dat mense op grond van kommunikatiewe ervaring oortuig word, en handel? (2) wat is die aard van rede en rasionaliteit in hierdie ervaringe? (3) wat is die rol van waardes in menslike besluitneming en handeling? (4) hoe kan rede en waardes geassesseer word? fisher (1987: xi) is van die oortuiging dat heersende, antieke, moderne en kontemporêre teorieë oor menslike kommunikasie nie genoemde vrae toereikend beantwoord nie. die rede vir hierdie onvoldoendheid is dat die rol van waardes in die konstituering van kennis, waarheid of werklikheid in die algemeen ontken word. 97 die komponente van fisher se narratiewe teorie van die retoriek inleiding volgens littlejohn en foss (2005: 18-23) bestaan ’n teorie uit vier basiese elemente, naamlik (1) aannames, (2) konsepte, (3) verduidelikings en (4) beginsels. nie alle teorieë sluit al vier die elemente in nie. ten einde enige teorie in so ’n mate te kan verstaan dat vertrekpunte vir die toepassing daarvan in die kommunikasiepraktyk geïdentifiseer kan word, is ’n begrip van die basiese onderliggende aannames daarvan ’n noodsaaklike voorvereiste. in dié verband kan in die eerste plek verwys word na filosofiese aannames oor byvoorbeeld die essensie van menslike bestaan, die aard van die werklikheid waarin die mens hom bevind en die bestaan, al dan nie, van ’n universele werklikheid. tweedens kan verwys word na byvoorbeeld die aard van kennis en hoe dit verkry kan word, die wyse waarop die wêreld verstaan kan word en die rol wat waarneembare getuienis en/of intuïsie in die bepaling van kennis speel. derdens kan verwys word na die rol van waardes in onder meer waarneming, teoretisering en navorsing. genoemde en talle ander verbandhoudende aannames word normaalweg aan die hand van drie terme onderskei, naamlik (1) ontologie (vrae oor bestaan), (2) epistemologie (vrae oor kennis) en (3) aksiologie (vrae oor waardes). dit spreek vanself dat dit juis die filosofiese aannames van ’n teorie is wat die vertrekpunt vir navorsing (of bloot vir ’n beskouing oor allerlei verskynsels) vanuit ’n bepaalde teoretiese invalshoek daarstel. konsepte, m.a.w. terme en omskrywings, gee ’n aanduiding van waarop daar in ’n teorie gelet word en wat as belangrik beskou word. verduidelikings is stellings oor hoe die veranderlikes met mekaar verband hou, dit wil sê hoe konsepte met mekaar verbind is. beginsels behels riglyne wat mense daartoe in staat stel om gebeure te interpreteer, oordele uit te spreek oor wat gebeur en te besluit oor hoe om in die situasie op te tree (littlejohn & foss 2005: 21-23). hierdie bespreking van fisher se narratiewe teorie (voortaan nt) is op fisher (1973; 1978; 1980; 1984; 1985a; 1985b; 1987; 1989) se werk gebaseer. daar word egter ook by aspekte van die beskouing van cragan en shields aangesluit (1995). hierdie twee kommunikasiekundiges is toonaangewende akademiese denkers en praktisyns op die gebied van die toepassing van simboliese teorieë in kommunikasienavorsing. dit is veral die wyse waarop cragan en shields (1995) die aannames van die nt indeel en die onderskeid wat hulle tussen basiese, strukturele en evaluatiewe konsepte van teorieë tref, wat vir hierdie bespreking relevant is. basiese konsepte verwys na die ontledingseenhede wat vanuit die perspektief van ’n bepaalde teorie in kommunikasieverskynsels en -artefakte waargeneem en ontdek moet word. aangesien die nt ’n simboliese teorie is, vorm simboliese feite (wat in waardebelaaide stories vervat is) die eenhede vir ontleding. strukturele konsepte voorsien die bloudruk, ontwerp, vorm of superstruktuur van die entiteit wat deur die teorie onder waarneembare fokus gebring word. anders gestel: 98 strukturele konsepte help om die realiteit (waargenome kommunikasieverskynsels) te omvorm wanneer ’n bepaalde teorie gebruik word. ’n evaluatiewe konsep voorsien ’n gids of middel vir die assessering van ’n narratiewe teks, asook ’n lens om te bepaal of die proses wat deur die teorie beskryf word, voorkom in die kommunikasieverskynsels wat bestudeer word. dit is dus die konsepte wat die navorser moet gebruik om die bruikbaarheid van die nt in die oplossing van probleme te evalueer (cragan & shields 1995: 20-25, 34-35, 69, 95-107). in die hieropvolgende beknopte bespreking van die sogenaamde elemente van die nt word, om praktiese redes, slegs aan enkele aannames en konsepte aandag geskenk. so benader, word opmerkings oor verduidelikings en beginsels, waar dit duidelikheidshalwe nodig blyk te wees, onder genoemde twee kategorieë ingesluit. filosofiese aannames van die nt die nt is op vyf filosofiese aannames gebaseer, waarvan drie ontologies, een epistemologies en een aksiologies is: (1) [ontologies] mense is wesenlik storievertellers (fisher 1985b: 75, 1987: xi, 5, 62, 64). hy gebruik die term homo narrans om die basiese aard van die mensheid aan te dui. hierdie mensbeskouing, stel hy voor, moet by metafore soos homo faber, homo economicus, homo politicus, homo sociologicus, homo sapiens en ook die mens as psigologiese of geestelike of rasionele wese gevoeg word (fisher 1984: 6). (2) [aksiologies] alle vorme van menslike kommunikasie moet fundamenteel as stories beskou word, met ander woorde, simboliese interpretasies as aspekte van die wêreld wat in tyd afspeel en deur geskiedenis, biografie, kultuur en karakter gevorm word (fisher 1987: xi, 49; 1989: 57). (3) [ontologies] geïndividualiseerde diskoersvorme behoort beskou te word as “goeie redes”, waardes of waardebelaaide regverdiging om op sekere wyses te glo of op te tree (fisher 1987: xi). (4) [ontologies] alle menslike wesens (wat nie verstandelik ingeperk is nie) besit ’n narratiewe logika wat hulle gebruik om menslike kommunikasie mee te assesseer (fisher 1987: xi, 67). die mens is dus daartoe in staat om tussen onder meer goeie en slegte en aanvaarbare en onaanvaarbare stories te kan onderskei. trouens, die mens beskik oor die natuurlike vermoë om die samehang en getrouheid van die stories wat hulle vertel en ervaar, te herken (fisher 1987: 24). (5) [epistemologies] die wêreld soos die mens dit ken, is ’n versameling stories waaruit mense moet kies ten einde die lewe in ’n proses van voortdurende herskepping te leef (fisher 1987: 5, 65). met ander woorde, soos cragan en shields (1995:96) hierdie aanname interpreteer — mense skep realiteit deur versamelings stories. 99 die basiese konsepte van die nt die nt behels drie verskillende soorte eenhede vir ontleding (data), nl: vertelling/storie, logiese redes en goeie redes (vgl. cragan & shields 1995: 98). vertelling of storie vir fisher (1987: 58) dui die begrip narration, wat in hierdie bespreking as vertelling of storie vertaal word, op simboliese handelinge — woorde en/of dade — wat opeenvolging en betekenis het vir diegene wat dit leef, skep of interpreteer. met ander woorde, ’n vertelling/storie behels kommunikasiegebeure waaraan boodskapontvangers betekenis toeskryf. fisher (1989: 55) onderskei tussen drie soort vertellings. die eerste soort behels geïndividualiseerde vorme soos die vertelling van staaltjies of die daarstelling van ’n persoonlike beskrywing. die tweede soort handel oor generiese vorme soos argumentasie. die derde soort verwys na ’n konseptuele raamwerk vir ’n begrip van menslike besluitneming, diskoers en handeling. om die de la rey-lirieke as ’n storie te beskou, beteken dat ’n evaluering daarvan aan die hand van die onderdele van ’n storie plaasvind. ’n storie bevat onder meer karakters, ’n plek waarin die gebeure afspeel, ’n intrige en ’n tema of boodskap (rowland 2005: 132). uiteraard is sommige stories beter as ander in die sin dat hulle as meer samehangend en “waar” waargeneem word, byvoorbeeld wat betref die rasionele en waardegeoriënteerde redes wat daarin vervat is (fisher 1987: 68). redes (logiese redes en goeie redes) die begrip redes verwys na die dryfvere vir handelinge, beslissings, besluite of oortuigings. fisher (1987: 143) stel dat redes deur middel van ’n verskeidenheid geïndividualiseerde diskoersvorme of uitvoeringe uitgedruk kan word. dit kan in en deur argumente, metafore, mites, gebare en ander maniere waarop kommunikatiewe verhoudings geskep word, voorkom. • logiese redes die begrip logiese redes word in die tradisionele retoriek-sin van die woord gebruik. dit het dus betrekking op onder meer bewysgronde vir redenering, bewyslewering en die rol van argumentering in die samelewing (fisher 1978: 379; 1987: 108). • goeie redes goeie redes behels die waardebelaaide aspekte van ’n storie. volgens fisher (1985a: 350; 1987: 48, 89, 107) is goeie redes elemente wat regverdiging voorsien vir die aanvaarding van of vasklewing aan die advies wat deur enige vorm van kommunikasie wat as retories beskou kan word, aangemoedig word (vgl. fisher 1980: 127). strukturele konsepte van die nt daar kan ’n minimum van vier strukturele konsepte in die nt onderskei word, naamlik: karakter, intrige, moralistiese mites en materialistiese mites. 100 karakter fisher (1987: 47, 75, 88) is van die oortuiging dat karakter in alle stories sentraal staan. die geloofwaardigheid van ’n storie word bepaal deur die kenmerke van die mededeler en die karakter(s) wat daarin voorkom. wat die mededeler betref, kan byvoorbeeld op grond van kennis van sy of haar karakter en werklike ervaring bepaal word of sy of haar storie samehang vertoon en waar klink. die bepaling van ’n persoon se karakter word gevorm op grond van die interpretasie van die persoon se besluitnemings en handelinge wat waardes reflekteer. karakter kan dus, soos fisher (1987: 47) dit stel, “beskou word as ’n georganiseerde stel aksionele geneigdhede” (ons vertaling). dit kan ook as ’n veralgemeende persepsie van ’n persoon se fundamentele waardeoriëntasie beskou word (fisher 1987: 148). die konsekwentheid van karakter en handeling dra tot die narratiewe waarskynlikheid van ’n storie by (sien ook opmerkings oor narratiewe waarskynlikheid/ samehang). intrige die intrige is die reeks gebeurtenisse en situasies in ’n storie. op ’n bepaalde vlak beskou, dui die begrip intrige bloot op die handelinge van die karakters. vir fisher (1987: 144) speel sodanige handelinge altyd in ’n historiese, situasionele en biografiese konteks af. moralistiese en materialistiese mites fisher (1985b: 87; 1987: 19) voer aan dat alle vorme van menslike kommunikasie deurdrenk is van mites, d.w.s. idees wat nie geverifieer of op enige absolute wyse bewys kan word nie. sulke idees kom in metafore, waardes, gebare, ens. voor. die mees meeslepende, oorredende stories is mities van aard, dit wil sê stories wat “openbare drome”, wat byvoorbeeld betekenis aan die lewe gee, weerspieël (fisher 1987: 76, 183; 1982: 304). in sy bespreking van die rol van mites in retoriese transaksies onderskei hy tussen moralistiese en materialisties mites (vgl. bv. fisher 1973: 161-162; 1987: 152, 188). • moralistiese mites die begrip “moralistiese mite” het onder meer op broederskap betrekking. dit behels waardes soos verdraagsaamheid, liefdadigheid, vertroubaarheid, liefde, regverdigheid en respek vir die waardigheid van elke individu. die mens is geregtig op sekere onvervreembare regte soos “lewe, vryheid en die strewe na geluk”. die regering word aangestel om hierdie regte te beskerm (fisher 1987: 148, 182). • materialistiese mites die materialistiese mite plaas ’n groot premie op werketiek en handel in meer as een opsig oor individuele sukses. dit sluit waardes in soos genot, selfverheerliking, politieke insig, selfvertroue, mededingendheid, om die spel eerlik te speel, om moeite te doen, volharding, inisiatief en prestasie ( fisher 1973: 161; 1987: 149, 185). 101 evaluatiewe konsepte die nt bevat drie konsepte wat gebruik kan word om die bruikbaarheid daarvan in navorsing te evalueer: gehoor, narratiewe waarskynlikheid/samehang en narratiewe getrouheid. met ander woorde, benewens die gehoor word sowel narratiewe waarskynlikheid/samehang as narratiewe getrouheid as kriteria vir die bepaling van die narratiewe rasionaliteit van ’n storie beskou (fisher 1987: 47). gehoor fisher (1987: 187) wys daarop dat alle stories, enige vorm van retoriese kommunikasie, nie net iets oor die wêreld meedeel nie, maar ook ’n gehoor impliseer. die gehoor se belangrikheid lê byvoorbeeld daarin dat hulle die hoofbepalers van die sukses van ’n meeslepende storie is (fisher 1987: 124-125). soos reeds by die bespreking oor die filosofiese aannames van die nt genoem, gaan fisher (1987: 24) van die standpunt uit dat menslike wesens oor ’n natuurlike vermoë beskik om die samehang en getrouheid van die stories wat hulle ervaar of aan ander mense vertel, te herken. die gehoor, wat uiteraard die boodskapontvangers van allerlei vorme verbale en nieverbale mededelings is, kan dus nie bloot as ’n groep waarnemers beskou word nie, maar is aktiewe, ononderdrukbare deelnemers aan die betekenissamestelling van die storie (fisher 1987: 72). narratiewe waarskynlikheid/samehang die begrip narratiewe waarskynlikheid, soos fisher (1987: 88) dit stel, verwys na die formele kenmerke van ’n storie, bedink as ’n onderbroke opeenvolging van gedagtes en/of handelinge in die lewe of literatuur (enige opgeneemde of geskrewe diskoersvorm). dit gaan dus daaroor of die storie saamhang en of dit vry is van teenstrydighede, al dan nie. die narratiewe waarskynlikheidskriteria handel vanselfsprekend hoofsaaklik oor die mate waarin ’n storie samehang vertoon, betekenis het, opsigself sin maak en vir die ontvangers as waarskynlik voorkom. fisher (1987: 105) noem dat samehang die komponent van narratiewe rasionaliteit is wat die storie as geheel in fokus bring. fisher (1987: 47) argumenteer dat die waarskynlikheid/gebeurlikheid van ’n storie aan drie vereistes moet voldoen, nl. strukturele, materiële en karakterologiese samehang: (1) strukturele of argumentatiewe samehang het betrekking op die mate waarin die storie intern konsekwent is, m.a.w. die mate waarin die dele van die storie “bymekaar pas” en dus nie weersprekend van aard is nie. (2) materiële samehang, eksterne konsekwentheid, dui op die mate waarin die storie rekenskap gee van feite wat as waar bekend staan. hierdie samehang word bepaal deur ’n storie te vergelyk en te kontrasteer met stories wat in ander diskoerse voorkom, m.a.w. die graad waarin die storie volledig blyk te wees in terme van die gebeure wat voorheen deur ander bronne ingewin is. ’n storie kan byvoorbeeld intern konsekwent wees, terwyl belangrike feite weggelaat word, teenargumente wat in kompeterende stories teenwoordig is, verswyg word en relevante kwessies oor die hoof gesien word. 102 (3) karakterologiese samehang verwys na die betroubaarheid van die karakters. dit handel dus oor die geloofwaardigheid en betroubaarheid van die karakters in die storie — die verteller(s) sowel as die karakters of akteurs. kan die ontvangers daarop reken dat die karakters in die storie op ’n betroubare manier handel? is die karakters konsekwent in hul handelinge? watter soort keuses oefen hulle uit en wat is die aard van die waardes wat hulle huldig? fisher (1987: 47) stel dit duidelik dat samehang in sowel die lewe as die literatuur vereis dat karakters kenmerkend optree: “sonder hierdie soort voorspelbaarheid, is daar geen vertroue, geen samelewing, geen rasionele menslike orde nie” (ons vertaling). narratiewe getrouheid die konsep “narratiewe getrouheid” verwys na ’n storie se waarheidgetrouheid of waarheidkwaliteite (fisher 1987: 88). hierdie getrouheidsbeginsel by narratiewe rasionaliteit het betrekking op die geïndividualiseerde komponente van stories — of hulle akkurate verklarings omtrent die sosiale realiteit verteenwoordig en sodoende goeie redes vir oortuiging en handeling konstitueer (fisher 1987: 105). dit gaan dus hier oor die mate waarin die storie met die logika van goeie redes ooreenstem: die deeglikheid van beredenering en die waarde van waardes. anders gestel: ’n storie wat waarheidsgetrou is, bied ’n stel waardes wat as goeie redes deur die gehoor beskou word. in die lig van fisher (1987: 47, 57) se standpunt dat ’n storie sowel rasionele redes (die logika van redes) as waardebelaaide goeie redes weerspieël, voer hy aan dat albei hierdie soorte redes in die assessering van ’n storie se waarheidgetrouheid verreken behoort te word (fisher 1987: 108). sowel die logika van redes as die logika van goeie redes voorsien maatstawwe vir die assessering van elemente in redenering (fisher 1987: 113). so benader, kan bepaal word watter redes wat in die storie vervat is, regverdiging vir die ontvanger se aanvaarding of verwerping daarvan voorsien. in die lig hiervan word vervolgens aandag geskenk aan die assessering van sowel logiese of rasionele redes as die sogenaamde goeie redes. rasionele beredenering ten einde volgens fisher (1978: 379-380; 1987: 108, 110) te kan besluit of ’n boodskap waar klink al dan nie, is daar met betrekking tot die logika van redes in ’n storie vyf aspekte waarop gelet behoort te word: (1) neem in aanmerking of die stellings in die boodskap wat voorgee om “feite” te wees, inderdaad “feite” is. met ander woorde, word die stellings deur konsensus of betroubare, kompetente getuies bevestig? (2) bepaal of relevante “feite” uitgelaat is en of die “feite” wat aangebied word op enige wyse verwring of buite konteks gebruik is. (3) herken en assesseer die onderskeie redenasiewyses deur hoofsaaklik van die maatstawwe van informele logika gebruik te maak. byvoorbeeld: is die verskillende soorte redenerings — voorbeeld, analogie, teken, oorsaak, definisie en outoriteit — terdeë in terme van byvoorbeeld aanspraakmaking gekonstrueer? 103 (4) assesseer die relevansie van die individuele argumente met betrekking tot die uitspraak (uitlegging) wat in die boodskap voorkom. dit gaan nie hier net oor die deeglikheid van die argumente nie, maar ook oor die mate waarin al die betekenisvolle argumente wat aangewend behoort te word, geïdentifiseer is. (5) oordeel of die boodskap die “werklike” kwessie in die saak direk aanspreek. met ander woorde, skryf fisher (1987: 109), oordeel of die boodskap aandag gee, al dan nie, aan die vrae waarom die hele saak draai of behoort te draai. assessering van die waardebelaaide redes met betrekking tot die assessering van die waardebelaaide redes wat ’n rol in die bepaling van die waarheidsgetrouheid van ’n storie speel, maak fisher (1987: 109) ook van vyf konsepte gebruik, nl: feit, relevansie, gevolg, konsekwentheid en transendentale kwessie. die volgende vyf vrae het hierop betrekking: (1) wat is die implisiete en eksplisiete waardes wat in die boodskap gereflekteer word? (2) is die waardes toepaslik ten opsigte van die aard van die besluit of uitspraak waarop die boodskap betrekking het? hierdie vraag veronderstel ook ’n bemoeienis met weggelate, verdraaide en wanvertolkte waardes. (3) wat kan die gevolge wees as daar by die waardes gestaan word — vir ’n boodskapontvanger se selfkonsep, sy/haar gedrag, sy/haar verhouding met ander mense en die samelewing, en die proses van retoriese transaksie? (4) word die waardes in die ontvanger se persoonlike ervaring, in die lewe en stellings van mense wat hy/sy bewonder en respekteer en in ’n voorstelling van die beste gehoor wat hy/sy kan bedink, bevestig en bekragtig? kortom gestel: is die waardes in ooreenstemming met die ontvanger se eie waardes, dié van diegene wat hy/sy respekteer en dié van ’n ideale gehoor? (5) selfs as ’n boodskap in ’n spesifieke geval waar klink, op grond van onder meer die feit dat ’n bewyslas tot stand gebring is, kan steeds gevra word of die waardes wat daarin vervat is die ideale basis vir menslike gedrag uitmaak. fisher se narratiewe teorie en retoriese kritiek: ’n nadere verkenning fisher (1987: 98) stel dat die nt net soos enige ander teorie oor menslike handeling daarop ingestel is om rekenskap te gee van faktore wat daartoe lei dat mense (uiteindelik) glo en optree. hy is van oortuiging dat die nt navorsers daartoe in staat stel om van menslike gedrag rekenskap te gee op maniere wat nie deur die gebruik van teorieë en metodes uit die sosiale wetenskappe moontlik is nie, veral nie dié wat poog 104 om naby ’n natuurwetenskaplike paradigma te kom nie (fisher 1987: 20). sy hoofbeswaar is dat sosiaalwetenskaplikes se standaardteorieë, kragtens die aard van hierdie teorieë, nie die assessering van waardes verreken nie. dit is teen hierdie agtergrond dat hy met betrekking tot die waardebepaling van stories die nt, met die klem op narratiewe rasionaliteit, op die tafel plaas (fisher 1985a: 348; 1987: 87-89). vir fisher (1987: 48) dui die konsep narratiewe rasionaliteit daarop dat dit nie die individuele vorm van argument is wat uiteindelik in diskoers oorredend is nie. dit is wel belangrik, maar waardes is meer oorredend. vir hom lê die nut van ’n waarde in sy relevansie, konsekwentheid en gevolge, en die mate waarin dit in die hoogste moontlike waardes gegrond is. fisher (1987: 111) skryf: “anders gestel, ’n waarde is nie waardevol omdat dit verbind is met redes of deur ’n redelike persoon op sigself uitgedruk is nie, maar omdat dit ’n pragmatiese verskil in ’n mens se lewe en gemeenskap maak” (ons vertaling). hy is van die oortuiging dat die finale beslissing oor wat om te glo of te doen dus deur die inspeksie van “feite”, waardes, die self en die gemeenskap gemaak word. dit is onvermydelik ’n intersubjektiewe en pragmatiese besluit. bowenal is dit ’n rasionele besluit (fisher 1987: 111). om die retoriese handelinge in die de la rey-lirieke vanuit die nt te benader, beteken aan die hand van fisher (1987: 143) se standpunt dat daar gefokus moet word op die boodskap, die geïndividualiseerde vorme wat dit konstitueer en op die betroubaarheid, vertroubaarheid en wenslikheid van wat meegedeel word. die evaluering hiervan geskied vanselfsprekend deur van die toetse van narratiewe rasionaliteit gebruik te maak, d.w.s. die toets vir narratiewe waarskynlikheid/samehang en die twee toetse vir narratiewe getrouheid. deur die de la rey-lirieke as ’n storie te beskou, word die kritikus in staat gestel om, soos fisher (1987: 144) ietwat aangepas opmerk, minstens drie soorte belangrike onderskeidings te tref: (1) ’n fokus op die opeenvolgings van simboliese handelinge en hul betekenis in die de la rey-lirieke, (2) ’n erkenning dat die de la rey-lirieke nie sonder ’n historiese, situasionele en biografiese konteks is nie en (3) ’n erkenning dat die betekenis en waarde van die de la rey-lirieke beïnvloed word deur hoe dit vergelyk met ander lirieke/stories wat aan die gehoor of ander waarnemers bekend is. voorts: die oorredingsimpak van die de la rey-lirieke word bepaal deur die mate waarin dit ’n oorredende storie is; die mate waarin dit waar is met betrekking tot die verlede, kulturele waardes verheerlik, ’n verhoogde persepsie van mense voorsien en met volkome vaardigheid aangebied word (fisher 1987: 156). alle goeie stories, skryf fisher (1987: 187), funksioneer op twee wyses: dit regverdig (of mistifiseer) besluite of handelinge wat reeds gemaak of uitgevoer is en dit bepaal toekomstige besluite of handelinge. hoewel daar in die literatuur oor oorredingskommunikasie talle vorme van kritiek teen fisher (1987) se teorie aangetref word (vgl. bv. mcgee & nelson 1985: 140; fisher 1989: 56), blyk dit dat sy beskouing daartoe aanleiding gegee het dat ’n groot verskeidenheid kritici en navorsers hulle tot narratiewe kritiek gewend het (rowland 105 2005: 141; cragan & shields 1995: 255-261). volgens rowland (2005: 141-143) kan twee kategorieë in hierdie narratiewe kritiekuitsette onderskei word. in die eerste plek is daar kritici wat van fisher (1987) se terminologie gebruik maak, veral die standaarde van narratiewe rasionaliteit. in baie van hierdie gevalle word temas in ’n storie geïdentifiseer en dan deur die toepassing van die standaarde van narratiewe rasionaliteit geassesseer. in hierdie kategorie bestaan daar ook gevalle waar die standaarde van narratiewe rasionaliteit gebruik word as ’n wyse om te verduidelik waarom ’n spesifieke gehoor ’n storie as oorredend ervaar het. tweedens is daar diegene wat ’n induktiewe benadering tot narratiewe analise ontwikkel het. in hierdie geval pas die kritikus nie ’n voorafbestaande narratiewe teorie toe nie, maar ontdek die implisiete narratiewe patroon in ’n gegewe storie. wat laasgenoemde opmerkings betref, moet in gedagte gehou word dat fisher (1987) se nt nie ’n spesifieke, klinkklare retoriese kritiekmetode vir die ontleding van retoriese tekste is nie (fisher 1985a: 357). dit is ’n teorie, ’n paradigma, ’n perspektief of ’n filosofiese stelling (fisher 1985a: 357; 1989: 57) aan die hand waarvan oorredingstekste krities in oënskou geneem kan word of byvoorbeeld die narratiewe rasionaliteit van ’n retoriese handeling soos die de la rey-lirieke begryp of getoets kan word. daar bestaan wel uitgewerkte retoriese kritiekvorms wat op fisher (1987) se teorie gebaseer is, soos dié van rybacki en rybacki (1991: 108-128). rowland (2005: 143-147) se sistematiese perspektief op narratiewe kritiek verreken ook verskeie aspekte van fisher (1987) se teorie. slotbeskouing in hierdie bespreking is aangevoer dat die omvangryke de la rey-debat wat in die nuusmedia en ander kontekste plaasgevind het, ook vanuit ’n oorredingskommunikasiekundige invalshoek voortgesit kan word. ’n oorsigtelike blik op die uiteenlopende redes wat deur die deelnemers aan die de la rey-debat gegee word vir onder meer die sukses, oorredingsimpak, algemene meeslependheid of gevare van de la rey, toon dat daar in die suid-afrikaanse samelewing, soos in enige samelewing die geval is, verskillende waardesisteme aan die orde is. beskouings oor die waarheid, wenslikheid of onsinnigheid van tussenmenslike kommunikasiegebeure is gewoon die resultaat van die lens waardeur gekyk word. vanuit ’n retoriese kommunikasiebril/perspektief beskou, blyk dit dat fisher (1987) se narratiewe teorie ’n bepaalde soort lig voorsien vir ’n soeke na die logiese en waardebelaaide redes wat vir die oorredingsimpak van de la rey verantwoordelik is. die navorser of kritikus wat daarin geïnteresseerd is om vanuit ’n interpretatiewe benadering wat met fisher (1987) se teorie verband hou, ’n bydrae tot ’n groter begrip vir die buitengewone impak van die oorredingshandelinge in de la rey te lewer, het een van minstens drie weë om te volg. eerstens kan met inagneming van die filosofiese aannames en begripperaamwerk van fisher (1987) se narratiewe teorie bepaal word of die de la rey-lirieke aan die vereistes van narratiewe rasionaliteit voldoen. tweedens kan die oorredingskrag van die de la rey-lirieke aan die hand van ’n bestaande of nuut 106 ontwikkelde retoriese kritiekmetode wat op fisher (1987) se narratiewe teorie gebaseer is, beskryf, ontleed, geïnterpreteer en geëvalueer word. derdens kan fisher (1987) se teorie, of ’n metode wat daarop gebaseer is, met een of meer van die ander retoriese kritiekbenaderings gekombineer word. en afgesien van fisher (1987) se beskouing kan, afhangende van die navorsingsvraag wat ter sake is, ook gebruik gemaak word van enige vorm van retoriese kritiek soos die neo-aristoteliaanse, dramatistiese, metaforiese of fantasietema-kritiek. laasgenoemde vorm, om met ’n enkele opmerking te volstaan, se relevansie vir ’n benadering tot die de la rey-lirieke lê byvoorbeeld daarin dat dit juis ten doel het om onder meer te verduidelik hoe mense gesamentlik ’n simboliese bewustheid konstitueer wat byvoorbeeld motiewe vir handeling voorsien. 107 verwysings borchers, t. 2006. rhetorical theory. an introduction. california: wadsworth. cragan, j.f. & shields, d.c. 1995. symbolic theories in applied communication research: bormann, burke, and fisher. cresskill: hampton. fisher, w.r. 1973. reaffirmation and subversion of the american dream. quarterly journal of speech 59: 160-169. fisher, w.r. 1978. toward a logic of good reasons. quarterly journal of speech 64: 376-384. fisher, w.r. 1980. rationality and the logic of good reasons. philosophy and rhetoric 13: 121-130. fisher, w.r. 1984. narration as a human communication paradigm: the case of public moral argument. communication monographs 51: 1-22. fisher, w.r. 1985a. the narrative paradigm: an elaboration. communication monographs 52: 347-367. fisher, w.r. 1985b. the narrative paradigm: in the beginning. journal of communication 35: 74-89. fisher, w.r. 1987. human communication as narration: toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. columbia: university of south carolina press. fisher, w.r. 1989. clarifying the narrative paradigm. communication monographs 56: 55-58. foss, s.k. 1989. rhetorical criticism: exploration and practice. prospect heights (ill): waveland. frey, l.r., botan, c.h. & kreps, g.l. 2000. investigating communication: an introduction to research methods. boston: allyn & bacon. ivie, r.i. 1995. the social relevance of rhetorical scholarship. the quarterly journal of speech 81: 138. littlejohn, s.w. & foss, k.a. 2005. theories of human communication. united states: wadsworth. mcgee, m.c. & nelson, j.s. 1985. narrative reason in public argument. journal of communication 35(4): 139-155. rowland, r. 2005. the narrative perspective. in kuypers, j.a (ed). the art of rhetorical criticism. boston: pearson. rybacki, k. & rybacki, d. 1991. communication criticism. california: wadsworth. van blerk, b. 2007a. de la rey-webtuiste. 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[aanlyn]. herwin van: www.news24.com [besoek op 19/02/2007]. gerber, j. 2007. sakeman wil de la rey se borsbeeld in sa hou. volksblad, 26 januarie: 3. gerber, j., schoeman, l. & williamson, e. 2007. bok blêr nie politiek. burger, 25 januarie: 14. goosen, d. 2007a. fak bly oor ‘de la rey’ vir skeppende afrikaner. beeld, 26 januarie: 12. goosen, d. 2007b. verskille oor wat ‘afrikaner’ nou is. news24. [aanlyn]. herwin van: www.news24.com/die_volksblad/nuus/0,8523,5-83_2071911,00.html# [besoek op 20/02/2007]. goosen, d. 2007c. geen links en regs om genl. de la rey. volksblad, 26 januarie: 8. grobbelaar, r. 2007. ‘almal is generaals’. beeld, 12 februarie: 3. 109 grobler, w. 2007. de la rey lives again. [aanlyn]. herwin van: www.carteblanche.mnet.co.za [besoek op 05/05/2007]. groenewald, y. 2007. de la rey – is it just a song? mail & guardian. 24 mei: 17. hattingh, j. 2006. steeds lief vir jou, koos. volksblad. [aanlyn]. herwin van: http/published/volksblad/2006/12/12/vb/texts/grys.xml [besoek op 12/12/2006]. jackson, n. 2007a. ‘de la rey’ omgeskryf vir die hemelse generaal. beeld, 26 januarie: 5. jackson, n. 2007b. suid-afrikaners ‘het `n hemelse generaal nodig’. volksblad, 26 januarie: 9. johnston, s. 2007. nou moet bok self by skool kom sing. beeld, 15 maart: 7. kenny, a. 2007. afrikaners protecting identity. citizen, 27 februarie: 13. kombuis, k. 2006. bok se liedjie raak hom diep. [aanlyn] herwin van: http://www.volksblad/2006/12/06/vb/texts/jrkoosk.xml. [besoek op 06/12/2006]. krog, a. 2007. de la rey: afrikaner absolution. [aanlyn]. herwin van: http://www.mg.co.za [besoek op 05/05/2007]. lamprecht, l. 2006. mk89 deel pryse uit. volksblad, 07 desember: 12. landman, r. 2007. de la rey lives again. carte blanche. 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[aanlyn]. herwin van: www.news24.co.za [besoek op 09/03/2007]. smith, s. 2007. buitelandse beeld: de wet, sal jy yanks loop red? [aanlyn]. herwin van: http://www.news24.com/beeld/opinie/rubrieke [besoek op 09/03/2007]. star. 2007a. arts department defends bok’s free-speech rights. 7 februarie: 11. star. 2007b. revisiting our cultures. 05 februarie: 8. steyn, j. 2006. nie meer so gedwee. volksblad, 8 desember: 8. strauss, p. 2007. de la rey, de la rey ... volksblad, 24 januarie: 8. van blerk, b. 2007a. de la rey webtuiste. [aanlyn]. herwin van: www.bokvanblerk.co.za [besoek op 09/02/2007]. van blerk, b. 2007b. de la rey webtuiste. [aanlyn]. herwin van: www.bokvanblerk.co.za [besoek op 22/07/2007]. van der leek, n. 2007. de la rey: afrikaner heritage: [opinion] how a simple song inspired white south africans. [aanlyn]. herwin van: http:english.ohmynews.com [besoek op 05/05/2007]. 111 van der merwe, h. 2007. bohaai in wetgewer toe boshoff uit ‘de la rey’ aanhaal. beeld. 18 junie: 2. van niekerk, j. 2007. dankie bok, en ons skaam ons vir koos. 07 desember: 10. van niekerk, p. 2007. generation in search of a leader. the herald, 28 februarie: 6. van vuuren, m. 2007. de la rey te omstrede en negatief vir saru. rapport, 3 junie: 8. van wyk, s. 2007. bok lyk moeg vir de la rey-bohaai. volksblad, 19 februarie: 4. volksblad. 2006a. internasionale lughawe o.r.tambo heet nou skielik de la rey. 07 november: 2. volksblad. 2006b. bok se liedjie raak hom diep, sê koos kombuis. 06 desember: 18. volksblad. 2006c. die fyner kuns van openbare diskoers. 11 desember: 1. volksblad. 2007b. as die bal reg wip . . . 26 januarie: 8. volksblad. 2007c. de la rey se kode. 9 februarie: 8. volksblad. 2007d. ons soek net ons eie mandela of biko. 13 februarie: 8. williamson, e. 2006. de la rey ‘gee nuwe identiteit vir afrikaner’. volksblad. [aanlyn]. herwin van: http://published/volksblad/2006/12/12/vb/texts/grys.xml [besoek op 12/12/2006]. williamson, e. 2007. bok is glo te omstrede vir advertensie in rugby-tydskrif. beeld, 1 junie: 3. zietsman, e. 2007. letters. mail & guardian, 24 mei: 17. 112 bylaag b de la rey-lirieke op ’n berg in die nag lê ons in die donker en wag in die modder en bloed lê ek koud, streepsak en reën kleef teen my en my huis en my plaas tot kole verbrand sodat hulle ons kan vang, maar daai vlamme en vuur brand nou diep, diep binne my. de la rey, de la rey sal jy die boere kom lei? de la rey, de la rey generaal, generaal soos een man, sal ons om jou val. generaal de la rey. oor die kakies wat lag, ’n handjie van ons teen ’n hele groot mag en die kranse lê hier teen ons rug, hulle dink dis verby. maar die hart van ’n boer lê dieper en wyer, hulle gaan dit nog sien. op ’n perd kom hy aan, die leeu van die wes transvaal. de la rey, de la rey sal jy die boere kom lei? de la rey, de la rey generaal, generaal soos een man, sal ons om jou val. generaal de la rey. want my vrou en my kind lê in ’n kamp en vergaan, en die kakies se murg loop oor ’n nasie wat weer op sal staan. de la rey, de la rey sal jy die boere kom lei? de la rey, de la rey generaal, generaal soos een man, sal ons om jou val. generaal de la rey (van blerk 2007a: 1) 113 communitas omslag nov 2008 115 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13:115 133 geraldine coertze* abstract this article examines the communication factors and the prevailing socio-cultural context which underlies the lack of vct uptake amongst male construction workers in south africa. the article is based on focus group discussions carried out with a group of african construction workers in howick, kwazulu-natal. lack of understanding of the term “vct”, lack of information on topics such as antiretroviral therapy and rapidtesting facilities, and lack of constructive interpersonal verbal communication on the topic were found to impact on vct uptake. socio-cultural factors such as high levels of stigma and discrimination of hiv positive persons, norms surrounding childcare, as well as notions of masculinity contributed to lack of vct uptake amongst males. it was also noted that the perceived susceptibility of the males was high as a result of misunderstandings and irrational fears of the means of transmission of the hi virus. suggested means of improving communication on vct include re-branding vct for certain populations, capitalising on the trust placed in radio, and implementing peerled education programmes to promote dialogical discussion. *geraldine coertze1 is a postgraduate student in the department of culture, communication and media studies at the university of kwazulu-natal, howard college campus, in durban. introduction the effects of hiv/aids have been seen to be highly problematic worldwide. subsaharan africa has been identified as the region most adversely affected by hiv/aids, with an estimated 24.5 million hiv positive people at the end of 2005 (fredriksson & kanabus 2006). the level of hiv prevalence in south africa, currently estimated to be at 10.8 percent of the population, is a pressing issue which clearly demands an aggressive strategy to curb it (shisana et al. 2005). one of the most effective ways, proven to assist in this process, is through “voluntary counselling and testing” (vct) for hiv, teamed with the provision of antiretroviral therapy (thom 2005). vct has become more desirable for use since the advent of rapid-testing (fredrikkson & kanabus 2006). results are available in between five and thirty minutes, allowing for both pre-test and post-test counselling, which accompanies the test, to be carried out in one visit (cichocki 2006). depending on the results of the test, personally tailored advice, referrals and avenues for support are offered to the patient (thom 2005). these include advice on the consistent use of condoms and where necessary, tests for cd4 counts, contacts for support groups, and as of 2003, in south africa, access to free antiretroviral therapy (swanepoel 2005). access to vct is thus seen to be important, as it has been shown that counselling, being aware of one’s status and receiving advice can positively impact on increasing health-promoting behaviour (nogogo 2005). pooled european research has shown that antiretroviral therapy decreases one’s risk of dying within ten years of contracting hiv by 64% (mocroft et al. 2000, in kippax 2006). however, these medications are not without side effects, often visible, amongst them “lipodystrophy” – the redistribution of body fat from the limbs and face to the abdomen (fallon 2003). vct uptake in south africa despite being successful in countries such as uganda, brazil and kenya (thom 2005), vct uptake in south africa has been surprisingly low. the availability of antiretroviral treatment in the public health sector was hoped to assist in diminishing the stigma surrounding hiv/aids (by presenting it as a manageable, chronic illness) and thus increasing vct uptake (irin plus news 2006a). however, research carried out by the human sciences research council in south africa in 2005 indicated that vct uptake is estimated to be at a level of 30.3% of the population (shisana et al. 2005). within this one-third of the south african population, other researchers have estimated that the ratio of male to female testees is 21% to 79% (irin plus news 2006b). this ties in with research which details the phenomenon of women attending public health clinics significantly more frequently than men, due to the demands of childcare (tollman et al. 1999, in pronyk et al. 2002). other patterns could be seen to be indicative of various underlying factors. these include structural, socio-cultural and communication factors. this study aims to uncover these factors and identify ways in which more culturally relevant and thus effective communication on the topic of vct, especially targeting males, can be designed and implemented. 116 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? literature review communication, both interpersonal and impersonal, has been identified as being an important barrier to accessing the vct service in south africa (policy project 2003a). whilst in countries such as uganda, hiv/aids communication has focused on morality and personal responsibility, in south africa different needs have been identified as being important. these are identified by simelea (2002, in cullinan 2002) as being the challenging of stigma, discrimination and denial surrounding the disease. these identified foci are underscored by research which has shown that amongst other factors, fear of rejection and violence, as a direct result of stigma and discrimination, are barriers to accessing vct services (riasa 2005). mistrust of health professionals, problems relating to accessing health services, as well as a lack of belief in one’s ability to cope with the emotional turmoil of testing, have also been identified as reasons behind a lack of vct uptake in south africa (van dyk & van dyk 2003). a study on vct uptake carried out by hutchinson and mahlalela (2006) in the eastern cape confirmed many of these factors, as well as identifying misperceptions of risk and a shortage of testing and treatment facilities. the probability of being tested was noted to be linked to psycho-social factors, such as “the absence of stigma” or “knowing someone with hiv/aids” (hutchinson & mahlalela 2006). other more general factors which have been identified through studies in the us as being catalysts of the process of deciding to undergo vct, include marriages, new relationships, the death of a partner, distrust of a partner, illness, weight loss and sexually transmitted diseases (shuter et al. 1997, in fako 2006). socio-cultural factors culture and health culture is defined by the collective consciousness of community of people, which is seen to be shaped by a “shared history, language and psychology” (airhihenbuwa et al. 2000: 106). the inclusion of a focus on culture has been deemed highly important in determining the success of health communication programmes in collectivist cultures. this is due to the fact that “culture is a central feature in health behaviour and decisions, particularly in the context of behaviours that predispose people to hiv/aids” (airhihenbuwa et al. 1992, in airhihenbuwa & obregon 2000: 6). each community can be seen to maintain health, prevent disease, respond to symptoms and treat the ill in a specific, well-established manner (gilbert et al. 1996). “health–seeking behaviour” follows the realisation of illness and, in many circumstances, includes consulting family members, friends and family (gilbert et al. 1996: 49). the course of action, be it visiting a modern health care practitioner or traditional healer, is often the result of the advice given by the network of persons consulted (gilbert et al. 1996). 117 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? power relations and masculinity there are many contextual factors, identified by parker (2004), which contribute to the spread of hiv/aids. amongst these, gender power relations are identified as being unequal and weighted towards decision-making by males (parker 2004). linked to such issues of power are those of masculinity, which campbell (2004) identifies as furthering the spread of hiv/aids. in research conducted by van dyk and van dyk (2003) it was found that the main reasons behind men not wanting to disclose their hiv positive status were due to fear of losing their sexuality and sex appeal. it is asserted that vct programmes should take into account the intricate issues of male sexuality and psychological barriers which are encountered in this process. couplefocused vct is recommended as a means by which to empower men to take responsibility for sexual choices, rather than denying their status or refusing to present for vct (van dyk & van dyk 2003). stigma and discrimination stigma is referred to as prejudice and discrimination against people, and the treatment of people in a negative manner. the stigma often attached to aids has been identified as a barrier to the humane treatment of people worldwide (singhal & rogers 2003). many studies have shown that people often understand how hiv is transmitted, yet do not have a suitable understanding of the ways in which it is not transmitted (london & robles 2000, in dias et al. 2006). a large proportion of respondents in a us study were shown to overestimate the risk of infection that casual contact with hiv positive persons poses (mmwr 2000, in dias et al. 2006). it is asserted that this fear of contracting hiv through casual contact increases stigma through an increase in fear that people have of associating themselves with hiv positive persons (dias et al. 2006). parker and aggleton (2003, in dias et al. 2006) argue that hiv/aids campaigns have not addressed this misunderstanding of the ways in which hiv is transmitted, as well as the ways in which it is not. strategies to increase vct uptake recommendations of shisana et al. (2005) include the need to refocus the communication strategy by addressing, amongst other factors, gender-related vulnerability, age-related vulnerability and vulnerability as a result of migration and mobility. more specifically, it is suggested that low levels of personal susceptibility be addressed, with specific emphasis placed on the need for persons to present themselves for vct, as well as to disclose their status to their partners. the risk of contracting hiv/aids during pregnancy and the suggestion that testing of both partners before planning to conceive should also be highlighted. this would thus incorporate the need for the periodic testing of men and women in stable relationships. 118 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? it is suggested by parker (2004) that with regard to the response to hiv/aids in south africa, national level (vertical) communication campaigns should serve as a useful backdrop to local, related (participatory) activities. the combination of the use of both is vital for the purpose of increasing general knowledge and awareness. the participatory communication which is referred to could be seen to be present in the practice of “peer-led education”. this is best described as “dialogic interpersonal communication and group learning processes” (mason et al. s.a.: 3). this process allows for alternative behavioural norms and practices to be identified and evaluated in a language with which the participants are comfortable and in relation to certain issues which are most personally relevant (campbell 2003). moving beyond the realm of peer-led education, it is asserted by mason et al. (s.a.: 3) that in order to maximise behaviour change strategies, these should involve individuals, families and communities. such extended “dialogic interpersonal communication and group learning processes” can be maximised by the use of “micromedia” – carefully and specifically created media for use with small, clearly defined groups of people which promote discussion and learning. theories of health communication and behaviour change models this study was guided by three theories, namely health belief model, social learning theory and diffusion of innovations theory. these theories fall into three categories which indicate the level at which they operate, namely the “individual” level, the “interpersonal” level and the “community” level (glanz & rimer 1995: 40). the health belief model is a rational-cognitive model, attributed to becker (1974), which seeks to explain the reasoning behind the lack of uptake in programmes designed to assist in disease prevention and detection. the main focus falls on understanding the personal perceptions of issues surrounding the programme or disease (airhihenbuwa & obregon 2000). this model is comprised of five components (glanz & rimer 1995): perceived susceptibility; perceived severity; perceived benefits; perceived barriers; and cues to action. a further component, according to glanz and rimer (1995: 19), is that of self-efficacy, which refers to the confidence which a person has in his/her ability to carry out a particular behaviour. social learning theory, developed by bandura in 1986, focuses mainly on the way in which modelling of behaviour and vicarious or observational learning has an effect on increasing levels of self-efficacy and individual behaviour change (slater & rouner 2002). particular concepts are included in this theory and highlighted by glanz and rimer (1995: 23-24). the first of these is reciprocal determinism, which refers to the triadic nature of the theory and the way in which the behaviour of the individual, the environment and the cognitive processes of the individual have the ability to impact on each other in reciprocal manners. behavioural capability refers to the assertion that in order for a person to carry out a specific behaviour, it is necessary that the person is 119 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? aware of the specific details surrounding the behaviour and how it can be achieved. the third concept is that of outcome expectations and refers to the results that a person anticipates will occur due to following a specific action. the fourth concept is that of self-efficacy. observational learning or “modelling” is also included and refers to the way in which people are able to learn through the experience of others. the process of socialisation is possible through the act of modelling. the diffusion of innovations theory, devised by rogers in 1983, focuses on the ways in which “….new ideas, products and social practices spread within a society…” (national cancer institute 2001: 226). there are five characteristics of innovations which have been identified as being important: relative advantage; compatibility; complexity; trialability; and observability (glanz & rimer 1995: 28). another important component of the theory includes the communication processes which are involved in the spread of a new idea – in terms of both knowledge and its application (airhihenbuwa & obregon 2000). this is viewed as a two-way process in which message receivers are active agents, as opposed to passive receivers (glanz & rimer 1995). the two-step flow of communication, which is incorporated in the theory, highlights the way in which opinion leaders are able to mediate messages (glanz & rimer 1995). research methodology content analysis, which refers to the quantitative research technique that objectively and systematically describes the manifest content of communication (berelson 1952, in deacon et al. 1999), was carried out. posters and pamphlets from the howick clinic, as well as television advertisements, radio content and local billoards formed the basis for this analysis. the main method of primary research carried out was that of focus group discussions, of which two were carried out in isizulu and sesotho, each with six male participants, all of whom being construction workers in the howick area. area of study the howick clinic is a municipal clinic situated in the kwazulu-natal midlands. the clinic serves the surrounding population through the provision of primary health care. amongst the many services offered is voluntary couselling and testing. patients who are identified as being hiv positive and requiring art are referred to the nearby communicable diseases clinic (van niekerk 2006). as a result of this clinic being nongovernmentally run, patients presenting at this clinic are referred to the government-run grey’s hospital in pietermaritzburg, a distance of approximately 30 km from howick (cheek 2006). other organisations – such as new start voluntary counselling and testing centre – are also in existence, and work in conjunction with the department of health. this organisation, based in cape town, durban and johannesburg (new start voluntary 120 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? counselling and testing centre 2006), makes use of mobile vct, where members of the organisation travel to certain areas and offer vct in rural areas, places of employment, at colleges and at universities (mtshali 2006). during these mobile vct events, the usual testing fee is waived in an attempt to attract higher levels of uptake. couple’s vct is a concept promoted by new start, where a price discount is offered to those testing as a couple. this option has not yet proven very popular, although it is noted that different communities produce different patterns in testing practices, both with regard to vct for couples, as well as the male to female ratio of testees (mtshali 2006). findings and discussion general health tests health tests for diseases which were identified by both group 1 (isizulu speakers) and group 2 (sesotho speakers) included cancer, asthma, arthritis, blood pressure and hiv/aids. differing points of view existed with regard to the importance of these tests, but the majority of the views were in line with the assertion by one group member that health checks are important as they allow one to know one’s health status with regard to illnesses, thus allowing one the opportunity to access treatment early. such attitudes could be seen to be indicative of the findings of the research of day et al. (2003), where a lack of belief in the value of health tests was not seen to be the main factor preventing uptake of vct, but rather social barriers, such as stigma. very critical views of clinics, including a general mistrust of staff, a preference for doctors in private practice and the perception that “….things don’t go well if i go to the clinic” (sotho male b) were aired. one member in group 2 asserted that white doctors were attempting to reduce the numbers of black people, that medicines offered at clinics generally did not tend to alleviate problems and that traditional herbs had to be used as well as prescribed medication. such comments and practices were seen to be in line with the assertion that most africans tend to believe that traditional healers are more skilled at treating ailments than modern doctors, despite such modern doctors often being visited (green 1994, in irin plus news 2001). awareness and understanding of hiv/aids none of the 12 men in the discussions indicated that they had heard of the term “vct”, although one member of group 1 later stated that he had, but did not know what was being referred to. in order to facilitate further discussion, a brief explanation of the term, indicating the inclusion of hiv testing, was given. group 2 members did not offer any suggestions as to how long the process of vct was believed to take, whilst a member of group 1 indicated that one has to return for the result of the test after a few weeks. the misperceptions surrounding the time taken for vct indicated that the availability of rapid-testing did not appear to be well known. this is an important factor, as the results of research carried out with mineworkers by 121 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? day et al. (2003) indicated that the implementation of same-day testing services had increased willingness to undergo testing in a group of 105 males by a significant 25%. a lack of awareness of the intricacies of these services could impact on the outcome expectations and behavioural capability components of the social learning theory (glanz & rimer 1995), thereby negatively impacting on the self-efficacy of the person with regard to presenting for vct. with regard to the diffusion of innovations theory (glanz & rimer 1995), the understanding of the complexity of the vct service could also be negatively affected, potentially decreasing one’s inclination to test. reasons offered for people choosing to undergo vct included feeling unwell, being persuaded by family members to test, as well as by female partners who had undergone testing during pregnancy. this insistence by family members for testing to take place, could be seen to be indicative the collectivist culture prevalent in africa (airhihenbuwa & obregon 2000). later in the discussion, the point of view was raised that “people should stop seeking vct when they are too ill, but hiv testing should become a habit” (zulu male a). statements such as these could be seen to link to the possibility of “optout” testing for hiv/aids, where routine testing for hiv/aids is carried out as a component of normal medical treatment, unless expressly refused by the patient (irin plus news 2006c), being viewed favourably amongst some sectors of south african society. sources of information some participants indicated that sources of information on hiv testing included elderly persons at home, one’s place of work, hospital and the radio. in one focus group it was indicated that vct had been mentioned on the television series soul city, but it was not understood exactly what was being referred to. the fact that this series was identified as an information source, highlights the observational learning component of social learning theory (glanz & rimer 1995: 23) and the effects that watching others carrying out a certain task can have on the knowledge of the person observing. it can also be seen to link to the observability component of the diffusion of innovations theory (glanz & rimer 1995: 28), which allows the person a better understanding of the service. however, it should be noted that in both cases, this observational learning and observability components were not fully realised due to the actual process of vct not being depicted. it was interesting that most of the sources involved mainly verbal communication. in group 1, ukhozi fm, an isizulu radio station, was specifically identified as a source information on hiv testing. the frequency with which hiv/aids-related messages are broadcast on radio was highlighted by group 2 members. this is in line with information obtained from the programme manager of ukhozi fm, who indicated that a strong focus was placed on empowerment and the provision of knowledge building information (msane 2006). it was claimed that hiv/aids content was included in programmes in one or another manner, ranging from phone-in discussions to promotions, interviews and advertisements an average of five or six times per day (msane 2006). 122 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? whilst television and radio were noted to be regarded highly in terms of credibility, points of view regarding the need for “live” persons allowing for two-way communication were also raised. such comments could be seen to indicate desire for the dialogical nature of interpersonal communication, as well as the opportunity to engage with opinion leaders, a component of diffusion of innovations theory (glanz & rimer 1995). with regard to the amount of discussion which occurs on the topic of hiv/aids and vct, it was indicated that whilst discussion on the topic of hiv/aids was common, especially amongst men, the vct experience itself was not commonly discussed, except in the event of a negative test result. this was identified as being as a result of fearing stigmatisation and abandonment. this lack of discussion on the topic of the vct process could impact on the trialability, a component of diffusion of innovations theory (glanz & rimer 1995), of the service, whereby a lack of exposure to knowing what the process entails and thus a lack of ability to contemplate undergoing vct could prevent uptake. the fact that interpersonal communication on the topic of hiv/aids exists, ties into the assertion that oral communication is viewed as highly valuable in traditional societies, despite often being overlooked (airhihenbuwa & obregon 1996). it also disproves the assertion by lau and muula (2004) that hiv/aids is often considered a taboo subject, resulting in hindering diagnoses, treatment and prevention. perhaps one could assert that it is not the fact that hiv/aids is a taboo subject that causes these hindrances, but rather the lack of direction in talking openly about such topics in a non-judgmental, guided and constructive manner. perceptions of severity hiv/aids was perceived to be a great problem amongst members of both groups, with examples given of the experiences of attending funerals weekly and seeing others in the community suffering and dying from aids-related illnesses. it was highlighted that persons with hiv/aids often became very dark in complexion, lost weight and became too weak to walk unaided. it was also stated that overweight women were deemed to be hiv positive, but perceived to be on antiretroviral treatment, known to cause weight gain. this could be seen to link to the observational learning component of social learning theory, (glanz & rimer 1995) in the sense that persons who were noted to be hiv positive were able to be identified by certain “markers” (singhal & rogers 2003). it was interesting to note the way in which the perceptions of hiv positive persons have changed, and this could be noted as an indication of the way in which the hiv/aids pandemic has rapidly changed (parker 2004). such perceptions could be seen to increase the amount of stigma and discrimination, even with those uninfected with hiv/aids, due to the markers of the disease having shifted. factors such as these should be addressed in health communication. 123 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? when asked which group of people were believed to be most affected by hiv/aids, group 1 indicated that the youth, adults and infants were most at risk. group 2 members indicated that females were most at risk as a result of being sex workers and being generally promiscuous. women were identified by both groups as being those who most often undergo vct. the reasons behind this included “because the diseases starts with them” (sotho male c, group 2), and “because they care for their children, and they often go to clinics for prevention” (zulu male b, group 1). the first of these views could be seen to be in line with the findings of studies conducted worldwide, which identified women as being blamed by men for “bringing aids into the family” (fleischman 2005, in de bruyn 2005: 10). group 2 members were asked for their perceptions on vct for couples and it was indicated that this was thought to be a beneficial practice. this was indicated by a group member who claimed that when presenting for testing without one’s partner, enquiries were made as to the whereabouts of the partner. when asked whether vct for couples was thought to take place commonly, it was claimed that it is often the case. the vct counsellor at the howick clinic, however, indicated that couples presenting for vct were uncommon (xulu 2006). the fact that recent department of health khomanani and lovelife television advertisements were noted to focus on encouraging testing by couples, especially before planning a family, indicated a positive move towards pursuing this topic within communication. perceptions of susceptibility both groups indicated that persons within their community were at risk of contracting hiv/aids. this was noted in the comment “people in my community are at risk as much as people in the cities” (sotho male b, group 2). with regard to information on the transmission of hiv/aids, group 1 indicated that hiv/aids was spread by unprotected sexual activity, contact with infected blood and from mother to infant. personal susceptibility was not directly included in the discussions due to the sensitive nature of the topic. however, to a degree this was able to be gauged by responses to the questions relating to communal susceptibility. interestingly, the comments made by the group members throughout the conversation highlighted the fact that a great deal of personal susceptibility existed. high levels of perceived susceptibility, based on irrational fears of being infected by hiv/aids as a result of having talked to, touched or worked with an hiv positive individual were noted. this could be seen to disprove the popular assertion surrounding hiv/aids that perceived severity of the disease is often higher than perceived personal susceptibility to the disease (govender & petersen 2004), resulting in a misappraisal of risk and thus a lack of behaviour change. the findings of this paper could be seen to indicate that in some cases, the levels of perceived susceptibility may in fact be equal to or greater than levels of perceived severity of the disease, as a result of irrational fears. 124 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? it is exactly these irrational fears which could have incapacitated persons and prevented the accessing of such services, increasing stigmatisation of and discrimination against hiv positive persons. this is seen by the response which was recorded when the focus group members were asked whether hiv positive people were seen to be different from ordinary people. this was answered in the negative, with the fear of being infected highlighted as the only reason for avoiding such persons. perceived barriers to vct uptake the first reason for people not undergoing vct which was identified by both groups as that of fear, both of a positive result and of being judged by others. hiv positive persons were believed to be ill-treated and made to sit apart from others, including family members, for fear of transmitting the virus. some group members avoided verbal and casual contact with hiv positive persons for fear of being infected. it was also detailed by one member that he felt uneasy having to work with the same construction tools as those who were possibly hiv positive. it was indicated that if a person suspected of being hiv positive was to bleed on such tools, he would refuse to use these. he also indicated that he would not venture too close to the open coffin of a person whom he suspected of having died as a result of hiv/aids, for fear of being infected. it was highlighted that very few families were willing to care for those who became ill and that often such people were completely abandoned by the family. there appeared to be fear of rejection, abandonment, dependency and a lack of care at one’s home. this linked to the research findings of hutchinson and mahlalela (2006) where the availability of home-based palliative care was identified as being an important factor, and was noted to improve the likelihood of testing amongst males. besides stigma and discrimination, other barriers which were seen to prevent men from presenting for vct included a lack of access to clinics due to hours of employment and sheer stubbornness. this stubbornness, as well as the fear of dependency, could be seen to be linked to the assertion by campbell (2004) that traditional notions of the constitution of masculinity could be seen to negatively impact on the prevention of hiv/aids. asked what factors were felt to motivate people to undergo vct, both groups mentioned having a friend who had undergone vct. additionally, group 1 members mentioned a fear of dying (fear appeared to play both an encouraging and inhibitory role), often brought on by watching someone else dying; suggestions by friends; a distrust of one’s sexual partners; having access to a clinic away from one’s community; and television and radio. such factors could be seen to link to the cues to action, a component of social learning theory (glanz & rimer 1995). the fact that members in both groups indicated that having a friend who had undergone the process of vct would be an encouragement, tied in with research carried out by 125 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? haupt et al. (2004). two-thirds of the 300 construction workers included in their survey claimed to have approached fellow workers on their own accord to discuss hiv/aids and issues that were not understood. haupt et al. (2004) asserted that such findings indicated that use of peer-educators in such settings appeared to be a vital tool in transmitting relevant information. perceived benefits of vct at the end of the discussion, all members in both groups felt that vct was a beneficial process to undergo. with regard to the perceived benefits obtained from vct by hiv positive persons, only one member of group 2 indicated that he felt that hiv positive persons could not be helped in any way. benefits which were identified by others included knowing one’s status, receiving care and emotional support, receiving medication, receiving condoms and letters for social grants were mentioned in both groups. these could be seen to form the relative advantage component of diffusion of innovations theory (glanz & rimer 1995: 23). when asked whether those who were found to be hiv negative benefited from the process, group 2 members first indicated that such persons were unable to helped in any way. following probing by the facilitator, hiv negative persons were described as only being able to help themselves by being honest with their partner. group one members indicated that hiv negative persons and their families benefited psychologically from vct by obtaining relief. it was interesting to note that mention was not made of further prevention which could be offered to such persons. this could perhaps be seen to be indicative of the assertion that vct is an effective means of “secondary prevention”, but does not appear to offer an effective primary prevention strategy to hiv negative individuals (weinhardt et al. 1999, in van dyk & van dyk 2003: 119). when asked about antiretroviral therapy, group 1 members indicated that they had heard of nevirapine. group 2 members indicated that they had not, but this was noted to be as a result of a lack of understanding of the word. zulu male c (group 1) indicated that the reason behind taking such tablets was “to lower hiv in their bodies so that hiv will not make them die faster”. an opposing view was heard when it was stated that “they finish off people who are very sick” (sotho male a, group 2). overall, it was also claimed that although side effects occured as a result of the medication, they did not cause death and were deemed to be helpful. misperceptions were seen to exist with regard to the cost of antiretroviral therapy, which could possibly impact on levels of vct uptake. recommendations based on the findings of this paper, certain changes with regard to communication strategies targeting hiv/aids and vct are recommended. these are discussed below. the trust placed in radio should be capitalised on by maintaining and increasing the level of hiv/aids content in ethnic languages, especially content in the form of 126 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? discussions with phone-in options that allow for a degree of two-way conversation. the inclusion in these discussions of hiv positive persons who are well-known in certain communities and who are able to openly refer to issues would improve the success of such programmes. such issues would include discussion on the actual process of vct, the personal effects of hiv/aids and stigma, and the fact that a great deal of discrimination and fear is unnecessary due to hiv not spread by touch. it is recommended that communication on the topic of how hiv/aids is transmitted and, more importantly, not transmitted be given higher importance, as this appears to contribute to increased levels of irrational fear regarding infection and thus increased stigma and discrimination against those whoe are hiv positive. one possible means of addressing these issues would be to create a short, ongoing educational and informative television programme which is broadcast after 20:00. this could provide an sms facility, whereby questions could be asked and answers could be researched and given. peer-led education campaigns to promote dialogue, perhaps with targeted micro-media, should also be considered. the way in which group 2 engaged keenly in the focus group discussion could be seen to indicate a need to discuss such issues in an open but constructive manner. such peer-led education campaigns could be implemented among colleagues at places of work, or within small communities at communal meeting places and persons educated in this way would be encouraged to share knowledge and the micro-media with other peers and family members, thus increasing constructive discussion on the topic of hiv/aids and vct, and allowing for diffusion of knowledge, increased community participation and thus community mobilisation. it is advised that the availability of rapid testing and same-day results be publicised, as this was not known by the group members and, as previously mentioned, research has shown that the availability of rapid-testing has been proved to be a very important factor in determining vct uptake amongst males. entertainment-education television programmes should include depictions of persons undergoing the various stages in the vct process: pre-test counselling, rapid-testing, post-test counselling and benefits such as support groups and antiretroviral therapy. focus should also be placed on the argument that people should not wait until they are ill to find out their hiv status, but should rather take the initiative to test early and often for hiv/aids. a communication campaign which focuses on disclosure, particularly amongst men, thus increasing acceptability of the disease, would also prove beneficial. awareness of antiretroviral therapy should be promoted, as should clear statements regarding the benefits and the potential side effects of undergoing art, which should be clearly identified and explained. it should also be highlighted that these are available free of charge at government hospitals, but that various tests have to be carried out to determine whether the person is at the correct stage of the disease to begin treatment. whilst “vct” may be a suitable english phrase to use when referring to the process surrounding hiv testing, it is suggested that ethnic language communication should not make use of this acronym as it is not understood by those who are non-english 127 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? speaking. it is felt that it would be more beneficial to simply refer to hiv testing in the way in which it is referred to by the ethnic language speakers, for example “ukuhlolela isifo sengculazi” in isizulu and “liteko tsa koatsi ea bosolla hlapi” in sesotho. it should be noted, however, that these descriptions refer only to the hiv testing itself, thus care must be taken to include the fact that counselling is included in the process, as well as the fact that it is a voluntary process, both of which appear to be fairly common knowledge but which should not be overlooked. it is asserted that the focus which has been placed on vct for couples be increased and that males are increasingly depicted in advertisements as being affected by hiv/aids, and conscientised as to their role in the spread and prevention of hiv/aids. the process of testing should be depicted as being manly, normal and expected, in an attempt to shift perceptions surrounding the constitution of masculinity. communication campaigns targeted at health care workers, which highlight the fears, understanding and beliefs of patients, especially male patients, including tips on how to best deal with male patients, could do well to improve service received by allowing for a more holistic approach to the treatment of the patient. an increase in the availability of mobile vct is also recommended, with mobile units visiting communities on weekends, in communal areas which are accessible and visible. this would hopefully increase the perception of the acceptability of vct and allow for males (and females) to have access to the service which they may not have during working hours. further research into the possibility of opt-out testing being introduced in south africa is recommended, as this could prove helpful in allowing for the disease to be seen as normalised and seen as manageable and chronic, as opposed to shameful and deadly. conclusion this article has attempted to answer three questions with regard to which communication factors are seen to prevent the uptake of vct, how these are linked to wider social and cultural factors and what changes could be made to current communication strategies to increase vct uptake, in particular amongst african males. factors identified in literature and previous studies as being associated with a lack of vct uptake, including interpersonal and impersonal communication (policy project 2003a), as well as fear of rejection, violence and stigma (riasa 2005). a mistrust of health professionals, problems relating to accessing health services, a lack of belief in one’s ability to cope with the emotional demands of testing (van dyk & van dyk 2003). misperceptions surrounding risk and a shortage of testing and treatment facilities (hutchinson & mahlalela 2006) were also noted. the article has identified and supported many of the above-mentioned factors which function as barriers to vct uptake. barriers associated specifically with males which this article has identified, included low levels of clinic access due to long working hours and not having the need to visit the clinic regularly in the way that females do, as well 128 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? as male stubbornness. factors impacting more generally on vct uptake levels included a lack of understanding of the term “vct”; a lack of awareness of the availability of rapid-testing for hiv/aids; a lack of opportunity to discuss hiv/aids and vct in a supportive and constructive environment; the minority belief that antiretroviral therapy can be harmful, as well as expensive to purchase; the fairly common belief that females are to blame for the spread of hiv/aids; and the belief that casual contact with an hiv positive person places one at great risk of contracting the virus. further research in this field could include focusing on the perceptions surrounding peer-led education, identifying the best locations for this to take place and the best means of identifying suitable opinion leaders for training. perceptions surrounding optout testing could also be investigated, determining the views of persons with regard to the potential acceptability aspect of such testing and how the introduction of this in south africa could impact on levels of stigma and discrimination. in conclusion, it is suggested that the communication factors which have been identified as impacting on and preventing the uptake of vct be addressed as a matter of urgency. without attention, an avoidable worsening of the hiv/aids pandemic could emerge, as a result of this “veritable communication tragedy”. endnotes 1 the author would like to thank johns hopkins higher education south africa, which via their bloomberg school for public health, centre for communication programmes, made available the resources to undertake this study. i am indebted to keyan g. tomaselli, abraham mulwo and lynn dalrymple for helping to prepare the article. 129 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? 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[online]. available at: http://www.stanford.edu/~jbaugh/saw/yoo-yoo_literacy.html [accessed on 05/06/2006]. 133 vct: voluntary counselling and testing or veritable communication tragedy? 134 september 2006 visual communication a transcendental empirical perspective communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 1 19 d.f.m. strauss* abstract the recent pictorial turn, succeeded by a visual turn, led to a new appreciation of visual communication in human culture. communication is normally associated with subjectsubject rela tions. the qualification “visual” entails an important demarcation and restriction for it mainly concerns (lingual and non-lingual) signs, sketches, tables, typographi cal designs, and so on. what is taken for granted are the spoken and the (electronically or non-electronically) written word. attention is given to the remarkable differences between animals and human beings regarding their visual capacities within the visible world. it appears that ani mals select only a limited section from what is available to them within their visible world. yet, there are animals that can register supersonic waves, see ultraviolet rays as light, fish can sense electrical fields, and birds use the magnetic poles of the earth as navigating devices – all senses lacking in a human being. within the human visual field human beings are capable of perceiving many more things than what they are actually noticing. this coheres with the absence of inborn activating mechanisms in humans. given the mysterious complexity of the eye, the important difference be tween animals and human perception is found in the distinctively human capacity to discern, to locate, to be attentive to something within a person’s visual field. this ability to be attentive is indeed decisive for visual communica tion. it is argued that the difference between oral and visual communication actually may serve to provide a criterion to distinguish between the science of ethnology and the science of history. 1 * d.f.m. strauss is professor in the dean's office, faculty of the humanities at the university of the free state. orientation normally visual communication intends to enhance and mediate communication aided by diverse visual means. amongst others, this implies that it is crucially dependent upon the possibili ties and limitations of human vision and the typical nature of human communication. on the basis of spoken language visual communication eventually benefited from employing as medium different kinds of signs organised and shaped in the form of lingual texts. but it also expanded its scope by exploring multiple other twodimensional images1 that can communicate messages or information. contemplate the possibilities of sketches, tables, typographical designs, and all sorts of other conventional signs. already since the rise of semiotics as a discipline,2 it was clear that what may be designated as the sign mode of reality cannot be restricted to written or spoken language. yet at the same time the scope of visual communication in principle does not exceed those conditions underlying the nature of linguistic signs (such as alphabet letters and their combination in words, sentences, paragraphs, and books). it should be kept in mind that although communication explores visual means, the wellknown distinction of saussure between the signifier and the signified (rose 2007:79-80) accounts for an “invisible” element, namely the intended linguistic meaning of the signifying person.3 however, what is normally not found in the literature on visual communication is an account of the underlying conditions making possible the ability of human beings to understand and interpret (the meaning of) signs – an ability also embracing visual communication. whereas an analysis of the actual manifestations of visual communication belongs to the specialists in the field, it is the task of a philosophical reflection to contemplate the distinctness and conditions involved in visual communication. this amounts to a transcendental-empirical method of analysis. its aim is to observe our experience of visual communication in its rich variety of forms and shapes and to ask what underlying (transcendental) conditions make this experience possible. an additional concern is given to the question whether visual communication in human life is not also found in animal life. the growing importance of the picture caused mitchell to speak of the “pictorial” turn (cf. mitchell 1986; mitchell 1994: 13) and soon after that, owing to widespread interest in issues of vision, jay, in two articles in the new journal on visual culture, discerned a “visual turn” (cf. jay 2000; jay 2002a). dikovitskaya accepts mitchell’s thesis that visual studies was “born to the marriage of art history … and cultural studies” (dikovitskaya 2006: 47). in general she discerns “two research paradigms: one that organizes the study of society on the model of natural sciences, and another whose approach belongs to the interpretative and hermeneutic tradition that emphasizes human subjectivity and contextual meaning” (dikovitskaya 2006: 47-48).4 underlying conditions the main focus of our account of the expression “visual communication” will be to show that it instantiates our capacity as human beings to function actively, that is, as 2 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective subjects, within the sign mode of reality.5 although there are similarities between animal and human communication one way of characterising the difference between them will be to argue that the subject-subject relations and subject-object relations involved in audible animal communication do not fall within the domain of visual communication. we shall argue that the latter, namely visual communication, actually highlights an important difference between animals and human beings, intimately cohering with the ambiguities inherent in human language and communication. this article will reflect on the complex web of interconnections in which visual communication is embedded. in its comparison of animal and human communication it will also pay attention to some differences between animal and human perception. of course the complexity of the eye occupies a central place in any account of visual communication and the way in which the visual element is embedded within domains exceeding human sensitivity, particularly in the ability of human beings to interpret visual communication within different contexts. moreover, acknowledging the ambi guity of the term communication will enhance a philosophical analysis of the scope, meaning and limitations of visual communication – in a transcendental-empirical perspective. the visual world of animals and human beings it is known that the magnetism of one piece of iron can be transferred to another (nonmagnetic) piece. in such an instance the initial magnetism is shared by the two pieces of iron. it can also be said that the magnetism of the first piece has been communicated to the second piece. this is an instance of physical communication. likewise, when the genetic code shares information from one generation to the next we meet an instance of biotic communication.6 sentient creatures, namely animals and human beings, may be able to share what they observe within a specific sensory field. for example, when someone knocks at a door both you and your dog see the “same” person. nonetheless, we will have to pay attention to the striking differences between animal and human sensing. animals are extremely selective when it comes to what they actually see. it appears that their sense organs select only a limited section from what is available to them within their bio-milieu (umwelt). yet at the same time certain animals are capable of observing things that by far exceed the visual abilities of human beings. there are animals that can register supersonic waves. bees can see ultraviolet rays as light and can discern the difference between polarised and non-polarised light. there exist fish that use an electrical orientation on the basis of a self-produced electrical field (eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 139). there are birds using the magnetic poles of the earth as navigating devices. all these abilities are absent in human beings (cf. portmann 1970: 200 ff.). in spite of their poor eyesight, bats hear ultra sound inaudible to us. they form a copy of their environment through the echo of their own call (eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 139). human beings are capable of perceiving many more things within their field of vision than what they are actually noticing. moreover, whatever is noticed deepens and 3 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective enriches the visual field, because the visually noticed things are grasped in conceptual representations. genuine concept-formation, however, is absent in animals. for that reason one may distinguish between sensitive intelligence and rational intelligence. perceiving multiple objects, delimiting particular perceptual objects or events in a sensitive way (capable of exerting a controlling influence on behaviour in later situations – such as avoiding fire), due to the continuity provided by the associative perceptive abilities of animals – all of this is enclosed within the domain of sensitively qualified beings. portmann captures these limitations when he characterises animals as umweltgebunden (constrained by environment) and instinktgesichert (protected by instinct) (portmann 1990: 79). overhage stresses that the practical intelligence of animals never exceeds the sensory-perceptive domain (overhage 1977: 117). empirical research shows that animals are bound to specific perceived forms. on the basis of their sensitive intelligence, animals are capable of seeing similarities and differences. in the case of the signs taught to the chimpanzees sarah, washoe, moja and lana it is clear that the way in which they use them is always found in sensory soundlike and image-like modes of locating the relevant similarities. (eibl-eibesfeldt summarises the research done by r.a. and b.t. gardner regarding the use of signs by chimpanzees – see eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 216 ff.) certainly human beings share this perceptive dimension with animals – but humans are not confined to or qualified by this sensitive way of dealing with similarities and differences. when certain stimuli (or a combination of them) are present, they may set into action an animal behavioural pattern that precedes any prior experience. it appears to be an inborn behavioural pattern independent of and prior to experience. the migrating songbird, known as the american robin (turdus migratorius, or north american robin), provides an example of how a fake or dummy can still trigger an inborn activating mechanism – in german designated as “angeborene auslösemechanismus” (aam). this action pattern does not rest upon conceptual insight. the robin has a bright red breast and it controls its own domain. the activating stimulus for protecting its domain is precisely the bright red breast of other members of the same species – any trespasser entering this domain will be attacked. in 1943 lack succeeded in placing a dummy robin – without the red breast – within the domain of a robin and no attack followed. when an artificial robin is constructed with a red breast, the attack is once again launched. in 1960 peiponen obtained the same result with bluebreast robins (eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 162-163). this clearly shows that the robin does not have a concept of a robin as a bird. it therefore differs from human perception, for when humans perceive a robin it is immediately recognised (identified) as a bird. in other words, human perception is cognitively opened and deepened, to the level of what we called conceptual representations – and we shall see that such conceptual representations play a crucial role in visual communication. 4 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective the mystery of the eye it appears to be hopeless to provide an evolutionary explanation for the origination of the eye. the biochemist behe categorically states: anatomy is, quite simply, irrelevant. so is the fossil record. it does not matter whether the fossil record is consistent with evolutionary theory, any more than it mattered in physics that newton’s theory was consistent with everyday expe rience. the fossil record has nothing to tell us about, say, whether or how the interactions of 11-cis-retinal with rhodopsin, transducin, and phosphodiesterase could have developed, step by step (behe 2003: 292). the remarkable fact is that the past 60 years have witnessed an incredible increase in our knowledge of the micro-dimensions of living entities. on the one hand these developments opened up a domain that cannot be reconstructed from fossils and on the other it revealed such an astonishingly complex picture that questions now arise – not because we know too little – but because we know so much. darwin honestly stated: if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down (darwin 1859: 219). although darwin did not pretend to give an account of the origination of the first living entity in his 1859 work on the origin of species, his openness towards refutation stated in respect of “any complex organ” may be applied to the (origination of the) cell as well.7 in view of the complexities discovered by biochemistry, and particularly as a result of the complex (simultaneous) interaction of all parts of living systems, behe introduced the idea of irreducibly complex systems.8 being attentive: its significance for visual communication since the acquisition of concepts in humans is normed, in the sense that one can identify properly (a circle is a circle) and distinguish properly (a circle is not a noncircle), and since we can also arrive at illogical concepts (such as a square circle),9 the rational intelligence present in humans pre-supposes a freedom of choice. this uniquely human feature enables human beings to alter or vary their focus of attention and this feature is indeed a pre-condition for visual communication. portmann aptly characterises this peculiar human freedom of choice: the narrow limitations of animal interests is opposed to our freedom of choice and direction. animals can escape the bonds of their urges only to a limited extent, while i myself can, in every moment, in accordance with my whole attentiveness, turn my entire inwardly participative dedication to some or other matter, however insignificant it may appear to be (portmann 1974: 102). the german word used by cassirer in this context is aufmerksamkeit, which he sees as capturing the truly creative capacity of the formation of concepts: “... the power of 5 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective being attentive as the truly creative ability of concept formation”.10 the fact that communication is qualified by the term “visual” in the title of this article (and this special number), suggests a restriction, disregarding “audible communication” as a form of non-visual communication. communicative and non-communicative experience of the world the biologist jakob von uexküll introduces the notion of a “functional circle” in order to account for the structural coherence between the animal body and its environment. he points out that the “features” of the environment are co-dependent upon the sensory organs (and neural structures) of animals. what turned out to be particularly striking is that these structures in advance co-determine the quality and intensity of the relationship between the animal and its environment. von uexküll’s aim is to penetrate to the “inner” side of animal experience (erleben) – a domain where quantitative methods fall short. once this switch has been made, a new world suddenly appears – a world of colours, forms, sound tones, and odours. the joys and pleasures accompanying them indeed appear as the worthwhile “object” of scientific biological research (cf. portmann 1970: xii). von uexküll constantly argues that a human being is unable to see, hear, smell, or feel what another sees, hears, smells, or feels (thure von uexküll 1970: xxv). the relationship between animals and their environments is given in an intricate and intimate connectedness, which causes von uexküll to capture this reality in terms of a true totality (ganzheit). although we cannot see, hear, smell, or feel what other human beings can see, hear, smell, or feel, we are capable of sharing our experiences by means of communicative acts. through such communicative acts human beings open up a communal domain that is absent in the case of animal umwelten. for example, although the oak tree is a biotic subject in its own right, it may serve in multiple ways within the umwelten of different animals. through their sensitive experience of the oak tree the latter is objectified in the lives of animals.11 the fox may explore the roots of the oak tree in order to find a hiding place – thus the tree only acquires a protective tone for the fox, which is similar to that of the owl. for the squirrel, by contrast, the tree has a climb tone, for the bird that builds its nest in the tree it has a supporting tone, and so on.12 human beings, by contrast, amongst others, owing to their communicative capacities, not only have overlapping umwelten but can also share, through meaningful communication, what they experience within them. in these communicative acts, the sign mode obviously plays a key role. humankind has the ability to express meaning and interpret it in its response to the normative demand of assigning meaning, the command to signify. within inter-human contexts such an expressive assignment of meaning or signification always calls forth the interpretative response of another human subject (irrespective of which visual objects may aid, mediate or support such interpretations). 6 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective when we merely look at our shared human calling to signify,13 we may capture the nature of this mode of functioning by designating it as the semiotic aspect of our experiential world. of course we may restrict ourselves to the act of signification embodied in conscious language use, for in this case we may refer to this aspect as the lingual aspect of reality. the third option emerges when we focus on the meaning established through acts of signification, in which case we may speak of the semantic mode. however, when we want to combine these three options, namely the semiotic, lingual and semantic, into one concise and encompassing designation, the best choice is to call it the sign mode. visual communication and the sign mode various authors in all sorts of ways distinguish between signals, symbols and other phenomena that appear (function) within the sign mode, including the expressive capacities of the human body. practically every work on general linguistics or on semantics will emphasise the lingual relation between the visible sign and its (invisible) meaning.14 for von bertalanffy symbols are representative in that they stand in one way or the other for the thing symbolised; they are transmitted by tradition (that is, by the learning processes of the individual in contrast to innate instincts); and finally they are freely created (cf. von bertalanffy 1968: 15; 1968a: 134). in order to demarcate visual communication, a distinction between modal concepts of function and concepts of entities and processes is needed. classifying certain kinds or types of entities always pertains to a limited class or group of entities. the group of germanic languages is limited in the sense that not all languages are germanic languages. likewise, different kinds or types of communication in every instance embrace solely those instances belonging to a specific type of communication. however, when we direct our theoretical attention toward the modal or functional aspects of reality – such as the spatial aspect, the physical facet, the lingual mode or the social function – we are no longer involved in the classification of entities according to the kinds or types to which they belong, and are therefore also not interested in the “kind laws” or “type laws” for entities. modal laws hold for whatever exists, type laws only hold for a limited class of entities.15 von weizsäcker expresses this insight by observing: “quantum theory, formulated sufficiently abstractly, is a universal theory for all gegenstandklassen (classes of objects)” (von weizsäcker 1993: 128). the sign mode exhibits the same modal universality evinced by all the other aspects of reality.16 this means that everything has a function within the sign mode of reality – either a subject function or an object function. individual human beings as well as lingual communities actively function within the sign mode and they do that in various ways. normal (spoken or written) language pre-supposes the individual language user and the linguistic community to which such a person belongs. non-verbal17 language, such as sign language, body language (including postures and gestures),18 and various images, signals, signs, and symbols not belonging to the human body, still invariably 7 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective function within the sign mode. although what is most of the time listed as non-verbal signals, such as facial expression, gaze, gestures, posture, bodily contact, spatial behaviour, clothes, and smell (cf. argyle 1988: 1), could be expanded, the actual issue is consistently to detect typical functions of the human body within the sign mode. what does this entail? subject-subject relations and subject-object relations human communication always concerns the relation between at least two subjects (or subject-positions within one person’s subjectivity). therefore one can also characterise it by saying that communication is constituted as a subject-subject relation. since the meaning intended in communication is not open to sensory perception, the following question may arise: if communication concerns a subject-subject relation, how does one bridge the gap between two human subjects? first of all it must be noted that what we normally experience as “objects” also function within the sign mode of reality. in the simplest case we can simply name any visible (or visual) “object.” any act of naming pre-supposes the ability to locate and identify, within a perceptual field, what will be named. acts of signifying that are exploring, on the basis of human “aufmerksamkeit,” these latent sign function of “objects” do that by making them patent, manifest.19 another way to state this is to say that they are objectified within the sign mode. such acts of objectification, however, are always performed by human subjects, which means that objecti fication is a subjective act.20 of course these intended “objects” are not objects in all contexts. just consider material “objects.” closer investigation reveals a more intricate picture. insofar as physical entities are material in nature, they are not objects but subjects, that is to say, they are subject to physical laws, and insofar as they are objects, they hold this status because they are considered according to some or other non-physical trait – for example, as something perceived (a sense object), as something analysed (identified and distinguished from something else – logical-analytical object), as something designated (object function within the sign mode), as something bought or sold (economic object), and so on.21 in general, everything, including human beings, either have a subject-function or an object-function within the sign mode of reality. the implication is that bodily expressions may equally commu nicate what is intended. but “language” is not something specific to any part of the human “body”. in fact, biologists have made the claim that we, as humans, do not even have “speech organs”! if a speech organ is defined as a bodily part existing solely in service of the production of speech sounds, then a surprising fact is that there are no human speech organs. the lungs, larynx, mouth cavity, palate, teeth, lips, and nose cavity, without exception, will continue to perform their primary functions within the human body even if human beings never uttered a single word (overhage 1972: 243). human language simply takes hold of all these different organs in the production of speech sounds. 8 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective the mere existence of something like sign language, solely using the hands, fingers and accompanying facial expressions, shows that human language is not the product of particular organs, but rather is a typical and total human phenomenon.22 a further remarkable feature of language is that it positions itself between the grasp of the hand and the view of the eye. plessner calls the eye the “organ of makingsomething-immediately-present”. thus, in various respects, the hand and the eye become relatively dispensable (cf. plessner 1965: 38; hofer & altner 1972: 203). however, what does not become dispensable is one or another mediating subjectsubject relation. this mediation normally takes on one of three forms: it is mediated through what is heard (audible), seen (visible) or felt (tactile – braille). in the strict sense of the phrase, visual communication concerns the intended meaning attached to all sorts of objectification within the sign mode. whatever is objectified can never “bypass” the realm of physical entities or entities having a subject-function within the physical aspect (just as little as oral communication in the narrow sense can by-pass physical sounds) – and the same applies to whatever else is chosen to mediate communicative subject-subject relations. since we have noted that insofar as material things are physical they are not objects but subjects, it follows that human communication takes place solely when physical things are objectified within the sign mode of reality. the sharing of meaning involved in communication pre-supposes a deepening of the modal structure of the sign mode guided by the meaning of the social aspect. in this way the sign mode, through communication, is opened up by disclosing its inherent structural element pointing forward to the social aspect. communicative encounters should therefore be appreciated as socially deepened lingual acts. we may once more ask: where does the “visual” element of visual communication fit in? since objectification is always the result of an act performed by a subject, in the case of communication we actually discern at least two subjects and two objects. the first subject (subject-1) is the subject who objectifies that which produces object-1 (whatever is objectified as medium – images, signals, signs, names, and so on). object2 relates to the object-function of what is designated (through its objectification in the sign mode). and subject-2 is the human person interpreting what has been objectified. in other words, visual communication is constituted by a subject1-object1-object2subject2 relation – which is a more inclusive account than the well-known view of commu nication as the connection between a “sender, medium and receiver” (which is merely a subject-object-subject relation).23 without an understanding of objectification one cannot give an account of (visual) communication. therefore, although it may appear that communication merely involves subject-subject rela tions, it should now be clear that this subject-subject relation is always mediated by a twofold subject-object relation. animal communication, by contrast, according to plessner, does not know a “mediation through objects” (plessner 1975: 380, cf. 379). that is to say, animals are incapable of 9 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective actively functioning (as subjects) within the sign mode of reality and therefore they are not capable of visual com munication in its lingually deepened sense. this is intriguing, since, in the domain of human sen sitivity, the sense of seeing and the sense of touching dominate that of smelling (cf. haeffner 1982: 16). thus language provides human beings with a mediated immediacy in the world – not only opening up an awareness of the past and the future (transcending the now), but also opening up the domain of human imagination. animal communication, by contrast, does not refer to the past or the future. it refers to the vital here and now. closely connected to this is the fact that animal signs strictly have a single content for every sign, whereas human sign-use presupposes choice and requires interpretation.24 all human communicative utterances can signify a number of different things, depending on the context, intention, or even, in the case of written language, the punctuation – and words in a human language have their specific semantic domains, most of the time encompassing multiple meaning-nuances. when this ability is compared with the famous dance of the bees it is immediately clear that every element of the dance always means exactly the same.25 the effect is that the semantic elements used in animal communication always just have one value. referential signs such as “i” and “you” are absent. chimpanzees do not have hypothetical statements (the conjunctive) and they possess no yes or no questions. the anthropoids display no grammatical competence and do not speak in propositions (see eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 230). implications of the subject-object-object-subject relation the expression “visual communication” could therefore be approached from two different angles: (1) one can focus on the possibility to see what occurs between two communicating persons; or (2) one can focus on the above-mentioned subject-1, object-1, object-2 and subject-2 relation (which embraces all forms of visual communication, verbal and non-verbal alike). regarding (1): this perspective provides just another instance of objectification within the sign mode of reality. while observing a subject-object-object-subject relation, the latter as such is also object ified.26 regarding (2): by acknowledging the intended subject-object-object-subject relation it is underscored that all subject-subject relations are founded in subject-object relations.27 the subject-subject relation entailed in human communication cannot manifest itself except on the basis of a two-fold subject-object relation. animals experience reality exclusively from their natural inclination, directed at that which is physically, biotically, and psychic-sensitively important to them. animals experience reality in terms of what is negotiable and not negotiable, edible and inedible, in terms of same sex and opposite sex, the same species and different species,28 10 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective comforting and alarming. what is also known within the animal realm is warning and emergency calls. the sounds used in these calls flow directly from the relevant organs employed in producing them – without (as plessner pointed out) being mediated by distinct objects (objectified artefacts) or showing the possibility of free, imaginative variation inherent in human lingual sound production. therefore, in an audible sense animal subject-subject relations are indeed founded in subject-object relations, but since no objectification, distinct from subject-bound sound production takes place, animals do not function on the level of human visual communication, mediated by distinct objects, such as technically (formatively) produced images, signals, signs, symbols, and linguistic systems (fully-fledged languages). just like a beautiful sunset is different from a painting of a beautiful sunset, natural sounds produced by animals are different from freely formed sounds or from meaningbearing cultural objects which are products of formative human control, guided by the human imagination. immanuel kant defined the human einbildungskraft (imagination) as the ability to represent an object that is not present in our intuition.29 conversely, the free formative imagination of human beings can also accomplish the opposite task, namely it can imagine what is given to the senses to be different from the way in which they are given. cultural artefacts are founded in the formative imagination of human beings. what is distinctive of human artefacts is that their form, function and manner of production should not be suggested (cf. narr 1974: 105; narr 1976: 99-101). visual communication does not merely disclose the latent object-functions of natural phenomena since it also incorporates the products of formative control according to an imaginative design. separating subject-subject and subject-object relations habermas separates (i) instrumental from (ii) communicative actions. the former actually re present subject-object relations and the latter subject-subject relations – and our entire argument is that the subject-subject relations involved in communication can only exist on the basis of subject-object relations. habermas, for example, distinguishes two kinds of bodily movements instead of simply recognising that both kinds have a function within the physical aspect, the sign mode and the social facet of reality (cf. habermas 1984: 97; habermas 1981: 146; strauss 2009: 323-325). both kinds of bodily movements at once equally display “physical” and “semantic” or “social” features. the question is therefore straightforward: what is wrong with acknowledging “bodily movements” as functioning within aspects of nature, such as the physical and the biotic, as well as within normative functions, such as the logical, the lingual or the social? juxtaposing subject-subject relations and subject-object relations runs parallel with the powerful naturalistic legacy in which causality is restricted to physical causality. this tradition has continued to hamper the approach of habermas. in the final analysis it (has) caused him to deny what we have called the modal-functional universality of the 11 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective sign mode. that is, the insight that every single entity, in addition to its functioning in all the other aspects or processes of reality, always also has a function within the sign mode as well. this modal universality of the sign mode embraces both the subjectsubject relations and the subject-object relations found within it. and it is the presence of subject-object relations and cultural artefacts that make visual communi cation possible. the inevitable presence of lingual objects accessible to the eye, of seeing and functioning in the sign mode mediated by lingual objectification underscores the fact that sub ject-subject relations are always founded in subject-object relations. other important features of visual communication whereas one can appreciate visual communication as being embedded in the deepened meaning of the sign mode, since it discloses the depicting nature of the lingual sign towards sharing (communicating) what has been signified with fellow human subjects, we can take a step back in order to illuminate other important features of visual communication – its relevance for the distinction between ethnology and the science of history, its significance for a gestalt-switch and for hermeneutics. the sign mode precedes the social aspect of reality, but is itself preceded by the cultural-historical aspect. this explains why morphology is foundational to semantics – for language requires formative human acts, taking shape in syntactical rules serving the intended lingual meaning through which the qualifying role of the sign mode is displayed. the typical nature of language is therefore built upon formative control – the cultural-historical foundational function of language. the difference between oral and visual communication has an important bearing on the distinction between what traditionally used to be designated as ethnology (currently: cultural anthropology) and the science of history. in cultures that are still dominated by oral traditions there are no true sources for the historian. it is only when the meaning of the cultural-historical mode is deepened under the guidance of the (written?) sign mode that the awareness emerges of what is histori cally significant and therefore distinct from what is historically insignificant. the intended con sciousness of what is historically significant materialises in inscriptions, monuments, written historical accounts, and so on. the latter serve as sources for the historian. the difference between what is historically significant or insignificant is made possible by the forward-pointing (anticipatory coherence) between the cultural-historical aspect and the sign mode. cultures in which this anticipatory moment is not yet disclosed do not, strictly speaking, participate in world history, as hegel realised. consequently, the distinction between ethnology and the science of history runs parallel with that between oral communication and visual communication. moreover, an articulated understanding of what is historically significant, dependent upon the nature of visual communication, even enables a more nuanced identification of a cultural community with its historical past and at once highlights avenues through 12 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective which what is fruitful in its tradition could be pursued in further historical development. once the meaning of the cultural-historical aspect is deepened towards the aspect of social intercourse with other cultures, it leads to an equally articulated development of the national identity of communities. the phenomenon of a gestalt-switch is dependent upon the analytical attentiveness of human perception (its aufmerksamkeit) which enables one to explore alternative conceptual representations in each gestalt-switch (for example the well-known gestalt-switch between a vase or two faces looking at each other). in the case of the general discipline of understanding and interpretation, hermeneutics, the apparent univocal visual text allows for multiple lingual interpretations. conclusion the transcendental-empirical method directed our reflection towards an investigation of the following eleven transcendental conditions making possible our experience of visual communication: ! the fundamental difference between aspects and concrete entities and processes both underlie the perceptive aspect and the sharing of meaning upon which communication takes place; ! the real existence (ontic status) of the sign aspect; ! the disclosed analytical ability of human beings to form conceptual representations and to focus on any section of the human visual field (aufmerksamkeit); ! the type law for being human demarcates human and animal experience; ! while animal umwelten are non-overlapping, human experiential contexts do overlap in the sense that they are communally shared by human beings through visual communication; ! human communication, owing to its foundation in the logical and sign modes of reality pre-supposes choice and requires interpretation; ! animal communication does not know a mediation through “objects”, that is through cultural artefacts designed according to the free, formative imagination of human beings – leaving open the form, function and way of production; ! animal signs only have one single “meaning”; ! human language is a pre-condition for visual communication – and, in the absence of specific speech organs, language is a total human phenomenon; ! visual communication is made possible by the distinct presence of subject-subject relations and subject-object relations within the (deepened) sign mode; and ! the ultimate condition for visual communication is given in the fact that subjectsubject relations are founded in subject-object relations. 13 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective 14 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective endnotes 1 instead of “embodying” what is intended by an image, the history of the image concept largely turned on the idea of representation – see sachs-hombach (2006: 30 ff.). 2 see scollen and scollen on “visual semiotics” (2003: 17 ff.). 3 de saussure prefers not to use the word “symbol” as a designation of the “linguistic sign”, because, as he argues: “[o]ne characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. the symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot (de saussure 1966: 68). 4 she circumscribes culture as a “representational, symbolic and linguistic system” (dikovitskaya 2006: 48). znanieki captures much more in the term culture: “the concept which this term symbolizes includes religion, language, literature, art, customs, mores, laws, social organization, technical production, economic exchange, and also philosophy and science” (znanieki 1963: 9; cf. 374). 5 we shall give a closer account of this expression below. 6 we do not use the word biological, because biology is the academic discipline studying living entities while being alive is a biotic property of such entities. 7 therefore the general assessment of behe is also applicable in this context: “the story of the slow paralysis of research on life’s origin is quite interesting, but space precludes its retelling here. suffice it to say that at present the field of origin-of-life studies has dissolved into a cacophony of conflicting models, each uncon vincing, seriously incomplete, and incompatible with competing models. in private, even most evolutionary biologists will admit that they have no explanation for the beginning of life” (behe 2003a: 292). 8 “by irreducibly complex i mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning” (behe 2003a: 39). 9 this example is actually derived from immanuel kant (1724-1804) – see his prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen metaphysik die als wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783: 341; § 52b). 10 “... der aufmerksamkeit als dem eigentlichen schöpferischen vermögen des begriffsbildung” (cassirer 1910: 31). 11 only human beings function actively or subjectively within the logical and postlogical aspects or reality (the historical, lingual, social, economic, aesthetic, jural, moral and certitudinal). things, plants and animals can be objectified by humans within these aspects (buying and selling them – economic object function, naming them – lingual object function, and so on). the highest subject function of material things is found in the physical aspect (on the basis of subject functions in number, space and movement), that of plants within the biotic aspect and of animals in the sensitive aspect. water, for example, a physical subject, is a “means of life”, i.e. a biotic object. likewise, the nest of a bird and the web of a spider are not sensitive subjects – they are objectified by animals within the sensory mode, they are sensitive objects and not sensitive subjects. even within the modal aspects themselves do we find subject-object relations – for example within the spatial aspect where a line is a one-dimensional spatial subject (continuously extended) and a point is a spatial object (lacking extension in any dimension). images are physical subjects with possible object functions in the sensitive en lingual modes. lingual signs are cultural objects, having their foundational function within the cultural-historical mode and their qualifying function within the sign-mode. 12 jakob von uexküll writes: “each umwelt isolates out of the oak tree a particular part whose characteristics are appropriate to be the bearer both of the properties and activities of their functional circle. in the umwelt of the ant the whole of the oak tree diminishes in its cracked bark which, with its valleys and heights, be comes the hunting field of the ant. … in all the various umwelten of its various inhabitants the same oak plays a widely diverging role, sometimes with particular and then again with none of its parts. the same part can be large or small, the same wood hard and soft, it can serve as a means of shelter or attack” (von uexküll 1970: 98-100). 13 the normative command: signify! 14 according to cassirer the signals and symbols are different in the sense that the former belongs to the phy sical world of being and the latter is a part of the human world of meaning, the world of human culture (see cassirer 1944). 15 the main laws of thermodynamics, such as the law of energy constancy and the law of non-decreasing entropy, hold universally for all possible physical entities. 16 the different aspects of reality provisionally identified are the numerical, spatial, kine matic, physical, biotic, sensitive, logical-analytical, the cultural-historical, the sign mode, the social, economic, aesthetic, jural, ethical and certitudinal (see strauss 2009: 82-103). 17 an interesting chapter in non-verbal communication is found in the relation between emotional intelligence and deception detection (see o’sullivan 2005: 215 ff.). 18 goldman accounts for postures with reference to the “more static and unchanging aspects of movement” (goldman 1994: 7). what she has in mind are certain enduring or persistent, virtuous attitudes. gestures express the “adaptations of parts of the body, not the whole body” (goldman 1994: 7). 19 in the history of philosophy a distinction is sometimes drawn between primary and secondary properties. however, whereas primary qualities – such as mass, volume, etc. – are seen as belonging to the real entities “out there,” secondary qualities – such as heat, colour, taste, etc. – are considered merely to belong to the “subject”. the view advanced in this article does not accept this dualism between primary and secondary qualities, for the latter are understood as latent object-functions inherent in concretely existing physical entities. 20 “subjective” is here understood both in the sense of actively functioning within an aspect and in the sense of being subject to the modal laws or norms of an aspect. but it is not used in the sense of arbitrariness. 21 therefore, although such things could be objectified by humans, this objectification pre-supposes their primary existence as (physical) subjects. speaking of them in all possible contexts as objects simply under scores the powerful subjectivistic (humancentred) legacy in western thinking. 15 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective 22 this highly developed and subtle cooperation, especially of three organs so heterogeneous in character as the mouth, the larynx and the brain, integrated in the production of human speech sounds, makes it rather difficult, if not hopeless, to provide us with a causal evolutionistic explanation of this astonishing pheno menon. the question still unanswered by our current scientific knowledge is: how many miraculous changes should have occurred to produce the conditions necessary for the articulation of truly human language? 23 consider the sentence: “john, this dog is too expensive.” the speaker is subject1; the word /dog/ is object1; the (lingually objectified) entity /dog/ is object2; and john is subject2. the objectification of the entity dog is therefore mediated by the lingual sign /dog/. 24 eibl-eibesfeldt understood the emotional context of animal communication when he states that that “which, by contrast, regarding animals, is generally designated as ‘language’, exclusively moves within ... the do main of interjection, of the expression of moods lacking insight” (eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 214). 25 the (i) tempo, (ii) direction and (iii) angle of the figure eight executed, always indicates the (i) distance, (ii) location, and (iii) direction of the source. interestingly, the distance-indication is apparently neither related to the actual distance, nor to the duration required to fly to the destination, for what is communicated is simply the effort required to reach the source (see eibl-eibesfeldt 2004: 258 ff.). 26 this is similar to the objectification of a mere subject-object relation, for example when a person observes someone reading a book. by reading a book the subject-object relation within the sign mode is actualised, because the human subject performs the act of reading, through which the latent lingual object function of the book is made patent. 27 of course with the exception of the numerical aspect of reality, for within it, all numbers always merely stand in a subject-subject relation to each other – when added, multiplied, subtracted, or divided. 28 remland underscores the importance for animals to know “whether another animal belongs to the same species”, something in most instances accomplished “by relying on various visual and vocal cues” (remland 2000: 35). 29 “einbildungskraft ist das vermögen, einen gegenstand auch ohne dessen gegenwart in der anschauung vorzustellen” (kant 1787-b: 151). see also kant (1800-a: 67) where he defines the einbildungskraft (facultas imaginandi) as the power (vermögen) to bring objects to consciousness without their presence to the senses. 16 visual communication a transcendental-empirical perspective references altner, g. and hofer, h. 1972. die sonderstellung des menschen. stuttgart: fischer. argyle, m. 1988. bodily communication. london: metheun. behe, m. j. 2003. design in the details: the origin 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(in 2005, 68% of the south african population could be classified in the living standards measure (lsm) 2 – 6 grouping, having an average monthly household income of between r1 093 and r4 207 (saarf, online)). seen from this perspective, this document should contain information that is easily accessible and readable, otherwise it may have a negative impact on understanding of the message and this may ultimately negatively affect health outcomes. the ppi within the context of health communication health communication can be seen as “the dissemination and interpretation of healthrelated messages” (rensburg 1997: 212). finnigan and viswanath (in freimuth, edgar & fitzpatrick 1993: 510) defined health communication as “the core of health promotion affecting individuals’ decisions or antecedent social and cultural conditions or public policy to make community environments supportive of healthier behaviours” (1993: 510), while suggs stated it as follows: “health communication efforts often are designed to improve lifestyle behaviors, reduce risk factors for disease, increase compliance with a medication or treatment plan, better self-manage a condition, 150 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? provide social support, or provide help with making decisions about health” (2006: 62). from the above-mentioned definitions, it is clear that health communication has a serious responsibility, namely empowering patients with relevant health/medication knowledge to make informed decisions about their health behaviour. the ppi, through its health communication message, is especially indicated to increase medication compliance, empower self-management of medical conditions through self-medication, and to enlighten patients regarding health decisions where medication is involved. however, the environment in which health communication functions, changes constantly with new technological advances, such as cd-rom technology and internet options, an increasingly great variety of health issues, as well as a consumer’s demand for high quality health communication information (medical facilitation: a communication-centred healthcare model s.a.: online). it is thus clear that in such an ever-changing health communication environment, the patient/client would naturally select information purposefully to which he/she will pay attention, based on personal interests and preferences. thus, the ppi has to meet the informational needs of patients in order to be an efficient health communication tool, as has been found through american research which indicated that the approach to health communication should reflect an audience-centred perspective, as well as the preferred channels, contexts and formats of the patients/clients (healthy people 2010 s.a.: online), if it is to achieve its aim. thus, if the ppi is to be a successful health communication tool, it is important to pay specific attention to the encoding of the health communication message, taking the message recipient and his/her needs and profile into consideration. however, not only formal relationships are included in the health communication contexts, but also the realities of everyday lifestyles, attitudes and beliefs, as expressed through the profile of the health communication audience: gender, age, education and income levels, ethnicity, cultural beliefs, primary language, physical and mental functioning, experience with the health care system, attitude and willingness towards different types of health communication (healthy people 2010 s.a.: online). in this regard, murrayjohnson and witte emphasised that a person’s motivation is central to the way a health message is processed and whether any action will result from the processed message (2003: 477). this emphasises once again the importance of accommodating patient needs in the health communication message and format. street also indicated the importance of linguistic resources in both the health care provider (be it the doctor/nurse/pharmacist, etc.) and patient/client as important factors to the success of health communication (2003: 65). however, the efficacy of health communication in a text is not only influenced by personal variables (age, psychological state, etc.), but also by variables intrinsic to the text (accuracy, balance, etc.) and the way that the message is conveyed (cultural competency, reach, repetition, etc.) (healthy people 2010 s.a.: online). from this it is clear that message presentation is as important as human factors at work in the health communication context. 151 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? the ppi: origin, contents and presentation the ppi basically originated in the early 1960s, after the thalidomide tragedy in belgium because it was realised that patients need full medication information to make an informed decision about benefits-to-risks of the medication. the ppis (between 1963 and 1988) were no more than technical documents, laden with medical jargon and basically incomprehensible to the lay person, but distributed in the medication package and hence available to the patient (vander stichele 2004: 31). gradually, over the years of its development, the document became more complete and scientific, yet also more difficult to be understood by the general public (gosselinckx 1989: 49 50). manufactured ppis were first mentioned in european legislation in 1975. however, in the us, patient package inserts as a means of health communication, gradually came into existence from 1968 onwards. in 1979 the food and drug administration (fda) proposed patient package inserts for 10 drug classes (375 medications) (mcginnis 2000: 5). according to basara and juergens, an increasing demand for ppis was sparked in the us at that time by the following factors: • a growing interest by consumers in health information and self-medication; • more direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs; and • laws requiring pharmacists to counsel patients (1994: 48). nowadays, ppis are widely used throughout europe (in the eu countries) for otc and prescription drugs dispensed in their original packs (amery & van winkel 1995: 52). basara and juergens defined a ppi as follows: “a ppi is any document that describes the characteristics, dosing methods, and adverse effects of a specific prescription medication, is consistent with prescription drug labelling standards, and is written in consumer-oriented lay language” (1994: 48). according to amery and van winkel, a ppi should be seen as a memory aid and should supplement information given by the health consultant (1995: 52), while jones considered the ppi to be a small link between a huge body of drug information and the patient, where the function of the ppi depends on the specific uses ascribed to it by the users (1989: 185). the quality of the ppi is determined by the quality of the scientific data sheet, the communication skills of the responsible person in the pharmaceutical company (or other manufacturing body) and the national regulatory policies, rendering the ppi a document that has regulatory, legal and educational functions (vander stichele 2004: 31). according to joossens, not only have patients the right to have a ppi, but it should provide information in clear language that is comprehensible to everyone, in an attempt to reduce the gap between health professionals and patients in order to promote drug compliance, and as a first step towards greater consumer participation in health care systems (1989: 20). contents of a ppi patients want to know what they are taking and what possible effects the medication could have, and prefer this information in a written format (mcmahon, clark & bailie 1987: 356). from studies it was established that, first of all, patients want to know the 152 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? name of the medication, what it is used for, common risks of normal use, risks of overdose and the risk of taking too little (maes & scholten 1989: 164). other information seems to be superfluous, or at least not part of the patient’s immediate communication needs. vander stichele pointed out that background information, such as medication composition and pharmacological action is not really wanted by patients (2004: 31-33). initially, drug manufacturers were obliged to list all actual and potential adverse drug reactions as part of “full disclosure” to patients. the implication is that the document became long and a skewed profile of benefits-to-risks resulted (morris 1977: 424). yet sub-minimum information is as dangerous (williams-deane & potter 1992: 114) and a recommendation to include the most frequently experienced effects was made (amery & van winkel 1995: 53). the recommendation included the following guideline for the contents of a ppi: it should be scientifically based, relevant and simply written, and based on a summary of the product characteristics, but without any pharmacological or technical information (amery & van winkel 1995: 53). this applies also to otc medication, where ethical pharmaceutical companies ought to provide patients with suitable and comprehensible information (gruber et al. 1995: 248). presentation of the ppi research has indicated that ppis in the us were prepared by private corporations, consumer groups, professional associations, governmental agencies and the pharmaceutical industry and therefore the content, style, level of readability and intended audience varied widely (dolinsky & sogol 1989: 29-30; basara & juergens 1994: 49). this resulted in a plea for standardisation of format and graphical style (herxheimer 1989: 74) in order to enhance communication efficacy. carter remarked that audiences have various linguistic, intellectual and educational backgrounds and these factors, together with the context in which the material is to be used, should be considered as preconditions for effective text design (1985: 148-149). in this regard, acceptance of the importance of the patient profile for text design of this health communication tool is realised. a logical structure to the presentation of information with clear headings was suggested by fitzmaurice and adams (2000: 260) to enhance communication efficacy. in 2004, vander stichele remarked that the lack of consistency in length, content and structure between ppis of the same medicinal class was a technical weak spot of ppis (2004: 131). the ppi: problems readability of the ppi it was found in research done in the us that patients’ comprehension of their medication information was not satisfactory and that the readability of the ppi was a primary problem (smith 2002: 1). a readability assessment of 63 nationally distributed ppis in the us indicated that the readability of the texts was of the 8th to the 9th grade difficulty. the ppis were written at a level that is above the average user’s level of reading ability (which is the 5th to the 6th grade) (basara & juergens 1994: 49-51). in 153 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? their readability assessment of ppis designed for oral contraceptives, williams-deane and potter referred to legibility as the ease with which the written information could be read and comprehended (1992: 114), a clear prerequisite for communication efficacy. although amery and van winkel suggested short sentences to improve readability (1995: 54), contrary results were obtained by other researchers: riche et al. stated that the use of shorter sentences in order to make material more readable, often has the opposite effect, because meaningfulness might be sacrificed by such style condensation (1991: 288-290). these authors also found that shortening sentences does not improve readability and that people actually read at a lower level than their educational level (1991: 328). similar results were obtained by vander stichele in a study about belgian ppis in which patients considered shorter sentences less interesting and childlike (2004: 124). riche et al. found that technical words, the use of passive voice and rare phraseology were confusing and negatively impacted on the readability of material. these researchers also found that readers preferred more meaningful words to less meaningful words, seen from the perspective of the patient; for example, they preferred “ongoing” to “chronic” (1991: 288-289). similar results were obtained by reid et al., who have also found that technical words in ppis caused comprehension problems and that people do not reread the ppi if at first they had not understood the terminology (1994: 332). according to arndt and janney, style is characterised by the choice of words and the arrangement of these words in a sentence (1987: 147) and these two elements have an impact on the accessibility and comprehensibility of the message. amery and van winkel were of the opinion that personalisation of the text, through the use of personal pronouns, would enhance the relevance to the patient (1995: 54). this was also the viewpoint of fitzmaurice and adams, who suggested that the writing style used in ppis should be personalised, unbiased and everyday; verbs should be in the active voice rather than passive voice and scientific jargon should be avoided in order to enhance readability (2000: 260). the primary concern about communication effectiveness in ppis, therefore, lies with text difficulty, expressed through style and word choice. already in 1980 morris, myers and thilman indicated that patient information should be “written for audience acceptance, rather than for favourable reading scores” (1980: 1504). features other than word and sentence lengths also have an influence on reading ease, like sentence structure and the organisation of the information into logical units – perceived as the style of the document (stevens 2000: online) – but also the physical aspects of the document, like style, layout, design and the use of graphics. all these factors should contribute to reading ease which also has an implication for communication efficiency and information comprehension. design factors design factors, like the manifestation of layout, typeface, style and size, use of white 154 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? space, primary key information and active vs. passive voice have been studied by rudd and colton (1998: 23), and found to have, in some cases, negatively affected the accessibility of information presented in the ppis. the design factors are, however, subject to the amount of information that has to be presented in the ppi, which has to be of such a format that it fits into the medication package (basara & juergens 1994: 52), a factor which could complicate design. the following were quoted as important design factors that could inhibit the use of ppis: a type size that is too small, paper that is too thin, or words that are too tightly spaced. technical design variables, included in a study undertaken by basara and juergens, were pictograms/graphics, colour, type size, paper quality and white space; the research results indicated that the use of only one colour print, no pictograms/graphics, average use of white space, small print and paper of average quality did not enhance the use of the ppi as a source of health information (1994: 5051). the minimum font size required by the european consumer lobby is eight points (amery & van winkel 1995: 56). when a ppi the length of one a4 page was tested, it was found to be too long. it was also found that comprehension of the information and willingness to take the drug were inversely related to the length of the provided text in the ppi and that itemised or summarised information aids comprehension (amery & van winkel 1995: 54-55). from these findings the question can be raised whether all relevant information can be accommodated in a design that provides an easily readable text in a concise format. although ppis are fairly standard regarding design factors, visual appeal of the ppi can be improved by using columns, itemising information, using headings and (sometimes) pictographs or graphics. bullets, italics and bold print are useful decoration techniques (amery & van winkel 1995: 52), while they also guide the reader through a text. a picture or illustration may activate background knowledge and may aid predictability of what to expect in the text (fulcher 1997: 509). however, since pictograms have no universally agreed-on meaning, amery and van winkel recommended their use simply as a guide through the text and not as an aid to vital information (1995: 54). already in 1985, orna suggested the following presentation style to increase accessibility of information in the ppis: clear signposting of headings, short sentences, lists, simple tables, codes to identify different types of information, and the standardisation of information elements and the sequence of information (1985: 30-31). communication barriers in ppis it is therefore clear that readability difficulty, design and message presentation problems can contribute to communication barriers in the health message. since noise is any stimulus that interferes either with the process of message transmission, or reception of a message (hybels & weaver 1992: 9; lowe 1995: 52; steinberg 1997: 16), it may limit or adversely affect communication efficacy. usually 155 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? noise exerts its influence on the communication message in one of the following ways: the message is affected in the transmission channel, through incomplete encoding, encoding ambiguity, by contextual ambiguity or often by a combination of these factors (ritchie 1991: 57). communication barriers can be classified as either of external, internal or semantic origin (hybels & weaver 1992: 9; steinberg 1997: 16), and as such are situated either in the message sender, the message itself, the receiver, the channel or in a combination of these elements. especially relevant to ppis, is the influence of semantic barriers. meanings reside in people and not in words (wood 2004: 79), as “language is a system of signs that express ideas” (cobley 2005: 45). therefore, to have mutual understanding of a concept implies that meanings between communication partners should overlap, otherwise “language becomes a barrier to effective communication” (steinberg 1997: 49). although language is an arbitrary code, depending on shared definitions, no two persons share exactly the same meaning for a given word (hahn 2005: online). in order to identify communication barriers in patient package inserts, the technical quality of the document, as well as the contained message should be considered. consumer organisations (in the us and europe) had previously voiced concern about the standard of the ppi relating to the quality, availability and usefulness of ppis, especially because medication non-compliance could lead to increased health care costs. morris, as quoted in williams-deane and potter (1992: 111), stated that in the evaluation of ppis there are two matters of primary concern, the first being effective communication and the second, behavioural outcome. communication efficacy refers to whether the ppi is readable and the message comprehensible, while the behavioural outcome is an indirect result of the communication efficacy of the ppi. research findings by schaafsma regarding the information in ppis indicated that: “much of the information given on medicines is regarded by patients as too difficult, especially written information” (2003: online; vander stichele 1989: 4). already in 1986 the difficulty in comprehending the contents of the ppi was recognised in belgium and a second leaflet was dispatched with the ppi, in order to transpose technical language to the colloquial and to aid the patient to understand the instructions better (laekeman & geerts 1986: 93). patients make judgements on the content of messages, or evaluative inferences based on informativeness and coherence of a message. informativeness is generally determined by only a small percentage of the available information. concerning the coherence aspect of a message, kellermann and lim stated that coherence refers to the degree that the message meets message expectations. if the expectations about the message are met, the message will be judged as coherent (1989: 104-119). schaafsma pointed out that, due to low literacy and second or third language proficiency, users do not fully understand the information (2003: online). vander stichele identified the following further communication difficulties in medical information: the information is too complex, too extensive, not extensive enough, 156 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? difficult to read, difficult to understand, difficult to remember, causing fear and/or causing confusion (2004: 124). the process of product registration is often complicating the process of message design in a ppi. the pressure to launch a new product on the market is huge, and few pharmaceutical companies can afford to lose time while discussing the wording of a ppi with the appropriate regulatory authority in belgium (vander stichele 2004: 49). this often results in the launch of a product without any review of the ppi and in so doing, communication effectiveness is compromised. comprehensibility readability of the text is the first step to the comprehension of the information contained in the ppi. eaton and holloway concluded that comprehension depends on reading skill and that comprehensibility can be improved by adjusting the readability level of ppis (1980: 242). patients’ literacy levels also influence their ability to comprehend information. however, readability assessments do not give an indication of the patient’s familiarity with medical terminology, or previous experience with similar documents (rudd, moeykens & colton 1999: online), and as such are not clear indicators of the comprehensibility of the information. according to reid et al. factors affecting the text are meaningfulness, organisation and syntax, and these factors are not evaluated by means of readability assessments. reader characteristics can also influence message comprehension (1994: 328). studies conducted by fleckenstein et al., liguori, benson et al. and morris et al. indicated that the reading ability of the patient on its own, as well as the readability of the material on its own, had an influence on the patient’s perception of how comprehensible the material was (eaton & holloway 1980: 240). it was further found that incomprehensibility of the information affected health status, service utilisation and behaviour of the patients (basara & juergens 1994: 49; rudd, moeykens & colton 1999: 10). comprehension is therefore the result of the process of interaction between the reader and the text. based on their research findings, riche et al. concluded that reader variables, such as interest, prior knowledge of the topic and reading proficiency, also play an important part in the comprehension of patient literature (1991: 287-288). since communication interactions take place in a complex field of forces, which include contextual, psychological, social and cultural forces, social and cultural beliefs or values and individual feelings can create an atmosphere in which there is a prospective uncertainty about the outcome of a given communicative interaction, not less so in health communication (medical facilitation: a communication-centred healthcare model s.a.: online). hahn felt that differences in background could be one of the most difficult communication barriers to overcome. under “background” is included: age, education level, gender, social status, economic position, cultural background, temperament, health status, political and religious orientation (2005: online). jones named the following influencing factors on comprehension of the message: demographic variables, education level (also recognised by reid et al. 1994: 333), and the state of wellness or illness of the patient (1989: 186). 157 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? it has already been seen that human variables and interest factors are important in the accessibility of health information. health literacy is defined as the ability to read, understand and act on health information (what is health literacy s.a.: online). this implies that the comprehension of health information is necessary to lead to behaviour modification. according to mccray, the problem lies in the difference between the basic literacy level of the patient and the readability of the health-related materials that the patient is expected to read, and the frequent mismatch between the two (2005: online). yet a patient’s reading ability does not always reflect accurately how well the material is understood (estey, musseau & keehn 1991: 166-168). the result of low health literacy is normally lower rates of adherence to recommended treatments, more medication errors and poor health outcomes (quyen ngo-metzger et al. 2006: online). herxheimer and davies stated that the fact that a ppi contains full information does not imply that the patient will be able to assimilate and use it, since effective transmission relies on both the transmitter and the recipient (1982: 94; gibbs, waters & george 1987: 24). the patient has to understand the purpose of the message in order to benefit from it and to facilitate comprehension (herxheimer & davies 1982: 94-95). this viewpoint was confirmed by research done by amery and van winkel, who found that the right information presented in the right way could improve comprehension, and therefore health outcomes (1995: 53). yet not only is comprehension of the purpose of the message important, but also the level of complexity of the information (pyrczak & roth, as quoted in spadaro, robinson & smith (1980: 215). the pure reduction of the readability level of health material, as expressed by readability assessments, is not an appropriate solution for comprehensibility, as this benefits those with higher health literacy skills more than those at the lower end of health literacy, since the information becomes even more accessible to them (rudd, moeykens & colton 1999: online). in order to enhance health literacy, it would be beneficial to write in a conversational style and adapt the content to be culturally relevant. from the above-mentioned literature it is clear that the ppi (in europe and america) may not be fulfilling its potential as health communication tool, due to various communication barriers originating in text design and/or message presentation. what is the situation in south africa? considerations for a developing country already in 1978 hermann, herxheimer and lionel suggested that each country should produce its own sets of minimum information for patients, as the extent of information needs may vary (1978: 1135). yet, according to amery and van winkel, it is time to ask whether the western approach is also applicable to third world countries and it was suggested to identify specific problems with the use of ppis in these countries (1995: 57). 158 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? the effectiveness of ppis as a source of health communication is negatively affected by medication distribution problems in the third world. the reasons supplied by amery and van winkel include: availability of medicine on the “black market”, where no ppi is available, as well as the illegal dispensing of scheduled drugs without any prescription. additional factors include counterfeiting of medicines and importing from manufacturers who do not uphold world health organisation (who) standards, and therefore also do not pay attention to the supply of applicable health information to the patient (1995: 59). at a drug information association (dia) meeting in 1999, hosted in gauteng, it was stated that less expensive drugs are being used without adequate patient information (barnes et al. 2001: online). a complicating factor to the distribution and standards of drug information is the fact that in a country like south africa there are 11 official languages, which would have to be taken into account when composing and designing ppis. this could imply huge financial and practical implications for drug manufacturers, should they decide to accommodate linguistic diversity. linked to the problem of multiple languages, is the problem of literacy and reading skills. from demographic and english language proficiency studies undertaken in the us, it was found that patients with poor reading skills included, amongst others, the poor, minorities, the unemployed, patients older than 60 years and those who had not completed their high school education (jackson et al. 1991: 1172). in developing countries, of which south africa is partially an example, unemployment and limited schooling are also problems that often reflect in language proficiency. thus socio-economic factors play a role in language proficiency, and by implication, in access to and comprehensibility of health messages. linked to language barriers are cultural differences (attitudes, norms and values), which affect health beliefs, including the utilisation of health information. cultural factors may cause problems with the interpretation of pictographs and as twyman warned: “if cultures are different, then picture conventions are also likely to be different; and if picture conventions are different, then so too will be the ways in which people interpret them” (1985: 301). schaafsma expressed the problem as follows: “... so simply translating information in a ‘technical manner’ does not account for such differences in beliefs and attitudes. if no ‘cultural’ translation is done, the information is not tailored to the patient.” “cultural” translation in this sense refers to adapting the message to the profile of the message recipient. in a country like south africa, with its diverse cultural component, it is especially important to adapt texts culturally to accommodate the socio-economic and educational variations in an effort to increase comprehensibility. other intercultural translation problems may also occur, for example, some words do not exist or have different meanings in other languages (schaafsma, raynor & de jong-van den berg 2003: online). added to the problem is the presence of culture-specific language and medical bias (schaafsma, raynor & de jong-van den berg 2003: online) aspects of which the south african context is not free of. 159 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? in south africa, package inserts, produced by the pharmaceutical industry, have texts in english and afrikaans. in april 2005 the south african medicines control council (mcc) published a set of guidelines which should be followed for these inserts. in these guidelines, exact instructions are outlined about headings, subheadings and the type of information that has to be presented under each heading or subheading. a proposed chronological order of information is also given, starting with scheduling status, followed by scientific pharmacological information. only under heading number 11 will the patient read about the dosage which means that he/she has to search in the document for relevant (wanted) information (mcc 2005: online). it is notable that in this outline provided by the mcc, product information enjoys higher priority than patient-preferred sections. yet, as indicated by several european studies, if the ppi is to fulfil its health communication goals, it should be written with the patient’s needs in mind. it is certainly important that full and objective information is presented, also to exempt the pharmaceutical companies from legal responsibility in the case of an adverse event, but it must also be kept in mind that the public receiving the ppi varies widely regarding educational, intellectual and socio-economic factors and therefore have varied medication information needs. concerning the translation of texts, schaafsma was of the opinion that translation is not a solution if the translation is done in another language than the patient’s first language, as this will not enhance comprehensibility of the message (2003: online). this has to be seen against the background of south african patients who often only have a basic knowledge of either english or afrikaans. in addition to language proficiency, education levels have a real impact on accessibility of health communication in the south african context. it was found from research done on health communication by tichenor, donohue and olien, as cited in freimuth, edgar and fitzpatrick (1993: 513), that patients with higher education levels acquire knowledge faster than those with relatively less education, resulting in even bigger disparities between groups of higher education and those with less education. this disparity will reflect in the ability to access health information, as well as the comprehension of the information contained in a ppi. according to rudd, moeykens and colton (1999: online), socio-economic status is expressed by education, occupation and income, and these factors are strongly correlate with health. in diverse socio-economic and educational circumstances, health communication has an added responsibility to ensure that health communication messages are accessible and that communication barriers are limited, in order to improve the state of health awareness of the patient. the dia, at their meeting in 1999, expressed it as follows: “although it is generally accepted that a medicine comprises a drug and drug information, limited provision is made to ensure adequacy of patient information. high levels of illiteracy, confusing package inserts and labels, and limited availability of patient information leaflets and other appropriate patient information are widespread problems in africa” (barnes et al. 2001: online). 160 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? from the above-mentioned it is clear that, although the package insert has a responsibility to communicate effectively with a diverse health audience, there are barriers to this aim, as has also been noted in the literature. up to the present, in order to accommodate the low literate patient/client, there has not been an expert decision on whether health information should be written at such a level that will accommodate the low health literate, or whether there should be two versions of the material – one for the health literate and one for the low health literate (bernhardt & cameron 2003: 595). in the south african context, this could have huge financial implications, as it would mean that all ppis have to be produced in 11 languages, and possibly in two versions, in order to accommodate diverse health literacy levels. not only will this cause logistical problems, but it could lead to more intolerance towards the ppi, as an element of exclusiveness might arise regarding the more “difficult” of the two texts. the south african mmc has in its concept document (mcc 2005: online) standardised the information elements and sequence of information in the south african ppi, yet other design factors have not been dealt with in the document. the print size and the layout certainly influence the accessibility of the information. no recommendation is given in the official guideline of the south african medicines control council (mcc 2005: online) regarding font size. communication efficiency of the south african ppi an empirical study was recently undertaken to investigate communication barriers in the south african ppi, making use of readability assessments (quantitative) and sample testing through interviews and focus groups (qualitative). sixty ppis (30 from over the counter (otc) medication and 30 from prescription medication) were subjected to a readability assessment. these ppis represent most regularly used medication (five drug classes, respectively). next, in-depth interviews were conducted and the constructs identified from these interviews were tested in focus group discussions. sample selection for the focus groups was done according to the following criteria: language preference (afrikaans or english), age group (younger that 40 years and older than 40 years) and lsm classification (according to the universal lsm classification determined in november 2006 by the south african advertising research foundation (saarf)) (saarf online). the lsm grouping was done as follows: lsm 1 – 4 (basic lifestyles), lsm 5 – 7 (average lifestyles) and lsm 8 – 10 (above-average lifestyles). as a measure of triangulation, structured interviews were also conducted with pharmacists. participants were informed of their right to withdraw at any moment without penalty, of the confidentiality of their identities and responses and they were debriefed after the interview sessions. the results obtained from this study indicated that, based on semantic variables, the readability of the ppi texts of some english and afrikaans examples could be considered “very difficult” or “difficult”, causing communication impediments. none were considered to be “easy”. from unstructured interviews it became clear that the communication barriers in the ppis are contained in aspects related to the ppi itself, the information contained in the ppi, and the use of language in the ppi. these aspects 161 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? were confirmed by focus group results, selected according to language preference, age and lsm classification. sub-group analyses were also performed on these three classifications: lsm groupings, language preference (english or afrikaans, since the texts are only available in these two languages) and age grouping. the study results indicated that, in addition to technical aspects and information overload, the biggest problem was situated in language usage and style. it was stated that: • the included terminology hampered comprehension; • a very formal style is unfriendly and not accessible to all; • there was a want for laymen’s terms and simplified language usage; • long sentences and “big words” excluded readers with little schooling; and • there is a demand to supply the ppi in more indigenous languages. from structured interviews with pharmacists it was confirmed that the value of the ppi in improving health literacy depends upon reading and understanding of the document, criteria not met by the present format, information and language usage in the ppi. this study further indicated that: • ppis in south african medication packages do not fulfil their communication aim, due to barriers that can be traced mainly to document and reader variables, rendering the communication contained in the document less efficient; and • health communication efficacy is influenced by, amongst others, cultural competence and understandability; factors that have been neglected in the present ppi. conclusions in diverse socio-economic, cultural and educational circumstances, health communication has an increased responsibility to disseminate linguistically accessible and comprehensible health information messages to facilitate an informed health decision. at present, the ppi included in the medication packet is subjected to various communication barriers, as has been from research findings. these barriers are of text and/or reader variable origin, which reflect negatively on the readability of the document and therefore, on medication information access via the package insert. reader variables complicate text wording and design – a fact that was emphasised by gillam and levenson, who said that “effective communication in health care relies on a common language, but also on culture, class, beliefs, trust, and many other factors” (1999: online). it is therefore necessary that adaptation of the message should take these reader-based variables into consideration. there is a definite need for a ppi as was indicated by research findings in 1987, which showed that between 55% and 69% more information is given and between 62% and 162 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? 68% of patients’ informational needs are being met by means of written information (ascione et al. 1987: 59). a study conducted in 1996 by the world health organisation has indicated that “there is a well evidenced and compelling need for public education in the appropriate use of drugs, with potential benefits for the individual, the community and the policymakers” (vander stichele 2004: 135). although new technologies allow for the delivery of health communication messages by means of telephone, video and other electronic means (suggs 2006: 62), the educational role of written patient information should not be overlooked, especially in the south african context where there are many people without access to electronic resources. this is mainly where an insert into the medication package should fulfil an important health communication role, provided that it communicates its message clearly (patient education s.a.: online). health communication efficacy is influenced by accuracy, availability, balance, consistency and cultural competence; it should be evidence-based and it should reach the target population repeatedly and timely in a format and text that is comprehensible (healthy people 2010 s.a.: online). it seems that especially the latter is at present a problem in the south african ppi. the above-mentioned south african research study has indicated that, in addition to readability difficulty, reader variables (including perceptions) contribute to barriers in south african ppis. it is necessary to realise that “effective communication in health care relies on a common language, but also on culture, class, beliefs, trust, and many other factors” (gillam & levenson 1999: online). from the above-mentioned results it is therefore apparent that adaptation of the message should take these variables into consideration. the two most neglected aspects in the ppi at present are cultural competency and understandability. understandability refers to the reading and language levels which should be fitting to the audience, while cultural competency refers to allowing for various population groups, language preference and linguistic and educational levels. it seems therefore that all the problems identified in the european and american ppis are also present in the south african equivalents. it is therefore also time for a re-thinking of the south african ppi, as it is at present not meeting its aim and not satisfying patients’ needs. thus, a document that will render effective medication information will have to satisfy document technical demands, as well as informational and linguistic demands. the document should be about the size of an a5 page, printed in letters of at least a 10-point print size. headings should be distinct and sufficient white space should separate different text sections. more than one colour printing will enhance the look and layout of the document, a method that can also be used to indicate more important sections, e.g. “warnings”. where possible, use should be made of pictograms/diagrams that are culturally sensitive. this will also accommodate readers of low literacy. the desired (reduced) informational sections should be presented in the preferred patient order, in order to enhance readability and perceived utility of the document. the information should be presented in everyday language without any scientific terminology or jargon. 163 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? texts should also be produced in various indigenous languages to accommodate readers not fluent in either english or afrikaans. yet, as appropriate translations from the present english or afrikaans terminology to the indigenous languages may not exist, this objective might be fairly difficult to attain, apart from the other logistical and financial implications of such translations. it is, however, imperative if cultural competence of the document is to be attained. the ppi, in its aim to disseminate comprehensible health communication messages, should aim at fulfilling all the communication efficacy demands to prove itself a valuable health communication tool, accessible to all. through achieving this aim, the health literacy of even the least educated members of society will be improved and in so-doing, it will render an incontestable health communication service to the south african patient. 164 does the patient package insert (ppi) in south africa serve the purpose of health communication? 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with, in particular in the corporate context. the south african reconciliation barometer's surveys have been used to provide empirical data regarding the state of the nation with reference to particular selected areas. these statistics show a deeply divided society with high levels of mistrust. the public relations practitioner needs to negotiate these contexts in their efforts to practice integrated strategic public relations. adler's multi-cultural-man metaphor (1985) serves as meta-theoretical framework. this article explores potential conceptual challenges for strategic public relations practitioners in their challenges to manage integrated public relations and the lessons to be learned from such traumatised societies. the extrapolation is the corporate context with the focus on integrated public relations challenges for the practitioners of public relations. * professor gideon de wet is executive dean: research and development in the govan mbeki research and development centre at the university of fort hare in alice. introduction over the past decade or more a number of countries have embarked upon dramatic socio-political transitions – mostly from an authoritarian repressive regime to a democratically-oriented society. a common denominator has always been a highly divided society filled with trauma. one such country is south africa which had its first democratic elections in 1994 after more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. a society deeply divided not only along the lines of race, ethnicity and class, but also deeply divided in terms of economic prosperity and access to opportunities. the context of this article poses that this kind of history and the new transformational challenges have profound consequences for the practice of integrated public relations in corporations situated in such societies. in particular, it poses serious challenges to the public relations practitioner as key player in the repositioning of their organisations. the public relations practitioner construct in this article deals with the strategic part of the practice of the profession and not with the technical application per se. furthermore, this article is focused on the analyses of some aspects of the state of the south african nation in transition as being reflected by the south african reconciliation barometer report (hofmeyr 2006) and its potential consequences for the practice of integrated public relations. the extrapolation will be contextualised in the corporate context with the focus on integrated public relations and the challenges faced by the practitioners of public relations. this will be discussed and presented in the context of the meta-theoretical framework of adler’s multi-cultural-man (1985). in turn, this background should be linked to rensburg and cant’s (2003: 39) reference to the evolution of public relations by identifying four trends that have been instrumental in its growth, namely the expansion of large corporations, the nature of change and conflict internationally and locally, the challenges of information technologies and the increased importance of public opinion in the 21st century for positive democratic means. see also huang and kleiner (2005) concerning the challenges for multi-nationals in an ever increasing globalisation context. having said that, strategically integrated public relations is viewed as the integration of an organisation’s new and continuing relationships with stakeholders, internally and externally, through managing the total communication activity initiated or received by such an organisation with the view to protecting the brand and reputation of the organisation in an ethical way. this context challenges the public relations practitioner profoundly. it is furthermore important to state that strategically integrated public relations in this article focuses on the conceptual challenges of relationship integration, stakeholder relationship integration, management integration, corporate structure integration and societal integration (caywood 1997). this article’s following two aims are: • to discuss and to extrapolate the potential of adler’s “multi-cultural-man” as metaphor (1977, 1985) and meta-theoretical framework in terms of its 192 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa conceptual application to the corporate context and the potential conceptual challenges practitioners have to face. it is not an attempt to position the “self against the other” but to emphasise the complexity of a divided past and hence the challenges for integrated public relations practitioners to work towards sound stakeholder relationships. • to make some suggestions regarding the conceptual and strategic challenges for integrated public relations practitioners who function in such corporate contexts, fraught with histories of division, mistrust and humiliation. having stated the above, it is important to indicate that this article is thus not about the application of public relations practices and techniques. the first democratic election of 1994 has placed south africa on a different route toward individual and collective futures. but the country cannot escape so easily from its divisive history, “the pictures in the minds” as walter lippman would say. traumatic pictures, or in the lacanian framework, a trauma located in the master discourse of a social mechanism (lacan 1977) as manifested in the socio-political past of the country. against this background manifests a very complex set of communication-driven processes that are contributing to the shaping of the south african society on its way to a new and intricate identity. some would say sets of identities. these communication processes are formal and informal in nature. there is a natural process of co-evolution as well as strategically-infused strategic communication processes being managed, in particular in the corporate context. from a communication, and thus for the purposes of this article, a strategic public relations perspective, the question remains: what is the role of the public relations practitioner in corporate south africa regarding negotiating these challenges that are being posed in terms of stakeholder relationships as a key function of integrated public relations against this background of division? the meta-theoretical discussion focuses on adler’s multi-cultural-man metaphor (1977, 1985) which for the purposes of this article would be juxtaposed in the south african historical and thus socio-political past as well as in the context of the present stakeholder relationship challenges faced by the public relations practitioner through integrated public relations practices. although the original concept was developed by adler (1977) with reference to white western males’ multicultural experiences (sparrow 2000), in this article the focus is on the heuristic and metaphorical value of the multi-cultural-man construct in the integrated public relations context. given this orientation, the aims of this article will be discussed in the context of the following aspects: 193 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa • the political context and identity formation: the apartheid and democracy eras; • the multi-cultural-man and identity: challenges for strategic public relations; • reconciliation barometer and multi-cultural-man: significance for strategic public relations; and • communication and the multi-cultural-man and the implications for strategic public relations. the political context and identity formation: the apartheid era to discuss identity as a collective national phenomenon, to discuss the historical contours or artifacts that contributed to identity construction, and to restrict this discussion to the institutional apartheid era for obvious reasons will do an injustice to the debate on identity and relationship dynamics. it is important to note early on that a discussion on globalisation does not form part of the parameters of the article, though the complexity of the globalisation context should constantly be kept in mind. identity discourse in the south african context is inextricably linked to historical eras that stretch way beyond the geographical boarders of south africa and the african continent (zegeye, liebenberg & houston 2000). stevens (2003) is of the opinion that these roots could be found in historical materialism with the emphasis on racism and colonialism. one of the fundamental corner stones of the apartheid era, some would say the most fundamental and devastating piece of legislation, was the legislation contained in the population registration act of 1950. the south african population was classified into four racial groups, namely white, black, indian and coloured. some of the categories even had sub-categories (muthien, khosa & magubane 2000). the result of the legislation was that through institutional processes a very decisive part of individual, group, community and corporate identities were determined along racial lines. the south african society was administered and managed according to this ideology. the hierarchical arrangement was white privileged people at the top, followed by the rest. the ensuing process of humiliation, the destruction of dignity and identity and the resistance ended in civil war that ensued and lasted for many decades. the political context and identity formation: the democracy era after 1994 the democratic state became a prime communicator of identity messages and thus of relationship and stakeholder building. corporate south africa has joined in this process. simplistically stated, the south african bill of rights is the counter pole of the 1950 population registration act. the bill of rights is viewed as the cornerstone of democracy and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. these values manifest in a range of activities including freedom of 194 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa expression, freedom of religion and belief, freedom of association and privacy, freedom of movement, access to health and education and the right to own private property, just to mention a few. all off which contribute towards the restoration of individual and collective identities in a free non-racial non-sexist democratic society. these intricate processes manifest inter alia in economic transformation with the aim of promoting growth and development through the redistribution of wealth and the creation of opportunity, especially for the previously disadvantaged (muthien 2000; magubane 2000). corporate south africa is at the centre of these initiatives. a massive re-branding and stakeholder relationship process after a negotiated settlement is taking place. this process cries out for strategic public relations at every level of society. the enormity of the transformation process and the complexities that accompany such an undertaking are evident. the transformation process is much more than a legalistic mechanistic exercise. it cuts to the proverbial bone of the very being of the south african society in all its intricacies. in the corporate context the question as public relations practitioner remains: “how does this context impact on my company’s strategic positioning, and secondly, what role must be played by the practitioner?” another, yet crucially important subtext to the macro framework of transformation is the need for reconciliation. reconciliation cannot be achieved without social justice, including the redress and the material well-being of the marginalised. redress in this context goes far beyond the material only. there is also a need to come to grips with the injustices and dehumanisation of the south african society. social justice carries with it the roots of identity construction and deconstruction. but a note of caution seems appropriate as adam (1994) puts it: “the legacy of past political systems lives on in everyday racial and ethnic consciousness. racism as the everyday false consciousness of socially constructed differences has not disappeared with the repeal of racial legislation.” it is the accepted position that social identity in the south african society is complex in nature. the complexity is not only informed by the hegemony of the past, but by the day-to-day realities of a society traumatised in very different and varied ways (duncan 2003). the point of departure regarding identity, multi-culturalism and communication, including the practice of strategic public relations, is not to position the “self” against the “other”. this is not an attempt to deny a racialised past, nor to argue that a clean slate approach should nullify the past (zegeye et al. 2000). a myriad of perspectives exists regarding stakeholder relationship development and the management thereof and thus identity deconstruction and identity construction, all leaning very heavily on the ubiquitous communication processes. see gordon (1995), berbrier (2004) and taylor (2006: 217-237) on the emotional contradictions of identity politics, for example. 195 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa the perspective supported is that stakeholder relationships and identities, through strategic public relations practices, can be seen as open ended, fluid and constantly in a process of being deconstructed and constructed with varied timelines and outcomes. from an integrated public relations perspective, this activity remains a continually strategically managed process of which stakeholder relationships form the cornerstone of the activity. stevens (2003) in the post-modernist context warns however by saying there is a lot of support for the argument of varied experiences of social life with diffused sets of identities, but the point is that such an approach could perpetuate racism in the context of identity politics. of importance here are the qualities of fluidity and contextdependence because conflicting racial, ethnic, gender, class, sexual, religious and national identities are a reality in the historical complexity of the south african society (zegeye et al. 2000). this is equally true for corporate south africa. these complexities must be factored into strategic public relationship plans and practices in a quest to form new relationships with stakeholders internally and externally. multi-cultural-man and identity: challenges for strategic public relations the above context provides the synergy for the complexities that confront public relations practitioners. the situation classifies itself way beyond a “crisis situation”. it is an existential and fundamental challenge of the being. the concept of “multicultural-man” has been described and discussed over centuries in many forms and contexts. zeno 294 bc refers to “cosmopolitan man”. lipton (1961) refers to “protean man” and milhouse, asante and nwosu (2001) refer to “trans-cultural person” while mcgill (2004) refers to the “global citizen”. adler (1977: 38, in sparrow 2000) refers to a new kind of man “embodying the attributes and characteristics that prepare him so serve as facilitator and catalyst for contacts between cultures”. the concept has traditionally been viewed as a person that moves about in multicultural environments or persons who emigrate to a culturally foreign country having to deal with the challenges to transcend narrow loyalties with the view to adjust and to start the process of acculturation and assimilation. kim (2001) says that unlike the original identity, the emerging identity is one that develops out of many challenging and often painful experiences of self-reorganisation under the demands of the new experience or conditions. through trial and error an expanded identity that is more than the original identity or the identity of the new encounter, starts to emerge. again, adopting this concept to the south african public relations context seems to be important without claiming that there exists a collective approach to public relations in south africa. the fact remains that public relations practices in south africa are being planned, executed and evaluated in the context of a multi-cultural world within particular divisive socio-political histories. 196 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa given the south african history of division and statutory racism and the progress that has been made over the past 13 years regarding cultural tolerance and integration, such a multi-cultural-man approach seems to be fitting to critique the development of new stakeholder relationships and thus individual and collective identities in particular with reference to the corporate world. the south african corporate quest is an inland expedition, an exploratory journey towards one another across mostly unfamiliar and divisive terrain. this interplay poses particular challenges in order to transcend the potential impact of very complex histories as determinant of content and form of public relations practices. in south africa, communication and cultural exchange are the pre-eminent conditions for a prosperous and a collective existence. the focus is on the ability to transcend the own, made up of a myriad of personal, collective, social, emotional, political and educational experiences. the ideal goal is to get to a stage where the essential identity is inclusive, yet selective of life patterns different from his or her own at the deepest levels of existence (adler 1985, in samovar & porter 1985). such an individual is grounded in both the universality and the diversity of cultural forms. multi-cultural-man is intellectually and emotionally committed to the unity of human beings but also shows a deep awareness of the differences that need to be overcome. the focus is strongly on communalities as the fundamental orientation. in public relations terms this represents an integrated communication focus. these communalities are instrumental to creating through communication an intersubjectivity of mutual understanding and a common future. in this context, the fluidity of stakeholder relationships and identity as well as the role of communication are central processes. this requires that the sense of belonging should assist the parties concerned to negotiate the ever new formations of reality. the process of living on the boundaries is a real and existential process (bennett 1993: 59). tension and uncertainty are two components that accompany this complex interactive process of moving back and forth in and between cultures/experiences, no matter where the encounters occur. in this regard is it important to indicate that history has a peculiar relationship with memory and the tension in terms of the interpretations of history. traumatised experiences are very difficult to deal with, especially where relationship dynamics are involved, because it manifests itself with very destructive consequences (van der walt, franchi & stevens 2003). in the south african context the meeting of people as equal entities in all contexts of society is indeed a fairly new occurrence. adam and adam (2000) warn however that in order to talk about collective identity and collective memory in the south african society these terms should only be used in a loose metaphorical sense. this meeting process in itself is not a simplistic process such as the making of friends. adler (1985) says that cultural identity is the symbol of one’s essential experience of oneself as it incorporates the world view, value system, attitudes, and beliefs of a group with whom such elements are shared. 197 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa today, in the south african corporate environment, legislation forces companies through for example the employment equity act 55 of 1998 and the policy of affirmative action to become more representative of the south african society. this process of unity does not come automatically. the challenges facing public relations practitioners are enormous in terms of the needs for affection, acceptance, recognition, affiliation, status, belonging and interaction with other beings as focus areas of identity and identity formation. adler (1985) states that the multi-cultural-man is radically different form the ordinary human being: • such a person (public relations practitioner) is psycho-culturally adaptive; • such a person (public relations practitioner) does not judge one situation by the terms of another and is therefore an ever evolving new system of evaluations that are relative to the context and situation; • multi-cultural-man (public relations practitioner) is propelled from identity to identity through processes of cultural learning and cultural un-learning. a new identity is always being newly created; • multi-cultural-man (public relations practitioner) maintains indefinite boundaries of the self. the parameters of the identity are neither fixed nor predictable. berger and berger (1973, cited by adler 1985) call it the homeless mind. a condition that allows for nothing permanent and unchanging; and • multi-cultural-man (public relations practitioner) is able to look at his/her own culture from an outsider’s perspective. this allows for a critical analysis of ideologies, systems and practices. in this process the symbolic recreation of the individual or corporation is important. this goes far beyond the experience of intercultural contact. the multi-cultural-man undergoes shifts in his/her psycho-cultural posture, religion, personality, behaviour, nationality, outlook, political persuasion and values. these aspects may be totally or in part reformulated in the context of their experiences, as the boundaries of contact move and change. where this process of change occurs it could take years to manifest. no two experiences are the same either. it remains unique. ting-toomey (1999) emphasises the point of mindful or deliberate communication as a process that underpins these identity negotiations where shared meanings are achieved through active involvement. the enormity of such a process in traumatised societies, and in particular in the south african context, speaks for itself. to idealise or romanticise this would assist in no way. the conditioning through political, cultural and educational systems over centuries lay very heavily on the collective minds of all. the stresses and strains that accompany this are enormous. in considering the extrapolation of the multi-cultural-man metaphor, the following aspects must be kept in mind: 198 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa • the multi-cultural-man (public relations practitioner) is vulnerable. in maintaining no clear boundary and form or sense of stability, the multi-culturalman is susceptible to confusing the profound and the insignificant, the important and the unimportant, the visionary and the reactionary. it will take time to “settle down”. • multi-cultural-man can become a diffused identity (erikson 1964, cited by adler 1985). in communication situations which are confusing, contradictory, or overwhelming, the individual is thrown back and in a subjective way must sort out what to make of situations. messages, images and symbols which are not organised coherently cannot be translated into the individual’s sense-making world. this can have serious consequences for the individual’s stability. • thirdly, multi-cultural-man can suffer from a loss of sense of his/her own authenticity. the danger is that such a person can easily disintegrate into a fragmented splinter. • the fourth challenge is that such an entity can move from identity to identity experience without any commitment to real life situations. such experiences can be viewed as superficial fads. this is especially true in situations where instant gratification seems at the order of the day. • in the process of challenging boundaries the individual or the corporation may hide behind a screen of apathy and cynicism which harbours insecurity. of importance is to understand that the concept of multi-cultural-man goes far beyond situations of cultural adoption and cultural shock. it is much more fundamental. the multi-cultural style of identity is premised on a fluid, dynamic movement of the self, an ability to move in and out of contexts, and the ability to maintain some inner coherence through varieties of situations (adler 1985). it is not a simplistic calculation or comparative choice between assimilation and integration. it is the ability to continually modify his or her frame of reference and the ability to become aware of the structures and functions of groups that need to be negotiated whilst at the same time maintaining a clear understanding of the own personal, ethnic, and cultural identifications that would enable the multi-cultural-man to function optimally in a multi-cultural context (berry 1970, cited by adler 1985). tillich (1966: 111, cited by sparrow 2000: 176) suggests that in future one should live with tension and movement. the aim is to create a third area beyond the bounded territories, an area where one can stand for a time without being enclosed in something tightly bounded. it is clear that strategic public relations cannot be practised in isolation from the complexities of societies. challenges that individual public relations practitioners face in situations of change and transformation are equally real in the corporate context of the south african society. once again the belief is that communication as strategic public relations practice performs a key facilitating role in the repositioning of companies in a democratic south africa. 199 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa relations barometer and multi-cultural-man in the context of the above discussion the following empirical evidence makes it extremely important to contextualise the integrated public relations challenges faced by public relations practitioners. methodology and background the analysis in this section is based on the results of four national surveys, which were conducted since april 2003. the standard sample size of this national syndicate survey is 3 500 south africans, aged 16 years and older, from both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. the results of the survey can be projected onto the south african population as a mirror image of trends in attitudes and perceptions in general. geographical area was factored into this process, and distinct sampling procedures were employed for metro areas and non-metro areas (hofmeyr 2006: 7-8). all settlements with a population that exceeds 250 000 had been categorised as metro areas. multistage area-probability sampling was used in these areas. the sampling included all persons of 16 years and older, living in multi-member households. enumeration areas were drawn from the 2001 population census and sampling points were allocated to sub-places in each of the metros. within each of the sub-places a street was randomly selected using the geographical information system (gis) and four to six houses were then selected using a random walk procedure. non-metropolitan areas were divided into the five following sub-categories: • cities: 100 000 – 249 999: large towns: 40 000 – 99 999: small towns: 8 000 – 39 999 • villages: 500 – 7 999: rural: fewer than 500 inhabitants multistage probability sampling was also employed in non-metropolitan areas, with all citizens of 16 years and older being targeted. enumeration areas (eas) were drawn from the 2001 population census and sampling points were allocated to sub-places in each of south africa’s nine provinces, based on community size. within each of the sub-places a street was randomly selected using gis and four to six houses were then selected using a random walk procedure. in areas where there were no streets in the selected eas, interviewers were required to count the number of dwellings and work out a skip, based on the number of interviews and the size of the ea and then select every nth dwelling (hofmeyr 2006: 7-8). all survey results are weighted back to the population figures. this is done to address sample skews that might affect the proper representation within the universe. data are weighted back to the population. the expected margin of error is estimated at 1.66% under the worst possible scenario (hofmeyr 2006: 7-8). the surveys provided snapshots in terms of the state of the nation. obviously the complexity of the south african situation should not be underestimated by focusing on these findings only, but from a strategic public relations planning perspective it remains very important. the barometer covered a spectrum of topics dealing inter alia with: 200 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa • economic matters; • human security; • the legitimacy of the new dispensation; • cross-cutting political relationships; • dialogue with one another as south africans; and • historical confrontation and race relations. from a strategic public relations perspective these aspects are vitally important in the process of transformation and identity formation because it deals with the very fabric of the south african society. the surveys provided a wealth of very important moments, expectations, perceptions and reality interpretations of the collective psyche of the south african society. for the purposes of this article the following categories have been selected for discussion purposes because they represent some of the most critical relationship dynamics which in turn are crucial for the practice of integrated public relations. this is even more relevant in the corporate context: • one united south africa; • historical view on apartheid; • race relations; • cultural matters; and • media as instrument of bridging the gap it must be stated that the use of racial categories and terminologies should be viewed in the context of the socio-political history of south africa. no ideological position is attached to the terminology. table 1: one united south africa in table 1, a marked increase in optimism from 72.8% to 76.2% since 2003 of all south africans has been recorded. white people seem constantly to be the least optimistic, followed by coloured and indian people. political power, and the loss and the gaining 201 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa of power by respectively the white and the black electorate could be at the root of differences of opinion. as far as the white group is concerned a slightly more than 10% increase since 2003 has been detected which could indicate a greater sense of optimism and acceptance for a united south africa. table 2: historical view on apartheid as crime against humanity: percentage agreement an interesting observation in table 2 is that all groups, only with marginal differences, view the apartheid system as a crime against humanity. even white people as the rulers and beneficiaries of the old system reject apartheid as evil. it is no surprise that all the other groups view apartheid very strongly or overwhelmingly so as a crime against humanity. there seems unanimity regarding the rejection of the past political dispensation in the most convincing way across all groups. table 3: race relations: the trustworthiness of the other group in table 3, almost 40% of the respondents indicated that they do not trust one another. black people show the least trust in other people, almost 45% of the respondents. white, coloured and indian respondents show a significant decrease of their levels of trust. however, very significant percentages of uncertainty dominate the question of trust in one another. in an sabc/markinor opinion poll (2005), the optimism about a common future among all south africans stood at 60%. this trend was up from 56% the previous year. 202 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa table 4: cultural matters: i find it difficult to understand the customs and ways of the other not much has changed over the past three years. the coloured, indian and white groups have registered significant lower levels of understanding of one another’s customs. the overall picture in table 4 reveals that almost 62% of the respondents have difficulty in understanding the customs and cultural ways of the other groups. black people in particular, almost 67%, in 2006 indicated the highest level of not being in a position to understand cultural customs and ways of other people. table 5: media as instrument of bridging the gap: using radio and tv shows where south africans can talk to each other about transformation in table 5, the overall opinion is rather positive, namely, that radio and tv should be used as platforms to discuss issues regarding transformation. it is rather surprising that white people seem to express very strong negative views about the use of these media as discussion forums. however, there has been a significant change since 2003. an increase of 12.6% towards openness has been recorded. all the other groups express very favourable views. more than 85% of the respondents were in support of the use of these media for transformation discussions. adam and adam (2000) refer to the white respondents’ position as collective amnesia as a strategy for dealing with unpleasantness of the past, especially a past that is highly embarrassing. discussion and synthesis the overwhelming picture that emerges from these findings is one of a deeply divided opinion and expectation of one another as south africans. encouraging is the almost 203 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa unanimous rejection of the past and the hope for reconciliation albeit in the context of mistrust and uncertainty. it seems evident that south africans try not to make too much contact across the boundaries. in a related study a total of 46% of all south africans indicated that they have never socialised across the colourline, while 23% almost never socialise across the colourline (willemse 2004). in total almost 70% of all south africans do not have significant contact with one another in social situations. of significance in this regard is the potential role of communication and thus strategic integrated public relations in the corporate context where the different groups are interacting more and more as equals and as subordinates as the transformation of corporate south africa is progressing. the fact that white people in particular seem not to be ready to talk openly about reconciliation/transformation in a public forum is a serious matter of concern. is it because transformation or reconciliation could be viewed as a private matter? is this opinion an expression of a collective guilt that should rather be dealt with in private and in one’s own close-knit circle? the same question could be extended to the corporate context that is still mainly in white hands. less than 3% of all johannesburg stock exchange listings belong to black owned companies. the white population comprises less than 10% of the total south african population (hofmeyr 2005). in short, there seems to be common ground about the rejection of the past, but the question is how to move forward in the new context is one of uncertainty. a lack of mutual trust and difficulties to identify with one another’s way of life, are key variables that need to be carefully managed in an integrated public relationship context. people live and work in corporations with varying backgrounds, values and expectations. this is even more challenging in societies that are emerging from a history of humiliation and strife. is it possible to cross the boundaries of the uncertainty in such a way that a new sense of security, belonging and identity could start to develop? in this regard, the concept of a multi-cultural-man should be explored and extrapolated to the corporate context. the opinion supported is that strategic public relations can play a significant role in the shaping of the multi-cultural-man identity metaphor as well as the development and management of stakeholder relationships as an extrapolation of the multi-cultural-man metaphor. such a position is even more relevant when strategic integrated public relations is viewed as the integration of an organisation’s new and continuing relationships with stakeholders, internally and externally, through managing the total communication activity initiated or received by such an organisation with the view of protecting the brand and reputation of the organisation in an ethical way. strategic integrated public relations challenges and multi-cultural-man the public relations premise supported in this article deals with the need to converge as strangers in the context of being stakeholders, internally and externally in the 204 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa company. according to barker and angelopulo (2006: 40) it is the cross-functional process of creating and nourishing strategically determined relationships with stakeholders and engaging in purposeful dialogue. it is a meeting point not to transfer information and meaning, but to jointly create meaning in an interactive and ongoing context. in a different sense, the multi-cultural-man metaphor and paulo freire’s (1970) dialogical approach to communication supplements one another. freire (1970) refers to a dialogical context where human beings are constantly learning from one another as equals. this is in particular applicable in situations where historically speaking an unequal and dehumanising system used to be ordering society’s ways and means. in the south african corporate context, the convergence or integrated strategic role of public relations should play in significant ways the role of addressing the divisiveness of stakeholder histories. communication, and in this context integrated public relations, play an increasingly important role in the overall integration of the organisation and in stakeholder relations (barker & angelopulo 2006: 43). in order to advance the argument of stakeholder relationship building, it is proposed that strategic public relations as communication process can enhance this process further by addressing these challenges in a well-planned and integrated way not only by focusing on messages and their content but in all aspects of relationship manifestation. adler’s multi-cultural-man metaphor (1985) propels a range of highly significant conditions that need to be taken into account by the public relations practitioner in the practise of integrated public relations. these aspects are: • the ability to transcend narrow loyalties in a changing and uncertain context, internally and externally to the organisation; • the ability to institute a process of self-reorganisation aided by the outsider’s perspective; • the inevitable expanded identity challenges that come with such repositioning; • the social convergence at micro and macro levels, internally and externally; • the ability to recognise the universal and particular, and the ability to merge and diverge in the interest of all concerned; • a nurturing of belonging and the recognition of the humanity of people; • not only be able to tactically reposition internally and externally, but also to integrate the ability to be adaptive at the psycho-cultural level; and • the ability to manage in an integrated way the challenges of indefinite boundaries and the dangers of fluidity regarding corporate identity. considering adler’s multi-cultural-man metaphor (1985) seems to be important. practitioners of integrated public relations should factor the following dimensions into their planning: 205 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa • vulnerability. situations of repositioning, the bringing into the corporation of people with such traumatic histories can leave everybody and thus the organisation and its functioning very vulnerable; • being extremely accommodative leaves people and the organisation diffused and at a loss in terms of purpose and identity with a serious challenge to its authenticity; and • such a situation can be experienced and perceived as a superficial fad underscored by apathy and a cynical view of belonging and commitment. having stated the above, newson, turk and kruckberg (2007: 218) emphasise that the premise of relationship construction is underpinned inter alia by the degree to which parties have the right to exert influence over others; trust in the sense of being willing to be open; satisfaction with what they do and experience; commitment, emotionally and as well as in terms of tasks; and lastly, communal relationships, meaning the authentic concern for the welfare of one another. in deeply divisive societies these are serious challenges to be overcome and to be strategically managed. communication is expected to be an integrating catalyst in all of these activities (caywood 1997; gonring 1997; gronstedt 1997). the metaphorical extrapolation of multi-cultural-man’s qualities as discussed above in the context of corporate south african’s repositioning must be integrated with the following challenges faced by public relations practitioners as identified by caywood (1997: xi-xiv): relationship integration: broadly speaking two levels of integration can be identified, namely the internal processes of management philosophies, policies, practices, structures and stakeholders – all focusing on the integration of relationships – and secondly, the external processes of society integration. however, these levels are intertwined and should be regarded as mutually supported processes. as far as stakeholder relationship integration is concerned the focus is broader than marketing target groups because the wider context of micro and macro implications regarding the successes and failures of the corporation have much wider consequences for societies and communities in which these corporations operate. to retrench workers in other words has wider societal and corporate implications than solely for the specific stakeholder group. the management integration function recognises the premise that communication represents a total package in terms of the whole spectrum of management functions such as it manifests in human resources, financing, accounting, general management, etc. the successes and failures of these managers have profound consequences for all concerned, internally and externally, to the corporation. integrated communication is essential for total alignment in terms of the mission, vision and values of the corporation. it becomes more than a management practice. it becomes a way of life, a corporate management lifestyle built on the premise of sound professional relationships. 206 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa equally important is a firm understanding for the need of corporate structure integration. managerial practices are supported by well integrated systems and structures throughout the corporation. environmental practices as well as internal decisions have consequences for structural arrangements. pressure to become more transparent or democratic in terms of managerial processes, as well as to react to technological developments such as electronic communication systems result in flatter managerial structures with a greater sense of executive powers and functions. an investment in trust underpins the viability of a diverse set of business units operating in an integrated way. as discussed in earlier sections, one of the most challenging aspects of public relations as integrated practice is to succeed with societal integration. corporate values that underpin and reflect the values promoted throughout societies are key aspects to the continuous process of relationship integration. no longer do corporations exist as employers only. partnerships – quite often beyond the technical definition of publics and stakeholders – transcend the parochial definitions of these entities. the philosophy of integration militates against technical definitions of stakeholders as a short term interest group. the dynamics of society are far too complex for such an approach. this is even more so in the globalisation context of the world. conclusion the limited snapshot provided in this article is testimony to a very complex society in transition. the changing environment has contributed profoundly towards integrated public relations challenges. meta-level dynamics which play a central role in the rethink of integrated public relations practices could be viewed as lessons to be learned. these include the following: • extrapolating the multi-cultural-man metaphor to the corporate context might be seen as stretching the limits of its application beyond the intended context of adler’s premise. this might be the case, but in terms of its heuristic value it does offer interesting conceptual and research possibilities for practitioners. • the meta and micro levels of democracy in south africa provide the parameters for communication convergence and interconnectivity in all spheres of society. the potential in spite of the legacy of the past to explore the multi-cultural-man metaphor forms part of the intricacies of the south african society. this may also be the case for other traumatised societies as well. • the significance of the dialogical approach in building trust and commitment, also at the emotional levels, seems to be a key aspect in integrated public relations. • stakeholder relations construction and de-construction without inter alia trust, commitment and a sense of belonging can only lead to polarisation and power struggles which would render authentic stakeholder relations impossible. 207 societies in transition: multi-cultural-man and strategic public relations (pr) challenges for pr practitioners in south africa • the manifestation of stakeholder relations and the construction of new identities through strategic integrated public relations could be a life-long process – more so in the south african case with a history which hardly has any shared symbols and common destiny among the different groups. in this case, corporations have to operate on and across boundaries to work towards new identities; they find themselves under enormous pressure to establish and maintain a brand that is stable. • south africans need to share a vision where the multi-cultural-man metaphor acts as the driving energy for the prosperity and dignity of everybody in a nonracial, non–sexist democratic society. the application of integrated strategic public relations in the corporate context can play a very significant role in transforming large sections of the life worlds of ordinary south africans. 208 societies in transition: 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successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence communitas issn 1023-0556 2008 13: 35 55 mark ingle* abstract this article attempts to isolate a “sufficient condition” for development communication to succeed. it juxtaposes two case studies the 19th century christian missionaries as a developmental success story, and the malign influence of soviet ideology as a developmental failure and analyses these case studies in the light of a variety of socalled “alternative theories” of development. human scale development, as articulated by manfred max-neef, emerges as being the most instructive of these paradigms. max-neef sought to identify the key “satisfiers” which would enable true development to occur. it is argued that many of the processes and activities that typically accompanied the communication of the message of christianity to southern african answer to the “satisfiers” that max-neef's schema calls for. the enquiry further argues that humankind's fundamental need for transcendence is the only need which, if satisfied, will of necessity culminate in true individual and, by extension, community development. this line of thinking ultimately draws its inspiration from the ancient greek concept of eros which is seen to have informed the early missionary movement's message of hope and faith. * mark ingle is a research associate in the centre for development support at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. introduction beginning in the late 1970s, a so-called “alternative” cluster of development approaches came to the fore in reaction against the then dominant paradigm of economic growth. prominent amongst these new approaches were human scale development, participatory development, and populism. this article will use these different approaches as lenses to try and solve a conceptual development puzzle that has far-reaching practical implications. this conundrum is that so much well-funded modern development effort has failed to achieve lasting results, whereas less materialistic social interventions have had major developmental impacts. the article examines this puzzle from the perspective of two historical case studies. the first of these is the 19th century missionary effort in southern africa which qualifies as a development miracle spanning 150 years. the second is the soviet economy. this was a human catastrophe that imploded after some 70 years but that still exerts a malign influence on many african states, angola being a case in point. these two scenarios will be explored in an effort to extract some common denominator that might serve to account for the success of the “miracle” and the failure of the “catastrophe”. the emphasis will however be on the positive case study, and on the human scale development approach. as the argument unfolds, it should become clearer that what is being sought for are the “satisfiers” that will help complete manfred max-neef’s “needs and satisfiers matrix” in respect of the crucial (and almost overlooked) fundamental need of “transcendence” (max-neef 1991: 32-33). the notion of “transcendence” is therefore pivotal to what follows. during the course of the argument it will become evident that the rubric, “alternative theories of development”, is a misnomer, and that these more human-centred approaches to development in fact pre-dated the so-called mainstream approaches. it will also become clear that the human scale development paradigm must inform the core of developmental community communications and work if one is not to substitute mere mass-modernisation for genuine development. before proceeding however, it is necessary to fight a preliminary rearguard action against the most alternative approach of them all – postor anti-development. for it is only by arguing the case for moral imperatives to action that we can salvage the argument for any kind of development at all. this will highlight the central argument of the paper: that “development” is an intrinsically moral endeavour, which depends fundamentally on the concept of transcendence of the human condition. “anti-development” countered there is no shortage of scholars calling for development to be abandoned. de rivero (2001: 1-10) for instance says that, for many third world countries, development has not worked, and it never will, because they are inherently “non-viable national 36 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence economies”. instead, he advocates a retreat into bare survival. munck (1999: 200) approvingly quotes esteva that “development stinks!”, while sardar (1999: 46,57) professes to find in development nothing less than the “eurocentric colonisation of time” against which he proposes the “islamization of knowledge” (and much else besides). nustad (2001: 480) cites sachs and escobar as seeing the “past 40 years of development as a direct continuation of the colonial project”. according to tucker (1999: 2) “development is not a natural process although it has been accorded such a status in the mythology of western beliefs”. santos (1999: 35), echoing escobar (1995: 215), argues that instead of “looking for models of alternative development the time has come to create alternatives to development”. escobar (1995: 213) also claims that development is “an all-powerful mechanism for the production and management of the third world in the post-1945 period”. and so on. pieterse (1999: 73,79) perhaps gets to the heart of the problem though when he asks, rhetorically, “who are we to intervene in other people’s lives?”, and speaks of “the insurmountable arrogance of intervening”. this is a valid question. who indeed do those who advocate development think they are? interestingly enough it was pieterse himself (in haines 2000: 57) who pointed out, apropos of the “anti-development” lobby, that “despite a stringent critique of developmental discourse, no coherent and viable alternatives to development are offered”. this sentiment is echoed by other commentators and, while no doubt valid, has a defeatist ring about it. it seems to imply that one might as well muddle along with development, until something better crops up. but the anti-development movement’s arguments can be countered in any number of ways. the following outlines but one approach. cooper (2002: 91-92) makes the point that “the idea that human populations could evolve and progress was a very old one – that states should intervene to shape such a process much less so”. development as a self-consciously state-driven socio-economic activity (a “project”?) only really came to the fore in the immediate aftermath of world war two. at that time it was essentially a matter of stimulating national economic growth. modern day development thus had its secular genesis in macro-economics. economics postulates a conceptual entity called “economic man”. economic man is concerned with “maximising pools of net utility” which is to say that he always acts in his own enlightened, rational self-interest. all things being equal, economists’ models can predict to a fair degree of accuracy what economic man will do in any set of circumstances. economic man may not, superficially, appear to be a selfish being though. this is because he is quite capable of short-term self-sacrifice with a view to maximising his long-term gains. economics could not function without economic man but needless to say economic man, like “the average person”, does not exist in actuality. he is no more than a useful notional construct but some scholars forget this. economic man answers to what is known in moral philosophy as an egoist (not to be 37 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence confused with an egotist) and is in fact a moral zombie – he would sell his own family into slavery if it furthered his ultimate purposes. nation states often have an unfortunate tendency to act a bit like economic man. this is to say that nation states, answerable to their taxpayers, tend to operate on a quid pro quo basis. the same holds true of commercial undertakings, answerable to their shareholders, who calculate the success of their “corporate responsibility” programmes in terms of return on investment (roi). these entities cannot “give” in the true sense of the word because they are institutions who administer the assets of others in whose interests they act. their aim is to exact leverage, to make strategic trade-offs, to maximise market share and power. but ultimately, at the coal face so to speak, it is human beings who “deliver” development to communities, human beings who talk to communities – not states and not economies. given development’s strong economic underpinnings, too many critics make the mistake of conflating economic man with social man. by so doing they discount the possibility of disinterested human goodness, of doing “the right thing” for no other reason than that it is the right thing. munck, sardar and their ilk function within a hermeneutic (to use their jargon) of constant suspicion. “what’s in it for them?” is the stock response to acts of genuine philanthropy. regrettably, this may say more about them than it does about the benefactors’ motivations. we cannot speak of truly liberating development unless we allow for the possibility of disinterested altruism, of unconditional giving – “duties undertaken…not for power or profit but under moral and religious impulses” (johnson 2003: 22). that we are therefore speaking of a moral imperative to develop is central to what follows and this will be elaborated on in the context of max-neef’s human scale development. case study 1: the christianisation of southern africa the spread of christianity among the indigenous peoples of southern africa began in earnest with the establishment of the london missionary society (lms) in the cape in 1799. arguably one of the most important phenomena to have occurred in south african history, its runaway success has been “almost totally ignored by scholars” (elphick 1997: 7). what concerns us here however is not the number of souls the missionaries might claim to have been instrumental in saving. it is rather the extraordinary zeal with which africans embraced christianity (elphick 1997: 4; sanneh 2003) and the massive development which this enthusiasm brought in its wake. as will become apparent during the course of this discussion, we are looking at communication precipitating what could be deemed a developmental miracle which has, astonishingly enough, been all but swept under the carpet of history. if development attracts the ire of scholars of an anti-western persuasion, then it is cold distaste with which they castigate the missionaries who brought christianity to africa. never can a group of persons who honestly believed they were doing good, and who achieved so much, have been subjected to such a studied campaign of vilification and 38 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence abuse by so many (cf. prozesky 1995: 265-274). the following may serve to illustrate the point. in 1994 the eminent expatriate south african professor, dan jacobson, published an article touching on the mission at kuruman in the northern cape province. after presenting his credentials to express himself on the subject, he wrote of the missionaries’ interest in african languages: “they barely discuss the matter… generally they write as if the linguistic problem simply did not exist” (jacobson 1994a: 3). the insinuation is that they were too haughty and arrogant to descend to communicating via the indigenous languages. anyone with even a shallow acquaintance with the missionary literature will know, however, that this is a gross error, if not a calculated perversion of the truth meant to cast aspersions on the integrity of the missionaries, and to belittle their labours. the missionaries’ concern with acquiring the ability to communicate in indigenous languages bordered on the obsessive, so eager were they to produce translations of the bible and to preach in the local vernacular. their correspondence and their journals bear ample testimony to this. couzens (2003: 117,127) reveals that it was paris evangelical society policy “that preaching was never to be done through an interpreter” and that the missionary mabille was sufficiently fluent on his first arrival at morija in 1861 to deliver a sermon in sesotho. couzens, himself an erstwhile professor of african literature, goes on to record that, were it not for the missionaries, it is doubtful whether an indigenous african literature would ever have emerged. in natal, harriette colenso “achieved a marked command of the zulu language without which she would have been much handicapped in the work she chose to do” (nicholls 1995: 173). such refutations of jacobson could be multiplied ad infinitum (opland 1997; prozesky 1995: 93,114,168,184; schoeman 1991: 39,98). the missionaries entered into a terrain that was in the process of being devastated by the mfecane (holocaust). far from their setting out to destroy african customs, as has been alleged by a black methodist bishop (mail and guardian 4 july 2003: 5), the missionaries’ intention was frequently to assimilate with african societies as much as they could without doing violence to their christian values (hodgson 1997: 70; japha, japha, le grange & todeschini 1993: 30; prozesky 1995: 276). those practices that they did condemn (many but by no means all – cf. de kock 1996: 102; giliomee 2003: 454) were on the grounds of them being incompatible with christianity, and not because they were african per se. chief amongst the practices which elicited their displeasure were inter-tribal slavery, and the trafficking in children and “black ivory”, i.e. adult human beings (eldredge 1995: 148; kilby 2001: 243; prozesky 1995: 18); cannibalism (cope 1977: 184; prozesky 1995: 22); the feeding of human corpses to domestic dogs (cope 1977: 306; hodgson 1997: 76); the sometimes appalling treatment of women (brain 1997: 198; hodgson 1997: 74; prozesky 1995: 20-1,26 n.23); infanticide (prozesky 1995: 23 n.7); the ravages of the trade in firearms and cape brandy; and so forth. in plain language 39 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence this amounted to what they considered “barbarism” and the missionaries opposed it in the face of fierce resistance from tribal chiefs, white settlers and slavers, and sometimes the colonial authorities themselves (see for example comaroff & comaroff 1991: 2745). this catalogue of horrors is intended to throw into sharp relief the positive good that came to be accomplished. it must be clearly understood that the missionaries’ overriding concern was the communication of the gospel and the salvation of the indigenous people’s souls (prozesky 1995: 92,263,274) and not their personal development. they measured their performance by the number of converts they made. they did not come primarily to build educational complexes such as the lovedale institute (shepherd 1941); to establish orphanages, and world-class hospitals such as those of mariannhill (brain 1997: 199); to establish extensive small scale farming, and agricultural schools (brain 1997: 199; simon 1959); to introduce pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys, and cats for the control of domestic vermin (couzens 2003: 85); to establish burial societies and stokvels (simon 1959: 220); to send promising black students to study at european universities (hodgson 1997: 84); to formulate the orthographies for several indigenous languages (opland 1997); to establish numerous newspapers and printing presses and to write the histories of the indigenous peoples, as well as to publish indigenous historians writing in their mother tongues (opland 1997); to establish viable selfsustaining settlements that grew into towns; to advance the political rights of black people (hodgson 1997: 84); to be instrumental in the founding of the african national congress (hodgson 1997: 87); to introduce the market system for produce and arts and crafts (hodgson 1997: 80); to pioneer women’s groups (gaitskell 1997); to instil literacy (prozesky 1995: 307-10,332), and so forth. but all this they did anyway, as an incidental extra to spreading the gospel. and they suffered grievous hardship in the process (kilby 2001; schoeman 1994). it was a remarkable achievement which reached its apex over a period of about 150 years in 1948 when the nationalist government came to power. this government then unfortunately set out to work against what the missionaries had achieved (japha et al. 1993). while the government of the day attacked the institutions, a new breed of radical historians and theologians (cochrane 1987; lewis 1988; villa-vicencio 1988) arose which set about systematically undermining the missionaries’ reputation (prozesky 1995: 265-74). in jacobson’s words the missionaries “remain guilty as charged” (1994b: 117). guilty of what exactly one might ask. guilty of helping people realise their potentials? guilty of precipitating beneficial change? (see prozesky 1995 for a spirited rebuttal of some of the missionaries’ more hostile critics). here lies the key to the reactionary undertone that characterises so much of the radical left’s theological discourse. at heart it still harbours a romantic yearning for the feudal and the “traditional” (cf. cochrane 1987; lewis 1988; sardar 1999). what should be of especial interest to students of development communication though is how incredibly successful most of the missionary “projects” were, and how effectively they communicated their message. how did they manage this on a financial 40 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence shoestring, and in the face of state and societal hostility? what approaches to communication and development were unwittingly being given expression to in the process of the christianisation of southern africa? case study 2: the calamitous development of soviet russia and its influence on africa after widespread acclamation by western intellectuals of stalinism (lilla 2001: ix-xiii) it is only since the end of the cold war in 1990, and the opening up of the russian archives, that the true extent of the depravity of communist russia is beginning to come to light (see for example werth 2007). communism’s total suppression of religion brought in its wake parallels to all of the “barbarisms” mentioned in the foregoing section. for the mfecane there were stalin’s purges. the soviet’s industrial development was grounded in forced (i.e. slave) labour. thousands of gulag labour camp inmates were reduced to cannibalism. bodies were cast out to the wolves. instead of the sniffing out of witches, stalin’s police, working on quota systems, would arbitrarily arrest citizens to stock the labour camps (applebaum 2004; werth 2007). as minogue (2003: 9) puts it: “far from forging ahead into the modern world [the soviets] lost much of their moral and social capital and ended up with an obsolete rusting industry built over a pile of corpses.” part one of the voluminous black book of communism (courtois, werth, panné, paczkowski, bartosek & margolin 1999) itemises the crimes of the soviet regime in exhaustive detail for those who have the stomach to read it. in a discussion of the environmental and human devastation wrought by communist development in the ukraine, vovk and prugh (2003: 14) come directly to the point: “soviet development philosophy was suicidal.” the legacy of stalinism still disfigures virtually all aspects of everyday life in present-day russia. for purposes of this study, there is little need to belabour the matter any further, other than perhaps to flag the calamitous impact of the soviet’s “developmental” ideology on africa. a brief examination of the fate of angola may suffice to illustrate just how pernicious an influence this was. in 1950 angola was described as being “the largest, richest and most important portion of the portuguese colonial empire” (cardoso 1950: 14). its chief exports by value were coffee, maize, sisal and diamonds, in that order (cardoso 1950: 130-1). the angola development fund’s major projects included hydro-electric installations, and the survey and construction of transport infrastructure (cardoso 1950: 87). angola was recognised as being a country of “immense” natural resource-based wealth and “developmental potential” but in the early 1960s the country descended into war against the colonial authorities, and by the turn of the century, 25 years after independence, “much of the infrastructure had been destroyed or had been left to decay and most sectors of the economy” were producing less than they had before independence with the signal exception of the oil industry (hodges 2001:7). 41 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence immediately following the withdrawal of the portuguese army in july 1974 “the soviet union significantly increased its financial and military support to the mpla faction” – many of whose cadres “had been trained in the ussr in the 1960s and were well versed in the prevailing marxist-leninist theories… of scientific socialism” (santamaria 1999: 696-7). it is beyond the scope of this paper to chronicle the brutality and chaos that angola descended into after the mpla came to power in 1975 and simultaneously declared a one-party state. suffice it to say that soviet-inspired scientific socialism “proved disastrous… causing the collapse of both industrial and agricultural production” (meredith 2005: 602) and the effective “pauperisation of the population” (hodges 2001: 52) all within a period of 15 years. certainly the colonial power had left angola ill-prepared for independence, and the destabilising effects of the war in neighbouring south west africa (namibia) hardly helped matters, but the new country could not have chosen a worse role model to emulate than the soviet union, by way of fashioning what hodges (2001) has termed the “afro-stalinist” state. statement of the development problem the preceding two scenarios give rise to many questions, some of which will be addressed in the course of the upcoming discussion. there is however an extraordinary dichotomy between the two case studies which suggests the central problem that will be dealt with here. it is this: why do some development projects that appear to have nothing going for them, succeed, whereas others that may even have a world power backing them, fail? how is it that a band of indifferently educated working class people managed, during an age when “development” as we understand it had not even been conceived of yet, to achieve so much under the most unfavourable of circumstances? what did they have that we today are blind to? from a cursory overview of the case studies, it appears that there are three key dimensions to effective development: participation, paternalism and populism. as the ensuing sections will show, participation enables empowerment; paternalism implies a sense of duty; and populism enables people to transcend the crass materialism of their surroundings. the act, and indeed the art, of communication is immanent within all three of these developmental dimensions. one reads in the development literature of such-and-such a factor being a “necessary but not sufficient” condition for development to succeed. could it be that development has its own “holy grail” – an elusive sufficient condition such that it – and it alone – might guarantee success? this study will attempt to show that there may well be a sufficient condition for development and will now proceed to try and identify that condition. 42 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence the participatory approach that development miscarried in the soviet union partially due to a lack of participation by the unfortunate “beneficiaries” seems obvious. the denial of participation would readily explain what vovk and prugh (2003: 2) identify as “a widespread sense of powerlessness, distrust of institutions, and apathy” – and this 13 years after the end of the cold war. similarly in angola “a continuing climate of fear” resulting from the “overtly totalitarian one-party system… unencumbered by any form of electoral accountability” (hodges 2001:168) effectively annulled any nascent participatory ethos that the fact of independence might have kindled. but the example of china should prevent one jumping to conclusions. china has seen phenomenal development during the selfsame period and is hardly less of an authoritarian society (kitching 1989: 104; yatsko 2001). the discrepancy between the performances of russia and china is a complex subject that cannot be attempted here but yatsko (2001: 128) makes an interesting observation. she comments on the complete sea-change in student attitudes since the 1989 tiananmen square massacre. invidious as recourse to cultural traits may be, it seems that china’s embrace of capitalism has struck an answering chord in the chinese psyche, especially the young. yatsko finds that chinese youth are now so intensely ambitious, so industrious, and so full of great expectations for their future, that they have lost interest in clamouring for any form of participatory role in society. it would appear that the very real prospect of transcending their current condition is such that chinese youth have somehow sublimated what max-neef (1991: 32) would term their “fundamental need for participation”. could this be explained in terms of a “satisfier” of the need for transcendence synergistically subsuming, and thereby neutralising, the need for participation? whatever the case, it is very apparent that china has given its young people hope (visions, dreams) in a way that both russia and angola have failed to do. this is important for what follows. in the context of the missionaries, henkel and stirrat (2001) advance the fascinating thesis that participatory practices are religious in their very essence. hence: “‘[p]articipation’ has… far reaching connotations involving a specific vision of society as ‘communitas’ and, at times, of evangelical promises of salvation” (2001: 172). communication constitutes the very essence of participatory practice and it goes without saying that the missions were intensely participatory institutions. botes (1999: 138) points out that, “participatory development… is about processes whereby people empower themselves to participate continuously in improving their own destiny” (emphasis added). this is crucial in the current context. central to the christian message was that the pastors or missionaries could only help (facilitate) people to save their own souls. this required skilled leadership (cf. botes 1999: 132139) which had to transcend mere technique to the point of becoming an art form. the essence of the pastor’s task was to equip people to take responsibility for their own salvation. the missionaries never claimed to be able to save anyone, all they could do, at best, was to activate the thirst for redemption which was assumed to be innate in 43 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence every sentient human being. and because, in the christian universe, this salvation could only finally take place in the next world, the need for transcendence in this life was infinite. the egalitarianism of the ideal participatory environment finds its echo in the christian teaching that before christ all are equal. the impact of this on the african psyche, which had been conditioned to a collective subordination (prozesky 1995: 16-22), can only have been seismic. it was this realisation which gave the emergent “schools” elite amongst the xhosa (the “schools” were the missionary-aligned xhosa while the “reds” were those who preferred to avoid the missionary influence) the confidence to demand participation in the running of their own affairs and to organise themselves politically. it is in effect the “schools” who now run south africa whereas the “reds” are still mired in poverty in the transkei. according to nelson mandela (kessler 1999: 228), on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the world council of churches: “…my generation is the product of church education. without the missionaries and other religious organisations i would not have been here today… when i say we are the product of missionary education, i recognize that i will never have sufficient words to thank the missionaries for what they did for us.” thus we clearly see the potency of participatory communication to effect personal change, but most especially when conducted in a context where the possibility of transcendence is being held out. if we take the transformation exemplified by the xhosa in conjunction with the chinese students’ example, we can see the animating power of awakening the need for transcendence. it is this that participation must strive for. in defence of paternalism christianity is nothing if not paternalistic. botes (1999: 44,69) in eschewing all forms of paternalism writes that “the real experts… are community members themselves”. there is some scepticism about this (cf. henkel & stirrat 2001: 171). is it really so? how should we reconcile christian paternalism with development? it can be argued that many of the social failings one sees in south africa today are due to a lack of paternalism and that, far from paternalism being undesirable, what is needed is more of it. paternalism (as with participatory development) can be used for good or ill (atkinson 2007: 91-6). “good” paternalism is a responsible form of oversight that knows when it is time to “let go”. it is a lack of paternalism that has cynically exposed the very poor to the pernicious effects of the state lottery. it was a lack of paternalism that allowed the extortionate micro cash loans business to flourish. the present south african government is currently (with often deleterious consequences) destroying the fabric of the paternalistic relationship that hitherto obtained between farmer and farm worker by making their relationship a purely mercenary one (atkinson 2007: 96-9). where paternalism is benign can there be any real objection to it? is it not perhaps irresponsible prematurely to break down paternalistic patterns of development? 44 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence the united nations has enthusiastically propagated the notion of a “right to development”. although one must exercise some circumspection with the rights that emanate from this body (economist 24 march 2007: 12,64) let us for the sake of argument grant a right to development, seeing that it enjoys such wide acceptance. rights entail duties and obligations, just as much as “up” presupposes “down”. it must be noted that a “right to development” is not the same as a “right to develop”. the former right is expressed in the passive voice. it is a right to be a recipient of something. this instantly posits an implicit duality. we thus have a developer and a developee (for want of a better word) – an agent and a beneficiary, namely the rights bearer. the developee has a right (with associated duties); the developer has duties and obligations. these latter are intrinsically moral obligations because they arise out of rights. these moral obligations, in execution, are essentially paternalistic and there is simply no escaping from this, discomfiting as it might be. thus: either we abandon “the right to development”, or we allow for enlightened paternalism. we have now returned, via an indirect route, to the “moral imperative” argument advanced against the anti-development cohort earlier and, given the right to development, the way is clear for the missionaries’ christian paternalism. the parallels with the christian cosmology of christ descending to earth to redeem a fallen mankind loom very large indeed. on reflection then, we should be able to grant that enlightened paternalism (as opposed to a totalitarian subjugating or suffocating variety) is not necessarily incompatible with the participatory approach when understood as a process with an end point (i.e. an exit strategy from the familial nest). the (neo)populist approach there is something deeply appealing to human nature in the cluster of ruggedly selfreliant values that attaches itself to the populist vision. populism, broadly speaking, arose in reaction to depersonalising industrialisation and holds out for “an alternative of small scale individual enterprise” (kitching 1989: 19). it focuses on “the retention of a peasant agriculture and of non-agricultural petty commodity production, and on a world of villages and small towns rather than large industrial cities” (kitching in hulme & truter 1990: 58). this vision is underpinned by notions of simplicity, self-reliance and self-sufficiency. it is in fact precisely what de rivero (2001) recommends for most of the undeveloped world, and what climate change activists are increasingly urging upon the developed world. the missionaries were fundamentally populist, and their settlements would have served admirably as prototypes for the kinds of utopian community envisaged by the early french social theorists (prozesky 1995; wilson 1991: 119-130). as cooper (2002: 16) says, “mission lobbies favoured a form of empire that gave space to christian conversion and to encouraging africans to become self-reliant small-scale producers”. hundreds of small utopian village communities sprang up in america from the 1830s on. these arose out of a direct rejection of industrialisation and urbanisation and “were formed according to various idealistic blueprints for social and economic harmony” 45 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence (kolodny 1983: xii). although none of these communities lasted more than a few decades it is an ideal that lives on and is periodically revived (most notably in the 1960s and then again in the 1990s). in the 19th century, populist-inspired settlements were much more of a viable proposition than might be the case today in our highly integrated and specialised world. although the populist vision is hopelessly romantic and unrealistic, as an economic proposition at scale for today’s world, that is not to say that its ideals and values should be cast aside. there is no reason why individuals should not cultivate a populist mindset of intelligent self-reliance even if they never opt for a rural plot or for small town living. populism as an aspiration will endure for as long as there exist dehumanising cities and institutions, in contradistinction to which it can define itself. this is as it should be, for such ideals may be the very stuff of transcendence. human scale development manfred max-neef (1991: 15) in advancing the desirability of a “transdisciplinary”, over against an “interdisciplinary”, approach to development, lays the foundations for his stress upon the need for “personal involvement” in development. this is an important preliminary to rescuing development from sterile academia and situating it squarely within the ambit of communication with warm, flesh and blood human beings. he goes on (1991: 16-19) to establish three “postulates” underpinning human scale development, namely: • development is about people and not about objects; • fundamental human needs are finite, few and classifiable; and • these needs are the same in all cultures and in all historical periods. what changes are the means by which the needs are satisfied. are these postulates valid? are they an adequate reflection of an objective reality? the first point amounts to the assertion that development is for people. this is virtually axiomatic and enjoys wide acceptance. it would be an odd definition of development that left people out of the equation, thus the first postulate is as good as true by definition. it has been a commonplace of moral philosophy ever since aristotle that human wants are many, whereas human needs are few. max-neef (1991: 16), perhaps unwittingly, reveals his origins as an economist by claiming that “it is traditionally believed that human needs tend to be infinite”. that may hold true for the discipline of economics but certainly not for other disciplines that have focussed on human needs. he appears to be confounding “needs” with the economists’ conception of “demand” which incorporates both needs and wants. the second postulate is therefore unremarkable and can be taken as given. it is in the third postulate that the real interest of max-neef’s philosophy lies. if he is right that fundamental human needs are not culturally determined, but apply across the 46 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence board so to speak, this is not trivially true – it is critically true. the implications are enormous. for one thing it would give the lie to arguments that development is essentially a western undertaking with no legitimacy outside of that context (cf. tucker’s assertion cited earlier that development “is not a natural process”). the needs max-neef (1991: 32-3) advances as being universal are: subsistence; protection; affection; understanding; participation; idleness; creation; identity; and freedom. the importance of max-neef’s schema of fundamental human needs, and their “satisfiers”, for an understanding of development is profound. it owes much to aristotle’s conceptual distinction between instrumental worth and intrinsic worth and it goes to the core of any development project. aristotle in the nichomachean ethics argues that what all human beings ultimately want is happiness, but what they need is a life of arete, i.e. virtue or excellence. the saying that “virtue is its own reward” derives from this. the distinction between the instrumental and the intrinsic is well illustrated by the fact that people will often, when asked what they need, unreflectingly reply, “more money”. but people cannot eat banknotes. the response, “money for what?” sets in motion a chain of enquiry of great value – one which makes manifest those assumptions and motivations which are unconscious or latent in people’s lives. the real value of max-neef’s schema lies in its suggestiveness (using its form as a point of departure) much more than in its more prescriptive particularities, the details of which could be argued into perpetuity. one could for example object that the fundamental need for struggle and challenge, or the need for hope, has been overlooked. one might quibble with “participation” being expressed as a “fundamental” need. is participation really sought as an end in itself, or is it more usually instrumental (i.e. a satisfier) in the meeting of some yet more fundamental need? but these finer details are not ultimately that important, in and of themselves. it is the instrumental process in the course of which individuals and communities uncover their own intrinsic meanings that is so vital. max-neef’s third postulate also suggests that the fundamental needs apply in all historical periods, although he does say that this cannot be claimed with “absolute certainty” (1991: 27). to cater for this uncertainty he goes on to suggest that fundamental human needs develop as the species evolves. given that the species evolves so slowly, perhaps he should have substituted this with “as society evolves”. whatever the case, there is a second crucial distinction that any analysis of needs must take into account (and which max-neef does not appear to). this is the difference between felt needs and ascribed needs. as ignatieff (1984: 11) says: it is also notorious how self-deceiving we are about our needs. by definition, a person must know that he desires something. it is quite possible, on the other hand, to be in need of something and not know that one is. just as we often desire what we do not need, so we often need what we do not consciously desire. 47 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence there is a certain utilitarian sterility to max-neef’s nine fundamental needs considered in toto. let us imagine a fully self-realised individual who has attained to a situation of perfect satisfaction and equipoise as regards all nine needs – a happy medium of neither too much nor too little. what then? where to next, if not sublime boredom? is there not something missing? indeed there is. ironically it is max-neef’s (1991: 27) tenth “afterthought” need of transcendence which is the “glue” which holds his entire edifice together. transcendence – the most fundamental need it is strange that max-neef (1991: 27) does not consider the need for transcendence to be universally applicable when one considers that the pyramids of egypt, built by what was arguably one of the most mythopoeic societies ever to have existed, still stand for all to see. max-neef says, “… it is likely that in the future the need for transcendence, which is not included in our proposal as we do not consider it universal, will become as universal as the other needs”. max-neef (1991: 17) posits “subsistence, that is, to remain alive” as being the fundamental need in what is (pace maslow’s hierarchy of needs) an otherwise non-hierarchical structure. but is it? if subsistence were primary how might we account for self-sacrifice? how to explain the millions who have given their lives in wars for what they believed to be a just cause? the parents who consciously lay down their lives that their children might live? the current islamist suicide bombers? the christian martyrs? one can think of endless such examples and in fact there must be very few people who, in extremity, would not sacrifice their lives for some or other transcendent reason. max-neef has economic man in mind when he says subsistence is our most deeply rooted need. many scholars coming from other disciplines (theology, philosophy or psychology to name but three) might unhesitatingly opt for the need for transcendence as being yet more basic than the need for brute survival. it was the ascribed need for transcendence in southern africa’s indigenous peoples that the missionaries, after having first activated it, then satisfied so successfully. the extraordinary thing about transcendence, and what makes it the most potent of all the needs, is that it is the one need that is indeed infinite – it can never be fully satisfied in this life. thus there is never any question of “is this all there is to life?” in the supposedly fully developed individual because the infinite need for transcendence dictates that no state of affairs whatsoever can possibly exhaust its potential for being met. by pitching their labours at satisfying transcendence over against subsistence, the missionaries were unwittingly employing the most supremely synergistic satisfier imaginable. in one fell swoop they met, by default, all of max-neef’s original nine needs including subsistence. this is because they communicated to their communities a reason to live – not houses, clothing, food, health, work or transport (although these came naturally in due course), but meaning and hope (prozesky 1995: 308-10). they helped them, greatly assisted by literacy it must be added, to envisage themselves as people with potential, they gave them a vision of what they could become. 48 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence it takes a real effort of imagination for westerners, raised with a solid sense of identity and in a society in which the primacy of the “i” is taken as given, to appreciate the transformative impact on the aboriginal mind of the missionary message. this message was, “to god you are unique. you are special. you are central. you are loved. you are wanted. you can be immortal.” this is the beginning of development with a heart. if this approach is not human-centred and human-scale then it is hard to conceive of what is. it is also hard to think of anything less like the soviet communist model which treated people as dispensable and irrelevant units or ciphers in its brutal collective machinations. the missionaries by contrast might die satisfied if they had saved just one soul for god (prozesky 1995: 92). what then was the miraculously synergistic satisfier that the missionaries applied to meet the fundamental need for transcendence? surely if we could harness the intensely human, hands-on energy of this elusive satisfier, this sufficient condition, in development work we could even leave the state and the macro-economy to go their own ways? for, as korten (1990: 124) points out, “the surest way to kill a [developmental] movement is to smother it with money.” how did a handful of people (there were never more than 2000 missionaries in the field in south africa at any one time) manage to inculcate an exotic system of values that is now, implicitly at least, subscribed to by at least 36 million south africans if one includes the so-called zionist or independent african churches (hexham 1994; kritzinger 1986)? eros – the ultimate satisfier it is not too radical a conceptual leap to equate development with transcendence. this is to say that development is transcendence insofar as we engage in it not for some greater good but as an end worth pursuing in its own right. if we look at the empirical case study offered by the missionary effort we could say that development is the actualisation of the universal (i.e. not eurocentric) human urge towards transcendence – it is transcendence in action, transcendence as process, transcendence as actualised by inter-personal communication. ul haq (1999: 16) and van zyl (1995: 1) are correct in not denying the efficacy of economic growth. there is no need to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. development studies as a discipline should itself develop and outgrow the simplistic adversarial “either/or” approach that wants to jettison everything that has gone before in favour of the latest trend. as dichter (2003: 63) points out, development practice is, in effect, always incrementalist. it is about what is found to work, and there is no place for a rejection of the role of the state, or the economy, on the grounds of ideological prejudice. pragmatism dictates that one adopts what is good and discards what is bad. the macro-economy is however essentially amoral while state interventions are invariably immoral, in the strict sense outlined in the earlier discussion of egoism. this is because the state generally looks for some kind of short-term payback. in advancing development the state does so for instrumental considerations, not for its intrinsic good. it would be a rare government that would countenance development if this might result 49 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence in its losing power, and conversely, governments are often committed to development only insofar as not “delivering” might get them voted out of power. this is not cynicism – it is how politics functions. human scale development, however, provides for a moral imperative to develop. what characterises it? from the missionaries’ example can we infer that the synergistic satisfier we are seeking is the christianisation of the world? or can we broaden that to say some or other form of religiosity must be present? in this secular world we would not get very far with such an approach, and in any event there are too many exceptions (china, japan) which disprove it one way or the other. it must be admitted that the panacea is hard to pinpoint. but perhaps if we look at what the missionary movement amounted to (i.e. what range of transcendence satisfiers it delivered) we can detect some underlying factor. for a start, the missionaries, in the very act of facilitating the spiritual transcendence of others, were giving living expression to, and communicating, their own personal need for transcendence. thus we see the extraordinarily productive, synergistic power of their work – the need and that need in turn actuating its own fulfilment. that they were committed to their task goes without saying (they frequently gave their lives for the cause). they were “in it for the long haul” – they had no illusions about quick fixes. they identified themselves absolutely with the poor and the oppressed, and they had an unwavering faith in activating the essential goodness of humanity. theirs was an overriding concern. they harboured no doubts about the rightness of their cause. they persevered in the face of sometimes impossible obstacles. and they “embedded” themselves within the communities. they prayed together, they worked together, and they sang hymns together. most importantly they gave the indigenous people a voice that went beyond the merely audible, and a means to commit their cultures and their histories to print. if an individual were to embody all of these qualities we might say they were “christlike” or saintly and if we turn to history for the impact such individuals can make, without the resources of state or economy, we would uncover names such as henrietta stockdale, emily hobhouse, mother theresa, florence nightingale (not to mention jesus christ) all of whom made a positive difference often in excess of anything any state has achieved. what was it that set them apart? following beukes (1992: 3) “development cannot be delivered or provided to people. it is something positive that happens…” (own emphasis). but what makes it happen? what is the catalyst? perhaps lilla (2001: 208) gets closest: that force is love, eros. for plato, to be human is to be a striving creature, one who does not live simply to meet his most basic needs but is somehow driven to expand and sometimes elevate those needs, which then become new objects of striving. why do humans ‘stretch’ themselves in this way? for plato this is a deep psychological question, one to which the characters in his dialogues offer many 50 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence different answers. perhaps the loveliest is that given by diotima… that ‘all men are pregnant in respect to both body and soul’. conclusion what are the practical implications of the foregoing argument for community development practitioners in south africa? for the development problem posed earlier? can we seriously advocate eros (the productive capacity of love to effect transformation) as part of an alternative approach to practical development problems in south africa? aristotle thought we could. as per veatch (1974: 120): most of us nowadays are inclined to assume that the purpose and function of the state is to make available to us various so-called external goods, hopefully in ever increasing amounts, and so to provide us with an ever higher standard of living. but not so aristotle, for his constant message is that the aim of the state is not so much to provide men with goods, as to make them good men. and by ‘good’ aristotle means ‘morally good’. if that is the task of the state then how much more so must it apply to individual moral agents (such as ourselves) actually to be good, to do good, and to communicate that good? as veatch remarks, “this is a theme that may sound strange to modern ears”. but aristotle is quite correct. the universally synergistic satisfier, the sufficient condition, we have been trying to find, such that development projects will not fail, cannot fail, boils down in the end to those who give expression to eros, in other words “good people.” it is that simple and that difficult. as ul haq (1999: 3) says, “the most difficult thing in life is to discover the obvious.” 51 an analysis of successful community development communication: missionaries, max-neef and the universal need for transcendence references applebaum, a. 2004. gulag: a history. new york: random house. atkinson, d. 2007. going for broke: the fate of farm workers in arid south africa. cape town: hsrc press. beukes, e.p. 1992. human development: its nature and relevance for a post-apartheid south africa. bloemfontein: university of the free state. botes, l.j.s. 1999. community participation in the upgrading of informal settlements: theoretical and practical guidelines. unpublished ph.d. thesis. bloemfontein: university of the free state. brain, j. 1997. moving from 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communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 183 201 thoko mnisi, naydene de lange and claudia mitchell* abstract this article outlines the use of a digital archive, a data set of staged photos around hiv and aids related stigma, with educators in two rural schools, exploring their views on using it in their teaching to address stigma. a qualitative research approach, using community-based participatory methodology, was used with educators in two rural schools. the findings suggest that the use of ict in a rural context can enable educators to access, create and share digital material, which is relevant and realistic and individually tailored, in creative ways to address hiv and aids related stigma in the school. technology can facilitate community participation in the production of local knowledge, however, language, computer literacy and access continue to remain a barrier. this work is exploratory and encourages further work around how visual data in a digital archive can facilitate social change. * thoko mnisi is a ph.d. candidate in the department of education at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. prof. naydene de lange is hiv and aids research chair at the same university, and mnisi’s promoter. prof. claudia mitchell is the james mcgill professor of visual arts-based methodologies, hiv and aids and social change in the faculty of education at the mcgill university in montreal in canada. she is also an honorary professor at the university of kwazulunatal. introduction once seen as a death sentence, hiv and aids, at least in the west, is now increasingly viewed as a chronic but manageable disease. however in sub-saharan africa hiv and aids remains a critical issue, particularly in the province of kwazulu-natal where there are still districts where, for example, more than 40 percent of women attending antenatal clinics are hiv-positive (caprisa 2005). while there are many interventions and policies that are under exploration across south africa, one area that remains under-studied is the extent to which participatory visual methodologies such as photovoice and participatory video as areas of intervention might contribute to engaging communities in not only identifying the key issues but actually participating in an analysis of the data. in our work with communities, one of the important areas that has been identified as a barrier to addressing hiv and aids is the issue of stigma. for example, people may avoid voluntary counselling and testing (vct) because they fear stigma, or they may avoid disclosure (and even the possibility of accessing grants and services) because of stigma. in a photovoice project in rural kwazulu-natal where cameras were given to young people to document how they envisioned stigma (moletsane, de lange, mitchell, stuart, buthelezi & taylor 2006), we saw firsthand some of the ways in which stigma remains one of the challenges to addressing hiv and aids. their images and captions powerfully captured some of the despair that is attached to stigma (abdool-karim & abdool-karim 2005; haour-knipe 1993; moletsane, de lange, mitchell stuart & buthelezi 2007; poindexter, 2005). in this article we are interested in how researchers working with the visual data that emerges in projects like the one noted above might draw on information and communication technologies (icts) and the notion of the digital archive as an “entry point” to community-based data analysis of photo data. a digital archive as explored in this article is an electronic “library” for managing, storing and disseminating visual data. to date, the idea of communities working with their own data (visual or otherwise) has been somewhat absent from the literature, even in participatory research. here it is argued that an important new direction in social research in the area of hiv and aids is the inclusion of ict components. technology has become popular, accessible and applied to various fields. roberto and carlyle (2008) take this up and argue that the use of computers and the internet could play an important role in hiv interventions, as such technologies are becoming more cost effective in reaching a large number of users, allowing individually tailored messages to be regularly updated and providing researchers and practitioners with a high level of control over implementation and monitoring. this article focuses on one application of icts in addressing hiv and aids, highlighting the ways in which educators in a rural community participate in using a digital archive, with a data set of photographs of stigma, to address issues around hiv and stigma. 184 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? framing the study as much as the focus of the article is on icts, there is still a need to understand stigma itself, why hiv remains highly stigmatised, its relationship to gender and sexuality in the context of hiv and aids, the psychosocial effects of hiv-stigma and how it has been or is being addressed, as it is a key barrier to hiv-prevention. the work is framed within three broad areas, namely (1) psychosocial approaches to addressing hiv and aids; (2) the use of participatory visual methodologies for engaging communities and as a way to see the issues “through their eyes”; and (3) the use of participatory digital archives in working with visual data linked to psychosocial aspects of hiv and aids. psychosocial approaches in drawing on a psychosocial approaches we emphasise the effects of the immediate social and situational context on the person who stigmatises, on those stigmatised, and on their interaction and ultimately on the personal, social, affective, cognitive, and behavioural effects thereof on the persons. stigma as it has been described is a social construct and the conceptualisation of stigma could provide an entry point to reduce stigma in all levels of the ecosystem (dovidio, major & crocker 2000), i.e. the individual, the family and the school in a rural community. informed by the notion of dovidio et al. (2000), as explained above, firstly, we also draw on the values of community psychology, concurring with seedat, duncan and lazarus (2001) that the values of community psychology are useful to think about transforming the way in which psychological problems are conceptualised and how they are understood. also, de lange, greyling and leslie (2005) point out that hiv and aids find its cause in the whole ecosystem, and therefore the solutions should be located in the whole ecosystem. community psychology focuses on people within their social worlds and uses this understanding to improve their wellbeing, to facilitate care and compassion, self-determination and participation, respect for diversity, human dignity and social justice (visser 2007). it is about understanding and helping, focusing on social issues and settings that influence groups and organisations (visser 2007) and in this case, the focus is on the school setting. the goal is to optimise the wellbeing of communities and individuals by innovative alternative interventions designed in collaboration with affected community members (duffy & wong 2000). a community psychology approach is embedded in an ecosystemic approach (donald, lazarus & lolwana 2002), which makes a valuable contribution by including a much wider social context in addressing hiv-stigma, which is not merely an individual’s problem but has its origins in the broader social context (eloff & ebersöhn 2004). participatory visual methodologies participatory visual methodologies are appropriate for involving the community and especially the youth in hiv-interventions that seek to address the “sick of aids” phenomenon (mitchell & smith 2003). these methodologies have shown the potential to bring about social change through democratic community-based participation while enabling the community’s voice to be heard (mitchell, de lange, moletsane, stuart & 185 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? buthelezi 2005). visual and arts-based methods are a broad category that includes drawing, photography, music, poetry, dance, electronic media like video and computers. all these are used as tools to entertain, teach and learn, foster creativity, self expression and interpersonal communication and the relationship between visual art, history, culture and society (mitchell 2008). digital archives in visual research building digital archives has become a key area in the field of information management including work in the area of hiv and aids. digital archives are valuable for present and future generations of researchers and the public at large (park, mitchell & de lange 2008). however, the full potential of such material can be realised only if the resulting digital objects are easily accessible, have a suitable search function, can be manipulated and are accompanied by sufficient metadata to support the use of data (linden & green 2006). metadata is data or descriptive information about a resource (lombardi 2008). gill (1998, in park et al. 2008) defines metadata as structured descriptions – stored as computer data – that attempt to describe the essential properties of other discrete computer data objects, e.g. digital objects (photographs), in terms of the title, creator, subject, date, keywords, abstract, indexes finding aids, hyperlinked relations between resources and annotations by users (park et al. 2008). archives have a great deal to contribute to those who are exploring social life as it is unfolding. in the context of visual representations of hiv and aids there is a strong case to be made for the use of archives to capture how the pandemic is unfolding. alongside this is the need to develop systems for precise and consistent record-keeping in an attempt to satisfy the norms of transparency, verifiability and repurposing of data. elsewhere the process of creating a digital archive is described in more detail (park, mitchell & de lange 2007). working with educators, community health care workers and learners in the learning together project (de lange 2003), and using photovoice to address issues around hiv and aids, a collection of about 500 photographs was generated. in considering how these might be stored, managed and made accessible to researchers, community members and educators, a protocol was developed to pilot, working with a small data set emanating from working with grade 8 and 9 learners around addressing stigma in their school and community. the photographs depicted the learners’ awareness of hiv and aids and awareness of hiv-related stigma and its impact, but also acceptance of personal agency and taking action (see moletsane et al. 2007). the 125 photographs (from the larger collection) were scanned, coded by adding metadata, using dublin core (2008) and greenstone software (n.d.) to build the digital archive, which is currently hosted on http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za on a restricted site. methodology for this research project a community-based participatory methodology was adopted, and informed by the theoretical frameworks previously explained. community-based participatory research (cbpr) aims to bridge the gap between knowledge produced and 186 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? practices used in communities to improve health (clinical information 2004). as a methodology, active community engagement in shaping the research and intervention strategies is promoted, as well as in conducting the research (o’fallon, tyson & dearry 2000). cbpr is also an interactive cyclical process, incorporating research, reflection and action. in this study previously produced visual data (the photographs) was taken back to the community that participated in the initial research, aiming to facilitate their accessing and working with the data to improve the health of the community. involving the community is important, and parker and aggleton (2003) urge such involvement of the intended beneficiaries in all strategies related to hiv-intervention. cbpr recognises the unique strengths that each participant brings (eloff & ebersöhn 2004) and has been used in interventions for stigmatised mental illnesses (cowie, boardman, dawkins & jennifer 2004). in the process of exploring what educators can do with the data, community-based participatory methodology also enabled us to collaborate with the community in a way that facilitates agency (marsden 2002). although this was not an intervention programme, the participatory nature of the work can bring about social change, as it benefits the community and develops knowledge applicable to their settings but also transferable to other settings (macaulay 2007). it is important to note that cbpr focuses on research which is of importance to the community and seeks to combine the knowledge with action and the intention of achieving social change (cornwall & jewkes 1995). more often the culture of the community can present itself as a barrier (stuart 2006), and cbpr can help overcome cultural challenges when conducting research in culturally diverse or unique communities. this is also relevant in this research as the educators were working a rural area in kwazulu-natal. research setting the two schools from which the participants were drawn are located in rural kwazulunatal, where statistics indicate that the hiv and aids prevalence rate (caprisa 2005) and aids-related morbidity and mortality are having an overwhelming impact (macqueen & abdool-karim 2007). as noted above, this research drew from secondary data of hiv-stigma staged photographs which were taken by grade 8 and 9 learners in the vulindlela district in exploring and addressing hiv-related stigma. the digitisation of photographs took place at the centre for visual methodologies for social change which is housed in the faculty of education at the university of kwazulunatal. the exploration of the archive with the educators took place in the schools in the rural district. oe school had a computer laboratory with internet access allowing us to work on the internet; the other did not, requiring us to work with an interactive cd and on two laptops. the sample the participating educators for the ict-based focus group interviews (nieuwenhuis 2007) were purposively selected, as mitchell et al. (2005) contend that voices of educators should be heard in debates about curriculum and care in addressing hiv and 187 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? aids, as well as hiv-related stigma. here we worked with teachers who are directly responsible for raising awareness and prevention of hiv and aids; assisting the infected and the affected; dealing with the trauma of illness and death of others (bhana, morrell, epstein & moletsane 2006); as well as trying to address the issue of stigma. the educators have a common problem, interest or goal, and therefore the 14 educators (5 males and 9 females) from two schools in vulindlela district, where the data was generated previously, participated. some of the participants had taken part in the learning together project where the educators at one school identified hiv-stigma as a barrier to the hivintervention programmes. consequently photovoice was used in an attempt to address stigma in a different way. the selection of this specific group of people was deliberate as they had been involved in a specific part of the research project (denscombe 2005). the choice of the participants was not only informed by the knowledge they have, but it was also driven by the data production method adopted. as part of the project each school was provided with a laptop and data projector and had been briefly trained in the use thereof. data generation the data generation was based on engaging the participants in what might be described as a focus group/workshop approach. building on the notion of focus group interviews which have the potential to encourage debate among participants about a particular topic which then enables them to build on each other’s ideas, generating an in-depth view (nieuwenhuis 2007), we set up a workshop environment with the educators. there they were able to generate different ideas on the use of the digital archive and they enhanced each other’s ideas in suggesting several uses of the digital archive, as becomes clear in the explanation of the process. the process part 1: exploring the archive the initiating activity of the “workshop” was to consider what a digital archive is, what it contains and how to access it. each participant in the group had an opportunity to access the data (through the website or interactive cd) and then to look at the data set which shows the nature of stigmatisation in this rural school through the eyes of grade 8 and 9 learners. figure 1: the digital archive 188 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? planning once the educators had seen what a digital archive looked like, and had scrolled down through the archive to see what the content of the archive was, a discussion on how the digital archive and its metadata could be used in facilitating the understanding of issues around hiv-stigma with learners was initiated. at this point each educator chose a photograph they thought they could use in their classrooms to address stigma. the purpose then shifted to designing their own exercises which they could try out with their learners. the planning phase was videotaped, audiotaped and supplemented by field notes. figure 2: working with the online archive part 2: trying it out an unexpected component of the project was the fact that the educators insisted on trying out their designed lesson activities with their learners and enthusiastically discussed the practicalities thereof. in the end, one educator at each school was identified to try out the lesson plan with a class of learners. the process was videotaped. figure 3: using the online archive in a lesson part 3: reflecting the educators returned to view the video recording of the lessons. this was followed by a group discussion, reflecting on their views on using the digital archive in the lesson. this again allowed for the refinement of their thoughts on the use of the digital archive with learners in their rural school. this too, was videotaped. 189 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? figure 4: sample photograph from the archive data analysis qualitative data analysis is primarily an inductive process of organising data into categories and identifying patterns among the categories (de vos 2005). this process of interpreting data is done for the purpose of drawing conclusions which reflect the interest, ideas and theories of the study (babbie & mouton 2004). the data from the focus group interviews answer the critical question on how digital archives can be used optimally, and was analysed using tesch’s descriptive analysis technique to identify units of meaning and to look for emerging themes as described by creswell (1994). the scope of this article does not include the types of activities the educators generated, nor the lessons they tried out, but rather their views on how the digital archive might be used. the raw data was transcribed from audio-tape to text, including non-verbal cues. it is from the transcribed interviews that an analysis was done in order to come up with themes. ethical issues ethics, according to neuman (2006) and babbie and mouton (2004), refers to the acceptable moral principles which guide the researchers’ conduct and activities during and after the research process. principles of equity, honesty and human consideration were adhered to. furthermore voluntary participation was proposed as we explained and it was also indicated in the consent form that they could withdraw from the research process at any stage. before each session we re-emphasised that the photographs in the digital archive were staged or were “made” by the grade 8 and 9 learners to depict stigma, even though the participants were quite aware of it as it they had been part of the project. this digital archive, consisting of staged photographs and the accompanying metadata, is hosted on a website with restricted access (maree & van der westhuizen 2007). this compels us as researchers to approach using the photographs with care, often using photographs which do not identify the participating learners. 190 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? ethical clearance for the research was obtained from the university ethics committee. permission from principals from both schools was obtained and all participants who volunteered signed informed consent forms. the focus group participants agreed that the focus groups discussions could be videotaped and transcribed to allow for accuracy of representation. findings in this section we present the findings from exploring the use of the digital archive of the staged hiv-stigma photographs. in so doing we look at five key thematic areas. pedagogical strategy there was agreement from the participants on the use of the digital archive as a general pedagogic tool, using a photograph and its caption as a stimulus to evoke some response. considering that the educators were working in a rural school with few technological resources, envisaging using the digital archive represents a shift in thinking. their suggestions focused on different approaches to using the archive, varying from projecting a photograph on the screen using a data projector and working with the image collectively, to a more individual engagement with it. one of the participants, for example, suggested using the data projector to project the picture and allow students, in a group, to read the captions, critique them and suggest appropriate ways of treating hiv-positive people: i can use it for my life orientation class. when i want to teach about hiv, i can allow them to talk about the collection… take one picture and talk and just talk about this issue of hiv and anything you can say. then they come up with some ideas on the hiv-stigma, because even in subject you can use those pictures, because those pictures talk, they talk anything you want them to talk… help learners understand stigma using the picture in the classroom and that how all learners should help each other in eliminating the stigma. education and life skills training in schools are fundamental to effecting appropriate behavioural changes among youth (who 2008) and hence teachers are a crucial link in engaging learners with hiv and aids and they therefore need to acquire good teaching strategies (kelly 2002). unaids (2002) suggests that national aids programmes should aim to provide learners with aids education addressing effective prevention, nondiscrimination, and care and support for people with hiv and aids. however, issues of sexuality and aids education are often not discussed with children and young people in schools due to religious, cultural or social sensitivities to sexuality and hiv and aids. moreover, the availability of information does not guarantee its application and schools may teach information on aids but not the behavioural skills needed for prevention and support. kelly (2002) suggests methods that are interactive and participative to be considered because they allow for discussion and some form of action. other participants suggested allocating a computer to each learner allowing the learners to browse through the collection individually and make their own suggestions on 191 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? addressing the issue of stigma. notwithstanding the technological and financial challenges to realising this as a viable option, the recommendation points to an innovative and sensitive way of raising awareness and allowing individual reflection and response to the stigma attached to the epidemic: …if it is one-to-one everyone… he will be learning and thinking ‘what am i going to say?’ and ‘how am i going to write?’, everyone is working and the individuality…will also help stop the laughing at each other. … and the department has introduced the learner centred…, that is … the teacher will just facilitate and the learner …, and the learners are hands on… although it is argued that technology can result in losing the dynamic, interesting, face to face discussion with students in the classroom, it does have the advantage of allowing thinking and reflecting on sensitive issues which are not easily publicly discussed with learners (educational technology services 2008). also, it has been suggested elsewhere that student participation – when using icts – improves because there is more depth and thoughtfulness in the online individual discussions (education technology services 2008). the work could be more graphic, comprehensible and interesting to students when incorporating diagrams, photographs, videos available on the web or enabling an educator to give lessons and assignments via a cd-rom. learners can also repeat an exercise in their own time and at their own pace. the participating educators presented a similar idea in terms of using the digital archive. breaking the silence the educators clearly saw how the digital archive consisting of a collection of photographs “made” in their own community has and could indeed open up a space to break the silence around hiv and aids. as we have been working in the community since 2004 we now see how slowly but surely the educators are beginning to tap into their own willingness to intervene in the lives of their learners: you know, i remember this project since 2005, when we were involved in this project. i could think when a person comes to me and tell me about his status, because you see, i couldn’t imagine a person doing that. i don’t know what i could have done during those years but now i sit with them and talk about it without any problem. i think this project has made some difference. a further suggestion in breaking the silence is extended beyond using the digital archive and its photographs with learners in the class, and to use it in an educational campaign in the community, in an effort to encourage both females and males to talk about the disease: … because in this photograph … i was just thinking of a campaign, educational campaign, directed to males so that they are as accepting as females, then the gospel spreads… 192 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? right now we are living in a stage where people would say i am going to songonzima clinic because i have stomach ache… we should reach a stage where people talk freely about his illness. forman (2004: 1) writes that the phrase “silence equals death” used during the eighties by american aids advocates still describes the danger of a lack of information and communication around hiv and aids. in south africa people still do not communicate about issues of hiv (deacon 2005) and lack of information still persists, even more so in rural areas. this is evident in the statistics of new infections and the number of people who are infected versus those who go for treatment (steinberg 2008). here, a lack of information and a lack of voice continue to be primary causes of infection among the worst affected groups – women and the youth (campbell, foulis, maimane & sibiya 2005). allowing for projection of feelings it is interesting that the educators explored the idea of how the photographs could possibly allow learners to project their feelings about the disease. in a community where it is difficult to talk about hiv, the importance of accessing and using the visual to create opportunities to talk about it objectively as “out there” and away from self, is much safer and critical to get the issues out in the open. the educators thought that the captions, written by the original photographers and included in the metadata, could be used to trigger further dialogue and expression of different views: …captions, i like that because it has something that can open … open up some discussions ... the way people who are hiv positive should be treated … using the photographs without their captions could also allow for projection of the learners’ own feelings, without being influenced by the captions: i can give them a task, take any picture, any picture without the captions and let them say anything about the picture and relate it with hiv stigma. what can they say about the picture? web-based education for the youth may be especially useful in certain cultural contexts and specifically around sensitive health issues like hiv and aids as it allows for engagement with sensitive information (berger, wagner & baker 2005) and can be accessed any time. in a rural area where resources are scarce, the digital archive can become a rich resource for learners not only to learn to use it, but also to contribute their own views on health issues including the issues of stigma, and in so doing contribute to producing knowledge relevant to the youth and their particular culture and context. influencing school policy from grass roots various viewpoints on the use of the digital archive were expressed by the participants, also using it as a resource to draw on when developing a school policy. this is what wang (1999) intended and achieved when she worked with the marginalised female farmers in yunnen province in china, engaging them in photovoice to make their voices heard and to influence policy makers. in this study one participant suggested: 193 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? i am thinking of a possibility of using the whole collection, especially because it concerns their school, they can give their views in trying to come out with an hiv and aids policy. it is often said that policies are easily generated, but not implemented. if the policy is informed by local and relevant information from grass roots level, the chances of implementation and bringing about change could be better. this concurs with the unaids (2002) notion that maximum effectiveness of a policy requires partnerships between policy-makers, religious and community leaders, parents, and educators in formulating sound policies on aids education; using curricula adapted to local culture and circumstances; focusing on life skills rather than biomedical information; teaching learners to analyse and respond to social norms and to understand which norms are potentially harmful and which protect their health and well-being; and training of teachers and peer educators. information and communication (and the technologies that facilitate them) are key elements of a community’s response to the epidemic, enabling advocacy, mobilisation, and empowerment of people living with hiv and aids, women, and other vulnerable groups. ict also increases democratic participation. an example of using ict to better understand the educational and sexual health needs of secondary school students and to share this knowledge to improve policy and services for adolescents is the teenweb (halpern, mitchell, farhat & bardsley 2008). the use of the digital archive with educators in their rural community holds potential to inform policy making, particularly so at school level, but also at other levels. creating a sense of agency the responses of the participants indicate that the digital archive containing photographs addressing issues around stigma can be used to enhance a sense of agency. one photograph showing a deserted classroom, according to a participant, can evoke discussion about where the learners had gone and can create the opportunity to discuss the need for personal agency, such as changing own behaviour and contributing to social change in the community: … the fear that this photograph leaves, could make them start talking ....and start developing lessons on the prevention of the disease because it makes you feel obligated to do something before this gets worse. you can use it to develop a whole chapter on prevention. another participant elaborated on that: as a learner is using this kind of learning which interest i think they can develop a positive attitude. the above points to the educators’ agency, while the data in the archive also showed learners rethinking their role in stigmatisation, suggesting how they themselves might take action. individually tailored and relevant web content targeting learners has shown promise although little evidence is currently available on the usefulness of web194 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? based health education strategies for students in low resource settings (halpern et al. 2008). our work here is beginning to suggest that it could be useful in various settings, but in particular in this under-resourced rural setting. neuhauser and kreps (2003) concur that health promotion efforts that are mediated by computers and other digital technologies may have great potential to promote desired behaviour changes through unique features such as customisation, interaction and convenience. e-health communication can improve behavioural outcomes (neuhauser & kreps 2003). however, we have yet to learn whether the technical promise of e-health communication in this study, i.e. the digital archive, will be effective within the social reality of a rural landscape. the challenge is to use this body of visual knowledge (photographs and its metadata) contained in the digital archive to create space for engagement and to inform interventions at school and community level that will facilitate taking action, individually but also collectively. an effort to transfer and to share the information using the digital archive in this research could allow educators and learners in a rural area to address the issues of hiv and aids stigmatisation. transferring information on arvs the participants suggested that if intervention strategies fail to address the seriousness of the pandemic, classrooms will remain empty, as depicted in photograph 1. i think i can bring to their attention that there are anti-retroviral now available so there is no need to wait until the classes are empty while there are arv. i can inform the learners that there is the treatment that prolongs [living with] hiv because many people are dying because they lack the knowledge. then they can even spread the news at their homes that people must come out and get tested so that they get the treatments at the right time before we see empty classes. people should not be afraid to go and get the treatment. sharing the fact that hiv and aids is a medically treatable condition and that antiretrovirals (arvs) are available may reduce the stigma ascribed to people with hiv and aids. treatment is one of the greatest possible incentives for people to be tested, and therefore they need to be informed regarding prevention, intervention and care. steinberg (2008), in the three letter plague, explores how hiv and aids plays itself out in a rural town in the eastern cape, and concurs that people prefer to die rather than to be tested and face the stigma of aids. educators suggested using the digital archive to disseminate the critical message to the community – that there is life after testing, and that knowing you status, if positive, can put you on the path to treatment and life. discussion while resource limitations and infrastructural shortages hamper both extensive ict connectivity and significant scaling up of a comprehensive response to hiv and aids, south africa has the human resources necessary to enable an effective response to hiv and aids. the department of health has initiated a telemedicine pilot project aimed at 195 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? developing a cost-effective e-health system in the country and are exploring various bandwidth solutions for rural areas in the province (muchie & baskaran 2006). an example of an innovative solution is seen in rwanda. the use of ict ensures rapid diagnosis and dispensing of drugs in areas where infrastructure is limited. in rwanda, tracnet was established and implemented by trac (treatment and research aids centre), an institution of the ministry of health, in 2005. it is a dynamic information technology system designed to collect, store, retrieve, display and disseminate critical programme information, as well as to manage drug distribution and patient information related to the care and treatment of hiv and aids. tracnet uses solar energy chargeable mobile phones, which can be used in the most remote parts of the country (tracnet 2008). such initiatives indicate the potential that ict holds in addressing the hiv and aids pandemic in general, but specifically so in rural areas. the south african ministry of education is trying to increase ict access in schools and gazetted a white paper on eeducation (doe 2004). various projects are also underway to provide ict access to rural schools, but it still remains too little (dlodlo 2009). however, we concur with muchie and bakaran (2006) that technology is not an object to be aimed at, and limited to specific areas, but a tool to be used for the benefit of all and in this case, to benefit people living with and stigmatised by hiv. forman (2004) asserts that a primary impediment in the fight against aids is a lack of information and communication about the disease. icts hold vast potential to combat the spread of the disease, as key elements of all aspects of hiv/aids strategies, including prevention, treatment and care and protection of human rights. they offer potential solutions to misinformation and myths, silence and denial, and stigma and discrimination against people living with hiv and aids. they are also key to a civil society response to the epidemic, enabling advocacy, mobilisation, empowerment, and participation. conclusion in making the case for community engagement with a digital archive in two rural schools, we believe that there is a great deal of potential to “save lives” in the age of aids. by this we mean that the findings suggest that the use of icts can enable people to access relevant, realistic and suitable information, which may help to counteract negative feelings, fear, embarrassment and the stigma of hiv and aids in a rural community. technologies appear to be very effective in facilitating community participation in the production of local knowledge and perspectives even though language, computer literacy and access can be barriers. more than anything we saw how imaginative, creative and problem-solving oriented educators can be in relation to the digital archive. while this study is exploratory and calls for further work to be done, we see it as a promising entry point to the engagement of educators and communities in finding their own solutions to addressing hiv and aids. 196 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? endnotes 1 this data set emanates from the work done in the learning together project involving teachers, community health care workers, parents and learners in rural kwazulu-natal in addressing issues around hiv and aids (nrf 2004-2006) (naydene de lange, claudia mitchell, relebohile moletsane, jean stuart, thabisile buthelezi, myra taylor and fikile mazibuko). 2 this notion takes up the idea of the digitization and data management with visual data in social research: giving life (to data) to save lives project (nrf 2008-2011) (naydene de lange, claudia mitchell , relebohile moletsane, jean stuart, thabisile buthelezi and myra taylor). acknowledgement we gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the national research foundation (south africa) in this research project. the ideas expressed in the article are those of the authors. 197 learning to use visual data to ‘save lives’ in the age of aids? references abdool-karim, s.s. and abdool-karim, q. 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view that in order to liberate africans, self-consciousness and self-esteem had to be restored to africans. in his view this had to be done through the act of african cultural reclamation. in this article the author interrogates the concept of african cultural reclamation and the role the media can play in order to fulfil africa’s quest for a true humanity as envisaged by biko. * dr simphiwe sesanti lectures in the department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch. 60 simphiwe sesanti introduction the title of this article – the media and africa’s on -going quest for a true humanity – is borrowed from the late black consciousness proponent, bantu steve biko’s title, black consciousness and the quest for a true humanity, anthologised in his book, i write what i like. in his anticipation of victory for the struggle against colonialism, biko (2004: 51) believed that the “special contribution” that africa would make to international politics or world affairs would be giving the world “a human face”. this he considered more important than creating a military and industrial outlook – an achievement the western world prides itself in. biko’s (2004: 26) vision for a humane world drew its inspiration from african culture. while he believed in the potency of african culture to usher in a humane world, biko (2004: 31) was painfully aware that african culture had been disfigured by the colonialist europeans. he observed that “in an effort to destroy completely the structures that had been built up in the african society and to impose their imperialism with an unnerving totality, the colonialists were not satisfied merely with holding a people in their grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content” (ibid.). the colonialists, biko further observed, turned to the past of the oppressed and “distorted, disfigured and destroyed it”. in their renaming and misnaming game, africa became the “dark continent”, african culture became “barbarism” and african religious practices and customs became “superstition” (biko 2004: 31). the misnaming and renaming project by european colonialists is referred to by mphahlele (2002: 17) as “disinherited imagination”. disinherited imagination refers to the perception of “standards as good because they are established by the white man and his traditions” (ibid.). disinherited imagination is the stripping, as mphahlele further points out, of the indigenous world of its own myths, poetry, dreams and reveries. as a consequence of the “disinherited imagination”, africans, to a great extent, lost touch with a culture that celebrated respect for all that exists. in terms of human relations, african culture emphasised the need to honour and protect women and children (ntuli 1999: 184). identifying gender relations as one of the key and core issues in the project of african cultural reclamation is crucial because, as mugo (1999: 215) observes, culture, with particular reference to african culture, has been misused “as justification for patriarchal repression of women and silencing of youth”. as mugo (1999: 217) notes, “no meaningful cultural renaissance can take place while certain sectors of the population under transformation are victims of silence”. the silencing of women, as mugo further points out, “becomes massive in that they constitute a clear numerical majority on the african continent”. this article is conscious of the need for caution when calls are made for cultural reclamation. that is because, as prah (2006: 329) notes, these calls are “very 61 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach often used as a cover for the maintenance of undemocratic and atavistic political practice”. this article is largely an interrogation of the philosophical underpinnings of african culture in an attempt to illuminate those aspects of african culture that can be utilised in order to realise biko’s quest for a true humanity. emphasis on the philosophical approach is informed by, among other factors, an understanding that “[african] culture refers to the sum total of african philosophy, behaviour, ideas, and artefacts” (asante 1990: 4). the author argues that the media should play a role in this quest and suggestions are made about how this can be done. cognisant of the fact that there are many understandings and misunderstandings of what constitutes african culture, the author’s point of departure is the definition of “african culture”. defining culture and african culture before defining culture and discussing african culture in particular, it should be noted that in this article, for the purpose of clarity, reference to “africans” means the indigenous people of the continent, or black africans. the terms “black” and “african” are used interchangeably. the author employs the terms not oblivious to the many existing and contesting definitions of these terms. culture is understood as “the means by which a people expresses itself, through language, traditional wisdom, politics, religion, architecture, music, tools, greetings, symbols, festivals, ethics, values, and collective identity” (maathai 2009: 160). maathai further points out that a people’s culture is their reference point to the past and their antennae to the future. significantly, maathai further observes that “without a culture, a community loses self-awareness and guidance, and grows weak and vulnerable”. with reference to african culture, this article is not claiming that africans are homogeneous. rather, it is as mphahlele (2002: 237) observes, that “[a]lthough there are regional cultures in africa, the existence of africanity cannot escape us”. the term “african culture” is employed and should be understood, in this article, as mphahlele (2002: 237-238) observes, the “common cultural experiences we [africans] share on the continent – the whole landscape of culture”. in discussing the issue of culture, this article is not oblivious to the fact that culture is not static but dynamic. in recognising the dynamism of culture, biko (2004: 106) notes that culture is “essentially the society’s composite answer to the varied problems of life”. this means that as new challenges emerge, communities must have ways of rising to the occasion. biko’s observation is echoed by mphahlele (2002: 238) who notes that culture is “a concept that defines what we as humans do and make to cope with the material realities of life”. observing that african culture “is not a museum specimen” but a “dynamic feature” of african lives, 62 simphiwe sesanti mphahlele (2002: 96), however, insists that only indigenous africans should be engaged in an exercise of defining and redefining it, and “decid[ing] what african culture should do in the face of modern technology”. having been born into privilege, mphahlele (2002: 82) argues that most whites in south africa have been “socialized into the belief that they were destined always to lead by virtue of being an extension of western civilization”. having made that observation, mphahlele argues that the definition and redefinition of what constitutes african culture must be done “without the white man’s tutelage”. in this he is echoed by prah (2010: 9) who refuses to accept that others can understand africans better than they understand themselves, insisting further that africans must master the knowledge about their own societies (prah 2010: 9). this insistence on self-mastery, with special reference to african culture, is a reflection of biko’s black consciousness philosophy. biko (2004: 26) stood strongly opposed to the “superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes a white a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that)”. he further opposed the “intellectual arrogance of white people that makes them believe that white leadership is a sine qua non in this country and that whites are the divinely appointed pace-setters in progress”. recognising the “terrible role played by our education and religion in creating amongst us a false understanding of ourselves” biko (2004: 57) insisted that africans “must therefore work out schemes not only to correct this, but further to be our own authorities rather than wait to be interpreted by others”. in rectifying the wrong done to africans, biko (2004: 105) held the view that “a lot of attention has to be paid to our history if we as blacks want to aid each other in coming into our consciousness. we have to re-write our history and produce in it the heroes that formed the core resistance to the white invaders.” biko was advocating, in other words, what maathai (2009: 171) refers to as “reclamation”. reclaiming african culture african cultural reclamation is the “resurrection, reconstruction, and revitalization of african culture” (modupe 2003: 59). it is an act of reengagement with one’s roots with the aim of attempting to embrace all of its richness, contradictions and challenges in fitting into the modern world (maathai 2009: 165). this is necessary for africans because, as maathai (2009: 165) observes, when africans were told that their culture was “demonic and primitive, they lost their sense of collective power and responsibility and succumbed, not to the god of love and compassion they knew, but to the gods of commercialism, materialism, and individualism”. african cultural reclamation is necessary because, according to mphahlele (2002: 82), “a number of black africans themselves have to tap the collective memory for all the things we need to know about the essence of being african”. africans, 63 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach mphahlele further notes, have “assimilated half-baked western thought and beliefs, which have uprooted us, left us directionless and chasing rainbows”. in endorsing cultural reclamation, ntuli (1999: 184-185) argues that this is a “strategic retreat to pre-colonial africa to extricate some of the knowledge systems relevant to our needs in the next millennium”. the “strategic retreat to pre-colonial africa” means, as prah (2006: 329) observes, that africans “need to be selective about what we keep, and what we reject in our historical and cultural heritage. what clearly goes against the grain of emancipation and salvation, we must readily and quickly abandon.” calls for the reclamation of african culture, have, as diop (1974: xiii) observes, been dismissed as “backward or alarming”. yet, as diop (ibid.) further observes, when intellectuals who are not of african stock explain their own historical past or study their language such is considered normal. while africans’ efforts to rediscover and reclaim their cultural past are treated with derision, there is no shortage of white scholars who research almost every area of african life and write about it (mphahlele 2002: 18). the african cultural reclamation project emerges out of recognition that, as ntuli (1999: 194) points out, african culture was a “first target of colonial power”. that being the case, for biko and his black consciousness movement culture “necessarily became the first instrument used to resist” colonialism. recognising that western powers’ success in effecting world domination was “predicated on its use of culture as ideology”, biko recognised that culture should be used by africans as an ideological tool for mobilisation, conscientisation and resistance (ntuli 1999: 191; 194). during this period that ntuli is referring to – the 1970s – black journalists, imbued with black consciousness, declared that they were “blacks first and journalists second” (raubenheimer 1991: 102). this meant that they saw themselves primarily as articulators of the black struggle. they rejected the traditional concept of liberal objectivity of white english language newspapers and saw nothing wrong in being revolutionary propagandists (raubenheimer 1991: 102; hachten & giffard 1984: 133). but, rejecting “objectivity” did not mean, for these journalists, twisting facts and distorting reality (raubenheimer 1991: 118). rather, because they belonged to the oppressed racial group in south africa at the time, black journalists felt they were bound to have a different political interpretation and social analysis from that of their white counterparts. african culture as an ideological tool was not seen just as a temporary weapon against oppression but a mechanism to secure for future beyond oppression. changes that have occurred to african culture have to a great extent been externally-driven and coercive. alluding to this view, biko (2004: 45) observes that while african culture may have sustained “severe blows and may have been 64 simphiwe sesanti battered nearly out of shape by the belligerent cultures it collided with ... in essence even today one can easily find the fundamental aspects of the pure african culture in the present day african”. in this, biko is supported by many scholars of african culture (modupe 2003: 59; schiele 2003: 187; mphahlele 2002: 154) who argue that not only has african culture survived brutal slaughter on home soil but that it proceeded under duress among african descendants who were scattered as slaves throughout the eastern and western worlds. although the colonisation of africa by europeans and arabs modified traditional africa somewhat, the insistence on the survival of african culture implies that “slavery did not destroy all the cultural vestiges of africa” (schiele 2003: 187), and colonialism and apartheid failed to do the same. it is the remnants of african culture that biko (2004: 106) believed should be “defined in concrete terms” that would “relate the past to the present” so as to realise africans’ quest for a true humanity. it is on this basis that biko (2004: 26) argues that “one cannot escape the fact that the culture shared by the majority group in any given society must ultimately determine the broad direction taken by the joint society of that culture”. such an approach, biko further observes, “need[s] not cramp the style of those who feel differently, but on the whole, a country in africa, in which the majority of the people are african, must inevitably exhibit african values and be truly african in style”. the media’s role in destroying african culture the media played a crucial role in disinheriting the african imagination. ziegler and asante (1992: 33) note that during the colonial era, when the media finally decided to pay attention to africans, this was done in a “derogatory fashion”. reports on inter-ethnic clashes were highlighted as “conflict between savages” and “mockery was made of every african custom, lifestyle or tradition” (ziegler & asante 1992: 33). mutwa (1998: 538) observes that a perusal of “printed newspapers printed in africa (which are not under african control)” makes the “reader…conscious of something which has been going on for centuries. hardly a month goes by without some white readers writing letters to the editors in which they blatantly insult the african.” when africans sought to resist the europeans’ insulting behaviour towards africans by “writ[ing] letters to these newspapers protesting against these unscientific insults, our letters are either coldly ignored, or, if published, they are shortened to pointlessness” (mutwa 1998: 538-539). even after africans achieved independence, the vilification of african culture and the valorisation of western values by the media did not abate. on this score, hawk (2002: 167) observes that when analysing political conflicts in africa, the western media identifies them as a “tribal problem” and that “the news blames those who suffer and locates the source of africa’s difficulties within african culture, often 65 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach ignoring the roles of others, especially foreign actors”. hawk (2002: 168) further argues that a major problem with this form of thinking is that “identifying tribalism as a problem emphasizes the negative aspects of cultural pride, representing it as the most important social pathology in africa whilst concealing the benefits of tribe”. the consequence of this approach on the part of the western media, hawk (2002: 172) further argues, is that “these portrayals often define african culture as the problem and western institutions as the solution”. focusing on tribalism as the problem, according to hawk (2002: 168), tends to mute other conflicts of interest between groups, and serves as a distraction from covert causes of many african conflicts. thus, hawk further notes, “class conflicts become tribalism; regional conflicts become tribalism; responses to structural adjustment programs become tribalism”. this concern is echoed by wa thiong’o (2008: 1) who notes that the “study of african realities has for too long been seen in terms of tribes. whatever happens in kenya, uganda, malawi is because of tribe a versus tribe b.” wa thiong’o further notes that this “misleading stock interpretation of the african realities has been popularised by the western media which likes to deflect people from seeing that imperialism is still the root cause of many problems in africa”. he (ibid.) laments that “some african intellectuals have fallen victims – a few incurably so – to that scheme”. the question that needs to be addressed next is: what are the africans’ understanding of themselves and their culture? african cultural values for the re-humanisation of humanity one of the core pillars of african culture is respect (boateng 1990: 117; mphahlele 2004: 254). this respect is accorded all beings – animate and inanimate alike. african initiation schools that colonialism strove to destroy “taught the love and protection of nature” (ntuli 1999: 192). that is because african culture holds the view that in all creation – animate and inanimate alike – resides the supreme being (mphahlele 2004: 253). it is for this reason that the kikuyus in kenya referred to mount kenya as “kirinyaga” – meaning “place of brightness” (maathai 2009: 173). the kikuyus believed that god dwelt on mount kenya and that the rains, clean drinking water and green vegetation flowed from it. this belief, as maathai further observes, was undermined by the european missionaries who told the local people that god did not dwell on mount kenya but rather in heaven, and that the mountain and its forests, previously considered sacred grounds, could be encroached upon. the kikuyus accepted the missionaries’ version and subsequently believed that their relationship with the mountain and nature in general was worthless, and an obstacle to development and progress in an age of progress. the consequence was that respect for nature 66 simphiwe sesanti was eroded and people began to see it as mere commodity to be privatised and exploited. the destruction of african culture had two interlinked consequences. the first consequence was that when european missionary education taught african children to “despise their mode of upbringing at home and to question their values and customs of their society”, the outcome was that children and their parents began to view issues differently, resulting in african children losing respect for their parents, and things fell apart (biko 2004: 104). the loss of respects for elders undermined the african teaching that children should have “respect for the aged, our parents – no matter how wrong we may think they are” (mphahlele 2002: 90). respecting the aged is not the same as turning a blind eye to their flaws, but rectifying their wrongs in ways that are not belligerent. unlike in other cultures where “respect is earned”, among africans everyone deserves to be respected first until that person projects behaviour that casts her/him as undeserving of respect. in the african cultural scheme of things, as mthembu (1996: 224) further observes, “respect and dignity have no boundaries regarding gender, age and position. a human being is treated humanely.” in plain speak this means that in african culture human beings – both men and women – were appreciated for what they were: humans. however, without being discriminatory, women in the african cultural setting enjoyed special recognition and respect. ntuli (1999: 184) observes that even in hostile situations such as war, veneration for women and children was observed: african traditional cultural ethics emphasised that women and children should be spared. according to diop (1989: 32), it appears that “in so-called primitive societies” the african had never doubted the participation of the father and mother but “did not assign to each the same degree of importance”. diop goes on to point out that with particular reference to black africa, “it is almost everywhere thought that a child owes more from a biological point of view to his mother than to the father”. the biological heredity on the mother’s side, diop further points out, is stronger and more important than the heredity on the father’s side. therefore, african culture held the view that “a child is wholly that which its mother is and only half what its father is”. boateng (1990: 144) endorses diop’s observation in noting that among the akan of ghana, for instance, a view is held that a child derives its blood from its mother, one soul from god and another soul from its father. the reasoning then is that “[i]f the mother gave the blood to the child, then the child is closer to her than anyone else”. in affirming africans’ cultural unity, and the prestige held by women in this scheme of things, rukuni (2007: 33) notes that “[a]nother common thread weaving through all afrikan (sic) cultural groups is that the mother is central to the household”. for africans, rukuni further notes, “mothers are always closer to our creator than fathers are, 67 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach because of the role mothers play in giving birth – with the creator, physically giving life”. the sacredness of motherhood, of the womb in african culture, is best articulated through the west african ohaffia saying: “father’s penis scatters, mother’s womb gathers” (kamalu 1990: 153). mutwa (1998: 626) observes that among the “bantu” africans the high law of behaviour towards parents stipulated that of your two parents your mother ranks higher than your father. in quarrels between your parents you must come to the aid of your mother, be she right or wrong. you may strike your father, but never draw his blood. you may never strike your mother and even if you do so accidentally you must lose your right hand. the second consequence of the destruction of african culture by the colonialists was that, as biko (2004: 44) observes, for africans it became “difficult…to talk with authority on anything to do with african culture” because africans were “not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even themselves”. while the africans’ right to speak with authority about their culture was usurped, biko further observes that other people became “authorities on all aspects of the african life”. the “authorities” identified by biko are also identified by asante (1990: ix), who points out that “western-trained scholars from a european perspective” who “wrapped in the swaddling clothes of a fully emergent european ideology, were often incapable of understanding the unity of african culture”. they are incapable of understanding and accepting that africa “is one cultural river with numerous tributaries characterized by their specific responses to history and the environment” (asante 1990: ix). the “argument given by those of the anti-african culture school is that the african culture cannot exist because africa encompasses too many ethnic groups” (asante 1990: 4). echoing asante, mphahlele (2002: 87), a subscriber to the notion of one african culture, emphasises that “[w]e believe in african culture that cuts across artificial boundaries…at the deepest spiritual level african culture unifies the whole continent.” on this score, hilliard (2003: 270) observes that “[f]oreign explorers have been fascinated by what they considered to be significant differences among africans, differences in the physiognomy of peoples, in ways of worship, etc.” insisting that african “cultural unity is far more significant than its superficial diversity”, hilliard notes that the foreign explorers did not fully appreciate the oneness and unity of african culture because their focus was on the “surface structure” as opposed to looking at the “deep structure” of african culture. the denial of oneness and unity of african culture by eurocentric scholarship is both hypocritical and inconsistent, according to dove (2003: 167). that is because there was a time when it was convenient to regard “african people [as] very much alike”: 68 simphiwe sesanti at that time, it seemed politically expedient to support this idea in order to justify the subjection of african women, men and children to analogous forms of barbarian treatment under the auspices of european domination. today, it is expedient to deny the earlier claim of cultural unity since this concept, retained in the minds of african people challenging academic racism and scholastic dishonesty, has taken on a new meaning. it poses a threat to the fundamental doctrine of white supremacy within the ivory tower. the usurpation of africans’ authority on their own lives reduced africans to being “gate-crashers” and elevated the usurpers to being “gate-keepers” (prah 2010: 2). the african cultural reclamation which biko advocated is a relentless struggle against africans’ disinherited imagination. just as the reactionary media played a role in the disinheriting of africans of their imagination, it can and should play a role in african cultural reclamation. the disinheriting of the african imagination was achieved through mis-education by educational institutions and the media. the media can contribute to african cultural reclamation through education – which is one of the core functions of the media – in order to accomplish biko’s quest for a true humanity. the media and africa’s quest for a true humanity the function of the media, according to herman and chomsky (1994: 1) is to “amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society”. inculcation of values by the media – which is the focus of this article – is education. shujaa (2003: 246) defines education as a “means of providing for the inter-generational transmission of values, beliefs, traditions, customs, rituals and sensibilities along with the knowledge of why these things must be sustained”. through education, shujaa continues, a people learn how to determine what is in its interests, and how to distinguish its interests from those of others, and recognise when its interests are consistent and inconsistent with those of others. the definitions of education above show very clearly the strong link between education and culture. education is, as mugo (1999: 218) notes, “a key institution for inculcating and promoting cultural values and practices. it acts as a communicator, as well as a reservoir of culture.” the colonial media in africa, as argued above, fulfilled the role outlined by herman and chomsky, but in a way detrimental to the africans. 69 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach writing on the status of the media in south africa ten years after the first democratic elections, nyamnjoh (2005: 40) notes that although it was relatively too early to use the same yardsticks employed for the bulk of africa in judging south africa, whose freedom was only a decade old, it was worth noting that there was “concern about the slow pace of reform in media relations with the black majority in the ‘so-called new south africa’”. one of the “concerns” raised by nyamnjoh was that increased black ownership and partnership in the media industry had not necessarily made newspapers “more representative of the concerns, interests and aspirations of africans as cultural communities”. in particular, nyamnjoh (ibid.) observes that the “ideas of ubuntu and africanisation have yet to capture the creative imagination of the media and cultural industries beyond the tokenism with which we are all too familiar”. in arguing that greater presence of blacks in the media had not moved beyond “tokenism”, nyamnjoh further points out that black faces in boardrooms and news had not resulted “in more or better coverage of black realities informed by their experiences, predicaments and philosophies of life”. in other words, nyamnjoh’s argument is that in the first decade of democracy in south africa, a distinctly black or african consciousness was missing in the content of the media. reflecting on the role of black journalists in a democratic south africa, mphahlele (2004: 331) shares nyamnjoh’s concerns. according to mphahlele, the role of black journalists should be to “[c]reate a cultural vision” and “help to develop an african consciousness”. the creation of a “cultural vision” for mphahlele means inculcating into the minds of black people that “although we have adopted western systems of education, of technology, even the religion brought by our colonizers – in spite of this, we owe it to our sanity of mind to develop african ways of perceiving”. the development of “african consciousness”, according to mphahlele (2004: 331) means that black journalists have a responsibility of “educating the reader about historical actions and discourse”: we should remind ourselves that several african countries were single vast tracts of land before the colonial masters carved up the continent, that in establishing boundaries they succeeded in cutting across unilingual populations. what mphahlele is advocating for is that black journalists in a democratic society have a responsibility of promoting african solidarity and a spirit of pan-africanism. in echoing the importance of “african consciousness” on the part of african journalists, moemeka and kasoma (1994: 40) argue that “african journalists… should strive to attain the virtuous life of a good man and woman according to african society before they try that of a good journalist. after all, they belong 70 simphiwe sesanti to their society first and are journalists second.” what this means, according to moemeka and kasoma, is that african journalists’ actions should be informed by their “customs, traditions, cultural norms and practices”. it is worth noting that moemeka and kasoma’s assertion that african journalists “belong to their society first and are journalists second” echoes a declaration by black journalists who, in the 1970s, inspired by the black consciousness philosophy, declared that they were “blacks first and journalists second” (raubenheimer 1991: 102). if, as moemeka and kasoma argue, african journalists should strive to attain a virtuous life of a good woman according to african culture, that means then that black journalists have an obligation, as part of the media’s role to educate, to remind africans, as karenga (2003: 90) notes, that the communitarian philosophy and emphasis of african culture serves as an essential framework for the conceptualization and pursuit of the just and good society, a society marked and moved by civility, reciprocity and equality in all areas of human life and practice. these areas of human life that karenga refers to, include gender relations. as mazama (2003: 28) points out, “[i]n african culture, emphasis is placed on the necessary complementarity, rather than the conflict, that exists between african men and women”. that is because, mazama further observes, “[w]hat makes a man is a woman; likewise, what makes a woman is a man”. the educational role of the media is to remind africans that according to african traditional education to walk on two legs did not automatically qualify one as “human”, nor did dying automatically qualify one as an “ancestor” (myers 2003: 124). rather, what qualified one as a human being or ancestor was “on the basis of one either evidencing the potential to manifest good consciousness… or in the case of the ancestor, having realized good consciousness in individual/group experience (self-actualized)”. what this means is that in re-africanising africans, black journalists’ role should be to remind themselves and their fellow blacks that the historical mission of the africans is to create a just and good society, and that everyone should be an agent of that cause. conclusion by interrogating the philosophical underpinnings of traditional african culture, this article sought to investigate the basis upon which the black consciousness’ advocate bantu biko advocated that african culture should be central in black consciousness and the quest for a true humanity. this interrogation revealed that traditional african culture emphasised respect for all that exists in the world – both the human world and the environment. it also revealed that the male species, 71 the media and africa’s on-going quest for a true humanity: a bikoian approach which has historically wreaked havoc in the world and continues to do so, must show respect to the female species so as to realise a humane world. this exercise, the article has argued, should be aided by the media, with particular reference to black journalists who share biko’s vision that the greatest contribution to human affairs is yet to come from africa – giving the world a human face. 72 references asante, m.k. 1990. afrocentricity and culture. in asante, m.k. & asante, k.w. 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(eds). untold stories: economics and business journalism in african media, pp. 32-61. johannesburg: wits university press. prah, k.k. 2006. the african nation: the state of the nation. cape town: casas. prah, k.k. 2010. soundings: studies on african transformation. cape town: casas. wa thiong’o, n. 2008. decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature. oxford: james currey. 74 raubenheimer, l. 1991. from newsroom to the community: struggle in black journalism. in tomaselli, k. & louw, p.e. (eds). studies on the south african media – the alternative press in south africa, pp. 93-130. bellville: anthropos publishers. rukuni, m. 2007. being afrikan. johannesburg: penguin books. schiele, j.h. 2003. afrocentricity: an emerging paradigm in social work practice. in mazama, a. (ed.). the afrocentric paradigm, pp. 185-200. trenton and asmara: africa world press. shujaa, m.j. 2003. education and schooling: you can have one without the other. in mazama, a. (ed.). the afrocentric paradigm, pp. 245-264. trenton and asmara: africa world press. ziegler, d. & asante, m.k. 1992. thunder and silence: the mass media in africa. new jersey: africa world press. 21 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding pedro diederichs* abstract eleven years ago the south african journalism fraternity got a huge wake-up call following a damning journalism skills audit report in which some serious shortcomings concerning professionalism in newsrooms were highlighted. naval-gazing by the majority of the media role players (educators and industry) agreed with most of the findings of the south african national editors’ forum’s first skills report published in may 2002 (sanef 2002a). this was followed by a second audit in 2004 focusing on the state of middle management skills in the same environment with much the same conclusion concerning skills gaps that needed urgent attention (sanef 2004). in this article answers to the research questions give an overview of some of the impressions of leading south african educators and trainers around an age-old question of what could be the answer to the “correct” way of training newcomers to the profession and what is perceived as the biggest stumbling block in teaching entry-level journalists. this is certainly nothing new, but the answers received are presented and deliberated on against the background of the author’s personal experience as a practising journalist and journalism educator over a period of 40 years. it may be that in certain areas of journalism practice and journalism education opportunities have gone begging and lessons could have been learnt. at the same time acknowledgement should be given for efforts made to counter the sometimes wild and opportunistic claims that the quality of journalism practice and education in south africa leaves much to be desired. * dr pedro diederichs lectures in the department of journalism at the tshwane university of technology in pretoria. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 21-35 22 pedro diederichs inleiding die “korrekte” model/program/leerplan/kurrikulum vir die opleiding van intreevlaken junior joernaliste (of dit nou suksesvolle matrikulante of voorgraadse studente is) was nog altyd ’n gunsteling-tema vir enige gesprek of debat of akademiese artikel tussen akademici en praktisererende joernaliste in die gespesialiseerde en komplekse wêreld van die media. argumente en idees rondom: prakties teenoor teoreties; verpligte en keusevakke; kontakure teenoor selfstudie; verenigings of forums vir opleiers; globalisering, glokalisering of lokalisering; sosiale media teenoor professionele media; afsonderlike platforms teenoor konvergensie; onafhanklikheid teenoor gebondenheid; afrikanisering teenoor verwestering; bestuur teenoor redaksie; winsbejag teenoor gehalte; vryheid van spraak teenoor sensuur of regulering. hoe al die temas op grondvlak deur dosente en opleiers hanteer en benader word, is deurslaggewend wanneer dit by die opleiding van jong en grootliks geesdriftige studente kom. enigeen wat betrokke is of was by die beplanning en opstel van so ’n bloudruk sal kan getuig dat dit nie sommer net nog ’n “joppie” is nie. joernalistieke studie behels soveel permutasies en eiesoortighede dat dit voorwaar ’n kragtoer verg om enigsins iets haalbaars met ’n eureka-moment daar te stel. hier kan rhodesuniversiteit se jarelange stryd om “die antwoorde” te probeer vind, as voorbeeld (indien nie ’n waarskuwing nie) genoem word (prinsloo 2010; steenveld 2006; du toit 2010). navorsingsvrae en metode teen die agtergrond van die kritiek wat tradisioneel, maar veral ook oor die afgelope jare, uitgespreek is teenoor die opleiding en teenoor praktiserende joernaliste ten opsigte van gehalte en relevansie, is ’n paar senior akademici en opleiers genader om hul siening te gee van wat as 1) die fundamentele kern van so ’n program beskou behoort te word, en 2) wat die grootste probleem is in die opleiding van hedendaagse studente en hoe om dit te probeer oplos. die vrae is gestel met inagneming dat talle elemente en faktore, soos deur jare van opleidingen navorsingsresultate aangedui, inspeel op enige van die antwoorde. tog gee die opname ’n interessante perspektief op ’n gefokusde poging tot klaarheid. altesaam 17 akademici en mediabedryf-opleiers is per e-pos gevra om binne ’n antwoordtyd van tien dae ’n bondige antwoord (paragraaf) op elke vraag te probeer gee. van die sewe departementshoofde wat genader is by van die suid-afrikaanse universiteite en universiteite vir tegnologie waar joernalistiekkursusse aangebied word, het vier gereageer. van die agt senior akademici (talle self oudjoernaliste) en bedryfsopleiers wat genader is, het ses kommentaar gelewer. 23 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding die uitgangspunt vir die artikel was bloot om ’n kwalitatiewe indruk te probeer kry. hoewel ’n klein groepie kundiges genader is, was die responskoers van meer as 60% volgens babbie (2008: 289) meer as genoeg is vir ontledings in sosiale navorsing. in hierdie opname het 75% akademici en bedryfsopleiers gereageer en 57% departmentshoofde. belangrikste enkele opleidingsfaktor vraag 1: noem een faktor/element/bestanddeel wat jy as die belangrikste vir suksesvolle joernalistieke opleiding beskou en hoekom. die terugvoer van die respondente word hier onder in geen spesifieke volgorde weergee: ’n goeie joernalistieke opleiding sal poog om ’n balans te handhaaf tussen vaardigheidsopleiding en teoretiese akademiese opleiding. in vaardigheidsopleiding behoort die klem op taalen denkvaardighede te wees. in die teoretiese akademiese opleiding behoort die klem op die fenomenologiese aard, rol, funksies en mag van die joernalistiek te val en op die aard van die mediasisteem (beleid, ekonomie, regte en bestuur) waarin die student werksaam sal wees. in beide behoort die onderliggende uitgangspunt die joernalistiek as semiologiese skepper en verspreider van betekenis te wees; op die joernalis as draer en verspreider van lewensen wêreldbeskouings; en op die joernalis as draer en verspreider van politieke en sosiale ideologieë. die doel moet wees om die student intens bewus te maak en te hou van sy/haar etiese verantwoordelikheid teenoor die mens en die samelewing. – prof. pieter j. fourie, unisa (professor en ’n voormalige departementshoof) ’n bewussyn van en belangstelling in wat om hulle aangaan – dit wat ons gewoonlik as “nuus” beskryf, maar ook ’n wyer verwysingsraamwerk wat insluit politiek, geskiedenis, kuns, letterkunde, ens. sonder so ’n belangstelling en entoesiasme – of die bereidwilligheid om dit te ontwikkel – sowel as ’n voortdurende kritiese en ondersoekende ingesteldheid, help al die tegniese vaardigheid nie veel nie. met vaardigheid sonder ’n verwysingsraamwerk, kritiese ontledingsvermoë en belangstelling in die wêreld om ons, kan mens net stenograwe oplei, nie joernaliste nie. – prof. herman wasserman, rhodes-universiteit (departementshoof en oudjoernalis) voortdurende skakeling met die bedryf deur besoeke en gaslesings, asook personeel se sigbaarheid in die mediawêreld. die feit dat die bedryf ’n mens se eie opleiding bevestig (“validate”) help om die studente as’t ware oop te maak vir die leerervaring. dit gee voortdurende momentum en stukrag aan ’n mens se opleiding. – cornia pretorius, noordwes-universiteit (dosent en oudjoernalis) 24 pedro diederichs die een element wat vir my die belangrikste is, is dat aspirant-joernaliste blootgestel word aan die basiese vaardighede van joernalistiek en dit onder die knie kry voordat hulle na hoë-profiel-aspekte aanbeweeg. in my ervaring as ’n nuusredakteur het ek telkemale gevind dat joernaliste tegniese vaardighede het, maar dat hulle ’n basiese nuusstorie nie kan skryf nie. gee vir hulle ’n polisienuusverklaring en hulle sukkel ’n halwe dag om ’n seslynstorietjie (dis nou vir radionuus) te skryf. ja, die meer gevorderde aspekte is belangrik, maar kry eers die fondament in plek. – margaret linström, universiteit van die vrystaat (dosent en oudjoernalis) onafhanklikheid van allerlei ander vereistes, sy dit van pretoria of bestuurders. dit stel jou in staat om te doen wat jy en kollegas glo gedoen moet word, en vinnig! so nie, is jy vasgevang in ’n “kommunikasiedepartement” waarin allerlei ander oorwegings geld. my gevolgtrekking ná 22 jaar in die spel is dat joernalistiekdepartemente of afdelings los van ander kommunikasie-rigtings moet staan. nie dat ons nie ook leer en baat vind by kollegas se insigte nie, maar ek meen jy is beter af as joernalistiek by ’n joernalistiekskool bedryf word. – prof. johannes froneman, noordwes-universiteit (professor en oudjoernalis) die ontwikkeling van die student se skryfvaardighede vir verskillende genres, asook aanbiedingsvaardighede vir die uitsaai-joernalistiek, en die koppeling van die joernalistiek met ’n gesonde dosis retoriese en sosiologiese teorie. – prof. johann de wet, universiteit van die vrystaat (departmentshoof en oudjoernalis) probleem-oplos-vaardighede. as ’n joernalis ervaar ’n mens talle moeilike situasies wat die nodige kennis en insig verg om dit suksesvol te hanteer. hoe om byvoorbeeld by ’n bron uit te kom en om sonder foto’s binne die perke van 350 woorde ’n ingewikkelde storie sinvol te kan aanbied. – prof. guy berger, unesco (o.a. media-projekbestuurder en oudjoernalis) om teorie en praktyk in die onderrig-, opleidingen navorsingsituasie te versoen. – prof. arrie de beer, universiteit van wes-kaapland (voormalige departementshoof en oudjoernalis) dit moet kennis en vaardighede oordra wat absoluut praktykgerig is en aan die hand van werklike voorbeelde uit die praktyk geïllustreer en toegepas word. werkgewers soek studente wat onmiddellik bruikbaar is wanneer hulle die dag begin werk en berigte kan lewer wat min of geen skaafwerk nodig het nie. – dolf els, naspers (voormalige hoof van opleiding by naspers) dit is moeilik om een element of bestanddeel te isoleer, maar dit is belangrik dat joernalistieke opleiding dinamies moet kan geskied, met ander woorde dat die leerplan maklik aangepas moet kan word by voortdurend veranderende omstandighede. – dr. gabriël j. botma, universiteit van stellenbosch (departementshoof en oudjoernalis) 25 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding bespreking van vraag 1 opsommend kan gestel word dat die meerderheid respondente die deurtrapte argument rondom die balans tussen praktykgerigte en teoreties-gebaseerde opleiding as die belangrikste vertrekpunt herbevestig. kennis soos in verwysingsraamwerk en praktiese vaardighede soos in aanbieding gaan hand aan hand met die vermoë om inligting en die insameling daarvan kundig aan te pak en dan ’n produk te lewer wat vir die teikengroep sin maak. prinsloo (2010: 185) beskryf dit as volg: “journalism… is located at the nexus where the twin imperatives of intellectual knowledge relevant to the field and vocational training meet – demands that are frequently reduced to a crude dichotomy of theory versus practice.” hierdie tema is verreweg een van die mees bespreekte temas in die literatuur oor die opleiding van joernaliste en dus is dit nie nie verrassend dat dit so na vore kom in hierdie oorsig nie (caldwell 2011; garman 2010; du toit 2010; prinsloo 2010). die aandrang van die praktyk is: “werkgewers soek studente wat onmiddellik bruikbaar is wanneer hulle die dag begin werk en berigte kan lewer wat min of geen skaafwerk nodig het” (els, kommentaar op vraag 1). hierteenoor ’n weergawe van die akademiese uitgangspunt: “in die teoretiese akademiese opleiding behoort die klem op die fenomenologiese aard, rol, funksies en mag van die joernalistiek te val en op die aard van die mediasisteem (beleid, ekonomie, regte en bestuur) waarin die student werksaam sal wees” (fourie, kommentaar op vraag 1). sien ook gilmor (2010: 6) wat oor opleiding sê: “there are signs of progress, and the educators, who used to lag far behind the practitioners in many ways, are catching up and even moving ahead on several fronts.” ook by die tshwane universiteit vir tegnologie (tut), waar die outeur verbonde is, word die opleibeleid van die wát van joernalistiek, maar ook die hóékom, streng gehandhaaf. beroepsgerigte onderrig is die grondslag vir opleiding by universiteite vir tegnologie (uvt’s) soos geërf uit die techinkon-omgewing voor 2005. die naamsverandering vanaf technikons na uvt’s het wel dié instellings ten goede genoop om meer “akademies” met vakmateriaal en vakaanbiedinge in kurrikula om te gaan. dus ’n wegbeweeg van die sogenaamde “handmaidens” van prinsloo (2010) wat volgens haar net op die “hoe” van joernalistiek gekonsentreer het. nagraadse studie en navorsingsuitsette het soos by die tradisionele universiteite skielik groter prominensie verkry, al was dit dalk meer om so gou moontlik te kan deel in die staatsubsidies in die akademiese wêreld as wat dit was om ’n gesonde balans tussen praktyk en teorie te vind. van geld gepraat: dit is effens van ’n verrassing dat “fondse”, of dan die gebrek daaraan, nie deur een van die respondente as allerbelangrik beskou is nie. waarskynlik ’n goeie aanwyser dat tog wegbeweeg word van die “hoe”. dat daar wel oor die afgelope dekade ’n breë beweging is na ’n opleiding wat meer kritiese, analitiese en gemeenskapgedrewe junior joernaliste behoort te lewer, is 26 pedro diederichs ’n gegewe hoewel die “fit for purpose”-onderwysbeleid oorbeklemtoon kan word (berger 2005). “post-1994 conferences also expressed a grave need for a new journalism curriculum which would not only address the challenges posed by the rapidly changing media landscape, but would also be embedded in an african and south african context” (dube 2008). hierin speel die verenigde nasies se organisasie vir opvoeding, wetenskap en kultuur (unesco) ’n wesenlike rol. deur ondersteuning vir beter joernalistieke programme in afrika met ondermeer ’n projek vir potensiële skole van uitnemendheid, het die vn-liggaam bygedra deur joernalistieke studie op ’n hoër en meer professionele vlak te plaas teenoor die stand van sake ongeveer 15 jaar gelede (unesco 2007). ’n voltooide modelleerplan vir joernalistieke opleiding in afrika word tans deur talle suid-afrikaanse opleidingsentrums aangepas vir toepassing met plaaslike omstandighede opgeneem in ’n hersiende kurrikulum (unesco 2007). die kurrikulum maak voorsiening vir die afrika-fokus wat joernalistieke opleiding in suid-afrika grootliks kortgekom het weens die oorbeklemtoning van westerse en eerste wêreldse vertrekpunte in ouer kurrikula (botha & de beer 2007; rabe 2008; hadland 2006). die ander belangrike faktore deur respondente word gesien as aanpasbaarheid van opleidingsmetodes en -materiaal by nuwe omstandighede (botma, in moodie 2012); aansluitend by voorgenoemde behoort onafhanklike joernalistieke denke ongehinderd toegelaat te word in ’n al meer “kommunikasiewetenskapomgewing” en sodoende kan aanpassings vergemaklik en dus bespoedig word. sien bespreking oor die tydfaktor later in die artikel. laastens word genoem dat dosente steeds aktief in die mediawêreld “gesien” word om onder meer groter geloofwaardigheid as opleiers by die studente te verkry. hieroor kan twee opmerkings gemaak word: praktykskakeling is ’n ononderhandelbare moet vir alle opleiers in joernalistiek; populêre mediaen gemeenskapsprofiele van joernalistieke leermeesters by tersiêre inrigtings is tans gans te laag om enigsins ’n duik te maak in die strewe na groter erkenning vir die rol wat die media in ’n demokratiese samelewing behoort te speel. grootste opleidingsprobleem vraag 2: wat is vir jou die grootste probleem in die opleiding van hedendaagse intree-studente en hoe probeer jy dit oplos? die terugvoer van die respondente word hier onder in geen spesifieke volgorde weergee: die grootste probleem is die bedryf wat vaardigheidsopleiding bo akademiese opleiding verhef en wat dus nie genoeg waarde aan ’n sterk akademiese opleiding heg nie. benewens dat so ’n houding die professionele stand en aansien van die joenalistieke beroep skade aandoen, het dit ’n effek op die diepgang en kwaliteit 27 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding van die joernalistiek. die oplossing is om ongeag hierdie houding, en ongeag of studente daarvan hou of nie, meer aandag aan akademiese/teoretiese opleiding te gee en om dit in joernalistiekkursusse uit te brei en te verdiep; om te volhard in die geloof in die belang van akademiese opleiding. – prof. pieter j. fourie, unisa (professor en voormalige departementshoof) dis dikwels ’n probleem dat studente nie ’n verwysingsraamwerk of historiese bewussyn het nie, of dit het as “kopkennis”, maar nie altyd kan verbind met/ toepas op hul ervaringswêreld nie. daarby is die huidige onsekerheid oor die toekoms van die joernalistiek as beroep, en die voortbestaan van die media as ’n bedryf, ook ’n beklemmende invloed (en die ekonomiese druk vereis ook etiese waaksaamheid). dit vereis van ons almal om kreatief te dink oor die joernalistiek: hoe ons dit definieer en praktiseer. – prof. herman wasserman, rhodes-universiteit (departementshoof en oudjoernalis) swak skryfvaardighede (oefen, oefen en oefen) en gebrekkige algemene kennis en historiese, asook teoretiese, konteks (lees, lees en lees). – prof. johann de wet, universiteit van die vrystaat (departmentshoof en oudjoernalis) hul wêreld is klein. algemene kennis min. hulle het ’n leeslys van boeke oor joernalistiek, joernaliste, politiek en sosiaal-ekonomiese kwessies wat hulle moet deurwerk voor hulle aanmeld vir klasse. hulle skryf een of selfs twee keer per week nuustoetse, algemene kennis-toetse, toetse van mense se gesigte (en hulle moet sê wie dit is) en geografie toetse (benoem land op kaarte). – cornia pretorius, noordwes-universiteit (dosent en oudjoernalis) myns insiens word landwyd te veel joernalistiekstudente tot joernalistiekgrade toegelaat. die mediabedryf in ons land is relatief klein en kan net soveel nuwe joernaliste werk aanbied. daar behoort ’n keuringsproses te wees vir jongmense wat joernalistiek wil swot (ek weet dat sekere universiteite en universiteite vir tegnologie ’n vorm van keuring toepas). as studente vir joernalistiek gekeur word, sal dit lei tot kleiner klasse, wat sal lei tot beter gehalte-opleiding. dit is haas onmoontlik vir ’n dosent om gehalte-onderrig aan ’n klas van amper 200 studente te gee – veral in ’n vakgebied soos joernalistiek waar individuele aandag van kernbelang is. – margaret linström, universiteit van die vrystaat (dosent en oudjoernalis) genoeg tyd om gefokus te werk. genoeg bedryfsinsette. gemotiveerde studente. rolmodelle (wens joernaliste wil trotser wees op wie hulle is. waarom noem hulle hulself “hacks”?). ’n bedryf wat 50-jariges pos (groot probleem. kan mens staatmaak op ’n lewenslange beroep?). – prof. johannes froneman, noordwesuniversiteit (professor en oudjoernalis) die grootste probleem is studente se swak kennis van geskiedenis. hulle weet nie wat hulle nié weet nie en die gevolge is duidelik in eenvoudige foute wat 28 pedro diederichs gemaak word. hulle het ’n swak begrip oor aktuele sake wat lei tot oppervlakkige joernalistiek. die antwoord: lees, lees, lees. – prof. guy berger, unesco (o.a. media-projekbestuurder en oudjoernalis) om teorie en praktyk in die onderrig-, opleidingen navorsingsituasie te versoen. alle dosente glo nie in die noodsaak hiervan nie, en in die praktyk steur die meeste joernaliste hulle nie daaraan nie. die enigste manier om daarmee vol te hou, is waarskynlik om te bly glo dat die model wel sin maak en die kursusstof en toepassing op so ’n wyse aan te bied dat dit wel sin maak. al glo die breë j-praktyk nie die storie nie, is daar tog hier en daar studente wat hul teoretiese kennis in die praktyk toepas en nie saam in die koor sing dat j-onderrig/opleiding nie saak maak nie. – prof. arrie de beer, universiteit van wes-kaapland (voormalige departementshoof en oudjoernalis) een van die grootste probleme is dat jong joernaliste nie genoeg lees nie, in sommige gevalle nie eens hul eie koerant nie! dit bring mee dat daar nie altyd voldoende diepte in hul agtergrondkennis/algemene kennis is nie. hul bewustheid van algemene nuus van die dag, plaaslik en internasionaal, is soms ook maar baie bolangs. op universiteit is dit nog moontlik om bv. koerant-lees verpligtend te maak en elke dag nuusbesprekings te hou en selfs algemene kennis-toetse in te bring. maar dit gaan oor meer as dit. mens sal graag wil sien dat hulle wyer as net koerante en tydskrifte/internet lees om ’n diepte in hul agtergrondkennis te kry (meer en ander boeke as net deon meyer se nuutste speurverhaal – hoewel hulle dit ook maar kan geniet, dan weet hulle minstens wie deon meyer is!). – dolf els, naspers (voormalige hoof van opleiding by naspers) daar is talle probleme, soos die blykbaar dalende vlak van taalvaardighede en belangstelling in ’n boeke-kultuur, maar ons as opleiers sal ernstig moet besin oor die toestand van die bedryf waarheen die meeste van ons studente op pad is. werksekerheid word al minder en dit is onduidelik hoe lank ons nog studente kan aanhou oplei vir ’n krimpende bedryf. ek weet nie hoe om die probleem op te los nie. dit lyk wel of meer instansies in suid-afrika nou in die rigting van gespesialiseerde nagraadse joernalistiek-opleiding beweeg. – dr. gabriël j. botma, universiteit van stellenbosch (departementshoof en oudjoernalis) bespreking van vraag 2 anders as die geval met vraag 1, is daar by vraag 2 ’n groter verskeidenheid antwoorde (omdat daar dalk meer probleme as oplossings is?). die stand van die bedryf en die aansien van joernalistiek word as ’n ernstige probleem geïdentifiseer. dit word in talle antwoorde direk toegeskryf of geïmpliseer aan die bedryf se voorkeur vir vaardigheidsopleiding bo akademiese/teoretiese opleiding en selfs ’n gebrek aan rolmodelle. die meerderheid antwoorde stem dus ooreen met die belangrikste enkele faktor soos in vraag 1 geïdentifiseer dat praktyk en teorie 29 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding in simbiose moet wees. minstens drie respondente spreek ernstige kommer uit oor joernalistiek wat nie meer as ’n aantreklike beroep gesien word nie teen ’n agtergrond van vroeë afleggings van seniors, min werksgeleenthede en grootliks geen of negatiewe groei in werksgeleenthede vir joernaliste. hierteenoor is die ou klagte oor swak verwysingsraamwerke en in sommige gevalle vaardighede weer daar. die versugting dat ’n leeskultuur mag ontwikkel, word uitgespreek, maar terselfdertyd gee respondente te kenne hulle voel hulle voer ’n verlore stryd. selfs algemene kennisen nuuskennis-toetse blyk nie die gewenste uitwerking te hê nie. hier kan genoem word dat bedenkinge uitgespreek word teen die bedryf se aandrang op goeie algemene kennis ten koste van joernalistieke vaardighede en konsepte (ansell 2002). die tersiêre opleidingswêreld in suidafrika ly op alle vlakke erg as gevolg van die swak akademiese vaardighede van nuweling-studente en opleiers moet aanvaar dat remediëring nodig gaan wees. streng keuring van studente vir spesialisgebiede soos joernalistiek versag die probleem effens. tog is daar by die tut se joernalistiekdepartement gevind dat selfs nadat die beste van die beste 100 nuwelinge uit sowat 400+ aansoekers gekeur is, profielbepaling deur die universiteit getoon het dat 90% se engelstaalvaardighede nie eens op graad 10-vlak was nie. ander sub-standaard vlakke sluit in numeriese vaardigheid en selfs lewensvaardighede. spesiale, verpligte bywoningsklasse van twee uur per week word daarom dwarsdeur die jaar vir risiko-studente aangebied. hulle word ook deur ’n mentorprogram (senior studente) ondersteun. in ander dissiplines by die universiteit (bv. ingenieurswese, regte, onderwys) bestaan reeds talle oorgangskursusse (“foundation courses”) waar suksesvolle studente outomaties as eerstejaars in die daaropvolgende jaar aanvaar word as hulle na wense presteer. moontlik is dit ook die enigste uitweg vir joernalistiekprogramme en kan daar ’n vinnige en ’n stadige baan ingestel word om die uiteindelike deurgangsyfers op te stoot. die akademiese peil en groot getalle studente wat toegelaat word in sogenaamde joernalistieke kursusse onder die sambreel van “kommunikasiewetenskap”, skep ’n verdere probleem. tydbeperkings is ’n probleemarea en die lae akademiese peil van studente verg remediëring wat verdere onderrigtyd kompromiteer. by die tut is daar bv. jaarliks sogenaamd 34 akademiese weke. dit verteenwoordig 170 klasdae of 1360 onderrigure (8 uur per dag) per jaar. as na die eerstejaarprogram gekyk word, word hiervan reeds 36 klasdae afgestaan aan oriëntering, registrasie, administratiewe take soos lenings en koshuisreëlings, semestertoetse, eksamens, hereksamens, spesiale eksamens en laaste maar nie die minste nie, valentynsdag, fakulteitsdag, studenteraadverkiesingsdag, lentedag, openbare vakansiedae en sporadiese betogingsdae in onderrigtyd. dit laat sowat 27 weke vir klasgee oor, wat 135 klasdae en 1080 klasure verteenwoordig. een akademiese jaar verteenwoordig 120 krediete per program en waar 1 krediet gelyk is aan 10 30 pedro diederichs onderrigure verteenwoordig dit 1200 uur. dit beteken dat daar in teorie nie genoeg onderrigtyd is om hierdie krediete te verwerf nie. as verdere aannames gemaak word soos hoeveel uur werklike kontakklasse is, kan gesien word dat daar maar min tyd is om die “perfekte” student aan die einde van ’n jaar te kan lewer. dit is onmoontlik om spesialisonderrig aan groot groepe in sulke omstandighede te gee. die enigste oplossing is kleiner klasse en streng keuring van studente wat joernaliste wíl word. daar is egter nou toenemende politieke druk dat enige vorm van keuring afgeskaf moet word. by die fakulteit geesteswetenskappe by die tut is bv. reeds opdrag gegee dat geen vooraf-profielbepalingstoetse meer toelaatbaar is nie. die feit dat daar ’n uitbreiding in die eenof tweejaar-nagraadse programme op vierdejaarsvlak gesien word (botma, kommentaar op vraag 2), dui op ’n groter begrip vir die noodsaaklikheid van ’n verdieping in die algemene opleiding. die akademiese peil van hierdie studente maak hulle gereed vir onderrig in meer omvattende en gespesialiseerde joernalistieke materiaal wat dan ingedra kan word in die praktyk (“... ’n effek op die diepgang en kwaliteit van die joernalistiek”, soos fourie betoog). daar is egter nog ’n dimensie aan die tydprobleem wat deur botma en froneman aangeraak word. dit is die nodigheid vir spoed wanneer nuwe ontwikkelinge in die vakgebied plaasvind en dit neerslag in nuwe leerplanne moet vind. alle leerprogramme en kwalifikasies van tersiêre instellings moet binne die volgende vyf jaar nuut geakkrediteer word deur die suid-afrikaanse kwalifikasie-gesag (saqa) in opdrag van die departement vir hoër onderwys en opleding (www. che.ac.za/accreditation). hoewel daar in die verlede telkens hewige kritiek uitgespreek is teen die rompslomp en tydrowende prosedures om kursusse geakkrediteer te kry deur saqa, is die proses steeds stadig en ’n dokumentenagmerrie. geen nuwe program sal binne een jaar deur dié kwaliteitsobstruksies van saqa kan beweeg nie. vir meer as ses jaar is gesloer met ’n nuwe kwalifikasiestruktuur met tien vlakke teenoor die ou een van agt (national qualifications framework: www.nqf.org. za). toe dit uiteindelik in januarie 2013 gefinaliseer is, is opleidingsbehoeftes ten opsigte van graadkwalifikasies in die uvt-omgewing feitlik geïgnoreer met ’n duidelike agenda ten gunste van beroepsdiplomas eerder as professionele grade. professionele beroepsgrade soos die b.tech. is afgeskaf en slegs dissiplines met erkende professionele rade/liggame gaan toegelaat word om “professionele” vierjaar-grade aan te bied. waar laat dit joernalistiek, wat geen professionele raad het en volgens joernalistieke beginsels nooit een gaan kry nie? by uvt’s wat nagraadse kursusse aanbied, sal studente nou oor ’n tydperk van vyf jaar diplomas moet verwerf voordat hulle tot meestersgraadstudies toegelaat gaan word – ’n bykomende jaar dus. 31 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding opleiding suiwer aan die bedryf se kant het egter ook akkrediteringsprobleme. die sectional education and teaching authoroties (setas) waardeur inhuisopleiding gefinansier moet word, is geskud deur interne ondersoeke na korrupsie en wanbesteding. in die drukmedia-omgewing is ’n heel nuwe seta, die “fibreprocessing and manufaturing (fp&m)”-seta in die plek van die ou mappp-seta gestig. die uitsaaibedryf se opleiding is onder die mict-seta se jurisdiksie geplaas. volgehoue pogings deur die suid-afrikaanse redakteursforum (sanef) om die opleiding van joernaliste minstens onder een liggaam (mict) te konsolideer, word al vir twee jaar gekortwiek deur die betrokke setas se gesloer. leerlingen internskappe in die bedryf en vir studente van akademiese instellings word intussen drasties benadeel met miljoene rande wat ongebruik lê. hier is ’n duidelike voorbeeld waar samewerking tussen akademie en bedryf gekortwiek word deur voorskriftelike en oningeligte burokrasie. samevatting die repliek op die twee vrae het weer eens aangedui dat daar nie ’n aller-antwoord of bloudruk is wanneer dit gaan oor die opleiding van joernaliste nie. talle respondente wou wegbreek van die nou voorskrifte waarin hulle moes kommentaar lewer, maar dit het hulle gedwing om gefokus te reflekteer – byna soos om ’n visie daar te stel met ’n missie wat dan later ondersteunend daartoe bygewerk kan word. terselfdertyd is duidelike tendense uitgewys wat as belangriker beskou word en dat daar deeglik kennis geneem is van byvoorbeeld die sanef-bedryfsouditte (sanef 2002(a); 2004) wat gedoen is. verskeie opvolg-werksessies, inhuisopleiding en simposiums is die afgelope dekade gehou en word steeds gehou in aansluiting met die strewe na gehalte-onderrig (diederichs 2004). in 2010 was een van die hoogtepunte in dié opsig die aanbied van die tweede internasionale world journalism education congress by die rhodes-universiteit in grahamstad. dit is goed om doelstellings en doelwitte te hê en na te streef. dit is beter om volgens neergelegde spertye bestekopname te doen en aanpassings te maak soos nodig. as na die stellenbosch-deklarasie (november 2002) van die joernalistiekskole en bedryf gekyk word, kan duidelike ooreenkomste gesien word met wat in die bedryf en in die akademie verwag word. hier is ’n opsomming van die werksessieuitkomste met die tema: “back to basics – the stellenbosch commitment” (sanef 2002(b)): a. reporting skills, accuracy, writing and interviewing skills ♦ qualified coaches in the newsrooms ♦ industry and educators put punitive measures in place to combat inaccuracy 32 pedro diederichs ♦ industry commit to take part in the consultation process on journalism unit standards (role of seta and saqa) ♦ intervene to improve skills gap related to secondary education b. legal knowledge, sensitivity, ethics ♦ develop in-depth knowledge about legal issues among mid-level editorial staff ♦ simplify information on legal issues related to media ♦ companies to make their codes of ethics/conduct publicly available ♦ develop resources for reporters on sensitive and ethical issues c. life skills, recruitment/commitment, historical and contextual knowledge ♦ educators develop cultural and historical knowledge of students ♦ editors visit tertiary institutions as guest lecturers ♦ promote a reading and lifelong learning culture d. other undertakings were given as in special partnerships between industry and educators. a significant commitment was made by media executives concerning training investments, dialogue, issue-based training and “accept there is no contradiction between the pursuit of the bottom line and the pursuit of excellence”. die meeste van die bogenoemde ondernemings vind weerklank in talle van die antwoorde op die twee vrae soos in hierdie artikel gestel. hierdie outeur se ervaring is dat al hierdie punte oor die laaste elf jaar in ’n mindere of meerdere mate aandag gekry het. dit is egter waar dat daar steeds groter aandag gegee moet word aan die gaping tussen hoofstroommedia en gemeenskapsmedia. laasgenoemde is steeds sterk aan die groei oor alle platforms heen en het die ondersteuning van opleidingsinstansies nodig weens ’n gebrek aan kapitaal en in sommige gevalle kundigheid. vennootskappe en memorandums van onderneming tussen rolspelers, soos reeds by sommiges soos caxton en limpopo onafhanklike koerantegroep (lin), is noodsaaklik. joernalistiekstudente se gemeenskapsbetrokkenheid kan op verskeie maniere uitgebou word as deel van die kurrikulum. by die tut se departement joernalistiek word deurgaans gestreef om hierdie ondernemings van akademiese kant via ’n weldeurdagte kurrikulum na te kom. volhoubare projekte soos die saamstel van ’n weeklikse gemeenskapskoerant, record noweto, in vennootskap met ’n mediamaatskappy; studentdeelname aan ’n verskeidenheid programme by twee gelisensieerde universiteitradiostasies, tshwane fm en tut fm; publisering van ’n webkoerant en blogs; projekte rondom mobinuus en selfoon-aps-ontwikkeling, sosiale media en gemeenskapsnuusbriewe 33 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding en dokumentêre produksies vir televisie en gesimuleerde nuusflitse vorm alles deel van die “doen” in opleiding sonder om die “vertel” af te skeep. spesiale aandag in alle aanbiedings word gegee aan konvergensie in die redaksiekantoor en multi-platform-aanbiedings – die norm vir die toekoms. die “waarom” van dit alles word ondervang in teoretiese onderrig soos in die geskiedenis van die wêreld en suid-afrika en die media, massakommunikasie en etiek in die media, entrepreneurskap, uitleg en ontwerp, nuuskennis en -bewustheid, mini-dissertasies en spesialisverslaggewing met temas oor geslag, gesondheid, wetenskap, ontwikkelingsjoernalistiek, publieke joernalistiek (“citizen journalism”), redaksionele bestuur en navorsingsmetodologie op vierdejaarvlak. op suiwer akademiese navorsingsvlak word meestersen doktorsgrade aangebied met geregistreerde verhandelinge oor media-onderwerpe om die prentjie te voltooi. dit skakel in by die weldeurdagte “afrika-kurrikulum” van unesco (2007) wat gebruik sal word as ’n basis vir plaaslike relevante leerplanne. so is dit ook in 2010 in oos-londen aanvaar by ’n kurrikulum-dinkskrum van alle uvt’s en saamsmeltuniversiteite (technikons en universiteite) waar joernalistiekdepartemente teenwoordig is. dit beloof weer groter akademiese beweegruimte tussen programme van verskillende universiteite aangesien vakaanbiedings op dieselfde inhoude en nqf-vlakke geskoei sal wees. dit is met programme soos hierdie dat joernalistieke opleiding in die land al meer joernaliste van formaat sal kan lewer wat met die nodige passie en kundigheid ’n medialandskap sal skep en handhaaf waarop suid-afrika en sy mediaverbruikers trots kan wees. in die woorde van ’n oudstudent: “for as long as i could remember, i believed that the pen was mightier – and more fun – than the sword. despite suggestions by my parents for a ‘safer’ career, i answered the call. i believe that journalism has a lot to offer me and i have plenty to give to the profession. i believe i have the passion, motivation, energy and commitment to do journalism justice – if i’m equipped with the necessary tools like this course offered” (merrington 2002). 34 pedro diederichs verwysings ansell, g. 2002. some thoughts on teaching and learning general knowledge in newsrooms. e-pos aan sanef-lede. 21 julie. babbie, e. 2008. the basics of social research. belmont, ca: thomson wadsworth. berger, g. 2005. “fit for purpose” – towards tracking the quality of university education of entry-level journalists in south africa. ecquid novi: african journalism studies 26(2): 175-198. berger, g. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 03 maart. botha, n. en de beer, a. 2007. south african journalism education: working towards the future by looking back. ecquid novi: african journalism studies 28(1&2): 198-206. botma, g. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 05 maart. caldwell, m. 2011. a q-methodology analysis of journalists’ reflections on learning at work. communitas 16: 53-74. de beer, a. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 02 maart. de wet, j. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 03 maart. diederichs, p. 2004. lessons from pretoria. referaat gelewer by colloquium “ten years of journalism training in sa”. rhodes-universiteit, grahamstad. dube, b. 2008. the challenges for journalism education in a transforming society: a case study of three selected institutions in post-1994 south africa. doktorale navorsingsvoorstel. departement joernalistiek, universiteit van stellenbosch. du toit, j. 2010. in search of critical engagement: a history of south african university-based journalism education. rhodes journalism review 30: 12-14. els, d. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 02 maart. fourie, p. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 08 maart. froneman, j. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 02 maart. garman, a. 2010. when 140 years of small-town newspapering meets journalism education. rhodes journalism review 30: 58-60. gilmor, d. 2010. if i ran a journalism school, i’d shake things up… rhodes journalism review (30): 6-7. hadland, a. 2006. changing the fourth estate: essays on south african journalism. cape town: hsrc press. 35 enkele indrukke oor aspekte van suid-afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding linström, m. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 09 maart. merrington, z. 2002. derdejaar-student se terugvoerverslag na indiensopleiding voltooi is by ofm. tshwane universiteit vir tegnologie, pretoria. moodie, g. 2012. are journ students in sa being taught enough new-media skills? [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://grubstreet.co.za/2012/03/07/arejourn-students-in-sa-being-taught-enough-new-media-skills/. [besoek op 12/03/2013]. pretorius, c. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 02 maart. prinsloo, j. 2010. journalism eduction in south africa: shifts and dilemmas. communicatio 36(2): 185-199. rabe, l. 2008. koördineerder van seminaar “journalism education & training: the challenges”. stellenbosch lodge, stellenbosch. sanef. 2002a. south african national journalism skills audit. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: www.sanef.org.za/images/uploads/sanef_2002_skills_ audit_1.pdf. [besoek op 10/03/2013]. sanef. 2002b. back to basics – the stellenbosch commitment. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: www.sanef.org.za. [besoek op 10/03/2013]. sanef. 2004. skills audit phase 2. managerial competencies amongst first-line news managers in south africa’s mainstream media newsrooms. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://www.sanef.org.za/skills_audit/phase2/441476.htm. [besoek op 12/3/2013]. steenveld, l. 2006. journalism education in south africa? context, context, context. in: olorunnisola, a. (ed.). media in south africa after apartheid: a cross-media assessment. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press. unesco. 2007. model curricula for journalism education for developing countries and emerging democracies. paris: unesco. [aanlyn]. beskikbaar by: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.phpurl_id=29213&url_do=do_ topic&url_section=201.html [besoek op 12/3/2013]. wasserman, h. 2013. e-pos aan outeur. 08 maart. 93 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 93-112 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet* abstract the article is guided by the following research question: what factors found expression, and influenced the extent to which cope’s 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape met the objectives set in the developed communication strategy? following the framework of systems theory, the developed communication strategy included an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing cope prior to the election, as well as recommendations for the messages the campaign would use to persuade voters; the techniques it would use to reach them; and a targeting strategy that aimed to identify the priority localities where campaign resources should be focused in order to reach the required number of votes to achieve the campaign’s objectives and goals. the success of the communication strategy was then evaluated postelection by explaining to what extent the campaign was able to meet the objectives and goals set for it. the main factors influencing cope’s election outcome were found to be non-adherence to targeting strategy; lack of national media coverage; poor distribution of campaign resources; state resources and patronage; insufficient visibility in targeted areas; cope’s poor campaign organisation; the mompati defection; and insufficient training. * jamie-ryan turkington completed a master’s dissertation on the topic in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein recently. prof. johann de wet, chairperson of the same department, was the supervisor. 94 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet introduction and problem statement the main purpose of this study was to evaluate a developed communication strategy for the congress of the people’s (cope) 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape. the 2011 election in the northern cape was one in which party-affiliated and independent candidates competed for seats on local and district councils as established by the municipal structures act, no. 17 of 1998 and the constitution of the republic of south africa, no. 108 of 1996. for this type of election, a mixed electoral system is used: first-past-the-post for ward candidates as well as proportional representation for the allocation of seats to political parties on councils. after the election, elected councillors would have constitutional duties related to overseeing the governance of a municipality. the development of the communication strategy was undertaken prior to the elections and its evaluation took place after election day, using data and experience gathered before, during and after the course of the campaign’s implementation. currently, no detailed analysis of the political landscape in the northern cape, either past or present, exists in the public domain. this is problematic because in an environment of limited resources for campaigning, communication strategies need to be efficient and effective in order to strengthen democratic processes through increased competition. as the party with the second highest proportion of the provincial vote in the 2009 national and provincial elections, cope became the official opposition in the northern cape legislature. as a fledgling party with a damaged public image nationally, it faced an acid test in the 2011 municipal elections. limited finances and a barrage of negative media coverage resulting from public battles for the control of the party by its leaders, had left it in a precarious position (phakati 2011). the party was formed largely by the members of the losing faction aligned to thabo mbeki in the wake of the african national congress’s (anc) leadership contest at the polokwane conference in 2007 (booysen 2009: 85-92). in the 2009 national and provincial elections, cope managed to accumulate up to 33% of the vote in a number of municipalities in the western half of the northern cape. based on these results, as well as its presence in many communities where potential opposition voters outnumbered those of the incumbent, a base existed to generate some gains in 2011. the party also had to compete with the anc and democratic alliance (da), with both of these parties being better funded and organised on a national level. 95 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape the northern cape presented a unique environment for which to develop a communication strategy for an election campaign. the vastness of the landscape and the near inaccessibility of areas where potential voters reside, are major obstacles to successful communication. because the strategy was tailored to a municipal election campaign, notable peculiarities were considered. not the least of these was the emphasis on certain communication means, due to their suitability given the limited geographical scale of the individual local council campaigns. traditional methods such as rallies, volunteer work, and proliferation of pamphlets amongst other techniques become more important to a communication strategy (maarek 1995: 211). while communication strategies may vary in their comprehensiveness, typically they include the campaign messages, techniques, schedule, budget, and campaign organisation required for fulfilling this purpose (gainer n.d.; green & gerber 2008; o’day n.d.). the recommendations for a communication strategy in this study focused on who the campaign’s target voters should have been, the messages the campaign should have conveyed to them, and the techniques that should have been used to reach voters. the finer details, therefore, of budgeting for the campaign and the scheduling of campaign activities were only considered in a general sense as part of the strategic recommendations. voters were studied primarily on the basis of political affiliation per geographic area through a voting district (vd) analysis, and in a broad socio-economic sense. research into the attitudes and opinions of voters in each locality was beyond the limits of this study. similarly, in evaluating the success of the campaign against the objectives set for it in the communication strategy, the analysis does not extend to the nature of the individual campaign’s run in each locality. instead, the key factors influencing the provincial campaign effort as a collective were assessed. campaigns are presented as operating within a system that must be affected to its advantage (rensburg & angelopulo 1996: 7-9; steinberg 1976: 89-132). the socio-political landscape was studied to develop and evaluate the communication strategy. given the above, the research problem that pertained to this study was: what factors found expression and influenced the extent to which cope’s 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape met the objectives set in the developed communication strategy? 96 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet research design and methodology both qualitative and quantitative research techniques were used to develop the communication strategy. the research began with a review of literature on campaign planning in order to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for the study. for the situation analysis that followed, qualitative research techniques were primarily used. the regulations and legislation on local government elections were consulted to understand the rules and nature of this type of election. demographic data and relevant literature on the northern cape were considered in order to provide the context of the election. independent electoral commission (iec) reports on past voting outcomes in the province were studied alongside the available literature on past elections, to analyse trends in the political landscape of the northern cape. literature on the main parties contesting the election, including academic and journalistic texts as well as documents produced by the parties, was studied to provide a background on each. the media landscape in the province was assessed using the marketing profiles of each platform and knowledge from communication practitioners in the province. anecdotal experience from being in the employ of cope also proved to be useful. quantitative research techniques were used to set the campaign’s goals and objectives, and to determine where the target voters of the campaign were to be located. a voting district analysis was used to analyse the balance of support for each of the main contesting parties, down to the smallest geographical unit – the voting district. the objectives for the campaign were set at a local and district council level in terms of the number of seats on municipal councils cope should have aimed to win in the election. objectives were calculated using the legislated formula for local government seat allocation along with data from past voting records. factors such as the strategic importance of a given council and the strength of the party’s grassroots campaign organisation in each locality were also taken into account. goals that support the objectives were set at all levels – from voting district, to ward, to local and district council – and were measured in votes. data generated by the voting district analysis was used for this purpose. a swot analysis was used to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing cope prior to the 2011 elections. field observations of by-elections in the run up to the election provided useful information on the campaigning habits of cope’s main competitors. 97 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape the literature review, situation analysis, swot analysis and results of the objective calculations and voting district analyses were then used to make recommendations for a communication strategy. recommendations were made on campaign messages and communication channels to be used to convey them. voting districts that needed to be targeted by the campaign in order to meet objectives were also recommended. the results of the election were then recorded against the campaign’s objectives and the main factors in the campaign’s implementation that influenced the outcome were discussed. practical experience of having worked on the campaign, reports from grassroots activists, and literature and press clippings were the main sources used for this purpose. the communication strategy the communication strategy is a comprehensive plan for all organised communication activities aimed at contacting target voters up until election day. as noted above, the development of the communication strategy for cope was limited to the messaging, targeting voting districts (vds) and techniques for contacting the voter. campaign messaging campaign messaging involves the choice of words and visuals the campaign plans to communicate, but does not include the techniques selected for communication or how the message will be packaged into different formats for each technique (moffitt 1999: 139). a message is the “single thought, idea, concept, truth or meaning” the campaign will use to persuade its target voters (fourie 1975: 10). answering the question “why should i support you?”, as if it was coming from the potential voter, is a useful exercise for developing the message (o’day n.d.: 21). the campaign message should also set the tone for the campaign. tone is the manner in which communication is phrased and delivered that must run consistently through the issues the campaign chooses to speak on, called campaign themes, and how they are addressed. a campaign should choose only a limited set of themes, and especially those that are important to its target voters (maarek 1995: 47-48). all themes must be constantly linked back to the campaign message during the course of the campaign. it must be kept in mind that the theme is not the problem itself, but the solution to the problem that is important to the voter (o’day n.d.: 26). the international republican institute (iri 1996: 43) states that besides the 98 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet candidate’s position on an issue, another factor in theme selection is whether the candidate or party is best qualified to address the issue. luntz (2007: 1-33) provides rules for the effective use of language in a campaign message. the message should be simple, short, credible (believable) and consistent in its repetition throughout the campaign. it should be novel or new, and speak to the voter’s aspiration in a relevant context. it may also include a powerful question, distinctive sound or texture. a good message can also show contrast between the candidate or party and their opponents by highlighting the positives of the former and the negatives of the latter, or simply by demonstrating difference. finally, a message must be targeted to the voters a campaign plans to persuade to achieve its objective (o’day n.d.: 22-23). the campaign message need not ascribe to all of the aforementioned criteria, but should at least possess a fair number of these characteristics to be successful. an important aspect to consider in developing a message is that of credibility, i.e. how believable or trustworthy a party is in the eyes of the voter. how much negativity a campaign should allow, or how much time it should spend attacking the opponent in an attempt to lower their credibility is dependent, firstly, on the tone that has been set for the messaging and, secondly, on how the campaign is faring in comparison to its viable opponents in the run-up to election day (morris 1999; o’day n.d.). messages have to be targeted and delivered to the potential voter via various techniques. targeting voting districts and techniques for contacting the target voter targeting voting districts means prioritising which voting districts should be given special attention in a campaign. four factors usually come into play: the number of registered voters in a vd; the predicted turnout; the size of the campaign’s base vote in the vd; and the amount of swing potential of a vd. a high number of voters prevalent in one or more of these factors in a particular vd suggests that it should be prioritised when setting vote goals above other vds where one or more of these factors are not numerically significant to achieve the objective. in general, it is easier to target base voters and swing voters than it is to go after an opponent’s base vote (shaw 2010: 165-208). there are times, however, where the dynamics of a vd that must be won demand that the campaign must go after the opponent’s base voters, in which case the availability of resources is assessed to determine to what extent its base vote can be neglected in order to pursue the opposition’s base. 99 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape while the communication strategy is the plan through which the campaign will achieve its goals and objectives, techniques are the means by which this will be accomplished, i.e. the activities or methods that will be undertaken to implement a strategy (iri 1996: 10). each technique for contacting the voter “can accomplish three things to varying degrees – persuade target voters; identify base voters (supporters), swing voters and the opponent’s base voters; and turnout the vote” (o’day n.d.: 30-31). persuading target voters generally applies to convincing either the opponent’s base voters to switch allegiance or getting swing voters to lean toward the campaign. turning out the vote, otherwise known as the get-out-the-vote phase of the campaign, takes place in the close run-up to election day and is aimed at mobilising sufficient voters to go to the polls and cast their vote for the candidate or party. there are a large variety of techniques that can be employed to contact the voter. a distinction can be made between techniques that allow indirect contact, such as mass media coverage, and direct contact with the voter, which includes personal contact methods like door-to-door canvassing for example (maarek 1995: 89-98). the purpose of describing the various techniques below is not to debate their merits or effectiveness in various contexts, but instead to represent the range of options that may be considered for a communication strategy. one of the traditional techniques for voter contact is door to door canvassing, involving volunteers and/or the candidate making personal contact with the voter. canvassing generally involves three concurrent phases that need to be planned for and a final get-out-the-vote phase. first, vds need to be canvassed street by street in order to identify supporters, take requests for more information or campaign branding material from supporters, and to note where follow-up visits need to be made. interpersonal contact is made with the voter by the candidate or volunteer canvassers on a door to door basis. second, the same areas need to be re-canvassed in order to visit homes where target voters were not reached the first time around. third, canvassers need to make good on the required follow-ups (burton & o’shea 2010: 193-196). the fourth phase which occurs shortly before and on election day is the get-out-the-vote phase. this involves contacting supporters to urge them to vote and arranging the logistics for people requiring assistance to get to the polling station. this phase requires careful planning as the costs tends to run very high, something which many campaigns do not take seriously enough during the earlier phases (green & gerber 2008). 100 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet closely related to canvassing is the literature drop where campaign literature is left at the household for later perusal. literature can also be handed out at strategic locations such as busy intersections, known as a literature hand-out. phone banks, teams of people who are either paid staff or volunteers tasked with telephonically contacting voters, may be employed to monitor support levels; respond to queries raised during canvassing efforts; remind people to vote; or to persuade voters to consider the campaign’s candidate. automated calls, called robo-calls, can be programmed to deliver a generic message to a voter, but this is neither effective nor cost-effective according to the findings of numerous studies (green & gerber ibid.). a popular form of personal contact is for the candidate to attend coffees to meet supporters and interested parties in an intimate setting such as a supporter’s home. of course, the idea of a coffee-drinking session does not fit all cultural and social contexts. this idea can be adapted to any slightly smaller, more intimate gatherings. other examples include braais (barbeques) and day-time yard meetings with homemakers or younger voters. supporters may also be requested to endorse the candidate to their friends through the use of a card template provided by the campaign. endorsements from influential figures in a community, or celebrities in the case of high-profile campaigns, are another form of this technique. civic organisations such as churches or special-interest groups may also be willing to endorse a candidate or offer their time and people for canvassing and other tasks on a voluntary basis. this is a viable option in some instances, but campaign planning should consider two factors in this regard. first, civic organisations are external to the campaign organisation and therefore outside of its planning. this may result in uncoordinated or even tactically incorrect activities taking place. secondly, these groups often come with their own political baggage and may end up hurting a campaign’s image. there are two types of techniques related to events. the first is preset events which are not organised by the campaign, that the candidate attends and possibly addresses, such as gala dinners, debates or funerals, either by careful planning or invitation from an individual or organisation. the second is the created event, which is organised by the campaign. the most common form is the rally where larger numbers of supporters are addressed by the candidate (o’day n.d.: 48-49). visibility is a technique that is more about creating an impression of an outpouring of support for the campaign rather than persuading voters. it aims to create a tangible presence for the campaign in a given area (shaw 2010: 348-349). this 101 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape can be achieved in any number of ways, most commonly though t-shirts, posters, bumper stickers and other branding material. finally, both paid and earned media form an integral part of any campaign’s techniques, especially in media-centred democracies where most political decisions made by the public are influenced by information gained through mass media. paid media refers to advertising in the press, on radio or online. earned media refers to the publicity a campaign generates, generally through press releases, interviews, events and mentions in editorials and reports. campaign objectives vs. the 2011 election results objectives and municipal vote goals that would enable cope to lead a governing coalition in twelve local councils were set as a result of the vd analysis showing the party to be within striking distance of realistically achieving this. the councils were: nama khoi, kamiesberg, hantam, karoo hoogland, khai ma, mier, kai garieb, khara heis, kheis, renosterberg, thembilihle and siyathemba. there were also prospects for cope to lead a governing coalition in the namakwa district and an outside chance of this occurring in the siyanda and pixley ka seme districts. the party had to adhere to the recommended targeting strategy by focusing its campaign resources primarily in target vds in order to achieve this. cope contested the election in the northern cape with limited resources relative to the other two main competitors, the da and anc. it was recommended that these resources be directed to localities where the party would be able to make a significant impact. as a result, objectives, vote goals and target vds were not allocated to three of the four local councils in the frances baard district and all three local councils in the john taole gaetsewe district. it was recommended that cope refrain from contesting these areas due to vd analysis data indicating low base votes, low swing potential and high numbers of anc base votes relative to the rest of the province. in the namakwa district, 84% of the total vote goal was located in just 31 target vds out of a district total of 101 vds. in the pixley ka seme district, 60% of the total vote in the district was concentrated in just 25 target vds. in the siyanda district, 74% of the total vote goal for the district was concentrated in just 27 target vds. in the frances baard district, 67% of the total vote goal for the district was located in just 25 target vds. all 25 of these vds were located in the sol plaatje local council, which governs the largest provincial centre of kimberley. it was recommended that swing voters in eight local councils that showed significant past support for the independent democrats (id), should be reached 102 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet with a tailored provincial campaign message that complemented cope’s national campaign message: “another five years of the anc in charge is a lifetime too long. only if cope and id supporters stand together in this election will it be possible to remove the anc from power in this council. by voting cope we can govern together to the benefit of the community.” this message, it was recommended, would focus on id voters, most of whom the analysis of past election results had revealed to have been voting for the opposition since 1994, by compelling them to vote cope as the opposition party with the most support and best chance of defeating the anc, based on the 2009 election results in these local councils. the message purposefully acknowledged these voters and their value in contrast to the da who, in the wake of the party’s merger with the id, had chosen not to include any of the party’s symbols or colours in its campaign material, or refer to these voters directly in its campaign messaging. techniques for reaching voters, and target voters in particular, in each district were recommended. door-to-door canvassing coupled with literature drops and handouts as well as preset events were recommended techniques for all districts. the provincial campaign message was to be communicated to swing voters in target vds in eight local councils and the national message to voters in the remainder of the province. cope president mosiuoa lekota was to campaign at preset events in at least one main centre of 11 of the 12 local councils where cope was set winning campaign objectives, as well as in the sol plaatje local council. provincial and national leaders were to campaign in the remainder of the localities with a specific focus on target vds. the campaign was to focus on achieving visibility through posters and t-shirts specifically in target vds in a manner that it enabled cope to at least match its competitors in this regard. minimal amounts of this campaign material were to be directed to non-targeted vds to enable the campaign to focus on appearing as a viable competitor where it counted. it was recommended that paid media coverage be pursued on billboards in kimberley and upington, commercial radio in the form of rsg, community radio in the form of nfm 98.1 in the namakwa district and radio riverside in the khara heis local council, as well as in diamond fields advertiser, a commercial newspaper in the sol plaatje local council. earned media coverage was to be sought in all community and commercial media in the namakwa, pixley ka seme, siyanda and frances baard districts in cases where a policy of carrying political news was in place. 103 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape the overall outcome of the election reinforces the trend of support in the province being consolidated around three parties. collectively, the da, anc and cope accounted for 97% of the vote in the 2011 election (94% in 2009). the anc was the biggest beneficiary (60% to 63% of the total provincial vote for the 2009 and 2011 elections respectively) of the decline of cope (the party’s proportion of the provincial vote dropped from 17% to 12% over the same two elections). in 2011, some councils were, nevertheless, won by the opposition as a result of coalitions between cope and the da, albeit far less than what appeared to be possible prior to the election. in nama khoi and hantam, the da leads a coalition government with cope, while in karoo hoogland, cope leads a coalition with the da. all three councils are in the namakwa district. cope failed to achieve its campaign objectives in all local and district councils the party contested. the party also chose to ignore the campaign objectives and targeting strategy recommended by this study, instead taking the decision to contest all councils and a total of 189 out of 194 wards in the province (it was recommended that the party contest 147 out of 194 wards in order to enable it to focus its limited resources in target vds). the significant disparity between the objective for seats on the namakwa district council and the actual result (six and one respectively) reflects the inability of the party to win sufficient representation in the four local councils where it had the potential to lead a governing coalition. this resulted in the failure to garner four seats on the district for district representatives from each of these councils; namely, nama khoi, kamiesberg, khai ma and karoo hoogland. while cope achieved the mayoral position in karoo hoogland, the district representative seat was negotiated away to the da because cope had not won an outright majority in the council that would have allowed the party to take both positions (julies 2011). similarly, the disparity between the objective for seats on the pixley ka seme district council and the actual result (seven and two respectively) is a consequence of the party’s failure to meet vote goals in councils where winning objectives were set in the eastern portion of the district, namely: renosterberg, thembilihle and siyathemba. a significant drop in support in the emthanjeni local council also cost the party a district representative seat for that council. the narrative is the same for the siyanda district (an objective of seven versus an outcome of two seats) where the party failed to meet vote goals in councils where winning objectives were set in the western portion of the district, namely: mier, kai garieb, khara heis and kheis. 104 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet in the frances baard district, cope lost a large chunk of support in the sol plaatje local council – just five seats were achieved against an objective of 12 (the party would have achieved nine hypothetical seats in the 2009 election). councils were contested by cope contrary to the recommendations of the study. three of these were in the frances baard district (dikgatlong, magareng and phokwane) and the three in the john taole gaetsewe district (moshaweng, ga segonyana and gamagara). the party was able to manage a total of seven seats from these five councils as well as a seat on the john taole gaetsewe district council. main factors influencing the outcome there appeared to be eight major factors that were common to all localities in the province in influencing the outcome of cope’s provincial campaign. while many emanated from within the system of the campaign organisation itself, some factors were beyond the control of the party at a provincial level, emanating from the external environment within which the campaign system operated. non-adherence to targeting strategy the reasoning behind the recommendation for cope to abstain from contesting in selected councils was that the party would likely have contested the election with very limited resources. spreading campaign material in the form of posters, t-shirts, flyers and the like too thin across the entire province would result in smaller quantities being available in targeted territories where it counts, with the natural consequence of a lesser impact on voters. the decision by the party to put added pressure on its finances by contesting an additional 42 wards in areas where it stood little chance of making inroads in all probability partially explains the reason why objectives were not achieved in seemingly winnable councils where voters needed to see and feel the presence of the cope through campaign material. ultimately, the party funded the campaign entirely on provincial finances (van niekerk 2011). unlike its main competitors, the anc and da, cope received almost no financial assistance from its national structure and should have taken more care to concentrate its resources in targeted areas more effectively. lack of national media coverage the sabc all but ignored the participation of cope in the 2011 elections. unfortunately for the provincial campaign, the source of this problem lay between the party’s national campaign organisation and the public broadcaster. cope appeared on just two of the sunday night election debates scheduled during the course of the months preceding the election (dexter 2011). this could have 105 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape occurred either through the bias of the sabc or the incompetence of the party’s national campaign organisation. besides the lack of earned media coverage on the radio and television platforms of the public broadcaster, paid media coverage was severely lacking in comparison to the anc and da who ran extensive campaigns on both platforms. no advertising campaigns were run by cope on television, in national print media or on any national radio station (dexter ibid.). given that most of the northern cape population relies on sabc news or radio for news and entertainment, the provincial campaign understandably suffered from the lack of coverage in comparison to its main competitors. poor distribution of campaign resources closely linked to the spreading of campaign resources too thinly by contesting in non-targeted areas, the distribution and procurement systems in place to ensure that campaign material arrived in each locality on time and in the right quantity were severely lacking. procurement of all t-shirts, flyers, backing boards and posters was done locally in kimberley or delivered to the city before being distributed to the rest of the province. immense distances therefore needed to be covered in order for the campaign material to arrive in the namakwa district and western portions of the pixley ka seme and siyanda districts. transport systems were lacking in that local leaders from the various municipalities were expected to arrange transport of the goods from kimberley to their area without a subsidy for this expense from the party. the end result was that, due to the proximity to kimberley, councils in the predominantly non-targeted east of the province were able to covet most of the campaign material at the expense of the predominantly targeted western councils, ultimately causing campaigns in those localities to suffer. in practice, this constituted an almost exact reversal of the recommended targeting strategy. state resources and patronage as predicted in the swot analysis, the anc supplemented its already well-funded campaign by using government departments to disguise campaign activities as state-funded service delivery programmes. besides the r10 million allocated by the premier and provincial treasury to be shared among councils where the anc exhibited a 2009 performance of 55% of the vote or less (wyngaard 2011), there are also examples of the probable abuse of state resources during the 2011 campaign. 106 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet for a period of two weeks stretching from late april to early may 2011, as the election neared in mid-may, the department of social development deployed a large delegation of officials alongside anc politicians to the karoo hoogland municipality for what was termed a “winter-relief programme”. the premise, as explained by the department, was to provide “poverty relief” in one of the coldest parts of the northern cape during winter (cloete 2011). the council also happened to exhibit the lowest percentage of anc support in 2009, namely 33%. blankets, scarves, food parcels and the like were distributed en masse to residents of williston, fraserburg and sutherland as anc politicians reportedly extolled the virtues of the party alongside government officials (julies 2011). insufficient visibility in target vds due to the poor distribution systems and the spreading of resources too thinly by contesting in non-targeted areas that characterised the cope campaign, the anc and da were able to capitalise by running far more visible campaigns by comparison in targeted localities. by 19 march 2011, the da had managed to line the streets of every locality in the country with significant numbers of election posters (zille 2011). due to high-quality printing, the posters did not fade at all through sun and rain, easily maintaining their brightness and colour into election day. albeit slightly later and with a lesser quality poster that was prone to colour fading, the anc was able to accomplish the same (letsoalo 2011). both of cope’s main opponents were also able to ensure significant numbers of t-shirts bearing party logos and slogans reached localities that cope should have been focusing its resources on according to the recommendations of this study. the effect was that cope’s message of being the more viable option for former id voters to choose based on 2009 electoral strength, was not reflected in what was visibly apparent to voters in each locality. cope’s poor campaign organisation cope’s campaign in the northern cape also suffered from a significant lack of support and disorganisation within the party’s national campaign organisation. in contrast to the “war rooms” of the anc and da (boyle 2011) from which campaigns were coordinated at a national level, cope barely had a national campaign organisation to speak of (khalipa 2011). the effects of a disjointed approach by its national structure were keenly felt by cope in the province. a clear deployment schedule for national leaders, including the party’s president mosiuoa lekota, to campaign in the province was non-existent. lekota turned out to be the only national politician to campaign in 107 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape a province where a significant number of councils appeared to be winnable based on past performance. while lekota was able to make campaign stops in many of the targeted councils, the uncertainty of when he would arrive and how many days he would stay in the province negatively affected the ability of local leaders to confidently mobilise voters to attend rallies without the absolute surety of a reliable schedule from the national structure. the momentum of the party’s 2009 election campaign, where it managed to hog 34% of sabc coverage (media monitoring africa 2009) was clearly not evident in 2011. while it can be argued that factional battles within the party had contributed to a hostile media environment, very little was done by the party in terms of pro-actively mitigating this during the 2011 campaign. the mompati defection an unfortunate setback for cope was the defection of neville mompati, its leader in the provincial legislature and one of its most high-profile politicians, to the anc in late april (kwon hoo 2011). besides the dismay this would have caused amongst grassroots politicians of the party, the defection was in all probability keenly felt in terms of party support in galeshewe, kimberley, where mompati remains popular (kies 2010). cope achieved just five seats on the sol plaatje local council in 2011 compared to the nine hypothetical seats it would have won in 2009. given the timing of just over two weeks before the election, it appears that mompati collaborated with the anc to ensure that his defection would have the maximum detrimental impact possible on the cope campaign. mompati in all likelihood conveyed confidential information to the anc about cope’s campaign strategy, including the recommendations of this study to which he was privy. within days of his defection, mompati hit the campaign trail on behalf of the anc – holding rallies specifically in targeted municipalities where the anc was under threat of losing control. rallies were held in keimoes in the kai garieb council, fraserburg in the karoo hoogland council as well as extensive radio appearances on nfm, the community radio station broadcasting to most of namakwa district (julies 2011; maphanka 2011; newman 2011). local leaders reported that mompati’s message was specifically tailored to discourage voters from supporting cope, along the lines of his initial pronouncements made when his defection was announced at an anc press briefing at luthuli house (mammburu 2011). insufficient training besides the lack of political buy-in on a provincial level for the targeting strategy recommended by this study, insufficient training was provided to regional and 108 jamie-ryan turkington and johann c. de wet local structures on how the targeting strategy would affect the approach to the individual local campaigns. in total, five training sessions, one per district, were held in march and a manual was produced by the party to explain how campaigns should be conducted on a local level. given the vastness of the province, however, even a session in each district is insufficient to reach grassroots activists in farflung localities. a targeting strategy has significant implications for scheduling, resource allocation to voting districts and wards, and many other campaign activities in each locality. if the strategy is not sufficiently familiar to local campaign organisations then the tactics employed by them are not likely to reflect the strategy. conclusion this study focused on campaigning in the northern cape province in particular. for campaigns to be successfully waged there in decades to come, professional campaign planning and management will be required. to achieve this, a number of research avenues will need to be explored in future studies. continued work on voting district analyses is important to ensure an on-going monitoring of shifts in party support on a micro-scale in order to develop targeting strategies as the basis for future campaigns. more knowledge of the provincial population, its needs and opinions, is also necessary. the themes on which the various local campaigns should be run must be identified by research into what concerns people on a micro scale. for the rural towns, villages and surrounding farms this can be done on a centre by centre basis. however, for more densely populated centres such as upington and kimberley, important townships with large electorates like pabalelo and galeshewe would need to be considered on a block by block basis to ascertain what the needs and aspirations are of people, many of them migrants, based on what standard of living they currently have and what they expect from a party in government. besides a geographic-based approach to acquiring knowledge of the electorate, enquiry should also be made into the various demographic groups residing in the province in order to understand them on a similar basis and to creatively define the population in new ways by identifying fresh groupings for targeting purposes. consistent polling of the electorate’s opinions would enable parties to test and refine campaign messages and candidates for political office; attitudes amongst their opponent’s base voters; and what positions parties and candidates should take on the burning issues of the day. a specific sector which deserves mention is the commercial farming network. helpful knowledge to accumulate would constitute: who owns what farm and 109 an evaluation of cope’s communication strategy for the 2011 municipal elections campaign in the northern cape where; what issues concern them; what assistance can they provide to campaigns in their locality; how many people they employ; and the migration patterns of workers and whether they are documented, registered voters. campaigns would benefit financially and politically from a greater knowledge and understanding of this important demographic. campaigning would also be aided by research aimed at developing professional systems for campaign organisations. this can extend from operational systems for door-to-door work – a staple technique for rural campaigning – to developing organograms for hierarchies within a campaign organisation and the various roles and responsibilities of each. while not a factor for the 2011 campaign, the use of social media as a communication channel for future campaigns in kimberley and upington in particular, may show enough potential to warrant a study as popularity and access to this platform grows amongst urban youth. field observations should also be a staple form of intelligence-gathering. continuous case studies based on the campaign strategies of the main contesting parties in the province, whether in by-elections, municipal or provincial elections, would yield valuable information about the habits of each party including the type of tactics, schedule and quality of campaigns they are likely to roll-out in various localities. this form of research would, in all probability, also reveal the means to combat the use of state resources for campaigning purposes – a form of patronage put to formidable use currently by the anc, the incumbent party at most levels of government. 110 references booysen, s. 2009. congress of the people: between foothold of hope and slippery slope. in southall, r. & daniel, j. 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[online]. available at: <http:// da.wwc.co.za/newsroom.htm?action=view-news-item&id=9238> [accessed on 21 march 2011]. 57 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community alette jean schoon* abstract this article describes a journalism education project in which television students worked collaboratively with teenagers in a community media club to make short videos about issues that directly affected the teenagers. an analysis of this project using action research methods draws on debates around media and community participation from several theoretical “moments”. these include current debates on online citizen media and participation, “civic media” and public news agendas from the public journalism movement originating in the nineties in america, and much older debates on participatory video production from the 1960s. the author set out how various theoretical concepts from these debates are manifest practically in the project. a key concept is the difference in the roles that the “professional” journalism students and the amateur teenagers adopt in shaping the story. * alette schoon is a lecturer in the school of journalism and media studies at rhodes university in grahamstown, south africa. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 57-75 58 alette jean schoon introduction should journalism educators teach students to work with communities and hand over parts of a story to their sources to shape? there are probably many who would react with horror at the idea of giving up some editorial control and who would label this behaviour as unprofessional. these educators could be described as subject to a “professionalization” discourse (reese & cohen 2000) where industry norms and practices are taken as absolute and not open to challenge or experimentation. however, there are others who would recognise that journalism is not as static as this professionalisation discourse implies but continually reinventing practices as well as values in response to its critics. many scholars of journalism now recognise that we are facing a new moment of “participatory journalism” brought on by the increasing use of the internet (hermida 2011; bruns 2010; rosen 2006). as journalism educators working with the future generation of journalists, surely one should therefore not just replicate current “professional” practices, but also work towards anticipating as well as reinventing them? south african journalism has its own particular challenges, however, which demand that journalism educators not simply copy international advocates of participatory journalism. south african journalism is increasingly criticised for the lack of working-class issues and perspectives in the media (friedman 2011; duncan 2003) which seems to mirror the increasing class divisions in our society. the picture of south africa that the media paints may be ignoring many injustices and greater trends because they draw their sources from a very limited pool of people (friedman 2011; duncan 2003). friedman (2011) argues that if journalism is indeed committed to serving not only its middle class audiences but in fact the greater south african public interest, it should find a way to represent issues that concern working class people and draw their perspective into the media. participatory journalism could be a solution. ordinary south africans from all walks of life increasingly have the means to tell their own stories. just recently a bystander in a township street used a mobile phone to document the public torture of a man dragged behind a police car in a video that made national and international headlines. as south african journalism educators we should be training journalism students to find ways of increasingly incorporating such amateur storytelling into their journalism to add value and depth to their reporting. in implementing a participatory journalism project, this author has set out to examine the role journalism students could play in such a partnership, the educational outcomes of such a project and the extent to which this process would enable a voice for marginalised youth. 59 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community context the school of journalism and media studies at rhodes university has a history of leading debates around what journalism should be, and not simply accepting it as is (steenveld, strelitz & wasserman 2012). one of the school’s key concerns is that journalism should be value-based and that these values should be democracy and justice. in the apartheid years both production and media studies lecturers actively engaged with critiquing mainstream media and exploring the alternative media as a practice that could address those critiques. in the post-apartheid years as the alternative media disappeared, there was an increasing sense of working at cross purposes. production lecturers were expected to prepare students for the professional world of the media industry while media studies colleagues were critiquing this same media industry (amner & marquis forthcoming). it is only in the past decade that, inspired by the public journalism movement as well as the notion of development journalism, praxis experiments were again initiated in the school (amner & marquis ibid.). here students are made aware of the critiques of the media, but are also encouraged to try out different methods to address these critiques through critical media projects. these projects can be equated to the notion of action research, a popular research technique amongst educationists who want to innovate within their profession. the attempt to innovate television production to adapt it to community participation demanded much lateral thinking, as there are no community tv stations which students could use to find audiences nor already existing community media initiatives which they could join. what many ordinary people in the community do have, however, are mobile phones with cameras. the first project in participatory journalism that was initiated by this author made full use of this technology and mobilised community members to use mobile phones to create hard news stories. students were paired with community volunteers who had received some training in print journalism at the local newspaper. the television students taught them how to identify a tv news story and film it using the mobile phone’s camera. the citizen journalists then had the following week to complete this in their neighbourhood. the week after that the tv students edited the clips for the citizen journalists and helped them to script news narration. however, despite their close collaboration with the citizen journalists, the students remained far removed from the realities of living in the community. a community member in the talk-show had to point out to a student presenter that the greatest danger for children playing in rubbish was not loss of self-esteem, but serious risks to their health. furthermore, the news values in these stories were often related to “bad news” (harcup & o’neill 2001) such as underage smoking. 60 alette jean schoon while the bad news frame worked for many of the packages (youtube 2010), in some of them they seemed rather forced. for example, there was one story where the community volunteer citizen journalist later admitted that she simply wanted to tell the story of her hero who had a good job as a receptionist but, in collaboration with the students, the story ended up focusing on the fact that this woman had not received a bursary for further study. in the studio talk-show discussion, a community activist felt that this angle did not recognise that many working people in the community were indeed successfully studying for certificates part-time and paying for their own studies. what this author began to realise was that dominant “negative” news values (harcup & o’neill 2001) and the emotional distance of factual reporting were influencing the framing and selection of news stories. it did not seem appropriate for people located inside a community to talk about their friends and neighbours. the reports appeared callous and judgemental or, at their best, simply lacked nuance and reflection. as an educator, this author was becoming very conscious of the impact of collaboration with the students in shaping the stories. therefore, in another project, a method was developed where our journalism students would still train people from the community to film news events on their mobile phones, but this time the citizen journalists would edit their own stories “in camera”. this researcher was hoping that by giving the citizen journalists editorial control of a story they would find new ways to share the news in their own voice, free from the constraints of news conventions. the citizen journalists were shown how to use live narration, describing what they saw as it happened and how to use the pause button to change the scene. the community journalists then sent their stories back to the students via bluetooth, with the students uploading the stories online and blogging about it. some interesting stories were received, such as a report on a break-in at a pakistani trader’s shop (youtube 2011a) as well as a report on a police arrest of an alleged thief (youtube 2011b). these stories provoked more questions than they answered such as why the person who was arrested seemed to be in great pain and was left groaning on the floor while discussions with the police continued. it seemed as if the accused thief had been beaten up, but the citizen journalist did not deem this newsworthy at all, choosing instead to report on who had arrived on the scene and what the police were doing. it also was not clear whether the long time the police took to respond to the pakistani shopkeeper’s call was related to xenophobia or simply general inefficiency. the stories suggested that the citizen journalists were conceptualising the audience of their stories as people like themselves, with the same knowledge of background context. many of the stories were indeed very insular and dealt with private matters, such as a story which focused on how music has changed a citizen journalist’s life. what marred these stories was often a lack of quality, both technical and story-crafting quality, as well as a “public quality”: 61 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community the stories lacked a public frame which would link individual difficulties to broader social concerns. they were difficult to watch and generally lacked a “sowhat” component. the most successful stories were clearly those that involved more collaboration with students. the project in participatory journalism with the upstart youth club, which is the focus of this article, arguably responds best to many of the concerns raised above in both the hard news collaboration with students and the more autonomous citizen journalism project. here we partnered with a literacy organisation that exposes young people to media production. together with the upstart youth club we planned the process of engagement more carefully as well as various steps developed with the organisers to fulfil the project brief of giving voice to issues that are of great concern to the teenagers. we involved the teenagers in preparation for the project and structured various interactions, which included planned time for the students to spend time in the world of the teenagers before the filming so that they would understand it better. the role of technology and the technical training played a smaller part and instead we focused on a series of interviews and listening skills. as current debates in participatory journalism seem to focus so much on the role of technology, this author would therefore like to use this article to consider the debates around the values and the process of collaboration that inform various traditions of participatory journalism, and use this educational project as a case study to set out what this means in practical terms. participatory journalism current debates current definitions of participatory journalism relate the concept closely to the technological environment of social and online media which has over the past ten years facilitated the producing, sharing and commenting on media by people who are not journalists or media workers (singer et al. 2011). while participatory journalism is recognised as important by journalists, it is generally not taken seriously and journalists see it either as tip-offs to follow up for “real journalism” or as fulfilling a community function enabling readers to experience some sense of belonging (heinonen 2011: 46). when there is collaboration between journalists and citizen journalists it is considered to involve journalists coordinating and motivating users to provide information for stories that would be difficult to acquire otherwise, suggesting that amateurs only do some of the legwork while journalists still craft the stories (singer et al. 2011). a study of various participatory journalism projects has, however, revealed that there is a wide range of possible ways in which journalists and citizen journalists cooperate in terms of story input, including citizen agenda-setting and story62 alette jean schoon crafting (nip 2011). between the two autonomous poles of conventional journalism authored by journalists and citizen journalism authored solely by citizens, there exists a whole spectrum of collaboration (nip 2011). on the side of the spectrum closest to absolute citizen editorial control one finds guided citizen reporting, where citizen journalists produce stories of their own but have some guidance from professional journalists. closer to the pole where journalists hold editorial control one finds citizen response, which involves citizens simply publishing commentary on journalism (nip 2011). where it gets interesting is in the murky middle section, where journalists and citizens start to share editorial control, which nip (2011: 137) terms “guided professional reporting”: in this level, citizens may be involved in more than one stage of the news, including shaping the news agenda, forming the story perspective and providing information during reporting. as nip explains, there were very few participatory journalism projects she encountered in this category. it comes as no surprise as journalists generally guard the gate-keeping role as their prerogative (hermida 2011: 21). it requires a mind shift for journalists to accept responsibility for shepherding an ordinary person’s story into the fold of the mainstream media. carpentier (2003) describes this shift in identity in bbc producers as moving from “gate-keeping” to “gate-opening” and argues that this shift in identity is crucial for the success of participatory video production. here the aim is to maintain an egalitarian relationship between professional producer and amateur. however, like the ideal egalitarian relationship between student and teacher described by paolo freire, “‘abdication’ is never complete, neither can it be expected to be complete”, the professional producer remains ultimately responsible for the success of the relationship and the project (carpentier 2003: 438). the reason why these bbc producers may have been willing to give up their gate-keeping role can be related to their buy-in with the social values of the project, which aimed to help ordinary people from marginalised sectors of society tell their stories so as to promote a more open, inclusive society. this value-based appreciation of participatory media stands in contrast to the journalists heinonen (2011: 45) describes who generally have a purely utilitarian concept of participation and relate it to commercial imperatives and building the brand of the media outlet. there are some journalists who do, however, see citizen participation as playing a “dialogic role” in that their voices add and deepen journalistic stories and may even help create original stories (heinonen 2011: 45, 50). whether or not citizen journalism provides alternative perspectives that provide a more diverse political view of the world, as some (rosen 2006; bruns 2010) 63 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community have suggested, remain a matter of debate. critics argue that citizen journalism has developed as “a practice in search of a theory” and that it needs to embrace the principles of public good in order to overcome its shortcomings and build on its strength as enabler and gate-opener for journalism (merritt 2010: 22). some scholars have noted how the initial enthusiasm for the transformative power of citizen journalism to introduce new levels of accountability has waned as it was found to be even less likely than professional journalism to promote a sense of civic responsibility: as more citizen-initiated journalism unfolded, traditional notions of gatekeeping that for generations had confined the press to a narrow, prescribed model were swept aside. but the citizen created coverage that emerged in its stead was all too often fragmented, incomplete, and in its own way even narrower, addressing private issues and concerns rather than anything related to building a more robust public sphere (rosenberry & st john iii 2010: 4). merritt (2010) proposes that the only way to return this sense of public good to citizen journalism is for it to return to an earlier theoretical moment in journalism studies, and that it should find politics in the principles of the public journalism movement. the public journalism movement the public journalism movement emerged in the usa in the 1990s in response to the perceived increasing gaps between the media and citizens, and the media and the government. the mainstream media was critiqued for privileging elite voices by focusing their stories on official sources, often far removed from the realities of people on the ground. the public journalism movement attempted to reform journalism by incorporating more public voices into the media. it developed a method for identifying different “civic layers” for stories in a geographical area and called it “civic mapping” (harwood & mccrehan 2000). these civic layers ranged from official spaces where official leaders could be found, to gradually less official and more informal spaces such as marketplaces, hairdressing salons and homes, where there were different people who set the tone for the conversations that took place in these spaces. it meant that journalists had to get off the phone, out of the newsroom and back on the street and find the spaces in these civic layers and the people who played a key role in these conversations, and to create their own civic maps that revealed a range of different sources. it was then up to the journalist to uncover a citizen’s agenda, or various competing citizen’s agendas, which would highlight the issues of concern for the community. this citizen’s agenda would then influence the newsroom’s news agenda, the stories that the journalist would cover and the way that they were framed, researched and presented. 64 alette jean schoon however, to do public journalism well does not mean that a journalist should give citizens unfettered control of the news agenda and in so doing compromise the journalists’ ability to maintain a critical editorial and reportorial stance in relation to the community, or that it should force journalists to gloss over community conflicts for fear of offending certain community segments (haas 2007: 33). wasserman and amner (forthcoming) agree with haas on this and argue that south african journalists should use civic mapping to discover sources from a range of places that cross the divides of our very unequal society, but that the constitution should hold greater influence in determining the journalist’s news agenda when it clashes with the citizen’s agenda. this particular cognitive approach to civic mapping, based on tapping into people’s conversations, has not been without its criticism from within the public journalism movement. campbell (2002, in haas 2008) defines a structural approach to civic mapping which is focused on transformation. here journalists identify structures that can solve public issues and then abandon their political neutrality to work actively with these structures and organisations to find solutions. haas (2008) calls on journalists to use both approaches to civic mapping so that they not only understand communities better, but they also understand the mechanics that can make change possible. participatory video production in considering how to get people involved in producing video collaboratively, one cannot ignore the participatory video movement that emerged in the 1960s in rural canada and has since become a standard method for development projects across the world. the participatory video movement currently privileges the handing over of cameras to communities, but as bery (2003) points out, there is a spectrum of participation options available to community participants and professionals, many of whom do not involve community filming. the process followed by our students and the upstart teenagers is probably closest to bery’s “co-learning” which is defined as follows: local people and outsiders share their knowledge: community members and outside video producers discuss the issues and develop the script. the production is made jointly with an outsider directing the process. local audiences will see and have access to the product so as to share it with communities (bery 2003: 106). this co-learning method where outsiders still operate the technology also fits the first instance of participatory video developed on the canadian fogo islands and known today as the “fogo process” (white 2003). the canadian film board initially commissioned a series of films for public broadcast so as to enable a national dialogue on the topic of poverty. it became clear that this was not an 65 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community issue that could simply be reported on by middle-class producers using standard conventions, when the screening of the first documentary led to the public humiliation of the impoverished family featured in the film (crocker 2003). this example reinforces the argument that it is not sufficient to simply represent people who are marginalised, but that they should be actively involved in participating in the production process to avoid such misrepresentations. the embarrassment resulting from the film prompted a collaborative approach to the subsequent films, where communities were actively involved in defining the issues that were of concern to them. the participatory video process is not neutral but committed to the improvement of the conditions of the communities involved (white 2003). it is this concern for giving a voice to the voiceless which was at the centre of the concern for its leading filmmaker, colin low (memorial university extension service 1972). the production process involved building a relationship with community members and interacting with them not only as subjects, but spending time with them as human beings. the fogo process also modelled experimentation with a range of filmmaking styles, exploring a variety of aesthetic codes that differed from an objective journalistic representation. post-production involved one of the most important decisions, which was to present material as driven by people instead of issues. in this way it allowed for the suspension of judgement as, instead of evaluating who was right or wrong in the juxta-positioning of quotes on a topic, the viewer could be drawn into the world of one subject and appreciate his or her concerns (crocker 2003). focusing on people-driven films also allowed for voices of leadership to start emerging in the community as some people’s voices resonated particularly strongly with community concerns (crocker 2003). a central component of the fogo process was the series of screenings that took place for the community that was also the subject of its films (cain 2010: 81). such screenings can serve as a catalyst for transformation in that it help subjects form a sense of self-worth and facilitate a community developing a collective identity (white 2003). in terms of the issues raised in the films, screenings may serve not only to bring awareness of collective problems but also facilitate discussion, consensus building and mobilisation. the people of fogo island seemed to have gained a better understanding of themselves, and their neighbours and individual communities were able to realise their common problems crystallised through film. something of an island community began to emerge (memorial university extension service 1972: 5-6). the screenings not only conscientised villagers but also allowed officials to hear the concerns of the villagers and to respond to them. these responses from officials 66 alette jean schoon were in turn recorded and taken back for screening in the villages, facilitating a deliberative culture. participatory video production often emphasised the process as more important than the end product and therefore its screening outside of the community was not always seen as important as the development it facilitated within a community (white 2003). the upstart videos the aim of the upstart videos was to create a number of videos that would each feature a story focused on one person, an upstart teenager, similar to the peoplefocused films of the fogo process (crocker 2003). each film would centre on a problem encountered by this teenager in his or her daily life or, as we put it to the young people, “something that ticks you off”; hence in defining this it was the teenagers who set a citizen’s agenda (harwood & mccrehan 2000). the teenagers were encouraged to work with the journalism students to shape the stories in which the teenagers would share their lives. therefore the project brief was similar to the fogo process in that the technical production was dealt with by the “professional” journalism students, while the upstart teenagers were given the responsibility to make sure the stories were told in a way that was true to their lives. the journalism students were told that while they needed to work collaboratively with the upstart teenagers to come up with the stories, it was their responsibility to ensure that the stories were well-crafted with strong narratives and that these stories could be linked to broader issues of social concern. in this way the journalism students played a role in steering the stories away from some of the pitfalls that citizen media often encounters (merritt 2000). while they were informed by a citizen’s agenda they still needed to follow their own journalistic values linked to the values of our constitution (wasserman & amner forthcoming). the students had to produce short videos in which they reflected on the process of collaborating with the teenagers and were tasked to answer various questions. the quotes used here were gathered from these “the making of” the videos. drawing up an agenda an important part of the process was that the journalism students had to learn an entirely new way of conceptualising their journalism. whereas previously the students had pitched stories to lecturers who either assigned a story or shot it down, now the process was more complex. they had to learn to become “gate-openers” (carpentier 2003) for the stories the teenagers wanted to tell. the students worked with the teenagers in small focus groups. here journalism students were tasked with steering the discussion to issues of concern to broader society; hence topics such as one student’s concern that his favourite soccer team was experiencing a losing streak were not chosen. this did not mean that issues dealing with private 67 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community life were not taken up; indeed a number of stories dealt with issues that could be considered private matters such as sibling rivalry, pregnancy, drug abuse and social media addiction. taking on the fogo ethics of prioritising the participants’ safety, any filming that could endanger the upstarters was avoided. kelly (tv student): first when we brought all the upstarters and we got all the ideas the biggest story that came out was gangs that were targeting the school, but as soon as we found out that it would have been dangerous for our upstarters to be involved we went back and we told the kids no let’s do another thing. an important role played by the journalism students was to encourage and validate the issues brought up by the teenagers as worthy of telling. one girl spoke about how what most irritated her in her day to day life was being bullied by boys at school who tried to remove her clothes, but that she could not see this as the legitimate topic of a film until the students persuaded her that it was. the teenagers were encouraged to speak in their own register, using their own expressions and their own language. it was very different from the mobile phone news experiment we did the previous year in which young people were drilled to speak like broadcast journalists. they took more ownership of the stories, and some teenagers, like masi, became actively involved in planning how they would like their story to unfold. justin (tv student): the way i think that we actually went about doing it is we sat, we spent a lot of time actually thinking about it first, actually thinking about a narrative and an actual storyline that would do the story. me and masi understood what each other wanted from this (youtube 2011c). masi wanted to be a television presenter but was concerned that he would not achieve his dream because many of his teachers were regularly absent for much of the school day. instead of producing a serious investigative report on truant teachers in which masi would become a victim, he wanted to be the hero of the story. masi’s story (youtube 2011d) began with him in the television studio presenting a show and berating his teachers for robbing him of his future. then he magically reappears back at school to guide us through the evidence. in this way masi uses humour and visual language to claim a position of authority over his difficult circumstances. unlike a hard news narrative where masi might have come across as the victim of a negative story, he now became a hero confronting adversity. in another case, the teenager driving the conceptualisation of her story had very particular ideas. aviwe had a few friends who had fallen pregnant while at school. she wanted to make a film where the issue included pregnant girls in the conversation discussing it seriously, not only as gossip. she was particularly 68 alette jean schoon enraged by the patronising attitude that government-sponsored advertisements seemed to adopt: gabi (tv student): i asked her like what she thinks needs to be done and she talked about the government having to make ads that appeal to them her generation as teenagers and then i gave [her] the idea that they should come up with an ad that will appeal to them and she got all her friends involved and they just came up with an ad. all i did was just facilitate it and refine it (youtube 2011e). aviwe’s advert (youtube 2011f) did not embarrass pregnant girls or patronise them, but drew on her knowledge of her friends who had become pregnant and the hard lessons they had learnt. it showed a pregnant girl sheepishly greeting the father of her baby with a rub of her enormous tummy and a shy “here’s your baby, sweetie” greeting, to which the callous boy replies “no, honey, here’s my baby” as he pulls a new girl closer. the sense of recognition was evident in the whoops of cynical laughter when her friends viewed the advertisement for the first time. as video allows for the use of subtitles, many of the upstarters were encouraged to use their home language, isixhosa. they were also encouraged to use their own voices and conversational style, which seemed to provide a real sense of ownership of the stories compared to a previous experiment where they used broadcast news narration style written mainly by the students. as carpentier (2003) highlights, the collaborative process is not always easy and despite the egalitarian notion of the partnership it is up to the “professional”, in this case the journalism student, not to “abdicate”. several of the journalism students expressed frustration about teenagers who arrived late or missed appointments or seemed to be “in a teenage mood swing” after committing to filming deadlines, but they dealt with these by finding ways to continue filming. crafting stories the journalism students used their much more extensive experience to come up with powerful ways to tell the teenagers’ stories. some journalism students used metaphorical ways to visualise the stories told by their teenager. they found ways to illustrate the dreams of a future shattered when the school’s science teacher was retrenched and no replacement was provided (youtube 2011g). the students set up visual metaphors based on the dreams expressed by different young people in the class. rugare (tv student): well, what we did is we tried to find a visual metaphor that would work. we went with the idea of learners making things and then later these things are destroyed (youtube 2011h). 69 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community the film shows a science pupil’s sketch of himself as a doctor being crumpled up, and the learner who dreams of becoming a pilot has his paper aeroplane trampled. the student journalists were explicitly instructed to make sure that the stories all had a public context relating the issue that was troubling their teenager to broader social concerns. for example, a teenage girl who has to spend long hours fetching water simply saw this as a great irritation and inconvenience, but the students linked it to her hopes for further study. they focused on questions exploring her lack of time to complete her homework due to all the time spent fetching water. in other films the teenage subject was encouraged to speak to other people with similar problems to show that this is a shared problem with public implications. it is this process of finding an angle and creating a context that is very much part of the skills we teach journalists. in fact, barlow (2010: 48) describes the creation of such contextual ties and story angles as one of the processes of gate-keeping practiced by journalists. journalism students were, however, not always successful in creating such contextual links, as the story of a teenage boy who hated doing chores at home demonstrated. the journalism student struggled to find out exactly why the boy had such strong feelings and eventually pin-pointed it to the bullying he encountered from his older, unemployed brother. as more than a third of out-of-school youth neither study nor work (cloete 2009), it might have been easy to find similarly frustrated, violent older brothers which could have made the story more than one of a private frustration but instead about the shared frustration of a generation of unemployed young people. all of the participatory video experiments we conducted involved the production of stories based on eye-witness accounts, personal experience and visual evidence collected by the filmmakers. in this sense these were reports, not simply commentary. they were therefore clearly different from much of the citizen journalism that is criticised for lacking such empirical basis and instead consists mainly of opinion, commentary, and evaluation of current events (merritt 2010). however, we steered away from following a strict objective journalistic style as it would indeed have been deceptive for the teenage journalists to attempt to pretend to have some distance from the concerns and conflicts in their neighbourhood or their street. the screenings from the start the upstart teenagers were aware that their films would be screened to an audience of peers, and this sense of audience helped to create a sense of voice and empowerment. one of the stories that created a particular impact in the screening was aviwe’s story (youtube 2011i) about the lack of hope that often accompanies living in poverty and which combines poetry with 70 alette jean schoon articulate reflection. through the screening of this film, aviwe achieved the kind of leadership status that is described in the fogo process (crocker 2003) as the natural formation of leaders germinating from producing films based on people, not issues. through such films certain people are able to articulate community problems in a way that resonates with others. aviwe’s film has become the central focus of a new upstart holiday programme that focuses on rekindling hope under difficult circumstances and she speaks to other upstart teenagers about her life. in fact, a number of films from this process are being used as themes to facilitate discussions with upstarters. the films were also shown to others: the upstart coordinator, accompanied by some of the teenagers, took several films to show to the mayor and senior directors of the city council. the films were also shown in two schools where both learners and teachers attended the screening. some teachers became uncomfortable with the challenging way topics like corporal punishment (which has been outlawed but is still widely practised) were addressed. there was also a special screening for parents of upstarters, which provoked many comments from parents thanking upstart for helping their children voice what was wrong in their community. zandi radebe (upstart fieldworker): they’re raising issues that their parents were silent on. the entire communities have grown, i suppose, weary because of course they raise these things at different platforms, but nothing ever gets done and they just eventually keep quiet and don’t raise things at all. so they were not just speaking for themselves but they were raising these silent voices of these very critical issues that affect the entire communities. the upstarters expressed delight and pride at seeing themselves raise issues in front of an audience of peers. as white (2003) highlights, the process of encountering one’s image on screen can be a highly transformative process creating a sense of identity and empowerment. nquatyiswa (upstart teenager): i was scared that i was going to be killed or everything is going to be done at me, but i started making choices for myself, started saying no that isn’t good, started saying i could go to school because it’s my future, started to say everything that is based on school. so i think it changed everything (youtube 2011c). the participatory process not only transformed the upstart teenagers but also the journalism students. our students predominantly come from middle-class backgrounds and are often unaware of the kind of hardships poor communities suffer and the injustices that are now shaped by class, not race. justin (tv student): the reason i feel very strongly about the kind of things masi’s experiencing is because i just don’t, i can’t actually comprehend that that’s something that’s actually happening in this country at this time. 71 exploring participatory video journalism in the classroom and the community some of the experiences, like bullying, were familiar to the journalism students, but they could not comprehend that there could be no institutional support for this kind of problem and that parents could be powerless and schools not adequately functional to deal with these issues. candice (tv student): i think like there are quite a vast number of differences like with things they have actually had to go through. i always assumed that if someone does something wrong [at school] they get can get kicked out i would think. through this experience journalism students begin to cultivate a sceptical attitude to hegemonic middle class “common-sense” notions of south african society, thus learning to listen to alternative voices. the process allowed the rhodes students to expand to their identity as “gate-openers” (carpentier 2003) and learn to allow the experience of others to help determine issues to be covered. zandi radebe (upstart fieldworker): standing from the perspective of rhodes university there are certain things that you will not be able to see, and i think the film collaboration... it broke down that barrier. conclusion to some extent this experiment in participatory journalism showed that it was useful to help shift our students’ mind-frames and move them away from what friedman (2012) describes as “a view from the suburbs” so that their view of south africa becomes holistic. benefits for the upstart teenagers appeared less tangible. while the initial reaction to these stories in the screenings was positive and affirming, questions remain about the actual impact. the story exposing corporal punishment (youtube 2011j) in one of the schools resulted in a recorded commitment from the principal to stop this practice. yet the following year when our students returned to the school it was still taking place. this disappointing circumstance fails to bear out the tenets of the fogo process and the public journalism movement which, as models of deliberation, have been successful in holding the powerful accountable for social ills. in canada and the usa, journalists were able to create real dialogue between officials and ordinary people in processes that held government accountable. in south africa the political culture emanating from the dominant ruling party has increasingly come to reject criticism in the media instead of engaging with it (wasserman & jacobs 2013). we showed the mayor several films of young girls who were afraid of walking long distances. nothing was done to improve services so that they would not need to walk such distances; later one of the girls was attacked while walking home. in light of this, the upstart coordinator expressed concern about the extent to which the project actually assisted the teenagers. 72 alette jean schoon this suggests that in creating participatory projects with citizen journalists one needs to think carefully of ways to keep stories alive and ensure follow-up so as not to produce more of the “weariness” that the upstart coordinator described to be common among the older generation. we do not need a tier of cynical and jaded citizen journalists who are labelled and ostracised in the process of producing media about their lives. it may be time for south african journalists to embrace haas’ (2008) 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[online]. available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojnbailu4y 76 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication phumlani erasmus myende* abstract this article investigates the impact of effective communication towards sustaining school-community partnerships. motivating the study is the argument that studies on school-community partnerships within a south african context have been limited to parental involvement only. moreover, those who have broadened this concept have seldom focused on the role of effective communication. the results revealed a direct relationship between success in sustaining school-community partnerships and effective communication. two partnerships were studied and the results revealed a lack of effective communication. this has negatively affected the partners’ commitment in the partnerships’ activities, empowerment of partners, mapping of assets and perceptions of partners about partnerships. however, in some instances effective communication was identified and it contributed positively in ensuring support for teams and individuals in the partnerships. it is concluded that effective communication is the pillar in ensuring that different partners’ interests and capabilities are understood and utilised in these partnerships. the study further recommends strategies to improve communication in schoolcommunity partnerships. * phumlani myende lectures in education leadership, management and policy at the school of education at the university of kwazulu-natal in durban. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 76-94 77 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication introduction increasingly, pressure is being placed on the staff members of south african schools to improve the quality of education provided to learners. however, in their attempts to improve the quality of education, schools have to address a number of challenges towards attainment of quality education. these challenges include, but are not limited to, poverty-related odds such as dropouts, crime, shortage of educational resources, violence, as well as alcohol and drug abuse (kamper 2009: 1; myende 2011: 2). different strategies have been developed to enhance schools’ ability to achieve quality education in the midst of the above-mentioned challenges. school-community partnerships form one of these strategies (dobsonblake 2010: 106). in the context of south africa and other countries such as the usa and australia, literature on school-community partnerships remains limited within the scope of parental involvement. for example, ndahayo and gaikwad (2004: 59-68) provide us with a picture of school-community partnerships drawing from epstein’s model of parental involvement. what these researchers have not captured well is that school-community partnerships constitute more components than only parental involvement. the definitions of school-community partnerships provided by different researchers can be used to gain a broader understanding of what schoolcommunity partnerships are. moore-thomas and day-vines (2010: 53) assert that school-community partnerships are relationships through which school staff members partner with families and other community members to help children succeed in schools. what remains unpacked in moore-thomas and day-vines’ definitions is the meaning of “other communities”. sanders and harvey (2002: 39) extend this definition by arguing that school-community partnerships are the connections between schools and individuals, organisations and businesses that are forged to promote directly learners’ social, emotional, physical and intellectual development. the definition by sanders and harvey justifies this author’s argument that schoolcommunity partnerships are not limited to parental involvement. this article is not aimed at interrogating contesting views on what school-community partnerships are and what not. however, through the contestations shown above the limited scope of our understanding of school-community partnerships is exposed. in this article it is posited that this leaves a huge gap in the literature that addresses school-community partnerships. furthermore, this article pays special attention to effective communication within the broader scope of school-community partnerships transcending parental involvement. using an interpretive and qualitative study, the aim of this article is to investigate the contribution of effective communication in sustaining school-community partnerships. secondly, the study makes recommendations on how communication 78 phumlani erasmus myende can be enhanced in school-community partnerships. motivating the study is the argument that studies on school-community partnerships within the south african context have been limited to parental involvement. moreover, those that have broadened this concept have seldom focused on the contribution of effective communication within the broader scope of school-community partnerships. in answering the questions underlying this article, the author draws from existing literature on the background of school-community partnerships with an aim to justify the argument for the sustainability of school-community partnerships. the literature review includes a brief review of effective communication in education. review of literature mapping the need for school-community partnerships within the south african context, school-community partnerships have gained advocacy due to a number of constraints. firstly, it is important to indicate that motivation for such partnerships is rooted in policy and other factors and demands by the state from schools. in a nutshell, the south african schools’ act no. 84 of 1996 (republic of south africa 1996) states that the education of a child should be the joint responsibility of the school, parents and other community members. the notion behind this extended participation has been the argument that schools stand a better chance at being productive if they draw support from other external stakeholders (sanders & lewis 2005: 1). in section 34, the south african schools’ act further advocates for extended involvement of all stakeholders on the basis that the government does not fund schools sufficiently in order to obtain all resources they need. section 36 of the south african schools’ act indicates that school governing bodies (sgbs) must take all reasonable measures within their means to supplement the resources provided by the government. school-community partnerships have been a potent strategy for sgbs to fulfil this role. aside from the fact that school-community partnerships are also supported by policy, the policy itself identifies several constraints that schools can address through school-community partnerships. these include the need for extra resources and a need for improved quality of education. sanders and lewis (2005: 3) identify the same constraints in their study. however, these researchers further contend that school-community partnerships are not only crucial for the benefits of the school. drawing from the basic understanding of the term “partnership”, which is a relationship characterised by shared goals and strengths for all those who are involved, sanders and lewis (2005: 3) state that partnerships also benefit the community. 79 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication the need for additional resources resources may be defined as the supporting aids that schools or communities utilise to perform their activities. these resources can be divided into human, financial and natural resources (myende 2011: 15). the impact of the lack of resources in education cannot be overstated. kamper (2009: 1) argues that in the process of providing quality education many schools first have to deal with issues such as poverty, gangsterism, illiteracy, hunger, homelessness and a fatalistic mind-set. this article argues that dealing with these issues will require a focused concentration of limited resources across these two areas (education and social ills) which influence each other. earlier in this article it was argued that the state does not provide schools with sufficient resources. sanders and harvey (2002: 37) concur with this argument as they state that schools may not possess all the resources they need, but this does not mean that these resources cannot be found. they point out that resources not available in schools may possibly be housed in the schools’ external community. in supporting sanders and harvey, anderson-butcher, stetler and midle (2006: 155) posit that: [s]chools in many communities are in the midst of potential resource bank agency, familial corporation and faith-based support. yet many schools are uninformed regarding neighbourhood assets, often struggling with how to serve students with multiple needs and issues. the question is how schools can be informed of and how they can tap into these resources if these are crucial for providing in multiple needs. school-community partnerships continue to be one of the ways to bridge the gap between individuals and organisations and schools. thus, through partnerships with their communities, schools can be informed of and tap into community resources. this justifies the need for the creation and sustaining of school-community partnerships. community development and renewal the school is the most important public institution in a community and also represents the economic lifeblood of the economy (hlalele 2012: 115). this indicates that although there is a notion that only schools benefit from their communities, schools also present calculated opportunities to their communities. in a study conducted by myende (2011) in kwazulu-natal, south africa, which was aimed at investigating the possibilities of an asset-based approach in schoolcommunity partnerships, it was found that the community benefited greatly from the resources that the school possessed. the findings of this study indicated that the school received a donation of computers from a partnering university and the same school had initiated several projects that involved community members. the 80 phumlani erasmus myende skills that have been gained from the project capacitated community members. this indicates that school-community partnerships are crucial for community development and renewal. the same partnership also developed learners in peer counselling. the findings showed that the community was also benefiting from the skills of learners who had been trained in peer counselling. other researchers such as bojuwoye (2009) and mncube and harber (2010) share these sentiments. although these studies focused on parental involvement, they are in agreement that community involvement results in community empowerment. mncube and harber (2010: 620) found that members of the community who were involved in the running of the school possessed a strong understanding of educational policies. in a study conducted by the hsrc for the nelson mandela foundation (2005) it was also found that when schools work with their communities, it is not only the schools that benefit. community development is therefore one of the end results in school-community partnerships. improved learner academic achievement and social development schools exist mainly for the purpose of educating children. the concern for quality education in south africa has been debated since 1994. several strategies have been devised to deal with the matter. for example, the total quality management system (iqms) was introduced to increase accountability of teachers and also to ensure teacher performance appraisal with an aim to improve the quality of education (weber 2005: 65). the need for quality education in a country that has a large number of communities who are faced by poverty is an endless debate as poverty and quality education are connected (kamper 2009: 1; botha 2010: 122). it is therefore a potent move to strengthen those strategies that have been associated with the attainment of quality results by learners. in a case study conducted by sanders and lewis (2005) in three k-12 schools (secondary schools) in the usa on the factors that drove principals to form school-community partnerships it was reported that all school stakeholders agreed that school-community partnerships contributed in learners’ academic success and personal development. in the study conducted by myende (2011) mentioned earlier, teachers and university project leaders also indicated that partnerships contributed immensely to learners’ academic performance and personal development. teachers reported that due to assets acquired through the partnership, learners were able to search information within the school library and computer laboratory without travelling to cities in order to access information. they stated that this has changed the performance of the school, especially in matric results. therefore the relevance of school-community partnerships in education cannot be doubted. with an aim to justify the need for communication in school-community partnerships, communication in general and in organisational life in particular is discussed next. 81 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication effective communication communication plays a major role in creating effective organisations and individuals in the society and its role in school-community partnerships cannot be overlooked: once a human being arrives on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships an individual makes with others and what happens to each in the world. how we manage survival, how we develop intimacy, how productive we are, how we make sense, how we connect with our divinity – all depend on our communication skills (swick 2003: 275). according to battilana et al. (2010: 424), effective communication is one of the important tools to pull organisations towards success. these authors postulate that leaders use communication to create a shared understanding of the vision and mission of an organisation. they further contend that the vision and mission are not only shared, but through effective communication the team’s commitment in achieving the vision and mission can be attained. hughes and greenhough (2006: 472) concur with battilana et al. (2010) as they argue that effective communication is at the core of school relationships with the external stakeholders. miller (2007: 239) further points out that partnerships need open communication in order to bring about social cohesion that results in the utilisation of individuals’ and organisations’ human and social capital that is at the disposal of each participant. in addition to the arguments above, it is argued that effective communication and empowerment of individuals within an organisation are connected and impossible to divorce (mncube & harber 2010: 620; swick 2003: 275). it is further argued by swick (2003: 277) that communication strengthens our way of dealing with cultural differences in such a way that they do not degrade our relationships. in this article, it is argued that it is not just any communication that is required to run organisations well, but rather effective communication. this article defines effective communication as the type of communication that leads to the achievement of anticipated goals. it is proposed that it is this type of communication that is required in school-community partnerships. the achievement of organisational goals may demand the buy-in from different stakeholders within and outside the organisation. therefore understanding and knowledge of these goals becomes critical. however, this understanding and knowledge cannot be achieved unless they are communicated to individuals or groups within an organisation (myende 2011: 25). effective communication requires communication to be a two-way process and reflects an equal partnership between different sources, in this case schools and other external stakeholders they are partnering with (van wyk & lemmer 2004: 183; hughes & greenhough 2006: 472). these researchers further argue 82 phumlani erasmus myende that to promote effective communication with external stakeholders, schools should design a variety of communication strategies that are aimed at facilitating active involvement of different stakeholders. however, van wyk and lemmer (2004: 184) acknowledge that communication in south african schools have turned out to be one-way rather than two-way. it is therefore important to explore what effective communication must be. the work of swick (2003) provides clarification. effective communication, according to swick (2003: 276), is communication that builds strong working partnerships between school stakeholders (teachers, management, learners, and non-teaching staff) and external stakeholders (parents, community organisations, businesses, higher education institutions, other individuals and members of the community). he further states that for communication to be effective it must engage all stakeholders actively in advancing and strengthening the growth and development of a child. moreover, effective communi cation provides nurturance of all participants in the education of a child and in building and sustaining relationships. another important aspect that is noted by swick (2003) is that effective communication is not only about passing on information from one source to another; it also occurs when different people work together to enhance the process of achieving goals. sanders and harvey (2002: 1364) postulate that effective communication determines the most suitable kinds of involvement and clarifies the responsibilities of each partner. through effective communication, sanders and harvey (2002: 1365) further assert that goals can be shared and understood by every partner. therefore this article focuses on how effective communication contributes to sustaining school-community partnerships. research design and methodology the partnerships this article is based on two school-university partnerships. the choice of using school-community partnerships to describe these partnerships is because universities, as indicated in myende (2011: 13), form part of a school’s community. school-community partnerships were also utilised instead of school-university partnerships because the partnerships that were studied did not only include schools and universities. the partnership called “nothing about us without us”, between a secondary school in kwazulu-natal and academic staff members of the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn), was studied in 2011. another partnership, this one between staff members of the university of the free state (qwaqwa campus), the schools in the dihlabeng municipality (dlm), and the dihlabeng 83 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication municipality, was studied in 2012. a brief description of the two partnerships is provided below. ‘nothing about us without us’ the project “nothing about us without us” was initiated by academic staff members from ukzn. the project was a new project founded after a series of projects that the ukzn staff members have initiated in the vulindlela district since 2004. the time-frame for this project was scheduled to be three years, starting in 2011 and ending in 2013. thirty-eight schools were targeted. the central aim of the project was to use participatory approaches to teacher development and community wellness to enhance teaching and learning in rural schools. the project aims were two-fold: firstly, it was aimed at intervention and also in generating niche research areas in the identified issues. in addition to teacher development and community wellness, the project’s aim was to deal with challenges faced by schools such as hiv/aids, gender-based violence, etc. project leaders in the partnership were drawn from ukzn and one project leader was a principal in a secondary school that formed part of the research. the aim of the project was not only to work with schools as other community representatives also formed part of the participants in the projects. ufs (qwaqwa campus), dihlabeng secondary schools and dlm this partnership commenced in 2011 with the main focus being the improvement of matric results of secondary schools in the dihlabeng municipality. the partnership is sponsored by the community engagement and staff wellness office of the ufs (qwaqwa campus) and the dihlabeng municipality. the university mainly deals with the coordination of the partnership activities while the municipality mainly deals with the logistics aspect of the partnership, such as catering for learners and ensuring that they have transport to and from the university to attend extra classes. nine schools are involved in the partnership and close to 620 learners from these schools participate in the partnership. these schools consist of both well-resourced and under-resourced schools. some of these schools have better matric results, while some perform below 50%. this article only reports on some of the 2012 activities for this partnership. research design the partnerships that were studied took place in a natural setting. in deciding on the research design for this study it was considered which design is suitable for studies conducted within a natural setting. according to babbie and mouton (2001: 270), qualitative research is suitable to studies that aim to understand behaviour and attitudes as it emerge from a natural setting. due to the nature 84 phumlani erasmus myende of this study, qualitative research became the preferred design. central to this study was also an aim to understand and interpret the actors’ views regarding their partnerships. interpretive qualitative research was utilised in this regard as it is argued that within an interpretive paradigm researchers are concerned with understanding insiders’ viewpoints (henning 2004: 20). the meaning as to how effective communication can contribute to sustaining school-community partnerships can only be understood from the meaning given by the actors in these partnerships. johnson and christensen (2008: 48) postulate that qualitative researchers within an interpretive paradigm attempt to understand how one or more individuals experience a phenomenon. methodology to elicit the in-depth views of participants in this study, semi-structured individual interviews, unstructured observations and a reflective journal were utilised. in the “nothing about us without us” partnership, five teachers (a principal, deputy principal, head of department and two post level one teachers) were interviewed, as well as two project leaders from ukzn. the interviews each took between 30 and 45 minutes, apart from one project leader who was interviewed for 25 minutes as the data during the interview reached saturation. these interviews were a potent technique as it allowed the researcher to probe for further information from the participants, when necessary. utilising individual interviews limited this study in generating the collective views of the participants in these partnerships. however, as explained in the data analysis, data was analysed continuously to identify the emerging views and use these in the next interviews to verify and also to ensure that what each participant was saying could be confirmed with other participants. this also increased the trustworthiness and confirmability of the data that were collected. unstructured interviews were used to study the partnership between staff members from the ufs (qwaqwa campus), dihlabeng secondary schools and the dihlabeng municipality. the researcher forms part of the partnership, therefore there were complexities in observing meetings that took place before all partnership activities. two meeting were observed and notes were taken to record the experiences of participants as drawn from their voices during meetings. the area of effective communication emerged during observations. the author also utilised a reflective journal that was used on a daily basis while visiting schools where easter classes were taking place. in the reflective journal all the concerns that were raised by principals, as well as the researcher’s own experiences, were recorded. 85 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication data analysis qualitative data analysis is an ongoing, emerging and non-linear process (henning 2004: 127). to ensure that important information was gathered during semi-structured individual interviews, analysis was done as the data collection took place. the analysis of data included the identification of categories as they emerged from the data. the analysis also followed the higher-order synthesis in a form of a descriptive picture that resulted in the identification of themes (henning 2004: 128). five themes were identified in the analysis process. these are presented and discussed in the results and discussion section. ethical considerations data in this study includes data that the author collected in 2011 for research as part of his master’s degree. permission was sought from ukzn and the department of basic education in kwazulu-natal. furthermore, informed consent was arranged with each participant in the study. secondly, permission to use data from the second partnership between the ufs (qwaqwa), dihlabeng secondary schools and dlm was sought from the ufs office of community engagement and staff wellness. participants in this partnership signed contracts and as part of these contracts they agreed that information of the partnership can be disseminated in the form of reports or academic articles. the researcher also uses his reflections and observations without mentioning the real names of participants in the partnership, which helps in maintaining the confidentiality of participants. results and discussion the results of the study revealed that school-community partnerships and effective communication are interconnected. the results also indicated that there was a lack of effective communication in both partnerships. to provide a picture of how effective communication could contribute to sustaining school-community partnerships, this article reports on how the lack of effective communication has impacted on the partnerships. partners’ commitment to partnership activities myende (2011: 12) describes partnerships as a contractual relationship between two or more individuals or organisations who commit themselves in sharing “risks” and “profits”. the partners jointly commit their skills to overcome risks and gain profit. in this sense the effective commitment of each partner to the partnership activities is important. the findings of the study from both partnerships indicate that effective communication is crucial for ensuring the commitment of all participants in the partnership activities. 86 phumlani erasmus myende in the partnership between the ufs (qwaqwa) and dlm schools, the study has found that for extra classes to commence all partners (teachers, coordinating staff from the university, principals, tutors and municipality employees) should be involved in a meeting that is organised to discuss how activities will unfold. usually, teachers from schools are expected to be the ones who teach learners during easter and winter holidays. however, in the meeting that was held for the easter holidays, teachers were not involved in the meeting. principals claimed that it was not communicated to them that they need to bring teachers along. several principals agreed on this statement that was made by one of the principals: our teachers are not prepared to teach in these holidays because all we knew is that the university will bring tutors that will teach during holidays. it was not communicated to us that same teachers from our schools will teach. in the “nothing about us without us” partnership the concern was also pointed out by several participants that were interviewed. during the interview, the principal who is also one of the project leaders, said: i think those, in terms of other outside parties, their participation is minimal because we have not invited them to participate meaningfully… the deputy principal also commented on the issue of effective communication: i joined the school from the beginning of this year and have seen the student teachers from the university in our school but the principal and other teachers did not clearly communicate to me in terms of the whole activities of the partnership. although i have noticed the relationship but i will say the information is not enough. the comments above point to the fact that effective communication is necessary for several reasons. commitment of all partners in the partnership activities is crucial for the success of school-community partnerships. however, what the study identified is the lack of effective communication that impacted on the participation of other participants. earlier in this article it was argued that the major reason for initiating school-community partnerships is to ensure joint responsibility for the child’s education. failure to ensure effective communication has resulted in the minimal utilisation of other external parties that might have contributed meaningfully to the success of partnerships. myende (2011: 12) postulates that collaboration is rooted in an understanding of interdependence among different people or organisations. therefore, there is no doubt that such interdependence in the above partnerships is needed. however, this cannot be achieved if each partner is not committed to the activities. the commitment of participants has been affected by lack of communication. for example, teachers would have been part of the partnership between the ufs (qwaqwa campus) and the dihlabeng 87 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication municipality if this was effectively communicated to them. moreover, it is assumed that outside participants in “nothing about us without us’ would have participated if there was communication between them and the school. the above-mentioned does not only influence the commitment of each participant, but it is largely contributing to the sustainability of school-community partnerships. these partnerships’ success is dependent on human capital. however, if these partnerships do not draw from all available human capital there is a risk of not generating sufficient assets. it is therefore argued here that communication that is not effective limits partnerships in drawing skills and knowledge from different participants. this was indicated by the results from the partnerships that were studied. in the first partnership, teachers did not form part of the partnership and this put pressure on the partnership organising team as they had to find more people willing to teach learners. initially, tutors were not supposed to teach, but due to poor communication the tutors were forced to teach. this is what one participant said in the meeting: tutors are not supposed to teach… now that we have no teachers we will see how we can utilise tutors in teaching some of the subjects where there is a shortage. in the other partnership (“nothing about us without us”) it also came to light that there was minimal participation from outside parties. this is the human capital that both partnerships would have utilised if effective communication existed between different stakeholders. literature has indicated the importance of ensuring that all partners contribute in partnerships. gretz (2003: 34) asserts that: [m]anaging partnerships in which students, parents, business leaders and community members are involved requires a delicate balance of delegation and control that enables stakeholders to participate and share responsibility and yet clearly define and understand different roles that are involved in a successful partnership. whereas delegation will increase the commitment of all members, there is no doubt that what gretz is proposing requires effective communication from all the people involved in the partnership. if leaders or those managing partnerships are to be able to delegate, it means those delegates should be able to communicate effectively in order to ensure that there is a sense of responsibility and accountability from all participants. empowerment of all partners it was pointed out in the literature review that effective communication is characterised by the empowerment of participants in the partnerships (swick 2003: 275). sanders and harvey (2002: 1365) have also stated the importance 88 phumlani erasmus myende of empowerment through two-way communication. the empowerment of participants is important in creating and sustaining school-community partnerships as participants are the ones who perform partnerships’ activities. however, it was noticed in the partnerships that effective communication was not ensured in some instances. for example, in the “nothing about us without us” project, it was clear that, as much as ukzn was involved in the partnerships, local communities played a vitally important role in ensuring that school were run smoothly. however, their roles can only be effective if they are empowered. the minimal involvement which was caused by the lack of effective communication with them could possibly lead to their disempowerment, which will in return contribute largely to the failure to sustain the partnerships. external partners, such as universities, will normally work with schools until the identified problems are solved. these partners do not promise any lifetime involvement in developing one school but they disperse their focus in schools according to their needs at that particular time. therefore the question is what happens when external partners such as universities are no longer involved? the empowerment of internal partners becomes a demand, rather than an option, otherwise achievements attained through partnerships will disappear. the lack of effective communication between the teachers from partnering schools, dlm and the ufs (qwaqwa) has resulted in the utilisation of other teachers and not those from partnering schools. the empowerment of these teachers has been sacrificed in this case, which questions the sustainability of partnership achievements. the findings in the “nothing about us without us” partnerships have indicated that the principal was also sometimes not clear of what his role was as the principal and the leader in the partnerships. the principal identified lack of communication between him and the university’s project leaders as a contributing factor in the lack of understanding of his roles. in the “nothing about us without us” project the same arguments can be applied. the interviews with two project leaders revealed that several workshops were held where community members, the department of education and teachers were invited to participate. these workshops were aimed at empowering all the participants. the project leaders indicated that on several occasions they arrived at the workshop only to realise that information was not disseminated to all stakeholders. this hindered the empowerment of participants who did not receive the information because of the lack of effective communication. effective communication would have resulted in the participation of all partners which would then have led to their empowerment. empowerment means that partners are aware of their roles and the roles of others in the partnerships. this creates partners who are able to do what has to been done in the partnership even if others are no longer part of the partnership. 89 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication asset mapping and effective communication it was stated earlier that the need for extra resources pushes for the development of school-community partnerships. it is therefore relevant that ways of tapping into available resources are developed. a challenge that hinders the success of school-community partnerships is not the unavailability of resources in the schools’ communities, but rather the lack of abilities to identify those assets. in the literature review, miller (2007: 239) identified social cohesion that results in the utilisation of both human and social capital for the benefit of partnerships. he argued that open communication is required for this to happen. in the two partnerships that were studied instances were revealed where social cohesion resulted in the utilisation of assets from different partners. on the other hand, the findings revealed a lack of communication which amounted to the failure to identify and tap into other assets possessed by the partners that were not invited. in the partnership between the ufs (qwaqwa campus) and dlm secondary schools, the findings indicated that resources from the university, the schools and the municipality were utilised effectively. these partners contributed assets they possess for partnership activities. it is argued here that if it were not for the role of effective communication, these partners would not have been in a position to understand what each partner could contribute in the partnership. in other words, asset mapping is possible if there is effective communication. however, in the “nothing about us without us” project the principal admitted that he did not make attempts to communicate with possible partners besides the university: i think those, in terms of other outside parties, their participation is minimal because we have not invited them to participate meaningfully… this prevents the partnerships from mapping other possible assets that could be of assistance in their activities. furthermore, the project leaders from the university stated that they had communicated with the principal, but that he did not bring other invited people on board. according to these project leaders, this was degrading the partnership and it was contributing to the failure to sustain the partnership. other teachers were reluctant to participate as there was a lack of social cohesion between the principal and the teachers resulting from the lack of effective communication. during the interview this is what project leaders said: project leader 1: well, one thing that came out quite clear is that there is a breakdown [of communication] between teachers and the principal because the teachers said they didn’t know i was coming… they were very upset… i think the principal is a male, dominant; he played a very oppressive role to me, not communicating with me and the teachers. the teachers were feeling very 90 phumlani erasmus myende powerless in this whole thing but they did say that they have rights and they will not listen to anything that i would say because they were not told about it. project leader 2: [a]ctually, they [the teachers] have told us that they don’t want to participate especially if the project is seen coming through the principal, which it did. the problem of poor communication was also identified by the teachers who were interviewed. according to these teachers, participation and contribution of assets (skills and knowledge) by other teachers were limited by the principal’s failure to communicate effectively. one teacher alluded to the fact that communication was a problem: the problem would be on the communication breakdown between the principal and the staff… i think people don’t know about it [project] because when we started there were not a lot of us. although this teacher did not refer directly to a lack of effective communication, references from other participants alluded to the influence of a lack of effective communication. the study found that all partners were aware that the school is surrounded by a number of people with assets, however mapping these assets required that all people be invited to the partnerships. as this was not the case, the mapping of assets could not occur effectively. de lange and combrinck (2011: 238) contend that communities, especially in rural areas, have a plethora of assets that can be used for school-community partnership sustainability. according to these researchers, such assets include unemployed members of the community and community buildings as well as other organisations that are situated around schools. sustaining school-community partnerships and failure to draw from existing assets have been seen to be interconnected. effective communication with different structures has been identified as a potent way to avoid this challenge (bojuwoye 2009: 471; myende 2011: 26). participants’ misconceptions and withdrawal participants in the “nothing about us without us” project, especially teachers, stated that they were not satisfied with the partnership. their perspective was that the university partners were interested in research and not in school development. on the other hand, others thought that the partnership was mainly for life orientation teachers who happen to deal with issue of hiv/aids. these teachers showed no interest in participation as they were not life orientation teachers. the written messages that were sent to the principal indicated clearly that the invitation was not only for life orientation teachers. this indicated a communication break91 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication down between some teachers and the principal and it impacted on these teachers’ withdrawal from the partnership activities. drawing from literature, it is stated that effective communication is crucial to obtain the buy-in of all stakeholders and to ensure that there is a common and shared understanding of the vision and the mission behind school-community partnerships (battilana et al. 2010: 424). one may therefore argue here that effective communication would have contributed in building these teachers’ understanding of their role and the vision and mission of the partnerships. this would have strengthened their ability to sustain partnerships, even when external partners are not central to all activities. supporting teams and individuals although the previous results indicate that effective communication was not ensured in both partnerships, other instances in both partnerships showed some application of effective communication. in these instances positive results were identified. after identifying challenges in the partnership between the ufs (qwaqwa) and dlm during the easter vacation activities, different ways of communicating and organising the partnership were devised. since then the correspondence between the schools, the university and the municipality has improved and activities of the partnership appears to be clear and understood by all the partners. for example, the organisation of the winter activities unfolded with no challenges and all partners have been empowered in terms of what is expected from them. different teams dealing with different subjects in the partnership were supported in terms of their needs and this assisted in encouraging them to put effort in the partnership activities. in the “nothing about us without us” partnership three teachers have formed feeding schemes and learner wellness programmes. these teachers have indicated that effective communication between them and other teachers as well the principal was bolstering the ability of their team to achieve its goals. these teachers also indicated that other teachers who were not part of the team would effectively communicate with them if there is a learner who required support, either in terms of a school uniform, food or counselling. they further stated that the principal supported their team. from the teachers’ voices, this can be accredited to effective communication. for example, one teacher said the following: [s]o when we tell the principal that we need this… he knows where to get it. ... what i can say is that our principal and other teachers are very supportive. the supportive role that the principal and other teachers played in the abovementioned case would not have been possible unless the team communicated with the teachers and the principal. these teachers further indicated that they were 92 phumlani erasmus myende receiving support for their team from the university. this would also not have been the case if they had not communicated with the university’s project leaders about their projects. what is also important to note here is that these teachers were empowered through the partnership and they were therefore able to initiate a new project on their own. conclusion and recommendations this article was aimed at investigated how the lack of effective communication impacts on sustaining school-community partnerships. the lack of effective communication weakened several factors that will usually build strong community partnerships. the commitment of all partners in the partnership activities, their empowerment, the mapping of available assets, positive conceptions about the partnerships and support for teams and individuals will normally create strong sustainable partnerships. however, due to the lack of effective communication partnerships could not receive commitment from all partnerships. secondly, empowerment of all participants was not realised as most of them did not participate actively or they withdrew completely from the partnerships. these partnerships could not tap into all available assets as other possible participants were not informed of the partnerships. the lack of effective communication also created misconceptions regarding the partnerships from other participants. the study recognised minimum instances of effective communication and these contributed in supporting teams and individuals in both partnerships. to ensure effective communication between different stakeholders in the partnerships, chikoko (2011: 84) argues that effective leadership is crucial. it is recommended that principals should be the ones ensuring that there is effective communication between schools and their partners. this does not mean that they have to hold all the power. however, it is suggested that they need to see to it that all partners understand the activities and their role in these activities. this can be achieved through delegating some of the roles. to ensure that communication is improved, it is also recommended that different communication strategies be utilised. it is further recommended that in order to form the correct understanding of partnerships through effective communication there is a need for those who initiate partnerships to meet with all possible participants and explain the need and goals of the partnerships rather than meeting with leaders in different organisations. this could also assist in avoiding the communication break-down that was identified in both partnerships. 93 sustaining school-community partnerships through effective communication references anderson-butcher, d.e., stetler, g. and midle, t. 2006. a case for expanded school-community partnerships in support of positive youth development. children and schools 28(3): 155-163. babbie, e. and 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the henderson-clark model (which included, besides the incremental-radical dichotomy, other contextual variables that could influence the circumstances under which a company could innovate); the teece model (used for predicting who will profit from an innovation); the s-curve framework (used for analysing technological cycles to predict the introduction, adoption, and maturation of innovations); and the abernathy-utterback model (linking product innovation, process innovation, competitive environment, and organisational structure). in 1997 the appearance of clayton christensen’s bestseller the innovator’s dilemma provided a new dimension to the innovation theory debate. this was the introduction of the dichotomy between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. a sustaining innovation helps established companies by improving the performance of an existing product in a way that mainstream customers value (scocco 2006: online). on the other hand, a disruptive innovation does not pose an immediate threat to established companies as it initially appears to be inferior to the incumbent product. initially christensen (1997) used the term “disruptive innovation” interchangeably with the term “disruptive technology”, but later the preferred term became “disruptive innovation” (christensen & raynor 2003). the logic of the process underlying the impact of a disruptive innovation can be described as follows: a disruptive innovation has a particular dynamic that endangers incumbents. the incumbent’s product has two primary dimensions of merit, a and b. (for example, a could be quality and b could be speed of delivery). mainstream customers are mostly interested in a but there is a minority customer set that values b more than a. the disruptive innovation, at launch, is weak on a but strong on b. as such, it attracts only the minority. because mainstream customers don’t want 3 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry it, incumbents tend to ignore the new entrant and the new technology. but over time, technology improves, and the innovation gets better and better at a. eventually it meets the needs of mainstream customers on dimension a, and, since they also place at least some value on b, they start choosing the new product. the incumbent is suddenly disrupted; they have ignored the new technology all along (govindarajan & trimble 2009: online). sandström (2010: online) lists several examples of disruptive innovations as originally defined by christensen, for example the transistor radio. the transistor radio initially had worse sound quality than the incumbent technology, namely analogue radio, but on the plus side the transistor radio was portable and had low battery consumption, which initially attracted a small portion of customers. eventually the transistor radio’s sound quality was improved, and this led to the transistor radio attracting mainstream customers, and eventually replacing analogue radio. other examples of disruptive innovations mentioned by sandström (2010: online) are: ♦ portable pocket calculators that eventually replaced desktop calculators, despite an initial poorer computing performance; ♦ lcd tv (with low weight and low battery consumption) that eventually replaced cathode ray tv, despite an initial poorer image quality; and ♦ digital cell phones that are replacing regular analogue phones despite being (initially) more expensive and (initially) having an inferior sound quality. disruptive innovation has proved to be a useful analytical tool for understanding how technological innovation has played an important role in shaping many industries in society. for this study the changes brought about by innovation in the communication field, and specifically with regard to the newspaper industry, are of relevance, and will be discussed in the next section. research problem one of the industries that has been affected most by disruptive innovations is the newspaper industry (sterling 2008: 20-26). it is a world-wide phenomenon that newspapers increasingly experience competition for audiences from internetbased self-help services, especially those that are often provided free of charge. some examples of such disruptive innovations threatening the newspaper industry, as regards advertising income for one, are online classified services (e.g. 4 dp conradie and pedro diederichs craigslist), online local searches, and online initiatives providing lead generation services, whereby, as described by lake (2011: online), potential buyers fill in online quote requests on an agency website, and the details of these buyers and their requirements are then sold to businesses. sterling (2008) also lists direct marketing and mobile solutions to specific information needs (especially those involving the immediacy and interactiveness of the internet in news searches) as disruptive innovations threatening the newspaper industry. although the world’s print media are struggling to hold on to traditional and shrinking readerships and advertising markets, they still seem able to hold their own against this digital encroachment in developing countries in africa and south america, and in india and china. in south africa for instance, publications like daily sun and the isizulu newspapers isolezwe and ilanga have prevented an even more serious slump in print newspaper circulation overall. community newspapers and “freebies” (free newspapers) are doing well, but “a long-term analysis of circulation numbers of leading publications reveals an industry in decline” (van niekerk 2012: online). the impact of these and similar disruptive innovations is viewed as a serious problem by most traditional newspapers, and is perceived by many as threatening the existence of the newspaper industry in its current form. it is reminiscent of the previous “innovation” crisis when new ict print technology over-ran the traditional production and labour intensive processes that lead to the electronic page layout (epl) printing process and desk top publishing (dtp) revolution towards the end of the previous century (melvern 1986; outing 2005). the way most newspapers initially reacted to this threat was to make their own internal production processes more digital, supported by the financial backing of the likes of rupert murdoch and eddie shah who saw huge savings through layoffs of redundant employees. this on-going digitisation process has in itself transformed the newspaper industry to a large extent, e.g. contributing to the so-called “death of fleet street” in england (harris 1997: 292; melvern 1986). harrower (2008: 2) points out that if newspapers do not adapt and evolve further, they run the risk of becoming as extinct as dinosaurs, or as former communication media such as smoke signals and the telegraph. crosbie (2006: online) refers to various stages of media transformation: [j]ust like how then-new technologies were used a century ago to make the sky a new and practical medium for transportation – new technologies have now been used to create the new medium for communications ... among the technologies needed to create this new medium were the invention of digital communications during the late 1940s, invention of the transport control/internet protocol ((tcp/ip) 5 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry during the late 1960s, arpanet’s creation of the internet and other people’s invention of the personal computer during the 1970s, and to a lesser extent the invention of the hypertext transport protocol (http) in the late 1980s, opening of the internet to the public in 1992, and invention of the graphical browser software later that year. those and other technological innovations converged to create a new communications medium that has characteristics inconceivable even a decade ago. in south africa the competition from online sources is seen as a significant threat to newspaper circulation figures (myburgh 2011: online). in fact, it appears that it is only the local tabloid press (spearheaded by daily sun) that has not been plagued by worrying diminishing readership figures over recent years (joubert 2009: 13). but, since 2009 even this phenomenon in the south african newspaper industry has shed circulation (partly attributed to distribution system problems) from a high of 500 000+ to 375 185 (abc 2012). from the above it is clear that the internet is increasingly being used as a medium for offering information to the public for certain actions that was previously obtained from newspapers. it is for this reason that this article – in an attempt to address this problem facing the newspaper industry in south africa – focuses largely on the information needs of local internet users. it is expected that, as access to the internet in the country increases from year to year, these information needs will become increasingly relevant to all institutions and media involved in information production and/or dissemination in the country. up till now it seems that some protection has been provided for these newspapers, as south african advertisers have yet to “…substantially shift their spending from print to online (as they have done in the united states)” (myburgh 2011: online). south african newspapers should also take heed of recent local internet availability statistics: [t]he south african internet user base had grown from 6.8 million in 2010 to 8.5 million at the end of 2011 – no less than 25% growth. world wide worx also forecast that this strong growth would continue during 2012, and the internet user base would pass the 10 million mark by the end of the year (world wide worx 2012: online) arthur goldstuck (2012: online), managing director of world wide worx, was quoted as saying: the internet has finally awoken, fully, in south africa. penetration is now approaching 20%, and for the first time we can see the mass market embracing digital tools on their phones. 6 dp conradie and pedro diederichs justin zehmke, executive producer of howzit msn, was also quoted as stating that: [a] total of 7.9 million south africans access the internet on their cell phones. of these, 2.48 million access it only on their cellphones, and do not have access to computers. the remaining 6.02 million users access the internet on computers, laptops, and tablet computers. however, 90% of this number – 5.42 million – also gain access to the internet on their cellphones. this means that almost 8 million south africans sometimes or regularly access the internet on their phones. this has huge implications for media and social networks. it means that, in the coming years, all services offered online will also have to be offered on cell phones (zehmke 2012: online). crosbie (2006: online) argues that broadly three communication media exist: interpersonal communication; mass media communication; and what he prefers to call the new medium (as opposed to the now vested “new media” which he calls “colloquial”). his viewpoint is that “… the new medium for communications… is entirely dependent upon technology unlike its two preceding media”. the new medium refers to a communication style of “many to many” which is not possible without technology. therefore the communication tools (vehicles) like online publications, social media, rss feeds, etc. used in this medium must utilise the technology fully as instruments in a new communication environment. one could argue that this technology is disruptive because broadcast and publishing executives still do not understand that it is wrong to see “mass media” as a catchall phrase for “all possible media”, as if no other medium can exist except as a mass medium. not fully embracing the concept of the new medium with its new technology could lead to an inability to break through from communicating not only interpersonally (one-on-one) or via mass communication (one-to-many), but from many-to many. the question facing newspapers is what can be done about this problem of online disruptive innovations? in 2003, christensen published another bestseller on disruptive innovation, this time titled the innovator’s solution, providing a detailed strategy for institutions wanting to counteract the above-mentioned threatening and negative effects of disruptive innovation (christensen & raynor 2003). one well-known initiative in america that is making use of this strategy of christensen to combat disruptive innovation in the newspaper industry is the initiative of the american press institute (api) called the newspapernext project. the newspapernext strategy involves the following four steps (sterling 2008: 20-26): 7 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry ♦ newspapers should first conduct a survey among potential markets (including readers and non-readers of the newspaper conducting the survey, or advertisers and those who have not yet advertised in the newspaper) to determine what the potential markets’ information needs are. in the terminology of christensen (christensen & raynor 2003), the aim of the survey could be formulated as trying to determine what informationrelated “jobs to be done” (jtbd) the potential markets have. ♦ next, newspapers should develop potential solutions for the identified information needs (or information-related “jobs to be done”). ♦ third, each newspaper should asses these possible solutions as to whether or not it is possible and practical (for that particular newspaper) to implement. ♦ finally, the newspapers should implement and test the most promising solutions in practice. the study described in this article can be seen as an attempt to apply step one of this strategy by conducting a survey among a group of south african respondents (all internet users) in order to determine what information-related “jobs to be done” the respondents would like to have with regard to the various information and communication media at their disposal. stated differently, the problem was to determine their information needs with regard to the information and communication media at their disposal. more specifically, internet users’ need for the following nine types of information (many of them traditionally provided by print newspapers) were studied: ♦ news-related information (e.g. reports or commentary on local/international events, politics, crime, sport, etc.); ♦ entertainment-related information (e.g. about movies, shows, music, reading, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.); ♦ education-related information (e.g. teaching materials, publications, educational events/ institutions, schools, etc.); ♦ health-related information (e.g. about hospitals, practitioners, medicines, illnesses, etc.); ♦ financial or economics-related information (e.g. stock market data, advertisements, buying, selling, etc.); 8 dp conradie and pedro diederichs ♦ tourism-related information (e.g. about destinations, hotels, maps, etc.); ♦ work-related information (e.g. specialist or professional information); ♦ social contact/communication-related information (e.g. via letters, postings, notices, messages, etc.); and ♦ environment-related information (e.g. global warming, pollution, water, endangered species, etc.). objectives of the study the overall objective of this study was to obtain information that could possibly be used by the newspaper industry to counter the impact of disruptive innovations on the print newspaper industry in south africa, according to the principles of the newspapernext strategy’s first step (sterling 2008: 20-26). the study had two more specific objectives, namely to determine among a sample of respondents of internet users the following types of information that could be of use to combat the impact of disruptive innovations on the print newspaper industry in south africa: ♦ the respondents’ most prominent information needs with regard to a number of specific information/communication media studied; and ♦ the respondents’ priorities with regard to which of these information/ communication media were needed most for satisfying their need for obtaining all of a number of types of information. research questions the overall research question that was studied was: what are the respondents’ patterns of information needs with regard to a number of specific information/communication media studied? the more specific research sub-questions were: 1. what are the respondents’ most prominent information needs with regard to each of the following information/communication media? ♦ print newspapers ♦ television ♦ radio ♦ magazines/journals 9 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry ♦ social media (e.g. facebook, twitter, youtube, mxit, etc.). ♦ online newspapers ♦ other internet-based databases/services/programmes (e.g. google, e-portals, wikipedia, blogs) ♦ interpersonal sources of information (e.g. other people) 2. which of these information/communication media are perceived to be most important by the respondents for satisfying their need for each of the following types of information? ♦ news-related information (including reports or commentary on local/ international events, politics, crime, sport, etc.); ♦ entertainment-related information (about movies, shows, music, reading, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.); ♦ education-related information (information on teaching materials, publications, educational events/ institutions, schools, etc.); ♦ health-related information (about hospitals, practitioners, medicines, illnesses, etc.); ♦ financial or economics-related information (including stock market data, advertisements, buying, selling, etc.); ♦ tourism-related information (e.g. about destinations, hotels or maps); ♦ work-related information (e.g. specialist or professional information); ♦ social contact/communication-related information (e.g. via letters, postings, notices, messages, etc.); and ♦ environment-related information (about global warming, pollution, water, endangered species, etc.). research methodology the study consisted of an online survey that was conducted among a randomly drawn sample of internet users in south africa. the survey was funded by a grant from the national research foundation (nrf). the reason why internet users were the specific focus of this study was that they are the target users of most of the disruptive innovations that had been found to be impacting on the newspaper industry. internet users are therefore logically also the most likely target recipients of any future counter measures that could be developed for the newspaper industry on the basis of surveys such as the one conducted in this study. 10 dp conradie and pedro diederichs population/participants the target population of this study was adults (i.e. 18 years or older) in south africa who have access to the internet. the accessible population was the nationwide online database (consisting of a panel of approximately 16 000 adult internet users) that has been built up by gauteng research agency consulta research. the sampling procedure used in this study and applied to this accessible population of internet users was random sampling. a total sample of 1018 respondents was finally obtained. from table 1, which provides details of the composition of the realised sample, it can be seen that the sample contained about as many male as female respondents. also, although the sample contained respondents representing nine language groups coming from nine provinces, most of the respondents were either english or afrikaans speaking and came mostly from gauteng, the western cape or kwazulu-natal. this composition has implications for the external validity of the study, and means that the findings cannot automatically be generalised to all language groups and provinces in the country. table 1: realised sample of respondents variables categories (frequencies and percentages) total gender male = 510 (50.1%); female = 507 (49.8%); missing/other = 1 (0.1%) 1018 (100%) age 18-25 yrs. = 33 (3.2%); 26-35 yrs. = 197 (19.4%); 36-45 yrs. = 266 (26.1%); 46-55 yrs. = 258 (25.3%); 56-65 yrs. = 170 (16.7%); 66+ yrs. = 85 (8.3%); missing/other = 9 (0.9%) 1018 (100%) home language afrikaans = 261 (25.6%); english = 732 (71.9%); isixhosa = 2 (0.2%); isizulu = 8 (0.8%); sepedi = 4 (0.4%); sesotho = 3 (0.3%); setswana = 3 (0.3%); tshivenda = 2 (0.2%); xitsonga =2 (0.2%); missing/other = 1 (0.1%) 1018 (100%) province eastern cape = 26 (2.6%); free state = 27 (2.7%); gauteng = 534 (52.5%); kwazulu natal = 141 (13.9%); limpopo = 11 (1.1%); mpumalanga = 21 (2.1%); north west = 20 (2.0%); northern cape = 7 (0.7%); western cape = 225 (22.1%); missing/other = 6 (0.3%) 1018 (100%) data gathering instrument and procedure questionnaire an online survey was conducted, containing the following types of questions: questions on media use (section a): respondents were asked how many hours they spent during the past week on each of the eight types of information media that were listed in the research questions, namely print newspapers, television, 11 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry radio, magazines/journals, social media, online newspapers, other internet-based databases/services/programmes, and interpersonal sources of information. questions on perceived importance of media to satisfy information needs (section b): respondents were asked to indicate (on a five-point scale) how important they considered each of the above-mentioned eight types of information media were in terms of satisfying their need for each of nine types of information. the scoring of the possible response alternatives was 1 = not important at all; 2 = unimportant; 3 = not sure; 4 = important; 5 = very important. the nine types of information were the same as those mentioned in the research questions of this study, namely information that was either news-related, entertainment-related, education-related, health-related, financial or economics-related, tourism-related, work-related, social contact/communication-related, or environment-related. questions yielding demographic information about the respondents (section c): variables included were gender, age, language (spoken most at home) and province. data-gathering procedure the survey was conducted online during the last few days of february 2012 by the staff of the agency consulta research from their head office in centurion, using their nation-wide panel of internet users from which the sample was obtained. all completed questionnaires were checked first for completeness and for suspicious response sets indicative of the respondent having opted for an obvious pattern of responses instead of applying his/her mind to the questions. all responses were captured in a microsoft excel spread sheet, which was then transformed into an spss dataset that could be used for statistical computations. with regard to ethical issues, this study followed the guidelines as set out by the research ethics committee of the tshwane university of technology’s faculty of humanities. this meant inter alia that the researchers had to ensure that the participants’ identity would remain anonymous, that their participation in the study was entirely voluntary, and that participation did not result in the participants experiencing any physiological/physical stress or pain, any emotional/ psychological stress, or anxiety, or any cultural, social or financial risk/harm. data analysis the data analysis was done by means of the spss statistical package and consisted of descriptive statistics, such as the calculation of frequencies and means, as well as standard errors and 95% confidence intervals for the means. 12 dp conradie and pedro diederichs findings this section contains the findings of the survey, presented in such a way as to link up with the two research sub-questions mentioned above. however, in order to place the other findings in perspective, some background data obtained from the question on the media usage of the respondents is provided first. background data on media usage as part of the online survey, the first question that the respondents were asked was: “during the past week, about how many minutes did you spend on each of the following media/information sources?” in table 2 the respondents’ answers are summarised by presenting the mean number of minutes that was spent on each medium/information source during the foregoing week. the table also provides the 95% confidence interval for each mean, which in turn can be used to compare any two means to determine whether or not they are statistically different. according to knezevic (2008: online), if the 95% confidence interval of two means overlap, these means are not statistically different from each other, but if it does not overlap, the two means are statistically different on the 5% level of significance. table 2: minutes spent on media/information sources during the previous week media/information sources mean number of minutes spent on each medium per week mean confidence interval (95%) print newspapers 72.65 67.015 to 78.285 television 540.63 482.89 to 598.37 radio 438.98 408.702 to 469.2 magazines / journals 70.19 63.228 to 77.152 social media 165.31 143.521 to 187.099 online newspapers 62.46 57.605 to 67.315 other internet 202.71 189.414 to 216.006 interpersonal (other people) 364.77 319.743 to 409.797 it was found that of all eight media studied, the respondents spent relatively the most time on television – on average just over 540 minutes (i.e. about 9 hours) per week. the second position was shared between radio (with a mean of about 439 minutes per week) and other people (interpersonal) (about 365 minutes), but, as the confidence intervals of the two means overlapped, the difference between 13 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry m edium m ean im portance ratings* (on rating scale from 1=n ot im portant at all to 5= v ery im portant) info need: n ew s info need: e ntertainm ent info need: e ducation info need: h ealth info need: f inance/econ info need: tourism info need: w ork info need: social contact info need: e nvironm ent m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv m ean c onf interv p rint new spapers 3.58 3.5413.619 2.94 2.8992.981 3.33 3.2883.372 3.15 3.1073.193 3.93 3.8933.967 3.34 3.2993.381 3.41 3.3673.453 2.63 2.5882.672 3.84 3.8023.872 television 3.85 3.8163.884 3.84 3.8053.875 3.56 3.5223.598 3.51 3.473.55 3.68 3.6433.717 3.82 3.7853.855 2.94 2.8992.981 2.69 2.6482.732 4.23 4.2014.259 r adio 3.91 3.8783.942 3.52 3.4833.557 3.34 3.3023.378 3.36 3.323.4 3.70 3.6633.737 3.23 3.1923.268 3.04 3.003.08 2.94 2.8972.983 3.89 3.8553.925 m agazines / journals 3.19 3.1543.226 3.27 3.2323.308 3.57 3.5333.607 3.59 3.5533.627 3.53 3.4933.567 3.91 3.8773.943 3.55 3.5113.589 2.77 2.7292.811 3.88 3.8453.915 social m edia 2.79 2.7492.831 2.98 2.9373.023 2.56 2.5222.598 2.45 2.4112.489 2.39 2.3522.428 2.82 2.7782.862 2.58 2.5392.621 3.68 3.6363.724 2.94 2.8962.984 o nline new spapers 3.56 3.523.60 3.03 2.993.07 3.26 3.223.30 3.06 3.0193.101 3.57 3.5293.611 3.14 3.0993.181 3.28 3.2373.323 2.67 2.6282.712 3.56 3.5193.601 internet 3.87 3.8373.903 3.69 3.6553.725 4.18 4.1484.212 4.06 4.0274.093 4.03 3.9964.064 4.20 4.1684.232 4.22 4.1884.252 3.62 3.58-3.66 4.06 4.0274.093 o ther people 3.76 3.7283.792 3.88 3.8483.912 3.71 3.6763.744 3.80 3.7663.834 3.57 3.5363.604 4.03 3.9994.061 3.97 3.9384.002 4.40 4.3734.427 3.80 3.7673.833 ta b l e 3: m e a n im p o r ta n c e r a t in g s o f m e d ia f o r sa t isf y in g d if f e r e n t t y p e s o f in f o r m a t io n n e e d s * t he shaded cells contain the statistically m ost prom inent m eans; underlined values in shaded cells indicate the statistically m ost prom inent m ean(s) in a row ; bold italic values in shaded cells indicate the statistically m ost prom inent m ean(s) in a colum n. 14 dp conradie and pedro diederichs the means was not statistically significant, resulting in the shared second position. the most prominent media were therefore broadcasting and interpersonal sources of information. next in the line of prominence were the relatively “new” online media, namely in fourth place other internet services (just over 202 minutes per week), and in fifth place (with about 165 minutes) social media (e.g. facebook, twitter, youtube, mxit, etc.). the sixth position was shared (again because of overlapping confidence intervals) between three media, namely print newspapers, magazines/journals, and online newspapers. it is therefore clear that if time spent on media was to be taken as a measure of their popularity, then print media and newspapers (in print or electronic form) were relatively the least popular of the media studied. findings with regard to first research sub-question the findings in this section are relevant for addressing the first research subquestion, which focuses on what the respondents’ most prominent information needs were with regard to each of a number of information/communication media. table 3 provides a summary of the mean importance ratings/scores allocated to eight types of information/communication media for satisfying different types of information needs (e.g. the need for news, entertainment, education, etc., inclusive of all the types of information mentioned in the research sub-questions). these mean scores are based on a rating scale that ranges from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (very important). the table also contains the 95% confidence intervals for each mean, which can be used to compare any two means in the table to determine whether or not they are statistically different. the first research sub-question was addressed by comparing the means (and confidence intervals) in table 3 on a row-by-row basis (in other words, separately for each medium). in order to illustrate the findings visually in the table, the statistically most prominent mean(s) in each row were underlined and the cells containing these means were shaded. the following findings were obtained: with regard to the respondents’ need for information from print newspapers, in the position of the statistically most important need (on a 5% level of significance), there was a tie between financial/economics-related information and information on environmental issues. third most prominent was the need for news-related information (i.e. reports or commentary on local/international events, politics, crime, sport, etc.). the statistically most important information need regarding television broadcasts was for environment-related information. in second place there was a tie between 15 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry the need for news-related information, entertainment-related information, and tourism-related information. for radio, in the position of the statistically most important information need there was a tie between news-related information and environment-related information. the third most important information need was for financial/economics-related information. the respondents’ statistically most prominent information need regarding magazines/journals consisted of a tie between the need for tourism-related information and the need for environment-related information. the third position of importance was a four-way split between health, education, financial/economics and work-related information. with regard to social media the respondents’ need for social contact/ communication-related information was statistically the most important – in other words the respondents viewed social media mainly as vehicles for social contact and communication. in second place was the need for entertainment-related information, and in third place the need for environment-related information. for online newspapers, in the position of the statistically most important need there was a three-way tie between the need for information relating to financial/ economics, environment and news. this bears some resemblance to the pattern found for print newspapers. for the respondents the most important information needs fulfilled by other internet-based databases/services/programmes were the need for work-related information, tourism-related information, and education-related information. statistically next in order of perceived importance there was a tie between the need for health-related and environment-related information. the most important information need perceived to be fulfilled by interpersonal sources of information (e.g. other people) was the need for social contact/ communication-related information. in second place was the need for tourismrelated information, and in third position of importance was the need for workrelated information. findings with regard to second research sub-question the findings in this section are relevant for addressing the second research subquestion, which focuses on a number of specific information needs, and asks which information/communication media are perceived to be most important for satisfying each need. the process followed in order to answer this question was to compare the means (and confidence intervals) in table 3 on a column-by-column basis. in order to illustrate these findings visually in the table, the statistically 16 dp conradie and pedro diederichs most prominent mean(s) in a column were presented in italic text, and the cells containing these means were shaded. the following findings were obtained: with regard to news-related information, there were three media that statistically (on a 5% level of significance) were found to be most important as information sources, namely radio, the internet and television. the next most prominent source was “other people”. two media were found to be statistically equally most important for providing entertainment-related information, namely “other people” and television. the next most prominent medium as source of this kind of information was the internet. the medium perceived to be most important for providing education-related information was the internet. second in importance was “other people”, while the third place was a tie between magazines/journals and television. the medium perceived to be most important for providing health-related information was the internet. second in prominence was “other people”, while magazines/journals were in the third position. two media were found to be statistically equally most important for providing financial or economics-related information, namely the internet and print newspapers. in the third position of prominence there was statistically a tie between radio and television. the medium perceived to be most important for providing tourism-related information was the internet. second in perceived importance was “other people”, while magazines/journals occupied the third position. the medium perceived to be most important for providing work-related information was the internet. second in prominence was “other people”, while magazines/journals were in the third position. the medium perceived to be most important for providing social contact/ communication-related information was “other people”. in second place there was, statistically speaking, a tie between social media and the internet. the medium perceived to be most important for providing environment-related information was television. second in prominence was the internet, while radio, magazines/journals and print newspapers were tied for third. discussion of findings the findings presented in the previous section show a two-fold pattern describing (a) what types of information needs the sample of respondents perceived to be most important with regard to each of a number of communication media, and 17 using the information needs of internet users in combating disruptive innovations in the newspaper industry conversely (b) which media were rated as being most important for satisfying each of these information needs. with regard to the first set of findings (which addresses the first research subquestion of this study), it is clear that for print newspapers, information provision regarding finances/economics, the environment, and to a lesser extent also news (local/international events, politics, crime, sport, etc.) were perceived to be the most important. much the same pattern was found for online newspapers, which means that the audiences of the two types of newspapers were similar in that the same information needs were being met. for a print newspaper wanting to combat potentially disruptive digital innovations by broadening the range of information needs being satisfied in its audience, it would therefore not be enough to bring out an online version of the newspaper. also, if the newspaper decided instead to diversify by publishing a new print magazine, the findings suggest that the respondents would use such a magazine mostly for meeting their need for tourism information and environmental information. if, on the other hand, the print newspaper decided to diversify in ways that involved other internet-based databases, services or programmes, the findings suggest that such new initiatives would be most suited for fulfilling the respondents’ needs for information on work-related issues, tourism-related issues, and education-related issues. as the finance sections of south african newspapers have shown growth and quality reporting over the last decade, the relatively important focus on finance/economic news in newspapers is to be noted, and should be of interest to publishers. could it be general interest in financial news, or the quality of the content, or both, that led to this indication? further research into this indicator could prove useful. also of interest are findings from other countries, e.g. some earlier studies (mcleod & choe 1978; sobal & jackson-beeck 1981) that show business/finances featuring last on the list of news preferences; and the more recent 2007 pew centre report on occurrences that impact on news/ information that pointed out that in america interest in finance news as a news category rose sharply over a twenty-year period (brainard 2007: online). regarding the second set of findings, it was found that the internet was rated by the respondents as being the most important medium for satisfying six of the nine types of information needs studied, namely the needs for information on issues related to work, tourism, education, health, finances, or news (although radio and television were perceived as being equally important as the internet for satisfying the need for news). it is therefore clear that the internet was generally perceived as being the relatively most important information source. by way of contrast, print newspapers, online newspapers, and print magazines/journals were not rated 18 dp conradie and pedro diederichs as being the most important for satisfying any of the nine information needs. this underscores the importance for newspapers to find innovative new ways of using the internet as a vehicle for meeting the needs of existing and new audiences. the poor ratings afforded to print newspapers and magazines correlate with research results concerning the decline of print media not only internationally, but also for most newspapers in south africa (van niekerk 2012; harris 1997: 292; melvern 1986; harrower 2008: 2; myburgh 2011; joubert 2009: 13). the online presence of these publications has also not notably improved the situation (cf. the selection of print media and online newspapers and magazines in the tables). this concurs with crosbie’s view that more than a billion people did not turn to the internet “…to read traditional media on computer screens” (crosbie 2006: online). he explains that the traditional mass media apparently do not understand that “… the hallmark characteristics of the new medium (new media) are about: uniquely individualized information (that) can simultaneously be delivered or displayed to a potentially infinite number of people. each of the people involved — whether publisher, broadcasters, or consumer — shares ... that content” (crosbie 2006: online). conclusion the newspapernext strategy (sterling 2008: 20-26) is a four-step strategy that was designed specifically for newspapers concerned about the impact of possible future disruptive innovations. the first of the four steps for newspapers to follow in order to combat disruptive innovations consists of obtaining a pattern of information needs from a sample representing a potential new market for the newspaper. the study described in this article consisted of such a survey of information needs among such a potential new market of south african internet users, and can be seen as an application of the first phase of the newspapernext strategy. each of the information needs studied represents an information-related task that the potential market would like to do, or in the terminology of christensen, a “job to be done”. in the sections above certain patterns of information needs among the respondents were identified and discussed. what is needed next from any newspaper wishing to proactively combat disruptive innovations by applying the results of this study is for that newspaper to study the pattern of identified needs in order to identify more clearly and formulate such possible “jobs to be done”, and also to develop potential solutions for such jobs. the newspapernext strategy finally suggests that each such newspaper should then implement and test the most promising solutions in practice – those that are assessed to be most possible and practical for that particular newspaper to implement. in this way it is hoped that the results of this study will contribute positively to such efforts to better understand and adapt to possible disruptive innovation processes in our society. 19 references abc. 2012 circulation report of the audit bureau of circulations of south africa [online]. available at: http://www.abc.org.za [accessed 1 june 2012]. brainard, c. 2007. 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communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 131 149 lynnette fourie* abstract the south african local government municipal systems act (act 32 of 2000) requires participatory governance. although this act is not concerned with electoral participation in the first instance, it is argued that it also sets the tone for electoral communication. in the spirit of participatory governance it could be expected of political parties to inform the electorate about issues relevant to local government, stimulate debate, motivate voters to participate in the elections and promote democratic values. against this background, this article endeavours to investigate to what extent the campaigns of political parties in the 2011 local elections displayed the context of local developmental government and enhanced participatory governance. a qualitative content analysis was done of the election material (manifestos, posters, television advertisements and pamphlets) of the anc, da, ff+ and cope in the tlokwe municipality. it was found that all the parties adhered to the spirit of and actively promoted local developmental government in their manifestos, although they did so to a lesser extent in the more popular media (posters, television advertisements and pamphlets). it was concluded that these messages were not harmful to the sustainability of local developmental democracy. * professor lynnette fourie1 lectures in the school for communication studies at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university. 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 131 introduction south africa hosted its fourth local government elections in may 2011. local government is the tier of government that is expected to be the most participatory, as confirmed in the south african local government municipal systems act 32 of 2000 (south africa 2000), which makes participatory governance a requirement. this implies active engagement by communities, not only during elections but also inbetween elections. although the above-mentioned act is not concerned with electoral participation in the first instance, it is argued that it also sets the tone for electoral communication. in the spirit of participatory governance it could be expected of political parties to campaign in a manner that facilitates and promotes community engagement and sustainable democracy. south african political parties accordingly signed a code of conduct on 10 march 2011. electoral conduct and especially the tone of election campaigns is not an issue unique to developing democracies. the ethics of election campaigns world-wide have been questioned, especially in terms of their informational value and their use of negative and/or emotional messages. it is argued in this article that political parties contesting a local election have a responsibility to inform residents regarding local issues and that they should not merely address issues that would score political points but do not have local relevance. it is further assumed that by informing the electorate regarding issues that are important to them, public debate and participation could be stimulated. in view of the above, this article endeavours to investigate to what extent political parties campaigned in the 2011 local elections within the context of participatory governance. context: local developmental government principles of democracy dahl’s (1998:10) definition of democracy implies that a democratic decision-making process should be characterised by the following: • opportunity is provided for all community members to participate; • all members of the community should have equal voting rights; • community members should be reasonably informed to enable them to deliberate on issues; • members must have control over the agenda; and • all community members must have the same rights (dahl 1998: 37-38). democratic decision-making thus clearly assumes participation. nsingo and kuye (2005:748) further argue that democracy is a political concept premised on values, process and practice. values imply a moral dimension, including tolerance of each other and recognition of diversity. process refers to the ability of the political system to 132 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 132 facilitate human rights and basic freedoms, while democracy in practice implies the way in which power is organised and exercised. it is therefore evident that participation lies at the heart of democracy. developmental state the south african government explicitly defines south africa as a developmental state (lefko-everett 2010): a developmental state focuses on economic growth and the mobilisation of national resources towards development goals (levin 2009: 944). one of the key features of a developmental state is its aim to stimulate market growth while also adressing market-related ineqaulities (levin 2009: 945, 948; naidoo & reddy 2008: 45). the south african developmental state is firmly grounded on the principles of democracy and socio-economic transformation. it focuses on social economic development based on a participatory and integrated planning process (levin 2009: 948; reddy 2010: 70). the importance of participation is also emphasised in the definiton of democratic local government in the white paper on local democracy (south africa 1998): “... local government is committed to working with citizens and groups within the community to find sustainable ways to meet their social, economic and material needs and improve the quality of their lives”. according to the white paper on local governance (south africa 1998) the outcomes of local developmental government are the provision of household infrastructure and services; the creation of liveable, integrated cities, towns and rural areas; local economic development and community empowerment; and redistribution. participatory governance the decentralised nature of local government implies that local government is the sphere of government that should be the most democratic (mzimakwe 2010: 514; reddy 2010: 71). the importance of community participation is accordingly emphasised in the preamble of the local government municipal act (south africa 2000): a fundamental aspect of the new local government system is that active engagement of communities in the affairs of municipalities of which they are an integral part, should be promoted and in particular in planning, service delivery and performance management. this begs the question of whether voting in elections alone could be regarded as participatory government. the green paper on local government (south africa 1997: 63) clarifies this issue by describing two modes of democratic participation: the importance of effective representation of community interests by elected councillors in the decision-making structures of local government, for example, can never be over-emphasised. the elected council remains at the heart of local democracy, provided that electoral competition is open and regular. however, the contact between municipalities and communities need not be limited to election and 133 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 133 representation. on the contrary, increased citizen involvement will increase municipalities’ ability to effectively shape viable human settlements. local democracy is thus seen as involving formal elections but also participatory processes that strengthen the democracy in the period between elections. in this regard, participatory governance refers to the manner in which municipalities govern between elections (barichievy, piper & parker 2005: 370; heydenrych 2008: 705-207; esau 2007: 195). barichievy, piper and parker (2005: 374) highlight three distinct aspects that define participatory governance, namely the definition of the municipality, the ward committee system and requirements for public participation. of special importance for the current article is the definition of a municipaliy: a municipality is defined as being constituted of government structures (the elected councillors), the administration (appointed staff) and the residents (barichievy, k., piper, l. and parker, b. ibid. 2005: 374). in practice this means that the residents who are the voters and citizens are seen as part of the municipality, and thus of government. mzimakwe (2010: 502) describes participation as a complex process in which people are supposed to (in varying degrees) influence development and government issues and activities that affect their lives. participation is thus an active process in which citizens are afforded the opportunity to take initiative and action and therefore to play an active role in the shaping of their own rights and responsibilities (nsingo & kuye 2005; mzimakwe 2010; reddy 2010: 75; esau 2007: 190-191; murray, tshabangu & erlank 2010: 45). this article focuses on elections as an opportunity to participate in democracy, but against the background of participatory governance it is acknowledged that elections alone do not guarantee democracy. keeping this in mind, it will be argued that political parties need to campaign in order to enhance participatory governance. literature review electioneering for participatory governance it is argued in this article that political parties should inform voters and stimulate public debate regarding issues relevant to local government, encourage voters to vote and actively promote democratic values in their electioneering (see fourie 2011: 166-170 for a full discussion). informing the electorate information is the first step in the participation continuum (nsingo & kuye 2005: 750751) as an informed community is a vital part of participatory governance (eveland & hively 2009). politically informed voters are more likely to participate in elections and to be able to express their political opinion than their uniformed counterparts (finkel & smith 2010: 418; eveland & hively 2009: 205; gunther & mughan 2000; kuan & lau 2002). voter behaviour may be explained by models such as the rational, partyidentification and sociological models (schoeman & puttergill 2007). 134 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 134 according to the sociological model, voters base their vote on the fact that they belong to a specific social grouping. altough some elements of this model may be pertinent in south african circumstances (see fourie 2004: 79-80), it is not the dominant model in south africa and is therefore not discussed in detail in this article. according to the party-identification model, votes are based on party loyality that has been built up over time and not necessarily on the merit of political issues at hand (see campbell et al. 1960). as is the case in many young democracies, the partyidentification model seems to be the dominant model in practice in the south african context, although not all voting behaviour can be explained by this model (schoeman & puttergill 2007). the anc, the party that is associated with the struggle against the former apartheid regime, has dominated south african electoral politics since the first democratic elections in 1994 (kotze 2006: 209; booysen 2007). the rational choice model assumes that elections are issue-based and that the decision for whom to vote is thus a rational one based on the dominant political issues at hand. in the context of democracy, the rational choice model is often seen as the normative model and this ties in with the arguments of an informed citizenry (eveland & hively 2009). however, various researchers have indicated that voting is rarely a purely rational act and that it is unrealistic to expect that voters will base their decision for whom to vote only on the merrit of policy issues (page & shapiro 1992: 5; congleton 2001: 35; eveland & hively 2009: 218). it is apparent that no one model can completely account for voter behaviour, as voters process information differently. when the models explaining voter behaviour are kept in mind, south african political parties are faced with the dilemma of, on the one hand, informing the electorate to contribute to sustainable participatory governance according to the rational voter model, while on the other hand also canvassing votes by emphasising party ties according to the party-identification model. the south african political context is not unique in this regard, as literature on political communication frequently points out that parties may be focusing too much on the image of the party and/or candidate instead of on the issues at hand. in this article it is argued that both issue (rational) and image (emotional) messages have a function in an election campaign. emotional messages should be used to attract the attention of the voter, but should also be contextualised against the background of policy issues, thus empowering the voter. this is even more pertinent in the context of local government election campaigns, where parties and/or candidates may use national emotional issues to canvass votes, instead of focusing on local issues that are pertinent to the specific community. with the functions of local developmental government in mind, it could be argued that political parties should focus on service delivery, local economic issues and community development issues; and that public debate regarding these issues should therefore also be stimulated. 135 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 135 stimulating public debate in an established democracy, it is the task of opposition political parties to critically evaluate the political scene during election campaigns. in a developing democracy, however, this should be done with care, as mere critique could destabilise the democracy. in this regard the use of negative messages during campaigns has widely been debated in political communication literature, as outlined in the following section. for the current argument, it is important to distinguish between comparative and negative messages (see fourie & froneman 2007). messages that compare policy viewpoints or that highlight shortcomings in the policies of other parties, can contribute to political debate and strengthen democracy; but messages that result in mudslinging could threaten the stability of a young democracy or contribute to voter apathy. it is argued that it is important for the ruling party to indicate what it has achieved, especially within the framework of democracy, while opposition parties should highlight issues that could threaten the sustainability of democracy. issues emphasised by political parties should thus be framed within the context of local developmental government. service delivery is certainly one of the most important mandates of local government and therefore should be one of the issues debated in the election campaigns. however, it should be linked to the relevance of local government and not merely be used as an emotional issue to gather party support. motivating voters to exercise their democratic right the mobilising function of political parties is extremely important in local government elections. while it is argued that local government should be “more democratic”, local elections often have a lower voter turnout than national elections. in south africa, the turnout in local elections was 44.62% in 2000; 45.63% in 2006 and 53.47 in 2011; compared to the national elections turnout of more than 70% in all the elections since 1994 (iec 2011). research in the early 1990s indicated that negative messages could lead to general political apathy and a decline in voter turnout (ansolabehere, iyengar, simon & valentino 1994; ansolabehere & iyengar 1995). although these finding were confirmed in more recent publications (abbe & hernson 2000; turner 2001; rahn & hirshorn 1999), the research was not conclusive. some researchers, for example, have even concluded that negative messages motivate people to vote, as they are usually remembered better and their emotional appeals achieve greater electoral participation (wattenberg & brains 1999: 896; kahn & kenny 1999: 878). it seems that the result of a negative message will differ according to the type of the message, the medium that is used as well as the circumstances in which it is applied (fridkin & kenny 2010; carraro & castelli 2010; walter & vliegenthart 2010). it is proposed that instead of focusing on the possible different outcomes of negative messages, political parties in a developing democracy have an obligation to explain to the voter why it is important to vote. on the one hand, the mandate of political parties require them to canvass as many votes as possible, in accordance with the party136 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 136 identification model; but on the other hand, in the context of a developing democracy it is also important to educate voters on the importance of participation in democratic structures. in the context of local developmental government, this could be done with reference to the role individual voters could play in participatory governance. contributing to a democratic culture through their interpretive function, political parties introduce a specific political reality to voters. this reality should contribute to voters’ perceptions and understanding of democracy and should enhance their democratic conduct. political messages should also actively promote core democratic values, such as participation; the right to political choice and elections; and civil and political rights (fourie 2011: 161-164), and it should also indicate how the specific political party’s policies augment these values. in their campaigns, political parties should furthermore take care not to make statements that could have long-term negative effects on the democratic process. research method this article focuses on the 2011 local election campaigns, but reference will be made to the 2000 and 2006 local election campaigns as well, to illustrate differences with previous campaigns. the four largest political parties in the north west province were included in the study, namely the african national congress (anc), democratic alliance (da), congress of the people (cope) and freedom front plus (ff+). the research focused mainly on each party’s manifestos and posters, as supplemented by television advertisements and pamphlets. this method was followed because the manifestos are best suited to the normative rational voter model. it was also assumed that very few voters would study different party manifestos, while political posters are very visible and widely accessible. political posters are also most likely to follow the party-identification model and to focus on image messages relating to the specific party. television advertisements and pamphlets are the media where it is the easiest to combine the rational and partyidentification models. however, these media are less accessible than posters, and only the anc and da used television advertisements. the collection of data was limited to the tlokwe municipality in the north west province, the municipality in which the researcher resides. this municipality was chosen for feasibility reasons but also for its political significance. the municipality is run by the anc, but was considered by the da as one of their strategic focus points. the da did indeed gain three seats from the anc in the election. tlokwe municipality was selected for this study primarily because it was expected to be an election campaign focus point for the major parties in the election. all four of the above-mentioned parties were contacted and the aim of the research was explained to them. the parties were requested to provide the researcher with copies of their printed campaign material and they responded in different degrees to this request, 137 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 137 ranging from the ff+ who provided a comprehensive portfolio of their material, to the anc who was not prepared to supply any material. the researcher accessed all available material on the political parties’ websites and photographed all political posters in the tlokwe municipality. the da’s television advertisements were available on their website and the anc’s advertisements were retrieved from youtube. this study thus focused on the campaign material as supplied by the political parties and material that was easily accessible to the general public. hence, this study does not claim to have exhausted all campaign material, but the available material is deemed to have been sufficient, as it is argued that the average citizen does not actively seek political information and would not have gone to the trouble to obtain campaign material that was not readily available. the campaign material was analysed by means of qualitative content analysis according to the theoretical assumptions outlined above. analysis and discussion informing the electorate: election manifestos the election manifestos of the main political parties confirmed that their policy issues were in line with what could normatively be expected from parties in developmental local government. the anc addressed six key areas in its manifesto: • build local economies to create more employment, decent work and sustainable livelihoods this included an emphasis on the party’s new growth path policy, job creation together with equal access to employment, skills development for women and support for small enterprises, co-operatives and informal sector and rural farmers. infrastructure development, expanding public works and youth development programmes were emphasised in respect of sustainable livelihoods. • improve and broaden access to local public services typical service delivery issues were addressed here, including the improvement of municipal access roads, water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal, primary health care, child-friendly facilities in municipalities and more information regarding the arts. • build more united, non-racial, integrated and safer communities building better communities involved housing, upgrading of informal settlements and addressing crime by mobilising communities and expanding police stations. • promote active community participation in local government the focus here was on extending the ward committee system and furthering cooperation with community-initiated social activities. • ensure more effective, accountable and clean local government that works together with national and provincial government 138 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 138 this involved increased community participation, publication of reports on local performance plans, supporting municipalities that lack capacity in the management and delivery of services, regular feedback to the community and greater transparency. the da focused on two main issues in their manifesto, namely reducing poverty and improving (and maintaining) service delivery. the issue of poverty was addressed over a wide spectrum, as is typical in the context of developmental democracy. the da’s proposals in this regard included ensuring clean, transparent, efficient and effective government; planning and regulating growth; building and maintaining infrastructure; making government accessible; building strategic partnerships; using resources sustainably; building human settlements; and fighting crime. the second issue, service delivery, was defined as caring for the poor, providing clean water, electricity, managing sewerage, ensuring refuse removal, delivering primary health care and facilitating social development. cope did not distinguish between main and supporting issues in its manifesto but listed all the issues they wished to address. for the purpose of this research, these issues were grouped together according to themes, in order to make it easier to compare cope’s manifesto with those of the other parties. the first theme pertained to the effective functioning of government and included citizen democracy, empowering the people, leadership, accountability and good governance. the second theme pertained to services and included ensuring better water and sanitation management, a better approach to dwellings, supporting effective local government in rural areas, early childhood development, achieving affordable energy and improving sports, arts and recreation opportunities and infrastructure. the importance of addressing crime and of the youth was also pointed out. the third theme pertained to promoting economic growth, development and food security. the main issues put forward in the ff+ manifesto were better services and municipal issues. these included fair taxes; keeping local government local; sustainable and independent communities; service delivery; acknowledging and protecting diversity at all levels of government; acknowledging the important role of opposition councillors; the accountability of councillors; and moral values as informed by christian principles. informing the electorate: posters, advertisements and other campaign material the issues of service delivery, local economics, development and the importance of the local community have been addressed extensively in the manifestos of the anc, da and cope and to a lesser extent in that of the ff+. however, it would be premature to conclude that political parties did indeed inform the electorate appropriately. from the literature review it is evident that very few citizens are active seekers of political information and it would be unrealistic to assume that the majority of citizens studied the different manifestos of the parties and based their electoral decision on that. in order to determine which of the above-mentioned issues where popularised and how they were communicated to the citizens, political posters and other relevant campaign material were analysed. 139 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 139 the central theme of the anc’s campaign was together we can build better communities. their posters all echoed this slogan, but depicted different aspects of service delivery, including children’s facilities, education, infrastructure maintenance, water and policing. the 2011 poster campaign of the anc was a continuation of their campaigns which started in 2000 with the slogan together speeding up change and fighting poverty and which was continued in 2006 under the slogans build better communities and a plan to make local government work better for you. in all their local election campaigns, the anc had focused their posters on the importance of local communities and by implication on service delivery. this focus was even stronger in the 2011 election campaign and was supported by television advertisements such as: together we have changed our community; millions now have access to water, electricity, sanitation, health care and housing ...; this is my community; i grew up here, everybody that lives here forms part of my family; in our community, just like in so many other communities, conditions have changed for the better ... the personalised approach of the television advertisements could elicit an emotional response and attract the voters’ attention. the da also focused on service delivery in their poster campaign and television advertisements. the da poster stated: da: we deliver for all. this is in accordance with the 2006 poster, the da delivers, but in contrast with previous poster campaigns where there was a stronger emphasis on crime, for example nail them and jail them (2000); stop corruption (2006); fight crime (2006); and zero tolerance for criminals (2006). service delivery was also the focus of the television advertisements. where crime is mentioned in a television advertisement, the relevance for local government is indicated: i feel very safe now that the da is in our community because when the da was not there, there were gangsterism ... nowadays we can walk freely in our community. the da’s television advertisement campaign involved an empathy appeal through a focus on ordinary people. in all their advertisements, ordinary citizens from all walks of life testified to the improvements in service delivery which the da had been responsible for, including sports facilities, housing, community safety, general infrastructure and electricity. in all the instances it is indicated how the da had touched the lives of individuals. the cope poster campaign did not highlight any specific policy issues, but focused on partnerships and the need for change. the ff+ focused on the issues of taxes and service delivery, with posters bearing the message no service delivery, no taxes. 140 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 140 it is important to note that there was a stronger emphasis on service delivery as an aspect of local democracy than in previous elections, although the focus was still not as strong as in the manifestos of the respective parties. stimulating public debate as was the case in the run-up to the two previous elections, there were many questions regarding the lack of service delivery (naidoo & reddy 2008; kotze 2006; schoeman & puttergill 2007). the emphasis on service delivery was thus predictable, but the question remains whether the issue was used to stimulate public debate in the context of developmental local government. in its manifesto as well as its television campaign, the anc, being the dominant, ruling party, emphasised what has already been achieved regarding service delivery, but also admitted that still more work is needed. their manifesto started with a message from the president admitting that: going forward and taking the message “working together”, we need to do things differently. this message is reinforced throughout the manifesto where it is indicated what has been achieved, but also what still needs to be done, for example: while many have access to housing and basic services, there is still a long waiting list; whilst many local authorities are doing excellent work we recognise that some are not performing well. the anc television advertisements followed the same pattern and stated that a lot has already been achieved in terms of access to water, electricity, sanitation, health care and social grants, while also indicating that there is still a lot of work to be done. the anc thus had a balanced approach, as they both pointed out what has been done, and at the same time also admitted that they could still improve. this was probably done in anticipation that opposition parties would attack them for the lack of service delivery in certain areas. the official opposition, the da, found itself in the position of not only being an opposition party, but also the governing party in seven municipalities at the time of the election campaign. as a ruling party, they focused on what they had achieved in these municipalities. this is in sharp contrast with previous elections, where the da used negative and even hostile messages when referring to the anc’s inability to address crime and to the anc’s corrupt councillors. the da’s manifesto included no direct negative messages about the anc, but comparative messages were used to indicate what the da had done differently than the anc, for example: when the da assumed office (of cape town) the municipality relaxed the criteria and opened up the bid adjudication tender award committee to the public; 141 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 141 in 2000, the da took control of the kouga municipality in the eastern cape from the anc. the municipality was bankrupt and struggling to deliver basic services. by 2002 ... the da had turned the municipality around; when the da took over from the anc in cape town, it pushed the qualifying threshold for indigent subsides from r88 000 to r199 000 so that many more people qualified for subsidised services. the same tone was reflected in the television advertisements, where the da used testimonials from people representing different walks of life to demonstrate what they had achieved. examples of these include: the da has developed and upgraded a sports facility ...; the da doesn’t beat around the bush: it goes straight to the source of the problem. (referring to the da fixing the roof of her house.); i have hope living here because the da delivers on their promises; there is no resentment in the community, as experienced elsewhere ... the ff+’s campaign was typical of an opposition party. their poster no services no taxes had a confrontational tone and implied that the anc was not delivering the necessary services. this message was backed up in their pamphlet which argued that the anc was not delivering services because they appointed people on the basis of race instead of capacity. furthermore, it was indicated that the anc was not maintaining civil order and that more than 3 500 farmers had been murdered since 1994. the ff+ also used negative messages towards the da. they referred to a case where the da proposed english as the only business language in the mid-vaal municipality, whereupon the ff+ lodged a complaint and succeeded to secure recognition for afrikaans as a business language in this municipality. in addition, the ff+ linked the da with the anc and in this way extended their negative messages about the anc to the da as well, by emphasising that both the da and anc are against the death penalty and that they both approved a constitution which endorses affirmative action. cope criticised local government, but did not name specific parties. it appears, however, that the anc is implied in statements like political infighting on the one hand and failure to uplift poor communities on the other have eroded the confidence of the people. although the above-mentioned two opposition parties used negative messages, the messages that were studied contained no personal attacks or mudslinging. this research was limited to the tlokwe municipal area and it was therefore not established whether pamphlets or fliers distributed in other municipalities obtained attack messages. the majority of the negative messages used in the campaign pertained to practices that could obstruct sustainable local government – the exceptions were the ff+ campaign’s reference to affirmative action and the death penalty, which were both issues of national rather than local government. 142 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 142 it is significant that the two major parties did not engage in negative messages in their public debate, but that they often debated different sides of an issue in their comparative messages. furthermore, the issues identified by the two parties were directly relevant to local government. both the anc and the da explicitly indicated in their manifestos how and what they have achieved and aspired to do in future to contribute to local developmental government. the television advertisements complemented the information in the manifestos, although they did not emphasise these messages to the same extent as the manifestos did. the television advertisements had a strong focus on service delivery and its importance for the individual. motivating voters to exercise their democratic right in the different parties’ manifestos, all the parties recognised the importance of participation. the da’s vision made reference to a free and independent civil society and declared: ... we (da) believe that every citizen must take responsibility for using opportunities provided. the anc’s manifesto did not directly refer to the importance to vote, but strongly emphasised community participation in statements like our direct contact with the people and our commitment to find councillors who will be accountable to the communities they serve. cope was the party that articulated the fundamental principles of participatory governance the strongest in their manifesto: political power resides with the people permanently and that during any election that power should not be merely surrendered to anyone. ... cope advances this position because the party defines democracy unlike other political parties as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with the people. in order to give effect to the understanding of democracy, cope advocates an activist state ... although all the parties endorsed the idea of participatory governance, they were still faced with the difficult task of mobilising communities to vote. before the election, as was the case in the previous two election campaigns as well (booysen 2007; bauer 2009), there were concerns that the lack of service delivery could result in a stay-away vote rather than a vote in opposition of the anc. before the election campaigns, all the parties ran voter registration campaigns in which voters were urged to register to vote. these campaigns educated voters on why they had to vote and on how local government functions. the anc’s campaign focused on the requirement of an id to be able to register. they linked the need to register to vote to the fact there was still more work to be done: so be part of the future. act now to make sure that you can vote. the ff+ focused on the issue that every vote counts, even a vote for a smaller party. the ff+ furthermore explained that the lack of service delivery affected every citizen and that everyone therefore needed to vote. during the election campaigns, however, political parties focused less on explaining the importance of voting. anc and cope posters urged people to vote for the respective 143 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 143 parties, while ff+ and da posters had a stronger message indicating that an individual vote could make a difference in the election. for example, the ff+ stated: get influence for better services and the da said: your vote can win it. political parties thus did not emphasise the importance of electoral participation sufficiently in their election campaigns. contributing to a democratic culture al the parties’ manifestos referred to the functioning and importance of local government as part of the south african government. the manifesto of cope especially referred to citizen democracy, the role of leadership in democracy, accountability and good governance. however, all the parties were less successful with linking their policy issues to democratic values in their campaigns. in their manifestos, both the anc and the da emphasised the important interplay between political and economic issues: as the anc, we know that political transformation without economic freedom is meaningless. the greatest obstacle on the road to an open opportunity society for all is poverty ... in order to slay the dragon of poverty, da governments focus on two things: creating an environment for growth and jobs; delivering essential services to every person irrespective of circumstances. this theme was, however, not conveyed in their poster campaigns. in their television advertisements, the anc mentioned “more local employment”. the da’s focus in their television advertisements was on service delivery, but they did not make the direct link between poverty and service delivery which they made in their manifesto. both the anc and the da emphasised inclusiveness in their posters and television advertisements. when the central theme of the anc, together we can build better communities, is read together with the anc manifesto, it becomes apparent that the anc thanks communities for the work that has been done, but also concedes that further change cannot be achieved without the communities’ continued support. this theme was also echoed in their television advertisement: together we have changed our community ... and working together we can build better communities ... the da focused on the message we deliver for all on their posters. in their manifesto, for all is defined as follows: we mean a society which truly belongs to all who live in it, in which all south africans – regardless of the colour of their skin or the circumstances of their upbringing have the same rights ... the theme of inclusiveness is continued in their television advertisements, without referring to it explicitly. the da had six television advertisements, each representing a different grouping of the south african society. this is also emphasised in the poster featuring a white, brown and black woman as representing the leadership of the da. 144 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 8. lynette fourie 11/18/11 3:53 pm page 144 cope’s posters also touched on inclusiveness, with reference to partnerships. the ff+’s poster with the message no services no taxes was more controversial. it was perceived by some as confrontational and not within the spirit of democracy; while it was also argued that service delivery is a democratic right and that citizens could protest in the absence of service delivery. conclusion it was argued in this article that political parties contesting an election in local developmental government should enhance participatory governance by: • empowering the electorate to make an informed decision on whom to vote for by focussing on issues relevant to local developmental government; • stimulating public debate by highlighting important political issues; • motivating voters to exercise their democratic right to participate in elections by emphasising the importance of participating in the electoral process; and • contributing to a democratic political culture by emphasising democratic values. in the 2011 south african local government election campaigns, all the parties focused on issues relevant to local developmental government in their manifestos. the anc, da and ff+ emphasised service delivery as the most important issue on their posters. service delivery was also emphasised in the anc and da television advertisements. given the context of dissatisfaction with service delivery before the election, it was not surprising that service delivery emerged as the most important election issue. what is important in the context of participatory governance is whether the issue was presented in a manner that could stimulate public debate and enhance participation. all the parties addressing service delivery emphasised its importance for each individual voter and the fact that all citizens are affected by (the lack of) service delivery. the risk of involving an emotional issue, such as service delivery, in an election campaign is that it could result in excessive use of attack messages and that it can be used only to score political points according to the party-identification model. the da, as the official opposition, did indeed highlight the anc’s inability to deliver serves effectively to all constituents, but they used comparative rather than negative messages. this is in contrast with previous elections, where the da used more negative messages towards the anc. the anc had a two-pronged approach towards the issue of service delivery, by firstly indicating what they had achieved, but then also admitting that more work still needs to be done. it is concluded that both the anc and da contextualised service delivery as a local government issue and their campaigns could have contributed to public debate regarding service delivery. the messages of the ff+ and cope on this issue had a more negative tone. despite the focus on the pertinent issue of service delivery, political parties still needed to motivate people to participate in the elections, as dissatisfaction with service delivery could result in a stay-away vote. all parties explained the importance of democratic 145 the 2011 local elections campaigns in the tlokwe municipality, north-west province: enhancing participatory governance? 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice 113 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 113-140 corné davis* abstract network direct selling organisations (ndsos), for example gnld and avroy shlain, exist in more than 70 countries and have more than 88 million members, who produce a global turnover of billions of us dollars annually. the most recent statistical information reveals that the vast majority of members do not earn significant income. criticism of these organisations revolves around the ethicality of consumption, the commercialisation of personal relationships, and the exploitation of unrealistic expectations. this article summarises the theoretical developments in the study that informed it, and is based, in essence, on secondorder cybernetics as a methodology as well as a development in theory. it aims to show how communication creates networks that sustain an industry of this kind despite the improbability of its existence. the article concludes that individuals are composite unities of self-creating systems, and they co-create social systems by self-creating and co-creating meaning. meaning is described as the continuous virtualisation and actualisation of potentialities that in turn coordinate individual and social systems’ actions. a communication process flow model is created and applied to provide a theoretical explanation for the existence of ndsos as selfcreating systems. * dr corné davis lectures in the department of strategic communication at the university of johannesburg. 114 corné davis introduction network direct selling organisations (ndsos) have become a significant social phenomenon and hence the subject of many scholarly inquiries, as parkhe, wasserman and ralston (2006: 560) state: “the ubiquity of networks, and networking, at the industry, firm, group, and individual levels has attracted significant research attention.” ndsos are distinguished from other forms of direct selling in that the emphasis in network direct selling is placed on the recruitment of distributors to consume and sell the products (lan 2002: 166). examples are organisations such as gnld (golden products) and avroy shlain cosmetics. the international sales statistics presented by the world federation of direct selling associations (wfdsa), of which most direct selling organisations are members, present figures for all direct selling organisations, and they reveal that most members operate through multi-level marketing that makes the recruitment of other members imperative, as opposed to single-level marketing where recruitment is not a prerequisite (wfdsa 2011). the research question this study aimed to answer was how ndsos manage to sustain themselves and show significant growth despite the evidence, such as that presented in figure 1 (for south africa specifically), that the vast majority of their members do not earn significant income through their membership. while detailed statistics relating to the global income distribution among members of ndsos are not readily available, the criticism of these organisations suggests that the income distribution for south africa represents a global pattern. in general, criticism aimed at ndsos revolves around the ethics of commercialising personal relations, the low earnings of distributors, and the general impact on members’ and their acquaintances’ social lives (which revolve around meetings, tea parties, conventions, and other occasions organised under the ndso banner). other studies express concern about the high sales force turnover in direct selling. statistical analysis suggests that ndsos cultivate consumers rather than create income-earning possibilities for their members (davis 2011). socialisation is central to ndso operations, but has a different dimension to socialisation in more typical organisation types. the social dimension of ndsos also appears to create networks that differ significantly from the networks described in the existing literature on network theory and analysis. the study is of particular significance for communication scholars, since the explanation for the existence and growth of ndsos transcends socio-cultural and even socio-economic boundaries as it isolates communication itself as the fundamental unit of analysis in social studies. 115 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems figure 1: rebate earnings in nsdos in south africa in 2007 the communication process flow model presented in this article aims to show how ndsos are created through communication, based on the theorising of niklas luhmann, whose work has not yet received significant attention within communication theory as a field. the discussion commences with a clear definition and description of direct selling and ndsos. definition and description of direct selling according to peterson and wotruba (1996: 2), a definition of direct selling that is sufficiently precise to enable meaningful communication yet broad enough to be helpful in terms of both research and practice is required. they add that many definitions are so broad that they fail to differentiate direct selling from other forms of marketing, and they also acknowledge that the term “direct selling” is typically associated with selling to ultimate consumers. bauer and miglautsch (1992: 14) also note that direct selling is often confused with direct marketing because of the word “direct”. more recent definitions have not been found in existing academic publications. the direct selling association of south africa (dsasa 2010) defines direct selling as “the sale of consumer product or service, person-to-person, away from a fixed retail location”. although this is not a novel or unique definition, it differentiates direct selling from other forms of marketing methods. baker (1984), and hart and stapelton (1992) distinguish direct selling by its lack of middlemen, identifying it as a form of selling without retail outlets, distributors or wholesalers. in other words, products and services are marketed to customers by independent salespeople. the term “distributors” may be confusing, though, up to r1000 per month 74% r1000 to r2500 per month 13% r2500 to r5000 per month 6% r5000 to r10000 per month 4% r10000 to r25000 per month 2% over r25000 per month 1% rebate earnings 2007 (dsasa 2009, in davis 2011) 116 corné davis since such salespeople are also referred to as “independent sales distributors, representatives, consultants, or various other titles” (dsasa 2010). bauer and miglautsch (1992: 14) explain that “most direct selling firms usually do not sell directly to consumers and they usually do not know who their end consumers are – nor can they track responses of consumers”. the direct selling education foundation (dsef) proposed a similar definition: “a method of distribution of consumer goods and services through personal (seller to buyer) contact away from fixed business locations, primarily in a home” (dsef 2010). this adds emphasis to the consumer market focus of direct selling and describes it as a distribution method. for the purposes of the theoretical discussion in this article, direct selling is defined as follows: direct selling is an economic and social activity that aims to establish relationships among individuals through communication activities for the purpose of establishing markets for the selling of products and the human actions that arise out of this provide evidence that persuasion has occurred (davis 2011: 63). direct selling occurs predominantly through ndsos that are members of the world federation of direct selling organisations (wfdsa), which publishes global statistics on this industry annually, as demonstrated in the figures below. global statistics the growth of the global direct selling sales force over the past ten years can be attributed to several factors. figure 2 provides an immediate impression. 117 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems 33.6 35.9 38.7 43.8 47.1 49 54.2 58.6 61.5 62.9 65.0 74.0 87.68 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 global sales force size global sales force size in millions (wfdsa 2011) figure 2: growth in global direct selling sales force over the past ten years the global sales force has increased by approximately 127 percent from 38.7 million to 87.7 million. it is interesting to note that the global sales force increased by 9 million between 2008 and 2009, and a staggering 13.68 million between 2009 and 2010. this may be attributed to the fall-out of the global credit crisis in 2008. the growth in global direct retail sales is presented in figure 3. figure 3: growth in global direct retail sales 81.87 85.44 82.26 78.66 85.76 89 99.36 102.6 109.18 114 113.9 117.5 132.2 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 global direct retail sales global direct retail sales us dollar billion (wfdsa 2011) 118 corné davis despite the approximately 127 percent global increase in the number of independent sales distributors over the past ten years, global sales increased by approximately 61 percent over the same period, from approximately $82.3 billion to $132.2 billion (wfdsa 2011). a simple calculation would suggest that the global retail sales per person would be approximately $126 per person in 2010, which provides further evidence that the average member of an ndso could not possibly earn significant income through membership. a theoretical explanation for a global industry such as this necessitates a metatheoretical perspective and interdisciplinary application. cybernetics provides such a framework and the discussion in this article focuses on second-order cybernetics, which has not yet been discussed within communication theory as a field. second-order cybernetics according to geyer (1995: 12) the clear articulation of second-order cybernetics occurred only in 1970, when von foerster coined the term in his distinction between first-order cybernetics as the cybernetics of observed systems and second-order cybernetics as the cybernetics of observing systems. aguado (2009: 59) claims that one of the milestones of second-order cybernetics is the distinction between two coexisting epistemological traditions in western thought, which are: ... on the one side, the tradition that radically separates scientific knowledge from general knowledge via the incommensurability of the subject and the object of knowledge and, on the other side, the tradition that correlates scientific knowledge to general – and, hence, to ordinary pragmatic – knowledge in terms of a complementary emergence of subject and object interaction (aguado 2009: 50). geyer (1995: 12) provides further clarification when he shows that the explicit inclusion of the observer in the system(s) studied from a second-order cybernetics perspective clearly places the emphasis on the study of living systems, while illuminating the biological basis of this approach. umpleby (1994: 2) shows, however, that the roots of second-order cybernetics were already present when the field of cybernetics was founded in the 1940s. he shows that second-order cybernetics has led to important theoretical understandings that have been of particular interest to studies relating to the nature of knowledge, cognition and understanding per se, as he states: “the ‘second order cyberneticians’ claimed that knowledge is a biological phenomenon (maturana 1970), that each individual constructs his or her own ‘reality’ (von foerster 1973) and that knowledge ‘fits’ but does not ‘match’ the world of experience (von glasersfeld 1987).” 119 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems table 1 summarises the key differences between first-order and second-order cybernetics. while this table appears relatively simple, it has far-reaching implications for the study of communication, organising and organisations. by implication, individuals are observing meta-systems in themselves. in other words, individuals are self-creating systems. this means that individuals are composite unities of self-creating biological, cognitive, and even social systems. it also means that the sub-systems that exist within these (at least) three major systems all in turn consist of various sub-systems that themselves consist of various sub-systems. for example, the body as a biological system consists of various sub-systems, such as the cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, nervous, and neurological system, among several other biological systems. table 1: definitions of firstand second-order cybernetics author first-order cybernetics second-order cybernetics von foerster (1970) pask (1973) varela (1980) umpleby (1994) umpleby (2005) the cybernetics of observed systems the purpose of a model controlled systems interaction among the variables in a system theories of social systems the cybernetics of observing systems the purpose of a modeller autonomous systems interaction between observer and observed theories of the interaction between ideas and society (adapted from umpleby 2005) it is evident that the self-creating properties of social systems such as organisations have (to some extent) become more evident in contemporary studies because of the shift towards second-order cybernetics and autopoiesis. this shift can be seen as an accumulation of consciousness that became established through the developments in first-order cybernetics, complexity, as well as secondorder cybernetics within the cybernetic metaperspective as a transdisciplinary collaboration among scientists in almost every field of study, as the discussion until now has aimed to show. while the cooperative and accumulative development in systems thinking is noted, mingers (1997: 304) argues that second-order cybernetics and social autopoiesis have been some of the most significant developments in systems theories since the early days of general systems theory (gst), as he states: 120 corné davis autopoiesis, in fact, has a foot in both camps. it is in the tradition of gst: a systems theory generated in the domain of biology that may be applied in other disciplines such as social theory; but also it is a theory of the observer that emphasizes the interpreted and constructed nature of social reality (mingers 1997: 304). it follows from second-order cybernetics that the observer cannot be separated from the observation and hence that the individual, as a composite unity of biological, cognitive and/or psychic systems, cannot be distinguished or separated from any observation. the implications of this view for the study of ndsos in particular is that an understanding of human behaviour ultimately depends on understanding the individual as a meta-system that consists of and is driven by various complex systems that propel the self-creation of the individual’s autopoietic systems. individuals create social systems such as ndsos and hence luhmann’s theorising about social autopoiesis is introduced and applied from a cybernetic meta-theoretical perspective to present a theoretical explanation for the existence of ndsos as self-creating systems. social autopoiesis luhmann (1986: 172) argues that the term autopoiesis has been invented to define life, and that its extension to other fields has been undertaken unsuccessfully and on the wrong premises. the discussion that follows aims to illuminate the aspects and dimensions of luhmann’s views that provide a direct link between cybernetics and communication theory as a field. luhmann (1986: 172) further argues that living systems are a particular type of system and that limiting autopoietic theory to life as a mode of self-production or self-reproduction means that the theory does not attain the level of general systems theory, which enables the study of most systems, such as machines, psychic systems, or social systems. he goes on to say: however, if we abstract from life and define autopoiesis as a general form of system-building using self-referential closure, we would have to admit that there are non-living autopoietic systems, different modes of autopoietic reproduction, and general principles of autopoietic organization which materialize as life, but also other modes of circularity and self-reproduction (luhmann 1986: 172). in pursuit of this objective luhmann (1986) follows a multilevel approach to establish a general theory of self-referential autopoietic systems, and aims to provide a more concrete level at which living systems (cells, brains, organisms, and so forth) can be distinguished. 121 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems luhmann (1986: 174) argues that the self-reference of autopoietic systems applies to the production of other components as well: “even elements, that is last components (individuals), which are, at least for the system itself, undecomposable, are produced by the system itself. this applies to elements, processes, boundaries and other structures, and last but not least to the unity of the system itself.” he identifies communications as the basic elements of the social system, and says that: [s]ocial systems use communication as their particular mode of autopoietic reproduction. their elements are communications which are recursively produced and reproduced by a network of communications and which cannot exist outside such a network. communications are not ‘living’ units, they are not ‘conscious’ units, they are not ‘actions’ (luhmann 1986:174). luhmann (1986; 1995; 2002) proposes a “new” social theory of communication, and re-defines communication as the unity of the synthesis of information, utterance and understanding. communication (information, utterance, understanding) according to luhmann (1986: 174-175) the unity of communications requires the synthesis of three selections, namely 1) information; 2) utterance; and 3) understanding (including misunderstanding), which is produced by a network of communication and not by the inherent quality of information or by language, as he states that [t]he synthesis of information, utterance and understanding cannot be preprogrammed by language. it has to be recreated from situation to situation by referring to previous communications and to possibilities of future communications which are to be restricted by the actual event. this operation requires self-reference. it can in no way use the environment. information, utterances and understandings are aspects which for the system cannot exist independently of the system; they are co-created within the process of communication ... the communicative synthesis of information, utterance and understanding is possible only as an elementary unit of an on-going social system (luhmann 1986: 174-175). luhmann (1986: 175) reiterates that the elementary, decomposable units of the social system are communications of minimal size, and that this minimal size cannot be determined independent of the system. he goes on to say that, “communication 122 corné davis includes understanding as a necessary part of the unity of its operation. it does not include the acceptance of its content” (luhmann 1986:176). however, as the theoretical explanation for the existence of ndsos as self-creating systems aims to show, the understandings of individuals, whether these are shared or accepted or not, coordinates individuals’ actions through the creation of networks that create expectations, that lead to the creation of communication themes that create meaning(s), that proceed to create new networks. the identification of self-referential systems that are created within and among individuals in ndsos provides further insight into the centrality of self-reference within the secondorder cybernetic perspective. a communication process flow model for ndsos a communication process flow model created for the purpose of presenting a second-order cybernetic explanation for the existence of ndsos is presented in figure 4. the key concepts in this model are discussed in the sections that follow. 123 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems figure 4: a communication process flow model for ndsos networks within a network theory perspective, van dijk (2001) developed a conceptual model of a network society that mirrors and enhances the marketing models used by ndsos, as illustrated in figure 5. the basic structural idea of network theory is connectedness, that is, the idea that there are relatively stable pathways of communication among individuals in ndsos. individuals who communicate with one another are linked together into groups that are in turn linked together into overall networks. expectation selection speech acts language comunication themes symbolic convergence self referential systems networks structure hierachy axioms meaning potentialities c00rdinated management of meaning individuals individuals virtualisationactualisation (re-) actualisation(re-) virtualisation 124 corné davis figure 5: networks connecting individuals, groups, organisations and societies every person has a unique set of connections with others in the organisation, in other words, “personal networks”. individuals tend to communicate more frequently with certain other organisational members, and form “group networks”. in ndsos individuals consciously and purposefully create new networks that overlap with other personal networks, such as friends and family, or other business networks, such as co-employees at their other, mostly full-time, places of employment. ndsos typically consist of many smaller groups linked to larger groups in organisational networks. some of the implications of a second-order cybernetic perspective for the creation of networks through communication are summarised table 2: communicative action society individual group/organisation (van dijk 2001) 125 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems table 2: network axioms networks increase the self-creating capacities of system units in relationship to their environment by interaction, variation and selection networks increase interactions within and between system units networks increase chances of variation within and between system units networks increase options for selections by system units (davis 2011: 271) it has been observed through experience with ndsos that new members of ndsos are instructed to compile a list of everybody they know and told that these acquaintances are potential clients, either for the selling of products or for the recruitment of new members. new members are therefore implored to increase their interactions and to create networks by doing so. as is also shown in the discussion below on the meaning that is created in ndsos, this action interacts with other actions, since the unity of the selections of information, utterance and understanding is completed within the individual, and therefore other individuals’ actions often complete this synthesis, even in the absence of verbal communication. luhmann (1995: 168) supports this claim: “only actions and not fully communicative events serve as connective points.” therefore the increased connectivity that occurs through networks in ndsos bring about increased observation of other individuals’ actions that create communication within individuals as composite unities of mental (psychic) and biological systems in the process of co-creating social systems. from the understanding that communication is the elementary process that creates social and psychic systems, the term variation necessarily refers to the variation of meaning in this discussion. meaning relates to the third selection within the unity of the synthesis of communication, namely understanding. it has also been explicated that meaning and understanding, and in fact communication itself, are completely self-referential. in terms of luhmann’s theorising about communication, meaning can be defined as “the continual virtualisation and actualisation, and re-virtualisation and re-actualisation, of potentialities” (luhmann 1995). it is therefore clear that networks increase the potential meanings that members of ndsos create between and among themselves, and also between and among themselves and members of other social systems they co-create. based on luhmann’s theorising, the unit of operation of the social system is the interactive construction of meaning (leydesdorff 2000: 274) and it is therefore apparent that networks increase the potential meanings that can be created within the various operationally closed social and psychic systems that are 126 corné davis linked to ndsos. by increasing the potential variations, networks also increase the options for selections by system units. members of ndsos sensitise themselves to other categories of information and utterance that create different hierarchies of contexts. it can therefore be seen that the increased interaction that creates increased variation also increases the options for selections, which means that different communication syntheses are created, particularly because of people’s involvement with ndsos. in doing so, they do the same with all other communication syntheses to greater or lesser degrees. in their selection (to become members of an ndso) individuals create and perpetuate networks. they therefore also select meaning through the continuous unity of communication synthesis they create. according to luhmann (1995) structures create expectations (luhmann 1995), as is shown with specific application to ndsos in the next section. expectations in ndsos individuals become members of ndsos because of certain expectations. the primary expectation attributed to individuals’ initial commitment to ndsos is material gain, even though it has been shown that this expectation is not met for the vast majority of members. expectations are multiple and can be related or linked to multiple social and psychic system operations, as table 3 below aims to show: 127 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems table 3: expectations related to ndsos expectations related to network direct selling organisations individual expectations material gain (financial relief, independence) personal gain (self-actualisation, selfesteem, self-determination, etc.) social gain (acceptance, affiliation, recognition, responsibility, etc.) ndso group expectations material gain (group achievements) personal gain (group status, recognition, cohesion, purposiveness) social gain (group recognition, acknowledgment, validation) ndso organisational expectations material gain (organisational growth, profit and market share) social gain (social responsibility, organisation’s image) other social systems’ expectations (determined by various social systems such as cultural, socioeconomic, legal, and so forth) cognitive vs. normative expectations product-related (price, quality, and so forth) sales-related (service, attention, communication, etc.) preference (supportive or non-supportive) (davis 2011) if one accepts that networks are structures, it can be argued that structures themselves create expectations, as luhmann (1995: 288-289) states: “expectations are the autopoietic requirement for the reproduction of actions, and to this extent they are structures. structures of expectation are basically the condition of possibility for connective action and thus the condition of possibility for self-reproduction through their own arrangement.” it is therefore argued that individuals’ expectations drive their actions, and in ndsos members are driven by their expectations of success, which is defined and determined by every individual’s operationally closed self-referential psychic and/or social systems. luhmann (1995: 293) offers further explanation: “the formation of expectations equalizes a multiplicity of highly heterogeneous occurrences under the common denominator of disappointing an expectation and thereby indicates lines of action.” if, in other words, the individual has the expectation of earning money from network direct selling, her or his actions will 128 corné davis be directed towards avoiding disappointment within her/himself, or the related social system. at the same time, individuals’ actions (attending or participating in meetings, for example) represent shared expectations among members of ndsos that are reinforced by the increase in membership observed by prospective or existing members of ndsos. it is clear from table 3 that expectations are mixed and that individuals’ behaviour or actions may be too complex to offer direct causal explanations. however, it is argued here that expectations are also created through communication, and that communication is a process steered by themes. luhmann (1995: 292) provides the link between expectations and communication themes as follows: expectations come into being by constraining ranges of possibilities. finally, they are this constraint itself. what is left is then just what is expected; it benefits from the condensation. perceptible constellations of things make that readily plausible, but the communication process, by choosing a theme and contributions to it, promptly excludes a lot and thereby grounds expectations (even if there are no prospects or nothing promised) (luhmann 1995: 292). communication themes in ndsos communication themes 1) have factual content; 2) have a temporal aspect; and 3) reach a saturation point. however, certain broad communication themes seem to appear and re-appear almost universally. such themes are identified within symbolic convergence theory as dramas and motives that become imbedded in fantasy themes and that create rhetorical visions and that can be differentiated further in terms of reality, time and moral dimensions. luhmann (1995: 150151) refers to sincerity and insincerity as a theme within what he refers to as the paradox of communication. individuals’ conscious or unconscious perception of sincerity or insincerity may be influenced by their perception of speech acts that represent communicators’ intentions and relate to individuals’ expectations. table 4 presents a summary of the discussion on communication themes in ndsos. 129 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems table 4: communication themes in ndsos communication themes in network direct selling organisations pragmatic themes (motives for achievement) organisational identity/image individual objectives/goals (potentialities) individual/group actions group goals/objectives benefits/rewards factual dimensions temporal dimensions social dimensions social themes (motives for social affiliation) identification relationships shared consciousness social benefits (esteem, affiliation, collaboration) righteous themes (motives for mastery) success (potentiality) social differentiation social responsibility morality advocacy (davis 2011) pragmatic communication themes pragmatic themes in ndsos are typically grounded in the identity and image of the particular organisation that forms the foundations of the training and information they present and distribute to members. from the particular ndso perspective, the purpose of these communication themes is to promote product advocacy, brand identity and loyalty, and shared purpose. from the individual members’ perspectives, the pragmatic communication themes relating to the organisation create information and utterance, which determine the selection of the individual’s understanding as it relates to the individual’s expectations. the expectations are created in relation to the perceptions of the organisational image and identity, as well as the product information that is co-created by the utterances selected during the interaction between members and other individuals. in gnld, for example, some of the health products have won international awards. the detailed catalogues containing product information become a pragmatic communication theme through which members confirm and validate their purposes. this communication theme becomes a communication theme in other social systems where converted members consider it to be their moral imperative to promote the consumption of these products for the benefit of all. 130 corné davis individual objectives and goals become a communication theme within ndsos in particular, because the individual is presented with the possibility of accomplishing self-actualisation, insofar as such self-actualisation is described as (financial) independence and all it may encompass for different individuals within different social systems. it is typical for group distributors in ndsos (as was observed in avroy shlain cosmetics) to set specific sales objectives for individual members that are calculated to accomplish a group sales target, which is in turn utilised to obtain an area sales target. the individual, group and area objectives are typical communication themes that are related to the factual, temporal and social dimensions. current objectives and goals are compared to the logistical information (factual) that is also provided to all members on a frequent basis and that is compared to past and future objectives (temporal) and related to the individuals’ and group’s accomplishments (social). this pragmatic communication theme creates selections of the third selection in the unity of communication synthesis, namely understanding, which may be described by terms such as responsibility, accountability, obligation, or expectation. it follows that the pragmatic theme of goals and achievements steers individuals’ interaction in other communicative contexts towards the accomplishment of these goals and objectives by increasing interaction and coordinating actions, which may become evident in their speech acts (also referred to earlier), even if they are not conscious of this. it has to be stated that the most prominent goal presented to members of ndsos is the recruitment of other members. this goal is emphasised and enforced by prohibiting members from earning the maximum profit from sales unless new members have been recruited, as has been observed in avroy shlain cosmetics, for example. in a similar way, the group goals and objectives become a pragmatic communication theme. individuals perceive themselves to be members of a team and a competitive environment is created between and among group members and other groups. it has to be reiterated that because of these groups’ social character, other pragmatic goals become integrated with this pragmatic theme. an individual may, for example, decide to demonstrate the application of products by arranging a social event such as a “tea party”. another group member may volunteer to mind this individual’s children so that this objective can be accomplished. similarly, other pragmatic communication themes relating to the accomplishment of group goals and objectives are continually created. the personal and financial benefits or rewards constitute another pragmatic communication theme within ndsos. individuals are generally praised and acknowledged for their accomplishments, which usually occurs during meetings. members who meet or exceed sales targets are typically singled out for praise, and their accomplishments are used to inspire and motivate other members. such 131 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems members are often requested to share their experiences and strategies with other members to demonstrate the actualisation of the potentialities that other members come to virtualise. as it was observed in avroy shlain cosmetics, for example, individuals who accomplished a set sales target for a given month would receive a reward such as an umbrella or handbag with the company logo. these rewards have symbolic rather than material value, but they become pragmatic communication themes that drive individuals towards the accomplishment of individual and group sales targets (such as acknowledgement, praise, rewards, etc.) and the overall goals and objectives of the organisation. social communication themes one of the primary social communication themes in ndsos is identification, as luhmann (2002: 121-122) states: “obviously there are countless distinctions that can function as the contexts of the formation of identity, among them the ontological distinction between being and nonbeing with which one can generate ‘somethings’”. in the context of this discussion the identification between individuals lies predominantly in individuals being or not being members of ndsos. typical sources of identification can be labelled as material, idealistic, and formal. the material identification between and among members of ndsos is usually represented in symbolic tokens, such as the organisation’s badges or other accessories that represent membership or levels of accomplishment within the organisation. these tokens can be described as symbolic abbreviations and may lead to symbolic generalisations that can represent an infinite potentiality of meanings, as determined by operationally closed self-referential systems, jointly or respectively. the idealistic identification between and among members of ndsos is evident from their mere membership and participation in organisational activities, such as meetings or other gatherings. the formal identification in these organisations can be witnessed in the rituals and ceremonies and titles that are awarded to different levels of hierarchy within these organisations. the aspiration to attain these levels in the hierarchy, which are associated with the different forms of identification, is usually a central social communication theme within ndsos, as it is aligned with the general purpose of membership. the relationships between individuals and groups within ndsos create another significant social communication theme within ndsos. the earning potential of members is increased by the sales of their recruits and therefore the creation and maintenance of relationships between and among members of ndsos as well as the relationships between members and their clients are emphasised. 132 corné davis supporting and developing other members create normative expectations within these organisations – or, in other words, some kind of moral imperative. the shared consciousness of purpose as it relates to individuals, groups and the organisation is a social communication theme that is usually related to members’ actualisation of the potentialities, in other words the accomplishment of organisational, group, or individual (sales) objectives. these accomplishments become sources of virtualisation and re-virtualisation of potentialities for other members. social benefits such as esteem, acknowledgment, and self-worth create a social communication theme that drives members of ndsos in general. whereas a person may be a receptionist or assistant in his or her formal occupation, he or she gains titles such as “ruby director” or “group distributor”, which is usually represented by a symbolic token, as referred to earlier. the majority of members in ndsos participate in direct selling on a part-time basis. it has also been noted that members usually involve most of their acquaintances in their selling activities and therefore the social esteem accomplished within ndso is often extended to their social communication themes within other social systems. therefore the social benefits associated with individuals’ membership frequently become social communication themes. righteous communication themes emotional perception and/or expression form an integral part of overall perception. righteous communication themes evoke particular emotional responses, as they relate to ego-system states. it was shown in the earlier discussion on expectations that individuals have multiple expectations that may coincide or may be in conflict. if it is generally assumed that individuals join ndsos for financial reasons, it must also be assumed that these individuals perceive themselves to be in some kind of financial position in relation to the other social systems they relate themselves to or differentiate themselves by. the financial positions individuals perceive necessarily create expectations or desires to overcome such financial difficulties that usually extend to psychological and emotional difficulties they may encounter. other socio-psychological factors such as the high divorce rate, for example, may add to individuals’ perceptions of victimisation, frustration, inadequacy, or other ego-system states. in this regard, individuals’ narratives or stories relating to their aspirations or success become righteous communication themes in ndsos. righteous themes generally contain emotional meanings described in terms such as mastery, victory, vindication, justice, self-actualisation, and so forth. such narratives typically include heroes and villains – for example, members’ stories about their mastery of a situation where they were subjected to authority and gained freedom. the emotions evoked through the narratives in groups within 133 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems ndsos create another dimension of identification and enhance further cohesion between and among group members. they come to see their goals as similar, and experience relief by narrating their experiences. the dimensions of morality that are discussed in the following section relate to righteous purposes and normative expectations. members of ndsos become consumers and product advocates, and their belief in the products and organisations they represent may become righteous themes insofar as they consider it to be almost their moral imperative to introduce members of other social systems to the benefits they perceive. in her seminal work on the development of ndsos in the united states, biggart (1989) identifies this kind of orientation as value rationality. the communication themes described create certain meanings within operationally closed psychic and social systems as determined by the self-reference of various systems. culture provides themes that are available for quick and readily understandable reception in concrete communication processes (luhmann 1995: 165). moreover, ndsos continuously co-create their own cultures, which are unique and cannot be described without specific reference to a specific system. the next section describes how the communication themes discussed in this section initiate the co-creation of meaning that creates ndsos. meaning as (re-)actualisation and (re-)virtualisation of potentialities the creation of meaning within ndsos is as complex as it is in most other communicative situations. as luhmann (2002: 84) observes: “a system that is bound to use meaning as a medium constitutes an endless but complex world in which everything has meaning, in which everything gives many cues for subsequent operations and thereby sustains autopoiesis, the self-reproduction of the system out of its own products.” the description of meanings that are created within ndsos within the dimensions of reality, time, morality and emotion aims to provide further clarity. it is reiterated here, as laflamme (2008: 70) concurs, that countless operationally closed, yet interdependent systems are at work within humans. table 5 summarises the key considerations relating to meaning, and relates these to the dimensions that characterise dramatising messages as they can be identified within symbolic convergence theory. 134 corné davis table 5: the creation of meaning in ndsos the creation of meaning in network direct selling organisations meaning is the unity of the virtualisation and actualisation and re-virtualisation and reactualisation of potentialities. meaning can be conditioned. meaning is a medium of communication (meaning can only refer to meaning). meaning is basally unstable with a built-in compulsion to self-alteration. meaning is attributed to actions as points of connectivity. meaning is created in dramatistic format. (davis 2011) individuals create and co-create meaning within themselves and within operationally closed social systems such as ndsos. many kinds of information and utterance determine the selections that create the unity of the synthesis of communication as elementary units of social systems. it has also been shown that the potentialities inherent in meaning itself can be linked to the potentialities imbedded in networks, expectations and communication themes relating to ndsos. meaning can be conditioned through language, and it becomes a medium in itself through symbolic interactionism and symbolic convergence. while all the considerations and discussions relating to meaning have specific significance, the attribution of meaning in ndsos is of fundamental importance to the theoretical explanation in this article. the global statistics relating to membership and sales activities in ndsos represent actions. individuals’ and groups’ understandings are indeterminable. their actions, however, become information and utterance that represent certain meanings or understanding to observers. the dimensions of meaning created in dramatistic format in ndsos are related to the communication themes identified in the previous section. the next section aims to show that all of the communication processes and dimensions that have been discussed in this section steer or direct individuals’ hierarchies of communication contexts towards self-reference as the central point of recursivity. self-referential systems and ndsos the following observation luhmann (1995: 137) makes relates to the earlier discussion of the increase in interaction through networks: “self-reference on the level of basal processes is possible only if at least two processing units that operate with information are present and if they can relate to each other 135 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems and therefore to themselves.” luhmann (1995) identifies several kinds of selfreferential systems that further enhance not only multiplexity, but also the various unconscious and even subconscious dimensions of communication. in the interests of comprehensiveness, table 6 presents a summary of some of the kinds of selfreferential systems that have been identified. table 6: a differentiation of self-reference within individual (psychic) and social systems a differentiation of self-reference in ndsos self-virtualisation visualisation/imagination of the accomplishment of the potential rewards associated with ndsos self-actualisation membership and participation in ndsos self-determination making selections that are aligned with ndsos in attempt to meet expectations; perception of control self-abstraction enables the replication of the same structures within the object itself. self-organisation individuals identify or create patterns of behaviour to reduce complexity. self-(re)presentation individuals present and/or represent themselves in their virtualised and actualised capacities as members of ndsos. self-observation/differentiation individuals differentiate themselves from other individuals through self-observation and selfassessment as propelled by communication themes within ndsos. self-simplification ndsos present potential solutions to complex realities through hierarchisation as a specific case of differentiation. self-socialisation socialisation is self-socialisation because its basic process is the self-referential reproduction of the system that brings about and experiences socialisation in itself. self-reproduction action systems must always reproduce actions. (davis 2011) it can be deduced from the brief descriptions in table 6 that these various kinds of self-reference play a constitutive role, not only in making selections that create the unity of synthesis that constitute communication(s), but also in the creation of networks that create ndsos. given that networks increase interaction, 136 corné davis variation and selection between and among individuals, the operationally closed self-referential systems within individuals, and hence the intrapersonal communication that occurs, create and co-create infinite potentialities of meaning as conveyed through actions and other dimensions of communication. the potential outcomes of communication and human actions that co-create the unity of communication synthesis, which in turn create elements of social systems such as ndsos, are therefore infinite and indeterminable. however, the existence and continued growth of this industry clearly demonstrate that individuals who are, and who become, members self-create and reproduce meaning and further communication that accomplishes the overall objectives of this industry. limitations and recommendations this study of ndsos has been based on direct observation, informal participant observation and information provided by the regulating bodies within this industry, such as wfdsa and the direct selling association of south africa (dsasa). the membership and sales figures were calculated and presented by these organisations and could not be verified. members do not formally resign when they no longer wish to continue selling or purchasing products. they simply withdraw from activities, and therefore there is no clear indication of the actual drop-out rate among distributors. formal interviews with a representative sample of members within this industry were not conducted for the purposes of this study. these could perhaps be done in future in order to gain deeper insight into the perceptions of individuals involved in the industry. in addition, further differentiation between communication themes in particular cultures, for example, could establish alternative explanations. emphasis was placed on the development of a theoretical explanation from a second-order cybernetic perspective, and an analysis of social and/or mass media has not been included in this study. the interpenetration and interdependence between and among social systems, together with the understanding of the information input-output ratio of individuals, mean that the impact of social and public media cannot be ignored, since this media represents and co-creates other operationally closed social systems. the same applies to the consideration of technology and the increased interactions it enables. it seems that debates regarding new applications of cybernetic concepts have largely been conducted in other social scientific disciplines, and in particular sociology, despite the challenges a co-creational perspective poses for communication in general, and for organisational communication specifically. the sociologist vanderstraeten, for example, asks the following questions about communication: 137 a second-order cybernetic explanation for network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems human beings are conceded greater freedom (greater complexity) than social roles, norms and structures would allow. this raises the following questions: how do human beings participate in communication, notwithstanding the autopoietic closure of psychic systems? how does participation in communication contribute to psychic system formation? (vanderstraeten 2000: 588) in a similar vein, the sociologists mutch, delbridge and ventresca (2006: 607) place the emphasis on ... the primacy of contextuality and process in sociological analysis, an attention to causal explanation that seeks to avoid both pure voluntarism and structural determinism, a requirement for theoretical consistency across levels of analysis and an advocacy of evaluations and internal debate around the thematization of issues and problems in order to facilitate theory building within and across traditions. it is therefore recommended that communication scholars take up the challenge to participate in, and even lead, new interdisciplinary debates. although luhmann’s theorising is perceived to be controversial, it provides may points of connectivity for communication scholars to engage with the challenges an emergent and cocreational perspective poses for our understanding of the role of communication in the autopoietic reproduction of social systems such as organisations. overton-de klerk (in davis 2011) encourages communication research that develops depth and texture through continuous reflection and critical self-assessment, which can offer new paradigms in an ever-changing environment in which improbabilities, such as the growth of ndsos, become the norm. conclusion it has been shown in this article that, in clear defiance of economic logic, ndsos are entrenched in contemporary society, and that until their actions provoke dissent rather than encouragement, these organisations will continue to exist and grow, regardless of the criticism they attract. but perhaps the criticism against ndsos has to be redirected towards social systems themselves. where does the valorisation of money stem from? what drives individuals to relate all selections they make in the unities of communication synthesis to money and to create their realities in monetary terms? individuals cannot claim to be the victims of social systems they co-create, even if they do this through silence – qui tacet consentire videtur. 138 corné davis the reality of ndsos raises the question whether the primary motive for the creation of these social systems is actually money, as bone (2006) claims, or whether it is value rationality, as biggart (1989) suggests. the multiplexity of these social systems together with all other social systems leaves this question pending. ultimately, the evidence shows that communication can transform the improbable and even impossible into the probable and possible, as luhmann (1996: 341) suggests: “from a sociologist’s point of view there may be many reasons to question the rationality of modern society; but there can be no doubts concerning its stupendous capacity to normalise improbabilities.” ndsos are created through communication and are sustained precisely because they create networks, which in turn increase interaction, variation and selection. the communicative activities of members and prospective members are driven by ubiquitous expectations that are articulated within broad communication themes. these themes can apparently be found in most cultures, and they enable members to co-create meanings that virtualise and actualise the network direct selling industry. 139 references aguado, j.m. 2009. self-observation, self-reference and operational coupling in social systems: steps towards a coherent epistemology of mass media. empedocles european journal for the philosophy of communication 1(1): 59-74. baker, m.j. 1984. macmillan dictionary of marketing and advertising. new york: nichols. bauer, c.l. & miglautsch, j. 1992. a conceptual definition of direct marketing. journal of direct marketing 6(2): 7-17. biggart, n.w. 1989. charismatic capitalism. direct selling organizations in america. chicago and london: university of chicago press. bone, j. 2006. the hard sell. aldershot, england: ashgate. davis, c. 2011. a second-order cybernetic explanation for the existence of network direct selling organisations as self-creating systems. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of south africa, pretoria. direct selling association south africa. 2010. 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[online]. available at: http://www.wfdsa.org [accessed on 17 february 2011]. untitled 15 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 15 31 zarine roodt* abstract this article is based on the notion that prisa's approaching 55th anniversary presents an opportunity to reflect on the current state of public relations in south africa – a state of affairs brought into sharper focus by the substantive change in the country subsequent to 1994's new political dispensation. this qualitative field survey asked the following research question: how do the presidents of prisa who have served terms of office since 1994 view the current state of public relations in this country? the purposive sample resulted in ten respondents and an interview strategy was utilised to elicit responses in terms of an interview schedule. the thematic analysis brought about a two-fold picture: there appears to be increasing pressure on the public relations industry from the outside, with a commensurate collapse from within the industry itself. the article concludes that in many respects this study underscores the fact that not much has changed in the public relations industry; therefore, one could argue that the findings point to a recurring crisis of credibility in the south african public relations industry. * zarine roodt is research associate in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 15 introduction and research question south africa has one of the world’s “more mature” public relations industries (sudhaman 2010). here, the industry is approaching its 55th anniversary, given the founding year of the institute for public relations & communication management (southern africa). prisa, the acronym by which the institute has been known for years, was established in 1957 and still serves as a mainstay for the public relations profession in this country1. since its earliest days, public relations in this country and on a wider front has been beset with a number of concomitant issues, including: confusion with regard to its nomenclature and what the practice entails, misunderstanding as to its intrinsic value and contribution to management, and disagreement regarding its positioning in the corporate hierarchy (cf. roodt 1988: 4, 5; white & ver�i� 2001). no surprise, then, that as early as the mid-70s, in south africa and abroad, mention was made of a lack of credibility regarding public relations practice (roodt 1988: 5). in south africa these and other issues, such as the professionalisation of public relations (niemann-struweg & meintjes 2008), have been brought into even sharper focus by the substantive change and upheaval in the country subsequent to the establishment of the new political dispensation in 1994. research has confirmed the impact of the environment on public relations practice, particularly during times of political change (holtzhausen 2005). thus, the process of comprehensive democratisation in south africa has had a significant effect on public relations and it is therefore logical to restrict the time-frame for a discussion of the status quo of public relations in this country to the period following this momentous date. so, the eve of prisa’s 55th anniversary presents an opportunity to reflect on the current state of public relations in this country2. given this meaningful vantage point it stands to reason that presidents of prisa may be regarded as a rich source of information concerning the industry’s status quo: not only have they been nominated and elected by their peers after serving in the ranks of the institute, but they have also brought their particular background in public relations and their specific perspectives of public relations (corporate, consultancy, and academe) to bear on the institute, its management and its affairs for a cumulative period of 17 years (post 1994). another rationale for focusing this survey on prisa’s presidents can be found in the study by the niemannstruweg and meintjes (2008) in which the authors suggest that prisa’s views could be included in any future research regarding public relations and its professionalisation. it is this author’s contention that prisa’s views should indeed be included and in this brief survey this will be done by way of the institute’s mouthpiece, i.e. its president. the aim of this study, therefore, was to garner the views of a specific group of people – the former presidents of the industry’s professional institute – regarding the state of public relations in this country. to this end, interviews were used to collect information while thematic analysis (wilson & maclean 2011: 551, 557) was applied in order to analyse and interpret the data. the rationale for adopting this qualitative approach is 16 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 16 highlighted by the research question, namely that of how the presidents of prisa who have served terms of office since 1994 view the current state of public relations in south africa. given that the researcher’s emphasis was on understanding (verstehen) (mouton 2001: 141), a qualitative approach was deemed to be the most appropriate one to meet the researcher’s aim of understanding how the former presidents of prisa view the status quo of public relations. definition and orientation as indicated above, the definition and description of public relations has been a contentious matter since the discipline’s inception. thus, there is no point in entering into a debate as to the best possible definition of the practice. for the purposes of this article, the author proposes the use of the definition which has held fast in south africa for almost 15 years. the definition was ratified by prisa and announced to its membership in february 1998 (communika 1998: 1): “public relations is the management, through communication, of perceptions and strategic relationships between an organisation and its internal and external stakeholders.” for the purposes of further discussion, it is deemed necessary to position public relations practice in terms of the disciplines with which it is most commonly associated/confused, namely marketing and advertising. marketing is primarily concerned with an organisation’s products and services: it identifies the needs of consumers for these products and services, and fills the gap between the need on the one hand, and actual acquisition on the other, by communicating productand service-related information. marketing makes use of various tools for this purpose, traditionally referred to as the marketing mix. advertising is equally concerned with products and services, on the one hand, and with ideas, on the other. its emphasis is on persuasion, with a view to driving consumer behaviour. its purpose is to establish the image of brands. advertising is a form of controlled communication in that the content of the advertising message, as conveyed through different media, is determined, and paid for, by the advertiser – either directly or through an agency. products and services are clearly not the domain of public relations. rather, the discipline is concerned with the organisation’s image, and with the management of every aspect which might influence that image. therefore, in brief, the focus of communication in the public relations sphere is on creating and managing relationships with key stakeholders. method and procedure this small-scale study may be defined as field research (cf. chesebro & borisoff 2007: 8) and a qualitative approach was followed for reasons explained above. the researcher made use of an interview strategy. 17 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 17 the study was undertaken in two stages. during the first stage the author conducted archival research (wilson & maclean 2011: 240), analysing various communiqués published in communika, prisa’s in-house publication – the original documents, in bound form, were obtained from the prisa office in randburg. typically, these communiqués took the form of an induction speech, various progress reports issued during the presidential term of office, and a farewell speech. the researcher used the information gleaned in this way as a basis for drafting the interview schedule. stage two comprised the interview process. the study was initiated in march this year (2011), and the interviews were conducted during april and may. analysis of the data commenced in june. sampling the selection of participants for the study was relatively uncomplicated as the population consisted of all former presidents of prisa since the institute’s inception in 19573. for reasons explained earlier, the timeframe was demarcated as 1994 to the current year, 2011. this resulted in a small, purposive sample numbering 11. the names of the concerned persons are listed in table 1. table 1: presidents of prisa from 1994 onwards 1994 – 1995 zarine roodt apr, fprisa4 1996 – 1997 viccy baker apr 1998 – 1999 anthea johnston apr, fprisa 2000 – 2001 sej motau cprp, fprisa 2002 margaret rowe apr 2003 – 2004 kate bapela apr, fprisa 2005 – 2006 merle o’brien apr, fprisa 2006 – 2008 mixael de kock5 apr, fprisa 2008 – 2010 victor sibeko cprp, fprisa 2010 – 2011 samantha louis apr 2011 – current ronél rensburg cprp the prisa president at the time of the 1994 elections was the author. reflective of the winds of change sweeping the country at the time, she was the first female president of the institute, while sej motau was the first black president to be inaugurated, later followed by kate bapela as the first black female president. subsequent to the author’s term of office, nine presidents have served, with the tenth having been inaugurated in june this year. 18 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 18 the author was excluded from the sample for obvious reasons. it may be mentioned that she had retired from the public relations profession in september 1999, but a background of some 20 years in the industry prior to that placed her in an ideal position to manage the research process and to keep its findings in perspective, while having the benefit of distance and retaining a measure of objectivity. interviews were conducted with nine of the ten presidents who had succeeded the researcher (viccy baker declined as she had moved out of the public relations sphere). although kelly (1999: 381) regards six to eight sampling units as sufficient for a homogeneous sample, the author is mindful of the fact that a sample as small as this one raises obvious questions regarding the generalisability of the findings and conclusions. the nine participants in the survey include persons of both genders, with the female participants (6) outnumbering the males (3) – a reflection of the gender profile of public relations in south africa. four of the participants are black and the rest white. all of them live in south africa, with the exception of one respondent who now resides in france and another who divides her time between south africa and india. no other demographic markers are relevant to this study other than the fact that one of the participants has retired from public relations. the participants are evenly spread across the different spheres of public relations, and offer solid representation from the consultancy and corporate sectors, and, in one instance, from academia – and it is thus clear what manner of expertise has led prisa over the years. the participants fall within the two higher levels of prisa registration, while most of them have been acknowledged as fellows of prisa (see endnote 4 for further explication). access was gained in the following manner: the author approached prisa’s president at the time, samantha louis, and the institute’s executive director, adele paulsen, to obtain their permission and support for the proposed survey. the names and chronological order of succession of the presidents were obtained from the prisa office manager, together with contact details for most of them. a letter of intent was sent to the former and current presidents via e-mail in march this year, requesting their participation. additional steps had to be taken in order to trace anthea johnston in france and merle o’brien in india and facebook was used for this purpose. participation did not present a problem as the participants knew the author; therefore, an interviewer-interviewee “relationship” already existed. data collection having decided on an interview strategy the author made use of the following procedure to gather information: semi-structured interviews (cf. wilson & maclean 2011: 201) were deemed to offer the best format and an interview schedule (cf. wilson & maclean 2011: 202) was regarded as a suitably flexible research tool – hence the questions were open-ended in nature (wilson & maclean 2011: 203). the scope of the interviews was aimed at arriving at an understanding of a group perspective (fontana & frey 2005: 698) and nine basic questions were formulated6. 19 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 19 the information-collection process comprised a combination of individual, face-to-face verbal interchange (fontana & frey 2005: 698) and electronic interviewing, while in certain instances, distance interviews were conducted (i.e., via e-mail). the interviews were restricted to a once-off brief exchange (fontana & frey ibid.) and were conducted in english, the professional language of choice in this country. where their programmes allowed this, face-to-face interviews were scheduled with participants in pretoria (kate bapela), johannesburg (mixael de kock) and cape town (sej motau). telephone interviews were conducted with two participants (samantha louis and ronél rensburg). the questions on the interview schedule were sent to the remaining participants and they responded via e-mail: anthea johnston, margaret rowe, merle o’brien and victor sibeko. the author recorded the face-to-face interviews on a digital recorder and had these transcribed, while the telephonic interviews were taken down in typed format by the author. the responses arising from the distance interviews were forwarded in msword files via electronic mail by the respondents. the transcriptions and e-mail responses were saved in one specific file on the author’s notebook computer, and a back-up containing all the data was securely stored in a personal safe. data analysis the author followed an informal approach as the nature of this field survey did not require sophisticated analytical methods. two points are worth mentioning: as suggested by seidman (2006: 112-118), the author avoided an in-depth analysis of the interview data until all the interviews were completed. the transcripts were then studied for the first time in order to avoid projecting anything learnt from the earlier participants onto the later data. secondly, the interview transcripts were analysed in the order in which the participants had served their term of office (rather than in the order in which the interviews were conducted) so as to facilitate a chronological unfolding of themes. ethical considerations of the conventional ethical criteria of informed consent, the right to privacy and protection from harm (fontana & frey 2005: 715) only the first applied to this particular survey, and it was mediated by the pre-existing collegial and professional relationship between the author and the participants. the author explained the purpose of the survey and of the proposed interviews in a letter which was mailed to the intended participants and consent was obtained in this manner. further to the issue of consent: permission to make audio recordings was obtained prior to the interviews. it should be pointed out here that the participants’ right to privacy was never at stake as each participant understood from the outset that the interview was to be conducted with him or her in a specific capacity, namely his or her position as president of prisa at some prior point. therefore, anonymity did not comprise a criterion in the context of the survey. 20 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 20 thematic analysis and discussion the author made use of thematic analysis for the following reasons: first, because thematic analysis “looks for patterns, or themes, across whole sets of data” ; secondly, it is flexible and versatile (wilson & maclean 2011: 551). the author took note of some points of criticism levelled at thematic analysis, namely an apparent lack of theory, the absence of a single agreed-on method of thematic analysis and the limited interpretative power of such analysis (wilson & maclean 2011: 553). however, the decision was made to persist with this technique, mainly because of its flexibility and versatility which suited the uncharted course in this study. the emerging themes point to a two-fold picture: there appears to be increasing pressure on the public relations industry from the outside, with a commensurate collapse from within the industry itself. pressure from the outside • “public relations has been suffocated by a crowding in of disciplines into the communication space”; • “our other peers take away the credibility of what we do”; • “public relations has been stripped of its value”; • owing to the global credibility crisis in communication, public relations in south africa has suffered: “people are very wary of public relations”; “public relations is no longer trusted at all”; • the political landscape in the country impacts on public relations: “a key factor that continues to hamper public relations in south africa is the growing mistrust between government and business, media, labour and civil society due to corruption, lack of accountability, etc.”; “public relations has now become a tool in the ‘business of politics’. political appointments, for example, are being made in prominent communication positions, without these incumbents having any business acumen or qualifications or ‘diplomatic’ skills to handle high-voltage public relations problems in a changing society”; “the point is that there is massive government wastage and massive fraud in the name of public relations which is not public relations – and this contributes to the credibility crisis in this country”; • “the environment has become too complex to navigate using public relations’ existing basket of tools – they are too lightweight to deal with the task at hand”; “public relations is powerless to play in the new media environment.” the flip-side of the coin points to a collapse from within the public relations industry: collapse from within • there is a “void of experience” in the industry, as seasoned public relations practitioners have emigrated and/or retired. “many of yesteryear’s best 21 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 21 professionals left the profession as they found themselves competing with flyby-nights, journos, secretaries, etc. and prisa ignored this”; “the loss of membership, especially senior members, coupled to the fact that the apr figures have not grown, means that prisa does not have ‘critical mass’”; “prisa is flying blind without a wisdom base of knowledgeable leaders: it cannot show practitioners which mountains to climb or lead the way up because it lacks a dominant coalition of people with the influence to turn the tide”; • public relations has become an “easy entry point” for practitioners who do not embark on full public relations practice. also, as one participant succinctly pointed out: the non-regulated aspect of prisa has led to “a vast increase in kitchen-table consultants who really don’t know what they are doing. regrettably, these people all qualify in terms of bee and tend to get a lot of jobs which they screw up – which feeds into the downward spiral of credibility loss”; • there is a lack of integration regarding the different areas of speciality in public relations: “clusters of practitioners are encountered across the country”, but the “glue” to link them is lacking; • perceptions of public relations are affected by the fact that “we tend to talk tactical language instead of strategic business language”, and that “the practice in general is still very ‘technically’ as opposed to ‘strategically’ oriented, as well as the fact that “pr has never really been a high intellectual content activity”; • there appears to be general consensus that the public relations industry has “lost its lustre”, as evidenced by comments such as “there is a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of revitalising public relations”; “public relations needs to redefine and re-position itself” in order to reclaim its position in the communication sphere; and “the public relations sector needs to sophisticate itself”; • the public relations industry has suffered from a loss of visibility and stature: “we had some significant public relations personalities … these days i don’t even know who speaks for public relations”; “the stature of public relations has been diminished over the years”; • public relations practitioners in south africa can be divided into two groups: professional, ethical practitioners, versus unprofessional, opportunistic ones. one respondent believes that ethics are “largely ignored as superfluous”; • there is no agreement amongst prisa’s base of experience as to the form that professionalisation should take: “it goes against the grain ... i don’t believe people should be forced” and “public relations should never be legislated”, as against “the industry should lobby for strict barriers to entry and prisa must enforce regulation”; “i think the public relations profession needs a statute; it needs to be regulated, and i think that regulation has to happen soon”. this points to the old divide in public relations: “people can practise without restriction”, 22 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 22 and practitioners “get away with practicing without accreditation; they don’t need a professional body to vouch for them” in view of the fact that “prisa is not representative of all who practise”, “prisa has no teeth”, and there is “no perceived value in belonging” (to prisa). the upshot of all this is that there are “no requirements for practitioners to join prisa in order to practise. until this happens, public relations will lack credibility as a profession.” these findings are illustrated in figure 1. figure 1: two-fold picture of public relations in south africa furthermore, it is clear from the findings that the public relations industry, at least in south africa, still bears the proverbial albatross around its neck – there is confusion regarding its name and practice, and misunderstanding as to its value and contribution. predictably, the professionalisation of the practice remains a real concern with no consensus as to how it should actually be accomplished. as a result of the current political climate, even more emphasis is being placed on professionalisation, with a strong focus on ethics. 23 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 23 other than those already emphasised, the following findings should be highlighted: 1) the king iii report7, commissioned by the institute of directors (iod), strikes a real note of optimism: “there could be no better time than now for public relations professionals to make their voices heard and earn the respect they deserve – especially with the overwhelming recognition of the importance of our role in good corporate governance.” 2) prisa’s initiative in terms of the global alliance is a source of pride8. “internationally, the global alliance for public relations and communication management recognises prisa as one of the most important role-players of its kind on the national and global stage.” 3) an afrocentric orientation in the south african public relations industry is borne out by statements such as “we do not expose ourselves as role models to our young up-andcoming professionals”, and “young people have to have somebody to look up to”, as well as by the use of terms such as “network” and “ubuntu”. in addition, “one of the things we want to do in south africa is to take our experience and share it with the rest of the continent. there are at least 40 states that need development and then we will take our credibility to a whole different level.” finally, “prisa has the (education) blueprint for the african situation – therefore it will be a sad day if a eurocentric model is applied to africa.” 4) the chronological change in perceptions of transformation within the public relations industry is apparent: • sej motau (2000-2001): “the face of prisa has changed from previously all white and middle-class, (it) is now more integrated than previously”; • kate bapela (2003-2004): “prisa has really tried to bridge the transformation issues”; • mixael de kock (2006-2008): “for many years the black component of prisa has been very militant about transformation, yet they were almost totally absent in the processes instituted to effect transformation”; • victor sibeko (2008-2010): “prisa had its share in addressing transformation, but its efforts were short-lived. the real transformation we would like to see is in the corporate world with more young professionals taking on much more responsible positions.” two matters that were raised repeatedly during the interviews require explication, the first being the question of ethics, while the second pertains to prisa membership figures, particularly in the senior echelons. considering the contrasting perceptions of ethics in public relations as being “largely ignored as superfluous” and “almost non-existent” as opposed to the observation that there have been only a “few incidences of unethical behaviour”, the author attempted to clarify this issue, at least partly. as there is no longer a standing prisa committee, formerly known as the ethics and disciplinary 24 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 24 committee, the former chief executive officer of prisa, margaret moscardi (who retired in mid-2009, after joining prisa in 1980) was asked about the number of cases reported to prisa. the current procedure entails the convening of an ad hoc committee by the prisa board, as and when such cases arise. according to moscardi (2011) there has been one instance of an ethical issue which was followed up and conducted to a final conclusion (in june 1999). it related to charges of drunkenness and disorderliness during the prisa agm and national conference. the apr status of the practitioner in question was removed by the full board which was convened immediately for this purpose and his employer was advised accordingly. subsequent to this moscardi also recalls two complaints which were not subjected to the disciplinary process, as they revolved around the legal issues in respect of money owed to consultants which clearly did not fall within prisa’s ambit. lastly, a more recent complaint involved a consultant employer and a staff member. however, prisa could not take action as the staff member in question did not renew his membership. thus, the fact of the matter is that the former ceo of prisa recalls only four cases of ethical concerns being brought to the attention of the institute. given the unregulated nature of the public relations industry, this is probably not an accurate reflection of the true state of affairs. secondly, the matter of membership, which has been a contentious issue for a large part of prisa’s history, should be placed in perspective since more than one president made mention of the drop in membership figures. by way of background: there are four different categories of professional registration within prisa, of which individual registration is one. this category comprises different levels, i.e. affiliate, associate, public relations practitioner (prp), chartered public relations practitioner (cprp) as well as accreditation in public relations and communication management (apr) – the highest level of the prisa registration system. fprisa denotes fellowship of the institute. (there are currently 19 fellowships.) in march 1999, in communika, prisa claimed a membership of 6 000. however, a bone of contention that arose prior to this point was the fact that only 2 000 of these were registered public relations practitioners – the rest were student members. this phenomenon relates to the fact that membership of prisa was compulsory for students who applied for the basic and advanced certificates in public relations practice and this artificially inflated the membership figures – a problem that was discussed extensively at prisa executive meetings in the early nineties. by omitting the student figures, it is possible to gain an accurate picture of the number of so-called “senior” members of prisa; and these figures have declined from 1 906 in 1994, to 913 at present. a number of presidents were particularly concerned about the declining apr figures and the effect of this tendency on the industry. the figures prove that this is indeed a matter for concern – see figure 2 below, which illustrates a decline from 341 to 100. 25 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 25 figure 2: the number of aprs within prisa (source: prisa) if this trend is read in conjunction with the cprp figures, pertaining to the second most senior level of registration in prisa, in figure 3 below, it is obvious that this is a serious matter as the numbers have dropped from 624 to 198. figure 3: the number of cprps registered with prisa (source: prisa) 26 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 26 it should immediately be pointed out that the declining figures highlighted above are not unique to prisa. in fact, professional bodies in south africa and internationally have been similarly affected in recent years. furthermore, this decline should be viewed against the background of the fact that membership of public relations’ professional body in this country is not compulsory. what is of concern is that, as far as can be ascertained, prisa has not attempted to determine the specific reasons for non-renewal of membership. at this point, the reader is reminded of the aim of this study, which was to garner the views of a homogeneous sample, comprised of former presidents of the industry’s professional institute, regarding the state of public relations in this country. following from this, the research question investigated by this study was that of how the presidents of prisa who have served terms of office since 1994, view the current state of public relations in south africa. the respondents’ collective answer to the research question is summarised as follows: • south african public relations is a globally recognised entity, with major opportunities in terms of globalisation as well as national and international networks which can be activated. south african public relations is in need of a professional board with formal registration procedures, along with a well-defined scope of practice in order to sophisticate and redefine the public relations profession. • the political change in south africa created opportunities for the public relations profession, but political and government fraud, corruption, media spinning, media untruths, propaganda, technology and competition hamper proactive engagement with these opportunities, resulting in scepticism towards public relations. • social media present an opportunity to reach broader and diverse communities (specifically the youth), but will not replace mainstream media as technology and access are defined by economic status. social media platforms should be embraced, but “control” is an issue; therefore, they should be well managed with proper organisational policies in place to avoid corruption of an organisation’s reputation and a decline in quality. • prisa is internationally recognised, offering a blueprint for the african situation. prisa gained ground in terms of transformation but lost ground in terms of membership. prisa promotes bee, and developed standards for the services seta, working with fapra9 and has also developed an educational arm in terms of a cpd system. prisa was proactive in terms of establishing public relations as a profession in south africa, and should make use of opportunities in terms of sharing knowledge. it should also utilise and capitalise on existing expertise (i.e. past presidents). 27 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 27 • regarding professionalisation, public relations requires legislation and a set of standards for practitioners. however, it is felt that – owing to freedom of association – people cannot be forced to join the institute and follow these standards and code of conduct. instead, prisa should work on becoming a cutting-edge association so that people would want to be associated with it. public relations, marketing and advertising bodies should merge into one regulatory, inter-disciplinary community council for well co-ordinated and integrated public relations products. • key issues facing public relations what is required: º credibility and role models for young people º marketing º strategy º education/knowledge/experience/research-based interventions º clear professional code of conduct º remaining abreast of social media and changes º shared value system through prisa º strategic business acumen º a focus on becoming global players º public, government and private awareness of prisa what should be managed: º declining trust of media and media corruption º uneven stakeholder environment • there are widely divergent opinions about ethics in public relations. the majority of the respondents are of the opinion that the ethical dimension of public relations is non-existent or of a poor standard, which correlates with the lack of ethics encountered in all societal spheres, while others feel that few ethical problems have arisen until now. it is believed that formal registration with a professional board would assist in tackling the ethical problems in the profession. • in south africa, there is not only a crisis of credibility; there are also crises of relevancy, legitimacy and reputation, which can be addressed (i) through knowledge and a reference base in prisa; (ii) by adhering to the principle that institutional responsibility should not be taken on as the public relations profession’s responsibility; and (iii) by using strategic business language instead of tactical language. 28 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 28 • regarding the term “public relations” vis-à-vis “communication” / “corporate communication”, there is a difference of opinion: four out of nine stated that the name (public relations) should be retained, while others expressed the opinion that one should not “play semantics”; that one should “just do the job professionally” and “be proud and confident” and call the profession “whatever is convenient at that point in time”. • as to the relationship between public relations and communication: opinions differ in this regard too, ranging from the conviction that public relations rightfully comprises the over-arching term, to the belief that professional public relations consultants understand that communication is what lubricates the project plan. the concepts of “synergy” and “merging”, “co-creating each other” and “dynamic relationship” are used together with “integration”, while the term “communication management” appears, together with an emphasis on “business perspective”. closing argument in many respects this study underscores the fact that not much has changed in the public relations industry, as is pointed out in the golden jubilee edition of communika (2007), in an article entitled “issues don’t really change”. the first few issues listed in the article are mentioned here to illustrate the researcher’s point: • should the profession be called public relations or communication? • is it a profession or an industry – or both? • the perception and image of public relations among the general public and those who should know better. • low entry levels to the industry and the perception that anyone can do “pr”. • the relationship between public relations people and the media, including spin. • the recognition of the value of good public relations, especially at boardroom level. • the overlaps and boundaries between public relations, marketing and advertising. • the skills and qualities necessary for a good public relations practitioner. so, regarding the research question of how the former presidents of prisa view the current state of public relations in south africa: not all of prisa’s former presidents necessarily view and define the status quo in terms of a crisis, although a number of them – including prisa’s current president – make explicit reference to the existence of such a crisis. therefore, in conclusion, one could argue that there is a recurring crisis of credibility in the south african public relations industry. 29 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 29 endnotes 1 the equally important role played by the public relations consultants’ chapter of prisa (prcc), specifically in shaping the consultancy sphere of public relations in south africa, must be acknowledged. however, given prisa’s longer existence and broader base of representation, it was decided to restrict this study to prisa and the views of its presidents. also, the original scope of and timeline for this study precluded the involvement of the prcc. 2 see the golden jubilee issue of communika (may 2007) for a valuable summation of the history of public relations in south africa. 3 see communika (2007: 17). 4 refer to the discussion of membership preceding figure 2 for an explanation of these acronyms which denote levels of individual membership in prisa. 5 mixael de kock provided invaluable insight and the concept “crisis of credibility”, as it is used in this article, and its title is credited to him. 6 the interview schedule is available from the author: zroodt@mweb.co.za 7 the latest king report adds a new perspective to future corporate governance and the corporate communication profession in south africa. for the first time it includes a separate chapter on stakeholder relationship management (communika 2009: 9; see also communika 2010: 10.) 8 prisa’s position as a founding member of the global alliance for public relations communication management (ga) in 1998 – and later as the secretariat – firmly established prisa as a leading professional body, not only in africa, but in the world (communika 2007: 4). 9 the federation of african public relations associations (fapra) is the umbrella body of all national public relations associations in africa. 30 recurring crisis of credibility? the state of public relations in south africa 2. zarine roodt 11/18/11 3:40 pm page 30 references chesebro, j.w. and borisoff, d.j. 2007. what makes qualitative research qualitative? qualitative research reports in communication 8(1): 3-14. communika. 1998. new definition of public relations. february: 1-12. communika. 2007. so many milestones in a decade of transformation. march: 1-23. communika. 2009. latest king report: a boost for the communication profession? may: 1-27. communika. 2010. prisa’s cms supports king iii recommendations. march: 1-23. denzin, n.k. and lincoln, y.s. 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(eds). 1999. research in practice. applied methods for the social sciences. cape town: university of cape town press. moscardi, m.a. 2011. e-mail interview. 21 july. mouton, j. 2001. how to succeed in your master’s and doctoral studies. a south african guide and resource book. pretoria: van schaik. niemann-struweg, i. and meintjes, c. 2008. the professionalism debate in south african public relations. public relations review 34: 224-229. roodt, z. 1988. the knowledge dimension as a fundamental requirement in the professionalisation of public relations. unpublished master’s dissertation. bloemfontein: university of the free state. seidman, i. 2006. interviewing as qualitative research. a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. (third edition). new york: teachers college. sudhaman, a. 2010. focus on ... south africa. prweek. 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice untitled 33 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 33 52 willemien marais and margaret linström* abstract in south africa, the three spheres of government perform distinct functions in terms of the constitution. by spreading the responsibilities of government across national, provincial and local structures, the constitution ensures that government does not become too far removed from citizens. if local government is the closest level of interaction for citizens, then media at community level provide the link for that interaction. it is against this backdrop that this article views the quote widely attributed to american congressman tip o'neil: all politics is local. political news has social importance for virtually everyone (gelman 2011). on the flip side of the coin, people are what matter in terms of community media (lauterer 1995: 9). this implies that even at grassroots level, media should have an editorial policy on political reporting if they want their editorial content to be relevant to the community they are serving. this loyalty to the needs of the community is the essence of media at grassroots level (milne, rau, du toit & mdlongwa 2006: 3-4). this article reports on a qualitative content analysis of the existing editorial policies of community radio stations and newspapers in the mangaung area in the free state. based on these findings, suggestions are made for a framework to draw up an editorial policy on political news for community media. * willemien marais and margaret linström lecture in the department of communication science at the university of the free state in bloemfontein. 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 33 introduction when people talk about democracy, the first thing they think about is government. according to the institute for democracy in africa (idasa), for most people democracy and government are inseparable. ström (2009: online), in a paper published on the idasa website, describes the relevance of local government as follows: in south africa, the three spheres of government perform distinct functions in terms of the constitution. by spreading the responsibilities of government across national, provincial and local structures, the constitution ensures that government does not become too far removed from citizens. local government is the sphere of government that is closest to the people. in many ways, it is the most important sphere of government because it provides the basic services that determine the quality of south africans’ everyday lives. it is also easiest for citizens to interact directly with local government and to build democracy by becoming involved in solving local problems. according to moy et al. (2004: 535), “the more politically knowledgeable people are, the more likely they are to become actively involved in decisions regarding their communities”. these authors quote galston (2001: 3) who opines that “competent democratic citizens need not be policy experts, but there is a level of basic knowledge below which the ability to make a range of reasoned civic judgments is impaired”. according to leiter, harriss and johnson (2000: 13), “the press as an institution serving the people of a democracy was identified when journalists were designated as the ‘fourth estate’”. this title was given to the press at the turn of the nineteenth century by the british parliament, recognising the fact that the press represents the people and has a strong influence on public opinion.” these authors (ibid.) suggest the fourth estate title is just as applicable today, for as the government grows more complex, it is difficult for an individual to grasp “even a small amount of what it does without the mass media as sources of information and interpretation”. if local government is the closest level of interaction for citizens, then the media at community level provide the link for that interaction. the importance of community media is three-fold: • firstly, government and ngos need the community vehicles of local media (emdon in duncan & seleoane 1998: 204); • secondly, community media as participants have the role of defining the terms of community interest and seeing how these are best served by government; and • thirdly, to educate readers/listeners on the inner-workings of government on all levels, but especially on municipal level. according to moy et al. (2004: 536), community media provide mobilising information that allows citizen to become involved in local affairs; and community media use “can set in motion a process of effects that begins with political knowledge”. this political 34 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 34 knowledge, according to these authors, can promote democratic behaviour “which in turn enhances one’s understanding of why politics is relevant and ultimately increased the likelihood of political participation”. myburg (2009: online), in turn, opines that community media have the potential to reconnect journalists with citizens, who need news they can use to make decisions about the public problems that confront them. it is against this backdrop that this article views the quote widely attributed to former american politician tip o’neill: all politics is local (gelman 2011). although o’neill was using the phrase to remind politicians of their responsibilities towards their constituencies, it could easily be applied to political reporting as well. political news has social importance for virtually all people, and people are what matter in terms of community media (lauterer 1995: 9). the following quote from one of the fathers of the public journalism movement, james w. carey supports this notion. carey (1987: 5) said, “the god term of journalism – the be-all and end-all, the term without which the entire enterprise fails to make sense – is the public. insofar as journalism is grounded, it is grounded in the public.” to use the equation used to illustrate logical consistency where a = b and b = c then a = c: political news = important to everyone and everyone = central focus of journalism (especially community media) then political news = important to community journalism. this implies that even at grassroots level, media should have an editorial policy on political reporting if they want their editorial content to be relevant to the community they serve. this loyalty to the needs of the community is the essence of media at grassroots level (milne, rau, du toit & mdlongwa 2006: 3-4). few beats covered by the community paper are more important (lauterer 1995: 34). the community newspaper is there in proxy for the citizen who will not or cannot attend that city council meeting. such coverage is one of a community newspaper’s main functions... as they directly affect the readers (lauterer 1995: 34). media provide for debate and discussion. in fact, one can go as far as saying that media are the information vehicles for civil society and government (duncan 1995: 209). on the other hand, media also play the role of watchdogs and educators. going back more than two decades, we find a good example of the power of community or grassroots media in what was called the alternative press (tomaselli & louw 1991: 8-9) in south africa during apartheid. although several commercial newspapers are credited for their role in creating awareness of the plight of the oppressed, there were many community newspapers that played a role in bringing about change. according to tomaselli and louw (1991: 9), community issues were central to the existence of the alternative press. examples are grassroots, formed in the western cape in 1980, and the oudtshoorn-published saamstaan, formed in 1984. south african community media are still emerging from the struggle era where they served predominantly as “a tool to counter state propaganda, inform, mobilise and 35 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 35 educate the masses about their rights to facilitate and the building of strong community organisations” (berger in rau et al.2006: 95). since democracy, the “activist” role or just a simple, clear purpose of community media has begun to diminish. tomaselli and louw (1991: 168) state that the apartheid government viewed community newspapers as knock and drop news-sheets which informed housewives of local shopping centre activities. unfortunately, this is still or again the case in many instances. to address this, the freedom of expression institute (fxi) established the community media policy research unit in 2002 to remedy the situation where the community media sector tends to survive attending to day-to-day operational issues, leading to policy, lobbying and advocacy efforts being seen as external activities that are not integrated into the day-to-day struggles of the sector. despite these efforts, little has changed. few community media organisations have a formal editorial policy in place; while even fewer enforce it. objectives the media’s firmly entrenched role as the fourth estate in a democracy, and especially the mutually dependent relationship between local government and community media, serves as the focus of this article. the primary objective is to provide a framework for an editorial policy on political news for community media. this will be achieved by: • highlighting the importance of community media in a democracy by way of a literature review; • analysing community media in the mangaung area’s approach to an editorial policy on political news by way of a qualitative description; • providing guidelines for the principles on which an editorial policy for political news could be based; and • providing strategies for implementing such a policy. key terms defining “community media” has proven to be rather difficult. mkhonza (in rau et al. 2006: 96) states that “…the concept ‘community media’ has come to be understood in varying and often contradictory ways, even by people who operate in the sector itself”. one of the main disagreements surrounding a comprehensive definition is the distinction between community media that are independently owned versus community media owned by large media corporations such as naspers. carpentier, lie and servaes (2001: 5) quote berrigan (1979: 8), who says “community media are media to which members of the community have access to for information, education and entertainment, when they want access”. according to franklin (2006: xxi), community, or “local media” as he calls it, “report local concerns of consequence” and are consumed by the local community. 36 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 36 in terms of this study, “community” refers to either a community of interest (meaning a group bound by shared values or interests) or a geographic community (e.g. the mangaung area) (duncan & seleoane 1998: 15). the issue of ownership does not come into play. a radio station is viewed as a community station when classified by the independent communications authority of south africa (icasa) as such according to licensing requirements. a succinct definition for a community radio station is offered by carpentier, lie and servaes (2001: 5) according to these authors, it is “a non-profit station, currently broadcasting, which offers a service to the community in which it is located, or to which it broadcasts, while promoting the participation of this community in the radio”. newspapers are less regulated in south africa and therefore not that easy to classify. in terms of this study, a community newspaper is a newspaper serving either a community of interest or a geographic community. this includes newspapers owned by for example media24 as well as independently owned newspapers. a definition of political news is as elusive as a unifying definition for the concept of communication. for the purpose of this article, political news is used in a broad sense and refers to news reports about any of the three levels of government as well as party politics, but with a specific focus on municipal news. definitions found for a policy are amongst others: • the rationale behind what shapes decisions made with regard to laws and regulations; • a guide to decision-making; • a course or line of action adopted and pursued; and • sets of principles and norms. for the purposes of this article, an editorial policy is defined as a set of principles and strategies to uphold those principles. the functions of the media in democracy according to fourie (2001: 218), one of the media’s main tasks is to make information public. thereby, says fourie, “the media claim to contribute to democracy and even to be a pillar of democracy. the media provide a platform for public debate and the formation of public opinion.” kovach and rosenstiel (2007: 5-6) provide what they refer to as the elements of journalism. the first of these elements is that “the purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing”. according to these authors (ibid.), to fulfil this task: 37 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 37 • journalism’s first obligation is to the truth; • its first loyalty is to citizens; • its essence is a discipline of verification; • its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover; • it must serve as an independent monitor of power; • it must provide a platform for public criticism and compromise; • it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant; • it must keep the news comprehensive and proportional; and • its practitioners should be allowed to exercise their personal conscience. in similar vein, belsey and chadwick (1992: 1) state, “journalism remains an honourable profession, because it has an honourable aim, the circulation of information, including news, comment and opinion. this is an honourable aim because the health of a community – especially a community that has any pretensions to democracy – depends on it.” the media is defined by parsons (in de beer & merrill 2004: 51-52) as a “means of communication and comprises the technology for sending and receiving messages and the organizations for gathering, processing, and transmitting news and information to a mass audience. global news agencies, newspapers, magazines, broadcast stations, and satellite networks are commonly identified as the media. taken together, these mechanisms supply the informational needs of a society.” according to parsons (in de beer & merrill 2004: 52), an important factor in this process “is the ability of the media to identify, create, manipulate, and spread public opinion. the media are the institution in society that not only informs the public but also can help move the masses in collective, purposeful, and productive action.” democracy is defined as “a form of government in which political power resides in all the people and is exercised by them directly or is given to elected representatives” (brits 1995: 67). glasser and craft (1998: 207) offer a broader definition of democracy. for them, democracy represents “a way of life and not merely… a form of government”. van cuilenburg, scholten and noomen (1992: 317, in fourie 2007: 188) opine that in a democracy the media has the following political functions: 38 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 38 • to inform about political developments; • to guide public opinion about political decisions; • to express different views about political developments and decisions; and • to criticize political developments and decisions. a un document emphasises the importance of the link between the media and democracy. titled human development report 2002: deepening democracy in a fragmented world, the report states that “democracy lies at the centre of human development and the media is considered a vital component of democracy”. the report adds that free media play three crucial roles in promoting democratic governance: • as a civic forum, giving voice to different parts of society and enabling debate from all viewpoints; • as a mobilizing agent, facilitating civic engagement among all sectors of society and strengthening channels of public participation; and • as a watchdog, checking abuses of power, increasing government transparency; and holding public officials accountable for their actions in the court of public opinion (2002: 75-76). retief (2002: 5-6) quotes jan larsen of the university of wisconsin-eau claire, who states: “what journalism and journalists should be about is upholding the democracy. what we report, what we write about should be the stuff that helps people participate in and contribute to daily public life”. according to altschull (1984: 189), “… journalists help protect political liberty by providing information that a democratic society requires if it is to govern itself”. the municipal beat the obvious importance of the media’s function in a democracy is not always apparent in news coverage in south africa, especially on local government level. according to the southern african ngo network (sangonet n.d.: online), “local government is not a sexy topic across the newsrooms of the nation”. the author of the article, ruth ritchie, succinctly summarises journalists’ dilemma as follows: producing readable municipal news that fits in the limited space, time and financial constraints that most of the media work under is no mean feat. this complex juggling act requires vast skill, knowledge, creativity, and indeed restraint. the editorial pressures to resort to stories of scandal and corruption are strong and some publications succumb easily. the institute for democracy in africa (idasa) has identified this as a potential threat to the country’s vision for participatory democracy. idasa’s 2005 research into municipal journalism indicates that “citizens feel the local media do not provide them with enough relevant or useful information about municipal issues” (davidson 2005: online). 39 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 39 the municipal beat has always been a problematic one in most south african newsrooms. in an effort to improve municipal journalism, the municipal journalism project was launched in 2005 as a joint venture between idasa and the consolidation of municipal transformation programme (wordonthestreet n.d.: online). before 2005, idasa’s media programme had worked with local media – community radio and small commercial newspapers – in dealing with the challenges of reporting the story of south africa’s local democracy. idasa then conducted a needs assessment to establish the situation with respect to coverage of municipal issues by the media. this revealed, among other things, that the relationship between municipalities and the media was often affected by issues such as the lack of understanding of the role of the media by councillors and municipal officials, and lack of understanding of how municipalities operate and how to read municipal budgets by journalists. as a result, idasa proposed an intervention consisting of a training component and a public discussion component, and out of this the municipal journalism project was born (wordonthestreet ibid.). the municipal journalism project was aimed at improving and strengthening the capacity of the media to report on municipal issues and to promote local government accountability among citizens. the key activities were training workshops aimed at journalists and a seminar on municipal journalism and local government accountability aimed at the main stakeholders, i.e. civil society, media professionals, and councillors and municipal officials (wordonthestreet ibid.). the project was based on the assumption that citizens who are well-informed and aware of local government operations and processes are likely to exercise their rights and responsibilities effectively and expect and demand greater accountability from those they have elected to represent them. the improvement in municipal journalism and reporting, it was assumed, would contribute to an informed citizenry, which is an essential element of active citizenship and promoting accountability of local government (wordonthestreet ibid.). the main objective of the project was to strengthen the capacity of local media in covering municipal issues so as to empower citizens with information and promote local government accountability. this was to be achieved through providing specific training in three areas: • understanding local government operations and systems; • understanding local government budgets and finances; and • community mapping (wordonthestreet n.d.: online). it was also done through initiating dialogue between the media, councillors and municipal officials, and civil society by means of a half-day seminar in each municipal area (wordonthestreet ibid.). 40 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 40 some of the noteworthy feedback and comments which were received at the seminars, and which are of particular relevance for this article, include the following: to create a more participatory democracy requires a healthy representative democracy at local level. it also requires citizens to understand the role of central and local government and to know who can be held responsible for the decisions and services that affect their lives. the media and local government should not be at war with each other. they should work closely together to the benefit of the people. local government needs the media and the media needs local government as an important news source. (louise mouton, journalist). idasa is concerned about democracy – sustainable democracy and participatory democracy, in which citizens participate in government. the political setup in south africa is designed in such a way that local government should be participatory; for idasa this raises questions about the role the media could play in that process. first, citizens at local level need access to the media. second, the media should inform and educate citizens. third, the watchdog role of the media is important. the media should provide a way for citizens to monitor the government and hold their politicians to account. reporting on issues often seems to be the only role of the media, but there are a lot of other roles the media needs to be play. it is critical that the media should provide space for citizens to participate in public debates. (brett davidson, idasa). i believe that the education and training of journalists covering local government should not only develop their skills and provide ongoing support. it should also include: • an understanding of the legal and institution framework of local government; • an understanding of the importance of using multiple sources; they cannot rely on one source only, e.g. press releases from local government; and • an understanding that journalists should be wary of getting involved in power struggles and of becoming the tools of factions or parties. if journalists want to keep their credibility as neutral commentators, they must be objective and talk to all parties involved. (derrick luyt, journalism lecturer and coordinator of investigative reporting course, rhodes university) (wordonthestreet n.d.: online). fourie (2001: 276-277) offers a possible solution to this dilemma. he suggests that civic journalism (also known as public journalism; not to be confused with citizen journalism) can provide people “with the news and information they need to allow them to function as citizens, to make the decisions they are called on to make in a democratic society”. foulty (in fourie 2001: 276-277) explains the aims of civic or public journalism as follows: 41 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 41 • it is an effort to reconnect with the real concerns that readers have about the things in their lives that they care about; • it takes the traditional five ws of journalism and expands them to ask why is this story important to me and the community in which i live; • civic journalists are trying to reconnect with their communities, to cross the gap that has opened and widened between the news media and their constituents – their readers and viewers; • plugging into the community is hard. it’s much harder journalism than dealing with the same old sources, the experts, the media-savvy advocates of the same old tired points of view, the self-serving talking heads; • civic journalists broaden their agenda from the usual overwhelming focus on political and governmental news to aggressively ferret out issues of interest to citizens who are not members of the elite. this means covering an agenda that is set more by the citizens, by the people, and less by those who would manipulate them; and • that means thinking about the news, from not only the standpoint of conventional journalistic practices, but taking it a step further and thinking about a subject from the standpoint of the public and public interest. haas (2007: 3) quotes glasser and lee (2002: 2003) who say: “public journalism rests on the simple but apparently controversial premise that the purpose of the press is to promote and indeed improve, and not merely report on and complain about, the quality of public or civic life.” according to haas (2007: 4), journalists must change the way in which they see the public: “instead of considering them as ‘thrill-seeking spectators’ who only pay attention to the news to be entertained by a political spectacle, or as ‘consumers’ who use the news to be informed about the actions of government officials, journalists should consider the public as engaged and responsible ‘citizens’ who are capable of active democratic participation”. ward and wasserman (2008: 52), writing on public journalism, argue that for journalists to “serve the public” these elements must be present: • a notion of “serving the public” that cannot be reduced to the interests of the current government; • the adoption of an independent, impartial stance by journalists which creates a critical distance between the journalist and the story, and between the journalist and the government official; and • the use of the media to create a critical, deliberative, public sphere. 42 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 42 methodology the primary focus of this study was to provide a framework according to which community media can draw up an editorial policy for reporting on political news. this need was identified following a small study conducted in the mangaung municipal area (including bloemfontein, thaba nchu and botshabelo) in the free state. it involved semi-structured interviews with editors, news editors and/or owners/managers at community media in order to analyse existing editorial policy. the sample consisted of five community newspapers and five community radio stations. the latest available audited readership (abc) and listenership figures (rams) were obtained, although some were not that recent, and in some instances not available at all. the community newspapers included in the sample were (the circulation figures indicated are the abc figures for the period july-december 2010): • bloemnuus/bloem news: owned by media24, english/afrikaans, geographical community, weekly, 42 000 • ons stad: owned by media24, english/afrikaans, geographical community, weekly, 36 500 • express: owned by media24, english/sesotho, geographical community, weekly, 50 000 • krant: owned by mahareng publishing, english/afrikaans, geographical community, weekly, 120 000 • mangaung issue: owned by news alive cc, english/sesotho, geographical community, weekly, 30 000 (abc, 01 july 2010 – 31 december 2010) the community radio stations included in the sample were (the listenership figures indicated are the rams for the period march-june 2011): • motheo fm: mostly sesotho, geographical community, 227 000 • kovsie fm: english/afrikaans/sesotho, geographical community with the core being the bloemfontein campus of the university of the free state, 29 000 • med fm: english/afrikaans/sesotho, community of interest (health), 27 000 • radio rosestad: afrikaans, geographical community, 38 000 • mosupatsela fm: sesotho, geographical community, 148 000 respondents were asked to define “political news” from their publication/radio station’s perspective. answers varied from “general” to “we cover national and provincial government, but not local government”. however, not a single respondent had a clearly defined description. none of the media covered in the study have a formal, written editorial policy on political news. in fact, the general description of the beat would be “haphazard”. 43 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 43 the fact that none of the ten community media in the mangaung area had a formal, written editorial policy on political news illustrates that – despite the importance of community media’s function in participatory democracy – few community media outlets currently fulfil this function in an organised, focused manner. many of the news editors claimed that their readers or listeners are “not interested in politics”. while this might show some consideration for the audience, it neglects that well-known fact that media should not only give their audience what it wants, but also what their audience need to live their lives. motivated by the lack of an editorial policy on political news at most community media outlets, and based on guidelines from literature, the authors suggest the following framework for community media in terms of developing an editorial policy for political news. suggested framework as mentioned earlier, the operational definition of an editorial policy for the purposes of this study is a set of principles, as well as strategies to uphold those principles. the set of principles defines the borders within which the publication or radio station may operate in terms of covering political news. the strategies provide an action plan for achieving goals and upholding principles. principles this section of the framework can be divided into two parts. the first is legislative principles, which include all formal statutory and regulatory aspects that influence or apply to the specific radio station or newspaper. the second part refers to selfregulatory principles, which are set by industry-representative bodies, voluntary codes of conduct, etc. legislative principles these principles are determined by the legal framework within which the particular industry operates. included are all general legal requirements for the media and communication industry in south africa. some of these are discussed briefly below, with reference to how compliance to the regulations and stipulations set out by these bodies, acts, etc. should be taken into account in editorial decision-making. • the independent communications authority of south africa icasa regulates, amongst others, community radio broadcasting (icasa nd: online). community radio stations in south africa cannot operate without a licence from icasa. licensee compliance with licence terms and conditions is monitored, and breach of conditions could result in a licence being cancelled. terms and conditions include the percentage of local content that must be broadcast, which has a direct influence on decisions regarding political news. icasa’s mandate is derived from various acts, including the broadcasting amendment act 64 of 2002. this act stipulates that “programming provided by a community 44 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 44 broadcasting service must reflect the needs of the people of the community ... dealing specifically with community issues which are not normally dealt with by the broadcasting service covering the same area” (broadcasting act 2002: online). one of the authority’s functions is to receive and resolve complaints. this is facilitated by the complaint and compliance committee (icasa nd: online). • media development and diversity agency the mdda was created in terms of the media development and diversity act 14 of 2002 (mdda act 2002: online), and falls under the executive authority of the government communication and information system (gcis about us nd: online). the mdda is primarily focused on channelling resources to community and small commercial media. community media who receive support from the mdda have to adhere to specific regulations set out by the mdda (mdda act 2002: online). breach of these conditions could lead to the withdrawal of support from the mdda. these regulations include an evaluation of the station or publication’s adherence to media law, which in turn will influence editorial decisions. • freedom of expression and access to information section 16 of the bill of rights (1996: online) provides for the following rights: a) freedom of the press and other media; b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas; c) freedom of artistic creativity; and d) academic freedom and freedom of scientific research. however, it does not extend to a) propaganda for war; b) incitement of imminent violence; or c) advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm. the relevance of subsection (2) in terms of editorial decision-making is clear. given how easy it is to be biased in political reporting, and the resulting consequences of biased reporting, it is every community journalist’s responsibility to understand and apply these rights. closely tied to the right to freedom of expression is section 32 of the bill of rights, which provides for the right to access to information (bill of rights 1996: online). (at the time of writing, the proposed protection of information bill had been referred for further consultation, and is therefore not discussed in this article.) the importance of access to information in a democracy cannot be emphasised enough. if citizens are to make informed decisions they need access to all relevant information. as has been illustrated earlier in this article, community media is ideally positioned to fulfil this role. community media’s editorial policy – and training – should make provision for this right, specifically in how it pertains to the community journalist. this includes how to gain access to information regarding local government (city council or municipal records), and how to interpret and report on situations where access to this information is not allowed, whether legally or illegally. 45 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 45 • other laws that influence media the editorial policy of community media should also include clear guidelines for reporting on, amongst others, elections. of significant importance in terms of political news would be the stipulations of the electoral act 73 of 1998 as amended by the municipal electoral act 27 of 2000 (municipal electoral act 2000: online). regarding an editorial policy, this act is relevant in terms of specific stipulations that have bearing on the community journalist, such as undue influence, access to voting stations, prohibition on publication of exit polls, and the role of the media as explained in schedule 2 of this act. examples of other laws that should be reflected in an editorial policy include the extent of a person’s right to privacy, defamation laws, copyright, etc. self-regulatory principles these principles are determined by the various industry-representative bodies that the radio station or publication belongs to, as well as codes of conduct. for example, community radio stations are legally required to adhere to icasa’s code of conduct (community sound broadcasting services regulations 2006: online). an editorial policy for political news could also be informed by: • industry-representative bodies (print media sa, forum of community journalists, association of independent publishers, south african national editors’ forum, national association of broadcasters, etc.) • broadcasting complaints commission of south africa (bccsa) • the radio station or publication’s parent company’s charter • the station or publication’s own vision and mission • the station or publication’s general editorial policy strategies strategies can also be divided into two parts, namely a) general strategies that focus on the functioning of the newsroom and the utilisation of human resources; and b) specific strategies that focus on reporting and writing the news. general strategies the first focuses on the newsroom and human resources. examples include: • a formal beat system in order to prevent “haphazard” reporting on any topic, but specifically political news, a formal beat system is not negotiable. however, keeping in mind that most community media are seriously under-staffed, and in many cases a one-person operation, covering beats could include utilising area-based freelance reporters, stringers and a well46 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 46 developed network of contacts. a detailed description of each beat is necessary in order to set borders to assist in determining whether information qualifies as a story for a specific beat. this system could be enhanced by harnessing technology. the station or newspaper’s website could be used to invite listeners/readers to send in news tips. bull (2010: 29) explains, “[r]esponses from readers to news items – via comments on stories, blog posts, emails and letters – can include new information that pushes a story forwards and gives something new to write about”. • newsroom regulations on sources closely tied to the beat system is regulation on sources, or commentators. here the importance of an extensive and in-depth knowledge of the community is illustrated (turner & rabe 2008: 66-67): credible local sources for the various beats have to be identified, and a professional relationship with these sources has to be built. creating a database, and keeping that database up to date, will save a lot of time when, for example, the journalist is looking for a local expert on financial matters who can comment on the municipal budget. • understand the target market knowing who your listeners/readers are will enable a community journalist to report on topics that are relevant to the community (bull 2010: 14-15). based on information obtained from formal sources such as rams, amps, lsm categories, etc. as well as first-hand knowledge of the community, a profile of the “average listener/reader” could be created against which to measure the news value of information. • regular training for the news staff having an editorial policy is not worth the paper it is written on if the people who are to execute it are not informed. training as a strategy is very broad and includes formal training courses on the one hand and informal newsroom mentoring on the other. training should focus on broader journalistic principles (such as understanding what the right to freedom of expression entails) as well as specific instruction (for example how to localise a national story, or how the city council functions). once an editorial policy has been created, and explained to newsroom staff, regular monitoring of the implementation is important, not only for identifying areas where further instruction or training is needed, but also to identify sections of the policy that need to be adapted and/or removed/improved. • community-connectedness the news staff must be firmly rooted within communities served in order to judge what information is relevant and meaningful to the community, e.g. ideally journalists should live in the communities they report on. added to this is a passion for the community as well as an understanding of how this community is served by the station or newspaper (turner & rabe 2008: 66). 47 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 47 specific strategies the second part of the strategies focuses on the news stories. here the guidelines from the literature have been divided into three distinct areas of focus, loosely based on the functions of community media. • strategies to personalise making the story relevant to the listeners/readers can be achieved by: º asking why the story is important to the community, thus showing the impact or consequences of the story for the community; º writing to the readers – create a sense of community by using “us”, “we”, or “our”; and º making the news story useful, thus news the audience can use (e.g. mangaung is experiencing a water shortage – suggest ways in which the community can save water). • strategies to analyse helping the listeners/readers understand the news can be achieved by: º unpacking complex issues for the readers/listeners (e.g. when news legislation is passed in parliament, explain to the audience what it involves in terms of their lives); º interpreting a story against the background of the community’s context, beliefs, values, and needs; º stimulating debate, e.g. by means of letters to the editor; º educating: e.g. explain to the readers/listeners the election process of school governing bodies or the election process in a by-election; and º explaining information in “reader-sized” terms, e.g. make use of graphs. • strategies to localise bringing provincial, national or international news closer to the reader (and thereby enhancing the news value) can be achieved by: º getting a local expert to comment on national or provincial issues, thus making the news relevant to the specific community (e.g. service delivery protests nationally – keeping an eye on the local community by reporting whether protests have spread to this area); º getting comment from local residents on how certain issues have impacted on them (e.g. how rising electricity tariffs are affecting local residents); 48 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 48 º finding locals who were involved in a national issue; º identifying local examples of a national trend (e.g. corruption in awarding national tenders – find out what the situation is locally); and º placing numbers/statistics/research findings in a local context (e.g. national aids figures versus mangaung figures). conclusion as mentioned earlier, the importance of community media with regard to the functioning of a democracy cannot be emphasised enough. both community media and local government function at grassroots level. it could be seen as the bridge that links the ordinary citizen with his/her government, and vice versa. the watchdog, information and education roles of journalism are at their most important here. the national government’s “strategic objectives” remain abstract concepts unless it is interpreted and explained to ordinary citizens. the best way to achieve this shared meaning is to take a concept, for example “accountability”, and put it in the person’s backyard by measuring it against the conduct of the local ward councillor. this article suggests a framework for an editorial policy for community media with a specific focus on political news. the framework consists of two sections, namely 1) principles that define the borders within which the publication or radio station may operate in terms of covering political news; and 2) strategies that provide an action plan for achieving goals and upholding principles. the section on principles can be divided into two parts. the first is legislative principles, which include all formal statutory and regulatory aspects that influence or apply to the specific radio station or newspaper. the second part refers to selfregulatory principles, which are set by industry-representative bodies, voluntary codes of conduct, etc. strategies are divided into general and specific strategies, and could be seen as the application or execution of the principles. general strategies include establishing a formal beat system, regulations regarding sources, training for newsroom staff, understanding the target market and creating community-connectedness. specific strategies include ways and methods to personalise, analyse and localise information in order to bring it closer to the listeners/readers, and to enhance the news value of the information. 49 all politics is local: suggestions for an editorial policy on political news for community media 3. willemien & margaret 11/18/11 3:42 pm page 49 references altschull, j.h. 1984. agents of power. the role of the news media in human affairs. new york & london: longman. belsey, a. and chadwick, r. 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5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice september 2006 151 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa communitas issn 1023-0556 2010 15: 151 165 nicola jones* abstract this article discusses what a free and responsible press means in pluralistic democracies, focussing specifically on whether that includes the freedom to offend. it argues that there is a distinction between hate speech and offensive speech, as the latter has no malicious intent, but rather occurs in interpretation. the article argues that pluralistic societies such as south africa need a relatively wide area reserved for controversial speech, so long as it is not hate speech, as toleration of controversial or offensive speech is a difficult but fundamental feature of an open society. this raises the notion of the use of satire in a developing country; where the sax appeal cartoons are concerned, the article discusses the wider ramifications of the university of cape town pledging to “censor” future student publications, as well as considering the argument put forward by david benatar, who argues that to pander to “sensitivities” only encourages more indignation and gradually shuts down the range of matters about which we can joke. the article ultimately argues for the necessity of keeping channels of uncomfortable communication open in order to build mutual understanding in a divided society who are ignorant of others’ cultural norms. * dr nicola jones is a senior lecturer at the department of media and cultural studies at the university of kwazulu-natal in pietermaritzburg. introduction “what is freedom of expression? without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” salman rushdie when discussing the role of the media during the transition to a democracy in the new south africa, one of the most contentious issues is that of hateful or offensive speech: should people be allowed complete freedom of speech, or should their words be censored in some way, with all language and graphics that groups and/or individuals find offensive, being outlawed? this issue is of global concern, as was illustrated in august 2009 when yale university press in the united states refused to republish a book, the cartoons that shook the world, if it included the 12 controversial cartoons depicting the prophet mohammed which were initially published by a danish newspaper in 2005, and when reprinted by other european publications, sparked a wave of violent protests. when the book was mooted, yale university and yale university press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous – do not include the caricatures. what’s more, they suggested that the yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically a drawing for a children’s book, an ottoman print, and a sketch by nineteenth century artist gustave doré of mohammed being tormented in hell, an episode from dante’s inferno that has been depicted by botticelli, blake, rodin and dali (cohen 2009). the book’s author, professor of politics at brandeis university jytte klausen, was unhappy with the decision, saying that “muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it” (cohen 2009). when one considers that this is an academic book for an academic audience and printed by an academic press, there is not much chance of it having a wide global audience, let alone causing a global outcry. even more disturbing was that klausen was told by yale university press that she could read a 14page summary of the consultants’ recommendations only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about it (cohen 2009), tantamount, in other words, to a gag order. it isn’t, however, only cartoons which are offensive to muslims which provoke a public outcry. the year 2009 saw the publication of two sets of cartoons lampooning jesus and aspects of christianity in the university of cape town’s satirical magazine, sax appeal, which caused an enormous public furore in south africa. the contribution in sax appeal that caused the most offence was a two-page spread containing black and white photographs, over which were superimposed speech bubbles or captions containing religious slogans and proposed retorts. although the contribution was headed “top ten atheist retorts to fundamentalist christians” (sagan 2009: 84), only two referred specifically to christianity. in one, a person says, “jesus died to save us from our sins”, to which the reply is, “i bet he feels like a tool now”. the second is a photograph of a 152 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa lone suitcase on a baggage-retrieval conveyor belt at an airport. one of the people standing adjacent to it says, “praise the lord, it’s a miracle…”, to which another responds, “no, you stupid c.u.n.t. (christian who understands no theorems), statistically they happen every 35 days” (sagan 2009: 84). there was also a complaint about zapiro’s full page cartoon (shapiro 2009: 11) in which he recycles a famous satire of the argument that homosexuality is immoral because there is a biblical injunction against it. here a questioner asks a religious authority for guidance on how best to follow other biblical laws, including ones that impose the death penalty for violating the sabbath, animal sacrifice and slavery. every year about 35 000 copies of sax appeal are sold in pick ‘n pay supermarkets and on the streets to raise money for charity, making it the largest student-run publication in the world. the 2009 issue contained articles deemed highly blasphemous, not only by many christians but also by other religious communities in south africa. at least two christian groups lodged formal complaints, and uct’s response was to offer multiple unreserved apologies, while pick ‘n pay distanced itself from the offending content and pulled remaining copies of the magazine from its shelves. in a similar vein, simply the promise to publish the danish cartoons in 2006 caused an uproar among the south african muslim community. originally published in september 2005 by the danish newspaper jyllands-posten, the cartoons were commissioned by editor flemming rose, who invited 25 newspaper cartoonists to draw the prophet “as they saw him”, and then printed the submissions of the 12 cartoonists who responded in the 30 september 2005 edition of the paper (cannon 2006). rose commissioned the drawings after several occurrences in 2005 led him to believe that there was a trend of self-censorship emerging in europe, specifically regarding material that might be offensive to muslims. the actual cartoons were varied. one poked fun at the jyllends-posten and another satirised an anti-immigration danish political figure. the most controversial cartoons included one showing mohammed turning away suicide bombers from heaven, saying “we’ve run out of virgins!” and another that depicted him with a bomb in his turban, a reference to the story of aladdin and how an orange falling into his turban led him to great fortune. these cartoons are widely available online (http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands_posten_cartoons/). the cartoons sparked controversy, but not immediate violence. however, by the beginning of 2006, protestors were burning danish flags in denmark, and violence and protests snowballed across the world, with protests cropping up nearly everywhere muslim populations are present. the story consequently made international headlines, and publications and broadcasters across the globe were faced with an ethical dilemma: whether to re-publish the cartoons, or not. in south africa, on 3 february 2006 the mail & guardian newspaper ran a single, restrained reproduction next to an analytical description of the furore. “there is merit in the argument that readers needed to see what all the fuss was about… m&g readers are generally a 153 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa tolerant and sophisticated lot,” writes kruger (2006). however, a muslim pressure group, the jamiat-ul ulama of transvaal, sought and won an interdict against johncom media and independent newspapers, among others, that friday night, effectively ensuring that no more south african newspapers were able to publish reproductions of the cartoons. however, in both these cases the question remains as to how the south african media should deal with both hate and controversial or offensive speech. in both events, was the outrage warranted? was the content blasphemous? where sax appeal is concerned, should either the students responsible or the university as a whole have apologised? in both cases, how does one deal with satirical content which some people may find offensive, in a media context? retief (2002: 213) maintains that the media have a significant influence on both perceptions and behaviour, but the nature of that influence, and what, if anything, the media should do about it, remain unanswered questions. this article sets out to examine firstly, what the role of a cartoon is, and secondly, what is meant by the term “hate speech”, as opposed to “hateful” or “offensive” speech. it attempts to answer the question whether any media should be allowed to publish hateful or offensive speech in a democratic society sensitive to the rights of free speech. this discussion necessitates some exploration of the concept of freedom of speech and expression in a south african context. the article concludes by offering some thoughts on whether the south african media should have published the danish cartoons, and whether sax appeal was justified in publishing the alleged anti-christian cartoons. the function of cartoons a political cartoon may be defined as “a form of visual news discourse that frames and communicates social inequities, ideological positions and political beliefs” (calogero & mullen 2008). it should also be emphasised that political cartoons provide a unique form of historical record, “capturing and reflecting the prevailing sentiments and opinions of their audiences” (ibid). researchers tend to have different ideas of the role of a cartoon, but there appears to be two broad schools of thought: either that cartoons play a negative role by scorning and ridiculing their subjects, or that they play a positive role by encouraging critical thinking and contributing towards raising important issues for public discussion. in his 2001 study of political cartoons, fetsko (2001) argues that the roles a cartoon could play include promoting critical thinking, drawing attention to an idea, event, organisation or person, and encouraging a course of action or stimulating a debate on an issue or event: “political cartoons… have provided a visual means by which individuals could express their opinions. they have been used throughout history to engage viewers in a discussion about an event, issue or an individual” (fetsko 2001: 3). the positive roles also associated with political cartoons include that it: ... can be a particularly valuable resource for development education. they, at their best, encapsulate some very complex issues, different viewpoints and some 154 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa of the contradictions which are a real part of many situations. political cartoons do not simply take sides; they offer a challenge to us all. they make links between issues which sometimes turn them inside out. they don’t spare our sensitivities – this is their essential strength (regan, sinclair & turner 1988: 10). however, hogan (2001: 27) takes an opposite approach, arguing that “the impact of political cartoons is not at all benign, the unrelieved diet of negative images may contribute to the level of cynicism for politics and politicians characteristic of many citizens in modern democracies”. whether their role is positive or negative, it is widely agreed that cartoons use satire and caricature to get their messages across. in his study of satire, ronald paulson (1967: 479) maintains “there is only one kind of laughter that cannot per se become satiric – that is the laughter of sympathy”. as satire, a cartoon will, by definition, offend at some level, and this diminishment, directed at powerful persons and institutions, functions to reduce the status of those who have initially been elevated, so that “the hierarchy is challenged in a corrective sense of order and consistency” (edwards 1997: 27). the targets of cartoon satire are almost invariably those who lay claim to some authority. parody, an element associated with the form of caricature, is often used as a visual tool by political cartoonists. edwards (1997) argues that besides traditional and official authority figures such as elected officials, another targeted group might be called advocates, who may be known as individuals or part of a group affiliation. these subjects are public advocates for a particular issue or ideology, such as televangelists or feminists. “cartoonists portray advocates with varying degrees of denigration, depending largely on where the cartoonists’ sympathies lie and the pomposity level displayed by the subject” (edwards 1997: 27). it is also interesting to note that satire and parody may be inherently scornful and ridiculing, but an extra dimension is added when the subjects of this scorn are persons or ideals commonly held in societal esteem. according to edwards (1997), the fact that cartoons have some kind of audience effect is demonstrated by direct audience feedback, and by legal actions against them. “cartoons are strategic in their purpose and instrumentally orientated towards the expression of a viewpoint. cartoonists are in the business of creating persuasive definitions of events and people for audience consumption, reflection, rejections and endorsement” (edwards 1997: 27). nel (2005: 28) states that cartoonists have long had a prime place on newspapers’ editorial pages. indeed, a newspaper’s policy may well be reflected in cartoons as well as editorials. “a cartoon makes no pretence of being unbiased, as a general rule,” write harriss, leiter and johnson (1985: 213). consequently, cartoons are generally accepted across the world as a form of political satire; a means of using humour to criticise current events. did the sax appeal cartoons and the danish cartoons constitute hate speech, offensive speech or blasphemy? 155 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa kenneth meshoe, president of the african christian democratic party, described the sax appeal cartoons as follows: the material is a repugnant and blasphemous attack on the lord jesus christ himself and on christians using words most decent people have never uttered because of their vulgar and course (sic) nature. this is hate-speech at its worst which cannot go unchallenged… the attack is clearly meant to be hate-speech and succeeds in being deeply offensive and hurtful to christians who love god (meshoe 2009). nel (2000: 64) defines hate speech as inflammatory speech that reflects and encourages hatred and contempt for members of a specific racial, religious, ethnic or other group. such speech is often used for political motives or to incite hate crimes. in some countries, hate speech is illegal, although notoriously difficult to define and therefore prosecute. in terms of section 16 of the south african constitution: (1) everyone has a right to freedom of expression, which includes – (a) freedom of the press and other media (b) freedom to receive and impart information or ideas (c) freedom of artistic creativity; and (d) academic freedom and freedom of scientific research. (2) the right in subsection (1) does not extend to – (a) propaganda for war (b) incitement for imminent violence, or (c) advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion and that (c constitutes incitement to cause harm. it is clear that the bill of rights in the south african constitution follows the trend in international human rights documents, which restricts the right to freedom of expression by prohibiting the incitement of discrimination, hatred or hostility based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion. according to the south african human rights commission, freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of any democratic society. however, section 16 (2) of the south african constitution modifies that right. because this is an exception to the general and accepted rule that everyone has the right to freedom of speech, words such as “incitement” and “hate” need to be interpreted before any ruling on a phrase or graphic can be made. added to this, two elements must be present before an expression can be determined to be hate speech. firstly, there must be an advocacy of hatred on one of the listed grounds, and secondly there must be incitement to cause harm. put differently, the enquiry is: ! does the statement advocate hatred? if so, ! is such advocacy of hatred based on one of the grounds listed in the section, and ! does such advocacy constitute incitement to cause harm? 156 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa there is no doubt that both sets of cartoons concern religion. the sax appeal cartoons target christianity, jesus and god, with the zapiro cartoons quoting from the book of leviticus in the bible. however, it is equally clear that they in no way constitute hate speech – there is no advocacy of hatred, and no incitement to cause harm. but there is no doubt that many people, christian or not, found them extremely offensive – there was a raging debate on many blogs on the internet (for example, http://synapses.co.za/another-victory-for-religious-hypersensitivity/), and western cape newspapers as well as pick ’n pay were flooded with letters to the editor and the managing director respectively. church groupings called for the dismissal of all sax appeal editorial staff, and threatened to boycott pick ’n pay if they did not remove the magazine from their shelves. christian democratic alliance spokesman colin fibiger said they considered the cartoons to be “a deliberate and planned discriminatory attack on christianity and will seek full restitutional measures”, including “the immediate removal of the executive director of student affairs, as well as the project manager and all editorial staff” (quintal 2009). thus, many christians viewed the cartoons as a direct mockery of their religion. however, it would appear that the original publication of the cartoons was not intended to cause harm. offensive speech has no malicious intent, but rather occurs in the interpretation. student cartoonist richard sagan (2009a: online) told carte blanche that he was extremely surprised at all the controversy and debate, especially in the context of a satirical and nonsensical magazine. he also believes that some of his content was misunderstood; for example, the caption in which he pokes fun at jesus was “meant to be seen as satirical commentary. jesus died for mankind and yet look at the state of the world” (ibid.) where award-winning cartoonist zapiro’s cartoon mocking the leviticus injunction against homosexuality is concerned, cartoonist jonathan shapiro said religions of all kinds were given far too much respect in society, adding that he believed “religious groups spend their lives waiting to be offended. it gives them reason for being. that’s what they want. this is their stock in trade, it makes them feel holier than thou, and they all join together in this holier than thou-ness” (shapiro, in quintal 2009). where the danish cartoons are concerned, they too deal with religion, depicting aspects of islam and the prophet mohammed. sachedina (in salih 2006) argues that many in the islamic world view the cartoons as a direct mockery of mohammed. he points out that depicting the prophet was not the problem, but under islamic law one is prohibited from showing his face, as “islamic laws specifies that if you have not seen a person, you cannot portray him”. sachedina believes there are two reasons for the volatile reaction from many muslims in response to these cartoons. firstly, he argues it is important to contextualise these issues within europe’s post-9/11 dealings with the middle east and with the world’s muslims. “what we are looking at is the predominance of the politics which treat all matters that are sacred in a secular fashion…[this is a]secularisation of the sacred images, of the sacred space, where nothing remains sacred any more” (ibid). this would help explain the widespread 157 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa criticism which argues that the cartoons were adding to a stereotypical western representation of muslims as violent and uncivilised. this leads to the current state of hate language in words and images in both european and islamic law, as sachedina argues that more and more constitutions are considering this an important issue, including islamic countries. he points out, however, that in many arab constitutions hate language is not restricted and can be used against jews and christians in various images and newspapers because these particular groups are underrepresented both socially and politically. however, according to islamic law, this is wrong, and what is clear is that for many muslims, the belief was held that mohammed was deliberately depicted in a particular way with the intention of causing insult, and therefore should amount to advocacy of hatred. interestingly, blasphemy is not considered hate speech in terms of south african law. retief (2002) points out that the mere fact that even a majority of people would probably think that blasphemy is immoral, is not sufficient grounds for making it illegal. in terms of the law, “taking the lord’s name in vain is not in itself regarded as blasphemous or offensive, but merely annoying” (retief 2002: 228). benatar (2009) takes this further by pointing out that while many religions prohibit blasphemy, there is disagreement about what constitutes blasphemy. “even where there is agreement, showing that there is a biblical prohibition against it does not suffice to show that it is immoral” (benatar 2009). he argues that many biblical prohibitions are non-moral in nature, concerning ritual matters rather than how we should treat one another. and where atheists are concerned, god doesn’t exist, and therefore it is impossible for them to believe he could have prohibited blasphemy. “this leaves those offering the blasphemy objection in a bind. however much they may believe they are right, they have to realise that others hold different beliefs with equal conviction” (benatar 2009). at what cost should free expression be defended? the question which needs to be answered is this: when may a government override the right to freedom of speech or expression? and when is it permissible to offend, gratuitously or otherwise? although freedom of expression is of the utmost importance to any democracy, shearmur (2006) argues that free speech is not a licence to disregard the sensibilities of others. and retief (2002: 220) argues that it is not an absolute right that should never be restricted at all. for example, very few people in this world would tolerate hardcore pornography in a television programme for small children. article 10 of the european convention on human rights explains that freedom of expression carries with it duties and responsibilities. freedom of expression may therefore: …be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. 158 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa christians, ferre and fackler (1995: 313) call this the great paradox of democratic theory: “liberty can never be absolute, censorship can never be absent.” but there is a huge difference between the seriousness of child pornography, which has the potential to ruin lives and cause incalculable harm, and the cartoons under scrutiny. in south africa, opinions on the issue of the right to freedom of expression are divided into two main camps. on the one side stands the human rights commission, the ministry of justice, and organisations such as the black lawyers’ association and the national association of black accountants, who wish to prohibit every kind of racist and sexist speech, as well as all other forms of discriminatory or hateful speech. on the other side of the divide one finds most major media institutions and the freedom of expression institute, who feel that a limitation of freedom of expression is unconstitutional. although the latter tends to be a somewhat controversial view, there is no doubt that there is a significant school of thought that is wary of any form of legislated censorship. vanderhaeghen (2006) argues that toleration of controversial or offensive speech is a difficult but fundamental feature of an open society; that the hallmark of an open society is that the odds should not be stacked against anyone or any group, and there should be no special protection for any specific group on any grounds, partly because in an open society this would not be necessary, and partly because to do so tilts the balance of privilege and influence in favour of that group: the problem arises in how one deals with dynamics in an unequal society, where the power balance is already weighing against, for example, jews or muslims. in this case, offensive or hate speech could be construed as an exercise of power, of domination which further serves to marginalise the weak and disempowered. but it’s a catch-22 situation: full and open expression of ideas and opinions is an integral part of paving the way towards an open society, and goes hand in hand with democratisation and equitable distribution of resources (vanderhaeghen 2006). there is no doubt that the ruling hegemony tends to define the acceptable discourse of the day – in other words, what constitutes hate speech is often defined by the ruling party. one only has to look at the consequences of media discourse under apartheid, where the ruling national party outlawed all forms of vehement criticism, simultaneously introducing an entire new discourse of “total onslaught”. the head of the policy unit at the freedom of expression institute, console tleane (2003: online), argues that there are serious implications for opening the floodgates for the banning of hate speech, and is against all forms of censorship. she says international experience has shown how hate speech is defined by whoever is in power, and that “hate speech” legislation is used to ban the politically powerless, who overwhelmingly are workers, women and black people. for example, in 1994, at a political seminar in gauteng, a debate about two slogans – the pac’s “one settler, one bullet” and the anc’s “kill the boer, kill the farmer” – took place. it was agreed that the two slogans carried the same meaning – both advocated hatred against white people in south africa (tleane 2003: online). however, while it 159 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa was agreed that the former was hate speech, and subsequently condemned, the latter was endorsed, as delegates argued the song should be understood in the context of strategic and tactical efforts to break the deadlock at kempton park. as the spokesperson for the department of education responded: “that’s not hate speech, that’s poetry!” this is a tenuous distinction, and i would argue that it illustrates perfectly the dilemma of hate speech: one person’s hate can be another person’s poetry. where the sax appeal cartoons are concerned, some people saw them either as plain funny, or as an integral part of a debate on the rise of conservative christian fundamentalism, not just in south africa but also in a global context, while fundamentalist christians in particular perceived the cartoons as deeply offensive. and where the danish cartoons are concerned, fleming saw their publication as an integral part of a debate on european self-censorship on all issues dealing with islam, while muslims perceived the cartoons as deeply offensive. in spite of the fact that certain groups took offence to both sets of images, i would argue that hateful speech should be reported, as failing to report hateful slogans and disturbing images can lead to distorted public awareness with detrimental consequences. suppressed hatred is, this article argues, more dangerous than expressed hatred. and suppressing open public debate leads to the creation of silences, a practice that should be especially abhorred in south africa. with specific regard to the media, i would argue that press freedom – as part of freedom of expression – is vital in sustaining any democracy. press freedom is understood here and defined as an environment that enables the press to function essentially unhindered in obtaining and providing a substantially complete, timely account of the events and issues in a society. all societies place some limits on the media, from libel law through to matters of national security some form of intervention is inevitable. however, ultimately i believe press freedom is indispensable in building and sustaining a democratic society. the media plays a vital role in influencing events and shaping values (jackson 1993: 75), and it is in this context, i believe, that the importance of being able to report offensive speech should be seen. an ethical way forward having said that, how should an ethical journalist go about reporting hateful or offensive speech and/or images without further inflaming a situation? tleane (2003: online) believes that resorting to restrictive legislation in an attempt to deal with hate speech “will take us back to the apartheid years”. she argues that controversial speech should be dealt with politically and intellectually, adding that it is contradictory to advocate for restrictions to be placed on freedom of expression when south africa prides itself internationally “to have found a political/dialogical solution to a mammoth problem called apartheid. …south africans need to honestly challenge themselves, and each other, about entrenched stereotypes that we hold about each other. the eradication of these challenges is crucial, as it will assist us to develop a better understanding of what actually constitutes the real problems that afflict relations” (tleane 2003: online). from a legal perspective, as both sets of cartoons constituted hateful or offensive, rather 160 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa than hate speech per se, editors had the right to publish and republish the images. i strongly believe that any liberal democratic society needs a relatively wide area reserved for controversial and offensive speech, so long as it is not hate speech. “toleration of offensive speech is a difficult but fundamental feature of an open society” (ward 2006). where the danish cartoons are concerned, i would argue that it is ethically permissible to republish the cartoons as long as it was done in a contextualised manner, and not in a contemptuous way. this would require explanation as to why some muslims opposed the depictions, by examining the social and political causes of the protests, and beginning to explore how democratic societies could fairly deal with such issues. the mail & guardian, for example, republished one image in a contextualised manner. responsible re-publication could also perhaps have included removing the facial features from the cartoons depicting mohammed, as this would perhaps have made them slightly less offensive. vanderhaeghen (2006) argues that “where a newspaper knows that offence will inevitably be caused, the editor should engage openly and fully with readers immediately and pre-empt criticism. this asserts responsibility and is likely to dilute the offensiveness of the publication.” ward (2006) believes another reason to publish the danish images in particular is that a publication might feel that members of the mainstream media should stand behind the principle of free expression against clear threats of intimidation. and bob steele (2006) argues that this is one of those cases “where there can be multiple, justifiable ethical answers. in the post 9/11 era, these matters take on a whole different level of urgency. the ethical decisions editors and broadcast executives face are tougher than ever.” however, vanderhaeghen (2006) argues that genuine ethical considerations, particularly in the south african context, were in many cases overpowered by a fear that is stoked by the very stereotype that muslim lobby groups are concerned about: “the outcome – not publishing – therefore, was not a considered opinion on what is good or bad in our society (as opposed to denmark or louisiana), but a craven, guilty-conscience response to aggressive lobbying. this contradicts one of the basic tenets of journalism, which is to act independently.” when it comes to treading on religious sensitivities, he believes the hard-line answer is that newspapers operate in the realm of reason, an argument that could extend to the sax appeal cartoons as well. “they [newspapers] are a rationalist forum. religion is by definition in the realm of belief. while one should not offend gratuitously, a rational agenda to inform people about things cannot be determined by irrational criteria. excessive concern about the sensitivities and dignity of others leads to paralysis, silence, and ultimately intellectual and social rot” (ibid.). kruger (2006) maintains that while it is right to be sensitive to fundamental religious beliefs, “this cannot be allowed to chill public discussion of so important a part of the modern world as islam, particularly its political forms… there can be no bar on satirizing the professed religious motivation of al qaeda, for instance, even if there are attempts to close down criticism on the grounds of religious sensitivities.” 161 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa the greater problem here, of course, was the widespread furore and violence involving the danish cartoons that in many cases was putting innocent people at risk; such a situation has to be factored into decision-making, both journalistically and ethically. according to steele (2006), “we have an obligation to consider both our duty – informing the public – and the consequences of our actions. we must seriously balance the value of continual reproduction of a visual image in the name of informing the public against the value of defusing (or at least not potentially inflaming) a very dangerous situation.” however, in the south african context, another consideration is the continuous pressure for the media of working forward, moving away from an historical context that reminds the media continuously of the burden of press restrictions and censorship. the court ruling that pre-emptively blocked south african newspapers from making their own decisions about whether to publish the danish cartoons or not, was consequently very disturbing, as well the veiled threat from uct’s management with regard to censoring future student publications before they go to the printers. both amount to prepublication censorship – which significantly undermines media freedom. benatar (2009) argues that the students responsible for the sax appeal cartoons had no reason to apologise, as pandering to religious (and other) sensitivities encourages more indignation and gradually shuts down the range of matters about which we can joke. he points out that much humour is offensive, and, given the great range of sensitivities, there is almost no view that does not offend someone: while i agree that gratuitous offence is presumptively wrong, it is unclear whether the offending humour falls into this category. many of the ‘jokes’ are attempts at humorously portraying serious critiques of religious claims. for example, many religious people take some relatively rare but favourable event, such as a recovery from cancer, as miraculous. critics of such claims note that statistically, a certain number of those treated will recover, thereby denying that the attribution of a miracle is appropriate (benatar 2009). benatar states that while these serious points offend some people, they are not gratuitous because they are part of the open exchange of ideas that is necessary for the pursuit of truth. two issues are important here. firstly, the sax appeal cartoons appeared in the context of a satirical student magazine, and one would expect some aggressive questioning. if someone chose to continue reading such a publication, then they could hardly claim to be surprised to find this kind of lampooning. shearmur (2006: 23) develops this view, arguing that there is a case for allowing minority groups to do what they wish, provided that it is clearly indicated what they are doing, so that it takes on a less than fully public status: “it would be akin to activities that take place addressed only to members of a private club, or to a website the access to which contains strong warnings or is only open to members.” frankly, because of the history of religion in south africa, i would agree that religious people can expect to encounter a degree of public criticism that is 162 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa robust and mildly sacrilegious. “given that religious people have, historically, tended to try to impose their social views on others and have, thus, intruded forcefully into the public realm, they can well expect that their views may sometimes be treated disrespectfully” (ibid.). conclusion where freedom of speech is concerned, i would argue very strongly that even seemingly blasphemous or offensive speech may nonetheless contain views or information that we ban at our peril. surely we benefit from hearing what some individuals in our society believe, or question? it is often the radical or potentially offensive viewpoints that act as important catalysts for public discussion of and debate about difficult and often avoided subjects. abrams (1996: 162) argues that “the risks inherent in suppressing speech – even racist speech – tend to outweigh whatever gains may be thought to flow from the suppression of those views”. the temptation to ban speech we don’t like, or that we think is “bad”, can be overwhelming at times, and there is no doubt that offensive speech can – and often has – done harm. but our constitution leads us to risk the harm that such offensive speech may inflict, to avoid the much greater harm that the suppression of speech has so often caused. 163 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa references abrams, f. 1996. speaking freely. trials of the first amendment. new york: penguin. ali, s. 2006. professional cartoonists wouldn’t do this. 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[accessed on 19/05/2006]. 165 contextualising the sax appeal and the danish cartoon furores for south africa 75 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 75-91 lizette rabe* abstract south africa has moved from an authoritarian state to a supposedly liberal democracy, with journalists as the assigned “watchdogs” of government. what can be learnt from a journalist who not only worked during apartheid south africa, but also for a company whose raison d’être was to support the specific ethnic nationalist ideology of the government of the day? rykie van reenen is regarded by one south african historian as “undoubtedly the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of the [twentieth] century”, later to be qualified by “possibly”. it is said her writing contributed in a significant way to the eventual change in afrikaner nationalist thinking. this article maps some of her dissentient writing to highlight her role as dissident journalist in a time of a kowtowing afrikaans media sector. by referring to several examples, van reenen’s critical commentary on the afrikaner nationalist government will be discussed. van reenen can be called a freethinker, but her writing was still within afrikaner nationalism’s “loyal dissent” paradigm. the question arises: can journalists free themselves from their own cultural backgrounds to become “watchdogs” of government and society? taking into account that van reenen was critical of the government of the day, while still remaining an afrikaner nationalist, with a lower case n, as she referred to herself, the author will ask how lessons can be learnt from the past and applied to the present. the article concludes with some observations on “independence” and “objectivity” as learned from the writings of van reenen. * lizette rabe is professor in the department of journalism at the university of stellenbosch. 76 lizette rabe introduction this article reflects on the role of one of the most significant afrikaans journalists of her time, according to some, and how she succeeded in developing a unique liberating voice together with other “liberal” journalists in the afrikaans media when this sector kowtowed to its master, the national party. this journalist is rykie van reenen (1923-2003), according to preeminent south african historian hermann giliomee (2003: 564), “undoubtedly the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of the [twentieth] century”. in a subsequent publication he qualified this estimation with the word “waarskynlik” (probably) (giliomee 2004: 470). van reenen was widely regarded as a critical, simultaneously uniquely creative, voice in the afrikaans media, criticising from within, as a loyal dissident. the question is: how did a female journalist develop into such a role, given the patriarchal and hegemonic “christelik-nasionale” (christian nationalist) culture of her time, where women were relegated to being second class citizens as a result of various complex factors, the rise of afrikaner nationalism, and the grounding of this ideology in a conservative reformed theological paradigm according to which women were inferior to men? approach this article uses the cultural history school’s approach (du plooy 1997: 94) according to which research is concerned with “the study of famous figures … and with the meaning … ascribed to their actions”. mouton (2001: 171) says for the purposes of historical studies, it should be taken into account that sources of data are varied: official and unofficial, archival, personal documents such as letters and diaries and also public records. the strength of such a study is the “ability to reconstruct the past through narrative techniques” with the “emphasis on process and change”. according to du plooy (1997: 101) further advantages are that the historical research method in communication is holistic, is able to study a range of human communications, includes most communication research methods and provides social and cultural contexts with an “understanding of contemporary communication”. the limitations, according to mouton (2001: 171), are linked to the limitation of data, or to the understanding and judgment of the historian, or to theoretical perspectives which are contradictory. du plooy includes as limitation the fact that it requires a vast amount of data, that it is time consuming to collect and interpret data, and that the conclusions “are difficult to confirm or verify through replication” (du plooy 1997: 102). still, one can conclude that “[e]xplanations in historical research are the means through which we are able to reconstruct the 77 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent past and understand it in its own terms” (du plooy 1997: 101). it should also be understood that history is “an interpretation of the past made by [white male] historians” (as cited in rabe 2006a: 66). in this sense it should be accepted that history is not a record of the past, but a selection of data and other information, by [white male] historians. muller (1990: vii) quotes a belgian historian who compared press history to an iceberg: that it is only the visible tip, “the ‘out’-ing of a mighty mass of history”. this historian also argues that no other branch of historiography “has so less own substance and is at the same time a function of the social, political, economic and cultural events”. this researcher wishes to emphasise that media history has not included “herstory”, as has been argued in several articles (rabe 2001; 2002; 2004; 2006a; 2006b; 2009) as it has not included the history of those who were the other in terms of white male supremacy. the media, being an extension of a hegemonic white male worldview, have, not unsurprisingly, neglected to be inclusive, not only in practice, but also in recording these histories. for the purposes of this article, historical data have been collected from a variety of primary and secondary sources, as is the nature of historiographical research. besides this, certain own peer reviewed articles were revisited, and some of the data were used for the purposes of a publication on van reenen which attempted to record the role and importance of a journalist extraordinaire in afrikaans media history (rabe 2011). to understand this past, and the context in which van reenen worked as a journalist (starting her career in 1945 and retiring formally in 1980), and to make “the past present”, a brief overview of south africa as an authoritarian state will first be supplied as context, followed by a brief analysis of the south african media landscape, also as context. this will be followed with an overview of van reenen’s development as journalist, after which examples of her writings will be presented to illustrate the unique “rykie” voice and her style of dissidence, described as an iron fist in a velvet glove. this will be followed by a brief discussion and conclusion of how journalistic lessons can and should be learnt from specifically this past for our current present – and how a journalist can and should, indeed, remain independent and a “loyal dissident”. for the purposes of this article, some of the original afrikaans quotations will be translated, and some presented with translations in parenthesis to show van reenen’s unique style. 78 lizette rabe context van reenen’s macro environment: south africa under apartheid one can broadly state that van reenen lived and worked at a time when the remnants of colonialism and the full force of apartheid strangled south africa. the south african socio-political context was an “extended colonialism” from 1652 until the first democratic elections in 1994, as argued by economist sampie terreblanche (2002: 3). terreblanche writes that the act of westminster which created the union of south africa on 31 may 1910 (2002: 239248) entrenched white supremacy founded on racialist capitalism (mostly the english industrial and mining establishment) and the afrikaner agricultural establishment (2002: 240-241). british colonial socio-economic segregation was founded on segregation in all areas of society (terreblanche 2002: 253). this segregation would form the foundation for afrikaner christian nationalism. ironically, this ideology was partly a response to the imperialism of british colonialism (giliomee & mbenga 2007: 96). the rise of afrikaner nationalism was fuelled by the years after the south african war (also referred to as the anglo-boer war) and those leading up to the first world war and the rebellion (terreblanche 2002: 248; giliomee & mbenga 2007: 228-229). one can argue that the “idealised epic myth” of the great trek as well as the mythologised heroism of the boers against the british empire during the south african war were fuelled by the afrikaans nationalist media of the (white) afrikaner who became more and more economically empowered thanks to the pact between the “afrikaner farming elite and a british/english business elite, and legitimised in terms of the segregationist ideology” (terreblanche 2002: 248). the afrikaners’ nationalist ideology was fuelled by the rise of german nationalism in the first third of the previous century and the notion of a “herrenvolk”, something the afrikaner identified with (terreblanche 2002: 301) and which led to the ideology of apartheid. during the latter years of apartheid, south africa developed into a “securocratic” or militaristic police state (terreblanche 2002: 314). this restrictive environment also led to extremely restrictive legislation for the media, and formed the macro environment under which van reenen worked from 1945 to 1980. van reenen’s micro environment: south africa’s media landscape under apartheid british colonialism/afrikaner nationalism also led to the fact that the south african press developed according to race and language. wigston (2007: 44) argues that “[w]hereas in most countries, the press is usually categorised according to various 79 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent political affiliations, the south african press, from its very beginnings in the cape colony, has been organised in terms of race and language”. the english press, originally in the hands of the south african english capitalist elite, was a so-called more liberal press, although they also served the interests of their constituency and therefore supported the status quo, namely the socio-economical racial segregationalist legacy of british colonialism, and consequently, apartheid. the afrikaans press, as “organ” of the national party, found itself in a privileged position during the apartheid years due to the close bond between party and media companies. a myriad of laws restricted the media, with various commissions of enquiry appointed by government to investigate the press (wigston 2007: 44-50). it has been said that apartheid south africa’s media were the freest media in africa. this is, of course, more an indication of the state of affairs on the rest of the african continent than complimentary to south africa. the apartheid regime “declare[d] a commitment to press freedom in parliamentary debates” but threatened the press “unless [it] sorted itself out” (wigston 2007: 45). since democratisation in 1994 media freedom is entrenched in the south african constitution of 1996 (article 16 in the bill of rights). south africa’s media have developed to play an independent, so-called “watchdog” role in what is a supposedly liberal democracy. the media establishment van reenen worked for, naspers (previously nasionale pers, established as de nationale pers in 1915 in stellenbosch), developed from a partisan, parochial press company at its inception into a major world player, by redefining and reinventing itself through its almost ten decades. it is at this company’s flagship newspaper, and generally accepted mouthpiece for the national party, die burger, where van reenen started to work in 1945. her independent, critical voice developed over the next few decades to that of an incisive commentator, one that never feared the white afrikaner male hegemony of her time, but who criticised on the grounds of principle. in 1965 van reenen was part of a selected group of journalists who established die beeld, naspers’s first sunday newspaper, and the company’s first newspaper beyond the vaal river, in the then transvaal. in 1970 die beeld and its rival dagbreek from the other afrikaner media company, perskor, merged to form rapport (as a result of afrikaner political pressure). naspers has repositioned itself during the 1980s in the years before the advent of democracy, and after the first democratic elections in 1994, at a faster pace. from a print media company driven by an ethnic nationalistic ideology, it has grown 80 lizette rabe into a multimedia company and is, in its tenth decade, regarded as a global media player, ranked among the top ten media companies in the world. van reenen: a brief overview this article will not analyse any of the many facets of a uniquely multi-faceted and multi-talented van reenen, but will focus on certain writings which can be interpreted as “subversive” (meiring 2003: 8) for its time, the result of an independent thinker and commentator, and of a “loyal dissident”. first, however, a brief evaluation of van reenen as journalist will attempt to provide some context for her writing. van reenen is not only regarded as a pioneering afrikaans woman journalist, but by some as the most outstanding afrikaans journalist of her century. her journalistic oeuvre ranged from specialist beat reporter and political and social commentator to an outstanding essayist, columnist and book critic. the expression “ryk, ryker, rykie” (rich, richer, rykie) developed in afrikaans newsrooms, indicating certain degrees of comparison, and that rykie herself was the ultimate standard. the current chair of naspers, ton vosloo (2004: 46-48), is of the opinion that van reenen contributed significantly to a “new thinking”, which resulted eventually to the capitulation of the afrikaner apartheid government (2004: 46-48). she was from the “verligte” side of the afrikaner establishment, and according to vosloo, “showed the government that its course was a false course”. according to another peer she made many south africans aware of a south africa which they did not know existed (grosskopf 1986:1). vosloo (2004: 46) said van reenen contributed immeasurably to the creation of a new order which had farreaching consequences for our country with her exceptional reporting on a level that as yet had not been achieved in afrikaans – nor, for that matter, in english. there was a political shift after 1965 … that culminated in the throwing off of state-driven apartheid in 1994. the power shift which vosloo refers to was the establishment of a sunday newspaper by naspers in johannesburg in 1965 which was independent of the national party and which criticised apartheid from within its own ranks. also giliomee (2005) describes van reenen’s contribution with the following description, namely of “helping the afrikaner breathe in the choking atmosphere of the 1970s”. 81 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent one can speculate that van reenen was probably the only afrikaans, maybe even south african, journalist who interviewed both biko and verwoerd – an indication of her independence and journalistic integrity. meiring argues that one can describe van reenen’s political writing not just as criticism, but as an attack on the nationalist regime (meiring 2003: 8). she says: in a time of draconian laws against the freedom of the press, in a time when the afrikaner hegemony did not have time for the critical voice of especially afrikaans newspapers, rykie, in an outspoken heroic manner, called the existing order to real order. it is also known that van reenen referred to “afrikaners, wit en bruin” (afrikaners, white and coloured), indicating her progressive, inclusive socio-political attitude, especially given the context of her time (boshoff 2005: 15). van reenen was generally regarded as a freethinker, both in politics and religion – and as such, also as a woman (and journalist), an unusual figure in afrikaner society. it was as columnist, especially for the column “op my randakker” for die beeld and rapport, that van reenen became a household name in the afrikaans community. an anthology of a selection of “randakkers” was published in 1980, which was so popular that a second print was necessary. at rapport van reenen was appointed as the first assistant editor of a major south african newspaper, in both afrikaans and english. she soon also became the first woman to hold the position of acting editor during periods when the editor was absent. it is speculated by several that she could have been the first woman editor of a major title, was it not for the patriarchy of her time which withheld her from being appointed officially. van reenen retired from rapport in 1980 due to a debilitating illness, multiple sclerosis. after her retirement, she was still active as a sought-after book critic. she passed away three days before her 80th birthday in december 2003. five examples of dissident formulations using five examples, this article will now present some of van reenen’s dissentient writing to highlight her role as independent, “objective”1 journalist in a time of a kowtowing afrikaans media sector. these examples of typical van reenen foci and formulations were selected to highlight her socio-political commentary regarding afrikanerdom and, specifically, afrikanerdom’s subjective historiography, as stated at the beginning, a specifically male activity in a specifically hegemonic male paradigm. 82 lizette rabe her extensive writing on censorship, both in terms of books criticising the establishment, but also on prohibitive legislation restricting reportage as applied by the nationalist government, are not among these examples, as this aspect of van reenen’s work demands a study in itself. she was an outspoken critic, and her writings on censorship have become classics. the five examples selected for this article, all from columns or book reviews, will not be analysed in detail, but will be presented (in chronological order as they appeared) to support the argument that van reenen was a journalist who could remain independent and “objective” despite being a member of an ethnic group within an extremely hegemonic, authoritarian period. she could transcend these boundaries and muster loyal dissent to remain a freethinker in a restrictive society. ‘now i understand a number of things better about our country’ van reenen could, with a few words, dissect a situation to its core, and provide readers with an analysis that would ring in their ears for days which would “become the subject of dinner table discussions” (meiring 2003: 8). such an example is her “randakker” column on a biography on voortrekker leader andries pretorius (van reenen 1977). it is said that through writing such as this she introduced afrikaans readers to a painful past and a south africa they did not know existed. in this column van reenen refers to how voortrekker men literally caught zulu children during the trek through the then natal, to abduct as servants, and how the history she was taught never mentioned any of these painful, but important facts. she does not spare the reader any detail: how children were caught “fervently”, how each member of a commando was allowed to catch two, but how some wanted five, and how, eventually, 68 voortrekkers signed a petition to formally request to be allowed to “catch five instead of two klyne zoelas” (dutch afrikaans: small zulus). van reenen rubs it in: how one of these children was swapped the next day for a horse, and how the horse was sold for an “oulap” (literally, a penny, in other words, so cheap that it did not really amount to any value). she ends this searing piece with a typical understatement: “no one taught me these things in school. now that i have it from an impeccable source in plain afrikaans, there are a number of things in our country that i can understand better.” ‘...when the cannon peeks over the hill’ van reenen set the political agenda in her writing with various issues. one was in 1978, in a “randakker” column (van reenen 1978), as a run-up to the publication of a book that caused a sensation among afrikaners, namely cottesloe (lückhoff 83 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent 1978). at the so-called “cottesloe meeting” in 1960 the dutch reformed church, to its shame, distanced itself from decisions taken there, and thus from sociopolitical reform. van reenen quotes shakespeare’s hamlet in her intro: “rest, rest, perturbed spirit.” she proceeds by referring to the cottesloe meeting as one spirit that does not want to go to rest. she then analyses the 1960 meeting and the 1978 publication, showing superb institutional memory and insight which became a hallmark of her work, ending the column with the following: of moet die geskiedenis nou maar rus? dit sal die toppunt van wrange ironie wees as ons nog onder mekaar ’n agterhoedegeveg oor cottesloe veg wanneer ’n kanon dalk eendag oor die bult loer.” (or must history rather rest? it will be the pinnacle of bitter irony if we still have a rear guard fight over cottesloe while one day a cannon peeks over the hill).2 ‘draconian fury’ van reenen’s review (1982a) of the book outcast cape town (western 1982) based on interviews by an american researcher after the group areas act was implemented and families were relocated to the “waaisandwoesteny van die vlakte” (drift sand desert of the flats), shows van reenen’s sympathy and empathy with the underdog, in this case, the “internally displaced”. she is also not sparing with her criticism on the grounds of the inhumanity of the legislation. she describes how a woman, who was relocated from mowbray to heideveld, went to collect her pension, and on her way wanted to have a look at the loquat tree she planted at her home in which she lived for 32 years. an english woman who then lived in what was her previous home, and on realising what the purpose of the woman’s visit was, reacted: “shame, sy moet vir haar ’n kardoessak vol pluk.” (shame, she should pick herself a bag full). van reenen: “krimp jy, hart?” (do you shrink, heart?) she adds: “the blade can also be turned!” that tale is a “tame” one, she writes, without “blood and tears”. she continues: “one asks oneself sotto voce what role studies like these have played in the emphatic rejection, this past year, of this ‘cruel law’, as it was called in evidence before the theron commission.” she concludes: “and if you have finished with that, you should also ask yourself how it is possible that we had to wait for an american to do such a study.” 84 lizette rabe it was with formulations in this review such as “die drakoniese drif van ’n aggressiewe afrikaner-nasionalisme” (the draconian fury of an aggressive afrikaner nationalism) that she did not endear herself to the political establishment. the afrikaner as ‘the bigger, freer, more humane human being he all along knew he was’ in another review (van reenen 1982b) she describes the book tyd en dae by the unsung afrikaner philosopher (he was roman catholic and taught at an english university), marthinus versfeld (1982), as the “most subversive little book since the four evangelists in afrikaans”. she writes, “it stands in the sign of pure humanism, which cuts through all defensive mechanisms”, and which can only be seen as “subversive” of tradition by those who equate tradition with such mechanisms. another understated van reenen formulation follows: soos die tregter na die fyndraai vorentoe vir ons nouer raak, en die uitsprake van amptelike kerk en kultuur destengevolge knellender, sê ons baie dae onder mekaar: ‘np van wyk louw,3 thou shouldst be living at this hour’ (of: ‘hei, schalk pienaar,4 waar is jy?’)” (as the funnel to the fine-turn to the future becomes narrower, and the pronouncements of official church and culture consequently more oppressive, many of us say among ourselves: ‘n.p. van wyk louw, thou shouldst be living at this hour.’ (or: ‘hey, schalk pienaar, where are you?’). she then proceeds: “but don’t we overlook versfeld?” she writes that his anthology “brings home the afrikaner, with a sigh of the deepest gratitude” “as die ruimer, vryer, mensliker mens wat hy al die tyd geweet het hy is” (as the bigger, freer, more humane human being he all along knew he was). she builds on the metaphor of homecoming and hospitality, and that versfeld shows afrikaners that they also inhabit the whole, big moral tradition of humankind, and, referring to apartheid, not only, die benoude ou aparte eenmans-woonstelletjie met die dik diefwering voor deur en vensters nie” (the stuffy separate little one-man flat with the thick burglar bars in front of door and windows). as if ‘through the back of binoculars’ in a review of the photographer paul alberts’s book, the borders of apartheid (1983), van reenen (1983), under the heading “fotoboek brand gewete” (photobook burns conscience), refers to the seed of the apartheid bantustans, 85 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent namely how van riebeeck5 has “ewe ‘minnelijck vermaent’” (…) the “hottentoos” to build their huts not too close to the moat of the fort, but “wat verder aff te gaen” (to go a bit further). van reenen writes in her typical light and humorous style that on this, their “stoutelijk” (cheeky) answer was that van riebeeck and co, as van riebeeck wrote in his diary, should understand, ‘dattet nie ons maar haer eijgen landt was’ en dat hulle hul ‘huisjes’ jolliewel sou bou ‘ter plaetsen daer se begeerden’ (that the land does not belong to the dutch, but it’s theirs, and that they will build, thank you very much, wherever they please). then she progresses with her argument and writes insightfully how, in essence, matters of land rights are the cause of conflict in africa. she formulates how land was estranged from the people of africa: grond waarvan die mense van afrika stap vir hebsugtige stap vervreem is, totdat hulle bly sit het met ’n paar hande vol laslappies” (land that was estranged from the people of africa step by greedy step, until they sat with only a couple of handful of patches). the sock follows in the next formulation: ’n mens kyk asof deur die agterkant van ’n verkyker na ’n miniatuurbeeld van die beklemmende skadusy van westerse kolonialisme soos hy hom wêreldwyd laat geld het” (it is as if one looks through the back of binoculars to see a miniature picture of the oppressive shadow side of western colonialism as it manifested itself worldwide). she continues that afrikaners were not exposed to this picture of africa: ons is op ander mites grootgemaak. daarom wens ek dié stuk was in afrikaans geskrywe … dis werk soos hierdie, waarvan daar nou ál meer kom, wat die kaleidoskoop van ons geskiedenis so hartgrondig skud dat die nasionale bewussyn (kleinlettertjie-n van my) van ’n nuwe geslag vir goed in nuwe voeë moet val. (we were raised on other myths. that’s why i wish this was written in afrikaans ... it is work like this, of which there is now more and more, which shakes the kaleidoscope of our history so deeply that the national consciousness (small letter n of mine) of a new generation once and for all must fall into new joints. 86 lizette rabe perhaps, in hindsight, the formulation is too cautious, but one should take into account it was written during a witch hunt period in the last desperate years of apartheid in its full force, which would eliminate any dissident noise. towards the end of the review she leaves the reader with a question ringing in his ears, but which incorporates a statement. this is an iconic van reenen style-ism, and can be the subject of yet another study. in this case, she asks: wie moet bv. nie effens meer genuanseerd oordeel oor vandag se anc-terreur as hy bekend is met dié organisasie se vreedsame maar vrugtelose bedinging om grondregte en politieke regte sedert 1912 nie?” (who should not, for example, judge in a more nuanced way current anc terror if he is familiar with the organisation’s peaceful but fruitless attempts to redress property and political rights since 1912?) discussion these five examples show how van reenen could sharply analyse and criticise afrikanerdom, but remain sympathetic to her ethnic group. this was also described as the “gentle touch” in her writing, namely that: [p]olitically she had a very delicate touch: she may have used a bludgeon on occasion, but i always felt that she found loud voices as ineffectual as loud manners (le may 2004:11). she was known for her iron fist in a velvet glove, as can be seen in the next formulation: haar humor, haar kritiese kyk en veral haar slag om die dolk met ’n laggie en ’n bietjie fluweel, maar met ’n onmiskenbare boodskap, in te dryf (her humour, her critical look and especially her way of driving in the dagger with a smile and covered with a scrap of velvet, but with an unmistakable message) (meiring 2003: 8). the question arises: how can a journalist, surrounded by a hegemonic ideology, practise “loyal dissent”, and remain independent, a freethinker, a dissident? can journalists distance themselves from certain contexts and be truly “objective”? can one be “objective” and simultaneously critical, yet loyal? the answer, if to be searched for in the work of van reenen, is yes. although she was sharply, and continuously, critical of the national party, she remained a loyal afrikaner, even describing herself as a nationalist with a lower case n. how did she do this? the answer lies in the fact that she managed to remain fiercely independent of a party-political ideology, and could therefore criticise 87 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent on principles, and not as a blind loyalist, as was the accusation against some of her peers. retief meiring (2009) says she was never a “jabroer” (yes man), but rather always on the side of the underdog. another observer is of the opinion that van reenen was “ideally situated” to influence afrikaners with “her type of thinking”: rykie het ’n fyn aanvoeling gehad vir die afrikaanse geesteswêreld – sy was vanuit die milieu, maar nooit deel daarvan nie. sy was terselfdertyd in die binnekring en buitestander. hierdie twee rolle het sy goed begryp en dit het haar in die posisie geplaas om vertroue te wen op grond van haar persoonlike integriteit. vir my is dit bewys in haar onderhoud met steve biko en haar siening van hom. (rykie was attuned to the afrikaans establishment – she was of the milieu, but never part of it. she was simultaneously in the inside circle but an outsider. these two roles she understood well, and this put her in a position to win confidence on the basis of her personal integrity. to me, the evidence is in her interview with steve biko and her view of him) (botha 2009). one can also say that because of her sex, she could remain independent. no “buy-in” was necessary, as she was not part of afrikanerdom’s male, patriarchal establishment. as a woman, this meant that she was also not a member of the broederbond, the secret afrikaner organisation which in fact governed south africa in all spheres through its network of influence. not officially an editor, she was not expected to kowtow to the nationalist party. thus van reenen was never formally part of hegemonic group ideology, and could remain independent, observing from the outside, although being culturally, and in terms of identity and language, part of the group. the question for us today remains: can journalists free themselves from their own cultural backgrounds to really fulfil the role of watchdogs and be independent, “objective”? conclusion one can conclude that, given the example of van reenen, a journalist can be, and must be, independent and “objective” from hegemonic thinking and remain true to principles in searching for the “truth”. she herself referred in an interview (voigt 1995) to how a journalist could encounter a problem with “afstandelikheid” (distancing) and independence. as a fellow-afrikaner she often had to write about people she knew in their personal capacity, and the matter of loyalty was a reality. she then proceeded to say they 88 lizette rabe were exactly that: people – but how then to write about the disgraces and scandals in which they found themselves? van reenen said that “in that respect” you develop a “steely” will, namely not to do something for the sake of exposing them, but to be “loyal to the truth”. in her words: “you develop a primary loyalty to the truth ... that is also the wonderful thing about journalism. that admission to yourself that the truth is important to you.” taking into account that van reenen was critical of the government of the day, yet still remained an afrikaner nationalist, with a lower case n, as she referred to her herself, journalists can indeed learn from the past and apply those insights to the present. although van reenen was in her gut an afrikaner, she could be a freethinker and practise loyal dissent by focusing on issues and principles in her search for the truth, and not be blinded by loyalism. this is a lesson from the past that today’s journalists can and should heed. our country is (still) in need of independent, critical, “objective” journalists, yet journalists who can remain loyal to values, and can criticise on principle. indeed, today’s south african journalists have an inspiring example in van reenen. if a journalist who worked during the heyday of apartheid south africa, and for a company whose raison d’être was to support the specific ethnic nationalism of the government of the day, could be successful in such a practise, today’s journalists should follow her example. this can also be applied to the fact that journalism, as “first draft of history”, can serve a formal purpose in recording history, and thereby, as a branch of historiography, can (and should) have its own historical substance, and not only serve to record “social, political, economic and cultural events”. in terms of a gender argument, and the masculinity of historiography as discussed earlier, one can also conclude that van reenen has proved that she was faithful to principles, and a reliable recorder of history. the past, indeed, is present, and lessons can be learnt from a freethinker journalist who adhered to the principles of journalism by practising loyal dissent. endnotes 1 it should be noted that “objectivity” is a contested notion in journalism. “objectivity” is defined as “not influenced by personal feeling or opinions in considering and representing facts” (nel, 2001:53). however, “[a]ll facts reported to newspaper readers must pass through the mind of the reporter. every reporter observes events and understands facts against a screen of experience and through the film of human emotions” (leiter, harriss & johnson, 2000:227). early newspapers and magazines were, in fact, propaganda, and reflected “the ideologies of a particular political party, or the opinions and aspirations of the single owner” (nel, 2001:53). one can state 89 the past is present: a freethinker journalist, ideologies and loyal dissent that in the case of the majority of afrikaans media this is particularly true, as it was the task of the afrikaans media to propagate afrikaner-nationalism. nel writes that objectivity has only been a discussion point since the early 20th century (2001:53). although there can be conscious efforts to be “objective”, “[t]he complete objectivity necessary to perfect reporting has yet to be achieved by any reporter” (leiter et al., 2000:227). “few readers, but all editors, know that the process of gathering and writing news is subjective, despite all efforts to make it objective” (leiter et al., 2000:226). westerstahl divides objectivity into “factualness” and “impartiality”. the first is further divided into “truth” and “relevance”, and the latter into “balance” and “neutrality” (as cited in nel, 2001:53). the term “objectivity” will thus be used in quotation marks throughout this article to indicate its ambivalence and, in fact, impossibilism. 2 as a note to this example, it must be said that these words still echo in the new south africa and proved to be prophetic, namely that afrikaners still have a rear-guard fight while danger is lurking ahead. the same words, namely, can be applied to a recent incident in which an afrikaner philosopher was literally attacked by a fellow (right wing) afrikaner (gerber 2011: 1) for his views – in a time when south africa’s real dangers should be identified and focused on in order to seek solutions for the “cannon peeking over the hill”. 3 n.p. van wyk louw, a well-known “liberal” afrikaans poet and academic of his time who developed the concept “loyal dissent”. 4 schalk pienaar was regarded as a “liberal” afrikaans journalist and editor. 5 jan van riebeeck, the founder of the voc’s refreshment station at the cape which led to the colonisation of the cape, first by the dutch, and then by the british. 90 references alberts, p. 1983. the borders of apartheid. cape town: suid-afrikaanse fotografiese galery. boshoff, t. 2005. personal e-mail to author. available from author. botha, a. 2009. personal e-mail to author. available from author. du plooy, g.m. 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(seventh edition). needham heights, ma: allyn & bacon. le may, j. 2004. journalist of quality, rykie should have been sa’s first woman editor. the argus. 4 january: 11. lückhoff, a.h. 1978. cottesloe. cape town: tafelberg. meiring, m. 2003. “rykie, rykdom van die randakker.” die burger. 31 december: 8. mouton, j. 2001. how to succeed in your master’s and doctoral studies. pretoria: van schaik. muller, c.f.j. 1990. sonop in die suide. cape town: nasionale boekhandel. nel. f. 2001. writing for the media in southern africa. (third edition). cape town: oxford university press. rabe, l. 2001. eva-lusie – die vrouestem in suid-afrikaanse media. inaugural lecture. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. rabe, l. 2002. eve-olution – the status of women in sa media. ecquid novi 23(2): 152-169. 91 rabe, l. 2004. women voices in the media of the afrikaans language community – an historical perspective. communitas 9: 31-49. rabe, l. 2006a. ‘ryk, ryker, rykie’: a first exploration of the journalistic contribution of a journalist extraordinaire. communicatio: south african journal for communication theory and research, 32(1): 65-87. rabe, l. 2006b. the wedge that cracked the rock – a pioneering woman journalist. communitas 11: 169-184. rabe, l. 2009. vryheid van die (afrikaanse) spraak: ryk, ryker, rykie. tydskrif vir geesteswetenskappe 49(1): 131-144. rabe, l. 2011. rykie, ’n lewe met woorde. cape town: tafelberg. retief meiring, m. 2009. interview. notes available from the author. terreblanche, s. 2002. a history of inequality in south africa: 1652 – 2002. pietermaritzburg: university of natal press. van reenen, r. 1977. vang vir jou ‘’n kleine zoela’. rapport, 14 august. van reenen, r. 1978. hier k-k-kom cottesloe! rapport, 19 february. van reenen, r. 1982a. ’n boek vir ons tyd. die burger, 11 march. dit sal nekhare laat rys. beeld, 29 march. van reenen, r. 1982b. tot lafenis van ’n honger en verskreeude volkie. die burger, 7 augustus. frisse gesprek met versfeld. beeld, 16 august. van reenen, r. 1983. fotoboek brand die gewete. die burger, 1 desember: 22. versfeld, m. 1982. tyd en dae. kaapstad: tafelberg. voigt, c. 1995. unpublished honours project. stellenbosch university. stellenbosch. vosloo, t. 2004. onblusbaar ryk [sic] van der byl van reenen. insig, januarie/ februarie: 46. western, j. 1982. outcast cape town. cape town: human & rousseau. wigston, d. 2007. a history of the south african media. in fourie, p. (ed.). media studies vol 1. media history, media and society. wetton: juta. untitled 191 visually representing social change – the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 191 206 heidi saayman-hattingh* abstract this research argues that the 1976 soweto uprisings as well as the release of nelson mandela in 1990 and the first democratic elections held in 1994 impacted significantly on the south african social documentary photographer, and turned out to be major turning points within the south african social documentary photography genre. based on this, this study sets out to firstly clarify the term social documentary photography as a particular type of visual communication within the documentary genre on an international level by briefly conducting a literature study on the emergence and subsequent use of the term social documentary photography. secondly the study places in context the practice of social documentary photography in south africa prior to the 1980s by reviewing possible societal, political and international factors of impact. this is achieved through a literature study as well as through the re-examining of openended interviews with south african social documentary photographers conducted as part of the author's doctoral study. finally, by analysing and synthesising the possible factors of influence on the south african social documentary photographer complexities inherent in the term “struggle photography” can be directly linked to political change as south africa moved towards a democratic society. * dr heidi saayman-hattingh is postdoctoral fellow in the american council of learned societies african humanities programme and research associate in the department of visual arts and design at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 191 introduction the 1980s and early 1990s was a period of great significance for south africa. it was a period where the fight for democracy intensified and resulted in the election of the first national democratic government. overthrowing the apartheid regime that preceded it came at a high price, one that many south africans paid for with their lives. according to hill and harris (1989: 7) photography took on a particular significance in this period of south african history as it provided irrefutable documentation of popular resistance and state brutality. these images were instrumental in bringing the south african struggle to the international arena and serve as part of a collective memory crystallising events from the past for future generations. this research argues that the 1976 soweto uprisings as well as the release of nelson mandela in 1990 and the first democratic elections held in 1994 impacted significantly on the south african documentary photographer and turned out to be major turning points within the genre. south african documentary photography during the 1980s and early 1990s tends to be labelled “struggle photography”, a generic term used both locally and internationally to describe documentary photography commenting on the effects of apartheid and the process towards democracy during this period. by applying this label there is a loss in perspective of the complexity of the field of south african social documentary photography, the diversity of experiences and approaches of its practitioners, the audiences for their work, as well as the changing dynamics of south africa’s political powerhouse. what then was the role that the south african documentary photographer chose to play? how have the social and political changes in south africa over the past couple of decades shaped the documentary practice in south africa? this study therefore further sets out to unravel the complexities inherent in the term “struggle photography” by investigating and comparing the changing factors that affected the south african documentary photographer during this critical period in the development of documentary photography in south africa as well as reviewing possible challenges facing the contemporary practitioner in a democratic environment. documentary photography vs photojournalism categorising photography can be a difficult task and both scott (1999: 14) and rosenblum (1997: 341) caution against attempting to define its essential nature too narrowly. many would question whether it has an essential nature at all. john tagg talks about “photographies” rather than “photography” – “photography as such has no identity. its status as a technology varies with the power relations which invest it. its nature as a practice depends on the institutions and agents which define it and set it to work” (tagg 1993: 63). scott (1999: 14) advises “any writer who takes photography as their subject to avoid being too categorical about any aspect of it as it is a fluid, mobile, unstable medium which is diverse in its application”. rosenblum (1997: 341) emphasizes that “all photographs defy narrow categorisation especially works that have social change as their prime goal as the passage of time has been especially effectual in altering purpose, meaning and resonance”. 192 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 192 early uses of the term “documentary” are often linked to the work of british filmmaker and theorist john grierson who believed that documentary was “an anti-aesthetic movement” that “knew how to use aesthetics” (marien 2002: 281). during the 1920s grierson suggested that documentary should be given the power of poetry and prophesy, introducing a new fusion of art and observation. according to marien (2002:281) it was during the 1930s that the term documentary photography came into wide usage referring directly to the social commentary work produced during the depression years: in a broad sense all non-fictional representation, in books or in images is documentary. but during the 1930s, when the word documentary came into wide usage, its meaning was more limited. writers, filmmakers and photographers produced a blend of modernistic style and realistic subject matter, aimed at educating the public about the experience of hardships or injustice. the term “photojournalism” is commonly attributed to cliff edom (1907-1991), who taught at the university of missouri’s school of journalism for 29 years. edom established the first photojournalism workshop there in 1946. photojournalism refers to the work done for picture magazines and newspapers, which came to the fore during the 1920s. the photojournalist tended to have a more autonomous and highly regarded role for photography than the news photographer. the main product of the newspaper is news and the news photographer wherever possible supplies images to accompany the daily and weekly stories, essentially documenting events of that particular day or week (rosenblum 1997: 41). chapnick’s (1994: 8) description of photojournalism reflects the same basic theme used in descriptions of the social documentary photograph: photojournalism is rooted in the consciousness and consciences of its practitioners. the torch of concern, a heritage of humanistic photography, has been passed from generation to generation, lightening the corners of darkness, exposing ignorance, and helping us to understand human behaviour. it bares the truth and sometimes it lies. it informs, educates and enlightens us about the present, and it illuminates the past. it records beauty and ugliness, poverty and opulence. although some may argue that the terms documentary photography and photojournalism represent two different approaches, there are many who have come to use the terms interchangeably. however it is not just about the interchangeability of the terms, but also the fluidity of the boundaries, in terms of the intended purpose of the work and how the images were regarded by the viewer, both in their original capacity, as well as from a historical point of view. the following statement highlights the contra-distinction between documentary photography and photojournalism: visual workers will find their legitimation (sic) in the response their work generates in viewers, whatever name the work goes by. they will find the direction for what they do in the particular circumstances of its doing, in the combination of organizations, audiences, and peers that surround them as they do the work (becker 1995: 13). 193 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 193 both documentary photography and photojournalism play a role in the way that societies inform themselves about their own identities and values and those of other cultures and societies (newbury 1999: 21). for the purpose of this study the term social documentary photography embraces two ideals: the depiction of a verifiable social fact and the evocation of empathy with the individuals concerned. 1980s documentary photography in south africa in the 1960s the triumph of humanism seen in the family of man1 exhibition was short lived. although a few photographers in europe continued in the humanist tradition, most americans took metaphoric documentary to a new level, one of the forerunners being robert frank in his book the americans. in 1955 robert frank began the first of several road trips around the united states where he “made pictures that would unravel the certitude of documentary photography as practiced by the fsa photographers and the picture press” (marien 2002: 343). frank saw “a soul-damaged population, fluctuating between violence, ignorance and despair” where the depression era documentarians had “witnessed a troubled yet resilient america” (marien 2002: 344). frank’s book the americans, published in 1958, was a protest against numbing mass culture, materialism and social conformity. this restlessness became more apparent as the photographer began to comment on the volatile socio-political situations in america, africa and europe. it was during the late 50s and early 60s that african-american photographers began to focus on the issues paramount within their own communities, such as racial discrimination, economic disparity, and civil rights (guice 2003: 54). in the late 1950s some of the worst racemotivated riots in britain were taking place. at the same time the coverage of the civil rights movement in america highlighted the efforts of the african-american to gain equality (parrish 2002: 367). this was almost simultaneous with the start of the south african black photographers’ drive to document the inequalities within the apartheid state of south africa, which filled the pages of drum magazine, established by publisher james bailey and editor anthony sampson in 1951. even though drum was white-owned and run, it was staffed largely by non-white writers and photographers addressing the problems created by poverty, unemployment, disease, crime, and a fanatic white-supremacist government, catering to the non-white, south african audience in a unique and exclusive manner. it can therefore be determined that british, american and south african photographers were all dealing with race-related issues at approximately the same time, but not necessarily relating to their audience in the same manner. what it did create was an international audience that was sympathetic to race related issues. due to growing worldwide concern for the actions of the apartheid government the state began to clamp down on publications drawing attention to the human rights violations of black south africans. the alternative press was forced underground and in 1960 the anc was banned (johnson 1991: 27). the coverage of the 1976 soweto uprising lead to a resurgence of the alternative press and south african photographers 194 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 194 started supplying images to the growing number of publications and organisations within the resistance movement. the left presses aimed to provide the ideological conditions within which oppressed people could identify themselves as “subjects” of particular communities and related anti-apartheid practices. while issues which bound these communities together were primarily negative in nature, by developing cultures of resistance they were able to articulate their struggle in positive rather than negative ways, and hence assist in the construction of alliances that could defeat apartheid. communication within communities thus became crucial in focusing the direction of social change (tomaselli 1991: 163). at the same time the international press began to publish images of the resistance in south africa and south african photographers found there was a demand for their images internationally, for example peter magubane (2003) photographed for time magazine. the international audience, educated by the vietnam media coverage, were becoming more concerned about international injustices (ritchin 1998: 605). as the viewing audience became more accustomed to photographic accounts of reported events, documentary photographers began to acknowledge and express a more subjective and aesthetic approach in their work (rosenblum 1997: 566). even though television may have rendered many picture magazines redundant, during the 70s and 80s the wire service and photo agency provided a platform for increased coverage of events worldwide within the documentary and photojournalistic tradition. photography in latin america, africa and asia came to be understood as a means to create a defiant or at least oppositional identity. as different societal needs and problems arose, so the social document adapted itself to serve both the intention of the photographer and a role in society. during the late 1960s and early 1970s american and british governments were dealing with issues of racism and colonialism and once these issues were addressed, the general public had become more sympathetic to issues of racism in general. therefore a racially sympathetic international audience and an increase in the demand for images due to an expansion in international press, supported collectives such as afrapix during the 1980s. these factors may account for an international increase and continuation in interest in south africa after the soweto uprisings rather than after the 1960 sharpeville massacre. should the apartheid regime have relinquished power during the 1970s then the chances are that south african documentary photography would probably not have enjoyed the development and recognition that it did in the 1980s. but the fact that the conditions were conducive both locally and internationally to the advantage of the south african documentary photographer results in the understanding that it was indeed a multitude of circumstances that motivated the documentary photographer and ultimately led to the international recognition of south african documentary photography during the 1980s and 1990s. 195 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 195 using the camera as a weapon against apartheid the 1970s saw a move towards photographers committing themselves to the struggle. the first south african television station was only created in 1976 and was, of course, heavily censored. photographers reacted with what they termed “morally honest propaganda” images showing what the government wanted to hide (sanner 1999: 255). according to tomaselli (1991: 163): after the mid-1970s the south african government faced a declining economy, coupled with resurgence in working class and popular resistance to its rule. the crisis of the 1980s saw greater government curtailment of the flow of information and moves toward the registration of journalists, newspapers and news agencies. this had as its aim the co-optation of the press into the states ‘national communication policy’ … during this decade the state believed that it was engaged in an internal war, and that it was justified in expecting the mainstream media to support its ‘total strategy’. those not voluntarily complying were – in terms of the government’s ‘us-them’ binary opposition – seen as identifying with the so-called ‘total onslaught’. once this premise was accepted, a justification was evolved for, at best, ‘nudging’ the press into compliance, or at worst, for creating some sort of censorship mechanism. the alternative press began to gain momentum following the revolt of june 1976 in soweto and periodicals such as grassroots, new era, spark, sound stone and above all staffrider, illustrated their pages with the works of enthusiastic and militant photographers. there was a common desire to distribute images of resistance, and contribute to the development of politically engaged documentary photography (sanner 1999: 255). according to jackson (1993: 30), “since 1976, a landmark year in south african history, the press was shaped by the political, economic, social and cultural forces buffeting the society”. during the late 1970s and early 1980s there was resurgence of resistance and due to an increase in both the urban african population as well as a growth in literacy, alternative publications began to mushroom (johnson 1991: 30). the first assembly of anti-apartheid south africans working in the arts field took place in gaborone, botswana, in june 1982. it hosted the first collective exhibition to come from south africa, bringing twenty photographers together for a first joint photographic statement (weinberg 1989: 64). as a result of this culture and resistance festival there emerged a collective awareness of a common identity and a common commitment to the same causes resulting in the creation of the afrapix photographic agency. afrapix’s objective was to expose the atrocities of the apartheid regime, as well as to foster and train a new generation of black photographers (sanner 1999: 253). afrapix was well known for their views and visual portrayal of the apartheid system and the resistance to it. in the words of the afrapix founders: “afrapix was created out of the desire to co-ordinate documentary photography and use it as an effective tool for social 196 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 196 change” (as quoted by sanner 1999: 254). according to santu mofokeng (1999: 268), “i joined afrapix in 1985. i had no work, no equipment and no resources. afrapix gave me a home. it provided me with money to buy a camera and film in order to document soweto and the rising discontent in the townships.” the 1980s was an extremely prolific period for documentary photography in south africa and south african documentary photographers rose to the challenge. the laws of the apartheid government restricted international photographers from entering and working in south africa, leaving the south african photographer with more opportunity to supply the international marketplace, who supported the cause of the fight against apartheid. photographic collectives such as afrapix encouraged photographers and provided established channels to the international marketplace and alternative south african publications. expansion in the press internationally created a market for photojournalism and images documenting conflict. many of the photographers felt the need to testify their involvement in the struggle against apartheid through images – “crusaders basically going out there on a mission” (miller 2004). the struggle against apartheid was a cause that most documentary photographers in south africa could identify with: “i would be dying trying to liberate my country and myself” (magubane 20032). those involved in the struggle against apartheid acknowledged photography as a means of exposing their cause to a sympathetic audience and supported rather than hampered the photographer. “the children that were toyi-toying at that funeral dragged me into the house and they saved my life” (kumalo 2004). most of the photographers commented that the type of subject matter in demand was easily available: “you did not have to think much, it was all happening in front of you” (wulfsohn 2004);“you could go out into the street, use your camera to photograph anything and you could sell your pictures” (tillim 2004). there were also difficulties facing south african photographers during the 1980s. the south african press had been subject to control for most of its existence, but in july 1985 a partial state of emergency was declared and cameras were banned from emergency areas. only officially accredited reporters were allowed to report in an unrest area after permission was granted. photographer louise gubb (2004) gives an account of how the law directly impacted on the social documentary photographer: …they brought in a state of emergency and photographers could be arrested and jailed. so it was very tricky working then, extremely tricky, because the police could come and surround a gathering and declare it retroactively, under the emergency powers, as illegal. so what you were doing there was illegal. they would take your film and if there was nothing on it they would not prosecute you but if there was anything on it you would be prosecuted. so we started developing ways of getting rid of the film. we had little runners or gave it to the radio journalists, because they were after the picture people. alternative or independent publishing in south africa originated because the government had complete control over state subsidised publishing in the country. by 197 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 197 1986 the south african government ignored international opinion and aimed at controlling the flow of information. it imposed tighter press restrictions and placed a wide-ranging prohibition on subversive statements. the police could regulate or stop any information relating to their conduct from being published. in 1987 a second state of emergency was declared and media regulations tightened even more: the emergency regulations and the numerous other laws concerning the press effectively placed vast parts of the society off limits for reporters. freedom to obtain and publish information was severely curtailed even before the state of emergency was imposed… the powers granted to the ministers of law and order and home affairs under earlier legislation and under the emergency rules gave them virtually absolute power to pull the plug on any newspapers they wished to close temporarily or permanently. government intolerance and hostility toward opposition papers, already widespread in the early 70s and early 80s, intensified as the decade unfolded (jackson 1993: 7). the government put increasing pressure on the media in an attempt to minimise the coverage of unrest in south africa (sanner 1999: 255). in many cases members of the south african defence force and police were known to take violent action against photographers; it was a period of continuous arrest, confiscation and harassment and even, at times, assault (weinberg 1989: 68). gubb (2004) and raymond preston (2004) give their experience with government officials during the 1980s: i was arrested many times in the 1980s. under the state of emergency, they would often prevent us from completing our assignments and challenge more of us to either get those pictures out or destroy the film. in that particular way, one was prevented from doing one’s work. the underwriting of the legislation was to stop you from covering the struggle; and … i was getting harassed by police, i was getting shot at, i was nearly beheaded by a police canister. another factor that social documentary photographers had to deal with was that the international marketplace had certain prerequisites for the type of image they were interested in: [t]here was a lot of pressure to sort of find those stereo-types that the world wanted like the white racist … boer or farmer or rich white person, poor black person, oppressed person and then the person’s struggle ... the world had commodified almost, south african imagery (weinberg 2004). many documentary photographers and photojournalists felt pressured into covering the struggle against apartheid at the expense of what they termed as their own personal work. they believed that they were “dealing with bigger issues” (vallie 2004), “subsumed by the energies of the war sort of syndrome” (weinberg 2004), “crusaders basically going out there on a mission” (miller 2004). 198 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 198 towards the late 1980s photographers emerged that were not only weary of the international image of south africa, but in some cases they were in disagreement with the work that documentary photographers were producing when they began documenting the violence of the early 1990s. photographer motlhalefi mahlabe (2004) defends his position at the time: south african photography, at that time, was defined by violence and that type of stuff. so if you look at people then and how they looked at us as a country, there was nothing else happening. people thought we never go to church, cultural activities taking place. they knew the pictures that the media fed the world with, so my choice was to look at ordinary life, people still going to church, people still enjoying life amidst all of these things and the creative process, more than anything. in the late 1980s santu mofokeng left afrapix: “i was unhappy with the propaganda images, which reduced life in the townships into one of perpetual struggle, because i felt this representation to be incomplete” (mofokeng 1999: 269). he went to work at the african studies institute, in the oral history project at the university of the witwatersrand. there his work involved documenting rural communities and marginal coloured communities threatened with resettlement. in addition to this he continued with his documentation of township life, which he began in 1982. this work came to the fore in a democratic south africa when the international market began to ask for ordinary pictures of everyday life in townships. he says “suddenly my pictures of quotidian african life – of shebeens3, street-soccer and home life, which had been considered unpublishable in the 1980s – now found commercial flavour” (mofokeng 1999: 269). the early 1990s struggle to establish political supremacy in 1990 president fw de klerk made a historic speech announcing that the anc, sacp and pac were to be unbanned and all political prisoners, including nelson mandela, who had spent almost 30 years in prison defending his beliefs of democracy, equality and learning for all south africans, were to be released. negotiations from totalitarian rule to democracy began and with that came the fight for political supremacy. archbishop desmond tutu (2000: x) believed this violence was the work of a third force, somehow linked to the apartheid government and its security forces, which, in part, was verified during the goldstone commission. the fact remains that while, seemingly, the violence being perpetrated by the apartheid government on the black resistance movement declined, a new type of violence emerged; one that was not so clear-cut in determining who was right and who was wrong. both black and white photographers were faced with seemingly senseless acts of violence. the authorities termed the violence as “faction fighting” or “black-on-black violence” in an attempt to tribalise as well as distance themselves from the conflict (marinovich & silva 2000: 227). some photographers became motivated by the conflict: “i truly believed people needed to see it” (silva 2004), and “a need to show what was happening around me” (marinovich n.d.). other photographers who photographed violence became 199 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 199 disillusioned or fed up with violence, saying “i went there and i came back with pictures but i don’t think i came back with myself” (mahlabe 2004) and “it was probably stuff that i would not have done if the situation in south africa was different” (williams 2004). the government became more tolerant of political activity and relaxed their policies against the foreign press as faction fighting and the exposure thereof advanced their viewpoint. images of violent activities were sought after by an international as well as local audience and a new type of south african photographer emerged to document the violence; one that was supported by the local media and in direct competition with foreign photographers in foreign media. “in the 1990s, after mandela’s release, the foreign journalists started to come in. so the tourist gates were open as far as foreign journalists were concerned. things were much more liberated and the anc was unbanned. that was when the very violent conflict between the various parties began to establish political party supremacy” (gubb 2004). four white photographers, kevin carter, greg marinovich, joão silva and ken oosterbroek, who covered south africa’s violent turn from apartheid to a new form of government, came to be called the bang-bang club. a south african magazine coined the name in recognition of the photographers’ consistent picture coverage of the bloody, deadly clashes in the nation’s black townships. marinovich and silva (2000: xiii) state that there was no such club and that they were amongst dozens of photographers and journalists that covered the violence during that period. according to chapnick (1994: 314), former president of black star photo agency: in the photojournalistic vernacular, ‘bang-bang’ is synonymous with action, producing photographs approximating the archetypal robert capa photograph showing the instant of impact when a bullet struck a spanish civil war soldier. editors revel in ‘bang-bang’ pictures, and readers are fascinated by them. picture-making in townships like soweto was risky. this was where partisans of nelson mandela’s anc party, which was newly legalised, and the zulu-backed party called inkatha, fought their bloody struggles for supremacy. the photographers travelled to the townships early in the morning, because trouble frequently exploded when people were on the streets heading for work. the hostels where the workers lived were flash points of sudden, unpredictable violence. the type of violence was no longer as clearcut as it had been in the previous decade with the result that personal risk to the photographers increased. in some instances photographers were also faced with the disapproval of the black majority who were traditionally avid supporters of the documentary photographer. photographers and reporters travelled together in groups, as a protective measure against the violence that could easily be turned against photographers when trouble broke out. another form of violence, as the two fighting factions battled hand to hand with rocks, knives, spears, and small arms, was when police often used excessive firepower to stop the outbreaks, and photographers often ended up in the crossfire (buell 2000: 202). 200 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 200 besides the violence between political followers during the early 1990s photographers were documenting social, everyday life in an attempt to provide a more well-rounded view of black culture as well as the inequalities apparent in the country. for example gideon mendel was documenting aids, paul weinberg worked on a two-year project in kosi bay, santu mofokeng was documenting everyday life in townships and ruth motau did a series on shebeens. many of the afrapix members felt that their work against the apartheid government came to an end when nelson mandela was released from prison and the political parties were unbanned. during the early 90s afrapix closed, along with many of the alternative publications that had been supporting the resistance movement. the photographers took “widely different directions” (sanner 1999: 261). some opened their own agencies while others either turned to working on long-term projects, or working for the international or local media. the 1994 elections saw the first democratic government come into power and south africa entered the post-apartheid era. the violence became radically reduced to small pockets of faction fighting in traditional zulu strongholds. social documentary photographers, who had been documenting the violence, were forced to reconsider their subject matter or to travel to other destinations to cover violent activity, which was still a topic highly sought after by the international community. there were mixed feelings amongst the social documentary photographers, “…throughout the 1980s, the more violent, the more dramatic the pictures, the better up until 1994, then it just died. there was no demand … it was just like a tap. there was just no more demand. you had to eek out stories… the moment nelson was in power, the minute they got him in power, they unplugged the cable (velasco 2004), while others felt released from what they felt was an obligation, “all i felt was great relief and then carried on doing what i really wanted to do. so it was not for me, a huge obstacle” (williams 2004). south africans had begun the process of placing apartheid behind them and photographers were challenged with a new approach to social documentary work during the 1990s, “we are now in a transitional period, and we need to tell all the stories… there was so much to tell, but it needed some serious thinking on, how do i illustrate this avid story?” (sibeko 2004). although this approach may no longer have been aimed at promoting a particular cause the general approach taken by photographers was to present south africa in a favourable light, promoting the political changes in the country. after the 1994 elections the international audience sought a new type of image, one that portrayed the success of democracy, and the south african photographer had to adapt to a new approach of documenting for an international market place. many documentary photographers had to adjust to a democratic society. at the same time there was a dramatic reduction in the interest and support of the international audience and media. the subject matter that brought many photographers international acclaim prior to 1994 was no longer available and these photographers had to find new ways of generating an income or follow similar types of situations in other parts of the world. “i may have stopped doing that kind of stuff in this country, but my work takes me to 201 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 201 other places. so i went to cover the genocide in rwanda and then off to afghanistan” (silva 2004). after apartheid grundlingh (1999: 250) and josephy (2002: 5) argue that after the 1994 elections photographers were freed from their collective political purpose and forced to redefine their individual photographic identities and aims: after the end of apartheid documentary photography underwent a crisis. the imperative to provide documentation of the ills of apartheid had disappeared and the function of expose seemed redundant in the context of transparency and reconciliation. the new constitution was hailed as being one of the most just and progressive in the world. it gave equal rights to all groups regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, age and religion. as the voice of the other could be heard, there was, apparently no longer a need to speak ‘for’ the silent majority. people could now represent themselves (josephy 2002: 5). josephy (2002: 7) believes that during the 1990s, particularly since liberation in 1994, south african photographers have begun to challenge the discourse of documentary photography. art photographers of the 1990s sometimes contain references to documentary, and contemporary documentary photographers rely more on art conventions than their predecessors. aesthetic considerations began to gain more importance within the documentary image (grundlingh 1999: 250). according to sanner (1999: 261) as south africa heals its wounds from the past, “photographers are channeling their energy into the exploration of other realms of experience”. he further believes that, as a pastime, photography has become more widespread and accessible to more of the population with street photographers making their appearance in many of south africa’s cities and photography, in general, being accepted as an art form in south africa. the coming of democracy in south africa gave birth to a democratic environment which has been endlessly broadcast by the mainstream media and according to langa (2004: 11) resulted in a new generation by the late 1990s, “for whom june16, apartheid and the struggle were as remote as the bambatha rebellion or the anglo-boer war meant to the rest of us”. the photographers from this generation have their own voice and their own way of making sense of their situation within a democratic society but also within a world that is becoming more and more of a global village. what was a consuming subject, in the past, has become a faint memory to many and to those entering the genre, a symbol of the past. conclusion this research has given clear indication that the broadly used term “struggle photography” has underlying complexities based in particular on the political turning points of the 1976 soweto uprisings as well as the release of nelson mandela in 1990. 202 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 202 the period heralded in by the 1976 soweto uprisings can be characterised by a conscious effort of the photographer to address the atrocities of the apartheid government. these photographers were widely supported by an international community who were sympathetic to the struggle against the apartheid government. this support was however conditional as most photographers interviewed who were practising during the 1980s make reference to prescriptions for images that would sell internationally. the community knew that they were being supported in the underground and international media and actively offered support and protection to photographers documenting the violent clashes between protestors and government officials. the government however actively sought to curb the flow of information on violence and political activity introducing laws to enforce their will on the press. these social documentary photographers believed that they were fighting for a good cause and had a good idea of who was in the wrong. when nelson mandela was released in 1990 many of them felt they had achieved their goals and chose to follow their own interpretation of apartheid’s legacy as well as other issues effecting society. the new type of violence that began to emerge just prior to nelson mandela’s release in 1990 was characterised by clashes between political parties and also known as blackon-black violence or faction fighting. photographers documenting the faction fighting were mainly made up of a younger generation. while still being supported by the international media, the local media became a new vehicle for reporting violence due to the apartheid government relaxing the media laws in south africa as the new type of violence was actually in their best interest. the social documentary photographer also gained international competition in the field due to the apartheid government’s changed policies. these photographers no longer enjoyed the communities’ support and help, most times travelling in groups, and often became victims of the violence between opposing forces as well as in the crossfire between peacekeeping forces and the violent clashes. there was no clear-cut idea of who was right and who was wrong, just outbursts of violence in a race for political supremacy. after the 1994 democratic elections these photographers were faced with an abrupt end to their subject matter and either had to re-invent themselves in a postapartheid society or moved on to cover similar situations internationally. endnotes 1 the exhibition was organised by edward steichen at the museum of modern art, new york, in 1955. the family of man consciously omitted conflicts and reduced the conditio humana around the globe to the elements of birth, life, love, joy, tragedy and death (neubauer 1997: 167). it was seen as a message of hope and brotherhood; it marked the triumph of humanism. it was the most remarkable exhibition ever mounted, drawing some ten million visitors from 69 countries. but, as often happens, the climax also turned out to be the limit; and it is fair to say that the later reaction against family of man ushered in the period of truly contemporary photography (osman 1987: 184). 203 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 203 2 peter magubane, interviewed by darren newbury, johannesburg, 2003. the author is grateful to daren newbury for sharing transcripts from his ongoing research on south african documentary photography. 3 unlicensed drinking houses in the township where people met socially. 204 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 204 references becker, h. 1995. visual sociology, documentary photography or photojournalism: it’s (almost) all a matter of context. visual sociology 10(1): 5-14. buell, h. 2000. moments: the pulitzer prize photographs. cologne: könemann. chapnick, h. 1994. truth needs no ally: inside photojournalism. columbia: university of missouri press. grundlingh, k. 1999. the development of photography in south africa. anthology of african and indian ocean photography. paris: revue noire. gubb, l. 2004. personal interview, 22 january. guice, c. 2003. reflections in black. black and 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divendal, j. culture in another south africa. london: zed books. weinberg, p. 2004. personal interview, 2 march. williams, g. 2004. personal interview, 16 january. wulfsohn, g. 2004. personal interview, 16 january. 206 visually representing social change the south african social documentary photographer and the struggle 11. heidi saayman-hattingh 11/18/11 4:02 pm page 206 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /warning /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjdffile false /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice untitled 75 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation communitas issn 1023-0556 2011 16: 75 94 christina jordaan* abstract the legalisation of same-sex marriages in south africa (1999) was a natural progression from the articles of the south african constitution (1996), particularly those contained in the bill of rights, that safeguard individuals from any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation. a legal right to protection against discrimination does not, however, translate to a society free of prejudice and (covert) discrimination, and this can be clearly seen in the way that deeply biased attitudes towards homosexuality1 emerge in public discourse at the level of the ordinary citizen, as well as the politically powerful. the public statements expressing extreme homophobia by a number of high profile individuals in recent years is of particular concern because it not only communicates prejudicial attitude through message transmission, but reinforces such attitudes amongst the intended audience. this kind of prejudicial communication is particularly insidious because it is impossible to prove cause and effect, even though legislation against hate speech is based on the assumption that speech communication can have a measurable harmful effect. this article explores the attitudes towards alternative sexual orientation of a sample group of 58 third-year b.ed. students at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. from the research results reported in this article it appears that there is at least an emerging tolerance towards gays and lesbians amongst the sample of educated young south africans. this is encouraging in view of the promotion of human rights, social justice and inclusion in a democratic south africa. * dr christina jordaan lectures in the faculty of education at the nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth. 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 75 introduction in recent years, a number of high profile individuals have made public statements expressing extreme homophobia, notably president robert mugabe of zimbabwe (die burger 2010b: 5), and the then deputy president of south africa, jacob zuma, who declared: “when i was growing up, a gay guy would not stand in front of me, i would knock him out.” in a documentary on black lesbians that was broadcast on the m-net programme carte blanche (2007) zuma’s statement, made at a political rally in 2006, was used as an insert, and journalist bongani bingwa referred to zuma’s statement, which he had been forced to retract, as indicative of deep-seated homophobia that seemed prevalent among african men. this intolerance for alternative sexual orientation was also, according to the documentary, evident in the violence committed against black lesbians. deeply biased attitudes towards homosexuality emerge in public discourse at the level of the ordinary citizen, as well as the politically powerful. the public statements expressing extreme homophobia referred to above is of particular concern because it not only communicates prejudicial attitude through message transmission, but reinforces such attitudes amongst members of the intended audience. it should be noted that zuma’s statement was made at a political youth rally in kwazulu-natal, and that he played on already existing prejudices, given the cheers his statement elicited. this kind of prejudicial communication is particularly insidious because it is impossible to prove cause and effect in terms of actual behaviour, even though legislation against hate speech is based on the assumption that speech communication can have a measurable harmful effect. in the carte blanche documentary, several interviews with black lesbians revealed incidences of intolerance and severe violence against these women in specifically black african culture. a young black lesbian told of how she was violently gang-raped and forced to have oral sex with various men in order to “teach her that the only acceptable form of sexual intercourse is with men” and to “cure” her of her sexual orientation. in another interview in the same documentary, a lesbian mother of twins told of the abduction, torture and gang-rape of her 13-year-old daughters to “prevent them from becoming like their mother and to teach them that the only acceptable form of sexual intercourse is with men”. as a result of the gang-rape one of the twin daughters committed suicide during 2006. physical attacks and violence against gay men in south africa are also common and well-documented. some of these acts also seem to be based on fundamentalist religious beliefs, for example the gang attack on a gay bar in cape town during 1999 in which six people were injured. according to hoad, martin and reid (2005: 200) the vigilante group pagad (people against gangsterism and drugs) was behind this attack. the attack was motivated by the group’s belief that homosexuality is a satanic state and that the post-apartheid government is a satanic state if they consider homosexuality as a form of human sexuality. 76 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 76 in 1992 the anc adopted a bill of rights which included “sexual orientation” as a right. discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would not be tolerated in the new south africa and this was enshrined in south africa’s constitution in 1996. the post-apartheid constitution, providing protection against discrimination for gays and lesbians, made south africa the first country in the world to guarantee gay and lesbian rights. however, south africa’s social reality is often in stark contrast with the social ideals articulated in the south african constitution and the bill of rights. this fact is underlined and supported by the various reports, articles and documentaries that deal with unfair discrimination based on, inter alia, culture, religion and sexual orientation. the mere inclusion of human rights and freedom of choice in a legal document is not enough to make tolerance and acceptance of differences a social reality. it also raises challenging debates about what the situation would be when personal choices and culture collide. which then becomes the most important – the right to protect the cultural beliefs of the community/society or the freedom of the individual? this article reports on the attitudes towards alternative sexual orientation of a cohort of 58 third-year baccalaureus educationis students at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. this represented a convenience sample and the respondents were not stratified in terms of race and culture. a thematic analysis of student responses to a limited number of statements and questions on homosexuality was conducted and correlated with findings of a literature study. the statements/questions were aimed at eliciting the responses of students regarding the social “acceptability” of alternative sexual orientations (as guaranteed in the bill of rights), as well as their perceptions regarding the impact of culture-specific values on views of alternative sexual orientation. before presenting the research findings, a brief literature study of homosexuality is necessary to contextualize this study. a word on homosexuality homosexuality has existed in all societies, cultures and socio-economic, religious, ethnic and racial groups throughout recorded time. these views and perceptions on homosexuality vary and range from a general tolerance towards homosexuality, for example, in ancient greece, to ideas of homosexuality being a sexual deviation, a mental illness or a perversion that requires psychiatric treatment, to the idea that homosexuality is a fashion. isaacs and mckendrick (1992: xiii) define homosexuality as follows: homosexuality is a broad spectrum of psychological, emotional, and sexual variables in a state of interplay between people of the same sex. homosexuality is not only sexual attraction between people of the same sex, but also includes an emotional as well as a physical bond; a fantasy system; and elements of symbolism, eroticism, and sexuality. homosexuality can be experienced in different degrees. 77 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 77 this definition highlights the complexity of homosexuality and refers to the broad spectrum of variables as well as the different degrees of homosexuality. many scientists have tried to unravel the mysteries of sexual orientation, but it should be noted that many people have misgivings about scientific efforts to understand homosexuality. some view homosexuality as a religious issue, others see it as a lifestyle choice, while others attribute homosexuality to genetic defects, hormonal imbalances, dysfunctional families, childhood sexual abuse and even the work of the devil. the ancient greek tolerance of homosexuality is well-documented. bywater and jones (2007: 6) state: philosophers such as plato, aristotle, leaders such as alexander the great, and writers such as sappho, were all greek and open lovers of members of their own sex. they regarded sexual orientation as more a matter of taste and preference as opposed to being integral to someone’s identity. and sexuality was firmly linked to power and status. this correlates with foucault’s (1978) notion that power works through discourses to shape particular and popular attitudes in society. religion has, and continues to powerfully influence attitudes by providing a meta-narrative (that functions as a “master discourse”) that frames discourses on culture, in particular those regarding beliefs and values. however, it falls outside the scope of this article to explore this aspect beyond a brief consideration of the influence of christianity on attitudes towards sexuality in south africa. christianity has been the main influence on sexual attitudes and behaviour in pre21st century western culture. according to giddens (2006: 489): (…) the christian view was particularly thought out and supported by thomas aquinas in the thirteenth century. he placed an emphasis on a ‘natural’ sexuality where semen was intended by ‘nature’ for reproduction and any other use of it was ‘contrary to nature’ and therefore against god’s will. this resulted in all other sexual acts being condemned as ‘unnatural’ and a sin. masturbation, oral sex, anal sex and homosexual relationships were seen as ‘unnatural’ and evil. the influence of the christian church on current western culture has strongly declined during the last half century, particularly in terms of values and mores that inform personal lifestyles. in spite of this general decline of the church’s influence on public morality, recent research on attitudes towards homosexuality conducted in europe, britain and america by jensen, gambles and olsen (1988) and lane and ersson (2006) shows that aquinas’ typing of alternative sexual orientations as “unnatural” still prevails. similar large-scale research on attitudes towards sexual orientation has not (yet) been conducted in south africa, but given the fact that 79.7% of the population claims to be christian (statistics south africa 2001), it is plausible that the conviction that a heterosexual orientation is the only “natural” one is widely held among south africans. this coincides with a view that homosexuality is “un-african”. 78 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 78 according to amory (1997: 5) there is a tendency to avoid research on homosexuality in african studies, and this tendency is perhaps best captured by the recurring and insistent refrain, “there is no homosexuality in africa!” this refrain is chanted like a mantra by politicians, scholars, and lay people alike, and is often accompanied by the similarly insidious accusation that homosexuality is a “western perversion” imposed upon or adopted by african populations. the debate on homosexuality entered the public domain in south africa only during the 1980s. until the late 1980s the anc had no policy on sexual orientation and some senior officials openly dismissed gay issues as irrelevant. the catalyst was a particular dismissive statement by a member of the national executive committee of the anc, ruth mompati, in 1987 (in hoad et al. 2005: 190): i hope that in a liberated south africa people will live a normal life. i emphasise the word normal ... tell me, are lesbians and gays normal? no. it is not normal. i cannot even begin to understand why people want gay and lesbian rights. the gays have no problems. they have nice homes and plenty to eat. i don’t see them suffering. no one is persecuting them. we haven’t heard about this problem in south africa until recently. it seems to be fashionable in the west. she saw the gay issue as a “red herring” detracting attention from the main struggle against apartheid, and justified the anc’s lack of policy on lesbian and gay rights by stating, “‘we don’t have a policy on flower sellers’ either. in her view, lesbians and gays are ‘(...) not normal. if everyone was like that, the human race would come to an end’” (hoad et al. 2005: 190). her statements also clearly imply that homosexuality does not occur amongst black south africans, since, according to her, gays and lesbians “have nice homes and plenty to eat” – thus excluding the majority of black south africans from the categories “gay” and “lesbian”. solly smith (in hoad et al. 2005: 143), the liberation movement’s chief representative in britain, expressed a similar dismissal of gays and lesbians: we don’t have a policy. lesbian and gay rights do not arise in the anc. we cannot be diverted from our struggle by these issues. we believe in the majority being equal. these people (gays and lesbians) are in the minority. the majority must rule. it was only during the nineties that the anc discourse started to create space for minorities, and the efforts of various senior anc members, including frene ginwala, albie sachs and kader asmal, persuaded the anc leadership to re-evaluate their stance on gay issues and to include the rights of gays and lesbians in the constitution, making south africa the first country in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. gay and lesbian rights was not part of the anc discourse, but entered it through its members in exile who were exposed to the liberal discourses of social democratic movements. according to mark gevisser (2000: 118): 79 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 79 the primary reason why the notion of gay equality passed so smoothly in the constitution is most likely that the anc elite have a utopian progressive ideology, influenced largely by the social-democratic movements in the countries that supported it during its struggle: sweden, holland, britain, canada, and australia. despite the inclusion of the gay rights clause in the constitution, homophobia is intense and widespread in post-apartheid south africa. gays and lesbians continue to be denied cultural recognition and are subject to shaming, harassment, discrimination and violence. a particular hostile set of attitudinal constraints cohere around the notion that homosexuality is “un-african”. this has been most crudely stated by the president of zimbabwe, robert mugabe, who in mid-1995 declared that gays were perverts and that their behaviour was worse than that of pigs. “they are lower than dogs and pigs, for these animals don’t know homosexual behaviour” (tribune 1997). in a letter to a johannesburg newspaper, the star, a reader praised mugabe because “(...) he espouses and cherishes our traditions and customs. homosexuality is an aberration to all thinking africans and indeed to most of civilised mankind. homosexuals are regarded as an abominable species, which must be punished and locked up.” the letter ends, “viva robert mugabe ... who defends our continent from satanists, sodomists and faggots” (the star 1998). although discrimination against gays and lesbians is illegal in south africa, negative attitudes persist. the following results of a survey of attitudes within the south african national defence force conducted during 2000 support this statement (hoad et al. 2005: 201): • only one quarter of the 3 000 participants felt good about the integration of gays and lesbians in the military; • almost a third (30.6%) did not want to share their mess facilities with gays and lesbians; • almost half (46.9% and 49.3% of the african respondents) felt that the integration of gays and lesbians would lead to a loss of military effectiveness; and • almost a third (31%) felt that gays and lesbians were morally weaker than heterosexual people. in journalist j.h. thompson’s book an unpopular war (2006) she covers the full range of experiences by national servicemen during the era of the “border war”, and also deals with the experiences of a hitherto “silent” minority, the homosexual conscript, through extensive interviews with actual servicemen. these recorded experiences range from fear of being “found out”, to exploitation of other servicemen’s homophobic fears, to the psychiatric “treatment” of gay conscientious objectors while in detention in pretoria. this “treatment” reminds of primitive 18th century practices, and in some 80 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 80 instances involved a pavlovian approach with electric shocks administered to the “patient” should he become aroused by pictures of naked males (cf. van zyl et al.1999). it boggles the mind that this kind of “therapy”, clearly founded on the notion that homosexuality was a disease that had to be “cured”, took place in south africa scarcely a decade before the adoption of the bill of rights. delimitation, research design and methodology this study is exploratory and analyses the perceptions and attitudes of 58 third-year education students at the nelson mandela metropolitan university. the research group is a convenience sample as all the students who are registered for the third year study for the b.ed. degree in intermediate phase studies were included in the study. the research sample consisted of a diverse, heterogeneous, multi-cultural group of 58 students. of the sample 19 (36%) were male and 39 (64%) were female. the purpose of this research was to understand current perceptions of a cohort of university students regarding homosexuality and to determine their level of acceptance of homosexuality. a mixed-method research approach was applied as both numerical information and text information were collected and analysed. the research was open and not directed by a prescriptive framework, preconceived ideas or formal hypotheses. it has been the experience of this researcher that designing a research questionnaire with a minimum of questions, phrased in an almost naïve way, was very effective in generating responses intended for a thematic analysis. conventional questionnaires consisting of many questions invariably exhibit inherent themes, and can therefore “prime” respondents to generate these same themes in their responses. data collection was done by means of the written recording of responses to two statements and two open-ended questions. the questionnaires were handed directly to respondents with the request to complete the questionnaire without prior discussion. the analysis of the data was done by identifying recurring themes and was scored by calculating the frequency of each theme. the following questions/statements were put to the group: 1) homosexuality is a normal and acceptable form of sexual orientation. 2) why do you think some people are homosexual? 3) indicate all cultural perceptions regarding homosexuality that you are aware of. 4) will you accept a homosexual person as your best friend? analysis and interpretations of data table 1 reflects the biographical data pertaining to the research sample. 81 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 81 table 1: biographical data statement one: homosexuality is a normal and acceptable form of sexual orientation respondents had to indicate on a scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree whether they perceive homosexuality as a normal and acceptable form of sexual orientation. table 2: analysis of statement one 82 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 82 the analysis of this question revealed that 28 respondents disagree that homosexuality is normal and an acceptable form of sexual orientation. 19 respondents indicated that homosexuality is an acceptable form of sexual orientation, while 11 respondents indicated that they were uncertain. the majority of respondents expressed a negative attitude towards the acceptance of homosexuality as a normal form of sexuality. this finding appears to be in line with the perception of various theorists and 19th century sexologists as well as current religious and cultural perceptions, as mentioned earlier. although the majority of respondents expressed a negative attitude towards the normality of homosexuality as an acceptable form of sexual orientation, significant in this regard is the fact that 30 of the respondents between the ages of 20-26 years indicated a more tolerant attitude and general acceptance of homosexuality. this finding is especially encouraging in view of the promotion of human rights, social justice and inclusion in a democratic south africa. the above findings show strong correlation with findings reported by jensen, gambles and olsen (1988: 51) on research done in spain, germany and england, who found that “younger and more educated people had more approval of homosexuality”. another interesting observation from this analysis is that a significantly larger number of female respondents than male respondents chose the acceptance and strong acceptance option. in total 19 respondents indicated that homosexuality is an acceptable form of sexual orientation, of which 14 were females and 5 males. this finding is supported by research done by lane and ersson (2006: 57) in america, northern ireland, the netherlands and sweden who concluded that “ ... women, young, well-educated and high incomes are conducive to less negative orientations towards homosexuality”. question two: why do you think some people are homosexual? this open-ended question required of respondents to indicate possible causes for homosexuality. the results were analysed according to correlation between responses and were categorised according to identified themes. the question yielded 83 responses from the survey group of 58 respondents. these responses were analysed and consolidated into 10 sub-themes, as indicated in table 2: 83 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 83 table 3: responses to question two ten sub-themes were identified, but since five of these represent marginal responses (less than 5% frequency) only the first five sub-themes are discussed. • theme 1: social and emotional consequences of child abuse, rape, violence or injury by the opposite sex based on the number of responses (21), the majority of the respondents felt that homosexuality was the result of either sexual abuse as a child, rape, physical and sexual violence against a partner by the opposite sex and continuous disappointments in romantic relationships and rejection by partners of the opposite sex. 84 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 84 the following verbatim responses typify this theme: people who are homosexual have also been previously molested or raped and this sometimes leads to confusion of their sexual preference. some other people become homosexual because for some reason like they have been hurt in life by the opposite sex and feel that they can be better off with people of the same gender who will understand how they feel. girl was raped, so she has a hate for all men and then turn to women for comfort and security. it might be due to trauma like abuse from their childhood. they could also have gone through a rough break up with a partner and then turn gay. the literature research reveals contradicting views on the relation between child sexual abuse and homosexuality. in this regard bass and davis (1992: 256) quote the revelation of a female survivor of child sexual abuse who says: “if you were abused by a man, you may find male genitals scary or repulsive.” both these authors are survivors from childhood sexual abuse, and admit that they themselves believed that they were lesbians because they had been so badly abused by their fathers. however, they claim that this belief is mostly due to the fact that “some survivors still believe that there is something wrong with them that caused them to be lesbian – that if they hadn’t been damaged sexually, they’d be heterosexual” (ibid.). • theme 2: own preference and choice this theme scored the second highest number of responses (20). according to the majority of the respondents homosexuality is an individual’s own choice and preference. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: i just know that you have the freedom to love whom ever who want to and it does not matter if it’s a male or female, its your happiness should be most important. i think it is a matter of preference. and once a person enjoys another person’s company they are physically attracted to the person. so it’s a matter of preference. it’s their personal choice. i think they choose to be that way, they adopt or form their own identity. it is their own feelings or life experiences which affect how they feel or their sexual preferences are. i think some people are homosexual because they choose to be. these findings indicate strong support for the acknowledgement of homosexuality as a personal choice and an acceptable lifestyle. this postulates a positive finding especially in the light of the acknowledgement of human rights and the acknowledgement of 85 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 85 freedom of choice and individuality. as such it shows a clear link with the response to statement one, strengthening the possibility that the promotion of human rights, social justice and inclusion in a democratic south africa can indeed promote tolerance and acceptance of various sexual orientations amongst the educated youth in south africa. • theme 3: genetic reasons this theme yielded 18 responses and is significant in terms of more resent bio-medical research on homosexuality. a concerning fact however, is the expressed view of a significant number of these respondents that homosexuality is a medical or psychological disorder that can, and indeed should be “rectified” or at least treated. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: they have a hormonal problem. it is some form of a disability that needs attention and i believe can be rectified. it could just be in their genes, i think that most who are homosexual doesn’t actually choose to be that way and that many of them actually wish not to be like that but it just is the way that they are. much has been written on possible biological “causes” for homosexuality. in 1991 moir and jessel published the controversial book brain sex in which they report on research where it was shown that the sexual orientation of rats could be pre-determined by manipulating hormone levels in the mother rat (cf. mcknight 2000; mcknight & malcolm 2000; alexander 2000). at this point there is, however, no clear consensus regarding biological factors and sexual orientation. • theme 4: absence of gender role models six female respondents and four male respondents gave answers that indicate the absence of a particular gender role model as a reason for homosexuality. these responses represent 17% of the overall responses and is significant in the perception that homosexuality is due to identification with gender role models. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: the absence of a father/mother. being exposed to friends with only one sex. not getting to do with the other sex. it has to do with the way they grew up and were treated. a man must be a man, so as a woman. only have friends of the same sex. significant in this regard is the correspondence with african literature perspectives indicating the importance of external agents to explain human behaviour. viljoen (2003: 534) states in this regard: 86 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 86 in contrast to some western-oriented theories that explain behaviour as the outcome of intrapsychic dynamics (such as freud, jung and erikson) or interpersonal dynamics (such as adler, horney and rogers), the african perspective attributes behaviour wholly to external agents outside the person. individuals cannot therefore hold themselves responsible or accountable for their own behaviour because the cause of all behaviour and events are ascribed to external, supernatural beings or powers. • theme 5: want to make a fashion statement although this theme only yielded a 12% response it is interesting in that it contradicts the prevalent theories on homosexuality. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: i personally think that some people are trying to make a ‘fashion’ statement. fashion. most of them they like to go with their friends’ style. i think it is becoming more of a fashion than people really being homosexual. hall (2003: 74) quotes judith butler who said: i can get up in the morning, look in my closet, and decide which gender i want to be today. i can take out a piece of clothing and change my gender, stylish it, and then that evening i can change it again and be something radically other, so that what you get is something like the co-modification of gender, and the understanding of taking on a gender as a kind of consumerism. • themes 6, 7 and 8: identity confusion, psychological pathology and satanism although these themes yielded very low percentages of responses it is significant as it captures some of the negative perceptions of homosexuality. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: it is because it’s satanism the changes that are taking place in the world and i believe something wrong has happened to these people. as people get educated they get some of the things wrong really. to me it is person that has no value and it’s dirty. these responses will be linked with the responses on cultural perceptions as the analysing of the data revealed a correlation between these findings. question three: indicate all cultural perceptions regarding homosexuality that you are aware of the third question was analysed according to gender and yielded 46 responses from the survey group of 58 respondents. these responses were analysed and consolidated into 4 sub-themes. 87 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 87 significant also is the fact that 17 respondents did not provide any response to this question. this might indicate an over-sensitivity regarding issues of culture in relation to sexuality, and an unwillingness to venture into what might be considered by some to constitute cultural stereotyping. table 4: cultural perceptions regarding homosexuality • theme 1: religious convictions the majority of the respondents indicated religious convictions and beliefs as the main reason why homosexuality is an unacceptable form of sexual orientation. the following verbatim responses typify the theme: jehova’s witness – it’s all manifested and based on the bible principle that says ‘no man, who sleeps with man will enter the kingdom of god! what more prove do you need? men and women are design and created to be together. christians glo dit is ‘n sonde, maar ek ook want in die bybel staan daar dat die here teen dit is [christian believe it is a sin but so do i because in the bible it is written that god is against it]. some cultures believe that you will be punished for being gay. christians belief that gay people do not go to heaven. that it is a sin. against some people’s religions and also against their moral values. that god made a woman for a man and not the same sex to have each other. that homosexual can’t go to heaven. man is made for a woman and not same genders. in my culture homosexuality is seen as a demonic practice. these findings are in line with literature on the topic and confirm that religion and religious beliefs still play a major role in adolescents’ perceptions and attitudes about homosexuality that prevail even many years after a generally more liberal attitude to sexual orientation has manifested itself. the findings of this limited study are in line with the research findings by jensen, gambles and olsen (1988: 47) based on a research 88 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 88 sample of 4766 respondents from england, spain and germany which indicated that the majority of respondents believe that homosexuality can never be justified and is always wrong. this has led the researchers to conclude that “[r]eligion and political values have a direct impact on the acceptance of the belief that homosexuality can be justified” (ibid.). • theme 2: social practices although this theme yielded only 10 (22%) responses it is considered significant as the responses reflect evidence of rather harsh social reaction against homosexuality by specific social and cultural groups. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: it is forbidden to be homosexual more especially to an african tradition in my culture, xhosa of course this things is not allowed. your parents can even chase you away from home because a woman and man separately have their own ways of coming up as men and women but not homosexual men/women. these people are not accepted by other people black culture ostrosizes lesbians. conservative christian, hindu, muslim families outcast their own children. the black culture are totally against it, it is wrong, a male must be with a female. these responses and findings clearly reflect an intolerance and rejection of homosexuals, supporting various literature findings. interesting, however, is to note that this seems to be the case in other countries as well. loftus (2001: 764) for instance refer to research done in america and concluded that: ... older, less educated people, african americans, people living in the south of midwest, males, people residing in small communities and religious fundamentalists are more negative toward homosexuals than are younger, more educated people, whites, those living on the pacific coast, females, residents of big cities or big city suburbs, and religious liberals. • theme 3: psychological pathology although this theme yielded only 4 responses it is considered significant as it presents correlation with various research studies documented in the literature. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: these people are sick, they need some customs to be done for themselves they are crazy, perverted, confused some are seen as perverted or chemically imbalanced. 89 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 89 • theme 4: homosexuals are hiv positive although this theme yielded only 2 (4%) responses it is considered significant as it is distressing that young educated adolescents still identify homosexuality with hiv despite the implementation of various hiv/aids educational programmes and public information sharing on the myths and misconceptions regarding hiv. the following verbatim responses typify this theme: gay people are not hiv negative gays are hiv carriers question four: would you accept a homosexual person as your best friend? the fourth question was phrased as a closed question. respondents had to select one of the options indicated in the table 5. the data is recorded according to gender. table 5: will you accept a homosexual person as your best friend? the analysis of this question revealed that 28 respondents will accept a homosexual person as a best friend, while 15 respondents indicated that they might accept a homosexual as a best friend. fifteen respondents indicated that they will not accept a homosexual person as a best friend. 90 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 90 conclusion the literature review reveals that homosexuality has always been, and remains a contentious topic, despite wide-spread attempts for more understanding and tolerance of this form of sexual orientation. although homosexuality has always existed in all societies, cultures and socio-economic, religious, ethnic and racial groups throughout recorded time, and has been the topic of many books, conference papers, academic articles and even political debates, it seems that general consensus about the acceptance and normality of this lifestyle is still a far cry away. despite major progress in south africa on various aspects of homosexuality, like the adoption of the south african constitution in 1996 and the legalisation of same-sex marriages in 2009, there are still wide-spread evidence of discrimination and violence against, rejection of, and fear of identification with homosexuals in south african society. a typical example of this is found in an article in rapport (scholtz 2010: 4) titled “gay vrou aangeval: ‘ek sal jou reg skop’”. in this story scholtz captures the events at a birthday party in may 2010 when a lesbian woman was violently attacked by another woman and kicked between her legs several times because she is homosexual. according to scholtz the two women belong to the same religious denomination and on the identified date started arguing about the illegal parking of the one’s car on the property of the other woman. the lesbian woman claims that she was then attacked by the other woman and so badly injured that she lost consciousness and had to be taken from the scene in an ambulance. she later had to undergo surgery. she claims that the other woman said: “ek sal jou p*** vir jou reg skop, want die here het hom gemaak sodat ‘n man en vrou seks kan hê en ‘n kind in die wêreld bring. jy is ‘n abominasie in god se oë.” [i will kick your c*** until it’s fixed because the lord made him so that a man and a woman can have sex and bring a child into the world. you are an abomination in god’s eyes.] however, it is clear that homosexuality is also treated with reservation and even inhumane behaviour in other communities and countries and is not restricted to south africa. for example, ian herbert reports on an attempt by the british professional footballers’ association to involve professional footballers in a campaign video which aims to use high-profile players as figureheads in a drive against homophobia. according to herbert the british footballers refused to appear in the campaign video “because they fear being ridiculed for taking a stand against one of the sport’s most stubborn taboos” (saturday star 2010). in most african countries homosexuality is still illegal and punishable by law. a recent case in malawi where a gay couple was arrested on their engagement party and sentenced to 14 years hard labour elicited strong reaction from various gay rights groups in the world (die burger 2010a). the malawian president has since pardoned the couple, but other african rulers remain resolute in their outright condemnation of homosexuality, a case in point being zimbabwe’s mugabe who, as recently as july 91 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 91 2010, vowed that gay rights would not feature in the country’s still to be formulated new constitution. however, from the research results reported in this article it appear that there is at least an emerging tolerance towards homosexuals amongst the sample of educated young south africans. this is encouraging in view of the promotion of human rights, social justice and inclusion in a democratic south africa. encouraging also is the fact that the majority of respondents indicated that they would accept a homosexual person as a friend, in sharp contrast to the outright condemnation of homosexuality by various leaders in africa. perceptions regarding the causes of homosexuality and its stigmatisation as a disease or mental disorder also seem to be changing, with the adoption of more realistic and humane positions as outlined in the literature study, and confirmed by the responses of the limited research sample. it is clear that further research on homosexuality and related issues is needed and “that a constitution guaranteeing freedom from discrimination on the grounds of gender, race and sexual orientation, inter alia, is far from sufficient in creating a sexually free and empowered citizenry” (hoad et al. 2005: 19) endnotes 1 the term is used inclusively and does not only refer to the traditional concept of same-sex relationships between males, but includes lesbian relationships. see isaacs and mckendrick (1992). 92 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 92 references alexander, j.e. 2000. biological influences on homosexuality: current findings and future directions. psychology, evolution and gender 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[online]. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/c2001primtables.asp [accessed on 05/05/2010]. the star, 24 april 1998. thompson, j.h. 2006. an unpopular war. from afkak to bosbefok. voices of south african national servicemen. cape town: zebra press. tribune, 24 october 1997. van zyl, m., de gruchy, j., lapinsky, s., lewin, s. and reid, g. 1999. the aversion project: human rights abuses of gays and lesbians in the south african defense force by health worker during the apartheid era. cape town: simply said and done. viljoen, h. 2003. african perspectives. in: meyer, w., moore, c. and viljoen, h. 2003. personology: from individual to ecosystem. cape town: heinemann. 94 public discourse and the attitudes of university students towards homosexuality as a sexual orientation 5. christina jordaan 11/18/11 3:48 pm page 94 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice 1 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa: a motivation for a new broadcasting model (television) pj fourie* abstract in the article it is argued that south africa needs a new broadcasting model. such a model should go beyond the present three-tier system and the reithian model. a single level with distributed or wider-dissemination public service broadcasting is suggested. the motivation is set against the background of the present (july 2013) (systemic) governance and managerial problems of the south african public service broadcaster (the sabc), the changed nature of public service broadcasting in the new media environment and a discussion of the changed thinking underlying broadcasting policy and public service broadcasting research related to, inter alia, the changed and changing nature of “public service”, “social responsibility” and the changed political economy of public service broadcasting. * professor pieter fourie lectures in communication science in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. research for this article was funded by the nrf. communitas issn 1023-0556 2013 18: 1-20 2 pj fourie introduction the purpose of the article is to motivate why south africa needs a new broadcasting model. this is done by briefly (1) discussing the present state of the south african public broadcaster related to governance and management as the cornerstone of independent public service broadcasting (psb); (2) by considering the impact of the new media environment on broadcasting and the impact thereof on the future of psb in south africa; and (3) referring to the impact of the changed phenomenology of public service broadcasting on psb’s future. the focus is on television and does not concern radio and new online or internet-based media. on 10 march 2013 the chairperson of the board of the south african broadcasting corporation (sabc) and his deputy resigned. this came after months of political and managerial turmoil in the board and in the executive management of the sabc. this turmoil was preceded by various efforts of the government to interfere with the board and executive appointments and efforts towards legislation affecting the political independence of the public broadcaster. besides government interference with and control over the public broadcaster under apartheid (cf. e.g. louw 1993), recent interference can be traced back to the early 1990s. it started shortly after the demise of apartheid and the adoption of new broadcasting legislation (cf. south africa 1999). various south african scholars have dealt with aspects of this history of south african broadcasting including the apartheid government’s authoritarian hold over broadcasting and particularly the sabc (as a state broadcaster). see in this regard, for example duncan and glenn (2010), louw (1993), louw and milton (2012) and teer-tomaselli (2005; 2011). the new legislation was the result of participatory consultation between key role players in the broadcasting sector, government, and civic society groups, formal inquiries and legislative processes including green and white papers, draft bills, etc. (cf. e.g. fourie 2003; duncan & glenn 2010). a key rationale for the new legislation was to turn apartheid’s state broadcaster into a democratic public broadcaster and to provide for the liberalisation and pluralisation of broadcasting in south africa (cf. e.g. teer-tomaselli 1993; 2005; 2011). the mandate of the sabc is firmly based on classic reithian psb principles. the principles can be summarised as a broadcasting service(s) which (from a normative perspective) provides a space for free expression and open debate, provides objective and impartial information and news, addresses a variety of social and cultural interests and tastes (plurality and diversity), provides services in as many of a country’s (official) languages as possible, gives a voice to minorities in a society, provides educational programming, contributes towards nation-building and a national identity, sets high production and programming standards, and is accessible to as many citizens as possible (universal service). 3 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa the degree to which the sabc has succeeded in fulfilling such a mandate is often questioned and critiqued by scholars, ngos and the media. however, it should be acknowledged that psb is universally battling to fulfil a mandate such as described above, leading to its future often being questioned. see in this regard, for example, the research and publications of the research group ripe (2013). nevertheless, it can be argued that the sabc is an organisation beleaguered by governance and managerial problems, financial problems, and problems related to production and programming (cf. e.g. blignaut 2013; duncan 2008; 2013; lloyd, duncan, minnie & bussiek 2010; mbanjwa & ndlangisa 2013; media monitoring africa 2012; styan 2013a; s.o.s. 20131). in the following paragraphs only the most recent governance and managerial problems of the sabc are discussed. this is done to add to the existing work dealing with aspects of the sabc’s governance, management and future by scholars such as duncan (2006; 2008), duncan and glenn (2010), louw and milton (2012) and teer-tomaselli (1998; 2005; 2011). the loss of independence: governance and management early in the history of the new (post-apartheid) sabc it was necessary for the then chair of the board and later minister of communications, the late ivy matsepe-casaburri, to give the assurance that the board would not allow government to interfere with its independence, neither would the board and the executive interfere with or influence management and editorial decision-making (cf. monare 2013:16). the opposite has happened. in 2013, monare (ibid.), for example, writes: “... the broadcaster has known no peace, with the board trying to appease politicians – or factions within the same party (the anc). for instance, the board is supposed to report to parliament, but the executive tend to interfere, while some mps are embedded in factional battles, instead of serving the public’s interest.” suffice to say that since 1994 there were various examples of governmental interference with the appointment of members of the sabc’s board and executive officers (cf. louw & milton’s 2012 analysis of how politics impacted on the governance and management of the sabc). the most recent case is illustrated by the resignation in march 2013 of the chairperson of the board, ben ngubane, and the remaining members of the board. the resignations coincided with accusations of corruption against the minister of communications, dina pule. soon after the appointment of the board in 2009, problems such as the following resurfaced: 4 pj fourie ♦ key corporate governance policies remained unformulated or inadequate; ♦ a lack of clarity about various policies continued across the entire sabc; ♦ a coherent turnaround strategy remained to be overseen; and ♦ irregularities in the application of the sabc’s own editorial policies continued (cf. s.o.s. 2013.) these and related problems led to the appointment of three corporate executive officers in the space of two years. in 2010, eight months after the “new” board was appointment, five senior members of the board resigned. they gave the following as reasons for their resignation: internal strife in the board, poor governance and undue interference from the communications ministry, a lack of support or political will from oversight structures (e.g. icasa) to champion the board’s efforts in turning the sabc around, and ministerial interference (cf. s.o.s. 2013). ngubane gave ministerial interference with the appointment of the sabc’s chief financial officer as his main reason for resignation (bailey & nkomo 2013: 1). his, and the resignation of the majority of the remaining members of the board, left parliament’s communication portfolio committee with no choice but to dissolve the board and to appoint a new five-member interim board. the political opposition immediately claimed these appointments had been bulldozed by the african national congress (anc), were non-transparent and inadequate, and did not contribute to the embattled sabc and the solving of the broadcaster’s problems. early in march 2013, the public protector, thuli madonsela, announced that her office is stepping up its investigation into “systemic governance failure at the level of the board and various allegations regarding certain appointments, dismissals and salaries at the public broadcaster” (blignaut 2013: 1). according to blignaut, the public protector’s office has, in the course of two years, received a vast number of complaints about the sabc, outlining improper appointments, unfair dismissals and ethical lapses in governance. in the months prior to the board’s resignation and shortly after it, the minister of communications, dina pule, was increasingly exposed by the media for poor management and corruption. she has been accused of mismanagement, including extravagant spending of public money on personal luxuries, favouritism, and the lack of managing the process of digitisation, causing backlogs and placing south africa on a slide in terms of ict development and expansion. pule was also exposed in the sunday times on 24 march 2013 for allegedly allowing her boyfriend to appoint friends and relatives to the boards of the post office, sentech, the universal service and access agency (usaasa) and the sabc. at the time of writing (july/august 2013), the minister was under investigation by parliament’s ethics committee. on 9 july 2013, president jacob zuma reshuffled 5 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa his cabinet (for the fourth time in his first five-year term). in the process he got rid of pule and appointed a new minister of communications, yunus carrim. in august 2013, parliament’s joint committee on ethics found pule guilty of breaching the code of conduct for members of parliament and recommended that the police and the national prosecuting authority investigate her case in terms of the powers and privileges act of parliament. carrim undertook to pay urgent attention to south africa’s backlog in the fields of digitisation and broadband development (including internet costs) and to the functioning and effectiveness of the sabc board and the broadcaster’s relation with and to government. in august 2013 new reports about the sabc’s financial and human resource mismanagement featured in the media and in parliament (cf. styan 2013b: 2; van wyk 2013: 1). duncan (2013: 4) attributes the problems of the sabc to four strategies which have created a structural weakness in the sabc: ♦ a strategy to corporatise the organisation with the purpose to free the state from having to fund it. this has made the sabc even more reliant on advertising, which in turn confused the public broadcaster’s mandate and caused institutional instability. ♦ an increase of government control (through legislation), giving the minister of communications “extensive” powers over the sabc. ♦ the sabc centralising its operations in an effort to save costs. this led to, inter alia, the closing of regional offices, less local content, and making the broadcaster less accessible to audiences. ♦ a strategy to reduce public accountability. elsewhere duncan and glenn (2010) ascribe many of the problems experienced, especially with public television in south africa, to managerial decisions which placed the public broadcaster on a road of marketisation which, according to fourie (2004), has led to the loss of a public service ethos. in addition to governance and managerial problems, questions are asked regularly about the sabc’s editorial independence, the sabc’s financial management, and about programming and production problems. as far as editorial independence is concerned, many examples can be cited of political favouritism leading to meddling with programme content and the shelving and rescheduling of programmes, leaving opposition parties in parliament to call for an investigation into political interference in the sabc (mouton 2012; strydom 2012). in terms of financing, the need for a new model is increasingly raised. the sabc’s reliance on advertising as its main source of income places the sabc on 6 pj fourie a high level of (unfair) competition with the private sector and it can be argued undermines the broadcaster’s remit to address audiences first of all as citizens and not as consumers. in 2013 almost 87% of its income came from advertisements, 11% from licence fees, and the remainder from government which was earmarked for educational programmes (green 2013: 3). this makes the sabc one of the only public broadcasters in the world that has to rely almost exclusively on commercial revenue to fund its operations. in 2010, lloyd et al. (2010: 146-173) gave a comprehensive analysis2 of the sabc’s financial position. they concluded with arguments in favour of a new funding model, taking into account, inter alia, performance indicators and transparency. according to the authors, such a model will be the only solution to the corporation’s financial woes. in relation to programming, production and technological development, several issues exist. whereas the sabc as the public broadcaster is especially expected to contribute to education, nation-building and national identity (see earlier reference to the principles of public broadcasting), the topic of local content3 as one of the main programming and production vehicles for such a contribution is particularly relevant. in this regard, media monitoring africa found that in terms of local content, 28% of the sabc’s broadcasting time was repeats. the report also found that despite a commitment to language diversity, english dominated, and was used in 76% of the sabc’s programming. the most broadcast genre was soap operas4 (cf. media monitoring africa 2012: 9-29). in regards to technological development, the sabc is negatively affected by especially the government’s floundering with decisions about digitisation. this has been the case since 2001, and has caused the deferment of the implementation date a number of times. the original switchover date of 2008 has been moved to 2015, leaving south africa to lag behind neighbouring countries such as botswana, lesotho and tanzania and negatively impacting on the sabc’s capacity to expand (cf. hoffstatter 2013). in addition to government interference causing the sabc to lose credibility, the problems briefly referred to above add up to a public questioning of the value of a public broadcaster. such questioning was most recently expressed in the media by thlabi (2013: 2) when she wrote: i can confidently say that the commercial media in south africa have taken up the roles of whistle-blower, social worker, legal adviser, trauma councillor, fundraiser, and so forth. i know for a fact that employees in commercial media are doing more for the community than all the channels of the public broadcaster together. community radio and tv channels are also doing amazing 7 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa work not only in broadcasting content, but in highlighting the problems of the communities they serve. so do we need the sabc? no, we do not. it may not be dead yet, but it is definitely on the verge of becoming obsolete. in the same vein, and in favour of private broadcasters, business day (2013) wrote in an editorial on 12 march 2013: south africa is [as a result of the crises at the sabcpjf] consequently getting very little tv and radio, while commercial broadcasters have to compete against the enormous, publicly funded behemoth. the deep irony is that they [commercial broadcasters] are managing to do so successfully. even without the subsidies and tax infusions and the huge infrastructure advantage enjoyed by the sabc, e.tv, for example, is doing quite well, as are some of the private radio stations, an extraordinary indication of the impotence at the sabc. to conclude: of all the problems the sabc may experience, and despite the inherent attributes and possibilities of psb in terms of access, addressing a diversity of public needs, etc., it is government interference and assaults on the political independence of the sabc that threatens the future existence of the sabc most. it should, however, be acknowledged that such interference is not only a south african problem but a structural and endemic problem of public service broadcasting as such. it is one of the main reasons for the questioning of psb’s future and an almost universal search for a new broadcasting model (at least as far as public service television is concerned). in the new media environment, which is far more democratised than has been the case in the era of scarce frequencies and top-down approaches to audiences, government interference in the governance and management of a broadcaster has become indefensible and poses a far greater threat to a broadcaster’s existence than has been the case in the past. a fundamental reason for south african psb being prone to government interference may be found in the initial british psb model, or the so-called “reithian” model (cf. hallin & mancini 2004). this model was (is) deeply informed by principles of social engineering in a uniformed society. with hindsight, it can be argued that this model was never appropriate for the south african society with its diverse cultures, languages and economies. it is a model exposed to political misuse as has happened under british colonialism, thereafter by the national party for the propaganda of apartheid ideology, and lately by the anc government for its own political agenda (cf. duncan 2006; 2008; fourie 2009; teer-tomaselli 2011). replacing the model is becoming increasingly unavoidable. the new media environment and psb moving away from the sabc, a second main reason for a new model is the changed media environment brought about by developments in communication and 8 pj fourie information technology (ict). amongst many consequences, ict has eliminated one of the main reasons for psb coming into existence in the 1930s, namely the scarcity of broadcasting frequencies. new broadcasting technology has expanded frequencies and their scope and therefore the availability and potential availability of stations and channels. the new media environment is characterised by new distribution platforms giving rise to multi-media approaches, a bigger diversity of media, a high level of interactivity between communicators and users (audiences), the convergence of public and private media, a blurring of media genres, niche markets and changed audiences with new viewing habits (from linear to non-linear viewing), uses and needs. as bardoel and d’haenens (2008: 341-342) write, the new media have created a fuller broadcasting environment with new media taking over the binding role of the traditional mass media. most of all, the new media environment is characterised by digitisation. digitisation makes the achievement of access goals (one of psb’s main principles) easier. by providing possibilities and opportunities for more voices, digitisation requires new ways of thinking about the democratic role of broadcasting, what constitutes democracy, different kinds of democracy, and different relations between the media and democracy. the multi-platforms created by and through digitisation also make it easier to address minority audiences, a diversity of interests, and provide more opportunities for the production of quality programming. in short, digitisation weakens public broadcasters’ justification that (only) they can play a role in the provision of universal access and in producing quality programming for various and diverse audiences (cf. debrett 2009: 809-810). in so far as the financing of psb is concerned, “… the traditional threefold task [of psb-pjf] as formulated by reith (information, education, entertainment) is no longer an adequate basis for the operation and financing of psb” (coppens & saeys 2006: 263). in the new media environment, broadcasting has (or can) become multi-functional in a networked, interactive mass communication environment. this, as well as the possibilities of an increase of hybrid-funded broadcasters, broadband piloting of programme and programme concepts, the targeting of particular audiences, on-demand media, and increased competition, should form the guiding principles for funding. south africa and psb in south africa have not escaped any of the above characteristics and consequences of the new media environment. to the contrary, the new media and media environment have also made the justification of psb as a separate kind of broadcasting (within the present three-tier model) with an exclusive mandate, regulatory protection and financial advantages in south africa fragile and insecure. it is this uncertain future of psb that has been dealt with in 9 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa depth by the international research group ripe (2013) and in south africa by, for example, teer-tomaselli (1998; 2011). in the european context the uncertainty and fragility of psb has also necessitated recent research by the european broadcasting union under the combined title of vision 2020: future strategies for psm. a preliminary indication is that in a new european broadcasting model psb will have to exist only as a “unit” amongst various broadcasting platforms (cf. bierman, leurdijk & suárez-candel 2013). new thinking about broadcasting besides the new media environment, a fundamental reason for a new broadcasting model is the new “phenomenology” of broadcasting dictated by, inter alia, the changed nature of social responsibility, public interest, public opinion and the new public sphere, the changed nature of broadcasting as mass communication and the changed political economy of public service broadcasting. over a period, many academics have become uncomfortable with psb as a concept and as a model. in many conferences, seminars and publications the problems besetting psb have been and are analysed and solutions to the problems are suggested. the topic has been dealt with from the perspectives of different mass communication theories emanating from different policy paradigms (cf. e.g. ripe 2013). a recent conference at mit on the topic of media in transition 8: public media, private media (may 2013) pinpointed the following as key theoretical issues in psb (and new media) research: the thin line between public and private media and how that affects or may affect broadcasting models and regulation; the shifting nature of the public and private at a moment of unparalleled connectivity; new notions of the socially mediated public; unequalled levels of data (information and content) via new media; the ways in which specific media challenge and reinforce certain notions of the public or the private; and the ways in which specific texts (content) dramatise or imagine the public, the private and the boundary between them. the changed nature of social responsibility and public interest social responsibility is no longer the exclusive domain of state departments, public organisations, and public broadcasters (cf. bardoel & brants 2003: 181-182). new economic (liberalisation, privatisation and internationalisation), market, social and political contexts (deregulation and self-regulation) have transformed the ways of thinking about who is responsible for social responsibility, what is social responsibility, what is needed in terms of social responsibility and what is in the public interest. for example, many south african private corporations, industrial companies, the banking sector, etc. are involved with social projects of various 10 pj fourie kinds, including corporate social responsibility programmes. apart from media companies themselves being involved with social projects, all the projects involve the use of the media (including public and private broadcasters) in campaigns related to building public awareness, expressing public needs and achievements and the need in south africa for nation-building. in terms of the regulation of social responsibility, bardoel and d’haenens (2008: 348-349) argue that there has not been an end to state responsibility, but that it “... is important to find the right mix between the ‘co-regulation’ and regulated ‘selfregulation’” of social responsibility. to this can be added that the state still plays an important, albeit shared, role but is no longer the only designated role-player for the provision of public service (including broadcasting as a public service). in addition to the changed nature of social responsibility, it is increasingly difficult to define concepts such as “public service”, “public good” and “public sphere”. from this stems the growing impossibility to motivate the continued existence of institutionalised psb based on a mandate defined in terms of old definitions and understandings of “social responsibility”, “public service” and “public good”. at the same time it is increasingly difficult for private broadcasters to claim that they do not have a “public service” or that what they are doing are not in the “public’s interest”. the changed nature of social responsibility, and with that of what constitutes public service, leads to the following question: is the term “public service broadcasting” still appropriate? in south africa, in terms of the variety of content and genres offered by various broadcasters, it can be argued that the term “public service broadcasting” or “public broadcasting” is confusing, if not misleading. it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the programming of the public service broadcaster and that of private broadcasters. they all offer (in the same ways) news, sport, games, soap operas, music, art, travel, food, local music, pop, jazz, etc. in terms of licensing, they all have to comply with the same content and quality regulations monitored by icasa and the broadcasting complaints commission of south africa (bccsa). given the changed nature of social responsibility and the growing uncertainty of the term “public service broadcasting”, the term is increasingly replaced with simply “public media” (cf. e.g. bierman et al. 2013). new characteristics of broadcasting as mass communication the changed nature of the phenomenology of broadcasting as mass communication also underlies the need for a new broadcasting model. the new nature is underlined by two prominent characteristics of “new” broadcasting, namely interactivity and intertextuality. 11 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa broadcasting can no longer be described in terms of a simple linear model from sender to receiver or in terms of top-down relationships. dialogue, interaction and feedback constituting interactivity have become the essence of broadcasting. interactivity between programme producers, presenters, journalists, etc., defines present sender-audience relationships. this new relationship defies the paternalistic and authoritarian attitude underlying traditional psb-audience relationships (i.e. we (the broadcaster) know better and for your (the audience’s) good we are the best to inform, teach, entertain, persuade and influence you). in the new social media environment it is often also difficult to clearly distinguish between a sender(s) and a receiver(s). likewise intertextuality, and through it narrative accrual, is an outstanding characteristic of “new” broadcasting. “narrative accrual” refers to the accumulation of the meaning of media content on a specific topic through different media and genres, for example, the accumulation of meaning through the programming (content) of both public and private broadcasters (and all print and online media) on a specific topic. the new media environment implores the need to broaden the definition of intertextuality far beyond media genres and media content on a single channel or on the different channels of a particular broadcaster. intertextuality (and narrative accrual) should be understood in terms of intra and inter media content and eventually the intra and inter media production of meaning, creating a semiosphere of mediated meaning. what this boils down to is that a public broadcaster is but one medium out of many (broadcasting, print and online) contributing to the circulation of messages, meanings and opinions in a society. the changed political economy of public service broadcasting from research about the political economy of broadcasting (cf. jakubowicz 2011; duncan 2006) it is clear that broadcasting, including psb, has moved from a service to a market economy. it is therefore almost obvious that the “classic” market failure argument is again prominent in discussions (including discussions of access and universal service) on the future of psb. the market failure argument has, however, lost its validity in the new media environment. the old argument is that being market and profit driven, private broadcasters will and cannot have as a primary goal the production of quality programmes and will and cannot meet universal access targets usually expected from a public broadcaster as part of its mandate. however, as seen above, the nature and understanding of social responsibility and public service as well as the phenomenology of broadcasting has changed. with the increased acceptance and acknowledgement of its social responsibility, the private sector plays an increased role in the delivery of public services, including the broadcasting of programming and social marketing usually associated with 12 pj fourie public service broadcasters. in terms of access, new media have created increased and widespread access to broadcasting of all sorts. in terms of programming, the sabc (as most public broadcasters) and private broadcasters have moved away from what jakubowicz (2002) (also see bardoel & d’haenens 2008: 344) calls a “monastery model” to a “full portfolio model”, that is a model of programming encompassing all broadcasting genres. in terms of increased access to programming, there is also no rationale (or policy) prohibiting south african private broadcasters from offering a full portfolio, including socalled “psb programming”, unless a broadcaster chooses a niche market which would, in any case, be in line with a pluralistic model. with digitisation the possibilities of offering a full portfolio will increase as the number of channels and platforms, together with competition, increase. the ‘undefinability’ of public service broadcasting from the above it is clear that it is becoming increasingly difficult to define psb. although policy is usually explicit in describing the mandate of public broadcasters, descriptions of what public service content and form are, are in essence non-existent. at best, there are vague guidelines. defining psb as a phenomenon or as a genre or as a unique kind of broadcasting being different from other forms of broadcasting is near to impossible. from a phenomenological point of view, all forms, genres and/or kinds of broadcasting are intrinsically public and all forms of broadcasting provide a service, whether it is to inform, to entertain, to educate, to influence and manipulate, to provide a platform for dialogue and debate, or to play a surveillance role. to conclude with jakubowicz’s (2011: 212) argument: if the role [functions] of the broadcaster is taken as the determent in the naming of the kind of broadcasting to be expected from a broadcaster, and if the broadcaster in a young and developing country is expected to play a national and educational development role [as public broadcasting has always been expected to do or has as its main function], then national broadcasting instead of public service broadcasting may be a more appropriate name in the sense of expecting the programme content to play a role in nation-building, in creating and sustaining a national and social identity, and in educating audiences about health, agriculture, the economy, religion, morality, culture, etc. however, it can be argued that this can be done through numerous genres by both public and private broadcasters. the term “national broadcasting” also carries a negative connotation and can easily be understood to mean state broadcaster or a broadcaster being misused to be a state broadcaster. the “undefinability” of psb also makes the distinction in south africa’s present three-tier model between public, private and community broadcasting increasingly superficial, especially as far as television is concerned. 13 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa towards principles for a new broadcasting model for south africa taking into consideration the state of psb in south africa (and in the rest of the world), the implications of the new media environment for psb, and changed thinking about the nature and future of psb it is clear that south african broadcasting policy will need to adapt to what mansell and raboy (2011: 1-21) describe as a new policy paradigm. this paradigm is guided by finding an appropriate role for the state in communications policy in the new communications environment and adapting policy to confront issues of content, audiences, access, social justice, different understandings of democracy and democracy in a global context, the changed relations between state, the market and civil society, and broadcasting communication as a social priority on the same level as, for example, education and health policy. in an effort to move towards a new paradigm for new psb television broadcasting policy in south africa, this author has argued in previous work on psb policy (cf. fourie 2005; 2010) for distributed psb. this was done on the basis of a distinction and description of psb as a specific genre. the genre was (broadly) described as content related to the development of audiences in matters of national development, national history, politics, culture and identity, and adhering to the principles of distinctiveness and creativity. as such this work can be described as being in the domain of moving away from institutionalised psb. jakubowicz (2011: 211-212) also refers to proponents “who advocate moving away from thinking of psb solely in terms of particular institutions and dissociating ‘public interest content’ from institutional frameworks (such as psb organisations) specifically created to provide it”. he shows how proponents argue that commercial broadcasters can also provide psb or may be required to provide it, and refers to the new zealand5 example and how such a scheme has also been proposed in the uk by the department of culture, media and sport and the department for business, innovation and skills (dcms 2009). in agreement with this view, this author has maintained that the sabc should be replaced with an agency responsible for the distribution of public service programming. such programming was defined as a “psb genre” (see above) encompassing the principles of “traditional” psb. it was argued that all the broadcasters in the country should be expected to broadcast programmes that comply with the principles of a “psb genre” and that broadcasting public service programming should be a prerequisite for a broadcasting licence. in terms of funding, it was argued that all broadcasters should receive an incentive for the production of quotas of psb programming. in terms of regulation (monitoring the broadcasting of psb quotas), south african local content policy and the south 14 pj fourie african media development and diversity agency6 were suggested as a model. a key argument was that distributed psb would stimulate the south african production industry and that it would expose (give access to) more people to more “public service content”. however, given the reality of new media and the new media environment, psb has become almost impossible to define. therefore, to distinguish, describe and regulate psb on the basis of a “psb genre” is problematic, if not impossible, even if it is on the basis of distributed instead of institutionalised psb. this, together with the need to acknowledge the new economy of broadcasting and the “new” phenomenology of broadcasting, requires a more open model geared towards the development and expansion of broadcasting. with this in mind a new south african broadcasting model will have to do, amongst others, the following: ♦ move from a three-tier system (the distinction between public, private, community) to a single broadcasting system; ♦ make a clear differentiation between radio, television and online media within a single broadcasting policy wherein, for television, as an example, the following would apply: ◦ a wider-dissemination model7,in which all the broadcasters are expected to comply with a prescribed quota of original local content (assuming that local content inherently encompass the characteristics of psb related to content); ◦ a broader definition and prescription of “local content” to include quotas per genre distributed over different genres and including documentary and investigative journalism besides magazine, drama, news, sports, music and games; ◦ the exclusion of repetitions counting towards local content quotas; and ♦ institute a broadcasting agency as a monitoring body. finally, a new model will need to: ♦ achieve a balance between economic and non-economic goals; ♦ acknowledge the diversity of broadcasting forms and platforms; ♦ support the production of a diversity of language and cultural services; ♦ depart from a broader understanding of social responsibility and public service; 15 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa ♦ achieve “institution-neutrality” (jakubowicz 2011: 212); and ♦ strive towards universal access. by moving in this direction, in other words by getting rid of the old category, concept and idea of psb and by replacing it with an appropriate emphasis on broadcasting as the omnipresent and dominant main mass communication medium in a society, the (inherent) problems specific to psb and psb institutions can begin to be addressed, such as political interference, financing the broadcaster, unfair competition and the loss of distinguishable content and form. endnotes 1 the “s.o.s.: support public broadcasting” coalition is a membership-based coalition representing unions, ngos, cbos, community media, the independent film and tv production sector, academics, freedom of expression activists and concerned individuals. the vision of the s.o.s. coalition is to create a public broadcasting system dedicated to the broadcasting of quality, diverse, citizen-orientated public programming committed to deepening south africa’s constitution. see http://www. supportpublicbroadcasting.co.za/ 2 see public broadcasting in africa. a survey. south african country report (lloyd et al. 2010). this is a comprehensive review of psb in south africa within an african context done under the auspices of the africa governance monitoring and advocacy project (now media monitoring africa), the open society foundation for south africa and the open society institute media program. 3 as an indication of local content quotas, see icasa’s discussion paper on the review of local content quotas (december 2000). in this document “local content” is defined in detail and the following are listed as quotas: public television: at least 50% of its programming during the south african television performance period and during prime time consists of local television content; i) 20% of its drama programming consists of south african drama; ii) 80% of its current affairs programming consists of south african current affairs; iii) 50% of its documentary programming consists of south african documentary programming; iv) 50% of its informal knowledgebuilding programming consists of south african informal knowledge-building programming; v) 60% of its educational programming consists of south african educational programming; vi) 50% of its children’s programming consists of south african children’s programming. private television: a weekly average of 20% i) 10% of its drama programming consists of south african drama; ii) 50% of its current affairs programming consists of south african current affairs; iii) 25% of its documentary programming consists of south african documentary programming; iv) 25% of its informal knowledge-building programming consists of south african informal knowledge-building programming; v) 20% of its children’s programming consists of south african children’s programming. private subscription television: a weekly average of 5% of its programming (cf. http://www.info.gov.za/view/ downloadfileaction?id=70333. accessed on 26 may 2013. also see: independent 16 pj fourie broadcasting authority act, 1993 (act 153 of 1993). 4 media monitoring africa (2012) assesses the quality and diversity of all sabc programming and news content across different mediums and against the background of the sabc’s claim (and mandate) that it represents south africa’s national identity, diverse languages, cultures and people. in general, and over various areas of production (genres), media monitoring africa recommends change and improvement (cf. e.g. 2012: 31). 5 the main problems with distributed psb experienced at that stage in new zeeland was finding a suitable definition for what constitutes psb programming, the management of an incentive fund and monitoring the broadcasters. 6 the south african media development and diversity agency was set up by an act of parliament (act 14 of 2002) to enable “historically disadvantaged communities and persons not adequately served by the media” to gain access to the media. 7 digitalgovernance.org (building and sustaining democratic and accountable governance institutions using ict). cf. http//www.cddc.vt.edu/digitalgov/govbroadcast-models.html accessed on 25 april 2013. 17 the rise and fall of public service broadcasting in south africa references bailey, c. and nkomo, s. 2013. pule’s sabc job for pal secret. the sunday times, 17 march: 1. bardoel, j. and brants, k. 2003. public broadcasters and social responsibility in the netherlands. in: lowe, g.f. and hujanen, t. 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(eds). the handbook of global media and communication policy. oxford: wileyblackwell. thlabi, r. 2013. euthanasia the sabc’s best option. the sunday times, 24 march: 2. van wyk, p. 2013. sauk betaal r1 miljoen vir 10 minute se inhoud. beeld, 5 augustus: 1. 197 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients communitas issn 1023-0556 2012 17: 199-221 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie* abstract the complexities in the social development setting in south african are clearly evident from unemployment and poverty statistics, low levels of literacy and education and lacking government response to social ills (case 2003). added to the complex environment in which south african non-profit organisations (npos) operate, is the communication relationship between npos and their corporate donors (as stakeholders of one another). this relationship is important for the survival and financial sustainability of the npos and to the corporate companies’ adherence to stakeholder demands and guiding principles such as set out in the king iii report (iodsa 2009). in this article, findings resulting from partially structured interviews with npo managers, corporate social investment (csi) officers of south african corporate companies and independent csi consultants are discussed. this study maps the complex shared and divergent perceptions of communication relationships between social development npos and their donors, and finds that not only is the communication relations strained, but a corporate communication perspective alone is not suitable to describe (or manage) this specific relationship. * louise van dyk lectures in the department of communication science at the university of south africa in pretoria. professor lynnette fourie is programme leader: postgraduate studies in the school for communication studies at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university. 198 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie introduction corporate success and organisational goal-attainment are linked to the on-going process of stakeholder management in which the needs of stakeholders are identified and managed strategically (freeman, harrison, wicks, parmar & de colle 2010: 6; freeman & reed 1983: 91; steyn & puth 2000: 210). such a relationship can be described and measured by considering the following dimensions identified in corporate communication literature: commitment, trust, satisfaction, cooperation and the use of dialogic, open communication (bruning & galloway 2003: 316; grunig 2002: 2; jahansoozi 2002: 4; ledingham 2003: 188-189; ledingham & bruning 1998: 63). in south africa, one of the stakeholder groups to which corporate companies have the responsibility to relate, are social development non-profit organisations (npos) whose projects are funded as part of their corporate social investment (csi) programmes. corporate companies are obliged to engage with the society within which they operate by requirements as set out in the companies act. voluntary compliance guidelines that further encourage responsibility towards society include the johannesburg stock exchange’s listing requirements and compliance with the king iii code on corporate governance. in addition to these voluntary guidelines, there are further pressure on companies for socio-economic development ratings on their black economic empowerment (bee) scorecards and adherence to international guidelines. on the other hand npos are dependent on corporate companies for financial support and cannot survive without them (padaki 2007: 70; rossouw 2010), let alone attain sustainability. despite the authority of stakeholder relationships in organisational communication (grunig & huang 2000: 43; ledingham 2003: 188) and the obligation of corporate companies and npos to have relations with one another, this corporate-npo stakeholder pair is largely under-researched in communication studies. in this article, the key concepts that define the communication relationship between corporate donors and npo recipients are briefly explored. this is done in order to broaden the understanding of the specific relationship between corporate donors and the recipient npos and could also contribute to the sustainability of those npos and the social change they facilitate in their communities. background literature when exploring the key concepts of the communication relationship between npo recipients and their corporate donors and commenting on the sustainability of existing stakeholder relationship measures to define and manage this relationship, a good starting point is to describe what stakeholder relationships are and how they are usually determined. 199 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients who are stakeholders and what are stakeholder relationships? freeman and reed (1983: 91) define the term stakeholder as groups/individuals that influence the attainment of organisational goals or on which organisational survival depends. in the case of communication relationships between corporate donors and the npos it could be argued that npos depend on corporate donors for survival, whereas the corporate donor does not face demise in the absence of npos. however, having a relationship with society definitely influences the corporate company’s organisational goal-attainment (freeman et al. 2010: 6; freeman, wicks & parmar 2004: 364; steyn & puth 2000: 210). various authors focus on the constant exchange of bilateral needs and expectations between parties in a relationship in order to create value for both and maintain the relationship (broom, casey & ritchey 2000: 14, freeman et al. 2010: 9). theoretical constructs of communication relationships if stakeholder relationships are defined by referring to the characteristics of those relationships, what are the indicators that distinguish a good relationship from a bad one? grunig, grunig and ehling (1992: 83) point to the importance of the dimensions of reciprocity, trust, credibility and mutual legitimacy as well as involvement, investment, cooperation, shared goals, interdependence, adaptation, summate constructs, structural and social bonds and passion. they also add that the degree of comfort with the relational dialectics and the level of comparison to alternatives could indicate the health of a relationship. ledingham and bruning (1998: 62) echo some of the previously mentioned dimensions, but add that the length of the commitment influences the relationship and that longer term commitments are a positive sign in a relationship. the most popular, however, are the two types of relationships (exchange and communal relationships) and four indicators (control mutuality, trust, commitment, and satisfaction) suggested by hon and grunig (1999: 3) to measure stakeholder relationships. these were selected as the starting point for this article because they offer the most concise way in which the preceding research can be summarised and because these indicators developed by hon and grunig (ibid.) are regarded highly for their contribution to relationship theory and measurement (ipr 1999). exchange versus communal relationship grunig (2002: 1) describes an exchange relationship as two parties who are in a relationship because they expect to benefit from one another. this expectation to receive something in return if you have given something is the basis for an exchange relationship. linking to exchange relationships are the strategic management perspective on stakeholder relationships as described by ni (2006: 200 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie 277), where a relationship is only perceived to have value when it contributes to organisational effectiveness. the value of stakeholder relationships in this sense is usually measured by financial performance (cooper 2004: 3). in contrast with an exchange relationship, parties in a communal relationship provide each other with benefits because the welfare of the other party is important to them and not because they expect benefits in return (grunig 2002: 1). this view is in line with post-modernist thinking where non-material dimensions are integrated with material ones. according to burger (2009: 188) the beyondmodernist thinking about relationships could be associated with terms like interdependency, multiplicity, and reciprocity. control mutuality control mutuality is defined by hon and grunig (1999: 3) as the level of agreement regarding who has power and influence over whom. imbalances in control mutuality are not unusual, but at least some control must be in the hands of both parties. the sharing of power was also identified by grunig and huang (2000: 43) and jahansoozi (2002: 8) as an element of stakeholder relationships. trust the amount of trust in a relationship is possibly one of the most agreed upon indicators of a relationship (jahansoozi 2006: 942; ledingham 2003: 188-189; grunig 2002: 2). trust is a complicated concept, and hon and grunig (1999: 3) operationalised the word to comprise three dimensions, namely integrity, dependability, and competence, with “integrity” meaning the conviction that the other party is fair and just; “dependability” indicating the belief that the other party will do as it says it will; and “competence” implying that there is a belief that the other party has the ability to do what it says it will. the combination of integrity, dependability, and competence will determine the confidence and willingness to open up to one another (hon & grunig 1999: 3). commitment commitment is the extent, either in line with action or as an emotional orientation, to which parties believe that their relationship is worth the energy spent to maintain and promote the relationship (hon & grunig 1999: 3). various other authors also refer to commitment as an important relationship indicator (grunig & huang 2000: 42; jahansoozi 2002: 4; bruning & galloway 2003: 316). satisfaction satisfaction refers to the extent to which parties feel fulfilled in a relationship because their positive expectations and beliefs about the relationship are being respected (hon & grunig 1999: 3). when a party is satisfied in a relationship 201 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients it believes that the other party engages positively to maintain and promote the relationship. hon and grunig’s (1999: 3) relationship dimensions refer predominately to the corporate environment. as this article focuses on the relationship between corporates and npos, some constructs identified in the social development literature as challenges specific to the social development industry were also included. shared goals and expectations shared goals, common interests and expectations are frequently emphasised in relationship literature (ledingham 2003: 188; jahansoozi 2002: 8) and indicated as specific threats to the relationship between social development npos and corporate donors by rajesh (2000: 327) and rossouw (2010). time and resource constraints limited time-frames and resource constraints on the side of the donors are regularly cited as being challenges for donor relationships (rajesh 2000: 327; rossouw 2010). also mentioned by ledingham (2003: 189), is the importance of the respondents’ opinions of time orientation. these perceptions on the influence of resource and time constraints on the relationship are also examined. with the well-researched relationship dimensions of hon and grunig (1999: 3) and the additional dimensions indicated by both relationship and social development theorists as potentially important in defining this specific relationship, the scene is set for exploring this relationship. however, before any enquiry can ensue, the importance of this relationship and the roles of the two parties should be investigated. corporate-npo communication relationships csi represents a corporate company’s interaction with the society in which it operates. largely encouraged by various legislative and normative rating scales and codes, csi forms part of the overall requirement of corporate governance (rossouw 2010). the touchstone regarding corporate governance is the king code of governance for south africa which put south africa’s csi practices at the forefront of governance internationally (iodsa 2009: 4). the report emphasises that all stakeholders need consideration from the company and not only those who are instrumental to the financial success of the company (iodsa 2009: 11; rensburg & de beer 2011: 153). 202 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie the voluntary and regulatory requirements for corporate companies doing business in south africa further include the johannesburg stock exchange’s socially responsible investment index (jse’s sri index) that consists of a set of criteria to measure the social and environmental responsibility of companies and also serves as a platform where potential investors can access information on the sustainability and responsibility of the companies’ business practice (jse 2010). the third and most enforceable requirement is the companies act 71 of 2008 that came into effect on 8 april 2009. the purpose of the act, among others, is to encourage transparency and high standards of corporate governance because of the significant role of companies within the social and economic life of south africa. it places high value on responsibility, transparency, accountability, and integrity of enterprises in the country (sa 2009: 42,142). the act requires that public and state-owned companies appoint a social and ethics committee that will monitor the companies’ compliance to equality, empowerment, corruption, health, public safety, and consumer and labour relations legislation (lomax 2010). another act that promotes csi is the national black economic empowerment (bee) act 53 of 2003 that has the broad aim of righting inequalities of apartheid by deliberate transferring of equities to the black community, transforming the workplace and promoting the development of black people (babarinde 2009: 360). in order to measure a company’s compliance, companies are required to set up a scorecard that rests on the seven pillars of broad-based bee. the csi pillar of the bee scorecard measures the extent to which a company contributes toward socio-economic development that increases access to the economy for black people (sa 2007: 10). these legal requirements and best practice benchmarks support the notion that corporate south africa should contribute to positive societal change and compliance to then drive csi decisions. this aspiration for compliance, and the rewards it holds, result in stakeholder relationships with the social development community and set the scene for csi in every corporate company. npos fit into the bigger social development sector as the implementation agencies that apply funding to ultimately effect social change in the recipient communities (rossouw 2010). they also act as the link between donors and recipient communities. npos are also positioned closer to the recipients than the corporate donors and are in an ideal position to articulate the needs of the communities in a bottom-up process to the donor. from a donor perspective the link that npos provide to recipient communities enable the donor to mobilise their social investment (shumate & o’connor 2010: 578). the literature suggests that, despite the important role of npos in social development, they are constrained by lacking infrastructure (boafo 2006), 203 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients disparities in the communication between urban donors and rural npos (boafo 2006), dependence on donors for funding (byrne & sahay 2007: 71; hodge & piccolo 2005: 175; helmig, jegers & lapsley 2004: 107) and increased competition for funding from other development organisations (helmig et al. 2004: 112). when considering the role of npos in social development, these challenges for npos then also become challenges for the recipient communities. the roles of both corporate companies and npos in social development and their various reasons for relating to each other make the communication relationship between the parties important for sustainable development as well as for corporate goal attainment. research procedure this exploratory research within the interpretative paradigm aimed to gain insight into the experiences and perceptions of role-players in the csi environment regarding the relationship between corporate donors and their recipient npos. a qualitative design is suitable in this case because the perceptions of respondents are central to the analysis (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004: 5). the sample consisted of two managers of social development npos who receive funding from corporate donors, and two representatives of corporate companies who manage the relationships with npos. to add to the richness of the data, the sample also included two independent consultants who work in this space and could provide information regarding the perceptions of both corporate donors and npos as well as provide their own opinions regarding the context of the relationships. drawn purposively to ensure the inclusion of the three groups mentioned above, the researcher based the selection on previous knowledge of the target population. the data was collected by using partially structured interviews with the respondents in their places of work. the duration of the interviews was between 45 and 55 minutes each and the interviews were recorded for later transcription. interview protocol to suit the exploratory nature of this article, the grunig (2002: 2-6) qualitative interview guide for evaluating stakeholder relationships was adapted for use in this enquiry. this instrument was used because it has its roots in award winning measurement research (ipr 1999) and additional constructs could be added to the interview guide with ease. to further allow the researcher to explore the possible link between the developmental realities in the work of the npos and the framework set by csi 204 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie practices for the relationship, items about the role of both parties in the broader social development sphere were added to the interview guide. probes to explore the approaches to development and csi of both parties in the relationship between corporate donors and npos were also included in the interview guide. the data was analysed using qualitative thematic analysis of the content of the partially structured interviews. the data-analysis for this article was based on carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction. this ladder suggests three levels of analysis comprising of steps overall and also indicates the tasks for each step (miles & huberman 1994: 92). interpretation of the results the findings of the partially structured interviews are organised to report on the relationship per relationship dimension to indicate key concepts and discuss the emerging themes. type of relationship respondents found questions about the type of relationship between corporate donors and npo recipients difficult to answer, with many responses indicating characteristics of both types of relationships. it is clear from respondents that money flows from the corporate to the npo who acts as an implementation agent in the social development field and that a return on this investment, in the form of results and reports, is expected by the corporate donor. however, it is not only the corporate companies that require some form of exchange from this relationship; the npos agreed that they are only in this relationship because they get something in return. the following responses provide an overview: most of them do it for what they get in return, it is not a bad thing, but many are just doing it for their own benefit and not for those who are being served – npo respondent (we are in this relationship because) we need the money – npo respondent we expect return on investment – corporate respondent apart from the definite exchange that can be deduced from responses, some characteristics of communal relationships are also prevalent. the npos argue that they expect something from the relationship they have with corporate donors, but what they get in return is not for them, but for the communities they serve. 205 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients the corporate respondents believe that they only needed returns from npos to ascertain that the good they want to do, gets done. control mutuality from the responses it is clear that corporate donors hold control over the relationship to such an extent that the channels of communication, the communication process and agreements between parties are controlled by the corporate donors with seemingly little input from the npo party in the relationship. although a natural power imbalance is to be expected in healthy, positive relationships, the negative attitudes of respondents imply that the power imbalance in this relationship is not natural and positive, as is summarised by a consultant respondent: the power always remains in the hands with the money. a finding that further highlights the power imbalance is that corporate respondents claim that the needs npos express in their funding proposals automatically mean that the donors are attentive to the needs of npos. the impression created is that the formal proposal takes care of the needs of npos instead of the focus being on a constant exchange of needs. when a proposal is presented to us by an npo it is needs-based and is already an indication of what needs need to be attended to and when we approve that we respond to those needs. when considering these aspects of control from the viewpoint of npo and consultant respondents, it appears that the corporate donors generally do not attend to the needs of npos nor take the interests of the npos into account. the lack of attentiveness and interest is evident in the following responses: i have not come across many of them (corporates) who are willing to come and sit and listen to the needs of the communities – npo respondent we don’t have a bargaining platform – npo respondent trust trust seems to be a much individualised factor, specifically regarding the integrity of the parties in the relationship where responses varied between the extremely positive and extremely negative with no dominant trends emerging. however, 206 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie some perceptions were evident when looking at the responses to questions about competence and dependability. the respondents had a distinctive view on the competence factor and indicated that corporate donors are generally regarded as competent while npos are generally regarded as incompetent. a lack of competence on the side of social development npos is part of each respondent’s perspective. these comments illustrate the point: the problem is, many community organisations do not have the skills and resources to facilitate good communication with corporates – consultant respondent we work with local people in our company that also do not have the capacity. we do not have the funding to hire highly qualified staff. corporate companies really do not understand that, they think that an npo should run just as smoothly as a department in their company where they pay very high salaries – npo respondent it is interesting, however, that there are different interpretations of the factors that constitute trust. most respondents equated dependability with on-time payment when they responded on the dependability of the corporate donors while the npos’ dependability was generally linked to service delivery and their influence on the brand of the corporate they are linked to. two respondents posed these views: we however also believe that how we engage with each other causes them to be dependable, so that we have never been required to call into ‘action’ clauses that we sign and hence feel quite confident in the control that we have been able to establish through the building of relationships – corporate respondent well, compared to government contracts, corporates normally pay in the time the contract stipulates – npo respondent on responding to questions pertaining to dependability commitment when reporting their perceptions of commitment to the relationship, the length of commitment proved to be a contentious issue to the respondents. from the responses it seems that the longer the funding term, the better the results and development impact. in an industry where funding cycles are an average of twelve 207 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients months and a long-term commitment is three years, the sustainability of this csi practice is questioned and criticised by most of the respondents. the respondents had this to say about the sustainability that the most funding cycles allow: sustainable impact does not come overnight and if you have annual funding cycles you cannot create sustainable impact with a child for instance – it is just crazy expectation – consultant respondent you cannot create impact in twelve months and with a million rand – consultant respondent some respondents report an understanding for the funding cycle dilemma by explaining that long-term commitments are like putting all your eggs in one basket and that the capacity of the npo should develop over time and at some point they should be more sustainable and less dependent on funding sources. satisfaction satisfaction proved to be different for each individual relationship, but it appears that satisfaction is linked and even subject to other relationship dimensions. the perceived short term of commitment from corporate donors, when it comes to funding cycles, is a source of great concern to the npo and consultant respondents. they perceive the short funding cycles to have negative consequences on the sustainability of npos’ work and also on the amount of relationship satisfaction of the npos. satisfaction was also linked to trust by many of the respondents as they referred to factors such as dependability and integrity in their responses about their relationship satisfaction. shared goals and expectations it was clear from the onset of the study that corporate donors and npos as organisations have very different goals. one respondent voiced the opinion of all of the respondents by saying they are from two different worlds. however, when respondents discussed the various roles of the corporate donors and npos in social development, a whole new point of view emerged with the two parties having related and supporting social development goals. even though they have different organisational goals and roles to play, they have one overlapping goal in mind – sustainable social change. when respondents shared their opinions and experiences of the unique characteristics of this specific relationship, the responses told a story of nuanced 208 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie expectations and motivations, sometimes shared, sometimes conflicting; it is expected from npos to be specialists in social development who make a meaningful contribution to social development, and to be much more than mere delivery mechanisms for csi funds. the corporate respondents were quick to add that although npos are important, they are difficult to work with and if they see themselves as too independent and only want the money, the relationship may take a turn for the worse. there is also the perception (and this was echoed by the npo respondents) that npos change their focus and beneficiaries overnight to fit donor requirements. the implication is that they work on different social issues every year, because they know where to find funding for those issues. one of the npo respondents commented that they understand the expectations corporate donors have of them, but that they just do not have the resources or time because they spend their days working on the ground with the community. a further corporate-npo relationship trend is that the two parties are in this relationship for two very different reasons. all the respondents mentioned that for corporate donors csi is mandatory, and legislated: broadly it is now a legislated requirement, all corporates, if they want to be on index they have to give 1% net profit after tax to csi. on the contrary, the work of npos is seen as an act of heart; an emotional motivation for representing the disenfranchised communities of south africa: it involves something larger, bigger than both the parties, that person or child at the end of the line as the end-beneficiary of the relationship. there is also consensus that this emotion is a difficult construct in business language and that the motivation of the npos alone, although sincere, is not enough for sustainable change. one of the respondents expresses the dilemma: the basis of the relationship is wrong, it’s always been wrong, because there are resources at stake here. the world of the npos, on the other hand, is presented by the respondents as a world driven by the needs of the communities they represent. these examples illustrate the point: 209 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients i think what we need to understand here, is the heart and the nature of development work. it is not predefined; it comes with enormous challenges – consultant respondent then you start something and after a year they say sorry, we don’t have funding for next year or cut your funding in half, then you are stuck. you are feeding children and next year if your funding is cut in half, the children, they are still hungry – npo respondent time and resource constraints there is agreement amongst respondents that the funding cycles set by the csi departments regulate the timelines in this relationship. the npo respondents feel that the funding cycle is something they do not even try to negotiate. this comment illustrates the frustration of npos with the lack of sustainable change due to time constraints: development takes years. remember we are working here with social change. you cannot change a pass rate in one month, twelve months and five years, maybe in twelve years you can expect some change. the corporate and consultant respondents perceive the npos to also be the cause of time constraints. they claim that time constraints could also result from an npo overpromising the time that a project will take during the application phase in order to secure funding and then being unable to deliver on deadline. when asking the respondents about financial transparency the most predominant responses where about the lack of transparency from the side of the npo. from the anecdotes it appears that npos have opportunity to be untruthful about their finances and almost all respondents recalled examples of embezzled funds. this lack of transparency and tweaking of budgets are, according to the respondents, not without reason. one respondent remarks: it is not in their (npos) benefit to be (transparent). if i have approached you for one million rand for a programme, remember the risk, you can say yes or no to me. then i apply to ten corporates. what happens if all ten says yes. now i have ten million rand. npos will not necessarily tell their funders about this. that is why i say it is not in their best interest to be transparent and i don’t blame them. 210 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie an npo respondent defends the practice: some corporates, you (npo) say you need r150 000 and then they give you r70 000. now what are you supposed to do? the constraints due to timelines and resources seem to be very fitting in this relationship context and contribute greatly to describe the reality of this relationship. discussion the insight of the role-players provided the researcher with a valuable understanding of the nature of these communication relationships. three thoughts emerge from interpreting the combined perspectives of all respondents and trends emerging from the data; the first being a concern for the strikingly negative responses regarding the state of the communication relationship between the corporate companies and the npos they fund. the second opinion deduced from the responses is that the relationship constructs, as defined by hon and grunig (1999: 3), and the resulting qualitative instrument by grunig (2002: 1) do not seem to be ideal for understanding this relationship and thirdly, the communication in this relationship seems to be purely managed from the corporate perspective while the participatory ideals for development communication are merely being paid lip service. the state of affairs in this relationship the relationship that emerges in this article is largely characterised by negative perceptions. although the respondents show some empathy with the other party in the relationship, the relationship itself shows stark shortfalls and the respondents speak of discordant, one-sided and unequal relationships. the evidence supports the notion that this relationship lacks control mutuality, trust, commitment, transparency, and a stringent framework while being overwhelmed by conflicting roles and expectations, time constraints and resource shortages. control and power imbalances are evident from all the responses, but instead of a natural and healthy power imbalance as promoted by hon and grunig (1999: 19), the disproportionate control the corporate donors hold in the relationship is perceived in a pessimistic light by npo respondents. trust seems to be dependent on the specific corporate-npo relationship, but distinct views about the incompetence of npos emerge when discussing trust with respondents. respondents (npos included) believe that npos are incompetent in the relationship and provide various reasons and defences 211 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients for this perceived incompetence including lacking skills of staff members, dependence of volunteers, limited access to resources, and increased exposure to environmental variables. when considering the commitment of both parties in this relationship, it was clear that only one aspect was important in this instance; the length of the funding cycle. it seemed like no other actions or affinities were important in this relationship and all responses focused on equating commitment with the funding term. another contentious issue in the relationship between corporate donors and npo recipients is the divergent goals and expectations of parties in this specific relationship. it is apparent in the minds of respondents that the goals of corporate companies are vastly different from the goals of social development npos, but a definite overlap in goals was perceived between the social responsibility goals of corporate companies and the goals of social development npos. in line with the idea that the corporate donors and npo recipients have opposing goals, the expectations and motivations within this relationship are seen as mostly contrasting and incompatible. the negative perceptions of respondents are clear from their attempts to award blame to the other party and from the defensive attitudes that are evident in almost all responses. the last characteristic that defines the negative reality of this relationship is the constraints of time and resources that are not only evident in the rest of the relationship characteristics, but also specifically mentioned by respondents as constraints in the relationship. time constraints are perceived to come from both sides of the relationship; from the corporate side with funding cycles and the compliance-driven nature of csi goals. time constraints are also perceived to be exacerbated by slow reactions from npos. resource constraints are seen as part of the reality of npos, but within the relationship resource constraints seem to result in negative perceptions around financial transparency. studying the responses in this study, it is firstly the challenges in this relationship that come to the fore. the second concern relates to the applicability of the relationship constructs to define this specific stakeholder relationship. it is prevalent in the responses that respondents are uncertain about certain relationship dimensions and the respondents questioned the appropriateness of certain dimensions for a relationship in this context. applicability of relationship constructs when considering the results of the interviews it becomes apparent that the constructs identified by hon and grunig (1999: 3) cannot be used to accurately describe the communication relationship between npos and their corporate donors. 212 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie the type of relationship is described by respondents as being characterised by a combination of exchange and communal elements. the results show that although the exchange of resources forms a definite part of the relationship, the communal cause of the relationship definitely adds the element of a communal relationship between the parties. the hon and grunig (1999: 3) distinction between exchange and communal relationships does not seem to be relevant in this relationship. from the results it is evident that corporate donors perceive their npo beneficiaries as incompetent and this incompetence has a negative influence on the trust between the two parties. from the responses it seems that a degree of incompetence is implied in the circumstances of social development npos. when considering that the incompetence of npos are not to be regarded in the same light as would incompetence from the side of corporate companies, it could be that this element of trust cannot be taken on face value to contribute to an accurate description of this relationship. commitment is another relationship dimension that produced skewed responses. commitment is apparently truly watershed in the success of this relationship, but the grunig (2002: 5) phrasing of the items relating to commitment led the respondents to focus on the length of the commitment and because the funding cycles and short-term nature of many csi initiatives are so central to the perceptions of the parties of one another, no other view on commitment in the relationship was offered. the definition of commitment by hon and grunig (1999: 3) is by implication then also not truly accurate in this context. satisfaction is a relational indicator that does not seem to feature as a separate dimension in this specific relationship. from the responses it appears as if satisfaction is either absorbed by other relationship dimensions or regarded as unimportant in this relationship. goals and expectations seem to be important in describing the state of the relationship between npos and their corporate donors, but from the results it is evident that goals and expectations, as defined for the corporate context, cannot accurately aid the description of this relationship. questions about this dimension yielded valuable results, but contrasting goals in this relationship cannot be regarded as one of the outright reasons why the relationship is largely negative. the organisation’s opposing goals are due to their roles in society and cannot be used as defined by ledingham and bruning (1998: 58) and other relationship theorists. 213 exploring the communication relationship between corporate donors and social development npo recipients participatory development communication perspectives related to the applicability of the hon and grunig (1999: 3) constructs, the third idea that emerges from the data, is the possible suitability of participatory development theories when considering managing and describing communication relationships in this context. communication for development is not only confined to the more researched topics of media and messages, but also refers to the broader interaction and relationships in the development process (servaes 2008: 17). it is this broader application that holds possible solutions where corporate communication theory fails to be effective. the type of communication relationship, seemingly undefined by the corporate communication idea for this relationship construct, is not such a foreign concept when looking at participatory development theories. the communication relationship between donors and npos fits into development communication discussions as a part of the complex communication systems that are implemented to affect social change as described by many communication for development theorists (huesca 2008: 189; servaes 2008: 15) and the focus seem to be on how these systems work in order to be means to social development ends. focusing on whether the relationship fits into either of the two category types of the hon and grunig (1999) theory, communication for development ideas are echoed in the responses that the exchanges between the parties are for a greater cause than themselves. the respondents perceive npos to be incompetent when compared to their donors in the communication relationship between them, but the responses also show that competence should not be judged the same for the two different parties in the relationship. once again, it seems that participatory development communication thinking provides a reason why the corporate communication perception of competence is not suited for this context. with a strong focus of the participatory development literature on the deliberate inclusion and empowerment of recipients (cleaver 2006: 786) ¾ therewith implying vulnerability, exclusion and powerlessness of the recipients ¾ to change their own circumstances, how can competence in participating and managing their own circumstances then be a fair prerequisite for npos to be trusted by their donors? rather than being viewed as a requirement for trust, competence could be seen as an outcome of participatory development (tufte & mefalopulos 2009: 5). similarly, the donors and npos cannot be expected to have similar organisational goals and relationship expectations. when considering their roles in the development arena – with the donors being both funders of development and drivers of economic development while the npos are implementation agencies, parallel organisational goals and expectations are not relevant. 214 louise van dyk and lynnette fourie commitment, another relationship dimension used in the grunig (2002) qualitative instrument, also has a developmental context that cannot be defined as other corporate communication relationships. the long-term time-dimension required for participatory development and short-term nature of the modernistic and diffusion models of development has been debated by many theorists and practitioners (tufte & mefalopulos 2009: 5). the limited funding terms of donors have long been part of this discussion (battilana & sengul 2006: 198; tufte & mefalopulos 2009: 46). when looking at issues of commitment from a developmental perspective, it is easy to see why the respondents in corporatenpo relationships experience the corporate communications perspective as limited. conclusion although no case can be made for all relationships or specific corporate-npo relationships, preliminary concepts and trends could be found in data. the results yielded from qualitatively analysing partially-structured interviews on the perceptions of corporate donors, npos and experts in the field suggest that the relationship is viewed as largely negative, despite the importance of successful communication relationships for both parties. described as conflict ridden, complex and unequal, the relationship could impossibly produce sustainable impact on communities. partially to blame for the challenges are the opposing natures of top-down, pro-active corporate social development practices and bottom-up, needs-based natures of development that manifest in social development npos. also evident is the unsuitability of corporate communication measures to accurately talk about the communication relationship between donors and npos. this article suggests the inclusion of participatory development views for the measurement of this relationship instead of solely relying on corporate communication theory, because this relationship is not seated in only the corporate arena, but also in the social development sector. communication for development scholar, servaes (2008:16) rightly claims that that communication for development uses skills from corporate 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deetz 1995; carroll & buchholtz 2008; kim & sriramesh 2009). this put pressure on business organisations and brand owners to consider not only the well-being of shareholders, but also the well-being of society, culminating in the introduction of the triple bottom line at the 1992 united nations earth summit. apart from the bottom line and the needs of shareholders, the needs of the planet and the people living on it were positioned as equally important. business organisations operate in a turbulent environment where stakeholders have become more “activist”, speaking out against perceived inequitable practices threatening their well-being and that of others (king & lessidrenska 2009; pratt 2009). the notion of active and “activist” stakeholders is also of significance in developing countries where business organisations as “harbingers of development” (pratt 2009: 230) are operating in a landscape “densely plotted with protest movements” (ibid.), and where stakeholder activism has become a fact of life (grunig 1992; kim & sriramesh 2009). this movement has been enhanced by the implications of the internet and social networking. consumers as stakeholders have also evolved to a point where they need more from a brand than only products or services. many consumers, it is contended, are actually seeking an opportunity to make a difference, as borne out by research indicating that consumers regard cause-related marketing as the most beneficial type of corporate social responsibility (csr) (werder 2008) as it allows them to participate in socially responsible behaviour. research problem and objectives although consumers have long been recognised as stakeholders by brand owners (duncan & moriarty 1997), the question remains as to what extent their voices are heard and to what extent brand owners recognise them as active stakeholders and collaborators in the development of brands. this study aims to address the research problem by linking certain aspects of corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory, normative stakeholder theory, corporate social responsiveness, stakeholder activism and accountability in an attempt to (1) develop a reliable measuring instrument for brands to evaluate to what extent they are attuned to the active consumer stakeholder concept, and (2) to ascertain to what extent awareness of the active consumer stakeholder concept has taken root in strategic communication activities of 51 south african brand leaders. 38 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk theoretical framework and key constructs corporate social responsibility although corporate social responsibility has long been in existence, by the late twentieth century people became far more sensitive to both social and environmental issues (arens, weigold & arens 2009). anti-corporate campaigns began emerging in response to the perceived negative impact industrialised business had on the planet and its people. the anti-corporate backlash climaxed in 1995 as the protestor spotlight turned on the oil giant shell (fauset 2006). during that year, the multi-national oil company was accused of both environmental and social atrocities. shell temporarily lost the confidence of both investors and the public, providing the business world with a much needed wake-up call. the importance of reputation, and the ability of activists to damage corporate reputation, thus was highlighted. whereas an image is a “façade” constructed by planned mass communication, reputation is constructed by stakeholders, often via social networks, and refers to the esteem that the brand holds in stakeholders’ eyes (satterthwaite 2010). according to graham and woods (2006), the most frequently cited definitions of csr all refer to the integration of social and environmental concerns in business operations and in voluntary interactions with stakeholders. the business case for csr (fauset 2006) emphasises its benefits for reputation, staff and consumer loyalty, and maintaining public goodwill (werder 2008). fauset (2006) rigorously scrutinises the sincerity of csr and is in agreement with bakan (2004), who believes that, in the shareholder arena, the duty to make money above all else can only mean that all csr is insincere – a public relations strategy. however, others such as melewar (2008) support the business case in that business leaders sincerely want their csr to work – acts of csr will increase market share. hannington (2010) suggests it would be in companies’ best interests to stop seeing csr as a financial burden and to start seeing it as a business approach directed at establishing long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities for competitive advantage inherent in environmental and social challenges. this is the case to some extent with cause-related marketing (crm). varadarajan (1988: 58) defines crm as “a co-alignment of corporate philanthropy and marketing strategy”. effective crm is about finding a link between the product offering, the consumer and a specific cause. however, baylin et al. (1994) assert that crm programmes exploit the cause involved, turning suffering into a marketable commodity. 39 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders the art of “greenwash” is said to have been perfected by shell in 1995. greenwashing is a company’s ability to project a caring image without actually changing any of its socially and environmentally questionable practices in any significant way (hamann & kapelus 2004). nowadays, however, “an increasing number of organisations view corporate social responsibility as integral to their systems of governance” (de beer & rensburg 2011: 208). the triple bottom line (3bl) has taken the emphasis off the single “p” for profit and includes two more “ps”, i.e. people and planet (brenkert 2004). according to de beer and rensburg (2011), the focus on profit alone is shortsighted and unsustainable as a mono-contextual practice by corporates, whereas the 3bl evolves this practice into a poly-contextual one, where looking after the interests of the people and the planet are in fact essential, and even preconditions for making a profit. corporate social responsiveness corporate social responsiveness (csr2) represents a move away from corporate social responsibility per se. the focus moves to the more practical aspects of making organisations more socially responsive to tangible forces in the surrounding environment including stakeholder demands. according to carroll and buchholtz (2008), it is seen as a more action-orientated development in csr. as the word suggests, corporations are more involved in responding and actively providing something, rather than simply fulfilling an obligation. the 3bl takes precedence over the traditional bottom line, and room is created to respond to expectations of both shareholders and stakeholders. the king iii report, for instance, devotes a whole chapter on stakeholder engagement. stakeholder theory at the core of corporate social responsiveness lies stakeholder theory, as originally described by freeman (1984), who has expanded the stakeholder scope to include stakeholders beyond shareholders. both freeman (n.d.) and campbell (2008) reflect on the bi-directionality of stakeholders in that they can both affect, and are affected by an organisation. du plessis (2006: 198) describes stakeholders as active interdependent entities that stand in a “two-way, interdependent and reciprocal” relationship with the organisation which can be contrasted with the concept “public”, which implies passive recipients and a linear, one-way flow of communication. ayuso, rodriguez and riccart (2006) classify stakeholders into primary and secondary groups. the primary stakeholders are those stakeholders that the business could not function without, such as shareholders, employees, owners, 40 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk suppliers and consumers. secondary stakeholders include social and political stakeholders that play a crucial role in obtaining business credibility and acceptance of business activities such as the media, ngos, activists, communities, governments and competitors. whether stakeholders are primary or secondary may vary with circumstances. stakeholders may also play more than one role at the same time (greenwood 2007). furthermore, consumers are becoming more socially and environmentally aware and are adopting many activist-like qualities. the stakeholder perspective is diagonally opposed to the shareholder view of milton friedman. he believes that the one and only responsibility that a company has to society is to maximise its shareholders’ profit (friedman 1970). friedman’s perspective essentially says that there is no room for philanthropy and that all funds must be directed to maximising profit (foohey 2004). while it is true that companies are legally obligated to maximise their shareholder profits and act in the best interest of the company owner (fauset 2006), friedman is contradicted by the new wave of developments which no longer see business interests as separate from sustainability (benioff & southwick 2004; grimaldi de puget 2005; de beer & rensburg 2011). consumers are where the money comes from to sustain a brand or company, making them a vital stakeholder in any business endeavour. as opposed to the traditional product-related benefits and factors that have influenced consumers’ opinions of companies in the past, consumers are now looking increasingly at sustainability and other csr related factors in their purchasing decisions, to the point that many major brands today such as johnson & johnson, unilever, philips, ford, starbucks and haägen-dazs have sustainability scorecards (sustainable brands n.d.: online). normative stakeholder theory according to normative stakeholder theory, stakeholders of an organisation are identified according to moral and philosophical guidelines which go beyond compliance with business and legal expectations (donaldson & preston 1995). this would also entail society’s expectations that organisations are good citizens who are held accountable for greater support of, and corporate social responsiveness to the society of which they are part (carroll & buchholtz 2008). in essence, normative stakeholder theory asserts that organisations exist to pursue stakeholder interests, and stakeholders are seen as ends in themselves (pratt 2009: 931). according to donaldson and preston (1995), one of the most important approaches to stakeholder theory and a belief that is at the core of normative stakeholder theory is that stakeholder interests have intrinsic worth. 41 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders stakeholder communication the shift towards a multi-stakeholder approach has led to a variety of shifts in the way that corporations communicate with their stakeholders. it is a much more inclusive approach and includes, amongst others, the shift from top-down to bottom-up communication, from consensus to dissent, from monologue to dialogue, and from control to self-organisation (overton-de klerk & verwey 2012). the traditional linear approach that sees communication as a top-down diffusion of organisational messages to its publics, is now replaced by seeing communication as an interaction allowing for bottom-up grassroots participation, networks of interaction, and action research processes (ströh 2007). this would include participation of stakeholders in consumer-generated media. stakeholders (including activist consumers) have become the co-creators of organisational and brand reputation (satterthwaite 2010; overton-de klerk & verwey 2012). accountability a concept that is strongly associated with the active consumer stakeholder concept is accountability. accountability refers to the two-way, reciprocal relationship that exists between an organisation and its stakeholders as active participants (du plessis 2006). according to nothhaft and wehmeier (2007), accountability is not owned by a company or a brand, but is granted by stakeholders, and must meet at least two conditions, namely, transparency (which entails impartial assurance and public disclosure) and congruency (the extent to which the brand’s communication is borne out by socially responsive behaviour towards various stakeholder groups). activism many people are too busy to take time out to be activists, which does not mean that the desire is not there but simply that they are too preoccupied to go and picket a corrupt company or tie themselves to a tree. the internet is changing all of that. it provides the new “super-consumers” who have few other ways to take a stand together to take action and control of their brands (bosman 2010: 4). activists can be seen as dangerous stakeholders (mitchell, agle & wood 1997), and we are slowly starting to see a merger between the consumer and activist stakeholder groups. as consumers become savvier and more critical, this merge is inevitable. the active consumer stakeholder and consumer activism are not synonymous, but they are not mutually exclusive either. 42 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk the internet and social media the internet provides a low-cost, direct, controllable communication channel which is faster than daily newspapers and more interactive than broadcast media (mccaughey & ayers 2003). in addition to this, it provides pressure groups or activists with a low-cost tool that facilitates direct contact with other stakeholders, and eliminates the media as gatekeepers (holtz 2002). communication technologies, such as the internet and social network sites, have begun to shift the power balance from large corporations to activists (jacques 2006). the internet is fast changing the activism sphere and the “democratised media” is making corporations more accessible and accountable (bennett 2008: 1). companies are “operating in a fishbowl – and consumers are not… shy about tapping on the glass” (bennett 2008: 2). moreover, blogs, message boards and product reviews mean that consumers “talk back” (bennett 2008). they are engaging in dialogue with brands, whether or not the brand chooses to respond. the virtual space of the internet allows for a fusion of various conversations across websites, social networks and even time. consumers are turning to the internet for advice on goods, products and services more than ever before, thus putting the power in the hands of people who channel their experiences through the internet. operational definition of the ‘active consumer stakeholder’ concept based on the literature review of key constructs as discussed in the previous section, the following operational definition of the active consumer stakeholder concept was developed for the purpose of the empirical research: the active consumer stakeholder concept refers to the pressure exerted by informed consumers to hold brands and organisations responsible and accountable for the well-being of society and the environment beyond the maximisation of profit, and to expect such entities to be responsive to and in dialogue with consumers as stakeholders of brands and organisations. research methodology the primary objective of the research was to develop a reliable measuring instrument which could be used to establish to what extent south african brand leaders are attuned to the active consumer stakeholder concept, as operationally defined for the purpose of the research. in addition to this, quantitative and qualitative analyses of further rankings and open-ended questions were aimed at achieving a secondary objective, which was to obtain some indication as to what extent awareness of the active consumer stakeholder concept has taken root among the sample. 43 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders the research design could therefore be described as a mixed-method design, each establishing insight into the other and into the research problem. questionnaire in order to establish a reliable measuring instrument or scale for brand leaders to evaluate to what extent they are attuned to the active consumer stakeholder concept, items needed to be established based on key constructs extracted from relevant literature, i.e. corporate social responsibility, stakeholder activism, accountability and stakeholder dialogue. these constructs were incorporated into a likert-type questionnaire consisting of sufficient items, and involving a sufficient number of respondents, to develop a quantitative measuring instrument. additional items were also generated via an initial pilot study conducted among consumers through three focus group discussions. question 2 in the questionnaire required that respondents rank, in order of importance, the top five factors that are most important in how companies should behave in the context of south africa’s economic, social and political challenges. qualitative, open-ended questions were added to the end of the questionnaire. the first open-ended question was linked to ranking stakeholders in order of importance, the second to the respondents’ experiences of activism, and the third to the type of safeguards and investments made to interact and if necessary counteract the active consumer stakeholder. due to the anticipated lack of time available to the group of desired respondents, the likert-type questionnaire was kept as short as possible (32 items). the potential problems that may have resulted from fewer items in the questionnaire were weighed up against the potential of a low reliability if there were too few respondents. data collection the questionnaire was completed via email by top south african brand leaders. in order to obtain responses from at least 50 subjects (the minimum number for reliability analysis), the first step was to extract 50 brand leaders from the sunday times 2010 top brand survey. there was a point where, due to lack of response and in some cases refusal to answer at all, the subject pool was expanded to include other top brands that were not necessarily part of the sunday times top brand survey, but that are all acclaimed and established south african brands (names cannot be mentioned for confidentiality reasons). this eventually resulted in the 51 responses obtained. the respondents ranged in age from about 25 to about 50. they varied from brand account managers to account directors, brand managers and marketing 44 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk managers. they all had a sufficient impact and knowledge of the brand to influence the direction and decisions of the brand, although their level and type of responsibilities may have differed. the majority of the respondents were middleranking, but there was also representation of respondents in both junior and senior positions. there was a weighting towards female respondents. the respondents represent a range of industries i.e. fmcg, including alcohol; food and service; retail, including clothing; motor and petrol; and financial. the components of the different biographical categories were all separate at first. they were subsequently combined in order to provide larger comparison groups (more than 20) so as to make the results more relevant and more representative in order to analyse them appropriately and with more statistical accuracy. data analysis for reasons of statistical analysis, the key dimensions and sub-dimensions of the active consumer stakeholder concept were summarised as: stakeholder scope (which includes stakeholders beyond, and including, the shareholder, but specifically the consumers), dialogue, corporate social responsibility (encompassing corporate social responsiveness), accountability and social media. data analysis firstly consisted of a series of reliability tests and a cluster analysis so as to determine the theoretical reliability and consistency of the underlying conceptual dimensions of the active consumer stakeholder concept. secondly, respondents’ ranking of the top five factors which were most important in guiding how companies should behave, were analysed. thirdly, qualitative analysis was done of key themes (if any) emerging from responses to the open-ended questions to see whether they added more depth to the findings. results the data were firstly subjected to reliability analyses. cronbach alpha scores were calculated for each set of items per theme. following initial runs of the five groups of items, and based on the requirements of the cronbach alpha to be above 0.6 or at least 0.55, only three of the themes actually proved to be reliable, based on the way in which the items had been grouped. as the outcome of the reliability statistics was not entirely optimal and as factor analysis could not be considered because of the small sample size used for this research, a cluster analysis was used to achieve a different perspective on the ideal themes. 45 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders groupings were based on the commonalities between the patterns in each participant’s responses – there was no linguistic or thematically logical reason for the groupings. however, by analysing each item that was grouped together by the cluster analysis and by using the knowledge obtained from the literature, themes began to emerge that accurately represented the active consumer stakeholder concept. assuming the clustered items had been sufficiently analysed, the anomalies eliminated and the restructured themes scrutinised, the resultant cluster of items should have been reliable, but were retested by new reliability statistics. in this instance, the desired themes began to emerge, as will be discussed shortly, and there were even several overlaps between the initial more “humanistic” and subjective reliability items and the new, more “scientific” and objective cluster analysis. based on the cluster analysis, these themes were restructured as dialogue, stakeholder scope, corporate social responsibility, accountability, and a newly emerged theme: brand image. the five newly comprised themes or scales were subjected to further reliabilities testing based on their new composition of items put together on the basis of the cluster analysis. all of these yielded significantly high cronbach alpha’s, with the exception of the image items, which were eliminated (see table 1). the reliability of the tool by using the remaining 25 items, a reliable tool emerged. these items reinforced the statistical reliability and theoretical accuracy of this tool in measuring the active consumer stakeholder concept. this notion was further reinforced when an overall reliabilities test of all included items yielded a high cronbach alpha of 0.854, meaning there is no statistical uncertainty as to the reliability of the tool. 46 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk table 1: result of new reliability tests based on cluster analysis theme/scale dialogue stakeholder scope accountability corporate social responsibility items 13: companies should regularly conduct market research to determine the attitudes and perceptions of their consumers. 14: companies should regularly conduct market or other types of research to determine the kind of influences the public has on the success of their operations. 15: companies should regularly conduct market or other types of research to determine the extent of influence the public has on the success of their operations. 1: companies should be concerned about the needs of the larger society beyond their shareholders. 3: companies should engage with the community before they embark on endeavours that affect that community. 8: companies should be concerned about the needs of the larger society beyond their shareholders. 11: companies should be held accountable to the public for their actions. 21: companies can be genuinely socially responsible and simultaneously look after the interests of their shareholders. 26: all companies should manage consumer perceptions vigorously via ongoing public engagement. 32: consumers are an essential stakeholder in any company. 4: it should be a legal requirement for companies to invest in social issues e.g. the environment, education, healthcare, etc. 9: consumers should be encouraged to actively collaborate in a company’s decision-making activities. 12: all companies should make information about that company’s business practices accessible to consumers. 18: companies have the responsibility to do things for the wellbeing of society that governments can no longer do. 31: companies should make all information regarding their business practices available online. 2: in my opinion, a company’s long term success is increasingly linked to the amount of “good” it does for society e.g. the environment, education, healthcare, etc. 6: a company’s endeavours in corporate social responsibility positively influence the purchasing decisions of that company’s products or services. 10: a company’s responsibility to society should go above and beyond legal requirements. 16: companies often claim to “do good” that is unsubstantiated by their actions. 19: companies should do “good” acts, even if they do not obtain publicity for them. 23: companies should concentrate on what they can accomplish in their immediate sphere of influence rather than try and right the wrongs in society at large. 25: because of social media, companies should be increasingly wary of hiding anything from the public. 27: companies should be held accountable for the well-being of people and the planet, as well as their bottom line. 28: social media helps in a company’s attempts to maintain a good image. 30: companies should set money aside, over and above their bottom line, for corporate social responsibility. cronbach alpha 0.882 0.752 0.839 0.663 47 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders question 2 in the context of south africa’s considerable economic, social and political challenges, please rank in order of importance only the top five factors that, in your opinion, are the most important in guiding how companies in south africa should behave: table 2: dispersion of respondents’ responses to question 2 1st choice 2nd choice 3rd choice 4th choice 5th choice caring for the environment 3 3 2 11 7 improving education 4 6 6 2 3 creating advertising and marketing 3 3 3 4 4 bettering healthcare 3 2 2 3 3 maximising profit 19 6 5 3 4 improving the quality of products and services 17 14 10 1 2 image management 2 3 2 6 2 community development 3 3 6 9 13 employee satisfaction 8 17 8 2 4 customer relationship management in the social media 1 2 1 2 0 nineteen respondents chose maximising profit as their first choice and 37 chose it within their top five, i.e. they felt this was the most important element to focus on in a company. this was the highest first choice out of all ten. overall, 44 respondents selected improving the quality of products and services within their top five choices for what they felt a company’s priorities should be. this was the highest overall choice. in terms of first choices, improving health care, community development and caring for the environment all had a very low selection rate. marketing and advertising featured very low with only 17 choosing it overall. image management scored lower than advertising, with only 15 respondents selecting it overall. open-ended questions these questions were included in order to add depth and understanding to the discussion and interpretation. it was generally agreed that “no company can succeed if it consistently ignores the needs of core stakeholder groups”. this was agreed on irrespective of the stakeholder group that was given most credence by the individual respondent. 48 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk however, the majority of respondents cited consumers as the most important stakeholder. within this choice, there appeared to be three main trends among the respondents. the first distinct direction was that without consumers “there would be no brand”, “brands exist for consumers”, and “without consumers, a company would not exist”. the second direction is illustrated by the act that several respondents asserted that “consumers should have an active role in steering business decisions – they know what they want and we can give it to them”. this speaks to the fact that consumers make the brand profitable. this links to the shareholder, which was often coupled with the consumer as an important stakeholder. “customers are the lifeblood of any company, as we exist to supply the products or services which they ultimately pay for – we derive turnover from their support.” this trend is summarised by the following remark made by one of the respondents: “the more satisfied the consumer is with your products or services, the greater the likelihood that they will support your business on a regular basis, which means increased turnover and happy shareholders”. the third trend around consumers as important stakeholders is linked to the interpretation of the open-ended question. several respondents linked the consumer to csr. this indicates that consumers have been identified as wanting csr from their brands. the money spent on csr may not translate directly into sales, but it will raise brand awareness and brand image. one respondent acknowledged: “as a brand, encountering some sort of consumer activism is inevitable”. many of the respondents had experienced consumer activism to varying degrees – from functional, offering-based scrutiny to racebased criticism and accusations of murder and environmental damage. this activism was experienced through blackberry messenger, facebook, twitter, and even websites dedicated to an attack on the brand. in most cases, respondents claimed that they had mechanisms in place to deal with any kind of activism from consumers or dissatisfaction. from dedicated pr teams and call centres to online content managers, the majority have some way of dealing with the active consumer stakeholder. some respondents claimed that their brand was “open to discussion with consumers in both public and private forums”. “dialogue is essential, particularly in constantly changing technological environment.” 49 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders discussion the research succeeded in achieving its primary objective, which was to develop a measuring instrument with internal reliability and academic integrity which can be used to evaluate to what extent brand leaders are taking cognisance of the active consumer stakeholder concept. the key dimensions of this measuring instrument reflect most of the theoretical tenets of the active consumer stakeholder concept as discussed in the literature, and include the following: dialogue is essential to the active consumer stakeholder concept, as not only is it one of the key tenets of stakeholder theory, but it also provides an indication of the nature and direction of communication and research, networks of interaction and level of participation and collaboration or opposition of stakeholders (ströh 2007). critical to the measurement of the active consumer stakeholder concept is also an indication of the width and inclusivity of stakeholders beyond shareholders (stakeholder scope). it also tests, to some extent, the understanding and recognition among respondents of the idea of stakeholder. corporate social responsibility and a brand’s attention to improving its environment, on both a social and environmental level, are core areas to be observed by the active consumer stakeholder concept. this also includes the idea of responsiveness to stakeholder needs beyond responsibility and philanthropy. accountability also forms an important dimension of the measuring instrument. as cited by kapelus and hamann (2004), accountability is a key criterion for assessing any kind of csr policy. the active consumer stakeholder holds companies accountable for their actions, and expects transparency and congruency. with regards to question 2, the strong inclination towards maximising profit as respondents’ first choice demonstrates a tendency to look at the bottom line as the most important factor in managing a business. this appears to support friedman’s (1970) belief that the only important stakeholder is still regarded as the shareholder and his or her investment is what actually keeps the company afloat; the other stakeholders would not exist without the shareholders and therefore are not prioritised. however, the fact that the majority of respondents identified the consumer as the most important stakeholder in the open-ended questions could signify a gradual mental shift from the conditioning created by friedman’s (1970) school of thought. this shift appears to be towards freeman’s (1984) advocacy of stakeholder theory. however, the desire to create profit for the shareholders, above all else, has been linked to the consumer by the respondents, with many asserting in the open-ended questions that without consumers buying their product or service, there would be no shareholder. 50 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk the lower rankings of the corporate social responsibility-based options in question 2 suggest that south african brand leaders fail to see the link between looking after people’s social problems, the environmental problems of the planet, and the profit that could be derived by a 3bl “poly-contextual” approach (de beer & rensburg 2011: 212). this incongruity is also evident in the data obtained from the analysis of question 2. the shareholders were seen as the most important stakeholders; however, this response may have also been influenced by the fact that companies are legally obliged to look after the financial interests of the shareholders, while csr is voluntary in nature (fauset 2006). the incongruity was further evident when the data were compared to the open-ended responses, which, as discussed, lauded consumers as the most important stakeholders. this may suggest a subconscious pull towards consumers and their wants and needs by south african brand leaders; however, the needs of the bottom line seem to be innately incongruent with the social and environmental needs of the consumer. improving the quality of products and services was also given emphasis in question 2. this again links back to the bottom line and the preference given to the stakeholder and friedman’s (1970) loyalty to the shareholder. however, by holding this quality in such high regard, stakeholders such as employees and suppliers also become important. in addition, products and services are directly linked to the active consumer. without maintaining strict standards with regard to the above, brands are at risk of attack from websites such as hellopeter.com as well as other online and offline activism. (environmental-friendly packaging is seen, for instance, as a result of such activism.) in terms of first choices, improving health care, community development and caring for the environment all had a very low selection rate. this simultaneously links to friedman’s (1970) theories and negates the concept of the 3bl. the people are not a priority, the planet is not a priority, but profit is (holliday, schmidheiny & watts 2002). these options are also tightly linked with csr. while these options are low on first choices, they do feature (far lower than the profit-driven ones) in the overall choices. friedman (1970) in fact suggests that without profit, a company cannot take other responsibilities that are external to its day-to-day functioning into consideration. this is yet another example of the incongruous nature of the subject matter. the fact that the csr-related options feature at all may however suggest that respondents see the potential for these factors to help influence the more popular profit-driven choices. it may also be indicative of the desire, by respondents, to provide a politically correct array of choices. as arens et al. (2009) suggest, on both a brand and consumer level people are becoming more sensitive to social 51 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders and environmental issues. however, advertisers and people in general have been conditioned to separate doing good from making a profit and, as the data suggest a shift towards a compromise between these two concepts, brand leaders may slowly be starting to see the relationship between simultaneously engaging with stakeholder needs and the potential rise in the bottom line. the option of marketing and advertising features very low overall in question 2. this could indicate a shift in emphasis from traditional communication-based interaction to a more active online content and an activist consumer management role of companies. as demonstrated by the responses to the open-ended questions, the majority of brands have ways of monitoring the active and disgruntled consumers through both online and offline monitoring systems. image management scored even lower than advertising. if this result is paired with the lowest-scoring customer relationship management in the social media at an overall 6, in isolation these two results might indicate that south african brand leaders do not hold image in high regard. perhaps this could be explained by the notion of brand reputation and the possibility that it has replaced the idea of brand image entirely. as suggested by satterthwaite (2010), brand reputation is built on the narratives written by organisational stakeholders in, amongst other, consumer-generated media. stakeholders have thus become the co-creators of brand reputation. these findings may suggest that brand leaders no longer feel in control of image-making, and are uncertain of how to manage reputation, which may be perceived as being in the hands of their customers and other stakeholders. in addition, during the reliabilities testing, results for both social media and image management were repeatedly incongruent. this shows that there was perhaps some misinterpretation of the options in question 2 in the questionnaire. this is most likely because the idea of the active consumer stakeholder has not entirely penetrated the south african market yet, and the idea of fending off this invisible enemy has not been fully digested. ultimately, new ways of maintaining public interest in and respect for a brand have to be devised. marketing needs to evolve continually, as it has since it began (arens et al. 2009). the empowerment of stakeholders is redefining the role of the communication professional and will require them to come to grips with the paradigm shift from top-down image management towards bottom-up digital reputation management, which includes collaboration and co-creation by consumers as stakeholders (overton-de klerk & verwey 2012). the high prevalence given to profit indicates that the ethically based motivation for any csr under normative stakeholder theory has not taken root among the sample of south african brand managers. however, altruism is not the debate: based on the data, what needs to be recognised in order for stakeholder theory 52 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk and any type or form of csr to succeed is to equate “doing good” with making money. the motivation is of no consequence. it could be argued that normative stakeholder theory, which focuses on ethics (donaldson & preston 1995), is at one end of the continuum, while shareholder theory (friedman 1970) is at the opposite end. the research indicates that this continuum is slowly curving to create a full circle, where the two notions reach a compromise and in doing so achieve congruence. to practice corporate social responsibility, or “sustainability” as it is also popularly known today, is no longer a fleeting trend. according to grimaldi de puget (2005), sustainability, rather than profitability, may become the measure of organisational success. many of the brands represented by the brand leaders have and do conduct visible csr and subscribe to the king iii report. however, the incongruities in the findings as discussed would suggest that south african brand leaders, at least as far as the sample of respondents was concerned, have not entirely made the link between sustainability and profitability. conclusion this study does not pretend to be more than it is: a first exploration of the active consumer stakeholder concept within the south african context. in order to provide more conclusive findings, more research is required. resistance to responding and time delays made it difficult to research a larger number of respondents. the sample size was too small to test the validity of the measuring instrument; neither does it provide for external validity with respect to the rest of the findings. however, given the limitations of the research, some interesting trends in the findings as discussed above warrant further research (also among consumers themselves), and lead to the following preliminary conclusions: there appears to be a lack of congruence, within the sphere of some south african brand leaders, with regards to the notion of the active consumer stakeholder. the apparent desire to cater to the active consumer stakeholder seems to be at odds with the emphasis on securing the bottom line for shareholders. this focus on profit indicates that corporate practice among the respondents still appears to be mono-contextual to a large extent (de beer & rensburg 2011). the research also, however, indicates a slow move towards more congruence between some nuances that exist at both ends of the stakeholder continuum, i.e. shareholder theory and stakeholder theory. overall, the results indicate that south african brand leaders, while aware of the active consumer stakeholder at some level, are not fully geared for this phenomenon and are not utilising it in their strategic communication practices, perhaps because an active (or activist) consumer stakeholder is seen as beyond the brand’s control, 53 a measuring instrument for the active consumer stakeholder concept among south african brand leaders and perhaps because it is perceived not to have a direct bearing on a company’s profitability. this inclination, from the stakeholder and csr-serving perspective, supports benioff and southwick’s (2004) belief that any philanthropic or csrbased endeavour needs to take a more revenue or profit-driven form. perhaps, in time, the realisation may dawn that “doing good” can in fact help secure the bottom line. 54 benjamin shapiro and nina overton-de klerk references arens, w., weigold, m. and arens, c. 2009. contemporary advertising.(twelve edition). ed. ny: mcgraw hill. ayuso, s., rodriguez, m. and riccart, j. 2006. using stakeholder dialogue as a source for new ideas: a dynamic capability underlying sustainable innovation. corporate governance 6(4): 475-490. bakan, j. 2004. the corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. london: constable. baylin, g., cunningham, p. and cushing, p. 1994. cause-related marketing: ethical practice or exploitative procedure? queens school of business 15-33. benioff, m. and southwick, k. 2004. compassionate capitalism: how corporations can make doing good an integral part of doing well. new jersey: the career press. bennett, a. 2008. consumers are watching you. advertising age 79(14): 19. bosman, m. 2010. the staggering trends that are reshaping consumer behaviour and business growth. a presentation to the global summit 2010 of the consumer goods forum. 24 june. brenkert, g. 2004. corporate integrity and accountability. california: sage. campbell, d. 2008. all about stakeholders. student account january 2008: 44-47. carroll, a. and buchholtz, a. 2008. business and society: ethics and stakeholder management. 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